Defiant: Stories From Abortion Providers on the Front Lines

May 2, 2023
National Women’s Law Center

Introducing: Defiant: Stories From Abortion Providers on the Front Lines, a collection of interviews with abortion providers in states across the country telling the stories of their work and lives, in their own words.

Six providers share the obstacles they have faced as health care professionals when trying to provide abortion care, including employment discrimination, challenges to their medical licenses, and threats of violence. They also reflect on the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and its impact on their ability to provide abortion care.

Continued: https://nwlc.org/resource/defiant-stories-from-abortion-providers-on-the-front-lines/

02.05.2023

Interviews/Podcasts

Videos/Images

abortion providers

defiant abortion providers

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health

Dr. Atsuko Koyama

Dr. Leah Torres

Dr. Melanie MacLennan

National Women’s Law Center

She was one of Alabama’s last abortion doctors. Then they came for everything she had

Dr Leah Torres has endured the ire of the anti-abortion movement without backing down – but now she faces her most daunting challenge

by Poppy Noor
Wed 22 Mar 2023

Dr Leah Torres doesn’t tell people what she does when she meets them, which makes it hard to make friends. She removes her name from every piece of trash before she puts it out for recycling, in case people walking past see her name and find out where she lives. If a package addressed to her arrives on her porch, she calls everyone she knows to identify who sent it before she opens it – it could be a bomb.

Once, coming back from work in the piercing August Alabama sun, she noticed a gray sedan parked in her driveway. Instinctively, she fled to a neighbor’s house – she barely knew him – but asked if he could walk her home anyway. The car turned out to be a stranger’s; the driver had just pulled over to send a text message. “Still, you never know,” says Torres, her big, almond-shaped eyes conveying concern.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/22/alabama-last-abortion-doctor-leah-torres

An Alabama Clinic Reinvents Itself for a Post-Roe World

BY ROBIN MARTY
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LUCY GARRETT FOR TIME
JULY 28, 2022

On the morning the Supreme Court announced that it had overturned Roe v. Wade, we had 21 patients in our lobby waiting to have an abortion. We cried as we were forced to turn them all away. They cried as they realized the very same medical procedure that was legal only a few minutes earlier was no longer available to them. But the reality was that each of those people represented a potential felony for my staff—and up to 99 years in prison. Within hours of the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the injunction on a 2019 law was lifted and abortion became illegal in almost all instances in the state of Alabama.

Continued; https://time.com/6200914/alabama-clinic-after-roe-v-wade/

USA – Abortion doctor sues conservative media sites for defamation

Abortion doctor sues conservative media sites for defamation

Associated Press
March 15, 2019

SALT LAKE CITY >> A well-known abortion rights activist from Utah has filed a lawsuit against three conservative media publications for defamation, says that online stories spread misinformation that she cut the throats of fetuses during abortions.

Dr. Leah Torres, a former Salt Lake City obstetrician-gynecologist, says in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that stories written by three conservative outlets in March 2018 painted her as a doctor who conducted unlawful abortions, leading to scourging harassment online and job loss. She says her personal information and the address and phone number of her clinic were released online.

Continued: https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/03/15/news/abortion-doctor-sues-conservative-media-sites-for-defamation/