This conservative Christian couple in South Carolina have become outspoken advocates for abortion rights

By Elizabeth Cohen, Naomi Thomas and Nadia Kounang, CNN
Fri December 23, 2022

Jill Hartle might seem an unlikely advocate for abortion rights, but after a devastating pregnancy loss, she’s raising her voice.

A conservative Christian and former Ms. South Carolina, Jill was a Republican until last summer, when in the wake of new abortion restrictions in her state, she endured the “excruciating” experience of terminating a pregnancy with a baby who had a severe heart defect.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/health/south-carolina-abortion-ivy-grace-project/index.html

State legislatures got redder in 2020. It’s a ‘dire reality’ for abortion rights, advocates say.

29 state legislatures now have antiabortion majorities

Caroline Kitchener, The Lily
Feb. 2, 2021

When the South Carolina legislature convened on Jan. 12, one issue took priority over any other. Senate Bill 1, the first piece of legislation introduced on the Senate floor, bans most abortions, outlawing the procedure once a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat — around six weeks — except in cases of rape and incest, when there is a fatal fetal anomaly, and when a mother’s life is at risk.

SB 1 cleared the state Senate on Thursday. Now it will head to the South Carolina House, where it will almost certainly pass, before making its way to the desk of Gov. Henry McMaster (R).

Continued: https://www.thelily.com/state-legislatures-got-redder-in-2020-its-a-dire-reality-for-abortion-rights-advocates-say/

Why a NY woman came to Colorado for a 32-week abortion

Why a NY woman came to Colorado for a 32-week abortion
Forty-three states place some restrictions on abortions after a certain point in pregnancy, but Colorado isn’t one of them

By Anna Staver, The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: October 13, 2019

In the spring of 2016, Erika Christensen and her husband walked past a tall, wooden fence that obscured the Boulder office of Dr. Warren Hern from the street and into his waiting room.

Printed signs taped to bulletproof glass told her all electronic devices — even cellphones — were prohibited and asked her to tell someone on staff if she needed to leave for any reason. The only items she could carry through the door were a printed book, her identification card and a check for $10,000.

Continued: https://www.denverpost.com/2019/10/13/late-abortion-women-2020/

How the US right-to-life movement is influencing the abortion debate in Australia

How the US right-to-life movement is influencing the abortion debate in Australia

August 21, 2019
Prudence Flowers

As the abortion decriminalisation bill gradually makes its way through the NSW parliament, opponents have been increasingly drawing on their long relationship with the right-to-life movement in the United States to lobby against the measure and try to push for more restrictive amendments.

This has been a trend in the anti-abortion movement in Australia for a while now. Activists have adopted some of the most successful elements of the US movement’s rhetoric and tactics in recent years in an effort to influence the debate in Australia.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/how-the-us-right-to-life-movement-is-influencing-the-abortion-debate-in-australia-121974

USA – The Hidden Consequences of the New Abortion Laws

The Hidden Consequences of the New Abortion Laws
They will force women to carry pregnancies to term despite the detection of painful and deadly fetal anomalies.

By Jennifer Senior, Opinion columnist
May 29, 2019

Recent state-imposed limits on abortion — from Georgia to Missouri, from Ohio to Mississippi — are rightly seen as a broadside aimed at women’s reproductive freedoms. But it is also worth examining a more particular, and potentially agonizing, consequence of these new restrictions. It is a hard one to talk about. It is, to some extent, taboo. But it must be discussed.

Namely: These new laws, should they survive judicial scrutiny, would ensure that a generation of women would be forced to carry pregnancies to term despite the detection of fetal anomalies — some of them cruel, painful and fatal.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/opinion/abortion-birth-defects.html

USA – ‘I’m an OB/GYN – All Abortions Should Be Legal. No Exceptions.’

'I’m an OB/GYN - All Abortions Should Be Legal. No Exceptions.'
Does a woman need to be on her death bed for her to be given the right to abort her pregnancy?

By Jennifer Gunter, MD, OB/GYN, as told to Tiffany Ayuda
May 21, 2019

Like a huge tide, there's a wave of Republican-led states that are enacting anti-abortion laws, and it's hurting women in many ways that we don't realize. From Georgia and Ohio's abortion bans that end access at six weeks to Alabama's almost complete ban, women are being marginalized more than ever. As a physician and gynecologist who has performed abortions and pre-term deliveries, it's terrifying to see how lawmakers are passing bills left and right on what women and gender minorities can and can't do with their bodies. And while not all of these laws have taken effect yet, they pose a serious risk to reproductive rights and add fuel to the pro-life side's efforts to strike down Roe v. Wade, which legalizes abortions nationwide.

Continued: https://www.prevention.com/health/amp27526828/abortion-bans-jennifer-gunter-gynecologist/

USA – At least 20 abortion cases are in the pipeline to the Supreme Court. Any one could gut Roe v. Wade.

At least 20 abortion cases are in the pipeline to the Supreme Court. Any one could gut Roe v. Wade.
Today’s emotional rhetoric has parallels to another politically volatile period in the early 1990s.

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
February 15, 2019

The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 vote this month to block a restrictive Louisiana abortion law from taking effect provided some measure of consolation to reproductive rights advocates who feared the court’s new conservative majority would act immediately to restrict access to the procedure.

But that relief is likely to be short lived. In the pipeline are at least 20 lawsuits, in various stages of judicial review, that have the potential to be decided in ways that could significantly change the rights laid out in the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, and refined almost two decades later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The 1992 decision said a state may place restrictions on abortion as long as it does not create an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to abortion.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/02/15/least-abortion-cases-are-steps-us-supreme-court-any-one-could-gut-roe-v-wade/

USA – Abortion Debate Reignited as Divisive Issue for 2020 Campaigns

Abortion Debate Reignited as Divisive Issue for 2020 Campaigns

By Anna Edgerton and Sahil Kapur
February 9, 2019

The acrimonious debate over abortion that’s divided the country for generations is being reignited for the 2020 election with the Supreme Court’s tilt to the right and Democratic-led states moving to lift some restrictions on the procedure.

New York has eased some restrictions on late-term abortions, and lawmakers in Virginia have proposed to do so. That has given anti-abortion advocates fresh arguments and targets. Both sides in the debate, at the same time, expect the Supreme Court with two conservative justices appointed by President Donald Trump to narrow abortion rights.

Continued: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-09/abortion-debate-reignited-as-divisive-issue-for-2020-campaigns

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

USA – We want our leaders to speak with moral clarity on abortio

We want our leaders to speak with moral clarity on abortion

By Jon O’Brien, opinion contributor
Feb 5, 2019

When President Trump was elected, many women realized that something that seemed a far prospect could become reality — that Roe V. Wade could be overturned. In the face of this threat, we have also seen something inspiring. State legislators across the country — from Oregon to Illinois to New York — have passed a wave of progressive laws to protect access to abortion and safeguard a woman’s autonomy to make her own moral choices over deeply consequential, deeply complex decisions around when and whether to continue a pregnancy.

Continued: https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/428397-we-want-our-leaders-to-speak-with-moral-clarity-on-abortion