Indiana AG Wants Abortion Reports to Be Public Records

7.26.24

Click to skip ahead: Let’s start with 2024 news, where Trump is running scared from Harris. In Criminalizing Care, some rare good news out of Texas. In the States, news from Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, and Florida. Ballot Measure Updates has news on Arkansas, Arizona and Florida. Finally, In the Nation looks at research connecting bans and violence against women, and a new campaign linking paid leave and abortion rights.

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2024

I have to imagine Donald Trump must hate seeing all of the attention Vice President Kamala Harris has gotten this week—from massive fundraising and record-setting Zooms to all of the epic Gen Z memes. The disgraced former president is also obviously worried about Harris, because today he made some noise about pulling out of the debate. Harris slammed Trump for “backpedaling”:

“But I’m ready. And I think that the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage and so, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Meanwhile, the anti-abortion movement is hot-to-trot on making Harris out to seem like an extremist on reproductive rights. Activist groups and conservative media are focusing on a 2023 interview the vice president did with Face the Nation. They claim that Harris “refused” to answer a question about whether there should be any restrictions on abortion. (The truth is that Harris said “we need to put into law the protections of Roe v. Wade.”)

As I wrote yesterday, this talking point about abortion ‘up until birth’ is going to come up again and again. And Harris is the perfect person to shut it down for good by going on offense.

One of the reasons the vice president is so well-positioned to do that is because of her expertise on abortion. The 19th reports, for example, that right before Roe was overturned, Harris met with law professors and reproductive rights experts Michele Goodwin and Melissa Murray to learn more about the legal consequences of the decision. Both independently remarked on Harris’ curiosity and understanding on the issue.

Murray says, “We were there to provide expertise, but we were talking to a very well-informed audience.” Love to hear it.

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If you missed my column yesterday about how Harris can destroy conservatives’ ‘post-birth abortion’ attack once and for all, read it here:

How Kamala Harris Can Hit Back on Trump's Abortion Lies

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While Democrats are newly-energized over Harris’ likely nomination, Republicans are feeling…meh. More reports are coming out that Trump regrets bringing on JD Vance, and Republicans are calling his VP pick “the worst choice.” One House Republican told The Hill, “It was so bad I didn’t even think it was possible.” Even conservative pundit Ben Shapiro admits that if Trump could go back a few weeks, he probably wouldn’t pick Vance.

And while my favorite media response has been this headline from The Atlantic—“I Hope Trump Kept the Receipt”—you know it’s bad when Business Insider starts running articles explaining how Trump could replace Vance.

A big reason Vance has been such a disaster is his blatant misogyny. His penchant for calling women “childless cat ladies,” in particular, is coming back to bite him in the ass. Women, especially those who’ve had a hard time conceiving, didn’t quite appreciate the quip. Actress Jennifer Aniston slammed Vance over the comment, as did former Trump aide Alyssa Farah—who called him out for “denigrating” women dealing with infertility.

Incredibly, Vance doubled down on the comment in an appearance on “The Megyn Kelly Show,” saying, “Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats.” What he has against women went uncommented on.

Quick hits:

• Moira Donegan at The Guardian on how different Harris is on abortion rights than Biden;

• Salon on why it’s so important that Harris isn’t afraid to say the word abortion;

• Jill Filipovic at The Atlantic writes that “a candidate who can galvanize abortion-rights voters is exactly what Republicans fear and Democrats need;

• And if you want to watch a short video, Carter Sherman at The Guardian breaks down what a Harris presidency could do for abortion rights:

Criminalizing Care

Some rare good news out of Texas, where a woman who was charged with murder after self-managing an abortion can move forward with her lawsuit against local law enforcement and prosecutors.

If you don’t remember what happened to Lizelle Gonzalez, it’s total a nightmare. Texas law prohibits the prosecution of abortion patients, still, Gonzalez was forced to spend two nights in jail on murder charges in 2022 after taking abortion medication 19 weeks into her pregnancy. The charges were dropped a few days later, and the district attorney who targeted Gonzalez, Gocha Ramirez, was fined and suspended.

Her lawsuit against the prosecutors and sheriff’s office says “the fallout from defendants’ illegal and unconstitutional actions has forever changed” Gonzalez’s life, and that she “was subjected to the humiliation of a highly publicized indictment and arrest.”

She’s seeking $1 million from the state. This week, a federal judge ruled that her case can advance, despite efforts from prosecutors to dismiss the suit.

Two important things to note: First, Gonzalez’s case followed many of the traditional hallmarks of criminalization that we talk about so often. For example, Gonzalez was turned into police by hospital staff. A study from If/When/How shows that when women are arrested for self-managing abortions, 39% of the time it’s a health care provider who has made that call. The same thing was true for Brittany Watts, and for the woman questioned by police in Georgia this week over her miscarriage.

The other thing I wanted to flag is that the hospital that treated Gonzalez performed a c-section to remove her fetus after finding it had no heartbeat. As I noted earlier this year, I don’t know the medical details of this case, but that seems to align with the troubling rise in post-Roe c-sections that AED has been tracking.

In the States

Bad news from Nebraska today. The state Supreme Court has allowed a ban on abortion and gender-affirming care for minors to stand, ruling that the law doesn’t violate the state constitution’s single subject rule.

The law very obviously combines two subjects—a 12-week abortion ban and anti-LGBTQ policy. Still, the Court ruled against a suit brought by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, saying that the law was fine because both issues were related to “public health and welfare.” (Whose public health and welfare? Certainly not women’s!)

Mindy Rush Chipman, executive director of ACLU Nebraska, said, “This case will not be the final word on abortion access and the rights of trans youth and their families.”

If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve been raising the alarm about the anti-abortion strategy around data and abortion reporting. Back in April, I told you about Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita’s campaign to make abortion reports public records in the same way birth and death certificates are. And in May, I told you how Indiana anti-abortion groups are suing to get access to women’s abortion reports.

Both Voices for Life and Rokita claim that the only way to find providers to prosecute is if anti-abortion groups have the ability to comb through women’s private information. They insist the reports aren’t medical records because they don’t include patient names. But as the state health department has made clear, anyone could reverse engineer the information to identify women—especially those who live in rural areas.

This week, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reports that Voices for Life is still at it, arguing that the health department’s interpretation is wrong and “tramples the legislative purposes behind TPRs [terminated pregnancy reports].”

That’s where their legal argument gets telling. The group’s lawsuit claims that the state legislature intended the reports to be public records that allow Indiana citizens “to examine whether abortion providers are complying with the law.” The idea that the primary purpose of abortion reporting is to enable the prosecution of providers is actually quite stunning—because Republicans continually claim the data collection is just about the health and safety of patients. It seems someone has let the cat out of the bag.

Iowa abortion providers and funds across the region are girding themselves for Monday morning, when the state’s abortion ban goes into effect. The Washington Post reports that the Chicago Abortion Fund has seen a 165% increase in requests for help from Iowa patients in just the first few weeks of July. Executive director Megan Jeyifo called it “staggering.”

To learn more about Iowa’s abortion ban, read Abortion, Every Day’s explainer. To support patients, donate to the Iowa Abortion Access Fund.

“An overwhelming majority of people disagree with this law. I mean, it’s not even close.” - David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center on Florida’s abortion ban

Anti-Abortion Strategy

You all know that personal stories have been Democrats’ best weapon since Roe was overturned. The horror stories of those who’ve been denied care and women’s abortion experiences aren’t just making for compelling and heartbreaking media coverage—they’re swaying voters. I mean shit, an Alabama Democrat flipped a House seat by sharing her own abortion story!

So it makes sense that anti-abortion activists and lawmakers are trying to replicate that success. I predicted that we would see more and more personal stories from the anti-abortion movement–and that they wouldn’t work. After all, there’s nothing emotionally moving about women who are happy they were forced into childbirth—if anything, it’s depressing.

Still, that hasn’t stopped conservatives from trying. This summer, Students for Life launched a billboard in Times Square highlighting their “Almost Aborted” campaign. (I know, what a name!) Now Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America is doing their own project, combining personal stories with another tactic I’ve warned about: ‘coerced’ abortions. Basically, conservatives are desperate to make it seem as if we’re the ones forcing women to do something against their wills.

SBA Pro-Life America held a virtual press conference with a small group of women who report being coerced into abortion. (The group even sat the women for a photo-op that mirrored the pro-choice ones we’ve seen.)

While any coercion story is awful, nothing about these women’s experiences makes you feel like the answer is to ensure that they don’t have a choice at all.

Ballot Measure Updates

The Arkansas Secretary of State’s office says they’ve finished counting the signatures for a pro-choice ballot measure and that at just over 88k signatures, the petition falls short. That said, the GOP-led office was only counting signatures gathered by volunteers; the state Supreme Court didn’t tell them to count the ones collected by paid canvassers.

If signatures from paid canvassers are counted towards the amendment, it appears Arkansans for Limited Government (AFLG) would have what they need to move the ballot measure forward. That means what comes next is up to the state Supreme Court. A statement from AFLG says, “Our optimism remains alive but cautious as we wait for the Arkansas Supreme Court to issue further guidance.”

The Arizona Mirror reports on the ongoing fight in Arizona over the phrase “unborn human being.” Remember, Republicans put that language in a description of a pro-choice ballot measure being sent to every voter in the state before November’s election.

A judge this week heard arguments over whether the term is biased. Arizona OBGYN Dr. Patricia Habak testified that in the twenty years she’s been practicing medicine, she’s never used the phrase “unborn human being.” Arizona for Abortion Access is pushing for the word 'fetus’ to be used instead.

While anti-abortion politicians work the wording angle, anti-abortion organizations in Arizona are suing to stop the measure from getting to voters at all. Arizona Right to Life says the proposed amendment is “inherently misleading” and shouldn’t be on the ballot.

Finally, the abortion rights group behind Amendment 4 in Florida is petitioning the state Supreme Court over the financial impact statement put together by a Ron DeSantis-stacked panel. For background on that fight, click here and here.

In the Nation

This month in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers make connections between abortion bans and violence against women—from sexual assault to domestic violence homicide.

The short version? The relationship between bans and devastating violence against women is undeniable. States with abortion bans have higher rates of peripartum homicide; calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline went up 98% since Roe was overturned; there are thousands of rape-related pregnancies each year in states with abortion bans; and states with bans are likely to have other policies that endanger women, like a failure to remove firearms from domestic abusers.

There’s also a piece of information in the NEJM that I haven’t seen reported elsewhere: that states with exceptions for sexual violence victims don’t have any more abortion patients than those without the so-called exemptions. In other words, exceptions don’t work.

The piece is well worth a read, if just for this quote alone:

“By ignoring the profound connections between violence and reproductive control and by failing to hold perpetrators of violence accountable, state policymakers have essentially sanctioned the violent control of women’s bodies. Government officials should have to answer for these policy choices.”

Finally, let’s end with a cool collaboration: Axios reports that Paid Leave for All Action and Reproductive Freedom for All are launching a $1 million media campaign together. There’s always been a connection between abortion rights and issues like parental leave (reproductive justice advocates have been pointing it out for decades!), but it’s nice to see a campaign that explicitly makes that connection. After all, the government isn’t just forcing women into pregnancy, but forcing them to become mothers in a country that offers abysmal support to parents.

Dawn Huckelbridge, director of Paid Leave for All Action, says, “Nothing is more important than the freedom to decide whether or not to have a family, and then if you do, the ability and freedom to support one, to care for one.”