Black Women Activists Warn Democrats After Abortion Failure: ‘Don’t Count on Our Votes’

Reproductive rights advocates of color wrote a scathing letter to Congress after it failed to end a federal ban on abortion coverage.

By Kylie Cheung
March 10, 2022

For the time being, reproductive rights advocates’ long-time dream of ending the Hyde Amendment, a half-century-old budget rider that prohibits federal funding of most abortions, is dead in Congress, despite President Joe Biden’s campaign promise to get rid of it.

Since Hyde disproportionately affects pregnant people of color, and particularly Black and Indigenous people, Black reproductive justice advocates have responded to the failure with a resounding warning to Democratic members: “Defend Black women’s rights or don’t count on our votes.”

Continued: https://jezebel.com/black-women-activists-warn-democrats-after-abortion-fai-1848635664


Canada – New Brunswick being sued over abortion access

Lawsuit filed by civil liberties group seeks to force government to fund abortion services in private clinics

Jacques Poitras · CBC News
Posted: Jan 07, 2021

A national civil liberties group has officially launched a lawsuit aimed at forcing the New Brunswick government to fund abortion services in private clinics.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association filed the constitutional challenge in Court of Queen's Bench in Fredericton. "The province is violating women's, girls' and trans people's fundamental right to make their own choices, their right to privacy, to safety and, of course, to equality," Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, the CCLA's director of equality programs, told reporters.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/abortion-new-brunswick-lawsuit-civil-liberties-association-medicare-1.5864555


USA – Ensuring Access to Abortion at the State Level: Selected Examples and Lessons

Ensuring Access to Abortion at the State Level: Selected Examples and Lessons

Elizabeth Nash,Guttmacher Institute
Megan K. Donovan,Guttmacher Institute
First published online: January 9, 2019

The October 2018 appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court has called into question the future of Roe v. Wade and abortion access in the United States. Just one month after Justice Kavanaugh took his seat on the bench, voters in Alabama and West Virginia approved state constitutional amendments intended to allow for additional abortion restrictions or even pave the way for outright bans on abortion in the event Roe is undermined or overturned.1

Although the changing composition of the Supreme Court has heightened the risks, efforts to restrict abortion are not new. Policymakers hostile to abortion have been working to undermine abortion care since Roe was decided. As a result, access to abortion already looks very different from state to state, and a person’s access to timely, affordable abortion care can be profoundly impacted by her race, socioeconomic status and available resources.

Continued: https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2019/01/ensuring-access-abortion-state-level-selected-examples-and-lessons