Abortion, Every Day (4.22.24)

New rule to protect out-of-state abortion records

Click to skip ahead: In Privacy Protections, the Biden Administration strengthens HIPAA. In the States, news from Arizona, California, Oklahoma and more. In Care Denied, a Kentucky representative shares her abortion and pregnancy loss story. Ballot Measure Updates looks at the latest in Idaho and Nevada. Mike Pence uses all the terms I’ve warned about in Conservative Language Watch. In the Nation, gearing up for the EMTALA case before the Supreme Court. And in 2024, Trump’s potential VP pick is extreme on abortion.

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Privacy Protections

It’s so rare that we have good news, I wanted to make sure to start with it! The Biden Administration is expanding and strengthening HIPAA in order to protect abortion patients and providers. The short version is that the new rule will stop abortion patients’ records from being disclosed or shared with law enforcement. From HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra:

“Many Americans are scared their private medical information will be being shared, misused, and disclosed without permission. This has a chilling effect on women visiting a doctor, picking up a prescription from a pharmacy, or taking other necessary actions to support their health.”

Previously, insurers, doctors, and health organizations were allowed to share patients’ medical information in criminal investigations. Given that abortion is now a ‘crime’ in so many states across the country, this kind of protection is more important than ever.

The new rule will also protect patients who leave their anti-choice state for abortion care—a vital move, given that it wasn’t so long ago that 19 Republican attorneys general moved to ensure they had access to women’s out-of-state abortion records.

In the States

This is interesting: Arizona Republican Rep. David Cook says that Democrats will have enough GOP House votes to repeal the state’s 1864 abortion ban: “You’re going to have 31 people that are going to put it on that board.” The last two times lawmakers have tried to repeal the total ban, Republican House Speaker Ben Toma blocked the effort. But The Hill reports that Toma is facing a lot of pressure from national Republicans, Donald Trump, and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, who are all desperate to avoid the political fallout from the ban.

In the meantime, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes says that the state’s 1864 abortion ban can’t be enforced until June. In a letter to hospitals, the Democratic AG says that providers can perform abortions up until 15 weeks of pregnancy until at least June 8th. Mayes also wrote that abortion providers can’t have disciplinary or licensing action taken against them by the Arizona Medical Board, the Arizona State Board of Nursing, and other medical authorities.

In related news, there’s a new progressive effort to unseat two Arizona Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of the 1864 ban.

Abortion rights groups in Florida and Arizona say they’re seeing increased support and enthusiasm since state Supreme Courts made anti-abortion rulings. Cheryl Bruce, campaign manager of Arizona for Abortion Access says, "Since the ruling, we have seen a flood of new activity. There's no fence left for people to sit on.” That doesn’t mean anti-abortion activists in the state are letting up—far from it. The New York Times reports on the radical lawmakers in the state who don’t give a shit about the public outrage.

The Guardian reports that California abortion providers are gearing up to help Arizona patients and to make the state a safe haven for care. Darrah DiGiorgio Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest (PPPSW), says, “This ruling places patients in Arizona in an even more precarious position,” and that the group has appointments available “in days not weeks.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom also says he’s working on a law that would allow Arizona doctors to provide abortions in California. In an interview on MSNBC, Newsom said the bill would be an emergency measure meant to help with the Arizona patients expected to travel to the pro-choice state as the 1864 ban goes into effect.

This comes at the same time that Newsom launched a powerful ad campaign in Alabama against Republican travel bans. The spot features two young women trying to leave the state for care, only to be arrested. A reminder, though: Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall doesn’t just want to criminalize helping a teenager leave the state for abortions. He says that the state can restrict women of any age from getting out-of-state abortions.

I had to share this bonkers quote from a Montana Republican. Last week, the state GOP took a symbolic vote against a pro-choice ballot measure, with some legislators using the opportunity to rail against abortion rights in general. Check out what Republican Sen. Chris Friedel said:

“I believe in women’s rights. I believe they have the right to choose. They had several choices to make before this all happened.”

Basically, just another version of ‘keep an aspirin between your knees’. Asshole.

Finally, I love this piece of service journalism from The Frontier in Oklahoma. The non-profit newsroom looks at the Republican claims about abortion medication, which have been plentiful as state lawmakers try to make it a felony to distribute abortion-inducing medication.

Quick hits:

• Florida Democratic Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell talks to The Guardian about the state’s “violent attack on women;”

• Missouri Republicans are still trying to defund Planned Parenthood;

• And anti-abortion groups are upset that Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who is pro-choice, visited a Catholic school to talk to students. (Reminder: 6 out of 10 Catholics believe abortion should be legal.)

Care Denied

Kentucky Rep. Lindsey Burke has shared her abortion and pregnancy loss story, and it is incredibly powerful—especially considering the Democrat has had to listen to Republicans and anti-abortion activists say awful things about nonviable pregnancies as she recovered from her own.

In the Lexington Herald-Leader, Burke shares how she had to leave Kentucky for care after finding out that one of her twin fetuses had a fatal abnormality. She needed to have a selective reduction in order to give the healthier fetus any sort of chance:

“We wanted him in our lives more than anything. The only thing worse than losing him would’ve been for him to be suffering and tortured. And I just didn’t want that for him.”

You may remember that it was just last month that Kentucky Republicans tried to sneak anti-abortion language about nonviable pregnancies into a bipartisan bill that would have provided supports for new mothers. In keeping with the language I’ve been tracking in my “Calculated Cruelty” series, conservative lawmakers added a mandate that patients with doomed pregnancies be directed to a “perinatal palliative care program,” aka a crisis pregnancy center.

At the time, Democrats walked out of the legislative meeting in protest, with Burke calling it “an insult to grieving parents everywhere.” She was always correct, but the additional context of her story makes me just incredibly furious on her behalf.

Ballot Measure Updates

The Associated Press has more information on the ballot measure campaign in Idaho, where Idahoans United for Women and Families wants to restore abortion rights. Melanie Folwell, a spokeswoman for the group, said, “We have not been able to get a fix from our lawmakers, our politicians…we are going to seek a fix from our people.”

Since Idaho passed its abortion ban, the state has lost nearly 25% of its OBGYNs and half of its maternal fetal medicine specialists. Multiple hospitals have shut down their maternity wards as a result, growing the maternal health deserts across the state.

"One in four Montanans will have an abortion in their lifetime. These people are our family members, our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, they are some of us in this room. Abortion is a topic that's become politicized and stigmatized, but in reality, we all love someone or are someone who's had an abortion.” ~ Martha Fuller, CEO of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Montana

A local news outlet in Nevada spoke to the abortion rights activists behind the ballot measure campaign, which was just given the go ahead by the state Supreme Court after being challenged by anti-choice groups. The proposed amendment from Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom will have to pass twice: this November, and then again in the 2026 midterms.

Conservative Language Watch

This is wild: Mike Pence wrote a New York Times op-ed this weekend that used all of the language tricks I’ve been tracking at Abortion, Every Day. If you read the column, I’m sure you clocked them immediately. This was the most obvious:

“I believe the time has come to adopt a minimum national standard restricting abortion after 15 weeks in order to end late-term abortions nationwide.”

It’s not just that Pence used ‘standard’ in place of ‘ban’, which AED has been warning about for a year—it’s what the former vice president wrote about “late-term” abortion. I’ve flagged multiple times that Republicans are trying to define ‘late’ abortion as anything past the first trimester. (Remember, ‘late-term’ abortion is not a medical term.)

But what truly blew me away about this piece was that Pence wrote twice that Democrats support abortion ‘up until birth’—language that isn’t just false, but dangerous. It’s the kind of rhetoric that gets providers killed, and I can’t believe it made it past the fact-checker.

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If you missed my piece earlier today about Republicans’ plan to trick voters, please make sure to read and share it. It’s an important one:

Republicans' Fake Ballot Measures

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In the Nation

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in another abortion-rights case—this time, it’s about whether anti-choice states can deny women life-saving abortions in hospital emergency rooms. Every single time I write that sentence, it takes my breath away. Abortion, Every Day will publish an EMTALA explainer this week, but in the meantime, you can check out Vox’s rundown and this excellent brief from KFF.

NBC News reports that pharmacists in anti-choice states are increasingly worried about dispensing misoprostol, the second medication in the two-drug regimen used to end a pregnancy. Misoprostol isn’t just used for abortions, but for miscarriage treatment and the prevention of stomach ulcers. But because the law in some states is so stringent, pharmacists are terrified.

Idaho pharmacist Matt Murray says, “The law isn’t clear whether a pharmacist is committing a felony for dispensing the medication. What level of due diligence are we expected to perform?”

If you want to know just how unclear Idaho law is, consider that when NBC News reporters reached out to the Idaho Board of Pharmacy, a representative responded that “abortion does not mean the removal of a dead unborn child or the treatment of a woman who is no longer pregnant.” In other words, if a woman is miscarrying but there’s a still a fetal heartbeat, pharmacists can’t prescribe the medication. I don’t know how pharmacists are supposed to glean such a thing, but I do know that women who have had their care delayed because of a fetal heartbeat have ended up in the ICU with sepsis.

At the same time that anti-abortion lawmakers put women’s lives in danger, they’re spreading the most vile lies about those who are trying to save pregnant patients. U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama repeated a dangerous lie on a podcast appearance this weekend, saying that Democrats are “for abortion anytime, sometimes past the birth of the baby.” Again, we know what language like this leads to.

Quick hits:

• USA Today on the study showing that the majority of Catholics want abortion to be legal;

• The Daily Beast on how Democrats are counting on ballot measure turnout to bring home 2024 for them;

• And Forbes on the Charley abortion chatbot.

2024

One of the politicians on Donald Trump’s shortlist for vice president doesn’t believe in rape and incest exceptions for abortion. In a CNN interview this weekend, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said, “I just don’t believe that a tragedy should perpetuate another tragedy.” You may remember Noem as the absolute nightmare of a person who said that a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term, and who threatened pharmacists with felony prosecutions if they dispensed ‘abortion-inducing’ drugs.

Over at The New Republic, Walter Shapiro reminds readers of how wholly unworried Republicans were in 2022 about what the impact of Dobbs would be on elections. They predicted it would be a “fizzle,” “a wash,” with Ted Cruz even saying “angry leftists” were going to be surprised when nothing about their lives changed. So much for that!

The Harvard Youth poll shows that young people—young women, especially—will be supporting President Biden’s reelection, and that reproductive rights is a top issue for Gen Z.

Indeed, Sara Guillermo of Ignite National, a political organization for Gen Z women, writes that their research also shows young people are pissed about abortion rights and that they’ll show up in November: “We won’t tolerate judges and politicians controlling our bodies. It’s a simple fact.”

Finally, Amanda Zurawski, who went septic after being denied an abortion in Texas, was on MSNBC talking about her work campaigning for President Joe Biden and the danger of a Trump presidency.