‘Comstocked’: How Extremists Are Exploiting a Victorian-Era Law To Deny Abortion Access

The 1873 Comstock law prohibits the conveyance of anything used for “the procuring or producing of abortion.” One man believes it’s the gateway to a national abortion ban that even the bluest of states will not be able to evade.

10/25/2023
by SHOSHANNA EHRLICH

In June 2019, the all-male city council in Waskom, Texas, unanimously voted to make the tiny town of just 2,000 residents the nation’s first “sanctuary city for the unborn.” Characterizing fetuses as the “most innocent among us [who] deserve equal protection under the law,” the ordinance expressly bans abortion within its municipal boundaries. The man behind the ban, anti-abortion zealot and pastor Mark Lee Dickson, has since expanded his campaign to outlaw abortion “one city at a time” into at least six other states.

At first glance, this effort may appear superfluous in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which, in overturning Roe v. Wade, ended federal protection of abortion rights. In response to the decision, a growing number of states have enacted outright abortion bans or highly restrictive laws, while others have doubled down on a commitment to keeping abortion legal and accessible.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/10/25/comstock-abortion-access-sanctuary-cities/


Abortion access in two ‘stalwart’ states in the South a focus of post-Roe court fights

By Tierney Sneed and Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
Mon August 8, 2022

Just how far people in the South will have to travel to access abortion care will be defined by legal challenges unfolding in Louisiana and Georgia.

Almost every state in the Southeast bans the procedure or limits it to all but the earliest stages of pregnancy -- with laws that were allowed to go into effect with the Supreme Court's reversal this summer of Roe v. Wade. But abortion rights advocates are fighting in state court for orders blocking those restrictions.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/08/politics/abortion-south-georgia-louisiana/index.html


What clinics in southern states where abortion is banned are doing now

Abortion is now largely banned across the South.

By Kyla Guilfoil and Alexandra Svokos
July 11, 2022

Two weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the South has become covered with abortion bans. Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Texas -- along with Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Dakota -- all now have near-total bans on abortion in effect.

The clinics that had been working there spent years navigating previous restrictions and fighting off state laws.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/clinics-southern-states-abortion-banned-now/story?id=86299844


Most Women Denied Abortions by Texas Law Got Them Another Way

New data suggests overall abortions declined much less than previously known, because women traveled out of state or ordered pills online.

By Margot Sanger-Katz, Claire Cain Miller and Quoctrung Bui
March 6, 2022

The impact of the Texas abortion law was partly offset by trips to out-of-state clinics, and by abortion pills

In the months after Texas banned all but the earliest
abortions in September, the number of legal abortions in the state fell by
about half. But two new studies suggest the total number among Texas women fell
by far less — around 10 percent — because of large increases in the number of
Texans who traveled to a clinic in a nearby state or ordered abortion pills online.

Two groups of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin counted the
number of women using these alternative options. They found that while the
Texas law — which prohibits abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be
detected, or around six weeks — lowered the number of abortions, it did so much
more modestly than earlier measurements suggested.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/upshot/texas-abortion-women-data.html


USA – Six Months in a State of Emergency

By Andrea González-Ramírez
Mar. 1, 2022

During the past six months, Kathaleen Pittman has often noticed some of her staff at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, Louisiana, are on the verge of tears. Every day, more and more patients reach out hoping to schedule an abortion at one of the state’s three remaining clinics, and the one closest to the Texas border. And every day, the employees who answer the phone have to tell callers — who are already frustrated by having to plan around a 24-hour waiting period that forces them to book two appointments — that the clinic may not be able to fit them into its schedule because of overwhelming demand.

“We’re compassionate people. Hearing these women, who are so afraid and so upset, has certainly taken its toll on the staff,” says Kathaleen Pittman, the clinic’s administrator. She’s been working at Hope since 1992, when she started as a part-time patient’s advocate. Over the past three decades, she’s witnessed a full-scale assault on abortion access in Louisiana: TRAP laws, a 20-week ban, mandatory waiting periods, a prohibition on telemedicine, and requiring parental consent for minors. And yet, Pittman tells me, “Never have I been so afraid of what’s happening.”

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2022/03/sb8-texas-abortion-ban-effects-six-months.html


Abortion pill use spikes in Texas as thousands of patients circumvent state’s ban

Orders for the drugs from an international nonprofit spiked 1,180 percent in the first week after the Texas law took effect in September.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
02/25/2022

Texans have been ordering abortion pills online at record rates in the wake of the state’s law banning the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, according to a new study published Friday in JAMA Network Open.

Orders for the drugs from the international nonprofit Aid Access spiked 1,180 percent in the first week after the Texas law took effect in September, increasing from about 11 purchases per day to more than 137 per day. And though orders decreased over the next few months, researchers found that they remained 175 percent higher than before the Texas law took effect.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/25/abortion-pill-use-spikes-in-texas-as-thousands-of-patients-circumvent-states-ban-00011728


Uncertainty overwhelms abortion clinics in Louisiana

PBS, Nation
Dec 13, 2021

NEW ORLEANS – Before Texas enacted the nation’s strictest abortion law this fall, sending hundreds over the Louisiana border to seek care, those in need of abortion services could get medical attention in a matter of days. But the possibility of an imminent Supreme Court decision allowing states to further restrict access has pushed the wait for people seeking abortions in Louisiana to weeks, said Kathaleen Pittman, the clinical administrator at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport.

The stress is overwhelming clinics in Louisiana, already among the most restrictive states for abortion in the nation.

Continued: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/uncertainty-overwhelms-abortion-clinics-in-louisiana


Texas abortion ban is an early glimpse of what post-Roe America would look like for women

By Katherine Dautrich, Isabelle Chapman, Majlie de Puy Kamp and Casey Tolan, CNN
Fri October 22, 2021 (CNN)

Nicole began her morning with a simple prayer: "Please let my car start today."

She had already gotten the mandatory ultrasound, scrounged up $595 and taken time off work. But at that moment -- with her pregnancy at exactly six weeks -- getting an abortion in her home state boiled down to her hatchback's temperamental engine turning over.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/us/texas-abortion-ban-invs/index.html


A Louisiana clinic struggles to absorb the surge created by Texas’ new abortion law

October 7, 2021
Sarah McCammon, Lauren_Hodges, Jonaki Mehta

The day before a federal judge blocked enforcement of Texas' restrictive new abortion law, the parking lot of Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, La., was filled with Texas license plates. Women held the door open as the line spilled out onto the sidewalk and into the grass.

"I drove 6 hours and 58 minutes," said M. from Corpus Christi, who didn't want to give her full name for privacy reasons. "I got here at 8:55 a.m. this morning. So I have not ate, we can't bring in anything to drink. My boyfriend's in the car asleep."

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/07/1044045564/a-louisiana-clinic-struggles-to-absorb-the-surge-created-by-texas-new-abortion-l


With Abortion Largely Banned in Texas, an Oklahoma Clinic Is Inundated

The new law prohibits abortions after about six weeks, a very early stage of pregnancy. Many women are now traveling out of state for the procedure.

Sabrina Tavernise
Sept. 26, 2021

OKLAHOMA CITY — On a windy Tuesday morning, the parking lot outside a small brick building on the Southside of Oklahoma City was filling up fast. The first to arrive, a red truck shortly before 8 a.m., was from Texas. So was the second and the third.

The building houses one of Oklahoma’s four abortion clinics, and at least two-thirds of its scheduled patients now come from Texas. So many, in fact, that it is trying to hire more staff members and doctors to keep up. The increase is the result of a new law in Texas banning abortions after about six weeks, a very early stage of pregnancy. As soon as the measure took effect this month, Texans started traveling elsewhere, and Oklahoma, close to Dallas, has become a major destination.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/us/oklahoma-abortion.html