Trump Allies Plan New Sweeping Abortion Restrictions

His supporters are seeking to attack abortion rights and abortion access from a variety of angles should he regain the White House, including using a long-dormant law from 1873.

By Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias
Feb. 17, 2024

Allies of former President Donald J. Trump and officials who served in his administration are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban or the laws enacted in conservative states across the country.

Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from 1873, to criminalize the shipping of any materials used in an abortion — including abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions in America.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/us/politics/trump-allies-abortion-restrictions.html

The Contempt for Democracy Driving the Anti-Abortion Movement

As pro-choice advocates plan more statewide initiatives protecting abortion rights, opponents say victory lies in stopping citizens from voting on the issue directly.

JOAN WALSH
Dec 19, 2023

In the wake of major abortion-rights victories in Michigan and Ohio, where majorities of voters enshrined abortion rights in the state Constitutions, and in Kansas and Kentucky, where voters rejected efforts to remove or prevent abortion rights from being included in the state constitution, the anti-abortion movement is mounting an aggressive campaign against such vox populi measures. Steven Aden, the chief legal officer of the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life told Politico, “We don’t believe those rights should be subjected to majority vote.”

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/abortion-rights-state-constitutions/

USA – Conservatives move to keep abortion off the 2024 ballot

“We don’t believe those rights should be subjected to majority vote.”

by ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and MEGAN MESSERLY
12/18/2023

Conservatives are testing new tactics to keep abortion off the ballot following a series of high-profile defeats.

In Arizona, Florida, Nevada and other states, several anti-abortion groups are buying TV and digital ads, knocking on doors and holding events to persuade people against signing petitions to put the issue before voters in November.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/18/first-rule-of-the-anti-abortion-playbook-dont-let-the-public-vote-on-abortion-00132049

USA – Next frontier in the abortion wars: Your local CVS

The emerging strategy could further limit the Biden administration’s already limited policy.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and LAUREN GARDNER, Politico
01/11/2023

Fresh off winning their decades-long battle to overturn Roe v. Wade, abortion-rights opponents are pinpointing their next targets: the nation’s biggest pharmacy chains.

Anti-abortion advocates are organizing pickets outside CVS and Walgreens in early February in at least eight cities, including Washington, D.C., in response to the companies’ plans to take advantage of the Food and Drug Administration’s decision last week allowing retail pharmacies to stock and dispense abortion pills in states where they’re legal.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/11/pharmacies-anti-abortion-pills-00077349

USA – The next abortion fight could be over wastewater regulation

Abortion opponents plan to use environmental laws to curb access to pills used to terminate an early pregnancy

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
11/23/2022

Abortion opponents and their allies in elected office are seizing on an unusual strategy after suffering a wave of election defeats — using environmental laws to try to block the distribution of abortion pills.

The new approach comes as the pills mifepristone and misoprostol, which people can take at home during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S. and virtually the only option for millions of people in states with laws that have forced clinics to close since the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/23/abortion-pills-opponents-environmental-laws-00070603

Inside the plan to create an abortion refuge for a post-Roe era

Abortion providers in blue-state Illinois are laying the groundwork for an influx of patients from states poised to ban abortion if the Supreme Court overturns its landmark precedent

By Caroline Kitchener
March 28, 2022

FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill. — When the woman called Planned Parenthood to schedule her abortion, Alexandria Ball picked up the phone and explained exactly what would happen next.

Ball and her colleagues would book her bus ticket to Illinois.

They would put her up in a hotel.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/28/abortion-sanctuary-roe-v-wade/

In First, California Would Require Public Universities to Provide Abortion Pills

In First, California Would Require Public Universities to Provide Abortion Pills
The bill, if signed by the governor, would mark a new way of giving women access to abortion as conservative states tighten restrictions.

By Pam Belluck
Sept. 14, 2019

At a time when conservative states are sharply limiting abortion access, California signaled a new frontier in abortion-rights on Friday with the passage of legislation that would require all public universities in the state to provide medication abortion on campus.

The bill, which would use money raised from private donors to equip and train campus health centers, grew out of a student-led movement at the University of California, Berkeley, and it has sparked the introduction of a similar bill in Massachusetts.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/health/abortion-pills-california-universities.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage