USA – The Long Campaign to Turn Birth Control Into the New Abortion

Now that the fall of Roe v. Wade has ended the constitutional right to abortion, many in the religious right have a new goal: undermining trust in, and limiting access to, hormonal contraception – including the pill.

October 8, 2022

When the Supreme Court’s decision undoing Roe v. Wade came down in June, anti-abortion groups were jubilant – but far from satisfied. Many in the movement have a new target: hormonal birth control. It seems contradictory; doesn’t preventing unwanted pregnancies also prevent abortions? But anti-abortion groups don’t see it that way. They claim that hormonal contraceptives like IUDs and the pill can actually cause abortions.

One prominent group making this claim is Students for Life of America, whose president has said she wants contraceptives like IUDs and birth control pills to be illegal. The fast-growing group has built a social media campaign spreading the false idea that hormonal birth control is an abortifacient. Reveal’s Amy Mostafa teams up with UC Berkeley journalism and law students to dig into the world of young anti-abortion influencers and how medical misinformation gains traction on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, with far-reaching consequences.  

Continued: https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-long-campaign-to-turn-birth-control-into-the-new-abortion/


USA – The next frontier for the antiabortion movement: A nationwide ban

Advocates and some GOP lawmakers have started mobilizing around potential federal legislation to outlaw abortion after six weeks of pregnancy

By Caroline Kitchener
May 2, 2022

Leading antiabortion groups and their allies in Congress have been meeting behind the scenes to plan a national strategy that would kick in if the Supreme Court rolls back abortion rights this summer, including a push for a strict nationwide ban on the procedure if Republicans retake power in Washington.

The effort, activists say, is designed to bring a fight that has been playing out largely in the courts and state legislatures to the national political stage — rallying conservatives around the issue in the midterms and pressuring potential 2024 GOP presidential candidates to take a stand.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/02/abortion-ban-roe-supreme-court-mississippi/


USA – Both sides on abortion certain Barrett would restrict, if not overturn, landmark court decision

By Seung Min Kim
Oct. 8, 2020

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett heads into her confirmation hearings next week with a detailed record that has led many liberals and conservatives to believe she would support restricting, if not outright overturning, the landmark decision that guarantees a woman’s right to an abortion.

But as her nomination fight unfurls in an increasingly heated election season, top Republicans — from President Trump to individual senators — appear to be playing down the impact Barrett’s confirmation would have on the fate of abortion rights in the United States.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-court-trump-barrett/2020/10/08/a82f4ace-0973-11eb-a166-dc429b380d10_story.html


How anti-abortion activists use cutting edge science to justify ever stricter laws

How anti-abortion activists use cutting edge science to justify ever stricter laws
As neonatal science advances, anti-abortion activists are looking to these new techniques to push for more restrictions

Jessica Glenza
Fri 13 Jul 2018

Dr Edward Bell treats the tiniest babies at University of Iowa children’s hospital, pre-term infants who weigh one pound or less, and whose chances of survival are minute.

One of his pet projects is tracking the smallest in the world, which sometimes attracts attention from abortion opponents. But the visitors he received in August 2016 still surprised him.

Joni Ernst, the fiercely anti-abortion Republican US senator from Iowa, sent her staffers to interview Bell. Of interest was an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which reignited debate about whether infants as young as 22 weeks old may survive if aggressively treated.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/13/how-anti-abortion-activists-use-cutting-edge-science-to-justify-ever-stricter-laws