Anti-abortion movement bullish as legal campaign reaches US supreme court

A case that could undermine the landmark Roe v Wade ruling and a punitive Texas law are the culmination of a decades-long push

Jessica Glenza, Reuters Tue 25 May 2021

The anti-abortion movement in the US is emboldened and optimistic after the supreme court announced it would hear a direct challenge to laws underpinning the right to abortion in the US, and Texas enacted a law intended to ban abortion after six weeks.

The high court decision to take up the case and the Texas move come during the most hostile year for reproductive rights in the nearly half-century since pregnant people won the constitutional right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy in the landmark 1973 case Roe v Wade.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/25/anti-abortion-movement-bullish-us-supreme-court


Trump walks abortion tightrope on SCOTUS pick

He needs to both nod to anti-abortion groups, while not turning off the moderate religious voters and Republicans who support legal abortion.

By MERIDITH MCGRAW and NANCY COOK
09/25/2020

In 2016, President Donald Trump vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices who would “automatically” overturn Roe v. Wade. Now, the White House is insisting there is no such abortion litmus test for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement. The change in tone reflects the tightrope Trump is currently walking on abortion with conservatives — and especially religious conservatives — ahead of the November election. Trump needs to both nod to concerns of powerful religious groups that have spent years trying to overturn Roe, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that cemented legal abortion, while not turning off the sizable faction of more moderate religious voters and Republicans who support legal abortion.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/25/trump-supreme-court-abortion-421443


USA – They’re Doctors. They’re Also Incredibly Effective—and Dangerous—Anti-Abortion Activists.

They’re Doctors. They’re Also Incredibly Effective—and Dangerous—Anti-Abortion Activists.
Your OB-GYN could be one of them.

Marisa Endicott
June 4, 2020

In April 2019, when meetings like this still took place, Diane Foley took the stage in Indianapolis, looking out into the faces of anti-choice advocates and doctors who were gathered for their annual conference. The Health and Human Services official began her presentation: “Opportunities for Collaborative Engagement in Policy Development.” The bland, policy-wonkish title belied its almost-revolutionary substance: nothing less than a major shift in American health care—and a threat to the more than 4 million primarily low-income people who rely on a key government program for family planning and other care.

Title X, which Foley oversees as the head of the Office of Population Affairs—and which also includes the government’s teen pregnancy program—offers health care providers more than $286 million in funding each year. Just a month before her presentation, a new rule passed that would, for the first time, prohibit Title X recipients from performing abortions on-site or even providing abortion referrals. This effectively shut out a quarter of all clinics that were getting funding—including Planned Parenthood, which has traditionally received some $60 million a year from the program and provides more than 2.4 million patients with a slew of services, from birth control to cancer screenings to wellness exams.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/american-association-pro-life-obstetricians-gynecologists-aaplog-anti-abortion-doctors-june-medical-supreme-court-decision/


A 12-year-old girl who was raped and impregnated in Guam can’t have an abortion because there are no providers in the US territory

A 12-year-old girl who was raped and impregnated in Guam can't have an abortion because there are no providers in the US territory

Nicole Einbinder
Jun. 6, 2019

A 12-year-old girl in the US territory of Guam who was allegedly raped and impregnated will have no choice but to give birth to the child — due to lack of abortion providers on the island.

Bureau of Women's Affairs Director Jayne Flores shared the girl's story with The Pacific Daily News. "It breaks my heart that the 12-year-old girl who got raped... has to have a baby," Flores said, adding that the man was recently charged in court. "It breaks my heart that that girl will have to go through with her pregnancy because there's no one on island that will help her."

Continued: https://www.insider.com/teenage-girl-raped-impregnated-guam-abortion-lack-providers-us-territory-2019-6


USA – At least 20 abortion cases are in the pipeline to the Supreme Court. Any one could gut Roe v. Wade.

At least 20 abortion cases are in the pipeline to the Supreme Court. Any one could gut Roe v. Wade.
Today’s emotional rhetoric has parallels to another politically volatile period in the early 1990s.

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
February 15, 2019

The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 vote this month to block a restrictive Louisiana abortion law from taking effect provided some measure of consolation to reproductive rights advocates who feared the court’s new conservative majority would act immediately to restrict access to the procedure.

But that relief is likely to be short lived. In the pipeline are at least 20 lawsuits, in various stages of judicial review, that have the potential to be decided in ways that could significantly change the rights laid out in the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, and refined almost two decades later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The 1992 decision said a state may place restrictions on abortion as long as it does not create an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to abortion.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/02/15/least-abortion-cases-are-steps-us-supreme-court-any-one-could-gut-roe-v-wade/


Why Abortion Rights Groups Are Fighting Their Battles At The State Level In 2019

Why Abortion Rights Groups Are Fighting Their Battles At The State Level In 2019

By Monica Busch
Feb 13, 2019

Abortion rights advocates are upfront about the fact that they believe there are currently very real, tangible threats to Roe v. Wade, especially given the Supreme Court's conservative majority. With this in mind, some organizations say they are spending more time advocating for state-level abortion laws in order to protect access in as many places as possible, should the landmark ruling one day be overturned.

"The truth is, it begins and ends in the state. Even our best [rulings], like Roe v. Wade, came from a challenge to a restrictive Texas law that criminalized abortion," Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health (NIRH) and the NIRH Action Fund, tells Bustle. "The reality is that states have long been the arbiters of whether or not women are able to access reproductive health care, and whether their rights are going to be protected."

Continued: https://www.bustle.com/p/why-abortion-rights-groups-are-fighting-their-battles-at-the-state-level-in-2019-15904800