“Abortionist”: The Label That Turns Healthcare Workers Into Criminals

The moniker has branded those who help terminate pregnancies as illegitimate, dangerous, and, in turn, allowable targets of violence.

KATIE HERCHENROEDER, Mother Jones
May/June 2024 issue (posted April 15)

In 2007, after Paul Ross Evans pleaded guilty to leaving a bomb outside of a women’s health clinic in Austin, he assured the judge: He never meant for anyone to get hurt. “Except,” he clarified, “for the abortionists.”

For almost two centuries, the moniker “abortionist” has branded those who help terminate pregnancies as illegitimate, dangerous, and, in turn, allowable targets of violence. Before Roe v. Wade, the label turned midwives and doctors into criminals to be cracked down on by the state. After the 1973 decision, right-wing movements continued to deploy the term to imply only back-alley doctors performed abortions.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/abortionist-the-label-that-turns-healthcare-workers-into-criminals/

USA – The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Biggest Fear

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK
MARCH 25, 2024

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a case that could determine national access to mifepristone, one of two pills used as part of medication abortion. In this week’s episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Carrie N. Baker, whose book, History and Politics of Abortion Pills in the United States, is being published by Amherst College Press this year.

Lithwick and Baker discussed the anti-abortion movement’s decadeslong efforts to target the abortion pill, how those efforts hampered FDA approval of the medication in the first place, and how having easier access to reproductive care through a pill that can be sent in the mail and taken at home fundamentally threatens the strategy of those seeking to dismantle abortion rights in this country. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/abortion-pill-supreme-court-preview-mifepristone-history.html

Standard pregnancy care is now dangerously disrupted in Louisiana, report reveals

MARCH 19, 2024
By Rosemary Westwood
4-Minute Listen with transcript

In the wake of Louisiana's abortion ban, pregnant women have been given risky, unnecessary surgeries, denied swift treatment for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, and forced to wait until their life is at risk before getting an abortion, according to a new report first made available to NPR.

It found doctors are using extreme caution to avoid even the appearance of providing an abortion procedure.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/19/1239376395/louisiana-abortion-ban-dangerously-disrupting-pregnancy-miscarriage-care

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

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

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

‘Stunning’ threat in Texas abortion case steps up Paxton criminalization crusade

State attorney general threatened to prosecute doctors if they provided abortion care to a woman with a nonviable pregnancy

Mary Tuma
Tue 12 Dec 2023

When a Texas court ruled that a 31-year-old woman with a non-viable pregnancy could have an abortion despite the state’s strict bans, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, responded with a brazen threat to prosecute “hospitals, doctors, or anyone else” who would assist in providing the procedure. The letter he sent Texas hospitals hours after the ruling, threatening first-degree felonies that could result in life in prison, was a “stunning” move indicative of his longstanding crusade to criminalize abortion care, say legal experts and advocates.

“It is extraordinary that Paxton would threaten hospitals and doctors with this letter before even winning an appeal,” Mary Ziegler, a UC-Davis law professor who focuses on reproductive rights, told the Guardian. “It’s a very unusual maneuver, but does certainly reflect his ultimate goal of wanting to go after abortion providers and supporters at all costs.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/12/texas-abortion-ken-paxton-kate-cox

Pregnant Texas woman granted abortion calls legal fight ‘overwhelming’

BY NICK ROBERTSON
12/09/23

The Texas woman at the center of a legal fight over whether she can receive emergency abortion care called the stresses of the controversy “overwhelming.”

Kate Cox was granted an exemption to Texas’ strict abortion laws on Thursday because her fetus has a fatal chromosomal disorder. But, the state Supreme Court paused the order on Friday after it was criticized and challenged by Attorney General Ken Paxton (R).

Continued: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4351846-pregnant-texas-woman-abortion-legal-fight-overwhelming/