Idaho Women Flown Out Weekly for Emergency Abortions

7.12.24

Click to skip ahead: In Attacks on Democracy, all eyes on Arkansas. Stats & Studies features a gutting but necessary report on the national impact after Dobbs. In the States has news from Iowa, California, Oregon and more. In the Nation, this sure doesn’t look like a ‘softening’ on abortion to me! Finally, in 2024 news, the fight to be Donald Trump’s sidekick.

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Attacks on Democracy

I literally just wrote a piece two days ago about all the various ways Republicans are trying to stop people from being able to vote directly on abortion. Now there’s another huge attack—this time in Arkansas. Abortion rights activists there gathered the signatures they needed to get abortion on the ballot, but Republicans are simply refusing to accept them.

Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston rejected the signatures, claiming that Arkansans for Limited Government (ALFG) didn’t submit necessary paperwork identifying paid canvassers and confirming that the petitioners were explained the rules about gathering signatures. That’s right, they’re using a red tape technicality to stop voters from having a say.

But here’s the thing: it’s looking like Republicans may have deliberately sabotaged the ballot measure efforts. In a statement on Facebook, ALFG says that the group worked with Thurston’s office “during every step of the process,” and that it was secretary of state office staffers who gave them the affidavit paperwork they turned in.

“Until today, we had no reason not to trust that the paperwork they supplied us was correct and complete,” the group wrote. From Arkansans for Limited Government:

“More than 101,000 Arkansans participated in this heroic act of direct democracy and stood up to loudly proclaim their support for access to healthcare. They deserve better than a state government that seeks to silence them.”

Lauren Cowles, executive director of the group, also wrote a letter to Thurston, making clear that “contrary to your claim, AFLG met the requirements.”

“These materials had already been provided to you, and were only provided again in an abundance of caution, even against the insistence of your staff that some of this information was not required.”

Still, the secretary of state’s office is standing by their assessment. But here’s the thing—we know that the claim AFLG neglected to turn in the names of paid canvassers is false. That’s because after they turned in their paperwork, those names were promptly doxxed by anti-abortion activists!

We know what’s going on here. Every time abortion is on the ballot, abortion wins. Rather than take that chance, they’re fucking over voters. (Remember, it was just yesterday that I reported that Montana Secretary of State was throwing out the signatures of registered voters from a pro-choice measure!)

We’re watching them undo democracy right in front of us—and because this is about abortion rights and women, not nearly enough people care. If you missed my column yesterday, it’s unfortunately timely:

"The Will of the People," Except on Abortion

Here’s the good news: people are paying attention. There’s a reason that abortion rights—and ballot measures—have been in the news more than ever. People are pissed. And for those who can’t vote on abortion rights, they want to know why not. Since Roe was overturned, and as more states launch pro-choice ballot measure efforts, I’ve seen more and more voters realize for the first time that they don’t have the ability to launch or support citizen-led initiatives. (Only half the states in the country do.)

I’ve heard from writers, lawmakers and activists in those states. They say voters are approaching them frequently, asking why they can’t do something like what Ohio did.

This week, the Des Moines Register, for example, explained a bit why Iowa voters can’t have a direct say (especially on the eve of a 6-week ban about to be enforced). And Axios Richmond did the same, laying out why there’s no option for an abortion rights measure in Virginia. That’s happening because voters are asking—and calling for a reason!

I especially appreciated this piece in The Herald in South Carolina: It both reports how the state doesn’t have a citizen-led initiative process, and just how afraid Republicans are of voters’ voices. Especially when it comes to abortion.

Conservative lawmakers there are putting up the exact defense I’ve tracked around the “will of the people” resurgence—the idea that voters don’t need a direct say because they have legislators to decide for them. From South Carolina Rep. Brandon Newton:

“The voters vote for their representatives. We vote on the issue and if the voters don’t like how we vote, then that’s how they have a say on the issue…as long as voters elect the people who make the decisions, I think that’s the voters having a say on the issue.”

State Rep. John McCravy, was less diplomatic when The Herald asked him if South Carolina voters would ever have a chance to make their voices heard on abortion rights:

“You can get a constitutional amendment on the ballot with two-thirds of the General Assembly. It’s not going to happen, so that’s the end of it.”

Charming! Katrina Shealy, one of the three Republican women who lost her state Senate seat after voting against a total abortion ban, says it’s obvious why anti-abortion lawmakers don’t want to put the issue on the ballot:

“I think it would be like Ohio, like Kansas, and that’s why they won’t do it. I don’t think they would like the outcome...they’re afraid of what the people would have to say.”

I’ll say it one more time: They know what voters want. And they just don’t care.

“When you are winning a campaign, you don’t have to try all sorts of tricks to get people to vote for you.” -President of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Emily Wales, The Kansas City Star

Stats & Studies

Sen. Maria Cantwell’s office released an incredibly thorough report this week, detailing the nationwide impact two years after Dobbs. It is, in a word, gutting.

But please: don’t let that stop you from reading it, because it’s that important. “Two Years Post-Dobbs: The Nationwide Impacts of Abortion Bans” features interviews with dozens of providers and advocates detailing the care crisis, growing maternal health deserts, and the absolute cruelty of abortion bans.

In addition to outlining some of the consequences we’ve heard about frequently—like long wait times for care in pro-choice states and patients being denied abortions even though they fall under so-called ‘exceptions’—the report also features jaw-dropping stories that even shocked the jaded folks here at Abortion, Every Day:

Rape victims are being denied emergency contraception in medical centers and hospital emergency rooms. The report found that sexual assault nurse examiners in Idaho, for example, are refusing to give victims Plan B—leading some women to have to travel to Washington. For emergency contraception. This is what I meant when we said the war on birth control is already here.

One Oklahoma OBGYN reported moving out of the state not only because of the ban, but because the FBI had alerted her health center that there was chatter about violence against them “just for providing birth control.”

Remember how Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador claimed that doctors were lying about having to fly women out of the state for emergency care? Well, this didn’t jut happen to a handful of women—doctors are flying women out of the state every week: From Dr. Ed McEachern, co-chair of the Idaho Physician Well-Being Action Collaborative:

“We've been flying out about a patient a week to Utah or Oregon or Washington, because the fetus is nonviable, or the life of the mother is at risk. That helicopter ride can cost over $70,000—that bankrupts families.”

Doctors have begun advising patients to buy medical evacuation insurance. Given all this, the next bit of news from the report makes sense, as horrible as it is: Some pregnant women are temporarily moving to pro-choice states at the end of their pregnancies just in case something goes wrong. They don’t trust that doctors in states with bans will be able to save them otherwise.

The other thing that stuck out to me from the report is something we’ve covered a lot here at the newsletter: forcing women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term, and the move to trick women out of understanding their diagnoses. If you’re a regular reader, you know from our “Calculated Cruelty” series that forcing people to carry doomed pregnancies is a major strategy for the anti-abortion movement—and that part of that strategy involves getting doctors to play down the diagnosis. (By calling fatal anomalies ‘life-limiting’ or ‘pre-viable’ for example.)

The report details what that nightmare looks like on the ground: OBGYN Dr. Natasha Schimmoeller in California, for example, says she sees out-of-state patients who don’t understand their diagnosis because their doctors were too afraid to tell them the truth—worried that it would lead to a conversation about abortion.

I could go on. And I will; AED will have more on Sen. Cantwell’s vital report next week. But in the meantime, absolutely read and share this.

In the States

Iowa’s 6-week abortion ban could go into effect as soon as next week—it depends on how quickly a lower court officially does away with a temporary injunction. (Remember, the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling a few weeks ago lifted that block in order to allow the ban to go into effect.) In the meantime, Iowa Democrats are worried that the state GOP will try to go even further in the next legislative session and push for a ‘life at conception’ bill. From Democratic Rep. Lindsay James:

"We have seen already that Republicans have made statements in the press that Republicans are thinking about it, looking into it and counting their votes. That it means if we don't put more Democrats in these seats, we are going to lose access to even more healthcare decisions."

Make sure to read this Los Angeles Times article about what’s been happening in the fight over a clinic in Beverly Hills, California. It’s a good reminder that just because a state calls itself an ‘abortion sanctuary,’ it doesn’t mean that it’s immune from anti-abortion nonsense.

Essentially, an abortion clinic set to open in the city had their lease rescinded after an anti-abortion group successfully pressured city council members. Andrea Grossman, a founder of Beverly Hills for Choice, said, “It’s a stain on the city that it meddled with something so urgent as this.”

Part of the reason the clinic was targeted is that it would have been the only provider in Southern California that offered abortions after 24 weeks, offering highly specialized care.

OBGYN Dr. Kim Bader spoke in support of the DuPont clinic at a Beverly Hills City Council meeting, saying that the patients at that point in pregnancy are often facing nonviable pregnancies, life-threatening complications, are abuse victims or are very young. “My experience with patients who needed late-term abortion were nightmares, absolute nightmares. I get choked up just thinking about it,” she said.

And while no one needs to justify their reason for ending a pregnancy, something I appreciated about the LA Times‘ coverage is that the article laid out how difficult it is to obtain an abortion after 24 weeks:

“Care for such patients is extremely difficult to obtain, in part due to medical and legal restrictions, along with the social stigma. The cost can balloon to $10,000 or more, while waits can stretch close to a month.

‘As you get later, it can become a three-day procedure,’ [Dr. Jennefer'] Russo, the DuPont doctor, explained. “It’s sort of like an induction of labor the third day. That can take several hours, and it’s a very intensive process.’”

Whenever Republicans mention abortion ‘up until birth’—which is often these days—this is what Democrats should be talking about. The GOP likes to paint an image of women impulsively deciding to end their pregnancies seven months in. But how many people do you know can travel across the country to find a clinic for a difficult three-day procedure that costs 5 figures?

Definitely check out the piece. Because as Dr. Bader told the LA Times, “If you could push a clinic like this out of Beverly Hills, you could push it out of anywhere.”

I love to have some good news every once in a while: An Oregon anti-abortion group lost a long-running lawsuit this week, with a judge ruling against their claim that their free speech rights were violated by police. Abolish Abortion Oregon argued that Grants Pass officers ‘harassed’ and targeted them. Why? Because they frequently had to ask them to stop using bullhorns and disrupting businesses and residents.

This may just be one case and one organization, but it’s actually much more meaningful than that. Since Roe was overturned, anti-abortion groups have ramped up their lawsuits against buffer zones, arguing that screaming in patients’ and providers’ faces is a First Amendment right. The more of these cases they lose, the better.

Quick hits:

• The Hartford Courant reports that that urgency around abortion access is waning in Connecticut the further out we get from Dobbs;

• The Missouri Independent on how abortion rights is playing out in Missouri’s Democratic gubernatorial primary;

• Amanda Zurawski was in Pennsylvania talking about her experience being denied a health- and life-saving abortion;

• Finally, residents in Texas, Amarillo will be voting on a travel ban in November. Remember what I wrote about Overton’s Window.

In the Nation

Thank goodness for Adam Serwer at The Atlantic, one of the few media voices of reason on the GOP’s platform. Serwer blasted publications for their misleading headlines that claimed Republicans had somehow watered down or softened their position on abortion—pointing out that the plank still very much called for fetal personhood in the way it always has:

“The wording of the platform restates the same radical position that Republicans took in the 2016 platform, but makes it more confusing.

…The GOP platform on abortion does not show Trump or the GOP ‘softening’ or shifting on abortion rights; it shows them trying to avoid the political consequences of their position on the matter by hiding them in plain sight.”

Serwer also quotes Abortion, Every Day (thanks, Adam!) and warns that the mainstream media’s embrace of bullshit rhetoric on the GOP’s ‘softening’ abortion stance may very well help Donald Trump win the election. The whole piece is well worth a read.

Speaking of mainstream media muck-ups, I can’t believe we haven’t seen more coverage of this: This week, Republicans blocked a bill to guarantee women’s right to travel across state lines for health care. How much clearer can they be?

The Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act states that ability to travel is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment and is a fundamental right. The legislation would simply make it illegal to punish anyone who travels for healthcare, or to target organizations that help people leave their state for abortion care. Seems pretty straightforward to me!

The bill was part of a slate of reproductive health legislation introduced by Senate Democrats. In addition to the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act, there was legislation to protect abortion providers who treat out-of-state patients, and a bill to help train more providers (who are desperately needed). You can watch U.S. Sen. Patty Murray talk about the slate of “basic, commonsense” bills here.

Kylie Cheung at Jezebel gets it exactly right:

“[T]o block these bills is to say the quiet part out loud: Republican lawmakers want the ability to ban interstate abortion travel, and the ability to punish and police doctors who provide abortion care to certain patients, even in states where abortion isn’t banned.”

This comes not so long after Democrats forced Republicans to vote on birth control and IVF, putting their extremism on the spot. So obviously I’m not shocked by their response—but the opposition to the travel legislation is particularly telling.

Democrats asked for unanimous consent to pass the legislation—which means only one Republican needs to oppose the bill to block it. In this case, it was blocked by Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. And I just want to flag something she said. Repeating the anti-abortion messaging we’ve come to know and love—and thrilling anti-abortion extremists—Hyde-Smith claimed that the bill would allow for ‘abortion trafficking’:

“This would allow traffickers and abusive partners to take vulnerable women and girls across state lines to obtain abortions in an attempt to cover up their abuse. These same abusers would also be given the freedom to travel across state lines to stockpile dangerous chemical abortion drugs to bring back to a life-affirming state.”

Quick hits:

• POLITICO on anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers;

• Rolling Stone is another outlet that caught on to the reality of the GOP’s platform;

• Vanity Fair on Trump’s pretend ‘moderate’ abortion stance;

• And Salon on why Biden hasn’t ‘restored Roe’ already.

2024

JD Vance is trying to pretend he supports abortion medication in order to get in line with Donald Trump, who he’s hoping will tap him for a VP slot. (Apparently Trump might make an announcement soon.) But despite the headlines, all Vance really said was that he agreed with the Supreme Court’s decision, which—as you know—wasn’t an ‘approval’ of the medication.

Vance is also talking more these days about ‘exceptions’, an old standby for Republicans looking to seem more moderate on abortion without making any meaningful policy change. (Because they know exceptions don’t work.)

If Trump does announce Vance as his running-mate—or anyone else—be on the lookout, because AED will put out an explainer with everything you need to know on their abortion stance. Sigh.

A U.S. House candidate for Michigan is talking about her abortion experience in a campaign spot, adding to the growing trend of political ads featuring first person accounts of abortion—including from candidates.

What I appreciate so much about this ad from Congressional hopeful Emily Busch is that it’s not a horror story, or about a wanted pregnancy gone wrong. Those are valid stories, of course, but they don’t represent most abortions. Most abortions happen because someone is not ready to be pregnant—which is fine! Good, even! The more we see these kinds of normalized abortion stories, the better.

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Thanks to Abortion, Every Day researcher Grace Haley, who contributed to today’s Stats & Studies section.