From America with cash: Right-wing groups want to end abortion in the UK

A right-wing political and media ecosystem pushing a US-style anti-abortion agenda is gaining traction in the UK

Sian Norris
19 April 2024

Conservative MPs, hard-right media personalities, and US-backed Christian anti-abortion charities are working to spread their anti-abortion agenda ahead of a parliamentary debate on legislation that would stop women being imprisoned for terminating a pregnancy after 24 weeks.

Emboldened by their success in the United States with the Dobbs decision – the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned the right to safe and legal abortion in the US – groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Edmund Burke Foundation are now seeking to rollback progress on reproductive rights around the world.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/us-anti-abortion-culture-war-uk-stella-creasy-amendement-/

On abortion culture wars, Britain takes a different path

As the U.S. grapples with abortion limits, British lawmakers propose scrapping all legal penalties.

APRIL 8, 2024
BY ANNABELLE DICKSON

LONDON — England’s abortion laws could be headed for an overhaul. Brits probably won’t be taking to the streets.

As the United States continues to grapple with the divisive fallout of the 2022 Supreme Court ruling which overturned Roe v. Wade and so ended the federal right to abortion, British lawmakers are gearing up to have their own debate on the hot-button issue.

Continued: https://www.politico.eu/article/abortion-culture-wars-britain/

‘Extreme’ US anti-abortion group ramps up lobbying in Westminster

The UK branch of the Alliance Defending Freedom has increased its spending and is forging ties with key MPs

Shanti Das, Home affairs correspondent
Sat 6 Apr 2024

A rightwing Christian lobby group that wants abortion to be banned has forged ties with an adviser to the prime minister and is drawing up policy briefings for politicians.

The UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has more than doubled its spending since 2020 and been appointed a stakeholder in a parliamentary group on religious freedoms in a role that grants it direct access to MPs.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/06/extreme-us-anti-abortion-group-ramps-up-lobbying-in-westminster

USA – The Current Attack on Abortion Pills Will Fail. The Next One Will Be So Much Worse.

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK AND MARK JOSEPH STERN
MARCH 26, 2024

There are always a couple of tells when the most conservative Supreme Court in more than a century finds itself adjudicating a truly mortifying and meritless case. One is that it’s coming up by way of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, a court that so consistently shovels its worst constitutional garbage upward that the high court conservatives are often forced to reluctantly lob it back. Another tell is when the facts of the case are so laugh-out-loud insane that even conservative justices can’t bring themselves to adopt them or the underpinning legal reasoning with a straight face. There’s yet a third tell: when the conservative justices start injecting a bunch of nonsense and randomized pet peeves into oral argument to distract from how embarrassing it would be to discuss the merits of the actual case.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/mifepristone-supreme-court-alito-national-abortion-ban.html

How Hobby Lobby Could Be Trump’s Reproductive Rights Wrecking Ball

The 2014 Supreme Court ruling is even more consequential as we stare down the possibility of Trump’s reelection—and a revival of the Comstock Act.

Susan Rinkunas
March 25, 2024

When Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell 10 years ago, he provided answers to questions that no one had asked—at least, officially. The plaintiffs, two businesses owned by Christians, objected to a mandate in the Affordable Care Act requiring health insurance providers to cover types of birth control known as emergency contraception, or E.C. Colloquially known as the “morning-after pill,” E.C. works after sex to prevent pregnancy by blocking sperm from fertilizing an egg or by preventing the release of an egg in the first place. But anti-abortion activists believe that morning-after pills and IUDs prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus, which they say is tantamount to an abortion.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/179622/hobby-lobby-comstock-alito-contraception

USA – Yes, some medication abortion patients go to the ER — but it may not be for what you think

A small portion of patients do visit ERs after an abortion, but it's not because mifepristone is unsafe

By NICOLE KARLIS
MARCH 20, 2024

Next Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will finally hear a case about mifepristone — the first drug used in a medication abortion.

A ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine — an organization of anti-abortion activists backed by the Christian right-wing lobbying group Alliance Defending Freedom — could severely limit access to mifepristone across the country. As women’s health specialists and doctors have told Salon before, the effects of such restrictions will be "devastating,” and have far-reaching consequences beyond impacting reproductive health.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2024/03/20/yes-some-medication-abortion-patients-go-to-the-er--but-it-may-not-be-for-what-you-think/

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/

Why the anti-trans movement is inseparable from the anti-abortion movement

The transphobes who put a target on the back of Nex Benedict, who was beaten to death, are a threat to everyone

Chrissy Stroop
22 February 2024

In the United States, as in the United Kingdom, there are some self-identified liberals and leftists who insist on pitting cisgender women’s rights against trans rights, baselessly arguing that draconian discrimination against transgender people is necessary to “protect women and girls”.

As a transgender American woman, the willingness of such people to partner with right-wingers to put a target on my back is bewildering and painful. The fact is, after all, that trans people suffer violence disproportionately. Just this month, in fact, a non-binary, Native American teenager, Nex Benedict, was beaten to death by other students in a school bathroom in Oklahoma, and the school administration didn’t even call an ambulance to try to save them.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/trans-rights-abortion-rights-america-adf-chrissy-stroop-nex-benedict/

22.02.2024

Commentary

Alliance Defending Freedom

anti-choice and anti-trans

anti-choice bigotry

Chrissy Stroop

Nex Benedict

Southern Poverty Law Center

Abortion Shield Laws: A New War Between the States

Doctors in six states where abortion is legal are using new laws to send abortion pills to tens of thousands of women in states where it is illegal.

By Pam Belluck
Feb. 22, 2024

Behind an unmarked door in a boxy brick building outside Boston, a quiet rebellion is taking place. Here, in a 7-by-12-foot room, abortion is being made available to thousands of women in states where it is illegal.

The patients do not have to travel here to terminate their pregnancies, and they do not have to wait weeks to receive abortion medication from overseas.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/health/abortion-shield-laws-telemedicine.html

USA – Accidents, Lax Rules and Abortion Laws Now Imperil Fertility Industry

Fertility clinics are routinely sued by patients for errors that destroy embryos, as happened in Alabama. An effort to define them legally as “unborn children” has raised the stakes.

By Azeen Ghorayshi and Sarah Kliff
Feb. 22, 2024

To the fertility patients whose embryos were destroyed at an Alabama clinic, the circumstances must have been shocking. Somehow, a patient in the hospital housing the clinic had wandered into a storage room, pulled the embryos from a tank of liquid nitrogen, and then dropped them on the floor — probably because the tank was kept at minus 360 degrees.

The bizarre episode was at the center of lawsuits filed by three families that eventually reached the Alabama Supreme Court. On Friday, a panel of judges ruled that the embryos destroyed at the clinic should be considered children under state law, a decision that sent shock waves through the fertility industry and raised urgent questions about how treatments could possibly proceed in the state.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/health/fertility-clinics-embryos-alabama.html