USA – What It Takes to Claw Back Abortion Rights in Court

Feb 19, 2024
By Andrea González-Ramírez, the Cut

Any day now, the Texas Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling on Zurawski v. State of Texas, the first-of-its-kind legal challenge brought forward last year by 20 women who say that they were denied abortion care in the face of severe and dangerous pregnancy complications. The case seeks to clarify what circumstances qualify as medical emergencies under the state’s three overlapping abortion bans, which threaten providers with up to life in prison, in addition to a civil penalty of no less than $100,000.

Molly Duane, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, came up with the case’s legal strategy and has since filed similar lawsuits in Idaho and Tennessee. … “Brittany Watts, Kate Cox — these are not isolated incidents,” she says. “The cruelty, the confusion, the absolute terror that is pervasive throughout the medical community and is impacting patients every single day, all that was by design.” I talked to Duane about the reasoning behind this focus on medical exceptions and the long game that is trying to claw back some abortion rights through the courts.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/zurawski-v-texas-and-clawing-back-abortion-rights-in-court.html


Our Abortion Stories: ‘I Knew Something Was Wrong, But My Doctor Wouldn’t Listen’

“Do I want my daughter to enter her childbearing years in a state where the providers of women’s healthcare are hamstrung by draconian laws?”

Feb 6, 2024
by TALLULAH COSTA, ALEXA SCHNUR and LIVIA FOLLET

In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the longstanding precedents of Roe v. Wade, representing the largest blow to women’s constitutional rights in history. A series from Ms., Our Abortion Stories chronicles readers’ experiences of abortion pre- and post-Roe. Abortions are sought by a wide range of people for many different reasons. There is no single story. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls.

The fall of Roe will continue to strain abortion access nationwide. We cannot, we must not lose the right to safe and accessible abortion or access to birth control.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/02/06/abortion-stories-roe-v-wade-doctor-health-abortion-miscarriage/


India – ‘24-Week Limit For Abortion Is Obsolete’

The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act does not permit abortions beyond 24 weeks, but this limit is obsolete, as abortions can now safely be performed right up to full term, senior advocate Colin Gonsalves says

By Menaka Rao
2 Feb, 2024

New Delhi: On January 23, the Delhi High Court recalled its order granting permission for abortion to a 26-year-old woman. Her husband had died two months ago. She was about 30 weeks pregnant when she approached the court. The earlier order was based on the fact that she had suicide ideation due to her bereavement, but the court turned back on its previous order after doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) raised objections to the late-term abortion saying that the foetus was viable and it could be born alive after the procedure.

This case is similar to the one decided in October 2023 by a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, which involved a married woman with postpartum psychosis after a recent delivery. There too, AIIMS doctors had sent clarifications that it was a late-term pregnancy as defined by the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 2021 (MTP Act). The Supreme Court not only rejected the abortion plea at the time, but also told the woman to deliver the baby at AIIMS and give it up for adoption if the couple wishes to do so.

Continued: https://www.indiaspend.com/indiaspend-interviews/24-week-limit-for-abortion-is-obsolete-892891


Making Abortion Safe Outside of the Legal System: A Q&A on Self-Managed Abortion

Sociologist Naomi Braine’s new book on the global feminist movement for self-managed abortion took her to Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe to study activists’ work there.

FELICIA KORNBLUH
Jan 30, 2024

From 2017 to 2019, sociologist Naomi Braine, a professor at Brooklyn College, traveled in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe to study what she terms a global feminist movement for self-managed abortion (SMA). The result is her new book, Abortion Beyond the Law: Building a Global Feminist Movement for Self-Managed Abortion (Verso, 2023).

The story of self-managed abortion starts from the fact that, according to the Guttmacher Institute, at least half of all abortions around the world in 2017 were medication abortions, in which people used drugs to end their pregnancies. (The ambiguous legal status of abortion in many countries means that the data is incomplete.) This contrasts with the common image of so-called “procedural” abortion, which occurs under professional medical care and mostly or entirely in a clinic or hospital.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/self-managed-abortion-naomi-braine/


Kate Cox on her struggle to obtain an abortion in Texas

January 12, 2024
CBS News

Kate Cox was pregnant with her third child when she learned the baby had a rare genetic disorder called Trisomy 18.  Cox and her husband, Justin, were informed by their doctors that if their child survived the pregnancy, her life expectancy would be at best a week. With the baby's health at risk as well as her own, Kate and Justin Cox sued the state of Texas for the right to have an abortion.

In her first interview since the Texas Supreme Court ruled against her, Cox talks about the case, her decision to have an abortion in New Mexico, and more in an interview with Tracy Smith for "CBS News Sunday Morning," to be broadcast Sunday, January 14 on CBS and streamed on Paramount+.

Continued: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kate-cox-interview-on-her-struggle-to-obtain-an-abortion-in-texas/


USA – The Impact Of Restrictive Abortion Laws In 2023

JANUARY 1, 2024
15-Minute Listen

From NPR's daily news podcast, Consider This: Nearly two years into Roe v. Wade being overturned, pregnant people continue to have a hard time accessing abortion and miscarriage care. This year saw the addition of new restrictive abortion laws in some states and protection of existing abortion laws in others.

What does this mean for abortion care in 2024, and how might all of this affect the 2024 elections?

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2024/01/01/1197958788/restrictive-abortion-laws-2023


‘A generational struggle’: abortion rights pioneer offers insights to the post-Roe US

Merle Hoffman opened an abortion center two years before 1973’s Roe decision; after its fall, she takes stock of the fight for abortion in the US

Ramon Antonio Vargas
Sun 24 Dec 2023

The battle to bring back the federal right to abortion in the US hinges on much more than just the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, and winning will require proponents to be as organized and steadfast as their opponents, at least as one of the reproductive freedom movement’s most veteran voices sees it.

Invoking scenes that played out all across the country after the supreme court’s Dobbs decision eliminated nationwide abortion rights, Merle Hoffman recently said: “It looks like thousands of people marching in the streets all over the country … [But] you can’t just do one action.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/24/merle-hoffman-abortion-rights-pioneer-post-roe-united-states


Abortion Pills Go Global: Reproductive Freedom Across Borders

By Rose Aguilar, Sarah Lai Stirland
December 21, 2023
50-minute podcast

On this edition of Your Call, social scientist Sydney Calkin discusses her new book, Abortion Pills Go Global: Reproductive Freedom Across Borders.

Calkin examines how the global flow of these pills is changing the politics of abortion in countries with restrictive abortion laws. Here in the United States, women used abortion pills to end more than half of unwanted pregnancies in recent years.

Continued: https://www.kalw.org/show/your-call/2023-12-21/abortion-pills-go-global-reproductive-freedom-across-borders


What It’s Really Like to Challenge Texas’ Absurd Abortion Laws

The government won’t admit what it’s actually doing.

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK
DEC 18, 2023
(1-hour podcast, partial transcript)

… Last summer, Amanda Zurawski and a number of plaintiffs sued to have Texas clarify its inscrutable and malleable “exception” rule, that, as it currently stands, does not seem to allow many exceptions at all, and instead threatens all abortion providers with losing their licenses, paying extortionate fines, and going to prison for 99 years if they help their clients access such care. That case went to the Texas Supreme Court on the same day Kate Cox learned that her baby would die of trisomy 18, the week before the Texas courts forced her to travel out of state to terminate her pregnancy.

On Amicus this week, Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in that ongoing Texas lawsuit, and one of her lawyers, Jamie Levitt, of Morrison and Foerster, who joined with the Center for Reproductive Rights to protect the rights of women in Texas, joined the show. Our conversation, lightly edited for clarity, follows.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/12/amanda-zurawski-on-challenging-texas-abortion-law.html


Nigeria – Interview: 2024 health budget of N1trn will barely scratch the surface, says expert

Dec 16, 2023
In 2017, Nigeria’s maternal mortality hit 917 per 100,000 births. Three years later, the figures surged by nearly 14 percent to 1,047 deaths, ranking among the world’s highest. With each spike, it is a bleak canvas of despair for countless Nigerian women seeking to bring life into the world.

With the conclusion of the 16 days of activism, Lucky Palmer, country director of Ipas Nigeria Health Foundation, spoke with TheCable’s CLAIRE MOM to shed light on the factors that contributed to the country’s high maternal mortality rate and offered practical steps that can be taken to ensure every woman’s right to safe childbirth.

Continued: https://www.thecable.ng/interview-2024-health-budget-of-n1tn-will-barely-scratch-surface-says-expert