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


Alabama is using the notion that embryos are people to surveil and harass women

Even before the court ruled in favor of this vulgar fiction, state authorities relied on the concept to intimidate and jail women

Moira Donegan
Mon 26 Feb 2024

Something that’s important to remember about last week’s ruling by the Alabama supreme court, which held that frozen embryos were persons under state law, is that the very absurdity of the claim is itself a demonstration of power. That a frozen embryo – a microscopic bit of biological information that can’t even be called tissue, a flick laden with the hopes of aspiring parents but fulfilling none of them – is equivalent in any way to a child is the sort of thing you can only say if no one has the power to laugh at you. The Alabama supreme court is the final court of review in that state. It cannot be appealed. For the foreseeable future, frozen cells in Alabama have the same legal status there as you or I do. Is this an absurd elevation of the status of an embryo, or an obscene degradation of human beings? The answer, of course, is both.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/26/alabama-ivf-frozen-embryos-surveillance


UK – Female students ‘fear for their safety’ as anti-abortion society set up by three men

Over 15,000 people have signed a petition voicing concerns about the new society, which has been allowed to exist due to freedom of speech laws

Athena Stavrou
Feb 19, 2024

Female students at the University of Manchester say they are “fearing for their safety” after an all-male committee set up a pro-life society.

Over 15,000 people have signed a petition voicing concerns about the group, which has been allowed to form due to freedom of speech laws.

Continued: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/anti-abortion-university-manchester-society-b2498465.html


Creasy accuses anti-abortion activists of ‘persistent’ personal harassment

Exclusive: ‘Some of the commentary is all about me being held to account by a god, and having my day in hell,’ MP says

Maya Oppenheim
Feb 11, 2024

US-funded anti-abortion activists have begun a crusade of harassment against high-profile Labour campaigner Stella Creasy, targeting her in a “persistent and sustained” pattern, accusing her of “killing babies”.

Speaking to The Independent in an exclusive interview, Stella Creasy said she is facing “a bonfire of abuse” from anti-abortion ideologues on social media in punishment for campaigning on abortion rights.

The Labour MP for Walthamstow said protesters have harassed nearby residents and leafletted her constituency with graphic imagery.

Continued: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/stella-creasy-anti-abortion-activists-b2493669.html


Brittany Watts, Ohio woman charged with felony after miscarriage at home, describes shock of her arrest

by Jericka Duncan, Rachel Bailey, Cassandra Gauthier and Hilary Cook
January 26, 2024
Video interview: 10 minutes

When Brittany Watts woke up at her Warren, Ohio, home on Sept. 22, 2023, she knew she was miscarrying.

Her 22-week-old fetus had been declared nonviable by doctors several days prior. Bleeding and in pain, she spent a total of 19 hours in the hospital over a span of two days, begging to be induced.
But an ethics group at Mercy Health - St. Joseph Warren Hospital had concerns about Ohio's abortion laws and how they applied to Watts' case, ultimately resulting in hours of delayed care.

Continued: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brittany-watts-the-ohio-woman-charged-with-a-felony-after-a-miscarriage-talks-shock-of-her-arrest/


64K women and girls became pregnant due to rape in states with abortion bans, study estimates

The research letter, published by JAMA Internal Medicine, estimated that nearly 520,000 rapes were associated with 64,565 pregnancies across 14 states.

Jan. 24, 2024
By Megan Lebowitz

More than 64,000 women and girls became pregnant because of rape in states that implemented abortion bans after Roe v. Wade was overruled, according to a new research estimate published online Wednesday.

The research letter, published by JAMA Internal Medicine and headed up by the medical director at Planned Parenthood of Montana, estimated that nearly 520,000 rapes were associated with 64,565 pregnancies across 14 states, most of which had no exceptions that allowed for terminations of pregnancies that occurred as a result of rape.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/64k-women-girls-became-pregnant-due-rape-states-abortion-bans-study-es-rcna135565


I Miscarried in Texas. My Doctors Put Abortion Law First

Jan 21, 2024
By Erin A. Snider

For nearly five hours I alternate between lying in a fetal position on our bathroom floor and curling up against the wall, shivering uncontrollably one moment, and burning up the next.

I vomit three times on the floor. I rock back and forth in tears, repeating out loud, to myself, to God, to my husband and my dog on the other side of the door, to please, please make this stop. The pain is so blinding that I think I'm hallucinating.

Continued: https://www.newsweek.com/i-miscarried-texas-doctors-abortion-law-1861677


USA – The Catholic Hospital System Killing Women

How Ascension hospitals are fueling the maternal death rate

JESSICA VALENTI
JAN 11, 2024

Earlier this week, The New Yorker published a piece about a young woman killed by Texas’ abortion ban. Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, the first reported post-Dobbs death, had diabetes, hypertension, and a history of pulmonary edema; she went to the emergency room with breathing problems just seven weeks into her pregnancy, and multiple times thereafter with ever-increasing issues. Yet even as Yeni got sicker and sicker, at no point did a doctor advise an abortion. No one even mentioned the possibility.

… The very same day that Yeni’s story was shared with the world, National Nurses United (NNU) released a report showing how Ascension is fueling the U.S. maternal mortality crisis. In fact, NNU called Ascension, which has 140 hospitals in 19 states, “one of the nation’s worst offenders for closing obstetrics units.”

Continued: https://jessica.substack.com/p/the-catholic-hospital-system-killing


Do pregnant women have a right to urgent medical care? No, according to a US court

Federal judges sided with a Texas law that allows the state to push pregnant patients to the brink of death before allowing medically necessary abortion

Moira Donegan
Wed 10 Jan 2024

Do doctors have an obligation under federal law to keep their patients alive, even if their patients happen to be pregnant women? Do doctors have an obligation to prevent maiming – or irreversible organ damage, or other kinds of serious bodily harm – and if so, does that obligation extend even to women? Do women have a right to access medically necessary care even if they are pregnant? No, according to the US fifth circuit court.

That’s the conclusion reached by a three-judge panel recently in Texas v Becerra, a case in which Texas sued the Biden administration over guidance that directed all hospitals receiving federal funds to perform “necessary stabilizing treatment” on patients – including abortions on pregnant patients undergoing medical emergencies.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/10/pregnant-women-urgent-medical-care-us-court-texas


‘Deeply Disturbing’: Federal Court Rules Texas Can Ban Emergency Abortions

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray called the 5th Circuit's ruling "a horrifying and astonishingly dangerous decision from a court that has shown repeatedly they have absolutely no regard for women's lives."

JAKE JOHNSON
Jan 03, 2024

The conservative-dominated 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled late Tuesday that Texas hospitals and physicians are not required by federal law to perform abortions under emergency circumstances.

The 25-page decision stems from a legal challenge that Texas filed in response to guidance issued in July 2022 by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. The guidance states that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) "protects providers when offering legally-mandated, life- or health-saving abortion services in emergency situations."

Continued: https://www.commondreams.org/news/5th-circuit-texas-abortion