USA – “In the end we will win”: The faces of the fight for abortion rights

The Supreme Court’s decision to end federal protections for abortion access didn’t just rewind the clock 50 years, it opened a Pandora’s box of confusing, potentially life-threatening legal complications. VF talks with five women on the front lines.

BY ABIGAIL TRACY AND ERIN VANDERHOOF
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DIANA MARKOSIAN AND DRU DONOVAN
OCTOBER 12, 2022

Tattooed on Caitlin Bernard’s left foot is the image of a coat hanger and the words “Trust Women.” The 38-year-old Indiana-based ob-gyn got it years ago; it was intended as a reminder of life before Roe v. Wade. Bernard has long paired her medical career with advocacy. She was a plaintiff in an unsuccessful 2019 American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit to reverse Indiana’s near-total ban on second-trimester abortions. Post-Roe, Indiana became the first state to pass an abortion ban. Now, Bernard is girding for another legal fight—this time against Republican Indiana attorney general Todd Rokita, who she says maligned her practice as Bernard became a lightning rod in one of the most publicized cases after the Dobbs decision stripped federal abortion protections and turned the country into a patchwork of disparate laws.

Continued: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/10/the-fight-for-abortion-rights

USA – What a Roberts compromise on abortion could look like

It’s a longshot, but court watchers are closely eyeing the chief justice for middle ground on Roe.

By JOSH GERSTEIN
06/19/2022

When the two sides in the abortion debate squared off at the Supreme Court last fall, they agreed on one thing: There was no middle ground.

Now, any hope abortion rights supporters have of avoiding a historic loss before the court lies with Chief Justice John Roberts crafting an unlikely compromise. In the wake of POLITICO’s report last month on a draft majority opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, Roberts would have to convince at least one of his five Republican-appointed colleagues to sign on to a compromise ruling that would preserve a federal constitutional right to abortion in some form while giving states even more power to restrict that right.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/19/john-roberts-compromise-abortion-supreme-court-00040720

‘Her Heart Was Beating Too’: The Women Who Died After Abortion Bans

Nov. 29, 2021
By Sarah Wildman

In 2012, Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old married dentist, appeared at Ireland’s University Hospital Galway in pain. She was 17 weeks pregnant and miscarrying. According to Dr. Halappanavar’s husband, hospital staff said that there was no saving the pregnancy, but they refused to intercede because her fetus still had a heartbeat. She was told her only option was to wait.

Dr. Halappanavar became feverish. By the time the fetal heartbeat faded away, she was in organ failure. Two and a half days later, she was dead.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/opinion/heartbeat-abortion-bans-savita-izabela.html

USA – Fetal Viability, Long an Abortion Dividing Line, Faces a Supreme Court Test

On Wednesday, the justices will hear the most important abortion case in decades, one that could undermine or overturn Roe v. Wade.

By Adam Liptak
Nov. 28, 2021

WASHINGTON — In 1973, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court drew a line. The Constitution, it said, did not allow states to ban abortions before the fetus could survive outside the womb.

On Wednesday, when the court hears the most important abortion case in a generation, a central question will be whether the court’s conservative majority is prepared to erase that line. The case concerns a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, long before fetal viability.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/28/us/politics/supreme-court-mississippi-abortion-law.html

USA – We can’t count on the Supreme Court to save abortion rights. We’ll have to do it ourselves

BY ROBIN ABCARIAN, COLUMNIST
OCT. 31, 2021

We have to face a disheartening fact: This country’s Supreme Court is no longer committed to protecting our constitutional rights.

The justices are believed to be on the verge of overturning Roe vs. Wade, or at least whittling it down to a meaningless stub by allowing brutally restrictive state abortion laws to stand.

Continued: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-10-31/abortion-rights-supreme-court

USA – Why Congress must abolish the most destructive abortion restriction ever passed

By KATHRYN KOLBERT AND JULIE F. KAY
JUNE 5, 2021

Three years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion in Roe vs. Wade in 1973, Congress made it significantly harder for low-income women to access the procedure by passing the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal Medicaid funding for abortions. It was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1980 — and remains in effect.

In our view it is the most destructive abortion restriction ever passed.

Continued: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-06-05/biden-hyde-amendment-budget-abortion

Missouri and the Fight for Abortion Rights: How Past Became Prologue

Missouri and the Fight for Abortion Rights: How Past Became Prologue
Missouri’s historic battle for abortion rights presaged in important ways where we are today, and what will be required of reproductive rights advocates in the future.

Aug 1, 2019
Angela Bonavoglia

The time, the late 1960s; the place, St. Louis, Missouri. Judy Widdicombe, a twenty-something self-described supermom, was raising two boys with her husband, working as a labor and delivery nurse in a Catholic hospital, and volunteering one night a week as a counselor on a suicide prevention hotline.

“In those days, there was no official place a woman with an unwanted pregnancy could go for help,” she told me when I interviewed her for my book, The Choices We Made: 25 Women and Men Speak Out About Abortion.

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2019/08/01/missouri-and-the-fight-for-abortion-rights-how-past-became-prologue/

01.08.2019

American Civil Liberties Union

Arlene Carmen

bomb threats

Clergy Consultation Service of Missouri

clinic picketing

Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion

Judson Memorial Church

Judy Widdicombe

Justice Blackmun

Kathryn Kolbert

manual vacuum aspiration

National Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion

peritonitis

Planned Parenthood Missouri

Planned Parenthood v. Casey

Pro-Life Action League

prosecuting women for abortion

Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region

Reverend Howard Moody

Roe v. Wade

self-induced abortion

self-managed abortion

septicemia

The Choices We Made: 25 Women and Men Speak Out About Abortion

undue burden standard

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services

The 3 Most Important Things You Can Do to Preserve Roe v. Wade

Prioritize these strategies.
By Kathryn Kolbert
Mar 23, 2017

The Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act underscores Republicans' virulent opposition to safe, legal abortion and contraception. Beyond cutting off Medicaid for millions of low-income Americans, the proposal specifically bars Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood clinics, one of the nation’s largest providers of birth control, cancer screenings, and mammograms for low-income women. And tax credits (which replace the existing subsidies to buy insurance) won't be available to pay for any insurance policy that includes coverage for abortion.

Continued at source: Cosmopolitan: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a9175037/abortion-roe-v-wade-activism-trump/

23.03.2017