USA – Why the rift between anti-abortion activists and Republican lawmakers is growing

Alabama supreme court’s decision causing a temporary halt in IVF care shines spotlight on problem between two groups

Ava Sasani
Sun 17 Mar 2024

There is a growing rift in the decades-old marriage between anti-abortion activists and Republican lawmakers.

The problem came into view last month, after a bombshell decision from the Alabama supreme court temporarily halted in vitro fertilization (IVF). The ruling, which described frozen embryos as “extrauterine children”, unraveled when the Republican-controlled legislature passed short-term protections for IVF providers.

Continued; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/17/anti-abortion-activists-republican-lawmakers-ivf-alabama


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/


Kamala Harris puts abortion front and center with visit to Minnesota clinic

Vice-president toured Planned Parenthood facility signaling issue will be key in election

Carter Sherman
Thu 14 Mar 2024

Kamala Harris visited a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic on Thursday, becoming what is believed to be the first vice-president ever to do so.

Harris stopped by a clinic in Minnesota, a state where abortion remains legal following the overturning of Roe v Wade, as part of her nationwide tour to highlight the impact of Roe’s downfall. Harris also toured the clinic, which remained open to patients as the nation’s first female vice-president made her historic visit.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/14/kamala-harris-visits-abortion-clinic-minnesota


How the US Christian Right Funds Anti-Abortion Activities Abroad

Right-wing US groups have spotted an opportunity to ramp up their activities since Roe v. Wade’s repeal.

by KATY FALLON, pictures by JNO.SKINNER
MARCH 13, 2024

In April 2023, Janet K. Museveni, Uganda’s first lady, published a photo on social media that rang serious alarm bells for advocates of reproductive and LGBTQ rights. The photo sparked concern because of a specific person in it: Sharon Slater, who heads the US nonprofit Family Watch International. The organization describes its work as “strengthening the family,” but the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has designated it as a hate group for its efforts to “further anti-LBGT and anti-choice stances.”

The SPLC is one of several rights groups and monitors that have called attention to the work of Slater and Family Watch International. More worrisome still, the photo of Museveni and Slater came shortly after Uganda’s parliament passed harsh anti-gay legislation that allows for a life-sentence for adults convicted of engaging in consensual, same-sex intercourse. Family Watch International did not reply to a request for comment, but the group has previously denied claims it had lobbied or advocated for the bill.

Continued: https://inkstickmedia.com/how-the-us-christian-right-funds-anti-abortion-activities-abroad/


‘Idaho’s seen as a war zone’: the lone abortion activist defying militias and the far right

Jen Jackson Quintano is her region’s only abortion rights organizer. Faced with a ‘culture of silence’, she’s platforming women – and changing minds

by Cassidy Randall
Tue 12 Mar 2024

Last January, Jen Jackson Quintano stepped into a theater in Sandpoint, a tiny city in northern Idaho, to debut a production that could best be described as The Vagina Monologues meets The Moth – a night of Idahoans sharing stories about their own reproductive agency.

Quintano was nervous. Idaho, where Republicans outnumber Democrats five to one, has one of the most punitive abortion bans in the country. Further, Quintano lives in a region of the state that keeps making national headlines for bold displays of armed intimidation by militia, white supremacists, and Christian nationalists. This was not necessarily a safe place to talk about abortion.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/12/abortion-rights-idaho-stories


Teen Abortion Access Remains Difficult Even in States Where Access is Protected

BY RACHEL JANFAZA
MARCH 11, 2024

A state like Massachusetts is considered a safe haven for abortion in a post-Dobbs America. But a first-of-its-kind report about national abortion access for youth from Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts’ ASPIRE Center for Sexual & Reproductive Health released on Monday called “The Minor Abortion Access Research and Advocacy Project” reveals that there are stark gaps in reproductive health care availability for minors – even in states that have expanded abortion access since the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

The group’s research found that oftentimes, parental involvement laws – which mandate minors’ parental permission before an abortion – or the judicial bypass process – which requires teens to go through the court system if they cannot ask their parents for consent to an abortion – stand between teens under the age of 18 and abortion, hindering young people’s bodily autonomy despite state policies meant to enhance reproductive health care access.

Continued: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/teen-abortion-access-remains-difficult-even-in-states-where-access-is-protected


Idahoans in rural Sandpoint reflect on a year without labor and delivery services

March 11, 2024
By Amanda Sullender

Lauren Sanders could not give birth in her hometown of Sandpoint. With the closure of the local hospitals’ labor and delivery services a year earlier, she had to drive over an hour to Coeur d’Alene to give birth to her son, now 4 months old.

“I was privileged to be able to drive that way for all my appointments and my birth. I was privileged to have the perfect pregnancy with no complications. I’m lucky ’cause that is who the laws of Idaho work for – people with perfect pregnancies,” Sanders said at a rally outside of Bonner General Hospital on Friday. “That is not the case for most people who give birth. Pregnancies are not supposed to be perfect.”

Continued: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/mar/11/amid-pro-abortion-protest-idahoans-in-rural-sandpo/


Wyoming Banned Abortion. She Opened an Abortion Clinic Anyway.

The only abortion clinic left in the state has been protested and set on fire, rebuilt and opened as Wyoming grapples with what it means to be conservative in a post-Roe nation.

By Kate Zernike, NYT
March 10, 2024

It was not such an implausible idea, back in 2020, when a philanthropist emailed Julie Burkhart to ask if she would consider opening an abortion clinic in Wyoming, one of the nation’s most conservative states and the one that had twice given Donald Trump his biggest margin of victory.

In fact, Ms. Burkhart had the same idea more than a decade earlier, after an anti-abortion extremist killed her boss and mentor, George Tiller, in Wichita, Kan., where he ran one of the nation’s few clinics that provided abortion late in pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/wyoming-abortion-clinic-julie-burkhart.html


The Biggest Thing Missing From Joe Biden’s State of the Union

BY DAVID S. COHEN, GREER DONLEY, AND RACHEL REBOUCHE
MARCH 08, 2024

On Thursday night, President Joe Biden gave an energetic and compelling State of the Union address that centered reproductive freedom. It was the second topic he addressed, behind only threats to democracy, abroad with Putin and at home with Trump. In turning to reproductive rights, Biden was able to showcase the powerful stories of his invited guests, like Kate Cox and Latorya Beasley, to underscore the real harms of anti-abortion policies.

There was a lot to appreciate in his speech, but there were missed opportunities.  Reproductive rights and justice advocates immediately noticed that Biden did not say the word “abortion”—a recurring issue for the president. But we noticed the omission of another word, which we think is possibly even more significant given the coming election: Comstock.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/abortion-comstock-act-joe-biden-state-of-the-union.html


Library archives uncover long-lost history of Colorado women dying trying to get an abortion before it was legal

By John Daley
Mar. 7, 2024

Abortion access —  some states have outlawed it, others have seen scores of patients from out of state —  has been in the news since the U.S. Supreme Court repealed the Constitutional right to an abortion two years ago.  But looking back through history shows that unplanned pregnancies and access to abortions have been in the news for a long, long time.

More than a century ago, readers of the Rocky Mountain News learned about the death of a young woman who worked in a shop named Maude, who was trying to terminate a pregnancy. A woman named Mrs. Proctor, the wife of the manager of a “remedy company,” was charged with manslaughter in Maude’s death.

Continued: https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/07/denver-public-library-history-of-abortion-access-in-colorado/