Post-Roe, anti-abortion groups target law protecting clinics from violence

The Face Act penalizes people for blockading and threatening abortion clinics. Anti-abortion activists want it repealed

Carter Sherman
Sat 16 Sep 2023

The inside of the abortion clinic was chaotic. Anti-abortion protesters lined the walls. A few had sat down on the clinic’s lime green chairs and draped themselves in chains. “Please inspire these parents to keep their babies!” one man shouted, before he started singing about the Virgin Mary. As some of the protesters sang and prayed loudly, the police officers crowded inside the clinic tried to urge them to move. They didn’t want to budge.

It was 22 October 2020, and one anti-abortion advocate was livestreaming a group of activists who were at the Washington DC-area clinic to, in their view, “rescue” people from having abortions. One redheaded young woman turned to the camera.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/16/face-act-anti-abortion-threaten-clinics

I Got an Illegal Abortion Before Roe v. Wade

She was 15 when she got an illegal abortion in a dirty Detroit warehouse. Now, she’s terrified others will experience something similar.

By Carter Sherman
April 7, 2022

Renee Chelian still doesn’t know who performed her abortion.

In 1966, Chelian was 15 years old and living in the Detroit area when she got pregnant. She had no idea what an abortion was, until her parents asked her if she wanted one. But Chelian soon underwent one—after being blindfolded and taken to a dirty warehouse crowded with women looking for illegal abortions.

Determined to keep pregnant people from facing the kind of uncertainty and danger she did, Chelian eventually become an abortion provider herself. She now runs three abortion clinics around Detroit.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgewz/illegal-abortion-roe-v-wade-michigan

States use coronavirus to ban abortions, leaving women desperate: ‘You can’t pause a pregnancy’

States use coronavirus to ban abortions, leaving women desperate: ‘You can’t pause a pregnancy’

Eight US states have worked to try and halt abortions entirely during the pandemic as clinics report a rise in demand

Jessica Glenza
Thu 30 Apr 2020

A woman in Texas was isolating with her family. She was frightened and carried a secret: she was eight weeks pregnant.

Even under normal circumstances, obtaining an abortion in Texas is described as “mostly impossible”. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, politicians in Texas and seven other states have worked to try to halt abortions entirely. They have undertaken costly lawsuits to restrict abortion in the name of health and safety, even as doctors lined up against them.

Continued https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/us-states-ban-abortions-coronavirus-leave-women-desperate

‘We should be terrified’: What Michigan women should know if abortion becomes illegal

'We should be terrified': What Michigan women should know if abortion becomes illegal
If the Supreme Court overturns the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, Michigan and other states could see a patchwork of abortion laws in the nation.

Kathleen Gray, Detroit Free Press
Aug. 8, 2019

Renee Chelian remembers keeping her head bowed and counting the pairs of shoes of the women sitting around her.

Chelian was 15 and too frightened to take in her surroundings or look at the faces of the many women who sat with her, waiting for an abortion at the Detroit warehouse where the floor was covered in grease stains, and folding chairs and card tables served as the only furniture.

Continued: https://www.freep.com/in-depth/news/politics/2019/08/08/abortion-illegal-michigan-roe-wade-overturned/1790907001/