USA – Their Hospital Didn’t Offer Abortions Pills in the ER. These Doctors Changed That.

Offering patients medication abortion when they need care has been a game changer at two California hospitals.

JAN 10, 2023
GARNET HENDERSON

When Dr. Andrea Henkel was training at Stanford Health Care, a patient visited the emergency room twice in one week for vomiting associated with early pregnancy. The patient said she didn’t plan on continuing the pregnancy and had an appointment for an abortion the next week.

“She was clearly miserable from a pregnancy that she didn’t want,” Henkel, a complex family planning specialist, said. “I wondered why we couldn’t just initiate her abortion via pills while she was in the emergency department—we already knew her gestational age and medical history, and she was certain on her decision.”

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2023/01/10/their-hospital-didnt-offer-abortions-pills-in-the-er-these-doctors-changed-that/


As Supreme Court Prepares to Rule on Roe, Illinois Once Again Ground Zero for Abortion Access

Could it mean the return of the Jane Collective for a new era?

DePaul’s Center for Journalism Integrity and Excellence
June 1, 2022

When Maggie Olivia found herself in a Missouri doctor’s office in the wake of a positive pregnancy test, she didn’t mirror her doctor’s enthusiasm. She remembers being in a new relationship and not in a position to financially support a child.

“I was crying … It was really upsetting.” Olivia said. “My doctor at the time was like, ‘Congratulations, mom.’ They gave me a little gift bag with prenatal vitamins …”

Continued: https://news.wttw.com/2022/06/01/supreme-court-prepares-rule-roe-illinois-once-again-ground-zero-abortion-access


Roe Is Dead. Long Live Roe?

The first state constitutional protection of reproductive rights hints at the contradictions and fears of a divided movement.

Judith Levine
March 14 2022

IF THE SUPREME COURT overturns Roe v. Wade, 26 states are “certain or likely to ban abortion,” according to the Guttmacher Institute. In December, the court heard arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, addressing Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act banning abortion after 15 weeks’ pregnancy. The law is a deliberate violation of Roe, the 1973 ruling legalizing abortion. Most observers expect the conservative majority to rule in Mississippi’s favor. In that case abortion law would revert to the states, where in vast red swaths of this nation it has been so slashed and shredded that it’s already practically confetti.

Continued: https://theintercept.com/2022/03/14/abortion-roe-wade-vermont-human-right/


What they don’t say about emergency contraception in the Philippines

Written by Marga Buenaventura
Nov 29, 2021

It’s hard having a uterus in the Philippines. Nine years have passed since the country formally enacted the Reproductive Health Act, giving hope to those in need of accessible contraception and responsible sexual education. But how has this landmark legislation actually improved the reproductive rights of Filipinos?

Despite the progressive contents of the RH Act, teenage pregnancy in the Philippines is the second highest in Southeast Asia, according to the Save the Children's 2019 Global Childhood Report. That means births to mothers aged 10 to 19 years old reached 180,000 in 2019, or 495 births per day.

Continued: https://cnnphilippines.com/life/culture/Health/2021/11/29/what-they-don-t-say-about-emergency-contraception-in-the-Philippines.html


When these women needed abortion care, they turned to Colorado

Nearby states have enacted abortion restrictions. But Colorado is still a ‘safe haven.’

BY: JULIA FENNELL
NOVEMBER 5, 2021

With states like Texas imposing abortion restrictions, and concern that more will follow, a greater number of out-of-state women are coming to Colorado to seek abortions.

Historically, women have come from all over the country to Colorado, which is sometimes called a “safe haven“ for abortion, to get abortion care.

Continued: https://coloradonewsline.com/2021/11/05/when-these-women-needed-abortion-care-they-turned-to-colorado/


USA – There’s a New Playbook for Securing Abortion Access

There’s a New Playbook for Securing Abortion Access
Recent wins suggest that we are more effective when we proudly proclaim our support for abortion access for all—and defend that position when the attacks come.

By Andrea Miller
Jan 22, 2020

Since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide 47 years ago today, anti-choice lawmakers have passed more than 1,200 legal restrictions on abortion at the state level, each more manipulative and deceptive than the last. Anti-abortion extremists have been hailed as master strategists for their focus on seating anti-abortion ideologues in state legislatures across the country. From 2010 to 2017, Republican control of state legislatures grew from 14 states to 32; during those years alone, anti-choice lawmakers passed more than 400 restrictions on abortion. Anti-abortion hysteria reached a fever pitch in 2019, as states across the South and Midwest passed abortion bans, including six-week bans in Georgia and Ohio and a total ban on abortion in Alabama and the far right—from Donald Trump down to state legislators—adopted a strategy of lies to buoy their extreme agenda.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/abortion-democrats-roe-anniversary/


USA – These States Have More Abortion Clinics Today Than They Did a Decade Ago

These States Have More Abortion Clinics Today Than They Did a Decade Ago
Even as Republican-dominated legislatures passed laws designed to shut down clinics from coast to coast, some states saw an uptick in abortion clinics.

Dec 23, 2019
Alys Brooks

In a decade in which dozens of abortion clinics were shut down by medically unnecessary state laws, around 14 states—mostly in the Northeast and West—have seen an increase in clinics, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute.

While the latest Guttmacher data is from 2017, other research, including a recent Abortion Care Network report focusing on independent clinics, indicates that clinics continue to close at an alarming rate. These closures include abortion clinics in states with Democratic-majority legislatures, like Whole Woman’s Health in Illinois, which closed in June, the same month Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed a landmark pro-choice law.

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2019/12/23/these-states-have-more-abortion-clinics-today-than-they-did-a-decade-ago/


USA – Fetal Personhood Is Maternal Punishment

Fetal Personhood Is Maternal Punishment
When society values the life of a fetus over that of a living person, women pay the steepest price.

By Katha Pollitt
Dec 2, 2019

We often talk about abortion as if it’s a thing unto itself. If we connect it to anything, it’s usually to sex education, contraception, and other contested ways of preventing unwanted births.

What gets much less attention is the removal of everyday rights from willingly pregnant women. For opponents of abortion, who grant personhood to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses, it’s not a stretch to go from saying “You have to have that baby” to “You have to produce a healthy baby, therefore your wishes, needs, and constitutional rights are of no account.” Moreover, if anything goes wrong, they’re going to assume it’s your fault alone.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/abortion-csection-birth/


New Illinois Abortion Clinic Anticipates Post-Roe World

New Illinois Abortion Clinic Anticipates Post-Roe World
A regional clinic across the river from Missouri reflects how both sides of the abortion divide are looking toward a landscape in which some states might ban abortions outright.

by Sabrina Tavernise
Oct. 22, 2019

FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill. — When it opens just across the river from St. Louis this week, the new Planned Parenthood clinic in Illinois will be one of the largest abortion clinics in the Midwest, set up to serve around 11,000 women a year with various health services, double the capacity of the clinic it is replacing.

Its size says as much about the future as the present: With the Supreme Court’s shift to the right, activists on both sides of the abortion divide are adjusting their strategy, anticipating that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that extended federal protections to abortion, might eventually be overturned and that some states would jump at the chance to ban abortions.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/us/missouri-illinois-planned-parenthood.html


Why a NY woman came to Colorado for a 32-week abortion

Why a NY woman came to Colorado for a 32-week abortion
Forty-three states place some restrictions on abortions after a certain point in pregnancy, but Colorado isn’t one of them

By Anna Staver, The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: October 13, 2019

In the spring of 2016, Erika Christensen and her husband walked past a tall, wooden fence that obscured the Boulder office of Dr. Warren Hern from the street and into his waiting room.

Printed signs taped to bulletproof glass told her all electronic devices — even cellphones — were prohibited and asked her to tell someone on staff if she needed to leave for any reason. The only items she could carry through the door were a printed book, her identification card and a check for $10,000.

Continued: https://www.denverpost.com/2019/10/13/late-abortion-women-2020/