USA – Fifteen-Week Abortion Bans Are No Compromise The GOP is haggling over when to ban abortion. So are some Democrats.

By Irin Carmon
Oct 5, 2023

The mainline anti-abortion movement has a problem it thinks a 15-week abortion ban can solve. Accomplishing its cherished dream of overturning Roe v. Wade has come at a cost. Many Republicans are squirming away from the anti-abortion cause as politically toxic, to the point that presidential front-runner Donald Trump seems to think he can blow off the movement entirely. Meanwhile, right-wing activists are fretting that abortion is still too accessible, with patients circumventing state bans via interstate travel or abortion pills by mail. New Guttmacher data even suggest the absolute number of legal abortions went up in the first half of this year.

Continued: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/abortion-bans-15-week-debate-republicans-democrats.html

Why Do Conservatives Attack Abortion and Trans Rights in the Same Ways?

Sept. 21, 2023
By Jennifer Finney Boylan

We were at the sinks in the ladies room, the stranger and I, washing our hands, when a trans woman came out of a stall, looked in the mirror and sighed. After she left, the stranger turned to me and said: “Can you believe that? A man, in here!” She shook her head disapprovingly.

This was 20 years ago, but I’ve never forgotten that stranger’s disdain. It has stayed with me, because the moment called for me to respond to her with courage. What I delivered instead was cowardice.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/21/opinion/abortion-trans-rights-republicans.html

21.09.2023

American Academy of Pediatrics

Irin Carmon

Jennifer Finney Boylan

trans rights and abortion rights

transgender rights

USA – The Shared Anti-Trans and Anti-Abortion Playbook

Some of the very groups that pushed for abortion bans are now coming for trans health care.

By Irin Carmon
Apr 4, 2023

A self-described whistleblower touting her progressive bona fides, claiming patients are being harmed by rapacious medical providers with no regard for informed consent or side effects. A cadre of former patients stating their regret, claiming the existing research on side effects and outcomes is doctored or misrepresented. Conservative legislators swooping in to purportedly protect these patients from themselves or from greedy doctors, lingering on whatever graphic details they can get their hands on. Centrists, and some liberals, wondering aloud if the strident defense of this health care may be political poison for Democrats, and anyway, surely there’s a middle ground to which only the truly reasonable and unemotional folks can lead us. In the meantime, people who can’t afford to get on a plane to a less hostile state are trapped unless grassroots funds come through, and even helping someone get care can put you in the crosshairs. All of this describes Abby Johnson…

Continued: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/04/anti-trans-anti-abortion-activism-playbook.html

The Future of Abortions in America. An access map.

by Irin Carmon, Maps by Marcus Peabody
May 23, 2022

The legal right to abortion is likely to disappear in half the country in a matter of weeks. Abortion itself, and the need for it, will not, and never has. The question is what it will cost medically, financially — and criminally.

In his leaked draft opinion demolishing Roe v. Wade, expected to be finalized in June, Justice Samuel Alito said abortion’s legality is not “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions.” Abortion’s reality unquestionably is. “The historical record clearly shows that generations of women desired and needed abortions, and neither law nor church nor taboo could stop them,” Leslie Reagan writes in her definitive history, When Abortion Was a Crime. She quotes a doctor’s letter from 1888: “I am sure there is no comparison between the number of abortions committed by doctors and the number committed by women themselves,” he wrote. “They talk about such matters commonly and impart information unsparingly.”

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/future-abortion-access-map.html

The Right-Wing Divisions Over Texas’s Abortion Law

SEPT. 16, 2021
By Irin Carmon and Benjamin Hart

Though Texas’s strict new abortion rule seemed like a blueprint for its red-state brethren, the path forward is a bit more complicated.

I spoke with senior writer Irin Carmon about why the law is dividing some conservatives — and why all the anti-abortion factions might wind up satisfied in the end.

Continued: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/the-right-wing-divisions-over-texass-abortion-law.html

USA – The Next Big Abortion Case Comes Down to John Roberts

The Next Big Abortion Case Comes Down to John Roberts

By Irin Carmon, The Intelligencer
Feb. 28, 2020

Almost four years ago, I sat on a cable-news set waiting for the Supreme Court to hand down a ruling on a Texas abortion law that, reputable medical organizations agreed, amounted to a bogus justification for shutting down abortion clinics. The live feed was trained on candidate Hillary Clinton’s Cincinnati rally, featuring Elizabeth Warren, who had just endorsed her.

Alike in blonde bobs and jewel tones, if not much else, the two raised their clasped hands to the sky in a show of party unity and the hint of an all-female ticket, or at least a future in which reproductive autonomy, along with everything else, didn’t depend on the whims of a tiny number of white men. The particular man we were waiting on that day was Justice Anthony Kennedy. Minutes later, the networks cut away to announce that his vote in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt would keep the clinics open, ruling that the Texas law placed an unconstitutional burden on women.

Continued: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/john-roberts-choice.html