The Week in Abortion
5.8.23 - 5.12.23
As we head into a new week of abortion news, here’s a quick (okay, not so quick) rundown of where we stand and what to be on the look out for in the weeks ahead:
Crisis in the South
Abortion access in the South continues to hold on by a thread: Florida has passed a 6-week ban, which could go into effect as soon as this summer. (We’re waiting on the state Supreme Court to issue a ruling on an existing 15-week restriction—if it’s upheld, as expected, the 6-week ban will also start to be enforced.) And while a group has begun looking at getting a pro-choice ballot measure in front of voters, they have a long road ahead.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper officially vetoed a 12-week abortion ban this weekend—legislation Republicans are falsely calling a compromise bill. (Read my column, “The 12-Week Lie” here.) The veto is expected to be overridden thanks to Rep. Tricia Cotham switching parties, but Gov. Cooper has still been looking for a single Republican to do the right thing and stop the override.
If bans go into effect in both Florida and North Carolina, access in the South will be absolutely decimated—not just for patients in those states, but across the entire region. (Florida and North Carolina saw the biggest increases in abortion rates post-Roe because of those traveling from out-of-state for care.)
What could make this shitshow even worse is that Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is trying to revive his plan for a 15-week abortion ban, in part because of North Carolina Republicans leading the rhetorical way for him to claim that such a ban would be a compromise or ‘moderate’ bill.
And while Republicans in some Southern states want voters to believe their restrictions are ‘reasonable’ and ‘commonsense’, leaders elsewhere aren’t bothering with pretense. This week, Alabama Republicans, for example, introduced a bill that would allow the state to charge women with murder if they have abortions—or if their miscarriages were deemed to be the result of “reckless” behavior. (HB454 would also define personhood as beginning at the moment of fertilization—which opens the door for prosecuting women for using IUDs and emergency contraception, because conservatives believe they prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg.)
In Louisiana, lawmakers rejected a bill that would have created abortion ban exceptions for rape and incest victims. And in Texas, Republicans also declined to pass any legislation that would create exceptions to the state’s abortion law, even after spending months claiming they wanted to do so. All of which is to say: They don’t give a shit about women, and they don’t give a shit if anyone knows it.
Care Denied
The other distressing trend we saw this week was an uptick in stories of women being denied abortions despite seemingly qualifying for their states’ exceptions. In Kentucky, Heather Maberry was unable to get abortion even though her fetus was diagnosed with anencephaly (it was missing part of its head & skull). An Idaho woman, Jennifer Adkins, was denied an abortion despite her fetus having a severe abnormality that is almost always fatal (Turner syndrome). Adkins, who was forced to travel to Oregon for care, said, “I deserve better, and so does everybody else.”
Finally, a 22-year old woman in Arizona was forced to carry her pregnancy to term despite her daughter having a fatal diagnosis. “I became extremely depressed,” Chloe says. “I didn't want to leave my bed.” After giving birth, Chloe’s daughter Laila lived for just 44 hours. “It was definitely hard to watch her just be in pain the whole entire time. It's like I was trying to keep her from feeling this pain, and she still had to feel it,” she said.
These kinds of stories are only going to get worse and worse—and we’re only going to hear more of them. What keeps me up at night, though, is knowing that the stories getting published represent just a fraction of what’s really happening.
Keep An Eye On
Back door bans. We were reminded this week of the abortion medication ban in Wyoming, which is set to go into effect on July 1. This law is different than the the total abortion ban in Wyoming that was passed and later blocked—which means it’s a way for Republicans to try to prohibit abortion despite what the law says. We saw the same thing happen in Utah, where Republicans passed a law requiring abortions be performed in hospitals—effectively banning clinics in the state. It was a way for lawmakers to get around the fact that abortion is legal in the state up until 18 weeks. Back door bans line up with the broader trend of Republicans undermining democracy to ban abortion, so we can plan to see plenty more coming down the road.
Where the money is going. The other thing to pay attention to is just how much money Republicans are funneling to anti-abortion centers. Hint: It’s a lot. And we’re not only seeing anti-choice states giving millions to these groups that don’t provide women with any sort of real medical service—but these same states are also re-establishing ‘maternity homes’. These are group homes that target vulnerable, poor pregnant women who often have no other place to go; they also often have relationships with anti-abortion centers and evangelical adoption agencies. At the same time anti-choice states are over-funding anti-abortion centers and enabling ‘maternity homes’, they’re also trying to make it easier to terminate parental rights. (I think we can all see where this is going.)
Stats & Studies
If you missed the latest report from the National Abortion Federation on the increase in violence and harassment against abortion clinics and providers, make sure to check it out here. Nothing too surprising—we knew these numbers were going to go way up, but that doesn’t make it any easier to see.
The other study we saw this week that was so important was polling from ABC News/Washington Post showing that 78% of Americans believe the decision whether to have an abortion should be left to a woman and her doctor. That’s a huge number and a really big fucking deal! Especially when you consider that support for legal abortion remains strong even when you’re looking at groups normally thought of as anti-choice. When asked the same question, for example, the majorities of Republicans (58%), conservatives (60%), evangelical white Protestants (56%), Catholics (75%) and non-evangelical white Protestants (83%) also report believing that abortion should be decided between a woman and her doctor.
2024
Finally, despite anti-choice groups saying that they would only consider endorsing candidates who support a federal abortion ban, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America had a meeting with Donald Trump and called their conversation “terrific.” Trump keeps going back and forth about a national ban—he’s said abortion should be up to the states, but also that he might support federal legislation if it had ‘exceptions’. But as I pointed out last week, what he says doesn’t mean shit. And just like we know it, so do these big anti-abortion groups. They’re just covering their bases.
I have been meditating on why our society is not nurturing and has no empathy and collective culture is flying apart. We need to understand, not just the burgeoning deviant political philosophies, but why they are becoming more actively hateful and vicious (especially in the "right to life" states). I watched DJT start with othering Obama by challenging his birth certificate, then othering Muslims and Mexicans as a political strategy, then accepting othering Jews ("will not replace us"), then a vast public movement of science and vaccine denial during COVID, which was not just without empathy, but othered the high risk elderly, essential minorities, the poor and urban elites (as expendable nuisances) in promoting their own libertarian, individualistic freedom, finally culminating in othering all pregnant moms to protect the potential life of a fetus above all values even at the price of allowing raped women and women who experienced incest and eagerly expectant mothers having a miscarriage to suffer and making the ethical practice of medical caring illegal and finally othering children by passing laws re-permitting child labor.
So what does this mean? From a historical perspective it is very serious because wars always start by othering the enemy (see WWII Japanese internment camps, Muslims in the Iraq war among others). It is not alarmist or paranoid to note that Hitler started his extermination project by othering handicapped, mentally retarded and mentally ill Germans and killing 200,000 of them. This is a deep seated pathology. Few people, especially in the media, see how all these events are tied together and are at the core of the Trumpian urge to fascism. It is especially lively in the "right to life" states. Thepoliticians there are eager to pass the most draconian laws, with not one word recognizing the inhumanity of their zeal. We are in a very dangerous period.
"...these same states are also re-establishing ‘maternity homes’. These are group homes that target vulnerable, poor pregnant women who often have no other place to go; they also often have relationships with anti-abortion centers and evangelical adoption agencies. At the same time anti-choice states are over-funding anti-abortion centers and enabling ‘maternity homes’, they’re also trying to make it easier to terminate parental rights. (I think we can all see where this is going.)"
My weekly reminder that this is the definition of trafficking.