Abortion, Every Day (5.13.24)

Polls: Americans support abortion, even in Louisiana

Click to skip ahead: In All About Arizona, some brief but terrific news. Anti-abortion orgs are focusing on Extraditing Abortion Providers. In the States, Louisiana Republicans want to make abortion pills a “controlled substance.” In Ballot Measure Updates, a fact-check of anti-choice messaging in Florida. In the Nation, AED reporting sparks a response from Senate Dems, and the rise of misinformation on birth control. In 2024 news, a new multimillion dollar ad campaign using women’s abortion stories to attack Donald Trump. In Stats & Studies, new Pew numbers show what we’ve known for years: that Americans support abortion. Finally, in Care Crisis news, OBGYNs talk about the study showing that new docs don’t want to practice in states with bans.

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All About Arizona

I saw some great news just as I was about to send the newsletter: the Arizona Supreme Court granted a 90-day delay on the enforcement of the state’s 1864 ban. That means that the law will not go into effect until mid-August (if at all). Remember, the 1864 ban was repealed—but the repeal legislation doesn’t go into effect until 91 days after the end of the legislative session. And anti-abortion activists wanted the total ban to be enacted in the meantime. The ruling means that abortion rights are protected for the time being. I’m thrilled for the people of Arizona, and all of the abortion providers and patients.

Extraditing Abortion Providers

I’m sorry to say that I’m seeing increased chatter from anti-abortion groups about prioritizing the extradition of abortion providers. As you know, conservative lawmakers and activists have been absolutely furious that doctors in pro-choice states have been able to ship abortion medication to states with bans—and that they can do so with the protection of shield laws.

In response, Republican legislators have been pushing legislation that would criminalize dispensing abortion medication as ‘drug trafficking’. And anti-abortion organizations are ramping up their messaging and threats about holding doctors accountable, even if they live in states where providers are legally protected.

Most recently, a legal fellow from Americans United for Life—one of the nation’s most powerful anti-abortion groups—argues at The Federalist that shield laws are unconstitutional. Guzi He writes that the laws violate the Constitution’s extradition clause and “put the commercial interests of abortionists ahead of the safety of women and girls, not to mention the damage done to long-standing traditions of interstate cooperation.”

The column comes just a few days after Kristi Hamrick, vice president of Students for Life Action, told NBC News, “The attempt by some states to create a little safe haven for abortion will not be successful. I think we will end up in court.” And in Amy Littlefield’s terrific piece about “the abortion pill underground” at The Nation, law professor Mary Ziegler predicts that anti-choice groups might just pull it off. “I think there’s a real possibility a court is going to say, ‘Well, actually, the banned state can come for you,’” she said.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for potential lawsuits and other hints from anti-abortion groups. We knew this would happen eventually, but it’s distressing to confront the reality.

In the States

Speaking of anti-abortion strategy around abortion medication, let’s take a look at what’s happening in Louisiana, where Republicans want to classify mifepristone and misoprostol as “controlled dangerous substances.” In an amendment attached to an anti-abortion ‘coercion’ bill, the GOP’s language would make having the pills without a prescription punishable by prison time.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Thomas Pressly says he’s trying to “control the rampant illegal distribution of abortion-inducing drugs” in Louisiana, and that “we will assist law enforcement in protecting vulnerable women and unborn babies.” And while the language of the amendment says that a woman obtaining the pills “for her own consumption” wouldn’t be targeted, anyone who helps a person obtain abortion pills would be risking prison time. As is so often the case these days, it appears the legislation is targeting abortion funds. (After all, those are the groups helping people obtain abortion pills through the mail.)

We’re not done with Louisiana news yet! A new poll shows something that isn’t shocking, but remarkable nonetheless: 54% of Louisiana voters want abortion to be legal in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. As I’ve said over and over again—Americans support abortion, even in red states.

A Tennessee woman says that the state’s abortion ban cost her an ovary, a fallopian tube, and as a result—her fertility. Thirty-four year old Breanna Cecil tells The Independent, “The state of Tennessee took my fertility from me, [lawmakers] took away my opportunity to have a family like my own biological family because of these horrible laws that they put in place.”

Cecil found out in early 2023 that her fetus was diagnosed with acrania, and that her pregnancy wasn’t viable. But because the fetus still had a heartbeat, she wasn’t able to get care in Tennessee. Cecil says she had to call twenty clinics and hospitals before finally finding a place that could see her in Chicago.

But Cecil ended up suffering a cascade of health complications that arose from the pregnancy, abortion, and delay in care; she ended up needing three different procedures to save her health and life, including an emergency surgery to remove an ovary and fallopian tube. She hasn’t been able to get pregnant since, and believes that if it wasn’t for Tennessee’s ban, that might not be the case. “Right now I feel like they took that away from me,” she said.

Kansas Democrats and abortion rights activists are concerned that Republicans are laying the groundwork to reverse a 2019 state Supreme Court decision protecting abortion rights. For example, Republicans are pushing a bill that would require child support during pregnancy—legislation that effectively enshrines fetal personhood. Democratic Sen. Ethan Corson says, “If we're going to say that fetuses now have legal rights, that is going to affect downstream a whole bunch of other things.”

Also in Kansas: Because Republicans have overridden Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto, anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers in the state will get $2 million in funding. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the money is heading to the groups despite the fact that none have submitted mandated reports about how last year’s funding was used.

Kansas law requires the programs to submit a report with information about the kind of work they did—from the number of clients serviced to how many women completed educational or job training activities. But when the publication filed an open records request, they found that no such reports existed or were ever filed. This aligns with what we’ve seen from anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers across the country: almost zero regulation or accountability.

Finally, just because California is pro-choice, it doesn’t mean everything is perfect there: Civil rights groups are calling out the Sacramento Police Department for sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with out-of-state law enforcement agencies. You can imagine why this is so important for abortion rights’ law enforcement in anti-choice states could use that kind of data to go after abortion providers and patients.

Quick hits:

• More on the challenge to Ohio’s ban on telehealth for abortion medication;

• A New Mexico clinic is offering free abortion medication to active-duty military all this week to commemorate Armed Forces Day;

• And Reckon tells us about five abortion funds helping the wake of Florida’s 6-week abortion ban. They can’t do it without us, so consider donating to one of the funds today!

Ballot Measure Updates

As you know, anti-abortion groups have been trying to push all sorts of lies to convince voters to oppose pro-choice ballot measures. We’ve seen them claim that protecting abortion rights would allow children to have gender-affirming surgery without parental consent, that the amendments would allow abortion “up until birth,” and even that pro-choice petitioners are trying to steal voters’ data. Last month, I raised the alarm on another eye-rolling claim that started to gain steam, particularly in Florida: that the language of the amendment could allow tattoo artists to perform or prescribe abortions.

Today, pubic radio station WLRN partnered with PolitiFact to make the truth clear, as ridiculous as it is that it needs to be said: no, tattoo artists won’t be able to give anyone abortions under Amendment 4. I hate that this is necessary, it feels absurd. But the unfortunate truth is that we need more pieces like this.

In the Nation

Last week, Abortion, Every Day broke the news about a Republican bill that would allow for the collection of pregnant women’s data (a story that has since gone viral).

Introduced by U.S. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, the legislation would mandate the creation of a government-run website, pregnancy.gov, that would prompt women to enter their personal data and contact information. Women would then be directed to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, and later be contacted by someone from the government about their pregnancy. As I noted last week, the bill is near-identical to one introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio that I flagged last year, and is part of a broader conservative strategy to collect data on pregnant women and pressure them out of having abortions.

Today, Senate Democratic women responded to that news, calling out the dangerous legislation:

“Americans don’t want the government to track, intimidate, and coerce pregnant women into carrying their pregnancies to term no matter their circumstances. Yet, Senate Republicans want to mandate the creation of an online federal database where women will be encouraged to register their pregnancies with the government in order to push them toward anti-abortion propaganda and dangerous crisis pregnancy centers—this tells us exactly how Republicans will weaponize the whole of government to restrict a woman’s freedom to choose and force them to stay pregnant no matter what.”

-U.S. Sens. Patty Murray, Debbie Stabenow, Amy Klobuchar, Maria Cantwell, Tammy Baldwin, Mazie Hirono, Elizabeth Warren, Catherine Cortez Masto, Tina Smith, Jacky Rosen, and Laphonza Butler.

Just another reminder of how Abortion, Every Day is making a demonstrable difference! Take, for example, the newsletter’s coverage of the bill compared to this puff piece from Axios, headlined, “Senate GOP pushes bill to provide support to pregnant women, moms.” The article said the bill would provide “various prenatal and postpartum support for women,” and touting it as coming “before Mother’s Day.” There was no mention of what the legislation would actually do.

I really appreciated this Bloomberg piece from Nia-Malika Henderson, who calls out Democrats for inadvertently stigmatizing some abortion patients by focusing almost entirely on the abortion stories of those they believe are most media-friendly:

“Democrats have judged that it is easier and more politically palatable to tell the story of upper-income White women who are dealing with planned pregnancies that go horribly wrong.”

Henderson also points out the stories we’re hearing from the Biden administration don’t reflect the diverse demographics of abortion patients, and argues that Democrats are cutting themselves off from the ability to make vital connections for voters. If they started talking about those who have abortions to go to college and later lift themselves out of poverty, for example, Democrats could make a better argument about the connection between abortion and economics.

Most importantly, though, Henderson writes that while Democrats say they trust women, their focus on a limited type of story gives the impression that “they only trust certain women.”

Agence France-Presse has an article about the increase of contraception misinformation on social media, pushed by American health ‘influencers.’ This is part of an insidious cultural campaign being pushed by conservatives, who are eager to convince young women that birth control is somehow dangerous or bad for them. The hope, of course, is this will make young voters a little bit less pissed off as Republicans continue their attacks on contraception.

In fact, misinformation researcher Jenna Sherman told AFP, “This spike in contraception misinformation correlates with the restriction of abortion access in a number of states.”

Quick hits:

• Law professor Mary Ziegler writes at CNN that abortion is actually on the ballot in every state;

• A Fox News host touted abortion ‘reversal’, an unproven and dangerous procedure that experts warn is not medically accepted or standard;

• Jill Filipovic writes at Slate about the growing legal movement to make pregnant people second class citizens;

• Finally, I can’t bring myself to write about the RFK Jr. abortion debacle, so feel free to catch up here.

2024

With voters furious over the end of abortion rights, women’s stories have taken central stage over the last few months: We watched Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear win reelection in large part thanks to an ad featuring a young woman who was raped and impregnated as a child, and a Democrat flipped an Alabama House seat after sharing her own abortion story.

Now, The Washington Post reports that a Democratic super PAC is launching a $25 million ad campaign in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania using women’s real stories to target Donald Trump. You can watch one of American Bridge 21st Century’s ads here, and below is another, featuring OBGYN Anna Igler talking about needing to end her doomed pregnancy:

Stats & Studies

Pew released a new poll on abortion rights today, and—unsurprisingly—support for the issue remains strong, and has increased since Roe was overturned. Sixty-three percent of those polled said that abortion should be legal “in all or most cases,” and Americans believe abortion medication should be legal by more than 2 to 1.

Here’s the thing. While Pew’s numbers line up with what we’ve seen from other polls, I really do wish they’d ask questions differently. As you know, we get much more interesting answers from voters when they’re asked if the government should regulate pregnancy and abortion, rather than when.

When pollsters presuppose that there should some kind of restriction on pregnancy, they’re adopting Republican rhetoric from the get-go. But the truth is that Americans are far more pro-choice than even positive studies give them credit for. A March poll, for example, showed that 81% of Americans believe abortion should be decided between a woman and her doctor, and not legislated by the government at all.

Pew got closer to this sort of question in this poll, asking voters whether the following statement described their view extremely well, very well, somewhat well, not too well, or not at all well: “The decision about whether to have an abortion should belong solely to the pregnant woman.” When framed that way, 73% of Americans said that the statement described their view extremely, very or somewhat well. Only 26% said that the statement described their view not too or not all well.

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For more on Americans’ support for abortion rights, check out my year-end roundup of polling & data:

The Year in Abortion: Polling & Democracy

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Care Crisis

New and prospective OBGYNs are speaking up in response to a study showing that new doctors are less likely to want to practice in anti-abortion states. Rohini Kousalya Siva, who will be starting her residency in Washington, DC this year, tells says that she didn’t even consider programs in anti-abortion states. “We’re physicians, we’re supposed to be giving the best evidence-based care to our patients, and we can’t do that if we haven’t been given abortion training,” she says.

And newly-graduated Hannah Light-Olson, who is leaving Tennessee for training at the University of California at San Francisco, tells KFF Health News, “I feel some guilt and sadness leaving a situation where I feel like I could be of some help.”

Similarly, longtime OBGYNs and physicians are worried about what the trend will mean for already underserved areas. From Debra Stulberg, chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Chicago:

“The geographic misalignment between where the needs are and where people are choosing to go is really problematic. We don’t need people further concentrating in urban areas where there’s already good access.”

Meanwhile, specific states are starting to notice the exodus of OBGYNS and their inability to recruit new physicians. A local station in Florida, for example, spoke to a maternal fetal medicine specialist who left the state after nearly a decade to move to New Jersey. Dr. Lindsay Maggio said, “I loved being in Florida and practicing in Florida. It just got increasingly more challenging over the last couple of years to feel like I could safely do my job and offer the level of care that I wanted to offer patients.” And WPLN, the public radio station in Nashville, Tennessee, reports that residency programs in the state saw a massive 20% drop in applications.