USA – Purvi Patel and the case of the self-managed abortion

Prosecutors—with the help of doctors and nurses—are punishing pregnant people using laws intended to help them.

Feb 8, 2021
Imani Gandy

Purvi Patel was suffering from heavy vaginal bleeding when she walked into the St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in Mishawaka, Indiana. She insisted that the bleeding was not the result of pregnancy. After the doctors persisted, however, she admitted that she’d had a miscarriage, and, not knowing what to do, had placed the remains in a dumpster.

What came next is a cautionary tale about what can happen to Black and brown women when they face bias and betrayal by health-care workers who are supposed to help them, and the ways in which hospitals, which are supposed to be places of healing, can become carceral.

https://rewirenewsgroup.com/ablc/2021/02/08/purvi-patel-and-the-case-of-the-self-managed-abortion/

New York Woman Faces Up to Eight Years Behind Bars for Selling Abortion Pills Online

New York Woman Faces Up to Eight Years Behind Bars for Selling Abortion Pills Online
In February, FDA agents showed up at Ursula Wing’s door with an arrest warrant and seized her computer and phones, her daughter’s iPad, boxes of medication abortion pills, and a dozen packages that she was set to mail.

Aug 9, 2019
Imani Gandy

A New York City woman who sold medication abortion pills to more than 2,000 people over two years has been indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce. If convicted, she could face up to eight years in prison.

In 2012, the woman, Ursula Wing, posted on her blog the Macrobiotic Stoner about her experience terminating her pregnancy using pills that she had bought online. Four years later, she found herself running a business providing medication abortion pills to customers who needed them, including a teenager who was afraid to tell her parents that she was pregnant, and a woman who hid her abortion from her abusive partner.

Continued: https://rewire.news/ablc/2019/08/09/new-york-woman-faces-up-to-eight-years-behind-bars-for-selling-abortion-pills-online/

Life After Roe

Life After Roe
We need to be clear about what is at stake with the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

By Lynn M. Paltrow
Sept. 1, 2018

In the post-Roe v. Wade world described by opponents of legal abortion — one they imagine Brett Kavanaugh will bring into being if he is confirmed to the Supreme Court — abortions will be outlawed, but women won’t be arrested and they won’t be treated like criminals. According to this mythology, women were never arrested for having abortions before Roe, and therefore we can count on the same being true after the constitutional protection for abortion is overturned. This is the story they tell, but it is not true.

As the Senate begins confirmation hearings this week on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, it is especially important to refute the skewed vision presented by those who want to see Roe overturned. Let’s begin by looking at a pre-Roe arrest — and then at the way the legal system has dealt with women even with Roe as the law of the land.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/opinion/sunday/brett-kavanaugh-roe-abortion.html