Even Exceptions To Abortion Bans Pit A Mother’s Life Against Doctors’ Fears

By Maggie Koerth and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
JUN. 30, 2022

Layla Houshmand was eight weeks pregnant in the spring of 2021 when she woke up to find her field of vision smeared with a hazy sheen, like Vaseline rubbed on the lens of a camera. She was already worried about her own health. She’d spent the day before nursing herself through the pain of a migraine. But now the headache was worse and her vision was blurring and Houshmand was even more scared. Then the vomiting began. Nothing would stay down. During one 90-minute appointment with an ophthalmologist, she remembered vomiting 20 times.

Something was clearly going horribly wrong with Houshmand’s body. Her ophthalmologist suspected a stroke in her optic nerve and told her the condition can be caused by pregnancy, but Houshmand was stuck in a Catch-22: The pregnancy was now also preventing treatment. Doctors told her that she needed steroids and blood thinners and a specific type of MRI that could make sure there wasn’t something even more serious happening. But she couldn’t get any of those things because they could endanger her fetus.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/even-exceptions-to-abortion-bans-pit-a-mothers-life-against-doctors-fears/

Why so many abortion restrictions are working their way through state legislatures now

Anti-abortion lawmakers are trying a variety of approaches to limit access to the procedure — so that they are prepared to restrict access, no matter how the Supreme Court rules.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
March 7, 2022

Florida’s legislature passed a bill that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Idaho’s Senate approved a bill to block the procedure after six weeks, modeled after Texas’ law. Georgia’s Senate advanced legislation that prohibits using telemedicine for abortion medication. And in Kentucky, the state House voted to pass new restrictions on abortion providers that, if enacted, could effectively shut down clinics in the state.

Legislatures around the country are voting on a variety of abortion restrictions, many of them not in line with the protections that have existed since Roe v. Wade was decided 49 years ago. They’re doing so with an eye on the Supreme Court, set to rule in a case that is widely expected to give more power to states to add limits to the availability of abortion.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/03/why-abortion-restrictions-pushed-state-legislatures-dobbs/

USA – I Learned How to Do an Abortion on a Papaya

I Learned How to Do an Abortion on a Papaya
Papaya workshops have become a popular way to demystify and destigmatize abortion.

by Marie Solis
Jul 24 2019

“This is a 10-week gravid uterus,” Zoey Thill said, holding up a "pregnant" papaya the size of a large fist. “And this,” she added, gesturing to her own pregnant belly, “is a 38-week gravid uterus.”

Thill, a New York City-based abortion provider, was explaining the anatomy of the uterus to a group of about a dozen of us, in Verso Books’ Brooklyn office on a Monday night.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3k334w/how-to-do-an-abortion-with-manual-vacuum-aspiration-papaya-workshop