The anti-abortion plan ready for Trump on Day One

The stakes of the election go far beyond whether a GOP president signs a bill banning the procedure.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
01/29/2024

Anti-abortion groups have not yet persuaded Donald Trump to commit to signing a national ban if he returns to the White House.

But, far from being deterred, those groups are designing a far-reaching anti-abortion agenda for the former president to implement as soon as he is in office. In emerging plans that involve everything from the EPA to the Federal Trade Commission to the Postal Service, nearly 100 anti-abortion and conservative groups are mapping out ways the next president can use the sprawling federal bureaucracy to curb abortion access.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/29/trump-abortion-ban-2024-campaign-00138417

USA – Abortion concerns once delayed a major religious freedom law. Now, they’re back in the spotlight

Do religious exercise rights protect access to abortion? Courts have been asked to decide

By Kelsey Dallask
Nov 25, 2023

On Sept. 18, 1992, the Senate Judiciary Committee and dozens of invited guests gathered to consider, among other things, the link between religious freedom and abortion.

The focus of the hearing was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a bill designed to restore religious exercise protections that recently had been severely limited by the Supreme Court.

Continued: https://www.deseret.com/2023/11/25/23960097/abortion-religious-freedom-restoration-act

USA – Anti-Abortion Groups Undeterred by Election Losses, Press On in Courts

Abortion opponents are seeking ways to work around voters and cancel out victories at the polls for reproductive rights.

By Rachana Pradhan , KFF HEALTHNEWS
November 23, 2023

Anti-abortion groups are firing off a warning shot for 2024: We’re not going anywhere.

Their leaders say they’re undeterred by recent election setbacks and plan to plow ahead on what they’ve done for years, including working through state legislatures, federal agencies, and federal courts to outlaw abortion. And at least one prominent anti-abortion group is calling on conservative states to make it harder for voters to enact ballot measures, a tactic Republican lawmakers attempted in Ohio before voters there enshrined the right to abortion in the state’s constitution.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/anti-abortion-groups-undeterred-by-election-losses-press-on-in-courts/

USA – Where does the fight to stop travel bans for abortion stand?

Nov. 13, 2023
By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press

A federal judge and the U.S. Department of Justice this week said that states are going too far by trying to block people from helping others cross state lines for abortion.

A ruling in Idaho and the federal government taking sides in an Alabama lawsuit are far from the final word, but they could offer clues on whether an emerging area of abortion regulation may eventfully hold up in court.

Continued: https://www.gulflive.com/news/2023/11/where-does-the-fight-to-stop-travel-bans-for-abortion-stand.html

13.11.2023

Commentary

abortion trafficking

abortion travel bans

anti-choice ordinances

Debora K. Grasham

Melissa Murray

National Right to Life Committee

Steve Marshall

travel bans on abortion

traveling for abortion

USA – Medical exceptions to abortion bans often exclude mental health conditions

Pregnant people were more likely to die from mental health conditions than any other cause, a CDC analysis found.

Nada Hassanein, Stateline
October 24, 2023

More than a dozen states now have near-total abortion bans following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, with limited medical exceptions meant to protect the patient’s health or life.

But among those states, only Alabama explicitly includes “serious mental illness” as an allowable exception. Meanwhile, 10 states with near-total abortion bans (Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming) explicitly exclude mental health conditions as legal exceptions, according to an analysis from KFF, a health policy research organization.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2023/10/medical-exceptions-abortion-bans-mental-health-conditions/

Confuse and mislead: US anti-abortion groups’ strategy to soften extreme bans

Critics decry ‘vague language and misinformation’ as Susan B Anthony claims US does not have true ‘bans’ since exceptions exist

Ava Sasani
Thu 13 Jul 2023

In the year since the US supreme court ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion, the anti-abortion movement is still struggling to define a cohesive vision of post-Roe America.

Now they are employing a new strategy: use confusing or misleading language to repackage and soften the more extreme types of abortion restrictions.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/13/anti-abortion-language-restrictions-bans-roe-v-wade

USA – The Abortion Battle Over Rising Deaths in Pregnant Women

BY KATHERINE FUNG
ON 3/24/23

A massive spike in U.S. maternal deaths has abortion-rights and anti-abortion groups debating the cause of the nation's most fatal odds for expectant mothers in more than half a century.

A new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week said that maternal mortality—deaths that take place during pregnancy or within 42 days after delivery—shot up by 40 percent in 2021. The figure reaffirms America's position as the most dangerous wealthy country to live in when pregnant or while giving birth.

Continued: https://www.newsweek.com/abortion-battle-over-rising-deaths-pregnant-women-1789982

The Latest Attack on the Abortion Pill Is Forty Years in the Making

If a Texas lawsuit prevails, mifepristone will no longer be available anywhere in the nation, even in states where abortion is legal.

By Sue Halpern, The New Yorker
March 9, 2023

In 1987, Ms. magazine asked me to write about RU-486, a new medication that caused the uterus to expel a fertilized egg before it could gestate. It wasn’t a contraceptive, but it wasn’t what most people considered an abortion, either. At the time, anti-abortion campaigners were brandishing ultrasound images that purported to show fetuses crying out in pain as they were being surgically removed. RU-486, which was developed in France but not yet available in the United States, threatened to stymie this tactic: there would be no fetal development to flaunt. Even the president of the National Right to Life Committee acknowledged that there was little P.R. value in images of what appeared to be menstruating women. This disarming of the pro-life movement, and the drug’s seemingly benign effect, I wrote, “may serve to decimate the ranks of abortion foes.” Étienne-Émile Baulieu, the primary developer of RU-486, which is better known as mifepristone, was even more hopeful. With this drug, he declared, abortion “should more or less disappear as a concept, as a fact, as a word in the future.”

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-latest-attack-on-the-abortion-pill-is-forty-years-in-the-making

USA – Most abortion bans include exceptions. In practice, few are granted

Jan. 21, 2023
By Amy Schoenfeld Walker, The New York Times

Last summer, a Mississippi woman sought an abortion after, she said, a friend had raped her. Her state prohibits most abortions but allows them for rape victims. Yet she could not find a doctor to provide one.

In September, an Indiana woman learned that a fetal defect meant her baby would die shortly after birth, if not sooner. Her state’s abortion ban included an exception for such cases, but she was referred to Illinois or Michigan.

Continued: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/most-abortion-bans-include-exceptions-in-practice-few-are-granted/

USA – The Fight Over Abortion Is Far From Over. Here’s What Will Happen in 2023.

2023 is going to be a big year for anti-abortion policy: Anti-abortion activists could even harness a 19th-century law to curtail talking about abortion.

By Carter Sherman
December 26, 2022

If this is the year that Roe v. Wade fell, 2023 will be the year that kicks off what promises to be a years-long, state-by-state brawl between Americans who believe abortion is essential to freedom and Americans who believe the procedure is murder.

Come January, state legislatures across the country will open for business. Conservative lawmakers will try to narrow the last few avenues to abortion available in red states. Abortion rights activists, buoyed by their victories in the midterms, will push for more ballot measures. Many of these legislative and political showdowns will likely end up in the courts.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkg9p7/abortion