USA – No One’s Access to Abortion Is Guaranteed — No Matter Where You Live

Living in a “blue state” does not guarantee the availability of abortion care to everyone who needs it.
By Renee Bracey Sherman & Regina Mahone , TRUTHOUT

January 26, 2024

Last year, travelers to the Oakland airport were greeted by a billboard touting the availability of abortion in California paid for by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The billboard was one of many in a 2022 campaign highlighting the state government’s new website for people seeking abortions, with the majority of billboards erected on California’s dime in states that had banned abortion following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Some of the billboards, like one in Texas, featured an image of a white woman wearing a white dress in handcuffs beside the words, “Texas doesn’t own your body. You do.” (The irony is that California does prosecute women for stillbirth and other pregnancy outcomes.)

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/no-ones-access-to-abortion-is-guaranteed-no-matter-where-you-live/

26.01.2024

Commentary

Chelsea Williams-Diggs

Gavin Newsom

New York Abortion Access Fund

The A Files: A Secret History of Abortion

USA – Billboards Throughout South and Midwest Advertise Abortion Access: ‘Pregnant? You Still Have a Choice’

9/27/2023
by CARRIE N. BAKER, Ms. Magazine

For years, right-wing evangelicals have posted billboards along highways and in towns across the U.S. trumpeting their religious views and their anti-abortion beliefs. Now, post-Dobbs, abortion rights supporters are fighting back with their own roadside billboards and mobile digital LED advertising trucks.

Shout Your Abortion recently posted six abortion rights billboards along interstate 55 through five states that have banned abortion—from Memphis, Tenn., to Carbondale, Ill. The billboards include messages like, “God’s Plan Includes Abortion” and “Abortion is Okay: You Know What’s Best for You.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/09/27/abortion-billboards/

27.09.2023

pro-choice billboards

ProgressNow New Mexico

A year since Dobbs, these are the many ways states are protecting abortion

June 23, 2023
By Nicole Nixon, Scott Maucione, Rick Pluta, Bente Birkeland, Mawa Iqbal, Dirk VanderHart, Dana Ferguson, Molly Ingram

In the year since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, 14 states have banned most abortions, but even more have moved to protect abortion rights in various ways.

Eleven states have passed so-called "shield laws," which can safeguard providers and patients against prosecution from other states. And at least 15 municipalities and six state governments allocated nearly $208 million to pay for contraception, abortion and support services according to data provided to NPR by the National Institute for Reproductive Health.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/23/1183646356/dobbs-roe-abortion-protections-illinois-maryland-michigan-colorado-minnesota

23.06.2023

News

enshrining abortion rights in constitution

pro-choice legislation

Roe v. Wade

sanctuary state for abortion care

Miles Apart: Texas and California Lawmakers Stake Opposite Corners of Abortion Policy

It’s about 1,500 miles from Austin to Sacramento, but Texas and California lawmakers are a million miles apart on how to treat private data related to reproductive health.

5/5/2023
by JENNIFER PINSOF and HAYLEY TSUKAYAMA

State lawmakers in Texas and California are staking out opposite corners of digital public policy in the post-Roe era: in Texas by trying to ban online speech about abortion, and in California by trying to protect those seeking abortions from dragnet-style digital surveillance.

How these states legislate reproductive data privacy and information access could affect millions of vulnerable people nationwide, because the internet doesn’t stop at state borders.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/05/05/texas-california-abortion-privacy/

06.05.2023

Commentary

Assembly Bill 793

digital surveillance and abortion

digital technology and abortion

USA – The anti-abortion movement’s next radical legal argument

If a law is blocked by a court, is it possible to break it?

By Rachel M. Cohen
Mar 20, 2023

Until very recently, nearly everyone accepted some basic ideas about the American legal system. If a state passes a law, and that law is challenged in court, we should act as if that law is still in effect while the case works its way through the court system. That changes only if a judge issues a “preliminary injunction” blocking the law while the lawsuit plays out or a “permanent injunction” to strike the law down. In that case, we all act as if the law is not in effect.

But in recent years, an aggressive wing of the anti-abortion movement has been working to challenge this broadly held idea of legality — a push that has attracted little notice, but is further complicating the debate over abortion access.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/3/20/23641072/walgrens-abortion-pregnancy-jonathan-mitchell-sb8

If You Want to Know What Republicans Think About How Americans Feel, Ask Walgreens

March 17, 2023
By Mary Ziegler

The corporate culture wars have reached a turning point: A number of companies that once championed social justice and equity seem to be beating a hasty retreat.

Walgreens is trapped in a political firestorm. The pharmacy chain, which had sought certification so its stores could fill prescriptions for the abortion medication mifepristone, announced last week that it will not dispense the pill in the 21 states where Republican attorneys general have threatened legal action. Walgreens, which said it came to this conclusion before the threats began, won’t dispense the drug in several G.O.P.-controlled states where abortion remains legal. There was a swift backlash, with Gov. Gavin Newsom announcing that California would not renew a multimillion-dollar contract with Walgreens and others calling for a nationwide boycott. The hashtag #boycottwalgreens has taken off on Twitter.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/opinion/walgreens-abortion-pill-attorneys-general-states.html

17.03.2023

Opinion

Comstock Act

corporations in culture wars

Walgreens mifepristone

United States

Anti-choice

Human Rights

USA – The sole US supplier of a major abortion pill said it would not distribute the drug in 31 states

A list circulated in January by the distributor to Walgreens and CVS underscores the uncertainty surrounding abortion pills in the post-Roe era.

By Rachel M. Cohen
Updated Mar 17, 2023

Earlier this month, Politico broke news that Walgreens, the nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain, assured 21 Republican attorneys general that it would not dispense abortion pills in their states should the company be approved to dispense them. The decision was met with sharp protest by Walgreens customers, abortion rights activists, and Democrats, who accused the pharmacy of caving needlessly to pressure.

But fear of state prosecution is not the only factor shaping Walgreens’ decision-making. Another previously unreported constraint on the company is that its sole supplier of Mifeprex — the brand-name drug for the abortion pill mifepristone first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000 — circulated a list to its corporate clients in January naming 31 states that it would not supply the abortion medication to. Vox spoke with two sources who had reviewed that list recently.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/3/15/23639267/walgreens-abortion-pill-mifepristone-mifeprex-misoprostol

California will cut ties with Walgreens over the company’s plan to drop abortion pills

March 7, 2023
EMILY OLSON

Last week, Walgreens said it will not distribute abortion pills in states where Republican officials have threatened legal action. Now a blue state says it will cut ties with the pharmacy giant because of the move.

"California won't be doing business with @walgreens – or any company that cowers to the extremists and puts women's lives at risk," Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a tweet yesterday with a link to news coverage of Walgreen's decision.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/07/1161590750/california-walgreens-mifepristone-abortion-pill

07.03.2023

News

California Pharmacists Association

Walgreens mifepristone

Democratic governors form alliance on abortion rights

By BILL BARROW and GEOFF MULVIHILL
Feb 20, 2023

Democratic governors in 20 states are launching a network intended to strengthen abortion access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision nixing a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy and instead shifting regulatory powers over the procedure to state governments.

Organizers, led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, described the Reproductive Freedom Alliance as a way for governors and their staffs to share best practices and affirm abortion rights for the approximately 170 million Americans who live in the consortium’s footprint — and even ensuring services for the remainder of U.S. residents who live in states with more restrictive laws.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-us-supreme-court-politics-texas-gavin-newsom-5db36213df3b4de5ad94ebbb53d01d30

Demand has quadrupled at some California abortion clinics since Roe fell

Women are making ‘traumatizing’ trips across state lines for care

By MARISA KENDALL
January 1, 2023

One woman had never flown on a plane before and was petrified to make the journey from Texas to California. Another drove all night from El Paso to make her appointment because she couldn’t miss work. A third was so worried about getting in trouble that she asked the staff at Planned Parenthood if they could wipe her phone and destroy all evidence of her abortion.

Six months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, prompting about half of the states in the country to move to ban or limit abortion access, these are the kinds of stories California clinics say they are encountering on a regular basis as they continue to serve an influx of patients from Texas, Arizona and beyond.

Continued: https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/01/01/demand-has-tripled-quadrupled-at-california-abortion-clinics-since-roe-fell/