‘A generational struggle’: abortion rights pioneer offers insights to the post-Roe US

Merle Hoffman opened an abortion center two years before 1973’s Roe decision; after its fall, she takes stock of the fight for abortion in the US

Ramon Antonio Vargas
Sun 24 Dec 2023

The battle to bring back the federal right to abortion in the US hinges on much more than just the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, and winning will require proponents to be as organized and steadfast as their opponents, at least as one of the reproductive freedom movement’s most veteran voices sees it.

Invoking scenes that played out all across the country after the supreme court’s Dobbs decision eliminated nationwide abortion rights, Merle Hoffman recently said: “It looks like thousands of people marching in the streets all over the country … [But] you can’t just do one action.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/24/merle-hoffman-abortion-rights-pioneer-post-roe-united-states

24.12.2023

Interviews/Podcasts

Merle Hoffman

post-Roe America

Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights

Overturning Roe Has Been a Horror Show

Medical nightmares are happening before our eyes, and even as Americans in red and blue states express support for abortion rights, the GOP seems determined to crack down further.

BY MOLLY JONG-FAST
DECEMBER 18, 2023

The moment Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, I knew Roe’s days were numbered. Sometime in 2019, a conservative friend texted me that Donald Trump was saving Amy Coney Barrett for when RBG dies. Sure enough, Trump tapped Coney Barrett shortly after trailblazing justice’s death…

With nearly 50 years of precedent wiped away, and an existing constitutional right to an abortion eliminated, I worried about all the cruel and chaotic scenarios that could play out, such as doctors being afraid to treat miscarriages. One of the reasons Roe was decided so broadly in 1973 was because doctors found themselves hamstrung by existing legislation, more worried about losing their medical licenses than their patients.

Continued; https://www.vanityfair.com/news/roe-gop-abortion-restrictions

USA – Desperate abortion foes resort to new tactics while pregnant people find ways to thwart them

BY ROBIN ABCARIAN, COLUMNIST
DEC. 18, 2022

Illegal abortion is back, and — dare I say? — it’s better than ever. Did our ultraconservative Supreme Court, so out of step with 21st century America, really think that overturning nearly 50 years of legal precedent would end elective abortion in America?

Sure, sure, they returned the issue to the states, the reddest of which immediately banned the procedure, even when a pregnancy results from rape or incest or the fetus has medical issues incompatible with life.

Continued: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-12-18/illegal-abortion-pills-ban-medication-abortion

The Post-Roe Abortion Underground

A multigenerational network of activists is getting abortion pills across the Mexican border to Americans.

By Stephania Taladrid
October 10, 2022

The handoff was planned for late afternoon on a weekday, at an underused trailhead in a Texas park. The young woman carrying the pills, whom I’ll call Anna, arrived in advance of the designated time, as was her habit, to throw off anyone who might try to use her license plates to trace her identity. She felt slightly absurd in her disguise—sun hat, oversized sunglasses, plain black mask. But the pills in her pocket were used to induce abortions, and in Texas, her home state, their distribution now required such subterfuge, along with burner phones and the encrypted messaging app Signal. Since late June, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas and thirteen other states had effectively banned abortion, and more were sure to follow. In some of the states, laws that originated as far back as the nineteenth century had been restored. Providing the tools for an abortion in Texas had become a felony that could lead to years in prison, and a fellow-citizen could sue Anna and collect upward of ten thousand dollars for every abortion she was found to abet.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/17/the-post-roe-abortion-underground

Forced Parenthood and Failing Safety Nets: This Is Life in Post-Roe America

The states with the strictest abortion laws are doing the least to help poor families. What could possibly go wrong?
Abby Vesoulis
August 29, 2022

Melissa Kearse, a 38-year-old single mother of five, has never had an abortion. She never wanted one. “I come from a very religious background,” she explains, “where my-body-my-choice is not necessarily my body and my choice.”

But in her home state of Georgia, any choice she did have was stripped away by the state’s conservative legislature, which in 2019 passed a trigger ban on abortion after six weeks gestation that took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this past June. Though Kearse is personally opposed to having an abortion, she is exasperated by Georgia’s call to meddle in this decision, particularly as someone who has struggled to provide for her family and been repeatedly let down by the state’s social welfare programs. “I don’t feel comfortable with somebody telling me what I can and cannot do if you’re not helping me provide,” she says. “If I got pregnant again, I would drown.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/08/abortion-bans-states-social-safety-net-dobbs/

The Fall Of Roe v. Wade Is Going To Hurt You In Ways You Can’t Foresee

Neha Sharma
Aug 26, 2022

As a family medicine doctor with a focus on reproductive health, including abortion care, I have been fighting against this outcome for years, and I’ve already seen a steadily increasing stream of patients who have needed to fly for compassionate abortion care. I’m lucky to live and work in New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul recently signed several laws further codifying and protecting abortion access. Connecticut was the first to pass similar protections, and states like California and Massachusetts are working on legislation. But this is a stark contrast to what Americans in other parts of the country are facing, even though access to high-quality, evidence-based health care should not be based on where you live.

So let’s explore what’s coming next, thanks to the fall of Roe: worsening health care disparities, higher maternal mortality rates, criminalization of pregnant people and their doctors, lack of medical care for people experiencing pregnancy complications, attacks on routine medical care for people who can become pregnant, and broad assaults on human rights currently in place for marginalized groups.

https://thenetionalnews.com/the-fall-of-roe-v-wade-is-going-to-hurt-you-in-ways-you-cant-foresee/

USA – The Coming Rise of Abortion as a Crime

In places where abortion is now illegal, a range of pregnancy losses could be subject to state scrutiny.
By Melissa Jeltsen
JULY 1, 2022

Before last week, women attempting to have their pregnancies terminated in states hostile to abortion rights already faced a litany of obstacles: lengthy drives, waiting periods, mandated counseling, throngs of volatile protesters. Now they face a new reality. Although much is still unknown about how abortion bans will be enforced, we have arrived at a time when abortions—and even other pregnancy losses—might be investigated as potential crimes. In many states across post-Roe America, expect to see women treated like criminals.

On Friday, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending abortion as a constitutional right. Nearly half of U.S. states either are in the process of implementing trigger bans—which were set up to outlaw abortions quickly after Roe was overturned—or seem likely to soon severely curtail abortion access. Reproductive-rights experts told me that in the near future, they expect to see more criminal investigations and arrests of women who induce their own abortions, as well as those who lose pregnancies through miscarriage and stillbirth.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/07/roe-illegal-abortions-pregnancy-termination-state-crime/661420/

‘I got in the car and he blindfolded me. I was willing to risk death’: five women on abortions before Roe

If the supreme court reverses the federal right to abortion, some Americans will no longer have access to the procedure. Five women speak of their experience in pre-Roe v Wade era

Candice Pires and Clare Considine
Thu 16 Jun 2022

If the supreme court reverses the federal right to abortion, some Americans will no longer have access to the procedure. Five women speak of their experience in pre-Roe v Wade era.

Roe v Wade, the landmark US supreme court decision that has given Americans abortion rights since 22 January 1973, was set to turn 50 next year. This June, as the supreme court approaches summer recess, it looks likely to release a decision that means the critical precedent will never reach its landmark birthday.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/16/five-women-on-abortions-before-roe-v-wade

16.06.2022

Grandmothers for Reproductive Rights

Kelli Wescott McCannell

post-Roe America

women's abortion stories

A Post-Roe America

We look at what abortion access would look like.

By David Leonhardt
June 6, 2022

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, more than 20 states — home to roughly half the country’s population — are likely to outlaw nearly all abortions. For women living in Mississippi, the closest place to receive a legal abortion might then be Illinois.

Yet the number of abortions performed in the U.S. would fall by much less than half, experts predict. One widely cited analysis, from Caitlin Myers of Middlebury College, estimates that the decline in legal abortions will be about 13 percent. The number of all abortions — including illegal abortions, like those using medications sent by mail to places with bans — will probably decline by even less.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/06/briefing/roe-v-wade-abortion-access-america.html

What the brewing interstate travel wars over abortion portend

Opinion by Mary Ziegler
Mon May 23, 2022

(CNN) The Supreme Court seems ready to undo Roe v. Wade, the landmark case recognizing the right to choose abortion, in a matter of weeks, and blue as well as red states are already preparing for what might be coming next: a conflict between states seeking to facilitate out-of-state travel for abortion and those trying to shut it down.

Strikingly, however, this brewing interstate war would be something relatively new. What has changed to make interstate conflict a possible new front in the abortion wars, and what does it mean for a post-Roe America?

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/23/opinions/anti-abortion-movement-geography-ziegler/index.html