Abortion, Every Day (8.31.22)

If you have tips for Abortion, Every Day, please send them to jessica@substack.com.

In the states…

Michigan’s legal battle over abortion shows no signs of being resolved quickly: Today, the state’s election panel was deadlocked over certifying the Reproductive Freedom for All measure, which would add an amendment to Michigan’s constitution ensuring a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including abortion. You may remember that organizers collected more than enough signatures to get it on the ballot, but anti-choice organizations challenged the amendment, saying it was “gibberish” because of…typos. As of right now, the measure won’t be on the ballot—but Democrats are planning to file an appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The South Carolina House passed a near-total abortion ban yesterday, with an exception for rape and incest if the pregnancy is under 12 weeks. An amendment that would have allowed rape and incest victims to have abortions before 20 weeks failed. Republican Rep. Micah Caskey, who supported the more lenient (if you can even call it that) law, said, “I just don’t know how you look your neighbors in the face, your daughters, and you tell them, ‘if you’re 9-years-old, you’re 11-years-old and you’ve been raped, you don’t have an option to take care of that.”

If you want a sense of just how removed from reality these legislators are, consider this exchange: Republican Rep. Doug Gilliam took issue with the description of a child rape victim being “forced” to carry a pregnancy. “She had choice,” Gilliam said, referring to Plan B. (Emergency contraception only works within a few days of unprotected sex or assault.) When a fellow Republican asked if how a child who was raped by her father would go get the pill, Gilliam responded: “An ambulance.”

In better news, ​​New Mexico’s governor, Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, signed an executive order today pledging $10 million to build a new abortion clinic. “The goal here is build it and they will come,” she said.

In Illinois, abortion providers are scrambling to absorb the increased patient load as women from out-state-travel there to get abortions—but they need help. In response, Gov. JB Pritzker is working to build more clinics and looking into laws that would allow nurse practitioners to provide abortions. More of this, please!

Pro-choice clinics across the country are dealing with the same overwhelm. In New Mexico, for example, one abortion provider says, “We have already reached capacity. What's going to happen is any of those additional women from Texas who now can't get care there are going to have to look even further away." 

This is awful (thought not entirely shocking): Tim Michels, the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, donated a whopping $250,000 to anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion groups in 2020. The foundation he runs with his wife gave money to organizations that not only are homophobic and oppose abortion—but that oppose all forms of birth control.

In response to the state’s extreme abortion ban, more and more Kentucky women are getting sterilized. Even two months after Roe being overturned, doctors say there are hundreds of women in the state waiting—sometimes on months-long lists—to have their tubes tied. They believe, understandably, that birth control could be next in their conservative state—and they don’t want to wait to find out. This part just about broke my heart:

“Some patients hoping for the procedure expect push back from their doctor, so they arrive to consultations braced to defend their case, two OBGYNs interviewed for this story said. One patient brought in a detailed list explaining why she wanted the procedure. Another brought a laminated, tri-fold pamphlet, complete with pictures of herself and answers to any anticipated question her provider might have about why she’d made her decision. It was like she was ‘presenting a project at school,’ her OBGYN said.”

Public radio in Indiana looks at the crisis that the abortion ban is going to cause on the state’s already-strained child care system, and in Georgia, women who use drugs that could end pregnancy for things like arthritis and ulcers, are being denied vital medication.

I told you a while back about the coffee shop owner in Texas who was giving out free Plan B; well, she’s written a piece for Newsweek on the community response. Short version? They called the cops on her. Others have been more supportive: 

“A grandma recently brought in her granddaughter, who was going off to college next year. She sat down and bought her granddaughter a coffee and pastry, then opened up one of the Plan B kits and walked her through what each item was and how to use it. It was just so heartwarming to see that, and it sunk in that this was bigger than any of us.”

A student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill writes about why abortion isn’t just a women’s issue: “[I]t is important that we acknowledge that the institutions involved in anti-abortion legislation are the same ones implementing anti-trans legislation.”

Some new state polls: In Colorado, 74% of Latino voters believe abortion should remain legal. And in Missouri, nearly half of voters would vote on a (hypothetical) ballot measure repealing the state ban, while 75% of respondents want exceptions for victims of rape and incest.

And gotta love this: Women in Ohio are registering to vote in record numbers—something that seems to be a national trend.

The American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) are urging Arizona’s attorney general to leave the injunction blocking the state’s trigger law in place, saying the ban “jeopardizes the health and safety of pregnant people in Arizona and places extreme burdens and risks on providers of essential reproductive health care, without a valid medical justification.” The AMA also held an online panel, “Reproductive Health Care as a Human Right,” available below. Participants included Dr. Jamila Perritt, President of Physicians for Reproductive Health, and Dr. Krishna Upadhya, Vice President at Planned Parenthood Federation of America:

 A reminder that if you want up-to-date on the legal status of abortion in each state, The New York Times is keeping track. 

On the national front…

NPR reports on the Mexican abortion clinic where 50% of the patients are American; The 19th notes the rising power of local judges in the abortion fight, especially in judicial bypass cases for minors; and Slate looks at women who take medication that causes birth defects, and what a post-Roe world means for them.

Al Jazeera put out a short documentary about the abortion fight in the U.S. that’s worth watching:

What’s particularly brutal is seeing the (sometimes illegal) hoops women are jumping through to obtain abortions, and knowing it just doesn’t have to be this way.

At The Atlantic, Molly Jong-Fast writes that the midterms are “a referendum on bodily autonomy.” And Mary Ziegler, law professor and author of “Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment,” warns about the conservative’s fetal personhood strategy in The New York Times: 

“Under the plan, fetuses would be counted in the census and the Department of Justice would investigate laws or policies that ‘deprive preborn persons of due process of law or the equal protection of the laws.’”