Pregnant woman sues Kentucky for right to have abortion

Woman, who is eight weeks pregnant, wants to have abortion in Kentucky but cannot legally do so because of near-total ban

Associated Press in Louisville and Ava Sasani
Fri 8 Dec 2023

A pregnant woman in Kentucky filed a lawsuit on Friday demanding the right to an abortion, the second legal challenge in days to sweeping abortion bans that have taken hold in more than a dozen US states since Roe v Wade was overturned last year.

The suit, filed in state court in Louisville, says Kentucky’s near-total prohibition against abortion violates the plaintiff’s rights to privacy and self-determination under the state constitution.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/08/kentucky-woman-abortion-ban-lawsuit


‘Everybody’s daughter’: The rape victim behind Kentucky’s viral abortion ad

Hadley Duvall helped Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear win reelection -- and she’s ready to campaign again in 2024

By Caroline Kitchener
December 4, 2023

MIDWAY, Ky. — One month before the governor thanked her for his victory, Hadley Duvall had already won.

Standing in the middle of a football field in mid-October, she looked out at the students of her small Christian university, stunned to be the one wearing the rhinestone tiara. Her classmates could have chosen to honor the student body president or a leading member of the local Bible study. Instead, they’d picked Hadley, the face of a viral ad about abortion and sexual abuse that had begun airing a month earlier, and would soon help Democrats hold the governor’s mansion in one of the most conservative states in the country.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/04/kentucky-abortion-ad/


Will Abortion Dominate the 2024 Elections? Tuesday Will Offer Clues.

Lisa Lerer and Shane Goldmacher
(New York Times)
Sat, November 4, 2023

Abortion has emerged as a defining fault line of this year’s elections, with consequential contests in several states Tuesday offering fresh tests of the issue’s political potency nearly 18 months after the Supreme Court ended a federal right to an abortion.

The decision overturning Roe v. Wade scrambled American politics in 2022, transforming a long-standing social conflict into an electoral battering ram that helped drive Democrats to critical victories in the midterm races. Now, as abortion restrictions and bans in red states have become reality, the issue is again on the ballot, both explicitly and implicitly, in races across the country.

Continued: https://news.yahoo.com/abortion-dominate-2024-elections-tuesday-151158875.html


Abortion is the common thread in 2023 elections. That’s bad news for Republicans.

The GOP still hopes that the only voters who care about abortion rights are women.

Oct. 28, 2023
By Andrea Grimes, MSNBC

Americans haven’t forgotten that the ability to decide if and when to become a parent is one of the most essential, personal and life-changing decisions we’ll ever make. And we especially haven’t forgotten that the GOP is primarily responsible for wresting that decision away from many millions of us.

Because we remember both of these things, the issue of abortion remains a common thread in upcoming elections around the country — much to the consternation of Republicans. A year after the issue boosted Democrats in the midterms, the GOP is struggling to convince voters that the abortion bans the party has pushed for decades are some sort of collective fever dream. They want us to think abortion bans are a mass hysterical event that has caused us to hallucinate traveling far from home for abortion care, to invent the state-mandated traumas of forced birth, or to imagine that the pregnant people we’ve lost to poor maternal care were always ghosts, irrelevant and expendable, and never our living, loved ones.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/election-2023-abortion-republicans-rcna122327


Poland – The war on women who use abortion pills takes a terrifying new turn

Researchers in Poland have developed tests that can detect if a woman has taken mifepristone. It’s a chilling development

Arwa Mahdawi
Sat 16 Sep 2023

Have you ever come across a scientific study and immediately thought to yourself: why? What was the point of this work exactly? Why were resources and brainpower devoted to figuring this particular thing out?

Normally I have this thought when a study comes out about whether, for example, Viagra can help hamsters recover from jet lag (it can!) or whether mosquitoes like electronic dance music (not really!). On this occasion, however, it was prompted by news that researchers in Poland have developed tests that can detect whether a woman has taken mifepristone and misoprostol, the drugs that are used in a medication abortion and colloquially known as abortion pills.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/16/abortion-pills-week-in-patriarchy-arwa-mahdawi


USA – Supreme Court’s split decision for abortion rights gives opponents an unlikely boost

Richard Wolf
Aug 31, 2020, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court's decision in June striking down a Louisiana restriction on abortion clinics is giving abortion opponents an unlikely opportunity in other states.

Officials in Texas, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Oklahoma have in recent weeks argued that the high court's 5-4 ruling actually bolsters their defense of anti-abortion laws, even though the justices ruled against Louisiana.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/31/abortion-supreme-courts-ruling-abortion-rights-boosts-opponents/5624869002/


USA – Every State That’s Tried to Ban Abortion Over the Coronavirus

Every State That’s Tried to Ban Abortion Over the Coronavirus

By Hannah Gold
Apr. 7, 2020

Just days into the national surge of coronavirus cases, as an increasing amount of states called for nonessential businesses to shut down, some Republican legislators began using the public health crisis as an opportunity to deny health care to patients seeking abortions. The tactic has been replicated in the past couple of weeks, with governors in several states peddling the cynical argument that temporarily banning abortion will help shore up their supply of medical gear for hospitals overwhelmed by the pandemic.

So far, lawmakers in five states — Ohio, Texas, Alabama, Iowa, and Oklahoma — have attempted to halt abortion services indefinitely. As of now, only the Texas order has taken effect, and all of these temporary bans face strong legal challenges. Last week, providers in Alabama, Iowa, Ohio, and Oklahoma filed lawsuits to prevent the orders from taking effect in their states. A similar lawsuit was filed in Texas last week as well.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2020/04/every-state-thats-tried-to-ban-abortion-over-coronavirus.html