Activists Are Trying to Ban Abortion Pills in Blue States, Forcing Patients to Face Protesters

"If the New York clinics are backed up and you need an abortion, you’re not going to feel like you have access," a law professor told Jezebel.

By Susan Rinkunas
Dec 12, 2022

People in blue states might recognize the threat of Congress passing a nationwide abortion ban under a Republican president in, say, 2025—but two recent under-the-radar actions on abortion pills underscore that no zipcode is safe from Republicans post-Roe v. Wade.

In November, anti-abortion activists filed a lawsuit asking the federal courts to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, the first drug used in a medication abortion. Days later, a different group filed a citizen petition with the FDA in which it weaponized environmental regulations to argue that patients need to bag up the products of conception and return them to abortion providers to dispose of as medical waste.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/activists-are-trying-to-ban-abortion-pills-in-blue-stat-1849883923

Will the world abort women’s rights after death of Roe v. Wade?

BY ELLEN WULFHORST, THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION
Nov 24, 2022

PATTAYA CITY, THAILAND – Women and girls around the world will suffer a knock-on effect from the U.S. decision to roll back abortion rights, experts say, predicting a global clampdown on hard-won female freedoms.

From access to abortion to voting rights, equal pay to equal status, women from Africa to Asia to Europe are expected to feel the fallout of the U.S. decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/11/24/world/women-rights-abortion/

BY ELLEN WULFHORST, THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION
Nov 24, 2022

From access to abortion to voting rights, equal pay to equal status, women from Africa to Asia to Europe are expected to feel the fallout of the U.S. decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/11/24/world/women-rights-abortion/

Abortion Bans Skirt a Medical Reality: For Many Teens, Childbirth Is a Dangerous Undertaking

Oct 9, 2022
Sarah Varney, Kaiser Health News

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Maryanna’s eyes widened as the waitress delivered dessert, a plate-sized chocolate chip cookie topped with hot fudge and ice cream.

Sitting in a booth at a Cheddar’s in Little Rock, Maryanna, 16, wasn’t sure of the last time she’d been to a sit-down restaurant. With two children — a daughter she birthed at 14 and a 4-month-old son — and sharing rent with her mother and sister for a cramped apartment with a dwindling number of working lights, Maryanna rarely got out, let alone to devour a Cheddar’s Legendary Monster Cookie.

Continued: https://www.physiciansweekly.com/abortion-bans-skirt-a-medical-reality-for-many-teens-childbirth-is-a-dangerous-undertaking/

Old Anti-abortion Laws Are Taking on Unintended Meanings

Even where the words remain the same, a shifting political culture has changed the impact of suddenly revived statutes.

By Daniel K. Williams
SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

Abortion opponents seem not to have expected some of the more draconian consequences of the Dobbs decision—that anti-abortion laws would prevent pregnant women who were not seeking abortions from receiving needed treatment for miscarriages, or that women facing dire medical complications from their pregnancies would not be able to get proper care. After all, the anti-abortion laws that were in force in the pre-Roe era before 1973 were almost never used to prosecute doctors treating miscarriages or providing lifesaving care to women, and all of the anti-abortion laws that went into effect this summer (including the one enacted in Indiana in August) specifically allow abortions in cases where they are necessary to save a pregnant person’s life. A National Review article published in late July insisted that no current state anti-abortion law prevents the treatment of miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/abortion-laws-pre-roe/671409/

20.09.2022

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Human Life Amendment

Mary Ziegler

National Right to Life Committee

pre-Roe abortion bans

pre-Roe laws

prosecuting doctors for abortion

They lost pregnancies for unclear reasons. Then they were prosecuted.

Experts say drug use is rarely the cause of miscarriage or still birth, but prosecution of women who test positive for drugs still happens — and could get more common in the wake of the Dobbs decision

By Cary Aspinwall, Brianna Bailey and Amy Yurkanin, Washington Post
September 1, 2022

Some were already mothers, excited about having another baby. Others were upset or frightened to find themselves pregnant. All tested positive for drugs. And when these women lost their pregnancies, each ended up in jail.

More than 50 women have been prosecuted for child neglect or manslaughter in the United States since 1999 because they tested positive for drug use after a miscarriage or stillbirth, according to an investigation by the Marshall Project, the Frontier and AL.com that was co-edited and published in partnership with The Washington Post.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/01/prosecutions-drugs-miscarriages-meth-stillbirths/

USA – Why Freedom of Speech Is the Next Abortion Fight

A legal battle in Mississippi will test whether states can criminalize those who merely provide information.

By Yascha Mounk
AUGUST 22, 2022

In the middle of July, three big blue billboards went up in and around Jackson, Mississippi. pregnant? you still have a choice, they informed passing motorists, inviting them to visit mayday.health to learn more. Anybody who did landed on a website that provides information about at-home abortion pills and ways to get them delivered anywhere in the United States—including parts of the country, such as Mississippi, where abortions are now illegal under most circumstances.

A few days ago, the founders of the nonprofit that paid for the billboard ads, Mayday Health, received a subpoena from the office of the attorney general of Mississippi. (The state has already been at the center of recent debates about abortion: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, upheld a Mississippi statute by allowing states to put strict limits on abortion.) The subpoena, which I have seen, demands a trove of documents about Mayday Health and its activities. It may be the first step in an effort to force Mayday Health to take down the billboards, or even to prosecute the organization’s leaders for aiding and abetting criminal conduct.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/freedom-speech-mississippi-abortion-rights/671202/

22.08.2022

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USA – The latest social media misinformation: Abortion reversal pills

After Dobbs, platforms’ uneven moderation approaches let an unproven “treatment” to reverse a medication abortion spread.

By REBECCA KERN and RUTH READER
08/20/2022

Social media companies are grappling with a flood of misinformation on an unexpected topic since Roe v. Wade was overturned: Posts promoting “abortion reversal pills.”

The dangerous and unproven treatment is being touted as a way for a pregnant person to halt a medication abortion before it can take effect. And while claims about these pills have existed on social media for years, they’re now skyrocketing — and getting a lot more traction with users.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/20/abortion-misinformation-social-media-00052645

USA – The Harshest Abortion Restrictions Are Yet to Come

The pro-life movement is now focused on three major strategies at the state level.

By David S. Cohen, Greer Donley, and Rachel Rebouché - The Atlantic
JULY 11, 2022

The Dobbs decision will forever change many people’s lives. But it also sparked a legal revolution that is just beginning. State by state, the movement that fought to overturn Roe v. Wade is now fighting for even more extreme measures.

This means that the harshest restrictions on abortion are yet to come. As the anti-abortion movement works toward its goal of a nationwide abortion ban, we can expect it to pursue three major legal strategies now that Roe has been overruled.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/pro-life-legal-strategies-abortion/661517/

11.07.2022

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David S. Cohen

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USA – Who and what is behind abortion ban trigger law bills? Two groups laid the groundwork

July 8, 2022
Ximena Bustillo

For two decades, abortion rights opponents have drafted so-called model legislation and lobbied to get the measures to restrict and ban abortions passed in statehouses across the country in preparation for the eventual fall of Roe v. Wade.

The model legislation and concerted political pressure from national organizations that oppose abortion rights resulted in key terms being cemented into laws, the limitation of abortion access and the influence behind the trigger laws that will go into effect in 13 states this summer as a result of the Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn Roe.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110299496/trigger-laws-13-states-two-groups-laid-groundwork

08.07.2022

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Americans United for Life

National Right to Life Committee

Pain Capable Unborn Child Act

US conservatives vow harsh restrictions to curtail abortion pills

Discreet and available by mail, abortion-inducing pills could make conservative abortion bans challenging to enforce.

By Brian Osgood
1 Jul 2022

The US Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that enshrined the legal right to abortion in the United States in federal law, reversing nearly 50 years of precedent and inflaming a sharp ideological divide.

The ruling last week was the result of decades of relentless organising by conservative anti-abortion rights groups in the US, which are now setting their sights on the fight to shape the post-Roe landscape.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/1/conservatives-seek-restrictive-measures-to-penalize-abortion-pills