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


The choice: a rural mother and abortion care on the Washington-Idaho border

Even in places where abortion is legal, the inaccessibility of the procedure elsewhere can seep over state lines by Katia Riddle in Clarkston, Washington

Fri 24 Nov 2023

As she walks in the door on a recent afternoon to relieve her parents of caring for her five-month-old daughter, Jasmine feels a familiar pang of guilt.

Jasmine*, 28, is a single mother raising four kids in a small town in far eastern Washington, near the border of Idaho. Her partner of more than a decade – and father of her children – is incarcerated for an assault charge that she brought against him.

Without her parents stepping in to help, she’d struggle to hold down her job at a factory. But she knows it’s hard on them.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/24/accessing-abortion-clinics-washington-idaho


I was pregnant, and getting an out-of-state termination was already scary. Then I got caught out by a fake abortion clinic.

Bethany Dawson
Aug 21, 2022

This article is based on conversations with Anna Smith, who asked that her real name not be used, from Kansas City, Missouri, who needed an abortion in a state where the procedure has been illegal since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. She detailed the problems she faced trying to cross the state line to get an abortion.

Roe v. Wade being overturned broke my heart. In the red state of Missouri, we had a trigger ban waiting for the Supreme Court judgment to drop. The moment it did, I knew every woman in my state would have their life changed.

Continued: https://www.insider.com/missouri-fake-abortion-clinic-tried-sabotage-a-womans-pregnancy-termination-2022-8


The Abortion Clinics Staying Open in Hostile States

By Andrea González-Ramírez
AUG. 19, 2022

Earlier this year, Katie Quinonez, the executive director of Women’s Health Center of West Virginia, had her eyes on a vacant lot next door. Purchasing the lot would allow the state’s only abortion clinic, located in the city of Charleston, to expand. Quinonez says the owner of the lot rejected the clinic’s offer, however, because the local West Virginians for Life chapter had been renting it, and the owner wanted to give the anti-abortion group until the end of the year to raise enough money to buy the property.

It was a frustrating reminder of the logistical challenges the clinic would face if it were ever to close and later attempt to reopen. The overturn of Roe v. Wade opened the door to an imminent ban on abortion in the Mountain State, making it crucial for Quinonez to plan the clinic’s next act.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2022/08/the-abortion-clinics-staying-open-in-ban-states.html


Feminists Fight Fake Abortion Clinics: “No One Should Be Lied To”

Organizations like SPARK, ReproAction and Abortion Access Front are exposing the deceptive tactics of fake abortion clinics and organizing to stop them from harming women.

8/8/2021
Ms. Magazine
by CARRIE N. BAKER and JULIET SCHULMAN-HALL

“My high school was down the street from a crisis pregnancy center. My house that I grew up in was next door to a crisis center. I drove by it every day and saw ‘pregnancy resource center.’ I just assumed that it was a medical provider. I wasn’t the only person fooled,” says Agbo Ikor, Director of Programs at SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW in Atlanta, Georgia.

“My best friend when she was pregnant, she was taken to a crisis pregnancy center. And while she was there, they shamed her. They made her feel like if she had an abortion she was just this terrible person. It was very traumatizing for her,” says Ikor. “It is infuriating. It’s just really, really hard to think about.”

https://msmagazine.com/2021/08/08/feminists-fight-fake-abortion-clinics-no-one-should-be-lied-to/


The Louisiana Clinic At The Center Of Abortion Case Before Supreme Court

The Louisiana Clinic At The Center Of Abortion Case Before Supreme Court

December 29, 2019
Sarah McCammon

On a recent Saturday morning at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, La., Kathaleen Pittman was preparing for a day of procedures, as a couple dozen patients sat quietly in the waiting area.

Her clinic is challenging a law passed by Louisiana's state legislature in 2014, which requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital in case of an emergency. The case, June Medical Services, LLC v. Gee, is scheduled to go before the U.S. Supreme Court next year, and the court's decision has the potential to chip away at existing precedent protecting abortion rights.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2019/12/29/791514162/the-louisiana-clinic-at-the-center-of-abortion-case-before-supreme-court


USA – 4 Women on Their Abortions After 20 Weeks

4 Women on Their Abortions After 20 Weeks

By Callie Beusman
Feb 8, 2019

In recent weeks, the anti-abortion movement has seized upon one of its favorite subjects with even more fervor than usual: abortion after 20 weeks. People purporting to be “pro-life” spent days deluging Virginia delegate Kathy Tran with death threats, wrongly accusing her of supporting infanticide after she introduced a bill that would make it slightly easier for women in the state to get later abortions. Trump seized upon this vicious momentum in his State of the Union address, expressing his disgust at the Virginia bill, as well as with “lawmakers in New York” who recently voted to legalize abortion after 24 weeks in cases where the fetus isn’t viable or the mother’s health is at risk. According to Trump, the latter group “cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.”

This isn’t true, of course, but that doesn’t matter to those using it to incite outrage. The point is to demonize procedures after 20 weeks, depicting them as barbaric and tantamount to murder as a means of demonizing abortion in general.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2019/02/abortion-after-20-weeks-womens-stories.html