In the States
Today was a tough one for abortion rights decisions. The Indiana Supreme Court upheld the state’s abortion ban, allowing it to take effect on August 1st. The law is essentially a total abortion ban. There are ‘exceptions’ if a pregnant person’s life or health is in serious risk; for rape and incest victims in the first ten weeks of pregnancy; and if the fetus has a fatal anomaly. The law requires that abortions only be performed in hospitals, stripping abortion clinics of their medical licenses.
A few things to note:
The ‘exception’ for rape and incest is, as all exceptions are, bullshit. Between the 10-week limitation, the ban on abortion clinics, and the fact we’ve seen again and again that doctors in anti-abortion states won’t take the legal risk—it’s highly unlikely that victims will be able to get abortions.
The allowance for abortion in cases of fatal fetal abnormality is downright cruel: It requires that doctors try to persuade women to carry their pregnancy to term by telling them about perinatal hospice services—which is fine on its own, and in an ideal situation would be part of the full spectrum of care offered to the patient. But the law mandates that doctors not only inform women that they can have hospice care for their fetuses, but that they give them a brochure of the services (which say on the front, “there is no footprint too small to leave an imprint on this world”) and require that women certify in writing that they are choosing not to offer their fetus hospice care.
Finally, the law includes a ‘complication’ reporting mandate that is near-identical to the one in Texas that Abortion, Every Day found was fabricating data. Not only does the law require that doctors report unrelated physical conditions as abortion ‘complications’, it also requires that psychological conditions like anxiety and trouble sleeping be reported as consequences of abortion.
The religious freedom challenge against the ban still stands; I’ll keep you updated on that, if there’s any movement. In the meantime, I’m so sorry, Indiana.
More bad news out of North Carolina, where a 12-week ban will go into effect after a judge today declined to block most of the law. In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles said that the confusing statements and contradictions brought up in Planned Parenthood’s suit were largely taken care of by a last-minute amendment from Republicans. Eagles blocked a minor provision, but the most important thing to know is that abortion access both in North Carolina and throughout the South will be decimated.
The law not only prohibits abortion after 12 weeks, it makes it near-impossible for many people to seek them in before the cut-off, as well. Medication abortion would require three in-person visits, for example—an attempt to make it harder for those traveling into the state for care to get abortions, and more difficult for those who can’t take that much time off of work. The law also mandates that doctors lie to patients about the safety of abortion; includes hurdles intended to humiliate and shame women; and requires that severe fetal abnormalities be “uniformly diagnosable” before a patient can get care—a standard that only applies a small handful of conditions.
North Carolina Health News spoke to doctors in the state about how they’re preparing and faring with the reality of the ban setting in. OBGYN Dr. Amy Bryant, who provides abortions, talked about a 17 year-old high school senior she treated a few weeks ago. She was 13 weeks and one day pregnant, which means that by tomorrow she won’t be able to get care in her home state. Dr. Bryant said, “That’s just going to happen so much more. It’s just unfair.”
Meanwhile, state Attorney General Josh Stein refuses to defend the law in court, calling it “sloppy” and saying, “My obligation is to the United States Constitution…that’s what I swear my oath to and to North Carolina law when it is not inconsistent with that Constitution.”
For more details on the law, check out my column, “The 12-Week Lie”:
Speaking of abortion access in the South: the former chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court says that current Justice Charles Canady should recuse himself from a challenge to the state’s 15-week abortion ban. Canady already has an anti-abortion history, but it also so happens that his wife, state Rep. Jennifer Canady, is a co-sponsor of the state’s recently-passed 6-week abortion ban. (As a reminder, the Florida Supreme Court is expected to come down any day now with a ruling on the state’s existing 15-week ban, a decision expected to pave the way for the enacting of the 6-week ban.)
Former chief justice Barbara Pariente not only said Canady should recuse himself, but did so in a sort of brilliant way: “I know Justice Canady to be of the highest ethics. I cannot imagine himself not recusing himself from a bill that his wife co-sponsored.” That’s the kind of pressure I love to see.
In Wisconsin, Republicans voted this week to uphold the state’s abortion ban from 1849. The legal challenge to the total abortion ban is making its way through the courts, and is expected to end up in front of the state Supreme Court. (Which considering pro-choice Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s recent win, is positive news.) The majority of Wisconsinites want abortion to be legal.
Just weeks after passing a 12-week ban, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen says he is “going to end” abortion entirely in the state. Please remember that Republicans spent months claiming that their ban was a ‘reasonable, commonsense’ compromise that still allowed abortions in the first trimester. But in a town hall this week, Pillen said, “I can assure you as long as I’m the governor, that’s unacceptable…we’re going to end abortion.”
A new study estimates that Texas live births increased by nearly 9,800 as a result of the state’s 2021 abortion ban. (Texas passed their anti-abortion law, SB8, before Roe was overturned.) While anti-abortion activists are sure to treat this as a victory, we know that women who are denied abortions are more likely to end up in poverty, more likely to stay with abusive partners, and generally fare worse than their counterparts who had a choice. In fact, researchers pointed out that the majority of people who seek abortions are already living close to the poverty line.
One of the study’s authors, Alison Gemmill, professor at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, “Even though we're not directly measuring the negative consequences of the study, we know from other studies…that people who are denied wanted abortions face a host of negative consequences. We need to contextualize what these births mean. It's nuanced.”
Meanwhile, if you missed this story about a Massachusetts woman who lost a fallopian tube in an emergency abortion because a crisis pregnancy center misdiagnosed her, NBC News did a short segment on the case:
In Maine, where Democrats have advanced legislation to expand access to abortion throughout pregnancy with a doctor’s recommendation, anti-choice activists are talking about a “people’s veto.”
In better news…
New York abortion rights advocates are putting a constitutional amendment in front of voters this November that would codify abortion rights. The move follows similar moves in several other states that enshrined abortion rights in their constitutions post-Roe. The state Equal Rights Amendment would also add protections for LGBTQ people.
Quick hits:
The American Prospect looks at how Minnesota became a model for pro-choice protections;
Also in Minnesota, there’s been a 20% increase in abortions;
Arizona pharmacists will soon be able to dispense birth control without a prescription;
Martha’s Vineyard is going to have abortion access for the first time in the Massachusetts island’s history;
And Iowa Public Radio on where access stands in the state a year after Roe fell.
In the Nation
Domestic violence experts are raising the alarm about what abortion bans mean for those in abusive relationships. Crystal Justice of the National Domestic Violence Hotline told PBS NewsHour that thanks to Dobbs, abusers “have even more power and control, because survivors have even less options and increased barriers to obtain that care.”
We know from research like the the Turnaway Study that denying women abortions put them at increased risk of violence—and that women who aren’t able to end their pregnancies when they want to are more likely to stay in an abusive relationship. Maeve Wallace, a reproductive epidemiologist at Tulane University’s Violence Prevention Institute, says, “Everything we know from existing data suggests there’s a relationship between availability of abortion and women’s risk for fatal violence.” (And in a country where the leading cause of death for pregnant women is homicide, every pregnancy is a life-threatening pregnancy.)
Over at The Guardian, Moira Donegan perfectly articulates what’s so infuriating about President Joe Biden’s latest dismissive comments on how he’s “not big on abortion”:
“Joe Biden has abdicated leadership on abortion, the loss of which is causing untold suffering, and which will define life prospects for a generation of women. Because he finds it distasteful. Because he’s not ‘big on’ it.”
Renee Bracey Sherman, executive director of We Testify, also has some choice words for the president:
“I don’t understand why he cannot show the same love and support and care for people in this country who have abortions as he does for any other issue where people are impacted. Why is it that people who win championships for sports get shown more love and have more invitations to the White House to meet with him than people who have abortions who are living through a human rights crisis?”
In response to criticism over Biden’s less-than-enthusiastic comments, Olivia Dalton, White House deputy press secretary, defended the president as being “quite clear and consistent over the course of his career.”
Something I missed first time around, because I was so pissed off about the “not big on abortion” aside. At the same speech, Biden also said that when it comes to ending a pregnancy, the first three months is between “a woman and her family,” the second three months “is between a woman and her doctor,” and the last three months “have to be negotiated, because you can’t—unless you are in a position where your physical health is at stake—you can’t do it.” It just struck me that the decision never seemed to be a woman’s alone.
Quick hits:
Reuters with the latest on the mifepristone lawsuit, and how it may rely on the anti-choice doctors’ standing to bring forward a case to begin with;
An increasing number of teenagers are opting for IUDs;
More information on the possibility of women bringing malpractice suits after being denied abortion care;
Republicans continue to hold up military promotions over the DoD’s abortion policy;
And somehow I missed this terrific (but depressing) interactive from The New York Times that tracks what happened to the abortion clinics that closed, and how it impacted their communities.
Stats & Studies
This is interesting: FiveThirtyEight reports that nonreligious Americans increasingly care about abortion rights—at this point more so than white evangelicals. From political scientist David Campbell at the University of Notre Dames:
“Religiously unaffiliated people are worried about this issue in a way that they weren’t before Dobbs, And evangelicals are maybe feeling some more ambivalence about abortion restrictions now that they’re actually happening. We’re in a very different era now and it’s changing how people are feeling about the salience of the issue on both sides.”
Check out the full analysis here.
Listen Up
The Gallup Podcast has a segment on the latest post-Roe polls:
The New Yorker spoke with Tammi Kromenaker, the director of Red River Women’s Clinic—which had to move from North Dakota to Minnesota after Roe was overturned.
Keep An Eye On
How pro-choice activists are being punished. I’ve written about this case before, but its egregiousness really does bear repeating: Right now, four people are facing 12 years in federal prison for tagging an anti-abortion center with graffiti. That’s right, prison for graffiti. The Biden administration is going after the young activists using the FACE Act—legislation that was meant to protect reproductive health clinics. And the crisis pregnancy center that was defaced is bringing civil RICO charges (a law made for organized crime). This is happening at the same time that the FBI is increasingly investigating pro-choice ‘domestic terrorism’—all because Democrats want to signal that they’re not biased. Total nightmare.
You Love to See It
In some better news, this is very cool: Mayday.Health has launched an abortion ‘pop-up’ that gives people in Texas information about how they can obtain abortions either out-of-state or via tele-health.
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