3 key things Biden and Harris are missing in their election campaign on abortion

Can abortion alone secure Biden’s second term? The president is making it a centerpiece of his reelection bid, but activists want more.

By Annabel Rocha
January 26, 2024

The Biden-Harris Administration is making it clear that the backs of their bid for reelection is built on restoring Roe v. Wade, attempting to appeal to the 18% of voters who told NBC News that abortion was their top issue in the upcoming election in a Nov. 2023 survey.

Yesterday Biden issued an invitation to Texas mom Kate Cox to attend the State of Union Address in March. Cox made headlines after being forced to flee the state to seek abortion to terminate her life-threatening pregnancy, and is the first pregnant adult to sue for the right to have an abortion since Roe was enacted, according to the Texas Tribune.

Continued: https://www.reckon.news/news/2024/01/3-key-things-biden-and-harris-are-missing-in-their-election-campaign-on-abortion.html

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/

26.01.2024

Commentary

Chelsea Williams-Diggs

Gavin Newsom

New York Abortion Access Fund

The A Files: A Secret History of Abortion

How to Spot Abortion-Related Misinformation

Between pregnancy “crisis centers” and “abortion pill testing,” there's a lot of questionable info out there. Here's how to tell what's evidence-based and what's not.

Lux Alptraum
Oct 24, 2023

In mid-September, the New York Times Opinion section ran a piece with a shocking headline. “In Poland, Testing Women for Abortion Drugs Is a Reality. It Could Happen Here,” the paper breathlessly declared.

As I read the piece, I felt a shudder of panic go down my spine. For years, abortion advocates have been confidently assuring people that abortion pills cannot be detected in the system when they’re taken by mouth. An effective test for abortion pills could have terrifying ramifications—at a bare minimum, it could discourage people from seeking follow-up care after a self-managed abortion.

And yet, at the same, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right here. What was the scientific justification for developing such a test?

Continued: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-spot-abortion-misinformation/

Q&A: Renee Bracey Sherman on the history of abortion coverage

OCTOBER 11, 2023
By FEVEN MERID

In 2016, Renee Bracey Sherman founded We Testify, an organization that centers the stories of people who have abortions—particularly those from communities of color and those who face significant barriers to reproductive health resources—in the hopes of transforming the public discussion around the procedure. “Abortion is probably one of the most lied-about, misunderstood, misrepresented medical, political, personal, familial issues there is,” she told me recently.

Since she founded We Testify, Bracey Sherman has produced a documentary with Planned Parenthood and is now working on a book, Countering Abortionsplaining, with Regina Mahone, an editor at The Nation.

Continued: https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/qa_renee_bracey_sherman_abortion_archives.php

11.10.2023

Interviews/Podcasts

abortion stories

Alicia Gutierrez-Romine

Bronze Thrills magazine

Countering Abortionsplaining

women's abortion stories

United States

Activism

Human Rights

The FDA’s Abortion Announcement Is Not What You Think

The FDA just reinforced “abortion exceptionalism” in health care and added paternalistic busywork for pharmacists dispensing medication abortion.

By Renee Bracey Sherman, Dr. Daniel Grossman and Tracy Weitz
JANUARY 6, 2023

This week, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would allow mifepristone, the first pill taken in the two-drug medication abortion regimen, to be dispensed at retail pharmacies. The FDA’s decision is a welcome move that has garnered headlines, but the fine print contains significant red tape that will continue to serve as a barrier for people already struggling to access medical care.

Because of “abortion exceptionalism” allowing abortion care (and miscarriage management) to be treated differently from other health care, medication abortion has always been more regulated than it should be. When the FDA approved the drug in 2000, it did so under a little-known bureaucratic system known as the Risk Evaluation Mitigation Strategy (REMS). Drugs under REMS usually carry significant side effects or are highly addictive, neither of which is true for mifepristone. Under these restrictions, clinicians who provide medication abortion must register with the FDA and then dispense mifepristone directly to the patient. As Renee and Dr. Grossman wrote last year, this requirement has made it impossible for mifepristone to be available over the counter, or at the very least to be dispensed without unnecessary certifications, despite the fact that it’s safer than Tylenol.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/fda-medication-abortion-pharmacies/

06.01.2023

Commentary

Featured

abortion exceptionalism

Daniel Grossman

Food and Drug Administration

pharmacy abortion pills

REMS

Renee Bracey Sherman

Risk Evaluation Mitigation Strategy

‘We’re doubling down’: how abortion advocates are building on midterm wins

Pro-choice activists are focusing on expanding abortion access, voter registration and education, and shield laws for providers

Melody Schreiber
Wed 7 Dec 2022

Renee Bracey Sherman answers the phone and apologizes – is it OK if we speak while she drives? Like many abortion advocates, she tends to keep a packed schedule and talk at lightning speed – the next initiative, the next law, the next policy on the horizon. Ask advocates how they felt in June after the Dobbs decision sharply curtailed reproductive rights across the US, or in November after wins in the midterm elections signaled strong public support for abortion, and they’ll answer immediately: We knew this was coming; but the fight’s not over.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/07/abortion-supporters-building-midterm-wins

USA – For-Profit Abortion Telemedicine Start-Ups Are Proliferating in Wake of “Roe”

Garnet Henderson, Truthout
November 26, 2022

In 2020, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must suspend its requirement that patients pick up mifepristone, one of the pills used in medication abortion, in person. After some back-and-forth under the Trump administration, the FDA permanently repealed the rule, which had long been decried by medical experts as unnecessary, in 2021.

This opened the door for providers to send abortion pills by mail in all but the 19 states that outlaw provision of abortion via telemedicine. (Many of those same states now ban abortion entirely.) This regulation change, along with increased popular interest in abortion access following Roe’s overturn, has led to a proliferation of telemedicine companies offering abortion pills. Some of these companies are run by people with prior experience in abortion care and connections in the reproductive health, rights and justice movements; others are not. Regardless, some abortion access advocates are raising concerns about whether the rise of for-profit telemedicine companies is the best way to serve abortion seekers.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/for-profit-abortion-telemedicine-start-ups-are-proliferating-in-the-wake-of-roe/

Why did images of early pregnancy cause such a social media firestorm?

Most people don’t know what early pregnancy actually looks like. That complicates abortion discussions.

By LUX ALPTRAUM
Nov 3, 2022

When Jessica Valenti first decided to share photos of what an early pregnancy looks like on TikTok, she knew that the images would cause a stir. Since the official fall of Roe v. Wade, Valenti has become a devoted abortion rights commentator, offering daily updates about the current state of abortion rights through her newsletter, Abortion Every Day. Over the course of the project, Valenti has attracted her fair share of trolls and angry commentary — but none of it prepared her for the response to her TikTok on early pregnancy on October 19th.

She expected that she’d get some right-wing pushback — maybe some anti-abortion types who’d insist that if you zoomed in on the photos of amorphous pregnancy tissue, you’d actually get a glimpse of a tiny person. What she did not expect was how many people — many identifying as pro-choice — would flood her comments insisting that the photos she’d shared were fake, that they’d been digitally altered to look less human, and that she was spreading misinformation that would only hurt groups that support abortion rights.

Continued: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/3/23435111/early-pregnancy-abortion-tiktok-social-media-images

Opinion: The conflicts in a post-Roe America are just beginning

Fri October 28, 2022
CNN

More than four months after the Supreme
Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health overturned Roe v. Wade,
undoing nearly five decades of federally-guaranteed legal abortion access,
Americans across the country are still wrestling with the consequences of the
decision.

How are Americans learning to live in this widely anticipated, but still-unprecedented, reality? CNN Opinion asked experts to share their thoughts on what a post-Roe America means – for the midterm elections and far beyond them.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/28/opinions/abortion-post-roe-america-midterms-roundup

USA – The human threat to abortion seekers

Apps and data matter — but people are often a weaker link

By LUX ALPTRAUM
Oct 15, 2022

In the years before Roe v. Wade, an anonymous group of Chicago-area women known only as The Janes came together to provide safe, clandestine abortions to pregnant people in need. Over the course of several years, the group provided over 11,000 abortions. When they were finally busted by the police in 1972, it wasn’t because of police surveillance or the group’s anti-war activism or even their willingness to provide abortions to the pregnant family members of police officers. It was a family member of a Jane patient who tipped off the police.

“Some nosey bitch tried to snitch on someone who needed an abortion,” says Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and executive director of the abortion storytelling organization We Testify.

Continued: https://www.theverge.com/23385553/abortion-seekers-security-threats-human-factor