The Week in Abortion

5.27.24 - 5.31.24

We have a lot to talk about! Between new anti-abortion laws in Louisiana and Tennessee, the Texas Supreme Court decision, and Democrats’ efforts to fight back, this week was wildly busy for abortion rights news. Below, you’ll find the most important stories and my takeaways. As always, if you want more information on a particular issue, just follow the link to the newsletter’s full coverage. -Jessica

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All Eyes On Texas

You’d think I would have lost my capacity for surprise at how far Texas Republicans are willing to go on abortion. I haven’t.

This week, I broke the news that the Texas GOP platform calls for punishing abortion patients as murderers—including with the death penalty. And by using language around ‘equal protection’ for fetuses, Republicans seem to believe that no one will notice what they’re up to.

The adoption of this plank came after an intense lobbying effort by Abolish Abortion Texas. This is a group of anti-abortion ‘abolitionists’ who say women aren’t victims in abortion, but killers.

Thanks to Abortion, Every Day’s reporting, national media has now picked up on the story and we’re waiting to see how Texas Republicans will respond. If you missed the piece, you can read it below:

Texas GOP Platform Endorses Death Penalty for Abortion Patients

Also in Texas, the state Supreme Court ruled against the twenty women who sued after the state’s abortion ban put their health and lives at risk. The justices said that “Texas law permits a life-saving abortion,” and anything else is doctors’ problem. It’s sickening really.

The suit brought by Center for Reproductive Rights wasn’t seeking to overturn the law—the women they represented just wanted the ban clarified so that doctors wouldn’t be terrified to give patients health- and life-saving abortions. The Court not only ruled that the women didn’t have standing to bring the suit, but also made clear that women should be forced to carry nonviable pregnancies to term.

Read the full rundown in Friday’s newsletter.

State News

On Tuesday, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed an anti-abortion travel ban. Republicans purport that the law, which they call ‘anti-trafficking’ legislation, will protect minors from abusive adults trying to sneak them out-of-state for an abortion. The truth is that the legislation was deliberately written to criminalize anyone who helps a teen get abortion care in any way.

I’ve written this many times before, but I’ll keep repeating it: Under this law, an aunt who lends her niece gas money to leave the state could be labeled a trafficker, as could a grandmother who texts her granddaughter the url to an out-of-state clinic.

If you think that sounds like a free speech violation, you’re not the only one! A judge blocked a near-identical law in Idaho on First Amendment grounds. We can expect to see a legal challenge in Tennessee as well.

Republicans insist that they’re just trying to protect children (even as they force them into childbirth), but it’s important to know that these laws will not stop with teenagers. Minors are the canaries in the coal mine: what happens to them today will come for us tomorrow. Already, multiple Texas counties have made it illegal to help a woman of any age leave the state for an abortion, and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has argued that the state could restrict pregnant women’s travel in the same way they restrict a sex offender’s.

In Indiana this week, a judge heard arguments in a case against the state’s abortion ban. The challenge argues that the ban “deprives patients of their constitutional right to obtain abortions to protect them from serious health risks.”

What’s notable is that in addition to pointing out that pregnancy can cause or exacerbate health conditions, the challenge also argues for mental health considerations. The groups note that pregnancy can make it impossible for those with mental illnesses like schizophrenia or major depressive disorder to take necessary medications.

Finally, if you want to know more about Louisiana’s new law classifying abortion medication as a controlled substance, check out the explainer I published on Monday. It’s a good way to learn more about what the law means for folks living in the state, and what it says about anti-abortion strategy more broadly:

Quick hits: Virginia’s presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Abigail Spanberger, said she would sign legislation guaranteeing the right to contraception. In the midst of Republican attacks on data and privacy, the New Hampshire House rejected a bill that would have required abortion providers to report patient information to the state. And Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird says that the state will resume reimbursing rape victims for emergency contraception, but I’m skeptical of her motives.

National Updates

The Biden Administration has launched a new website for those who believe their rights have been violated under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA)—a way to make it easier for patients who were denied emergency abortions to make a complaint.

Democrats are planning a $100 million abortion rights campaign targeting swing districts, with a memo from the House Majority’s PAC saying Republicans’ anti-abortion votes will be “career killers.”

And Senate Democrats are making a move to force Republicans’ hand on birth control. They’ll be fast-tracking a vote on federal legislation to protect contraception and put GOP lawmakers—who desperately want Americans to believe they support birth control—on the spot.

If you need a refresher on all the different ways Republicans are already attacking contraception, check out the outline I wrote on Friday or re-read Abortion, Every Day’s series on the GOP’s plan to ban birth control. (Part I, Part II)

AED EVENT ALERT! The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee is holding an abortion rights panel on Tuesday morning at 10am. Abortion, Every Day researcher Grace Haley will be there to cover the hearing and to update paid subscribers in a live-chat. So if you’ve been waiting to upgrade your subscription, this is a really good reason to do so—readers tend to really love these live conversations.

Meanwhile, Republicans are out there being downright embarrassing. For years, anti-abortion groups like Students for Life have pushing the ridiculous claim that mifepristone is poisoning the environment via wastewater. This week, congressional Republicans adopted that argument in a letter to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), writing that the agency needs to ensure that the flushed drug and “fetal remains of unborn children” don’t pose an environmental threat.

The letter’s language is near identical to the language from Students for Life, who concocted the claim after realizing that young people oppose abortion bans but care about the environment. Worst of all, this hints back at a tactic I warned about in 2022: Anti-abortion groups want to force abortion medication patients to bag up their bleeding and bringing it back to their healthcare provider, claiming it’s dangerous medical waste.

The idea is to punish, shame, and humiliate patients who just want to end their pregnancies in the privacy of their own homes. Read AED’s full coverage of the story here.

Quick hits: Democratic attorneys general met last week to strategize on abortion rights and hear from abortion clinic workers and patients. Doctors are urging the Supreme Court to rule that EMTALA requires states to provide life-saving and stabilizing abortions. And Hillary Clinton says that Democrats didn’t do enough for abortion rights before the end of Roe.

Anti-Abortion Language Watch

We saw a lot this week in anti-abortion rhetoric and messaging trends. To start, the Texas Supreme Court used the term ‘life-limiting’ when in their ruling that women must carry nonviable pregnancies to term.

Anti-abortion activists want doctors and courts to use ‘life-limiting’ instead of calling a fetus’ condition lethal or nonviable. It’s a way to give patients false hope about their pregnancies, and to make Americans forget that their laws mandate that people carry doomed pregnancies.

The other language tactic we saw this week also had to do with nonviable pregnancies: Conservatives are ramping up their use of the word ‘disabled’ to refer to fetuses with fatal conditions. The language was used in the Texas GOP platform, for example, and anti-abortion activist Ingrid Skop dropped it in an interview with The New York Times. She called ending a doomed pregnancy “disability discrimination.” (If you think that’s offensive, remember this?)

Also this week, anti-abortion activists—who know their policies are massively unpopular—continued their trend of co-opting pro-choice language. In response to laws that prevent crisis pregnancy centers from lying to women, conservatives say that Democrats are taking away women’s “choices.”

Finally, be on the look out for language and policies around ‘coerced abortion.’ I’ve been flagging this term for a while, but it’s come up quite a bit over the last few months. Much like calling travel bans ‘anti-trafficking’ efforts, the idea is to frame wildly misogynist laws as pro-woman.

Must-Read! Crisis Pregnancy Center Data Breach

If you missed Abortion, Every Day’s investigation into the data breach at Heartbeat International, please read and share it. While their centers mislead women into believing that their health information is protected by HIPAA, the group is actually revealing women’s private health info—down their last menstrual periods—to corporate employees, thousands of trainees and, in one case, anyone with an internet connection!

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