Really awful news out of the gate today. A judge in Texas ruled that hospitals in the state aren’t beholden to a federal law requiring them to provide emergency abortions. Not so surprisingly, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix was appointed by Donald Trump.
Better news out of Idaho, on the same exact issue: A federal judged blocked the state from enforcing their abortion ban in medical emergencies—because doing so would violate federal law. (Essentially this judge came to the exact opposite conclusion that the Texas judge did.)
I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that we’re having to fight it out in court so that doctors can save women’s lives.
In Indiana, doctors are already seeing out-of-state patients who have been denied health- and life-saving care. Dr. Katherine McHugh told ABC News about seeing a patient recently who went to the emergency room in her home state after she began to bleed during pregnancy. Even though the woman was bleeding badly, her cervix was starting to open, and abortion would be the standard of care—ER doctors turned her away because the fetus still had a heartbeat. “The woman or the pregnant person can lose a lot of blood and become infected, can get very very sick and can even die from this,” Dr. McHugh said. Luckily this woman was able to travel to Indiana where she got an abortion, but Dr. McHugh points out that won’t be legal in a few weeks.
The Michigan Court of Appeals declined to consider an appeal put forward by Republicans against an order keeping abortion legal in the state. And in Florida today, an appeals court rejected an injunction against the state’s 15-week abortion ban. (Also in Florida: A judge who refused to let a teenager get an abortion because of her grades was voted out of office. Good, fuck that guy.)
Republicans in Wisconsin are asking a judge to throw out a lawsuit challenging their abortion ban; abortion funds in Texas are suing the state attorney general to stop unfair prosecution of their work; and foster care advocates in Indiana are stressed about how the abortion ban will put a strain on the system, while ignoring the children who already need care. Foster parent Allie Missler says, “We keep saying babies, babies, babies. What about the children that are already here?”
You may remember Republican candidate for Minnesota Lt. governor Matt Birk for saying awful things about abortion and rape; well, it appears that in 2018, Birk also called birth control “a fast road to Hell.” Seems like a real winner.
Oklahoma’s extreme abortion law goes into effect this week. The ban only has an exception to save a person’s life, and makes providing abortion a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The proposed ballot measure in California to protect abortion rights has strong support; and a coalition of medical professionals, lawmakers and activists have come together to expand abortion access and protections in Hawaii.
If you’re in Kentucky or know someone who is, Planned Parenthood has released a list of their endorsed candidates in the state. And here’s some more info on the disaster that is Tennessee’s abortion ban, where “any doctor could be charged with a felony for any abortion performed and then shoulder the legal burden of proving the abortion was medically necessary.”
In Missouri, sex workers are organizing to protect their right to abortion: “At the end of the day, what we are all advocating for is for people to be able to be in charge of what they do with their bodies.”
And some good news out of New York, where an upstate race shed some light on abortion as a winning issue.
In Ohio, a guest columnist at The Columbus Dispatch who has previously voted Republican, says after Roe, “the only way forward is to revoke all support from any candidate that does not support a woman’s right to full bodily integrity.”
And The New York Times looks at what will happen in North Dakota, Texas, Idaho, and Tennessee should their trigger laws go into effect.
Conservatives are very mad about this interview with Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill. This quote in particular seems to have set people off.
Facebook removed a Planned Parenthood post that gave information about medication abortion; Meta says it was taken down mistakenly. Hmm. Related: SELF has an article about obtaining abortion medication using tele-health and potential legal considerations.
Yelp is doing the right thing, it seems: The company announced that it will flag crisis pregnancy centers with a note that warns people of their “limited medical services” or make clear that the center may not have “licensed medical professionals onsite.” Yelp's vice president of user operations Noorie Malik said in a statement, “[P]roviding consumers with reliable and useful information to help inform their decisions is critical to our mission—this includes access to reliable information about reproductive health services.”
I’ve written a lot about cities in anti-abortion states trying to use whatever power they have to soften the blow of abortion bans; today Bloomberg looks at the battle between those cities and anti-choice state leaders.
Listen to Detroit Public Radio for a conversation on why most Americans want access to abortion to be legal, even if they have complicated feelings about abortion itself.
In anti-choice states—where the sex education is abysmal—teenagers are taking matters into their own hands, and educating each other. Fifteen year old Rivka Vizcardo-Lichter from Virginia says, “Teens are just going out into these waters alone and ignorant.”
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