Disabled Texans face more barriers to accessing abortion

Few organizations track the number of disabled individuals trying to access abortion, but abortion providers and groups that help assist Texans obtain out-of-state abortions say they are falling through the cracks.

BY NEELAM BOHRA, Texas Tribune
FEB. 20, 2024

When disabled Texans used to visit abortion clinics, staffers would remember them. They may have needed in-clinic accommodations or American Sign Language Interpreters, and they appeared infrequently. Still, they came.

But more than a year since performing abortions became illegal in the state of Texas, disabled people have become a “missing population” at the clinics still providing abortions out of state, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion provider.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/20/texas-abortion-disabled/

USA _ A Weekend at Abortion Camp Offers a Glimpse Into the Future of Abortion Access

In the year after Dobbs, the movement has been operating in triage mode, and Abortion Camp was conceived as a conclave where activists could come together to have honest conversations about their work and what they needed from each other.

REBECCA GRANT
Oct 26, 2023

On the wall in the gym at Abortion Camp hung a massive, colorful map of the United States festooned with index cards. Each card had the name, age, pronouns, astrological sign, and affiliation of each of the 50-or-so people who had traveled from across the country, and a few from overseas, to attend the event. As a kickoff activity, the campers had broken into small groups to fill out the cards and then placed them on the map to show where they were from.

Abortion Camp was held in early September at a hotel in the Pacific Northwest. The campers ranged in age from 19 to one woman in her 80s, and spanned professions and geographies. They were doctors, midwives, abortion fund workers, community organizers, nonprofit leaders, poets, digital security specialists, lawyers, clinic escorts, doulas, and researchers. Some attendees had known each other for years, while others were meeting for the first time. What they all shared was a commitment to keeping abortion accessible in the wake of the Dobbs decision.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/abortion-camp-activism-dobbs/

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/

Texas – Lawmakers hold press conference to unveil ‘Rosie’s Law’ abortion legislation

by Jessica Taylor
Mon, March 6th 2023

AUSTIN, Texas — A new bill is bringing abortion access and emergency contraception back into the spotlight. State Senator Sarah Eckhardt (D-Austin) is one of the lawmakers supporting the bill called Rosie’s Law.

Rosie’s Law is named after a McAllen, Texas mother who died from an unsafe abortion in 1977. Organizers say that Medicaid would not cover her care at her local clinic.

Continued: https://cbsaustin.com/newsletter-daily/lawmakers-hold-press-conference-to-unveil-rosies-law-abortion-legislation-texas-austin-medicaid-coverage-family-planning

This Mexican clinic is offering discreet abortions to Americans just over the border

August 31, 2022
LILLY QUIROZ, NPR

TIJUANA, Mexico — In the months since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Luisa García has noticed a sharp and striking trend: More Americans are seeking her clinic's services in Tijuana, Mexico.

García is the director of Profem Tijuana, where people can get abortions just a few steps across the San Ysidro border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/31/1119886629/abortion-mexico-roe-wade-ban-texas-supreme-court-border-tijuana

31.08.2022

Luisa Garcia

Profem Tijuana

Roe v. Wade

Texas Equal Access Fund

How to Support People in States Where Abortion Is Under Threat

Donating to national organizations is great. But these local reproductive health care services—in places under immediate threat—could use your help, too.

July 17, 2022

IT’S BEEN SEVERAL weeks since the US Supreme Court wiped out 50 years of established precedent of reproductive rights. The cultural analyses, personal narratives, and investigations that might best be described as horror stories have since predictably surfaced to the top of the news cycle.

For example, highlighting Texas as a model for what’s to come, several media outlets reported on a teen who found out she was pregnant with twins 48 hours before the Texas abortion ban. Also known as the scientifically inaccurate Texas Heartbeat Act, the ban took effect in September 2021. The teen wanted an abortion but couldn’t access one in her home state—a disastrous predicament that many women will soon face, or are now facing.

Continued: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-support-local-people-funds-abortion/

17.07.2022

Featured

abortion support networks

Hoosier Abortion Fund

Kansas Abortion Fund

Right By You

Tea Fund

Texas Equal Access Fund

As Oklahoma and Idaho enact abortion restrictions, Black women will suffer the most

BY AMIAH TAYLOR
April 13, 2022

On April 12, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill that makes it a felony—punishable by up to 10 years in prison—to perform an abortion, excluding cases where there is a high risk of pregnancy-related death. The bill is just the latest example of the steady rise in restrictive measures across the U.S. that limit women’s access to abortions, especially for Black women, who are five times more likely to have an abortion than their white counterparts.

“States that enact restrictions on abortion access are not interested in supporting families, but rather in controlling the reproductive lives of women and birthing people—especially Black women and other people of color,” said Kamyon Conner, executive director of Texas Equal Access (TEA) Fund, a reproductive justice nonprofit.

Continued: https://fortune.com/2022/04/13/state-abortion-restrictions-black-women-reproductive-maternal-care/

USA – We All Lost the Abortion War—It’s Time to Start Over

Republicans continue to rally behind false assertions and emotional pleas, while Democrats continue to backtrack rather than challenge anti-choice operations with the consequences of state intervention in every pregnancy.

BY KAITLIN BYRD
APR 13 2022

There is no political crisis for Lizelle Herrera. It is only days after the 26-year-old Texan was arrested on murder charges for her January miscarriage, and the national Democratic machine is silent. There’s no rapid response team churning out talking points; there’s no deluge of coverage on cable news; there’s no announcement or statement from the president of the United States on his disgust and dismay at the criminalization of this basic human experience and constitutionally protected right. Instead, for reproductive rights and abortion advocacy in particular, the politics of this moment feels like the beginning of the end. Continued: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a39716353/start-another-abortion-war-opinion/

Texas’s strict new abortion law has eluded multiple court challenges. Abortion rights advocates think they have a new path to get it blocked.

The new strategy is a response to attacks by antiabortion groups on organizations raising money to help low-income patients get access to abortions.

By Caroline Kitchener, Washington Post
March 21, 2022

The initial attacks came in court and on social media, when a group of antiabortion lawyers accused two Texas abortion rights groups of funding abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, the legal limit under Texas’s restrictive abortion ban. They filed official requests in court for more information on the abortions, then took to Twitter, warning that anyone who helped fund abortions through these two groups “could get sued.”

“The Lilith Fund and the Texas Equal Access Fund have admitted to paying for abortions in violation of the Texas Heartbeat Act,” said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, an antiabortion legal group, referring to abortions the groups helped to facilitate over a two-day period in October when a judge temporarily blocked the ban.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/21/texas-abortion-sb8

Texas – Abortion rights groups sue, saying ‘extremists’ are using the courts to target them

Courts asked to block any lawsuits resulting from information gathered in depositions of leaders of groups that fund abortions

By BeLynn Hollers
Mar 18, 2022

Two abortion rights groups — Texas Equal Access Fund and Lilith Fund — have together sued two organizations outside of Texas and two private individuals who they say are targeting them as they try to aid pregnant women after the passage of SB 8, the state law that bans abortions after around six weeks. The Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based nonprofit law firm, and America First Legal Foundation, a D.C.-based advocacy group, are the two organizations listed in the lawsuit. It also names Ashley Maxwell of Hood County and Sadie Weldon of Jack County as defendants. The two women filed petitions in January and February, seeking to depose leaders of the Texas Equal Access Fund and the Lilith Fund.

Continued: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/courts/2022/03/18/abortion-rights-groups-sue-saying-extremists-are-using-the-courts-to-target-them/