USA – Planned Parenthood affiliates train abortion doulas to reduce stress for patients

BY: SOFIA RESNICK
MARCH 15, 2024

A 39-year-old single mother of two got up extra early on a recent Wednesday morning, hoping to be one of the first outside the Planned Parenthood clinic near Phoenix, Arizona.

The upside of not telling anyone about her abortion was that she wasn’t going to have to explain herself. The downside was that she couldn’t receive any pain medication, since she’d have to drive herself home. After scraping together $770 to pay for the procedure — $250 of which she said came from an abortion fund — she couldn’t afford an Uber for the 80-minute round trip. So she was overcome with relief when not only did the busy clinic not turn her away, but a retired nurse named Mary Cross offered to be her abortion doula, free of charge.

Continued: https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2024/03/15/planned-parenthood-affiliates-train-abortion-doulas-to-reduce-stress-for-patients/


Arizona, Dominican Republic both grapple with 19th century abortion laws

BY: GLORIA REBECCA GOMEZ
DECEMBER 26, 2023

In Arizona, the state’s highest court is considering whether to restore a near-total abortion ban from 1864, and in the Dominican Republic, women are fighting against an all-out ban from 1884.

The just 20-year difference separating the two laws was striking for Sen. Anna Hernandez, D-Phoenix, who traveled to the Caribbean country earlier this month to learn what awaits women in Arizona if access to abortions is cut off.

Continued: https://www.azmirror.com/2023/12/26/arizona-dominican-republic-both-grapple-with-19th-century-abortion-laws/


Arizona court weighs 1864 abortion ban that risks ‘conditions of misery’

After months of disarray over the legality of abortion, the state supreme court will decide whether to reinstate ‘zombie’ ban

Carter Sherman
Tue 12 Dec 2023

Dr Gabrielle Goodrick can barely bring herself to talk about the weeks when Arizona banned abortion.

In the months after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, abortion flickered in and out of legality in Arizona as state courts attempted to interpret a long-dormant 19th-century abortion ban that was suddenly relevant again. Goodrick, a longtime abortion provider in Phoenix, was forced to cancel patients’ appointments, then desperately try to reschedule them during the brief period of time when the procedure became legal again. Patients sometimes showed up at the clinic for their appointment, were turned away, and sobbed outside the clinic. Stressed-out staffers quit, but given all the uncertainty, Goodrick couldn’t hire new ones. She had to keep going with too few employees.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/12/arizona-abortion-ban-supreme-court


Supreme Courts in 3 states will hear cases about abortion access this week

DECEMBER 11, 2023
By Katherine Davis-Young (KJZZ), Alice Fordham (KUNM), Hanna Merzbach (KHOL/Wyoming Public Media)

The future of reproductive rights for a wide swath of the Mountain West may be decided next week, as three state Supreme Courts hear arguments in cases that will determine abortion access in the region. Here's what to know.

Which law is the law in Arizona?
When the U.S. Supreme Court returned abortion regulating power to states, Arizona had two seemingly conflicting abortion laws on the books. One, passed just a few months before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, outlaws abortion after 15 weeks. The other, which dates back to 1864, is a near-total ban.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/12/11/1218357869/state-supreme-courts-abortion-wyoming-new-mexico-arizona


Women’s lives, like mine, hang in the balance if medication abortion is banned

Emma Burns
OCTOBER 18, 2023

This week, Vice President Kamala Harris visited my alma mater, Northern Arizona University, as part of her “Fight for Our Freedoms” college tour to discuss key issues that disproportionately impact young people across America, including reproductive freedom. This issue is deeply personal to me, which is why I’m sharing my story of how receiving an abortion while I was a student at NAU saved my life. Without access to a medication abortion, I would not have lived to see the end of my sophomore year, let alone my college graduation. The fight for our reproductive freedom is as important as ever now that access to this life-saving form of health care is under attack.

As a 19-year-old college student already struggling, finding out you’re pregnant with twins is akin to submerging underwater. The world falls silent, and your only thought is of survival. I knew the only way for me to move forward would be to terminate my pregnancy. But due to Arizona’s restrictive abortion laws and lack of access to care, I was almost unable to make this decision for myself.

Continued: https://www.azmirror.com/2023/10/18/womens-lives-like-mine-hang-in-the-balance-if-medication-abortion-is-banned/


Chaos and confusion: As a window opens for legal abortion in Arizona, providers ride emotional roller coaster alongside patients

By Taylor Romine, CNN
November 7, 2022

Dr. Jill Gibson is jogging from patient to patient through the complicated maze of exam rooms, wearing navy scrubs, protective booties and a magenta shirt reading “I Stand with Planned Parenthood.” Gibson, Planned Parenthood Arizona’s Medical Director, saw nine patients the day CNN visited their Tempe clinic in late October. Those patients were there to decide how to proceed with a pregnancy, or to move forward with terminating their pregnancy.

Three weeks earlier, the latest in a series of back and forth legal rulings paved the way for the resumption of abortion care at shuttered Planned Parenthood clinics across the state. After the fall of Roe v. Wade in late June, Planned Parenthood closed its four clinics that provide abortion care because of “Arizona’s tangled web of conflicting laws,” the organization’s president and CEO, Brittany Fonteno, said at a press conference at the time.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/us/az-abortion-providers-mental-health/index.html


Wins for abortion rights advocates in Arizona, Ohio with new court rulings

Two restrictive laws were temporarily blocked on Friday.

By Meredith Deliso
October 8, 2022

Restrictive abortion laws were temporarily struck down Friday in Ohio and Arizona, two states where abortion services have been in flux in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned.

In Ohio, a six-week abortion ban is indefinitely blocked while a state constitutional challenge brought by the ACLU of Ohio on behalf of abortion providers in the state proceeds.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wins-abortion-rights-advocates-arizona-ohio-court-rulings/story?id=91192016


Arizona judge rules state can enforce near-total abortion ban

By Maeve Reston, CNN
September 24, 2022

An Arizona Superior Court judge ruled Friday that a 1901 ban on nearly all abortions in that state can be enforced, a decision that is likely to see an appeal and is all but certain to galvanize female voters to turn out in greater numbers in the state's closely contested US Senate and governor's races.

In ruling that Arizona's near-total ban on abortion could take effect, Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson granted a request by the state's Republican attorney general to lift a court injunction that had barred enforcement of Arizona's pre-statehood ban on abortion after the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Continued: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/23/politics/arizona-abortion-ban-ruling/index.html


‘I Don’t Really Want to Go to Jail’: How One Doctor Kept Doing Abortions Post-Roe

A doctor in Arizona kept performing abortions after Roe v. Wade was overturned. But due to an 1864 law criminalizing abortion, chaos reigned.

by Carter Sherman
June 27, 2022

In the hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday morning, all four phone lines at Gabrielle Goodrick’s abortion clinic in Phoenix rang nonstop.

The calls came in by the hundreds. People were in shock. They were hysterical. They cried. Many had no idea what Roe even was, let alone that a handful of Supreme Court justices had just ruled to erase the precedent, which had guaranteed the national right to abortion since 1973, as if it had never been. 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkgdbb/arizona-abortions-roe-v-wade


Advocates Challenge Arizona Court Ruling Medical Use of Marijuana During Pregnancy is Child Neglect

8/21/2021
by CARRIE N. BAKER

Reproductive rights advocates have come out in force to support Lindsay R., an Arizona woman whom the state of Arizona has branded a child abuser because she used medical marijuana while she was pregnant. National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) and 45 leading health organizations, doctors, ethicists, scientific and medical experts, and advocates have filed a brief asking an Arizona Court of Appeals to overturn the state’s action.

When Lindsay was pregnant, she had a life-threatening condition called hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), which caused constant nausea and vomiting. Her condition was so severe she was hospitalized twice during her pregnancy.

Continued:  https://msmagazine.com/2021/08/21/arizona-medical-marijuana-pregnancy-child-neglect/