Texas Rules Against Women. Again.

5.31.24

Click to skip ahead: In Texas Nightmare, the state Supreme Court has ruled against 20 women whose lives were endangered by the state’s abortion ban. In the States, news out of Indiana, Iowa, Washington and more. Ballot Measure Updates on anti-abortion tactics in Montana and Nebraska. The GOP’s War on Birth Control lays out what to think about before Senate Dem’s vote. Finally, Destigmatizing ‘Abortion’ looks at how orgs aren’t afraid of the term ‘abortion’ anymore.

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Texas Nightmare

I’m not surprised, but I am sickened: The Texas Supreme Court has ruled against the twenty women who sued after the state’s abortion ban put their health and lives at risk. The justices decided that there’s no problem with the state’s ban, and that the issue was doctors misunderstanding the law—not the law itself. “Texas law permits a life-saving abortion,” the opinion states.

A refresher: The Center for Reproductive Rights brought the lawsuit on behalf of women harmed by Texas’ ban. You can read the details of their stories here, but it’s likely you remember some of their names: Amanda Zurawski, for example, ended up in the ICU with sepsis. She was denied care until she was on death’s door. Samantha Casiano—forced to give birth despite the fact that her baby was missing parts of her brain and skull—actually vomited on the stand while recounting watching her baby take pained last breaths. She said that talking about what happened “just makes my body remember and it just reacts.”

What was so hard about watching this case play out was seeing these women relive their worst moments just to have the state attorneys treat them like shit—including arguing that they didn’t have standing to even bring a suit because they weren’t currently pregnant. (Zurawski said, “I survived sepsis and I don't think today was much less traumatic than that.”) The Court agreed with the state, ruling that the women didn’t have standing in the case. Which is…just mind-blowing.

Horrifically, justices also ruled that women should be forced to carry nonviable pregnancies to term:

“The current law, however, plainly does not permit abortion based solely on a diagnosis that an unborn child has an abnormal condition, even a life-limiting one…

As painful as such circumstances are, that the law does not authorize abortions for diagnosed fetal conditions absent a life-threatening complication to the mother does not render it unconstitutional.”

Notice anything about the language there? “Life-limiting” is a term I’ve flagged before, one that anti-abortion activists want doctors and courts to use instead of calling a fetus’ condition lethal or nonviable. It looks like they got their wish. (It’s also worth noting that blaming doctors for not understanding the law is also an anti-abortion talking point, one we started to see soon after Roe was overturned.)

Eleanor Klibanoff at the Texas Tribune points out that in this way, the ruling was similar to the one on Kate Cox’s pregnancy. Despite Cox’s pregnancy being nonviable and her health and life at risk, Texas Supreme Court denied her an emergency abortion.

This decision comes just days after Abortion, Every Day broke the news that the Texas GOP platform calls for punishing abortion patients as murders, and the same week that college professors in the state sued for the right to punish students who miss class to get abortions.

I’ll have more on the ruling soon, but I just want to send my thoughts to the brave patients who came forward in this case. They laid their pain bare in the hopes that it would make even the smallest difference. It might not have changed the law, but I do think their stories changed the country.

In the States

Earlier this week, I told you about the challenge against Indiana’s abortion ban. Brought by the ACLU of Indiana and Planned Parenthood, the suit argues that the ban’s ‘exceptions’ for serious risks to a pregnant person’s health or life are too narrow and vague. (So, not dissimilar to the case just ruled on in Texas.)

Indiana Public Radio has more on the case, noting that the challenge also argues that the ban on abortion clinics—pregnancies must be ended in hospitals—is too prohibitive. “No hospital outside of Indianapolis is currently providing abortion care,” the suit states. A good deal of hospitals in the state are also religiously-affiliated.

Doctors gave testimony in the case this week, with Dr. Amy Caldwell saying plainly, “Women will die from complications as a result of not having access to abortion care.” And Stephen Ralston, director of maternal fetal medicine at George Washington University said, “That's just not in anybody's best interest, to wait until patients become sick to perform care.”

What’s also important about this case is that the challenge addresses the mental health implications of Indiana’s ban—something we’ve seen other challenges shy away from. The suit (correctly) argues that pregnancy can make it impossible for those with mental illnesses like schizophrenia or major depressive disorder to take necessary medications.

Remember how Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird stopped the state from reimbursing rape victims for emergency contraception? And how she stuck by her decision even after finding out that the majority of victims served by the funding were children? I sure do!

Well, now Bird says that that Iowa will resume paying for the morning-after pill for victims, but that the state won’t reimburse abortions for victims. In the last year, only one rape victim has requested funding for an abortion; hundreds asked for coverage for emergency contraception.

I’m so glad to see this funding reinstated, but I’ll be honest—I’m also a little concerned. There’s a nagging voice at the back of my head saying that Bird made clear her office won’t cover abortion because at some point the state will claim that emergency contraception is abortion. (An argument we know anti-abortion activists and groups make often.) Just something to watch out for.

A new study shows that out-of-state abortion patients have increased by 50% in Washington. Family medicine doctor and lead author Emily Godfrey says, “It’s an important study, because we need to continue to monitor who is getting abortions at what state to ensure that there’s health equity through this very distressing time.”

The state has become a safe haven for those seeking to end their pregnancies, and researchers found—thankfully—that so far the level of care hasn’t changed despite the new influx of patients. That doesn’t mean Washington shouldn’t implement new tactics or investments in care, however.

Finally, Tennessee anti-abortion groups are hard at work doing PR for the state’s newly-signed travel ban. Here’s Stacy Dunn, president of Tennessee Right to Life, in the National Catholic Register:

“Parents have a right to be involved with their daughters’ well-being. The abortion industry has no right to keep parents in the dark at a time when their daughters are so vulnerable and could possibly be in danger.”

Remember, this law wouldn’t just make it a crime to bring a teen out-of-state for an abortion, but to offer help in any way. Even lending a teenager gas money could be labeled as trafficking. But anti-choice activists are eager for voters to believe they’re just interested in protecting children.

Quick hits:

• The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled against an anti-abortion group this week;

• Controversy over a Catholic hospital merger in New Hampshire;

• A man who firebombed a California Planned Parenthood has been sentenced to six years in federal prison;

• A new bill would require Delaware public universities to offer abortion medication to students;

• And Planned Parenthood Great Plains is hosting a two-day vasectomy clinic in Kansas.

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If you missed Abortion, Every Day’s investigation into a data breach at the country’s largest network of crisis pregnancy centers, make sure to check it out. This is a group getting millions in taxpayer funding!

EXCLUSIVE: Health Data Breach at America’s Largest Crisis Pregnancy Org

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Ballot Measure Updates

The Montana Free Press has a piece worth reading about the signature gathering effort in the state, and the tactics anti-abortion activists are using to keep abortion off the ballot. As you may remember, abortion is protected in Montana’s constitution, but the Republican governor and Attorney General have been trying to chip away at the right and get the state Supreme Court to reverse that decision. The abortion rights amendment is a way to add an extra layer of protection.

Anti-abortion activists, however, really don’t want that to happen. So they’ve been harassing and videotaping signature-gatherers—something the antis call “shining a light” on the process. Patrick Webb of the Montana Family Foundation outright admits that they’re trying to stop voters from having a say:

“Them not getting out and actually signing up every person that comes by, because they are actually trying to walk away from our people or get away from the camera, prevents them from getting signatures. When we multiply this across multiple people doing this in each county where they’re at, we can stop them from getting this on the ballot.”

We’ve seen this type of attack on democracy in every state with a pro-choice ballot measure. Conservatives know that Americans want abortion to be legal, so the only way to keep their bans in place or enact new ones is to stop voters from getting to decide at all.

Meanwhile, Nebraska Public Media highlights a different anti-abortion strategy in Nebraska: proposing a fake ‘pro-choice’ ballot measure. This is something I’ve written about before; essentially, anti-abortion groups know that voters want abortion to be legal, so they’re putting an amendment on the ballot that appears to support abortion rights. The anti-abortion group even used a name that’s similar to the actual abortion rights amendment!

But while Protect Our Rights would enshrine abortion rights through ‘‘viability’, Protect Women and Children would supposedly protect abortion only through 12 weeks. What makes that number significant? Nebraska already has a 12-week abortion ban! That means that the amendment would enshrine an anti-abortion ban into the state constitution. It’s brilliant, really.

The GOP’s War on Birth Control

Republicans are desperate to keep their position on birth control under wraps, so I’m really glad that Senate Democrats are fast-tracking a vote on the issue. I’m dying to see how the GOP is going to react.

It’s safe to assume that Republicans will either make it all about abortion (just like they tried to do with Dem’s IVF legislation) or claim that birth control is protected so there’s no reason for them to support a bill. But as law professor Mary Ziegler told The Hill, “If that’s the case, I don’t know why you don’t just support a bill that doesn’t matter anyway and make the issue go away, instead of giving Democrats ammunition.”

Just a quick reminder on how Republicans are (already!) banning birth control:

• Defining certain kinds of contraception as abortifacients. As I’ve outlined before, this is a major tactic at the moment. Conservatives argue that IUDs, emergency contraception—and sometimes even the Pill—don’t prevent pregnancies, but end them. They’re planning on focusing on emergency contraception in particular because of how many Americans confuse it with abortion medication.

• Denying contraceptive coverage. You don’t need to pass a law that says ‘birth control is illegal’ if you just make it impossible to get. By making contraception too expensive—or ensuring employers don’t need to cover birth control they claim is an ‘abortifacient’—Republicans are able keep women away from the medication.

• ‘Conscience’ clauses and laws. Once again, no law necessary if you can’t access contraception. It’s an effort that conservative powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom is hot on at the moment—claiming that it’s a violation of religious liberty to ‘force’ pharmacists to dispense birth control. For women in rural areas, just one extremist pharmacist can be the difference between having access to contraception or not.

• Funding anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. This is another strategy I’ve outlined previously—one that’s getting worse with massively increased funding for the religious groups. With anti-choice states running OBGYNs and reproductive health clinics out of town, Republicans are framing CPCs are the answer to those health care gaps. But these centers can’t prescribe birth control, and their policy is to warn women away from it. (Even lying about the dangers of contraception.) In communities where CPCs outnumber real clinics, women and girls will be given false and scare-tactic information to keep them away from birth control.

Destigmatizing ‘Abortion’

For years, abortion was treated as a third-rail political issue, with Democrats touting half-hearted ‘safe, legal and rare’ rhetoric. Now candidates are making the issue the centerpiece of their campaigns, and abortion is set to be the most important political issue heading into the presidential election.

Given how popular abortion rights has become, it makes sense that ‘abortion’ is making a comeback. This week, reproductive rights organization Pro-Choice Ohio rebranded themselves as Abortion Forward Alliance. Executive director Kellie Copeland says abortion stigma is “enabled by euphemisms.”

“We found that when we were talking with Ohioans…euphemisms were not needed; people weren’t shying away from having the conversation about abortion, and I think it’s very important for people to be direct.”

Love this. For too long, reproductive rights groups focused on ‘choice’ over abortion, too afraid of turning off voters or funders. But abortion is popular! And as Copeland said, I don’t think people need to talk around the issue.

In fact, a spokesperson for Arizona for Abortion Access said something similar this week. Chris Love told the Arizona Mirror, “We’re intentionally using ‘abortion’ as a word because that was the thing that we’re doing.”

“We don’t want to play ‘hide the ball’ with voters. We don’t want to insult voters’ intelligence by using poll-tested terms that don’t really mean anything. We want to say the thing.”