Idahoans in rural Sandpoint reflect on a year without labor and delivery services

March 11, 2024
By Amanda Sullender

Lauren Sanders could not give birth in her hometown of Sandpoint. With the closure of the local hospitals’ labor and delivery services a year earlier, she had to drive over an hour to Coeur d’Alene to give birth to her son, now 4 months old.

“I was privileged to be able to drive that way for all my appointments and my birth. I was privileged to have the perfect pregnancy with no complications. I’m lucky ’cause that is who the laws of Idaho work for – people with perfect pregnancies,” Sanders said at a rally outside of Bonner General Hospital on Friday. “That is not the case for most people who give birth. Pregnancies are not supposed to be perfect.”

Continued: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/mar/11/amid-pro-abortion-protest-idahoans-in-rural-sandpo/


USA – Malpractice lawsuits over denied abortion care may be on the horizon

Sunday, June 25, 2023
Harris Meyer

A year after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many physicians and hospitals in the states that have restricted abortion reportedly are refusing to end the pregnancies of women facing health-threatening complications out of fear they might face criminal prosecution or loss of their medical license.

Some experts predict those providers could soon face a new legal threat: medical malpractice lawsuits alleging they harmed patients by failing to provide timely, necessary abortion care.

Continued: https://www.capradio.org/articles/2023/06/25/malpractice-lawsuits-over-denied-abortion-care-may-be-on-the-horizon/


USA – Woman says she was forced to travel for an abortion despite her fetus’s fatal condition

Heather Maberry's unborn child was diagnosed with anencephaly at 20 weeks.

By Mary Kekatos / Video byJessie DiMartino
June 15, 2023

A Kentucky mother of three says she was forced to travel out of state for an abortion despite her fetus being diagnosed with a fatal condition.

After Heather Maberry, 32, a substitute teacher from Stanton — about 100 miles southeast of Louisville — and her husband, Nick, got married last year, they were excited to try for a baby and expand their family.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/woman-forced-travel-abortion-despite-fetuss-fatal-condition/story?id=100065877


“Some Anti-Abortion People Will Say Our Situation Was Different. It’s Not.”

Three stories of people navigating a new world of restrictions post-Roe

Katie Herchenroeder
April 13, 2023

One woman had already decorated the nursery. Another had picked out a name, something with family history. A third woman was sifting through her oldest child’s clothes to see what might fit the next addition to the family. Their hopes had risen over the months; plans were taking form. Then the appointment happened.

For those who must terminate their pregnancy for medical reasons, or undergo a TFMR, as the procedure is known, the need typically becomes apparent during an appointment that takes place later in the second trimester, after week 16 or 17, an important phase for fetal development—and a period that has become highly politicized and regulated in post-Dobbs America.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/171115/abortion-as-told-to-roe-dobbs


Once a ‘quintessential pro-life Texan,’ she had to flee her home state to get an abortion

By Elizabeth Cohen and Danielle Herman, CNN
September 9, 2022

Nine years ago, Cade DeSpain messaged a friend about a cute girl he saw on her Facebook feed.

The friend introduced him to Kailee Lingo, her sorority sister at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. Kailee remembers that when she and Cade met, it was "a connection at first sight."

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/09/health/abortion-restrictions-texas/index.html


USA – She ended a pregnancy so her child wouldn’t suffer. Now she helps others like her.

Emma Belle and other parents who experienced TFMR, or termination for medical reasons, are creating an online community to ease the grieving process

By Ashley Fetters Maloy
Apr 26, 2022

Emma Belle was hopeful about this pregnancy. Anxious, but hopeful. In their quest to have a baby, Belle and her husband had been through three rounds of ovulation induction, a miscarriage at five weeks and two rounds of intrauterine insemination. When she was still pregnant after a few months in late 2020, she began to allow herself to imagine actually parenting a child.

Then the bad news came. Belle, who lives part time in the United Kingdom and part time in Dubai, recalls that at her 12-week scan, “the sonographer’s face changed. She said, ‘I can’t not tell you what I can see.’ ” A genetic test later found a 99 percent chance the baby had Edwards syndrome, also known as Trisomy 18. Doctors told Belle that the baby would likely either die in utero before 28 weeks or live only a few hours or days.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/04/26/tfmr-pregnancy-termination-for-medical-reasons/


Abortion in Northern Ireland: at the interface between politics and law

22 March 2021
by Anurag Deb, UK Human Rights Blog

Abortion reform in Northern Ireland has had a fraught history, to say the least. Matters appeared to finally come to a head when in 2019, the UK Parliament enacted the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc.) Act 2019 (2019 Act), which created a duty on the Secretary of State to implement abortion reform by following the report of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination of Women (CtteEDAW). Nearly two years and two statutory instruments later, Stormont finds itself mired in fresh controversy as long-term abortion facilities in Northern Ireland have yet to be commissioned. So the obvious question arises: what happened?

Continued: https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2021/03/22/abortion-in-northern-ireland-at-the-interface-between-politics-and-law/


Abortion: Assembly backs change in NI abortion law

March 15, 2021

A bill which seeks to amend the law in Northern Ireland to prevent abortions in cases of non-fatal disabilities, including Down's Syndrome, has been backed by a majority of MLAs.

The Severe Fetal Impairment Bill, brought by DUP MLA Paul Givan, passed its second stage by 48 votes to 12.

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-56404024


The unheard pain of abortion in Poland

By Valérie Gauriat 
Updated: 12/02/2021

In front of one of Warsaw's main hospitals, an ominous van is parked. Its sides are covered in an image of what is allegedly a dead fetus. It's a message from anti-abortion groups to one of the capital’s few facilities that still perform pregnancy terminations.

A recent ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal has just toughened one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. Terminations in Poland were once only allowed in cases of rape, incest, danger to the mother's health or life, serious defects of the fetus or incurable disease. The new amendments mean that last option is now prohibited.

Continued: https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/12/the-unheard-pain-of-abortion-in-poland


Colorado Abortion Ban Could Be Felt Nationwide

October 31, 2020

Sarah McCammon

Last year around this time, Tammy, her husband, and their young son were
getting ready for a big expansion of their family: she was expecting twins –
one boy and one girl.

The family celebrated around Christmastime with a gender reveal party, complete
with matching onesies reading, "Little Brother" and "Little
Sister."

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/31/929637426/colorado-abortion-ban-could-be-felt-nationwide