The Week in Abortion
(2.20.23-2.24.23)
In the states…
The biggest takeaway from this week is that Republican lawmakers are desperate to start punishing women. We saw bills in four different states that would classify abortion as homicide—which means women who end their pregnancies would be prosecuted for murder, which is punishable by the death penalty in some cases. Those bills were introduced in Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia. Republicans will claim that these bills and the legislators who are proposing them are extremists or out-of-touch with the party—don’t let them gaslight you. This was always the point. (And if you have any linger questions about that fact, check out what else is happening in Alabama, where Republicans are holding tight onto an older law that allows women to be prosecuted.)
Everyone should also be paying close attention to what’s going on in Tennessee, where Republican lawmakers have been fighting it out with the state’s biggest anti-choice group over an exception for women’s lives. Tennessee Right to Life doesn’t want the exception added in, and was successful in lobbying the legislators for a weakened (essentially unusable) version that removed any mention of doctors using their best medical judgement. This isn’t just important to the women in the state—but women across the country: National anti-abortion organizations see Tennessee as their big win, and the abortion ban there as model legislation for every state. So what happens there will have an impact everywhere.
Other notable state updates are that Utah Republicans moved forward legislation that would ban abortion clinics in the state entirely; the Wisconsin primary for the state Supreme Court signaled voters’ strong support for abortion rights; and a proposed ban in Wyoming passed through a Senate committee, legislation that would also expand lawmakers’ power to interpret the state constitution.
In the nation…
Walgreens caved to conservative pressure on abortion medication from Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach. The company assured him in a letter that they have no plans to ship or dispense abortion medication in the state—this is part of a broader nation-wide intimidation campaign against pharmacies who might carry the pills. Twenty state AGs sent Walgreens and CVS threatening letters warning them that shipping the medication into the state would be illegal. (It is not.) Given Walgreens response to Kansas, it’s safe to assume they will buckle under the pressure in other states, as well.
And while we’re still waiting on a ruling in the case on abortion medication, Attorneys General from 12 states filed a lawsuit yesterday against the FDA in a move to force the agency to increase access to abortion medication.
The last bit of news on abortion pills is that VICE found that over 20,000 packets of the medication have been shipped to the U.S. since Roe was overturned—and those are just numbers from a few suppliers. The actual amount is likely much higher, which is both good and bad: Good that people are getting the medication that they need, bad that so many of these pills are having to be sent surreptitiously.
Statistics & Studies…
Some of the biggest news this week was data: PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) put out a new study on what Americans think about abortion, showing that this country is overwhelmingly pro-choice. As has been the case for decades, most Americans continue to support legal access to abortion—but a few notable things that will (or should) make a big difference in the months ahead:
Young people are more pro-choice than ever;
The percentage of those who believe abortion should be illegal is rapidly declining;
The percentage of Republican women who support total abortion bans is also on a steep decline, with 20% of them supporting total bans in March 2022, but only 15% doing so by December;
And it’s not just people in pro-choice states who support abortion rights—most people in most states do. (Check out the infographic from The Washington Post below)
What the mainstream media missed…
This is something I’ve written about before, but with the results of this latest poll out I can’t help but think once more about the damage that ‘both sides’ journalism is doing on abortion rights. We are not a country divided on abortion! We are a country that is in a conservative chokehold—bound by the laws of a powerful few radical lawmakers who do not give the slightest shit about what voters actually want. And when reporters don’t cover abortion with that as the dominant frame, they are doing their readers a disservice.
Jessica -- every day I gobble up the news digest you create, in the same way I sip my morning coffee with Bryan Stevenson’s EJI daily lynching history. These are not pleasure reads. These are not penance for personal misdeeds! But you and Bryan understand that our collective and individual DNA is encoded by these dehumanizing events. We can only understand and recognize the pain and ailments we each are feeling if we understand them in our context.
Obviously, it is hard to read. Sometimes, I cannot fathom how you manage the compilation... too much misogyny, fear, hatred, anger and that is, thankfully, not the world that I have largely known. That said, I have lived in parts of the world beset by genocidal outbursts and extreme, mortal othering; where recalibration and new trajectory was made, it was made by exposing dark truths and sustaining the difficult but vital work of reconciliation. The injustice American women are grappling with will have to be met with this sort of work... just as we MUST ultimately grapple with the legacy of America’s racist enslavement of African peoples and the casting off of the continent’s Indigenous people.
Thank you for doing these weekly summaries. I don’t have the time or strength to read the news daily and am so grateful that you make it possible for me to be informed without being overwhelmed!