Click to skip ahead: Anti-Abortion Language Watch looks at the term ‘fear-mongering.’ In the States, news from Louisiana, Texas, Kentucky, and Massachusetts. In Social Media Censorship, abortion medication groups are being booted from certain platforms. In the Nation, Republicans are being put in the hot seat again, this time on IVF. Ballot Measure Updates looks at what’s happening in South Dakota and beyond. A few quick hits in Stats & Studies. Finally, in 2024, a bit of advice on how to talk about Donald Trump and abortion.
Anti-Abortion Language Watch
Let’s talk about ‘fear-mongering.’ We’ve been hearing that word a lot lately from anti-abortion lawmakers and activists, eager to play down just how bad the post-Roe nightmare really is.
At last week’s Senate committee hearing, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy chastised doctors and Democrats for “fear-mongering” about the consequences of abortion bans. (Here was my response.) Sens. Katie Britt and Ted Cruz used the same term in a Wall Street Journal op-ed after introducing legislation they claimed would protect IVF. (It wouldn’t.) Their pair wrote that national outrage over the Alabama Supreme Court decision was based on “misconceptions and fear-mongering.”
And anti-abortion lobbyists at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America have been hammering on ‘fear-mongering’ for months. In April, group president Marjorie Dannenfelser said Democrats “will spend millions to fear-monger and lie.” This week, state public affairs director for the organization, Kelsey Pritchard, told the Catholic Courier that ‘pro-life’ activists have to respond to “fear-mongering” about the danger of abortion bans by pointing out that “there is a life of the mother exception in every single state.”
Fun fact: What Pritchard doesn’t mention is that it wasn’t so long ago that Tennessee didn’t have an exception for women’s lives, and that her group spent months lobbying legislators to keep it that way. So maybe, just maybe, we’re afraid for good reason.
And that’s the thing: Something can’t be ‘fear-mongering’ if you’re right to be scared. What’s that saying? It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you! We need to hammer that truth home again and again. All anti-abortion groups and lawmakers have right now is rhetoric; we have reality.
In the States
The Texas Tribune reports that Texas Democrats are hoping to bring out voters who are horrified over the state’s abortion ban. State Sen. Carol Alvarado called on Democrats to double down on outreach to suburban women voters, and “young voters who don't want government dictating their health care options, couples who are struggling to start a family.”
I told you yesterday about the effort in Massachusetts to warn people about the dangers of crisis pregnancy centers. There’s some more coverage of the campaign today, along with images of what the public awareness ads will look like, and this short spot:
Really glad that the state is taking on CPCs. Here’s how Rebecca Hart Holder of Reproductive Equity Now put it:
“Anti-abortion centers are the foot soldiers of the anti-abortion movement. These facilities are how anti-abortion extremists operate in protected states like ours.”
Check out coverage of the campaign at WGBH, the Boston Globe, and MassLive. And in the Stats & Studies section later in the newsletter, I’ll tell you about a report on CPCs from Reproductive Equity Now.
Louisiana state representative Aimee Adatto Freeman wrote a letter to the editor this week about the new law classifying abortion medication as a controlled substance. She writes that the state is continually losing OBGYNs and other related specialists because of the state’s abortion ban, and makes this vital point: “What is to stop legislators from adding other medications they don’t like for nonmedical reasons?”
Finally, I’ve been warning about attacks on buffer zones for a while: anti-abortion activists and legislators are trying to do away with protections for clinics by claiming it’s a ‘free speech’ issue. This week, Kentucky’s Attorney General Russell Coleman is trying to bring that issue all the way to the Supreme Court.
Coleman wants SCOTUS to hear a challenge to a buffer zone ordinance in New Jersey, because a similar case in Kentucky is on hold. Coleman thinks that what happens in the NJ case will impact the one in his state. As we’ve seen in other states, Coleman claims that “buffer-zone laws cut off free speech.” I’ve written this so many times before but it’s worth repeating: they are claiming that screaming in patients’ faces and harassing doctors is a First Amendment right.
And remember, this call to SCOTUS is coming at the same time that anti-abortion groups and media are trying to paint extremists convicted of violating the FACE Act as innocent, praying grandmas.
“People come in pregnant and are suddenly faced with this reality of having to leave the state for what is basic, essential medical care. They’re terrified, and they’re angry, and they have every right to be.” - Dr. Chelsea Daniels, Florida Planned Parenthood physician on giving care in the wake of the 6-week ban
Social Media Censorship
The New York Times has an important piece today on how social media platforms are censoring abortion rights content. The issue seems to be specifically with groups that provide abortion medication and information about abortion medication:
“TikTok has briefly suspended the account of Hey Jane, a prominent telemedicine abortion service, four times without explanation. Instagram has suspended Mayday Health, a nonprofit that provides information about abortion pill access, without explanation as well. And the search engine Bing has erroneously flagged the website for Aid Access, a major seller of abortion pills online, as unsafe.”
This comes at the same time that Republicans are trying to stop women from obtaining or even learning about abortion medication. Louisiana now classifies abortion medication as a controlled substance, for example, and travel bans (like one recently passed in Tennessee) make it a crime for people to help teens get abortions in any way—like sending them information about where to get abortion medication.
And just this week, David Closson of the powerful conservative organization Family Research Council told Axios, “We do believe the abortion pill is the next frontier.”
That’s why sharing information online—on social media, in particular—has become so important. But some platforms are banning or shadow banning users who create content about the pills. Rebecca Davis, Hey Jane’s head of brand marketing, was told by TikTok representatives that videos using the word ‘abortion’ would be flagged and might not appear on people’s feeds.
Some users (like yours truly) have tried to get around that barrier by spelling abortion in different, incorrect, ways that the platform may not flag. But as creator Ashley Garcia told the Times, “We shouldn’t have to substitute words—we shouldn’t have to censor ourselves.”
Make sure to read the full article, because there’s a lot more going on there worth knowing about. You can also check out this new report from Amnesty International on the “Post-Roe Removal of Abortion Information Online.”
In the Nation
After forcing Republicans to show their true colors on birth control last week, Senate Democrats are pushing through another vote to reveal GOP extremism. This time, it’s on IVF.
If you read my column about Republicans’ nonsense IVF ‘protection’ bill, you know that the GOP is desperate to seem as if they support the fertility treatments. That’s largely thanks to the national backlash sparked by an Alabama Supreme Court decision that frozen embryos are “extrauterine children.” Since then, conservative lawmakers have been scrambling to do damage control; and their bill was pure PR.
The truth is that Republicans’ legislation wouldn’t have protected IVF at all, but allowed states to restrict the practice. What was important to them was the ability to put out a press release, write an op-ed, and feign giving a shit about women. A vote on actual IVF protections—like the ones introduced by Sen. Tammy Duckworth—puts GOP lawmakers in the hot seat.
That hasn’t stopped Republicans from continuing to pretend, though. A new campaign ad from Sen. Rick Scott, running for re-election in Florida, features the Republican laughing off accusations of being a misogynist. His tone is actually bit creepy, made worse by the fact that he reveals his daughter’s personal health information in order to curry favor with voters. He says IVF “has brought beautiful babies to so many families,” and that the issue is “personal” for him: “My youngest daughter has been undergoing IVF treatments to grow her family.”
For more, check out my piece on what Republicans’ IVF bill is actually about:
If you don’t already read Katelyn Jetelina at Your Local Epidemiologist, you should get on that! And you should especially read this terrific piece in The Washington Post by Jetelina and Heidi Moseson at Ibis Reproductive Health about the retracted mifepristone studies that made it all the way up to the SCOTUS despite their obvious problems:
“We all deserve a solid foundation of data to make smart health-care decisions. This bedrock of data is highly dependent on ethical scientists and a strong review process. Retracted studies should never have reached the Supreme Court.”
THANK YOU.
Quick his:
NPR and NBC News on the Supreme Court abortion cases we’ll get rulings on this month;
The Washington Post on the ways Democrats are trying to reach young voters;
Axios looks at how abortion fights in battleground states could help Biden in November;
KFF Health News with a reminder that ballot measure wins don’t mean immediate pro-choice protections—there are usually court battles that follow;
Finally, thanks to fellow Substacker Heather Cox for the nice shout out in her live-chat!
Ballot Measure Updates
I could not love this more: Abortion rights advocates in South Dakota trying to get voters out for a pro-choice measure are selling “Where’s Cricket?” bumper stickers. (If you don’t know the sordid story of Cricket, the puppy that Governor Kristi Noem shot and killed, I’m jealous of you.) Pro-choice activists in the state are using the national outcry over Cricket’s death to reach voters, and I think it’s brilliant.
A reminder that Nebraska voters will be seeing multiple abortion-related ballot measures thanks to conservatives trying to confuse voters. An anti-abortion group launched a fake ‘pro-choice’ measure in the hopes of getting Nebraskans to enshrine a 12-week ban into the state constitution. More broadly, national anti-abortion groups are hoping that a win will help with movement morale: since Roe was overturned, abortion rights has won every time its been on the ballot.
Finally, the Los Angeles Times looks at the ballot measure fights across the country and the hurdles different states have to restore or protect abortion rights—from the requirement that Florida measure win 60% of the vote to the broad attacks on democracy to stop voters from having a say. (Speaking of attacks on democracy: I hope you read yesterday’s newsletter.) Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom For All, says because Republicans don’t have a majority on the issue, “they’ve orchestrated a whole mechanism to subvert and go around the majority will in this country.”
Stats & Studies
Reproductive Equity Now has a guidebook on anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers and what makes them so dangerous;
Amnesty International looks at the “Post-Roe Removal of Abortion Information Online”;
And Pew has a new report on where voters stand on cultural issues (like abortion) ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
2024
Media outlets are still hot on this story about Donald Trump giving remarks to a radical anti-abortion group. As I wrote yesterday: I feel like I’m missing something here. Why is this appearance a bigger deal than the actual horrific, radical things coming out of Trump’s mouth?
Yes, of course it matters who Trump affiliates himself with. As Biden campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said, “If you want to know who Trump will fight for in a second term, look at who he's spending his time speaking to: anti-abortion extremists who call abortion 'child sacrifice' and want to 'eradicate' abortion 'entirely.’”
But here’s my concern: When a story like this gets coverage in dozens of publications, while the radical things Trump says barely get a mention, it gives readers the impression that appearances like this one are the height of the former president’s extremism. And if I was a moderate voter and saw that the biggest Trump-abortion news was a pre-recorded speech to a conservative group, I would feel like the Democrats didn’t have much on him.
Indeed, recent polling shows that most Americans don’t believe Trump is a danger to abortion rights, and Republican women in particular don’t seem to understand how radical Trump is on reproductive rights. Take this local television segment where female Trump supporters in Pennsylvania were asked about abortion; they all seem to think that Trump is moderate on abortion and simply wants to stop ‘late’ abortions.
Now, obviously any voters showing up to a Trump rally aren’t really living in the land of the coherent—but there’s something to be learned about the way these women talk about abortion. They’ve bought into the lie that women are deciding willy nilly that they don’t want to continue a pregnancy at 8 or 9 months, and can just hop into a clinic and get care without an issue. And because Democrats are so afraid of talking about abortion later in pregnancy, those kinds of messages are proliferating unchecked.
It’s just another reminder that Democrats need to stop running scared from the issue.
Before I go, a few words of appreciation: I’m so grateful for people like Kaitlyn Joshua who are out there retelling their worst and most vulnerable moments in order to make people understand what’s at stake this November. I wish it wasn’t necessary, and I truly can’t believe women need to lay their pain bare in order to be seen as fully human. But we know that personal stories resonate with voters; they matter. And Joshua, whose experience you likely remember, is putting herself out there for the good of us all. So thanks to her, and all the other women like her who are speaking up.
I live in Chicago where our city government is run by a mayor and a city council. The councilors are called Aldermen. The city is divided into aldermanic areas called Wards. There are 50 Wards (and 50 Aldermen) in Chicago.
Areas around hospitals, schools and other designated locations are deemed “quiet zones” and don’t allow protestors to use amplified sound (among other restrictions) in their protests. The reason is obvious. Hospitalized patients and care givers should not have to listen to that level of noise. One Alderman has been trying to get the area around Chicago’s largest abortion clinic designated as a “quiet zone” since every weekend hundreds of protesters show up harassing patients and staff and using amplified sound at such a level that staff can barely interact with patients. One other Alderman has been holding up the vote complaining that such a change will infringe on the protesters rights. When this kind of bullshit goes on in Chicago then you know it an go on (and be successful) elsewhere.
Yesterday seemed to be misogyny day in the New York Times op ed pages. One was shaming young women for caring about their careers and not having more babies & another was against the metoo movement and calling for compassion, not for the victimized women but for the men who behaved badly. This kind of opinion seems to be getting more and more space in mainstream outlets.