USA – Abortion Clinics Are Dealing with More Arson, Stalking, and Anthrax Threats Now

Abortion providers feared they’d see an increase in harassment and threats if Roe v Wade was overturned. They were right.

By Carter Sherman
May 11, 2023

Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick has provided abortions for 26 years. And up until a few years ago, she never had to deal with protesters at her Phoenix, Arizona clinic.

But in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the protests at her clinic have become so large and loud that, for the first time, Goodrick has had to enlist people to help escort patients through the picketers.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7bday/rise-in-abortion-clinic-harassment-after-roe

This Trump Judge Could Effectively Ban the Abortion Pill

Matthew Kacsmaryk could revoke the FDA's approval of Mifepristone after anti-abortion groups filed a dubious lawsuit in Texas

BY TESSA STUART
JANUARY 18, 2023

THE ALLIANCE FOR Hippocratic Medicine does not have a robust online presence. Its website consists of a generic landing page that appeared in July, a month before the organization was legally incorporated in Amarillo, Texas. There’s no phone number, no email, no physical address, no board of directors listed. A single button, labeled “Learn more about AHM,” just reloads the page. According to records filed with the Texas Secretary of State, the group’s mailing address is located several states away, in Tennessee, but the decision to incorporate in Texas — in Amarillo, specifically — may prove critical in determining the fate of a lawsuit filed in November challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s 22-year approval of Mifepristone, a key component of the abortion pill.

Continued: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-judge-matthew-kacsmaryk-ban-abortion-pill-1234658423/

USA – ‘Lock it down right now’: Abortion rights advocates prepare for a new wave of digital security threats

Advocates and abortion providers are reassessing their digital security practices ahead of an expected rise in cyberattacks and surveillance.

by SAM SABIN
06/17/2022

Abortion rights groups are using software that protects privacy and are honing other strategies to combat digital threats that they expect will worsen in a post-Roe world.

Those efforts are gaining new urgency as a looming Supreme Court ruling threatens to open a new wave of security threats for people seeking abortions and their health care providers.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/17/abortion-rights-advocates-digital-security-threats-00040654

USA – Google misdirects one in 10 searches for abortion to ‘pregnancy crisis centers’

In US ‘trigger states’ where the procedure may soon be illegal, searchers may be sent to centers that do not actually provide care

Kari Paul
Thu 9 Jun 2022

One in 10 Google searches for abortion services in US “trigger states”, where the procedure is likely to become illegal if the US supreme court overturns Roe v Wade, are being misdirected to clinics known as “pregnancy crisis centers” that do not actually provide care, according to a new study.

After a leak revealed the US supreme court is on the verge of overturning the landmark abortion rights law Roe v Wade, attention has turned to “trigger law” states that would ban abortion immediately if the decades-old decision is undone.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/09/google-searches-abortion-clinics-pregnancy-crisis-centers

Why Do Social Media Platforms Keep Removing Posts About Safe and Legal Abortion Pills?

Access to solid information about how to get ahold of abortion pills is more crucial now than ever.

May 13, 2022
Madison Pauley, Mother Jones

Not all the 39 patients who asked Christie Pitney for abortion pills last week were pregnant. Some had IUDs or were on birth control, and they wanted to have the pills—an extremely safe, FDA-approved regimen that is now the most common way of terminating a pregnancy in the United States—on hand, just in case. “They’re very, very worried and scared about what the future holds,” says Pitney, an advanced practice midwife who prescribes abortion pills virtually to patients.

The patients had found Pitney through Aid Access, an organization that connects people who want medication abortions with telehealth providers who can give them online consultations and order the pills for them.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/twitter-instagram-facebook-google-abortion-pills-roe-ban/

Anti-Abortion, Pro-Insurrection

Opponents of the right to choose played a key role in the January 6 uprising in the U.S. Capitol.

by Eleanor J. Bader
February 3, 2021

Pundits eager to dissect the origins of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol rarely include the misogynist anti-abortion movement in their musings. But they should.

Not only did many prominent anti-abortion groups and individuals attend the gathering—including Operation Save America leaders Frank Campana, Ante Pavkovic, and Jason Storms; former Planned Parenthood staffer—now an outspoken antiabortionist—Abby Johnson; convicted clinic bomber John Brockhoeft; and clinic harasser turned West Virginia House of Delegates member Derrick Evans—but racism, vitriolic hatred of socialism and communism, and reverence for militarism have for decades been a part of the ideology gluing violent opponents of abortion to the broader cause.

Continued: https://progressive.org/dispatches/anti-abortion-pro-insurrection-bader-210203/

Anti-Abortion Activists Were All Over the Capitol Riots

“A young woman was just shot in the neck beside me in the Capitol Building,” tweeted one anti-abortion activist known for creating "Baby Lives Matter" murals.

By Carter Sherman
12.1.21

When a single shot rang out during the Capitol riot and struck Ashli Babbitt, anti-abortion activist Tayler Hansen was filming.

“A young woman was just shot in the neck beside me in the Capitol Building,” he wrote on Twitter, where he appeared to be filming just steps away from the shooting inside the Capitol Building. Then he shared a second video showing Babbitt on the floor with blood streaming down her face, as panicked people attempted to save her.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4ad73w/anti-abortion-activists-were-all-over-the-capitol-riots

USA – ‘I Feel Very Powerless’: How Abortion Providers Are Dealing With COVID-19

‘I Feel Very Powerless’: How Abortion Providers Are Dealing With COVID-19
Abortion providers face a complex interplay of questions about how to balance their own health, the need to physically distance, and the potential of COVID-19 to limit patients’ ability to travel for abortion services.

Mar 23, 2020
Lauren Young

When Dr. Sheila Ramgopal woke up on March 15, the COVID-19 warning signs were there. A dry cough. A sore throat. Some tightness in their chest, and a temperature slightly over 100 degrees.

“Not even a fever in my mind,” Ramgopal, medical director of Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Reproductive Health Center, told Rewire.News. But the symptoms met the criteria to be tested for COVID-19. All that was missing was a known exposure to someone who had tested positive for COVID-19.

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2020/03/23/i-feel-very-powerless-how-abortion-providers-are-dealing-with-covid-19/

Why Anti-Abortion Lawmakers Have Become So Open About Attacking ‘Roe’

Why Anti-Abortion Lawmakers Have Become So Open About Attacking ‘Roe’

Nov 25, 2019
Casey Quinlan

Since Trump entered the presidential race in 2015, anti-abortion advocates and lawmakers "have been emboldened with horrific rhetoric that supports a climate of violence against abortion providers," said Erin Matson, co-founder and co-director of Reproaction. "They’re just going for the jugular."

In late October, Pennsylvania state Rep. Stephanie Borowicz (R-Clinton County) and state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin County) introduced a bill banning abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. During the press conference, Borowicz said the bill could be the “dagger in Roe v. Wade.”

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2019/11/25/why-anti-abortion-lawmakers-have-become-so-open-about-attacking-roe/

USA – Abortion After the Clinic

Abortion After the Clinic
As Republican lawmakers try to legislate it out of existence, the future of reproductive healthcare may be at home.

By Irin Carmon
Nov 11, 2019

When Leana Wen introduced herself to America as the new president of Planned Parenthood last fall, she had a story she liked to tell — one that showed exactly why abortion access mattered. It was a sad tale of “a young woman lying on a stretcher, pulseless and unresponsive, because of a home abortion.” Wen, an emergency physician who had been plucked from Baltimore’s Health Department to take over the century-old institution, said the young woman had arrived at her ER in “a pool of blood” because “she didn’t have access to health care, so she had her cousin attempt an abortion on her at home. We did everything we could to resuscitate her, but she died.”

Wen was talking about a time when abortion was technically legal, yet the story rhymed with the pre-Roe era, when doctors and lawyers spoke of being radicalized by women filling their wards with blood and desperation, the same nightmare the familiar pro-choice rhetoric warns will soon be upon us. Behind the scenes, however, a vanguard of the abortion-rights movement implored Wen, directly and through intermediaries, to stop talking about “home abortion” in such dire terms.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2019/11/future-abortion-access-america.html

11.11.2019