Abortion, Every Day (7.25.23)

Ohio voters will get to decide abortion rights

In the States

Terrific news out of Ohio: pro-choice advocates have collected enough signatures—over 495,000—to get abortion rights on the ballot! The measure, the language of which you can read here, would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The remaining hurdle, of course, is next month’s special election to determine whether the standards on ballot measures will be raised.

Ohio Republicans are trying to make it impossible for citizen groups to pass ballot measures, or even get them in front of voters to begin with. Issue 1 would require that measure have 60% of votes to pass, as opposed to a simple majority; it would also mandate that signatures be collected from every county in the state before a measure is able to get on the ballot.

The good news is that the majority of Ohio voters don’t support Issue 1, and a new poll released this week reports that nearly 58% of voters support enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution. Now you can see why Republicans are so desperate to raise that standard to 60%! (For months, they’ve claimed that the move has nothing to do with abortion rights; they gave that lie up recently, admitting that it’s 100% about banning abortion.)

The Washington Post also reports that anti-abortion voters in the state aren’t exactly keen on Republicans’ efforts to make it harder to pass ballot measures: only one-third of anti-abortion voters are in favor of Issue 1.

Meanwhile, political experts are looking to happens in Ohio as a test case for the rest of the country. Ballot measures have been extraordinarily good for abortion rights, but conservatives are hoping that their strategy of anti-trans scare tactics and ‘parental rights’ talking points will win over voters—and that they’ll be able to export that messaging elsewhere.

We’re waiting on a ruling from Texas Judge Jessica Mangrum after last week’s emotional testimony from women whose health and lives were endangered by the state’s abortion ban. It may take weeks for her to issue a decision, but we’re on standby. (I’m still reeling, to be honest, over how incredibly cruel the lawyers were for the state.)

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, on behalf of Gov. Kim Reynolds, argued in a court filing on Friday that the recently-blocked abortion ban should be able to go into effect. The fight over Iowa’s abortion law is expected to go to the state Supreme Court, where it’s unclear what might happen. A previous ruling declined to allow a similar ban to go into effect, but that decision was based on a procedural issue—not the content of the law itself. That said, legal experts believe that despite the conservative makeup of the Court, there’s still a chance they could rule the ban is unconstitutional.

A new report out of Florida shows that more than 38,000 abortions were performed during the first half of 2023—a stark reminder of just how many people will lose access to care if the state Supreme Court allows the 6-week abortion ban to go into effect. I’ve said this before, but I think it’s worth repeating: Florida’s population is similar to the populations of Greece and Sweden combined.

The three Republican women who voted against South Carolina’s abortion ban are worried that the decision will end up hurting them in upcoming primary fights. But Sen. Sandy Senn says she wouldn’t have been able to look at herself in the mirror by voting any other way:

“I don't want any woman to have an abortion. But I'm not going to be judging them, and I want things to be safe for them. I'm not going to go willingly back to the 1950s. I'm just not.”

The Minnesota Republican running for governor, Scott Jensen, says that his party needs to rethink their stance on abortion, saying “we can be pro-life from a personal perspective, and we can be pro-choice from a policy perspective.” Sort of an interesting take, considering just a few a months ago Jensen said abortion should only be legal to save a pregnant person’s life. He later claimed he’d be okay with rape and incest exceptions, and then went on to put out a truly bizarre ad. All of which is to say: maybe he’s not so credible on abortion.

Quick hits:

• The Associated Press on how abortion rights will fare once Wisconsin’s Supreme Court flips next month;

• Rolling Stone has more on the story I reported last week about the Alabama anti-abortion leader arrested for child sexual abuse;

• The federal indictment of two men responsible for firebombing a California Planned Parenthood will be unsealed today, and the arrest of a third man will be announced;

• And an Iowa columnist rightfully tears into the Republican who said that if women are worried about an abortion ban, “everyone is free not to have sex.” Which is…demonstrably not true.

In the Nation

POLITICO has a big piece on the way that Republicans are pushing abortion restrictions through unrelated spending bills. Lawmakers used the defense spending bill, for example, to try to reverse the Pentagon’s abortion policy. Now, Republicans are doing things like adding language to the food and agriculture spending bill that would ban the mailing of abortion medication. It’s completely shameless, and unpopular: a new poll shows that most voters oppose adding abortion related measures in spending bills.

Naturally, conservative legislators are doing all of this under the direction of major anti-abortion organizations like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Students for Life. Kristi Hamrick, the chief policy strategist with Students for Life, told POLITICO, “This goes to the core of our argument against people who say abortion should just be a state issue…it’s already a federal issue.” Students for Life wants to make birth control illegal, so these really are the last fucking people on earth you want dictating federal law. (For a list of the proposed restrictions in each spending bill, Forbes has a rundown here.)

In related news, President Joe Biden released a statement on Friday about Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s protest of the Pentagon’s abortion policy, which has led to the hold-up of hundreds of military promotions and nominations. He said, “What Senator Tuberville is doing is not only wrong—it is dangerous.”

And if you’re looking for a longer read today, the Center for Public Integrity has published an incredibly important piece on how Republicans flipped state Supreme Courts—and the massive implications that the move has had on abortion rights. I’m making my way through it now and whew.

Quick hits:

• Democratic lawmakers—including U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and John Fetterman—introduced the Convenient Contraception Act, which would expand access to birth control;

• Democrats also wrote to the Department of Justice, urging them to adopt pro-active measures protecting Americans’ right to interstate travel;

• Feminist author Susan Faludi thinks maybe the Barbie movie was about abortion;

• And Print magazine on telehealth abortion provider Hey Jane’s billboard branding strategy.

Stats & Studies

I’ve been pointing out for a while now that Americans increasingly support abortion throughout pregnancy. When Gallup came out with their June report, for example, so much of the coverage focused on the fact that support for abortion dropped off after the first trimester. What almost no one wrote about, though, was how support for abortion later in pregnancy jumped by nearly 10 points since 2018. I wrote that it was an indication Americans were starting to understand that pregnancy is too complicated to legislate.

Today, FiveThirtyEight has a piece on a fascinating PerryUndem poll showing something very similar. In fact, the report found that voters are more likely to support a hypothetical ballot measure when it doesn’t include a ‘viability’ restriction:

“PerryUndem found that respondents who received the version of the ballot measure with no government regulations included were 15 percentage points more likely to say they would “definitely” vote for it: Forty-five percent said they would “definitely vote yes” on the version with no restrictions, while 30 percent said they would “definitely vote yes” on the version with a viability restriction.”

Tresa Undem, a co-founder of PerryUndem, says that while even five years ago people supported a viability mandate, today, “People are saying, ‘I don’t want the government involved in this at all.’”

Reporter Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux posits that the shift could be because voters are more aware of why people have abortions later in pregnancy, or because after Dobbs, Americans are more suspicious of government regulations on abortion. (Some respondents worried “that states will regulate ‘fetal viability’ too heavily,” for example.)

I tend to believe both are true. Most of all, I think that the consequences of abortion bans—which Americans are seeing play out every day—have done more damage to the anti-abortion movement than we ever could have.

I’ll be interested to see how this poll is received by pro-choice ballot initiatives in places like Missouri and Ohio, where there’s been some tension with local abortion rights groups who disagree with including any language on ‘viability.’

Criminalizing Care

Republican strategist Jamie Corley writes in POLITICO that conservatives should quit focusing on abortion medication, an issue she calls a “political dead-end.” Corley points out that because pills are increasingly being shipped to patients, Republicans no longer can use abortion providers like Planned Parenthood as political bogeymen. Even more importantly, claiming that those who ship the pills are “traffickers”—as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser has done—puts lawmakers in the position of having to answer whether or not they want to prosecute women for abortion:

“The availability of mifepristone forces Republicans to answer a deeply uncomfortable question: Who is the criminal when a woman induces her own abortion?”

The problem, of course, is that there are plenty of Republicans who would love to prosecute women—and won’t mind saying so. There’s been an increase in lawmakers attaching their names to bills that would classify abortion as homicide and make it punishable as such, and anti-abortion activists who believe the same are similarly gearing up.

For example, States Newsroom has been covering the Georgia gathering of Operation Save America, a domestic terrorist group that wants those who have abortions punished as murderers. Yesterday, reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris wrote about one of their panels, a group of all-male activists pontificating on how they can punish women—even if it means ending up in “a civil war.”

Some language to pay attention to from that panel: ‘equal protection’. I’ve written about this term before, and the way it’s been used in bills like the one in South Carolina that would have made abortion punishable by the death penalty. The term also feels very on brand for a movement that likes co-opting feminist and progressive rhetoric: ‘equal’ is quite a word to use when you want to kill women who have abortions.

Finally, The Marshall Project has a must-read investigation into the way that pregnant women in four Southern states are being arrested, jailed, and removed from their children using ‘chemical endangerment’ laws. These are laws meant to punish people who do things like operate meth labs with their kids in the house, yet Republicans are using the laws to go after pregnant women they say have substance abuse problems.

I’m going to insist you read this one, because it really paints a stark (and accurate) picture of the future of abortion criminalization. Remember how Abortion, Every Day revealed that Alabama’s Attorney General was planning on using chemical endangerment laws to prosecute women for abortion medication? It’s all connected.

In Better News

I told you last week how providers in certain pro-choice states were starting to ship abortion medication directly to patients in states with bans. Doctors who live in places with shield laws—which protect them from out-of-state criminalization—are working with Aid Access to get the pills to patients as soon as possible. (Previously, shipping could take weeks because the medication was coming from abroad.) The Washington Post had a really good article on the change; and this weekend The Guardian published a piece on how the shift is helping patients get care without long waits.

Abortion provider (and Abortion, Every Day commenter!) Linda Prine, told The Guardian that they’re shipping about 50 packages of pills a day, with a shipping time of two to five days:

“The whole experience of wanting an abortion and then needing to wait three or four weeks to get it to happen, and not even be sure if those pills are ever going to come, that’s just so hard. Who wants to do that? Nobody.”

Abortion providers in pro-choice states expect that there will be a test of just how strong those shield laws are at some point soon, but that they’re prepared for whatever happens. “But I’m definitely not taking any vacations in Texas,” Prine said. (Exactly why the expectation that OBGYNs take their board certification exams in Texas is so absurd.) Ms. magazine also has a piece on the issue, if you’d like even more reading.

In more good news, the Reproductive Freedom Alliance—a coalition of pro-choice governors—held its first meeting yesterday in California. A release on the convening said that governors “shared progress and best practices” and “received a briefing from reproductive health care providers from around the country.” This is the kind of pro-active measures we like to see! Click here to see quotes from the different governors who attended.

Quote of the Day

“I think Mr. Skrmetti should take his patriarchal ideological crap and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.”

-Tennessee Sen. Heidi Campbell responding to state Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti seeking access to the medical records of those who get out-of-state abortion care

2024

Mike Pence doubled down on his assertion that women should be forced to carry doomed pregnancies. In an interview with Pence, CNN’s Dana Bash asked the former vice president if he really believes women should have to carry a pregnancy to term even if there’s no chance of survival. Pence not only did exactly what I flagged last week—pivoted to talking about ectopic pregnancies, which have nothing to do with the question—but then characterized cases where fetuses have no skulls or are missing parts of their heads as “simply the subjective judgment of a physician.”

Also notable: Pence used the term “minimum national standard” (aka a national ban) multiple times. And The 19th points out that while Pence continues to say that he wants to support women and families, he hasn’t really explained how he plans to do that.

Finally: I cannot believe we’re at a point where publications have to fact-check the idea of ‘post-birth abortions’, but that’s 2024 news for you! Yesterday, the Houston Chronicle published a piece debunking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent claim that “in some liberal states, you actually have post-birth abortions.” I did a TikTok about this over the weekend, as well, and how the absolutely bonkers claim is related to the very tragic reality of palliative care for newborns. Which makes the lie all the worse.

Keep An Eye On

I’ve been writing for a while now about the way that abortion opponents are planning on targeting data: Abortion, Every Day uncovered the way that Republicans were using abortion ‘complication’ reporting laws to drum up false statistics, for example, and I’ve warned that anti-abortion groups were sowing distrust in maternal mortality data because they knew those numbers were about to skyrocket.

Now, in the wake of an increase in infant mortality in Texas, anti-abortion activists are attacking credible data and pushing misinformation in an effort to confuse and distract Americans. The Charlotte Lozier Institute—the ‘research’ arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America—is out doing the media rounds, claiming that the increase in infant deaths is because of…illegal immigration. Wish I was kidding. The group also argues that the mortality rate for newborns only went up because Texas law has been “preventing unborn children from being aborted due to their medical condition”—which is a nice way of saying more women have been forced to carry doomed pregnancies.

You Love to See It

In much more pleasant news, congratulations to Boulder Valley Health Center in Colorado! The clinic is celebrating its 50th anniversary of providing care to the Boulder county community and beyond. CEO Savita Y. Ginde says, “This is an incredible milestone for us. As a long-standing community institution, we are proud of our local roots and history and the vital role we hold in so many people’s lives.” It’s pretty amazing, all things considered. Love to see independent clinics flourishing.