USA – ‘No one’s coming to save us’: Abortion campaigns scramble for limited cash

From deep-red Arkansas and Missouri to purple Arizona and Nevada, activists are already competing with each other.

By MEGAN MESSERLY and ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
02/19/2024

Abortion rights could be on the ballot in nearly a quarter of states this November, raising concerns among supporters about the ability to fund major campaign efforts in all of them.

From deep-red Arkansas and Missouri to purple Arizona and Nevada, activists are already competing with each other for a limited pool of cash and auditioning for the national progressive groups they need to fund their efforts to enshrine protections in state constitutions.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/19/abortion-access-map-funding-00141436


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


Biden’s Support For Israel Is Fracturing The Reproductive Rights Movement

Reproductive justice workers believe Biden is contributing to a maternal and reproductive health crisis in Gaza. They’re deeply frustrated with him and the big reproductive rights groups that are backing him.

By Alanna Vagianos
Feb 16, 2024

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris celebrated what would have been the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade in late January — their first campaign event of 2024. The “Restore Roe” rally in northern Virginia made it clear that the Biden/Harris ticket will center abortion rights in the reelection campaign. The theater was filled with the president’s supporters and leadership from national reproductive rights organizations who have endorsed him, including Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women and Reproductive Freedom for All.

Only a few minutes into Biden’s speech, several protesters interrupted, calling for a cease-fire in Israel’s U.S.-backed military operation in Gaza, which has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians and set off a maternal and reproductive health crisis.

Continued: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-israel-support-fractures-reproductive-rights-movement_n_65ce3765e4b04daca6961613


State governments looking to protect health-related data as it’s used in abortion battle

State governments across the U.S. are adopting or considering laws that would block the sale of personal health data or information about who visits sensitive sites such as sexual health facilities

By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press
February 16, 2024

Some state governments and federal regulators were already moving to keep individuals' reproductive health information private when a U.S. senator’s report last week offered a new jolt, describing how cellphone location data was used to send millions of anti-abortion ads to people who visited Planned Parenthood offices.

Federal law bars medical providers from sharing health data without a patient’s consent but doesn’t prevent digital tech companies from tracking menstrual cycles or an individual’s location and selling it to data brokers. Legislation for federal bans have never gained momentum, largely because of opposition from the tech industry.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/state-governments-protect-health-related-data-abortion-battle-107313291


USA – Abortion exceptions “have no meaning at all” — and estimates of pregnancies by rape prove it

A new report estimates 65,000 pregnancies by rape in abortion-ban states, underscoring the fallacy of these laws

By NICOLE KARLIS
JANUARY 26, 2024

For years, Dr. Samuel Dickman was an abortion provider in Texas. Currently, he works as the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood in Montana. But in both states, he’s had patients who have spontaneously revealed that they were pregnant as a result of rape.

Dickman and his colleagues thought if some people are revealing this to their abortion providers, without being prompted, there have to be more who aren’t because they understandably don’t feel comfortable doing so. Moreover, what was happening to pregnant survivors of rape in states with abortion bans?

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2024/01/26/abortion-exceptions-have-no-meaning-at-all-and-estimates-of-pregnancies-by-rape-prove-it/


USA – No One’s Access to Abortion Is Guaranteed — No Matter Where You Live

Living in a “blue state” does not guarantee the availability of abortion care to everyone who needs it.
By Renee Bracey Sherman & Regina Mahone , TRUTHOUT

January 26, 2024

Last year, travelers to the Oakland airport were greeted by a billboard touting the availability of abortion in California paid for by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The billboard was one of many in a 2022 campaign highlighting the state government’s new website for people seeking abortions, with the majority of billboards erected on California’s dime in states that had banned abortion following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Some of the billboards, like one in Texas, featured an image of a white woman wearing a white dress in handcuffs beside the words, “Texas doesn’t own your body. You do.” (The irony is that California does prosecute women for stillbirth and other pregnancy outcomes.)

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/no-ones-access-to-abortion-is-guaranteed-no-matter-where-you-live/


Democrats condemn ‘cruel’ abortion bans ahead of 51st anniversary of Roe

‘Extreme’ Republican-backed bans have caused untold ‘suffering’ for women, senators say, and vow to restore federal abortion rights

Jessica Glenza
Wed 17 Jan 2024

Senate Democrats underscored their commitment to abortion rights in a press conference on Wednesday, ahead of the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade. The now-overturned supreme court case provided American women with a constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 years.

Experts at the briefing described Republican-backed abortion bans across the country as “cruel”, “extreme” and causing untold “suffering” for American women, thousands of whom are forced to travel across state lines for abortions or be forced to remain pregnant.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/17/democrats-restore-abortion-rights-roe-v-wade-2024-election


Arizona court weighs 1864 abortion ban that risks ‘conditions of misery’

After months of disarray over the legality of abortion, the state supreme court will decide whether to reinstate ‘zombie’ ban

Carter Sherman
Tue 12 Dec 2023

Dr Gabrielle Goodrick can barely bring herself to talk about the weeks when Arizona banned abortion.

In the months after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, abortion flickered in and out of legality in Arizona as state courts attempted to interpret a long-dormant 19th-century abortion ban that was suddenly relevant again. Goodrick, a longtime abortion provider in Phoenix, was forced to cancel patients’ appointments, then desperately try to reschedule them during the brief period of time when the procedure became legal again. Patients sometimes showed up at the clinic for their appointment, were turned away, and sobbed outside the clinic. Stressed-out staffers quit, but given all the uncertainty, Goodrick couldn’t hire new ones. She had to keep going with too few employees.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/12/arizona-abortion-ban-supreme-court


The choice: a rural mother and abortion care on the Washington-Idaho border

Even in places where abortion is legal, the inaccessibility of the procedure elsewhere can seep over state lines by Katia Riddle in Clarkston, Washington

Fri 24 Nov 2023

As she walks in the door on a recent afternoon to relieve her parents of caring for her five-month-old daughter, Jasmine feels a familiar pang of guilt.

Jasmine*, 28, is a single mother raising four kids in a small town in far eastern Washington, near the border of Idaho. Her partner of more than a decade – and father of her children – is incarcerated for an assault charge that she brought against him.

Without her parents stepping in to help, she’d struggle to hold down her job at a factory. But she knows it’s hard on them.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/24/accessing-abortion-clinics-washington-idaho


USA – Abortion rights groups seek ballot measures in 9 more states in 2024

Despite an unbroken winning streak since Roe v. Wade was overturned, some of the efforts to enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions face substantial challenges.

Nov. 22, 2023
By Adam Edelman

Seeking to extend their unbroken winning streak, abortion rights supporters are already deeply entrenched in efforts in at least nine states to put the issue on the ballot in 2024. Groups have begun collecting signatures to let voters in these states decide on similar initiatives.

The latest victory for the movement was in Ohio, where voters enshrined abortion rights in the constitution of the Republican-leaning state.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/abortion-rights-groups-seek-ballot-measures-9-states-2024-rcna125177