Anti-abortion centers raked in $1.4bn in year Roe fell, including federal money

Exclusive: memo shows anti-abortion pregnancy centers received at least $344m in government money in 2022

Carter Sherman
Wed 14 Feb 2024

Anti-abortion facilities raked in at least $1.4bn in revenue in the 2022 fiscal year, the year Roe v Wade fell – a staggering haul that includes at least $344m in government money, according to a memo analyzing the centers’ tax documents that was compiled by a pro-abortion rights group and shared exclusively with the Guardian.

These facilities, frequently known as anti-abortion pregnancy centers or crisis pregnancy centers, aim to convince people to keep their pregnancies. But in the aftermath of Roe’s demise, the anti-abortion movement has framed anti-abortion pregnancy centers as a key source of aid for desperate women who have lost the legal right to end their pregnancies and been left with little choice but to give birth.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/14/anti-abortion-centers-funding


Malta – We aid and abet abortion

People call the free Abortion Doula Service because they know they will receive abortion advice according to best practice

Christopher Barbara, Natalie Psaila and Isabel Stabile
Nov 20, 2023

We refer to ‘Inciting murder of the unborn” (October 6) in which senior colleagues call for the police to investigate us for providing information and support to those persons in Malta who seek an abortion. This is preposterous.

We have absolutely no qualms letting people know exactly how to order pills online, how to take them and what complications are possible as well as the precautions they need to take to avoid them.  We do this because we are medical professionals and are obliged to provide every support possible to any person that needs our help.

Continued: https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/we-aid-abet-abortion.1067760


Abortion pill mifepristone: An explainer and research roundup about its history, safety and future

Amid pending court cases and ballot initiatives, journalistic coverage of medication abortion has never been more crucial. This piece aims to help inform the narrative with scientific evidence.

by Naseem S. Miller
November 1, 2023

Access to mifepristone, a medication that’s used for the safe termination of early pregnancy, hangs in the balance while the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to take up a case that could determine the legal future of the abortion medication.

In August, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mifepristone should not be prescribed past the seventh week of pregnancy, prescribed via telemedicine, or shipped to patients through the mail. In September, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to consider a challenge to that ruling.

Continued: https://journalistsresource.org/health/mifepristone-research-roundup/


‘Disproven and unsupportable’: Kansas judge blocks junk science abortion restrictions

The ruling called the long-standing “Women’s Right to Know Act” an attempt to discourage abortion seekers

BY: RACHEL MIPRO
OCTOBER 30, 2023

TOPEKA — A Kansas judge on Monday blocked a combination of long-standing and newly implemented abortion restrictions in the state in what abortion providers described as a “hard-fought” win against “ethically unjustifiable” misinformation.

Johnson County District Judge Krishnan Christopher Jayaram ruled against several abortion requirements set out  in the “Women’s Right to Know Act,” patchwork legislation enacted over the past two decades that uses medically inaccurate information to dictate abortion restrictions.

Continued: https://kansasreflector.com/2023/10/30/disproven-and-unsupportable-kansas-judge-blocks-junk-science-abortion-restrictions/


California Brings First-Time Lawsuit Against Anti-Abortion Movement’s ‘Abortion Pill Reversal’ Scheme

“Those who are struggling with the complex decision to get an abortion deserve support and trustworthy guidance—not lies and misinformation,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

10/9/2023
by JENIFER MCKENNA and CARRIE N. BAKER, Ms. Magazine

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit on Sept. 21 against a chain of California crisis pregnancy centers and its national parent organization for false advertising of “abortion pill reversal” (APR)—an unproven and possibly dangerous high-dose progesterone intervention the anti-abortion movement claims can “reverse” an underway medication abortion. This is the first lawsuit in the country challenging the CPC industry’s promotion of APR.

AG Bonta’s complaint charges RealOptions Obria, a five-site crisis pregnancy center chain in Northern California, and the Ohio-based Heartbeat International with violating California’s False Advertising Law and Unfair Competition law by falsely advertising “abortion pill reversal” as safe and effective. The lawsuit seeks an injunction to block further dissemination of the misleading claims, in addition to other remedies and penalties available under state law.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/10/09/abortion-pill-reversal/


What Abortion Pill ‘Reversal’ Really Accomplishes

It’s more than an unproven medical treatment—it’s a view into the antiabortion movement’s larger project.

Sep 5, 2022

THE AMERICAN ANTIABORTION movement is on a full-court press to remake the nation in its image. In June, its decades-long campaign to install sympathetic Supreme Court justices paid off with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, which stripped away the constitutional right to abortion. Now, the movement is pushing for draconian personhood laws (legislation granting fetuses the same rights as people) in an effort to make abortion murder.

In some states, the push is already working. In Georgia, for example, a new law allows expecting parents to claim fetuses as dependents on their tax returns. These victories are the result of a shrewd, ambitious strategy. The rise of an experimental treatment known as abortion pill “reversal” is part of this plan. Although it might appear a peripheral concern—hardly anyone actually seeks out this treatment—it’s a distinctly revealing pet project. The story of the rise of abortion pill reversal contains the antiabortion movement’s blueprint within it.

Continued: https://www.wired.com/story/abortion-pill-reversal-essay/


USA – The latest social media misinformation: Abortion reversal pills

After Dobbs, platforms’ uneven moderation approaches let an unproven “treatment” to reverse a medication abortion spread.

By REBECCA KERN and RUTH READER
08/20/2022

Social media companies are grappling with a flood of misinformation on an unexpected topic since Roe v. Wade was overturned: Posts promoting “abortion reversal pills.”

The dangerous and unproven treatment is being touted as a way for a pregnant person to halt a medication abortion before it can take effect. And while claims about these pills have existed on social media for years, they’re now skyrocketing — and getting a lot more traction with users.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/20/abortion-misinformation-social-media-00052645


UK – Pregnant woman shocked after GP ‘gave her anti-abortion leaflet’

Woman was reportedly handed information from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children at London clinic

Shanti Das
Sat 30 Jul 2022

A pregnant woman who told her GP she was considering having an abortion says she was left “shocked and traumatised” after being given a leaflet for an anti-abortion group.

The woman, 38, says she was seeking treatment for a bladder problem on 19 July when a doctor at All Saints Medical Centre in Plumstead, south-east London, asked whether she was pregnant.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/30/pregnant-woman-shocked-gp-anti-abortion-leaflet-society-protection-unborn-children-spuc


How Latin American women are winning the battle for abortion rights

Argentina, Colombia and Mexico have recently legalised or decriminalised abortion. Could Chile be next?

Diana Cariboni
29 April 2022

It was inconceivable, just five years ago, that ultra-conservative Colombia would decriminalise abortion, or that Catholic, neoliberal Chile would be gearing up to vote on a new constitution that enshrines sexual and reproductive rights, including on-request abortion.

Yet in February, Colombia’s constitutional court removed abortion (up to 24 weeks) from the criminal code in response to a court case brought by Causa Justa – the spearhead of a wide-ranging social and legal campaign of more than 120 groups and thousands of activists.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/women-latin-america-winning-abortion-rights/


USA – Abortion Pills, Once a Workaround, Are Now a Target

In advance of a Supreme Court decision, states are proposing new restrictions and heavier criminal penalties on medication abortion.

By Kate Zernike
April 6, 2022

Last year, after Texas passed its strict abortion ban, surgical abortions in the state dropped by half. Many women found a workaround: pills. The week the law took effect, requests for medication abortion shot up to 138 a day from 11 a day at just one service that delivers the pills by mail.

Anti-abortion lawmakers in the state were already on it. That same week, they passed another law making it a felony to provide abortion pills through the mail and requiring doctors to comply with new testing and reporting procedures to prescribe them.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/us/abortion-pills.html