Georgia Supreme Court Allows Six-Week Abortion Ban to Remain in Effect as Legal Challenge Continues

October 24, 2023
ACLU
Case: SisterSong v. State of Georgia / Affiliate: ACLU of Georgia

ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court issued a ruling today that allows H.B. 481, a ban on abortion after approximately six weeks of pregnancy, to remain in effect. The court’s majority opinion disregards long-standing precedent that a law violating either the state or federal Constitution at the time of its enactment is void from the start under the Georgia Constitution. Georgia’s ban was blatantly unconstitutional when enacted in 2019 against the backdrop of Roe v. Wade and almost five decades of federal precedent, and therefore unenforceable, as the trial court found. But today’s ruling reversing the lower court’s decision concludes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe last year effectively erased that history.

Continued: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/georgia-supreme-court-allows-six-week-abortion-ban-to-remain-in-effect-as-legal-challenge-continues


Republicans Want to Control Your Pregnancy, Not Just Your Abortion

Nearly 1,400 prosecutions of pregnant people occurred in the 16 years leading up to Dobbs in 2022, a new Pregnancy Justice report finds.

10/9/2023
by TALLULAH COSTA, Ms. Magazine

The war on reproductive justice wages on, and the right to a safe and healthy pregnancy hangs in the balance—according to a new report “The Rise of Pregnancy Criminalization,” by Pregnancy Justice, an organization dedicated to defending “the civil and human rights of pregnant people,” and guided by a reproductive justice framework. Analyzing data from 2006 to 2022, the report offers the first and only comprehensive study of the criminalization of people for their actions while pregnant during the Roe era.

The report shows an alarming rise in pregnancy criminalization, increasing three-fold over the past 16 years. The states where fetuses are recognized as people under criminal law, as decided by state supreme courts, are also the states with the most striking data for prosecutions of pregnancy. Just five Southern states are largely responsible for this increase in arrests: Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Mississippi.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/10/09/pregnancy-jail-prison-arrest-women/


USA – The 10 Most Urgent Lessons Reproductive Justice Activists Have Learned for You This Year

Actually, this fight is about so much more than abortion.

BY HANNAH CHUBB, CHRISTEN A. JOHNSON AND ERIKA W. SMITH
JUN 21, 2023

We’re not going to lie and say that abortion access in America is in great shape. But we can tell you not to despair. Thanks to the hard work of activists and community organizers who have been agitating tirelessly throughout the past year, we’ve seen reproductive justice victories both big and small across our country.

Six states—Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Ohio, South Carolina, and Wyoming—have blocked would-be abortion bans. Michigan, Minnesota, and several other states have enacted stronger abortion protections at the state level. Even in the 14 states where the procedure is now completely prohibited, abortion advocates haven’t given up—and they’re seeing more people join the effort than ever before.

Continued: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a44107481/abortion-activists-lessons/


Dorothy Roberts on reproductive justice: ‘Abortion isn’t the only focus’

The scholar discusses why the movement needs to bring reproductive justice out of the margins and into the center

Marian Jones
Sun 28 Aug 2022

For many women of color, the right to control one’s reproductive destiny has always been about much more than the right to abortion.

With the recent loss of the constitutional right to abortion in the US, some reproductive rights advocates are calling for a renewed focus on reproductive justice, a concept developed in the early 1990s by women of color. Reproductive justice stresses not just the right to abortion, but also economic, racial and environmental justice, along with other facets of social equality, as critical to true reproductive freedom.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/28/reproductive-freedom-abortion-rights-dorothy-roberts-interview


To Be Pro-Choice, You Must Have the Privilege of Having Choices

April 11, 2022
By Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective

As a queer woman who grew up in North Carolina, I learned at an early age that my Blackness could be a source of great joy — but it could also pose a threat to my safety and autonomy.

In middle school, white boys laid their hands on me without my consent when I sharpened my pencil. To travel through town, I had to pass a building dedicated to Senator Jesse Helms, a champion of modern-day anti-abortion laws. It was all a daily reminder of the tight grip that whiteness had on my full liberation. I did not consent to that either.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/opinion/abortion-black-brown-women.html


Mexico – Free Abortion Across Borders

Following Mexico’s Supreme Court ruling to decriminalize abortion, feminists in the country continue to help people access care. Their work can serve as a model for US activists navigating the limits of state health services.

BY ZOÉ VANGELDER
FEBRUARY 4, 2022

This story originally appeared in Dissent on Oct. 13, 2021, and is shared with permission via the Progressive International’s Wire.

Crystal, an abortion acompañante from Mexico, has a green bandana attached to her backpack that signals her involvement in the marea verde, the “green wave” of reproductive rights activism gaining momentum throughout Latin America. In her bag she carries pamphlets from the Tijuana Safe Abortion Network and Las Bloodys, the feminist collective she helped found. Designed to fold up into a neat rectangle that slips discreetly into a back pocket, the pamphlets provide details for how to self-administer an abortion safely, avoiding legal and medical risks.

Crystal clarified that aborto libre didn’t just mean free of charge; it also means free as in liberated, free from stigma, free from medicalized control and legal restrictions, free for pregnant people to make the best decision for themselves.

Continued: https://therealnews.com/free-abortion-across-borders


Linking Voter Suppression and Abortion Restrictions: “If We Lose Voting Rights, We Lose Women’s Rights”

A combination of legal restrictions on voting and abortion, physical violence and intimidation tactics have emerged again during a time of renewed challenges to white male supremacy.

5/7/2021
by CARRIE N. BAKER

In the first four months of 2021, Republican lawmakers introduced over 360 bills to restrict voting rights and 536 bills to restrict abortion rights. The defeat of Donald Trump, and Biden’s attempts to dismantle Trump’s white supremacist agenda, have inspired a fevered campaign by state-level Republican lawmakers of voter suppression and abortion restrictions. While at first glance these efforts might appear to be unrelated, they are deeply connected, says Smith College professor Loretta Ross.

“The right-wing has an intersectional agenda. Their whole plan is to maintain a white majority by whatever means possible. So that requires them to try to socially engineer white women into having more babies and to restrict voting rights and immigrant rights,” Ross told Ms.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2021/05/07/voter-suppression-abortion-restrictions-womens-rights/


SCOTUS Issued a Blow to Abortion Pills by Mail, But Advocates Aren’t Giving Up

Reproductive justice activists are urging Biden to back access to abortion pills after a setback from the Supreme Court.

BY Amy Littlefield, Truthout
January 22, 2021

There has been a quiet revolution in access to abortion pills in the United States over the past six months — and whether it continues depends on the new Biden-Harris administration.

Last July, a federal court suspended a rule that requires patients to go to a health center in person to pick up mifepristone, the first pill in a two-step process for medication abortion. The court sided with SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, allowing providers to mail mifepristone during the COVID-19 pandemic. But on January 12, the Supreme Court reinstated the rules, leaving in doubt the future of a landscape which advocates like Elisa Wells, co-founder of the medication abortion advocacy group Plan C, had rapidly begun to put in place.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/scotus-issued-a-blow-to-abortion-pills-by-mail-but-advocates-arent-giving-up/


Supreme Court Grants Trump Administration Request to Endanger Abortion Patients During the Pandemic

In its First Abortion Decision Since Justice Barrett’s Confirmation, the Court Allowed the Trump Administration to Subject Abortion Patients to Needless Covid-19 Risk

JANUARY 12, 2021
American Civil Liberties Union

WASHINGTON — In its first ruling on abortion with Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the bench, the Supreme Court today reinstated a federal policy that requires patients seeking a medication used for early abortion care to incur unnecessary COVID-19 risks by traveling to a health center for the sole purpose of picking up a pill and signing a form.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy requires patients seeking mifepristone to pick up the pill in person at a hospital, clinic, or medical office, even when the patient has already been evaluated by a clinician using telehealth or at a prior in-person visit and will be receiving no medical services at the time. During the pandemic, this travel exposes patients to needless COVID-19 risks relating to transportation, childcare, and other interpersonal contact. With today’s decision from the Supreme Court, the in-person pill pick-up requirement will go back into effect immediately.

Continued:  https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/supreme-court-grants-trump-administration-request-endanger-abortion-patients-during


USA – Telemedicine abortion is here to stay

By Carrie N. Baker

Published: 12/23/2020

The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming many aspects of our lives, and
abortion is no exception. Telemedicine is expanding access to abortion health
care in ways that are likely to persist long after the pandemic is over.

Telemedicine abortion combines medication abortion — which uses pills to end a
pregnancy — and telemedicine — which allows health providers to supervise the
use of abortion pills via videoconferencing or telephone consultations.

Continued: https://www.gazettenet.com/Baker-column-37937013