USA – Anti-abortion pregnancy centers are deceiving patients – and getting away with it

One Florida case shows just how little authorities are doing to hold pregnancy centers accountable, even when the risks to women – and evidence – are significant

Laura C Morel for Reveal
Thu 15 Dec 2022

Patricia Henderson stood in the parking lot next to the Florida Women’s center in Jacksonville, wearing a white lab coat and greeting patients as they emerged from their cars. Their abortion appointments, she told them, were in the flat-roofed building across the road.

Once inside, Henderson handed them three pages of paperwork to fill out – questions about everything from their highest level of education to the date of their last period. State investigative documents lay out what clients say happened next: she led them to a pink-walled ultrasound room, where she would reveal their pregnancies in grainy images that, according to leading medical groups, only a licensed physician or a specially trained advanced practice nurse should interpret.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/15/us-anti-abortion-pregnancy-centers


USA – Setting the Record Straight on Abortion and Maternal Health

The Turnaway Study’ was published in 2020 to much acclaim. Now the integrity of a paper criticizing it is being investigated.

Colleen Flaherty
November 14, 2022

Frontiers in Psychology, a peer-reviewed open-access journal published by Frontiers Media, is investigating a recent paper criticizing a landmark study on abortion and maternal well-being.

Frontiers published an expression of concern—separate from the review article itself—last month, after readers pointed out that the article had been edited and peer reviewed only by scientists with antiabortion views. The editor and three out of four reviewers are affiliated with one antiabortion group in particular.

Continued: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/11/14/journal-investigating-antiabortion-paper


Desperate pleas and smuggled pills: A covert abortion network rises after Roe

Amid legal and medical risks, a growing army of activists is funneling pills from Mexico into states that have banned abortion

By Caroline Kitchener
October 18, 2022

Monica had never used Reddit before. But sitting at her desk one afternoon in July — at least 10 weeks into an unwanted pregnancy in a state that had banned abortion — she didn’t know where else to turn.

“I need advice I am not prepared to have a child,” the 25-year-old wrote from her office, once everyone else had left for the day. She titled her post, “PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!”

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/18/illegal-abortion-pill-network/


USA – Medical Impact of Roe Reversal Goes Well Beyond Abortion Clinics, Doctors Say

State abortion bans carry narrow but sometimes vague exceptions, and years of prison time. That’s forcing doctors to think like lawyers, and hospitals to create new protocols.

By Kate Zernike
Sept. 10, 2022

In Wisconsin, a group of doctors and lawyers is trying to come up with guidelines on how to comply with a newly revived 173-year-old law that prohibits abortion except to save the life of a pregnant woman. They face the daunting task of defining all the emergencies and conditions that might result in a pregnant woman’s death, and the fact that doctors could be punished with six years in prison if a prosecutor disagrees that abortion was necessary.

A similar task force at an Arizona hospital recommends having a lawyer on call to help doctors determine whether a woman’s condition threatens her life enough to justify an abortion. Already, the hospital has added questions to its electronic medical forms so they can be used to argue that patients who had abortions would have died without them.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/10/us/abortion-bans-medical-care-women.html


Abortion Pill Providers Experiment With Ways to Broaden Access

These new efforts, which test the legal boundaries, have sprung up since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and many states restricted abortion.

By Pam Belluck
Sept. 3, 2022

As bans and restrictions proliferate across the country, abortion pill providers are pushing the envelope of regulations and laws to meet the surging demand for medication abortion in post-Roe America.

Some are using physician discretion to prescribe pills to patients further along in pregnancy than the 10-week limit set by the Food and Drug Administration. Some are making pills available to women who are not pregnant but feel they could need them someday. Some are employing a don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach, providing telemedicine consultations and prescriptions without verifying that patients are in states that permit abortion.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/03/health/abortion-pill-access-roe-v-wade.html


Inside the Powerful Anti-Abortion Campaign to Convince You That Everything Is Just Fine

Be careful of what you read about miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies right now.

KIERA BUTLER AND MADDIE OATMAN
July 21, 2022

Late last month, shortly after the US Supreme Court stripped away federal protection for abortion rights, Dr. Christina Francis, an OB/GYN based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, took to Instagram with an urgent message: She wanted her followers to know that even in states where abortion will soon be illegal, doctors still would be able to terminate pregnancies to save the life of the mother. “Treating ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages or other life-threatening conditions in pregnancy is not the same thing as an abortion,” she said in a video she took of herself from inside a car. “This is very important to clear up because I know that many women are feeling fearful that they might not be able to receive life-saving care if they need it.” Commenters thanked Dr. Francis for her clarification. “The amount of people that don’t know the difference is disturbing,” said one. “So many people spreading false information. Thank you for sharing and educating!”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/inside-the-powerful-anti-abortion-campaign-to-convince-you-that-everything-is-just-fine/


Abortion Opponents Hear a ‘Heartbeat.’ Most Experts Hear Something Else.

Embedded in abortion laws in Texas are disputed assertions about embryonic development and the procedure’s risks. Chief among them: whether the early embryo has a heart.

By Roni Caryn Rabin
Feb. 14, 2022

The Texas law banning abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy is based on a singular premise disputed by many medical experts: that once an ultrasound detects electrical cardiac activity in an embryo, its heart is beating and a live birth is on the way.

At this very early stage of a pregnancy, however, the embryo is the size of a pomegranate seed and has only a primitive tube of cardiac cells that emit electric pulses and pump blood.

Continued:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/health/abortion-heartbeat-debate.html


What an America Without Roe Would Look Like

Legal abortions would fall, particularly among poor women in the South and Midwest, and out-of-state travel and abortion pills would play a bigger role.

By Claire Cain Miller and Margot Sanger-Katz
Dec. 5, 2021

Last week’s Supreme Court arguments on a Mississippi abortion law raised the prospect of a return to a time half a century ago — when the procedure was illegal across most of the United States and women, perilously, tried to end pregnancies on their own or sought back-alley abortions.

If the court decides to reverse or weaken the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, it will usher in a somewhat different era. Abortion would remain legal in more than half of states, but not in a wide swath of the Midwest and the South.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/upshot/abortion-without-roe-wade.html


USA – Covid Put Remote Abortion to the Test. Supporters Say It Passed.

Medication abortion was briefly available online in some states, but a court ruling blocked it. Advocates want it back.

BY REBECCA GRANT
04.05.2021

LAST SUMMER, Cindy Adam and Lauren Dubey received the news they had hoped for, but hadn’t expected to get so soon. Their new telemedicine clinic would be able to offer remote medication abortion services, at least for the time being.

Medication abortion — which most commonly involves taking two medications, 24 to 48 hours apart, during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy — has been available in the U.S. since 2000. But, despite a growing chorus of advocates and experts who say remote access is just as safe as in-clinic care, the Food and Drug Administration requires providers to dispense mifepristone, the first of the two medications, inside the walls of a clinic, hospital, or medical office, citing the risk of complications. Most abortion providers interpreted this language to mean they could not mail mifepristone to patients’ homes, rendering fully remote abortion care impossible.

Continued: https://undark.org/2021/04/05/digital-abortion-access/


YouTube Just Banned a Popular Anti-Abortion Channel for COVID Conspiracies

One of its videos featured a doctor who called the pandemic “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”

By Carter Sherman
11.2.21

YouTube has banned LifeSiteNews, an anti-abortion outlet that bills itself as the “#1 pro-life news website,” for repeatedly sharing videos that spread misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines against it.

“In accordance with our longstanding strikes system, we terminated the channel LifeSiteNews Media for repeatedly violating our COVID-19 misinformation policy, which prohibits content that promotes prevention methods that contradict local health authorities or WHO,” Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokesperson, told VICE News in an email.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3v5mx/youtube-just-banned-a-popular-anti-abortion-channel-for-covid-conspiracies