This Southern State Just Repealed Decades of Abortion Restrictions

This Southern State Just Repealed Decades of Abortion Restrictions
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is expected to sign a bill overturning several anti-abortion laws. That's good news for people across the South.

by Amelia Harnish
Feb 28 2020

When Rachel Scruggs, 25, found out she was pregnant last fall, she knew immediately she would need an abortion. Just weeks prior, she had extricated herself from an emotionally abusive relationship, and she already had a 5-year-old son to look after. Scruggs, who works as a waitress in Manassas, Virginia, took the day off and found a ride to the nearest abortion provider in Falls Church.

At her appointment, Scruggs learned she was seven weeks along, meaning she could have a medication abortion using the drug Mifeprex. Although major medical groups agree that medication abortion can be safely prescribed by midlevel providers like nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants and administered at home, Virginia law requires that a physician prescribe it and and FDA rules mandate that it be administered in the office.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/akwnq8/virginia-just-repealed-decades-of-abortion-laws


USA – There’s a New Playbook for Securing Abortion Access

There’s a New Playbook for Securing Abortion Access
Recent wins suggest that we are more effective when we proudly proclaim our support for abortion access for all—and defend that position when the attacks come.

By Andrea Miller
Jan 22, 2020

Since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide 47 years ago today, anti-choice lawmakers have passed more than 1,200 legal restrictions on abortion at the state level, each more manipulative and deceptive than the last. Anti-abortion extremists have been hailed as master strategists for their focus on seating anti-abortion ideologues in state legislatures across the country. From 2010 to 2017, Republican control of state legislatures grew from 14 states to 32; during those years alone, anti-choice lawmakers passed more than 400 restrictions on abortion. Anti-abortion hysteria reached a fever pitch in 2019, as states across the South and Midwest passed abortion bans, including six-week bans in Georgia and Ohio and a total ban on abortion in Alabama and the far right—from Donald Trump down to state legislators—adopted a strategy of lies to buoy their extreme agenda.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/abortion-democrats-roe-anniversary/