Abortion, Every Day (5.9.24)

Republican bill would create gov't website to collect data on pregnant women

Click to skip ahead: The GOP’s Attacks on Privacy looks at a new Republican bill that would create a gov’t-run website to collect data on pregnant women. In the States, news out of Arizona, Ohio and Florida. In Care Crisis news, a new study shows that new doctors are less likely to want to move to and practice in anti-abortion states. Ballot Measure Updates has info on Oklahoma, New York, Florida and Missouri. In the Nation, more on second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s effort to get men involved in abortion rights. In Stats & Studies, a new report from Guttmacher and a few quick hits. 2024 looks at VP Kamala Harris’ trip this week to Pennsylvania and Hillary Clinton’s reaction to the EMTALA arguments in front of SCOTUS. Finally, Keep An Eye On how anti-abortion groups are pretending to care about domestic violence.

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The GOP’s Attacks on Privacy

A new bill introduced by U.S. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama would mandate the creation of a government-run website that would collect data on pregnant women. It’s as bad as it sounds.

Sen. Britt says the MOMS Act (More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed) is “further evidence that you can absolutely be pro-life, pro-woman, and pro-family at the same time.” So let’s take a look at what Britt considers “pro-woman.”

According to the proposed legislation, pregnancy.gov would take users through a series of questions—including their zip code and contact information—that would direct women to “relevant resources” in their area. This assessment would then be sent to a government staffer who may use it “to conduct outreach via phone or email to follow up with users on additional resources that would be helpful for the users to review.”

In other words, after entering their personal information into a government website, women would be directed to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers and then contacted by someone from the government about their pregnancy—presumably to pressure them out of an abortion. (Crisis pregnancy centers will frequently harass women who have been to see them, calling nonstop to shame them out of getting care.)

If this sounds familiar at all, it’s because I flagged similar language in a bill introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio in January 2023. His near-identical bill would have established life.gov, a government-run website that collects data on pregnant women. They’ve been trying to make this happen for a long time. In fact, Rubio is a co-sponsor on this new bill.

If you thought this was just about data collection, you’d be wrong! Reckon points out that Britt’s legislation would require child support payments to start at pregnancy, effectively enshrining fetal personhood.

There are also key terms in the newly-introduced legislation that you’ll recognize, including calls for the website to include resources on “perinatal hospice” services and “infant loss support.” If you’re a regular reader, you know that these are code words for crisis pregnancy centers that pressure women into carrying doomed pregnancies to term.

The legislation also says that the resources would include information about the “risks” of abortion and “information on child development from moment of conception. You will not be surprised to know that the bill is endorsed by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

I’ll have more on this legislation and how it connects to the conservative attacks on our privacy and data tomorrow. But for now: WOW.

In the States

Doctors in Arizona are calling for the legislation that repealed the state’s 1864 abortion ban to go into effect immediately. As it stands now, the repeal legislation won’t go into effect for 91 days after Arizona’s legislative session comes to an end—which means that 1864 ban could be enforceable for a period of time. As I mentioned yesterday, that’s exactly what anti-abortion groups are hoping for; they’re asking the state Supreme Court to allow the 160-year-old ban to take effect, even if it’s for a limited time.

Earlier this week, I told you how Ohio Republicans are trying to keep as many abortion restrictions in place as possible, despite voters overwhelmingly passing Issue 1—which protects abortion rights in the state constitution. Now Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has weighed in, saying that the state’s 24-hour waiting period for abortion care should remain.

DeWine’s stance is the same one we’ve heard from other Republican leaders in the state: the waiting period was around before Roe was overturned, and Issue 1 was supposed to revert laws back to Roe. “Those guardrails are still in effect,” he said. “They worked well before, so I don't see any reason to change them.”

As I wrote previously, this is the problem with campaigning on a ‘restore Roe’ message. But the executive director of Pro-Choice Ohio, Kellie Copeland, says that Issue 1 wasn’t about going back to Roe:

“[Issue 1] does so much more than Roe because it prevents political barriers to abortion, contraception, miscarriage management, infertility treatments, and maternity care. No amount of gaslighting or trying to rewrite history will change the fact that Ohioans rejected their ideological and dangerous anti-abortion agenda.”

NBC News reports on what Florida’s 6-week ban means for providers in shield law states who ship abortion medication to anti-choice states. These doctors are protected from prosecution by the laws in their pro-choice states—but anti-abortion groups are getting increasingly fed up with their inability to go after the providers.

Kristi Hamrick, vice president of Students for Life Action, says, “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.”

That’s a terrifying thought, but it’s one that seems more likely by the day. Remember, I reported yesterday that law professor Mary Ziegler told The Nation, “I think there’s a real possibility a court is going to say, ‘Well, actually, the banned state can come for you.’”

Finally, some Republican lawmakers in Alaska voted with their Democratic counterparts to stop a law that would have prohibited public funding for abortions. The Alaska Watchman reports that four Republicans in the state House—including the Senate President and Majority Leader—voted down the anti-abortion amendment in the state operating budget bill. Apparently the state Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that the health department must pay for Medicaid recipients’ abortions, regardless of other abortion laws. (It’s an interesting piece on Alaska abortion politics, if you want to click through.)

Quick hits:

• 3 out of 4 voters in New Jersey say abortion is a main factor in their 2024 vote;

• More on the vote in Louisiana that will force child rape victims to give birth;

• The Nashville Scene looks at recent abortion-related legislation in Tennessee, like the state’s new travel ban;

• And more on the newly-signed Missouri law prohibiting Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood—even for birth control or STI testing.

Care Crisis

A new study shows that new doctors don’t want to practice in states with abortion bans. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) found that recent medical school graduates were less likely to apply for residencies in anti-abortion states—continuing a trend that the group reported last year.

States with abortion bans saw a 4.2% drop in residency applications, whereas pro-choice states saw just a .6% percent decrease. Last year, anti-abortion states saw a 3.3% drop in doctors applying to practice there. And by the way, this drop in residency applications didn’t just apply to OBGYNs or other kinds of reproductive health care specialties–but to all doctors.

Beverly Gray, OBGYN professor at Duke University School of Medicine, told KFF Health News, “People don’t want to go to a place where evidence-based practice and human rights in general are curtailed.”

AAMC’s research aligns with what we’ve seen anecdotally reported out of anti-abortion states, and the trends that Abortion, Every Day has been tracking: doctors simply don’t want to live and work in places where they could be arrested for doing their jobs, and where they can’t give patients the standard of care.

And while you can’t blame doctors who leave anti-choice states or refuse to practice there, there is a real harm to patients. There are growing maternal and reproductive health deserts in anti-abortion states, and we’re likely to see gaps across different kinds of healthcare, as well.

Ballot Measure Updates

Oklahoma columnist Ginnie Graham wants abortion rights activists to propose a ballot measure sooner rather than later, noting that the attacks on democracy will soon make it harder than ever in the state to let voters have a say. She points to bills at the governor’s desk that would increase the fees for filing a citizen-led petition, raise the threshold for signatures, and require a certain percentage of signatures from every county in the state.

“If abortion-rights advocates wait too long,” she writes, “lawmakers will continue chipping away at the initiative-petition process to the point where it will be impossible.”

Tamya Cox-Toure, executive director of the ACLU Oklahoma and chair of the Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice, tells Graham that it’s not about ‘if’ they’ll bring forward an amendment, but ‘when.’

“We’re looking at an intentional, strategic opportunity of when we move forward with a ballot initiative,” she says.

And just a few quick hits out of other states: The Nation asks whether Missouri’s abortion rights ballot measure will help Democratic candidates. Hundreds of people gathered for an event on Florida’s Amendment 4. And Ed Kilgore at New York Magazine writes that the ruling against the state’s abortion rights ballot measure is a blow to New York Democrats.

In the Nation

I told you yesterday about second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s new campaign to get men involved in abortion rights. (Which is much-needed.) Emhoff spoke to Yamiche Alcindor at NBC News about why the effort is so important, and what he would say to male lawmakers who are passing abortion bans: “Listen to doctors, listen to nurses, listen to men and women who are suffering because of those actions.” You can watch the full segment below:

On Morning Joe this week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she felt ill listening to the Supreme Court arguments on EMTALA:

“I thought I would literally throw up listening to the oral argument before the Supreme Court about whether or not doctors and hospitals and nurses have to give emergency care to pregnant women who show up in emergency rooms, as you say, bleeding out in terrible pain, having some extraordinary challenge to a pregnancy that they wanted, but now they are not only sick but maybe dying.”

I think we all felt the same. As I’ve written before, there’s something soul-numbing about realizing that of of course they want us dead.

Quick hits: Kylie Cheung at Jezebel looks at the trend of Republicans defending child marriage; CBS News on the history of 6-week abortion bans; and U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona says he’d do away with the filibuster to codify abortion rights.

Stats & Studies

The Guttmacher Institute has a report on abortion trends they’ve tracked in the first quarter of 2024. In addition to new bans, attacks on young people, and efforts to enshrine fetal personhood, Guttmacher notes the massive expansion of funding for anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers: They found that 12 states introduced bills that would fund the dangerous fake clinics, with money ranging from $200,000 to nearly $30 million. The group also points out that this funding is sometimes is taken from TANF funds (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), money meant for low-income people.

Quick hits: When Americans were asked about what political issues would motivate them to protest, abortion was high on the list. KFF has a new policy brief on how abortion bans impact pregnancy loss, like miscarriage and stillbirth.

2024

Vice President Kamala Harris was in Pennsylvania this week talking about abortion rights and the attacks on our freedom. Harris hammered on Donald Trump, (correctly) blaming him for the post-Dobbs horror stories we’re hearing every day. She also responded to Trump’s move to appear ‘moderate’ on abortion, saying, “I think the American people recognize when they’re being gaslit and have the ability to decipher beyond the charade.”

Harris also did an event with Emmy-winning actor Sheryl Lee Ralph, from “Abbott Elementary,” who spoke about her own high-risk pregnancy and the importance of reproductive healthcare:

“If you were to take Planned Parenthood away from some communities, there would be no place for the women or the men to go for health care…Listen, if a man can get Viagra, I need health care too.”

You can watch a small snippet of that conversation and some thoughts from Pennsylvania voters here.

Two women denied vital abortion care have been on the road campaigning for President Joe Biden: Amanda Zurawski, who went septic in Texas after being denied treatment for a doomed pregnancy, and Kaitlyn Joshua of Louisiana, who was turned away by multiple hospitals when she was miscarrying. (If you haven’t read the column Joshua wrote about her experience, make sure to remedy that.)

At one event in Michigan, Zurawski laid into Republicans who call themselves ‘pro'-life’:

“I simply don't believe them, because in my situation, the bans nearly killed me. So that's not pro-life for me, it's not pro-life for my future fertility, my future children that are now harder for me to conceive because what I went through. So it simply doesn't make any sense. There's nothing pro-life about these bans.”

In another Michigan event, the two women were in conversation with state Attorney General Dana Nessel, who also shared her abortion story. Twenty years ago, while pregnant with triplets, Nessel needed a selective reduction to save two of the fetuses. “I can’t imagine, I literally can’t imagine being in the situation that you guys have been in, in the states that you’re from, now post-Roe,” she said.

In the least shocking news ever, Donald Trump has been using his ‘back to the states’ rhetoric to avoid taking a specific stand on abortion. Trump refused to answer a question about whether Wisconsin’s Supreme Court should uphold a lower court ruling restoring abortion access in the state, for example: “It’s up to the state—it’s what the state wants to do. For years they fought to get it back to the states, I was able to do that.” (He will never fail to take a victory lap.)

And as Trump continues with the farce that he would be somehow moderate on abortion rights, columnist Susan Demas writes that the disgraced former president’s record on abortion rights (and everything else) speaks for itself:

“It’s a level of willing obtuseness rarely seen in politics. Trump has already declared he wants to be a dictator on day one, so assuming that he’d simultaneously be a squishy centrist on abortion is a bizarre bet.”

Keep An Eye On

Anti-abortion groups are desperate for voters to think that they give a shit about women—that’s why we’re seeing so much more messaging from them about abortion medication being used by domestic abusers or abortion ‘coercion’. And what’s happening in Kansas right now is a perfect example of that national strategy. (And how it’s not based in reality.)

Kansas Republicans have been able to enact several new anti-abortion laws after overriding vetoes from Gov. Laura Kelly. One requires doctors to ask abortion patients a series of invasive questions—part of the broader conservative strategy on data collection. Another makes it a crime to ‘coerce’ someone into an abortion, with a definition of ‘coercion’ so broad that people could be brought up on charges for kicking a roommate out or deciding to divorce someone.

Again, anti-abortion groups and lawmakers want people to believe that domestic abusers frequently coerce their victims into abortions. And while reproductive coercion is absolutely real, what’s far more common than abusers pressuring women into abortions is abusers pressuring women into childbirth. From Michelle McCormick, executive director of Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence:

“It was much more frequent, in my experience, that a victim or survivor was being pressured into either having children when they wouldn’t want to or having their chosen form of birth control hidden from them.”

And Amanda Meyers, director of the Wichita Family Crisis Center, tells The Topeka Capital-Journal that abusers often force their partners into pregnancy and childbirth because it creates a permanent link between them, making it harder to escape:

“Probably less than a handful of times have I seen (abortion coercion) arise with my clients, but reproductive coercion or coercion around family planning is happening in 90 to 99% of the cases.”

Anti-abortion lawmakers and activists don’t like to talk about that, though, because it would remind people of just how aligned their movement is with domestic abusers. After all, there’s only one side of the abortion debate that wants to force women into doing something against their will.