Prosecuted for a miscarriage: Ohio demonstrates the ghoulishness of post-Roe America

Post-Roe politics are turning every pregnancy into a potential crime scene

Dec. 21, 2023
By Andrea Grimes

Give birth, die trying, or go to jail.

To the anti-abortion politicians and lobbyists who got their wish when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, these have always been the only acceptable pregnancy outcomes. Ideally, they’d like a country full of meek, compliant (and mostly white) women whose sole mission in life is to have children. But since pregnancy is dangerous, it’s unavoidable that a number of those women will die in the process — especially in the United States, where our maternal mortality rates (particularly for Black and brown people) are already exceptionally high, and rising. That’s too bad, of course, but for anti-abortion forces it’s better than the alternative: Women who think we have the right to make our own decisions about when, where and whether to carry a pregnancy to term.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ohio-woman-miscarriage-case-brittany-watts-rcna130511

Abortion Legal Assistance Network Launched: ‘A Strong Defense Against Bullies’

A new alliance of reproductive rights groups aims to “help those involved with abortion care navigate [a] confusing and hostile legal landscape and to provide a strong defense against bullies.”

2/22/2023
by CARRIE N. BAKER, Ms. Magazine

Six leading reproductive rights organizations announced on Feb. 22 the formation of a new Abortion Defense Network to connect people facing legal threats related to abortion with attorneys who can provide legal advice and representation in civil and criminal proceedings.

“The overturning of Roe v. Wade has unleashed nonstop legal chaos and confusion,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Abortion providers, doctors and even family members of people seeking abortion care are unsure what they might be prosecuted for. Many states have conflicting and overlapping abortion bans that make it nearly impossible to know what is legal and what is not. People are worried they may be prosecuted even for helping someone find abortion services across state lines.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/02/22/abortion-defense-lawyer-courts-assistance/

Learning to Self-Manage Abortions Is Key in a Post-“Roe” Society

As we head into 2023, we face the collective challenge of working to normalize knowledge of self-managed abortions.

By Kelly Hayes , TRUTHOUT
December 31, 2022

For many of us, the fall of Roe v. Wade was one of the most devastating events of 2022. When Politico published a leaked draft of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I was deeply rattled. My intellectual awareness that such an outcome was likely, given the Republican’s seizure of the Supreme Court, had not prepared me emotionally for the sight of those hateful, arcane words. Like many people, I was overwhelmed by the impulse to do something useful. So, I trained to become an abortion doula, which means that, in addition to my work as a writer, organizer and podcaster, I also provide various forms of support to people who are seeking to end pregnancies. Through that work, and my coverage of abortion rights on “Movement Memos,” I have built relationships with some great people who are working to help folks around the country access abortions. About six months out from the fall of Roe, we all agree about one thing: We desperately need to normalize knowledge of self-managed abortion.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/learning-to-self-manage-abortions-is-key-in-a-post-roe-society/

A Mexican network is smuggling abortion drugs to American women

By David Shortell, CNN
Wed July 13, 2022

Mexico City (CNN) One day late last month, as new abortion restrictions began taking shape in US states, three Mexican women quietly crossed into the country at different points along the border, dozens of abortion-inducing pills hidden in their belongings.

The medication, an FDA-approved two-drug combination, had traveled across the interior of Mexico in the previous days, handled by an underground network of some 30 organizations in the country.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/13/americas/mexican-network-abortion-drugs-usa-intl/index.html

How Mexican feminists are helping Americans get abortions

Latin
American groups are sharing their abortion access models with US activists in
as Roe v Wade stands to be overturned

Cecilia Nowell
Fri 10 Jun 2022

In late January, nearly 70 abortion rights activists from across Mexico
gathered in a city along the US-Mexico border. For three days, they huddled in
hotel conference rooms, video chatting with activists in the US, who had been
unable to travel due to Covid-19 and an Arctic cold front. Together, they
strategized how to support Americans as abortion restrictions proliferated
across the US.

“It was three days of very, very, very, very cold outside, but very, very warm
inside,” Verónica Cruz Sánchez, director of Las Libres, a feminist organization
based in Guanajuato, Mexico, said.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/mexico-abortion-access-americans

The FDA made mail-order abortion pills legal. Access is still a nightmare.

Restrictive states have already set their sights on a new wave of telehealth companies that were supposed to be a panacea for a post-Roe world.

By Julia Craven
Mar 29, 2022

When Emma found out she was pregnant in February, it was too late for an in-clinic abortion.

She estimated that she was at six weeks, but Texas, a bastion of retrograde abortion policy, bans the procedure at roughly that mark, so any local options were out of the question. Her local Planned Parenthood told her to prepare to travel out of state and offered to connect her with a clinic. Emma, who takes medication that makes her cycle irregular, wanted an ultrasound to confirm her recollection of the gestation age. But the clinic didn’t have an appointment for the next two weeks.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22968993/abortion-pills-mail-medication-fda-texas

How State Abortion Bans Could Create New Criminals

As more states introduce laws that restrict abortion rights and the future of “Roe v. Wade” remains uncertain, the threat of overcriminalization and mass incarceration looms.

BY BOBBIE STEIN
OCTOBER 22, 2021

The elimination of cash bail, the decriminalization of drugs and petty theft offenses, and sentencing reform have recently shifted the criminal justice landscape throughout the United States. Nonetheless, a new threat of over-prosecution and incarceration looms large in the, perhaps, unexpected realm of reproductive rights.

According to Planned Parenthood, nearly 600 abortion restrictions have been introduced in state legislatures this year alone—and more than ninety have become law. While some of these laws do include criminal penalties, all of them make getting an abortion nearly impossible for most people and they set the stage for broader, more restrictive laws in the future.

continued: https://progressive.org/latest/abortion-bans-create-new-criminals-stein-211022/

Criminal convictions for abortion, miscarriage? Texas abortion ban previews life without Roe v. Wade

Defense attorneys say there’s a history of criminal convictions over abortion, miscarriage and stillbirth that will only be exacerbated if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Barbara Rodriguez
September 2, 2021

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this week not to block a Texas law that bans most abortions raises questions about the future of Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling guaranteeing the right to an abortion. And it worries criminal defense attorneys, who have been sounding the alarm on the legal ramifications of restricting reproductive rights.

Their warning: If the 1973 ruling is overturned, far more people will face criminal charges, including pregnant people seeking abortions and those who help them access them — even people who inadvertently end a pregnancy.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2021/09/criminal-convictions-abortion-miscarriage-texas-abortion-ban/

If You’re Jailed for Having an Abortion, This Fund Will Help With Bail

The Repro Legal Defense Fund is a new initiative that will support people who are investigated, arrested, or prosecuted for self-managed abortions.

Jun 9, 2021

Rafa Kidvai, Rewire

Since 2000, dozens of people have been unjustly accused of a crime for ending
their own pregnancy—that is, self-managing abortion outside of a clinical
setting—or for helping a loved one do so. And those are just the cases we know
of to date.

As lawyers and advocates for reproductive justice who fight attacks on
self-managed abortion, we’ve tracked these unjust investigations, arrests, and
prosecutions across the United States, both in localities where self-managed
abortion is explicitly criminalized and in places where police and prosecutors
have manipulated laws to target people.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2021/06/09/we-need-bail-funds-for-abortion-now-heres-why/

09.06.2021

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USA – Feminist Multi-Front Battle to End FDA’s Abortion Pill Restriction

Feminist Multi-Front Battle to End FDA’s Abortion Pill Restriction

5/20/2020
by Carrie N. Baker

Feminists have been fighting a defensive battle to protect abortion rights for years—but today some are taking the offense, pushing to expand abortion access by calling for the removal of FDA restriction on the abortion pill mifepristone.

Formerly known as RU-486, mifepristone ends pregnancy by blocking the effects of the hormone progesterone, which sustains pregnancy. Used in combination with another drug—misoprostol, which causes contractions to complete an abortion—mifepristone is extremely safe.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2020/05/20/feminist-multi-front-battle-to-end-fdas-abortion-pill-restriction/