Are Republicans Faking Their Abortion Infighting?

7.19.24

Click to skip ahead: In the States, news from Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and more. Ballot Measure Updates look at Montana, Missouri, Florida and Arkansas. I’ve been enjoying JD Vance’s Very Bad Week. Finally, In the Nation, the RNC was suspiciously devoid of any conversation about abortion.

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In the States

Relatively good news out of Iowa, where a 6-week abortion ban won’t go into effect today as originally feared. The Des Moines Register reports that because Planned Parenthood of the Heartland asked the state Supreme Court to rehear the case, the injunction on the ban has not been lifted while that petition is reviewed.

That means abortion is still legal in Iowa until 22 weeks after your last menstrual period. Click here for Abortion, Every Day’s explainer on Iowa’s abortion ban, and consider supporting the Iowa Abortion Access Fund.

Whenever the Iowa ban does go into effect, Minnesota abortion providers are gearing up for an influx of patients. The Star Tribune reports that health centers in the southern part of the state are already starting to see Iowa abortion-seekers, who are well-aware that the ban will be enforced soon.

Remember this wild case in Oklahoma last year? A woman was arrested for using marijuana edibles and topical creams during her pregnancy even though she had a medical marijuana card and a recommendation from her doctor. If that wasn’t bad enough, the reason prosecutors gave for the woman’s arrest was that her fetus didn’t have its own separate license for medical marijuana. Really.

Well, we have some rare good news: Yesterday, the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals ruled that it’s not child neglect for a pregnant person with a marijuana prescription to use the drug, and they rejected the idea that a fetus needs their own special license. From Dara Gell, senior staff attorney at Pregnancy Justice:

“Had the prosecution succeeded in this dangerous fetal personhood argument, pregnant people in Oklahoma would have been at risk of criminalization for simply taking prescription medications. Medical marijuana is legal in the state—becoming pregnant should never be a reason to away a person’s rights, including their right to use legal medications.”

Glad to see this resolved, but the fact that these charges were ever brought is bananas.

Some more good news (again, relatively speaking) in Kansas this week. I’ve been raising the alarm about anti-abortion efforts around data collection and abortion reports, with one of the most obvious examples coming out of Kansas. A new law there requires doctors to ask abortion patients invasive questions and then report their answers to the state.

But the Associated Press reports that the law won’t be enforced while a legal challenge against the rule makes its way through the courts, thanks to a deal made between lawyers for the state and providers. The Center for Reproductive Rights says they’re relieved with the temporary reprieve, calling the law “an unjustifiable invasion of patient privacy that has nothing to do with people’s health.”

The Guardian reminds us that folks in Amarillo, Texas, will be voting on a so-called ‘abortion trafficking’ ordinance—a policy which would make it illegal to help anyone leave the state for abortion care, or to have or distribute abortion medication. You may recall that the city council declined to pass the ordinance, but anti-abortion activists gathered enough support to get it on the local ballot. Lindsay London, an activist with the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance, tells The Guardian, “We are ready.”

Targeting small towns and cities with these ‘sanctuary city’ ordinances has been a growing anti-abortion strategy. In part the idea is to create chilling effect that scares people out of getting care, but the policies are also being proposed in service of a broader tactic: They’re hoping a legal challenge against the ordinances will make its way to the Supreme Court and allow them to rule in favor of the Comstock Act.

Quick hits:

• A women's health nurse practitioner in Georgia writes in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about what two years of a 6-week ban has done to the state;

• Tennessee Republicans are mad that they lost their Title X funding (which requires that health centers receiving federal dollars at least tell patients about abortion);

• The number of Idaho patients getting abortions in Montana has tripled in the last year;

• And in Texas, a sculpture was vandalized at the University of Houston after a harassment campaign lead by anti-abortion groups.

Ballot Measure Updates

We got good news earlier this week in Montana, where a judge ruled that the state must count ‘inactive’ but registered voters who signed a pro-choice ballot measure petition. Already, Republican state officials are fighting back, eager to ensure that voters don’t have a direct say on abortion rights; they’re asking the state Supreme Court to block the judge’s order mandating that the signatures to be counted.

For full background on clearcut attack on democracy, click here. As a reminder: Abortion is legal in Montana, but Republican leaders in the state have been trying to chip away at the right—including pressuring the state Supreme Court to repeal a 1999 ruling that protects abortion in the state constitution.

The abortion rights ballot measure effort in Arizona raised over $10 million dollars between April and June. Dawn Penich of Arizona for Abortion Access told the Arizona Capital Times that the massive fundraising “speaks to how passionate people are about restoring and protecting rights.” By comparison, the anti-abortion counter-campaign raised only $291,430 in the same time period. (Cue the world’s tiniest violin.)

Florida’s Tampa Bay Times fact-checked Gov. Ron DeSantis’ assertion that Amendment 4 would allow for abortion ‘up until birth,’ a claim that anti-abortion groups make pretty much every time they open their mouths. The truth is that the pro-choice ballot measure heading to voters would protect abortion rights until ‘viability.’ But a spokesperson for DeSantis said, “Where does it define who gets to define ‘viability?’”

This is one of the reasons ‘viability’—which is not a real medical standard—has been at the center of so much controversy. Most pro-choice ballot measures have included the term (or related limits) in an attempt to preempt conservative attacks about supporting abortion ‘up until birth.’ But as we’ve seen again and again, Republicans say that no matter what an amendment’s language is. For a reminder of why we need to stop compromising on our rights and freedom, read this December guest column from Erika Christensen of Patient Forward:

Guest Column: The Danger of Abortion 'Compromise'

Kansas City NPR reports that Missouri’s abortion rights ballot measure has a few thousand more verified signatures than is required to get the issue in front of votes this November. Unsurprisingly, the campaign saw the most support in the district that contains St. Louis and part of St. Louis County.

Finally, the Arkansas Times (which has been putting out incredibly comprehensive coverage) reports that Arkansas Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin is asking the state Supreme Court to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to force state officials to accept the signatures collected for a pro-choice ballot measure.

For those who need a refresher: After Arkansas For Limited Government (AFLG) collected enough signatures to get abortion on the ballot, Secretary of State John Thurston simply refused to accept them. He claimed the group didn’t file the necessary paperwork, but that’s untrue—Republican officials just don’t want voters to have a choice. Understandably, the pro-choice organization is now suing Thurston’s office. But today, AG Griffin asked the state Supreme Court to dismiss that suit.

I’ll keep you updated as I find out more. But you know what I’m going to say: If Republicans are so sure this is a ‘pro-life’ country, why work so hard to stop voters from having a say?

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JD Vance’s Very Bad Week

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance is being raked over the coals this week and I am very much here for it.

WIRED found Vance’s (public!) Venmo account, which showed just how connected he is to the most conservative extremists in the country. We knew that of course—but given Vance is desperate to distance himself from Project 2025 and “the elite,” seeing his friend group is quite something else. (From Tucker Carlson and Bari Weiss to the government relations director at the Heritage Foundation, architect of Project 2025.)

As you can imagine, the articles about Vance that I like most are the ones that expose his anti-abortion extremism. After all, Donald Trump was hoping to get a running mate who could appear moderate on abortion rights, and that is not Vance.

In addition to supporting a national abortion ban and saying he believes that federal legislation may be necessary to stop women from leaving their states for care (!!), Vance has also voted against IVF and birth control protections, wants law enforcement to be able to get women’s out-of-state abortion records, and regularly calls Democrats “childless cat ladies.”

The most recent and relevant abortion rights news on Vance, though, is his support of the Comstock Act—the federal zombie law that a Trump administration would use to enact a back-door national abortion ban. While the Comstock story is getting plenty of pick-up, much of the coverage is focusing on what that would mean for abortion medication. But remember: Comstock would not only make it illegal to ship abortion medication, but any tools at all having to do with abortion. And because conservatives have spent years trying to redefine certain kinds of birth control as abortifacients, IUDs and emergency contraception would be on the line as well. (AED’s Comstock Act explainer is here.

For some other good reading, Joan Walsh is at The Nation writing about Vance’s misogyny, and don’t miss Laura Bassett’s piece about Vance at The Cut, which reminds us—among other things—that Vance opposes no-fault divorce.

In the Nation

The Republican National Convention has tellingly avoided talking about abortion, an issue that’s been increasingly damaging to the party while becoming more and more popular with voters.

The 19th points out that the 2020 RNC had a slate of prominent anti-abortion speakers, for example, and that Donald Trump talked about the issue in his speech that year as well. This week, nada.

The BBC spoke to Republicans at the convention who seemed largely understanding of the political calculation, telling reporters that Trump was just being “pragmatic.” And while publication after publication insists that the GOP platform has ‘softened’ on abortion rights, the vice president of Students for Life seemed pleased as punch when she spoke to reporters. Kristi Hamrick told the BBC that the Trump campaign gave them exactly what they asked for:

“The 14th Amendment is the legal foundation upon which we need to build a new, more pro-life America. That’s a win.”

Remember: Despite the platform’s mention of states’ rights, including the 14th amendment language is about invoking fetal personhood and a national ban.

That’s not to say that every anti-abortion activist was happy. Anastasia Rogers with the extremist group Live Action told POLITICO, “Ultimately, it boils down to ‘your state, your decision,’ and that sounds a lot like ‘your body, your choice’ to me.”

That said, you know what I think. From quotes like that one to this New York Times op-ed from an anti-abortion activist bemoaning that Trump has “abandoned” them—I think they’re all full of shit. They’re feigning infighting to make it appear that the anti-abortion movement is pissed off at Trump for supposedly softening on the issue, even as they know he’ll give them everything they want.

This is exactly what they did in the lead-up to the GOP platform being released: Anti-abortion groups pretended to be upset, claiming hat Trump’s people were removing a call for a national abortion ban. We know that wasn’t true.

Does that mean that there’s no conflict within the anti-abortion movement? Of course not! Especially when it comes to individual activists who don’t love Trump’s rhetoric on abortion. But I do think that organizations are being very strategic in a way most press isn’t catching onto.

If you’re not followingThe Nation’s abortion correspondent, Amy Littlefield, you should get on that immediately. She’s doing some of the best repro rights reporting in the country. Littlefield was on Democracy Now this week talking about the RNC—and how Republicans were mum on the issue:

Salon has an important piece up today about the lack of abortion ban exceptions for mental health. You all know how I feel about exceptions generally—they’re written to be unusable—but the fact that mental health doesn’t even come into the equation is a real problem. Even some pro-choice advocates have given up on the idea of mental health exemptions. (I’m thinking specifically about the EMTALA oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court, and how the Biden administration assured the justices that the federal law didn’t protect mental health.)

That can’t be our way forward. As professor Antonia Biggs from Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at the University of California said, this is about stigma, and “there's a problem in trying to legislate which reasons for abortion are okay.”

Quick hits:

• Bloomberg on the anti-abortion myths that don’t seem to die;

• STAT News on how the Supreme Court’s EMTALA decision endangered emergency care;

• And Mother Jones on how the anti-abortion movement has “gamed” state Supreme Courts.

“If you read between the lines, the GOP’s platform is not about moderation. It’s about creating the appearance of moderation, all while assuring the far-right’s antiabortion crusaders that a national abortion ban is still coming if a second Trump administration has anything to say about it.” - Law professor Mary Ziegler, Los Angeles Times