Abortion, Every Day (7.5.23)
Ohio activists collect 700k signatures to get abortion rights on the ballot
It’s Grace Haley (Abortion, Every Day’s researcher) and I have a quick update—I’ll be bringing you the newsletter every Wednesday for the rest of the month.
As the country celebrated the Fourth of July yesterday, many great writers reflected on the freedoms that are restricted and withheld from most of its citizens, especially in the face of abortion bans. I wanted to start the newsletter today with some of these pieces.
In the Nation
Jessica mentioned this Los Angeles Times op-ed in our Monday newsletter, but I wanted to highlight a central question from the piece once more: who gets to see freedom as we celebrate our independence? Through the failures to pass legislation ranging from the Equal Rights Amendment to the Women’s Health Protection Act most recently, Carla Hall makes the case that women do not have access to the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. And that “without personal autonomy, there is no liberty”:
“In America, liberty has never been part of a woman’s brief, and our personal autonomy has neither been spelled out nor assumed…Now, instead, what is being spelled out in the law is what women can’t do with their bodies.”
Another op-ed in Rolling Stone also discusses how our branches of government have limited liberty and opportunity to be accessible to only the most privileged few. Marley Dias, an 18-year-old activist and founder of the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign, details how recent court decisions on affirmative action, student loans, and abortion access compound structural racism and pushes Black women to the margins of society in ways that are deeply damaging to their health and wellbeing.
“While the 4th should mark Independence Day, this year it’s marred by a Supreme Court that has pushed Black women out of the conversation on freedom. Education is freedom. To be in community with those who look like you is freedom. To be economically empowered is freedom. To choose when and where to create life is freedom.”
These are themes that come up frequently in our reporting; the abortion news today is a good example:
The Center for Public Integrity, for example, reported on how the scope and quality of reproductive care in the U.S. is highly dependent on where you live—which creates a systemic web that exacerbates inequalities and health disparities. From the deep effects of abortion bans and the lack of insurance coverage for abortion-seekers, to limited abortion training for health care providers and college students lacking the skills to navigate sexual consent and contraception. The issues in this report remind us that there is no law that regulates what a (white cis) man can do with his body.
The Associated Press talked to the maternal care doctors choosing to leave their home-states with restrictive abortion laws and those who decide to stay. Their decisions center a fear for their own safety and ability to practice marked by their duty to provide care, especially in rural areas. Before Dobbs, half of the counties in the US had low or no access to obstetric providers—a number that will only get worse as the full weight of the decision takes effect. The piece is a good example of the crisis of care we’ve been covering here at the newsletter, including the widespread maternal care shortages and the widening medical deserts post-Roe.
The American anti-abortion movement’s reach goes beyond our borders: U.S.-based organizations in Africa, for example, are lobbying to restrict abortion across the continent. Christian organizations like Family Watch International are pursuing meetings with African presidential offices and other political leaders to advocate for the removal of constitutional abortion protections. They’re also mobilizing to preach an anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion mission. Abebe Shibru, the Ethiopia director for MSI Reproductive Choices, said that these organizations “consider the Supreme Court decision as fuel for them.”
Finally, The Washington Post reported on the growing pressure on Biden to reform the Supreme Court and the increased support for court expansion. This comes after recent anti-affirmative action, anti-LGBTQ and anti-student loan decisions rocked the nation around the year anniversary of Dobbs—along with reports that some of the conservative justices accepted lavish trips from billionaires.
Reproductive rights groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America are now supporting court expansion; and Democratic Reps. Don Beyer of Virginia and Ro Khanna of California have reintroduced legislation that would mandate 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices. From the organization Demand Justice:
“The court is already in a very unhealthy state. The public’s confidence in the court has never been lower, and the court’s legitimacy derives from the public having a belief that its rulings are nonpolitical. The crisis is already here.”
Biden has shown little openness to major changes to its structure so far.
Quick Hits:
Rolling Stone on the national abortion ban strategy that uses the Comstock Act and why GOP politicians don’t want to talk about it;
KFF Health News on the gap in knowledge about dangerous working conditions for pregnancies after the approval of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act;
Intelligencer making the case for liberals to adopt the Federalist Society strategy and use state courts to check the Supreme Court;
And The New York Times reports that the man who raped an Ohio 10 year-old—the girl whose story became an international example of the cruelty of abortion bans—was given a life sentence for the attack.
In the States
We have great news out of Ohio, where we’ve been closely watching the ballot measure fight: abortion rights advocates in the state filed more than 700,000 signatures today to place a reproductive rights measure on the general election ballot in November. That’s nearly twice as many signatures required. (Here is a great video of the U-Haul truck unloading the hundred of thousands of petitions from Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom.)
The Ohio Secretary of State office will spend the next few weeks validating the signatures before it officially makes the ballot. This is big news, as this could be the only abortion rights referendum in 2023.
Abortion, Every Day has been reporting on the anti-democracy blueprint that anti-abortion advocates are attempting to pass across the country, largely around making it harder to pass ballot measures by raising and expanding the standards. In Ohio specifically, Republicans are working to require 60% of the vote as opposed to a simple majority for measures that change the state constitution. They’re holding a ($20 million) special election on the issue this August; you can read more about that effort at Axios.
More on Republican moves to pass abortion bans against the wishes of voters: Iowa’s Governor Kim Reynolds announced today that she is calling for a rare special session for July 11 “with the sole purpose of enacting legislation that addresses abortion and protects unborn lives.” Since the Iowa Supreme Court declined to reinstate a 6-week ban, anti-abortion activists and lawmakers in the state have been gearing up to introduce new abortion restrictions.
In response, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Pam Jochum railed against the move at the Des Moines Register:
“Republican extremists, led by Gov. Kim Reynolds, are rushing to take away Iowans’ established rights and personal freedoms. And they hope they can do it fast enough that Iowans won’t even notice. Now is the time for Iowans to fight back against an extreme abortion ban that will cost women their lives as well as their freedom.”
We’re a few days into the first week of North Carolina’s newly-enacted abortion ban. Health care providers are saying that the ban is already having an impact on patients. As a reminder, a federal court judge allowed most of North Carolina’s abortion ban to go into effect this weekend, despite current litigation challenging the ban. One minor portion of North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban was temporarily blocked before it went into effect on July 1.
The blocked measure required that abortion providers document the "location of the pregnancy" in the body before performing the procedure. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper wrote in a statement that the numerous clarifications around the bill’s language show that "[t]he rushed abortion ban was so poorly written that it is causing real uncertainty for doctors and other health care providers.”
Abortion access in the South continues to be critically endangered: We’re still waiting on state Supreme Court decisions from South Carolina and Florida about their bans. South Carolina’s ban is being challenged in front of the all-male state Supreme Court; and Florida’s Supreme Court will soon decide on the state’s existing 15 week ban (which will determine the future of the 6-week ban).
In Arizona, 12 of the state’s 15 county attorneys are calling for Gov. Katie Hobbs to rescind her recent executive order that limits their ability to prosecute abortion-related cases. They stated in a letter to the governor’s office that the executive order “interfere[s] with the discretion of prosecutors in fulfilling their duties as elected officials.” The governor will not be rescinding the order, per a gubernatorial spokesperson. (As we’ve reported previously, Hobbs’ move comes in the wake of Republican Attorneys General and legislators working to remove prosecutors from office who don’t go after abortion cases.)
Quick Hits:
More from Ohio: there are a host of barriers when seeking abortions for college students attending state universities;
Access to medication abortion is helping Massachusetts health care providers fill gaps in care;
And a Missouri judge dismissed four prosecutors from a religious freedom challenge to the state’s abortion ban based on their standing.
Stats & Studies
This piece from The Guardian visualizes the legislators who ban abortion. We know that it’s mostly white male lawmakers who are enacting bans, but there’s something about seeing that fact visually that sits deep with you.
This is all happening while report after report show how deeply unpopular these abortion bans are. This morning Axios’ daily podcast highlighted the recent polling that shows that abortion support is at a record high (69%).
Quick hits:
New data shows that over half of Missouri citizens do not believe or know that emergency contraception is legal;
More data: Oklahoma women are forced out of state to receive abortion care;
And data from Pennsylvania and their post-Roe uptick in out-of-state abortion-seekers.
Anti-Choice Strategy: Language
Abortion, Every Day has tracked GOP political strategy going into 2024 through their recent attempts in calling a 15-week national ban “reasonable” and inching away from using the word “ban.” A recent example: Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Elise Stefanik will be introducing a 15-week national abortion ban ahead of the election and are instead calling it a “national standard” and a “national consensus.”
The Hill has a bit more on this and the internal division among Republicans on whether to keep abortion-banning to state legislatures, or to put their weight behind a 15-week national abortion ban. Republican political strategists have argued that legislators must reframe their abortion message in order to gain control of the Senate because they know abortion bans are deeply unpopular. A quote from Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster and strategist:
“If they’re going to argue for one national position by Congress, it needs to be something close to consensus middle ground for the country. Seems like that’s somewhere around a ban after 15 or 16 weeks with exceptions for severe cases, like the life of the mother.” (Emphasis mine)
Moreover, Ayres argues that these federal proposals aren’t “really a national 15-week ban,” because they throw agency back to the states to allow them to ban abortions earlier than that. Yet another reminder of the way that conservatives are trying to redefine what ‘ban’ means.
At the end of the day, this shows what we’ve been tracking at Abortion, Every Day: anti-abortion leaders want to call their strategy anything other than what it is—a movement to eradicate across the country abortion as we know it.
One last fun bit of 4th of July news: Claudia Conway, daughter of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America strategist and former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, tweeted her support of abortion rights when she reposted a video of herself talking about not buying into “July 4th propaganda.” She said, “Why should we be celebrating independence when not all of us have independence? And that's why all of us are out here fighting for our reproductive rights…” Anyways, I hope you had a better 4th of July than Kellyanne Conway!
And if you missed Jessica’s column this morning on exceptions, you can read it here:
I love seeing children of conservative politicians speak out against their parents' godawful beliefs. I hate that these children have to put themselves in the unfriendly spotlight without even the support of their immediate family. It's a lonely place to be and they deserve better.
Extremists do not get to determine what ‘consensus’ is. Period.