The Black Women Who Fought for Ohio’s Historic Abortion Win

Voters recently approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing access to abortion—thanks, in part, to the Ohio Women’s Alliance.

BY LARADA LEE-WALLACE
NOV 21, 2023

This year, on November 7, Ohio voters made history. In a statewide vote, constituents approved a constitutional amendment that will guarantee access to abortion and other reproductive health care, making it the seventh state in the nation where voters have protected abortion access since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, per the Associated Press. The victory came just a few months after a special election in which Ohio voters also rejected a Republican-backed measure that would’ve made changing the state’s constitution even more difficult—a move many believed was a deliberate attempt to derail the proposed amendment.

Continued: https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a45876130/ohio-abortion-rights-amendment-2023/

21.11.2023

Commentary

Abortion Fund of Ohio

Jordyn Close

Lexis Dotson-Dufault

Ohio ballot initiative

Ohio Women’s Alliance

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights

USA – Abortion Wins Elections for Democrats. What Should Advocates Demand in Return?

How can this popularity translate into political power for a movement that is not accustomed to making bold demands of its political leaders?

AMY LITTLEFIELD
Nov 20, 2023

If abortion were a 2024 presidential candidate, it would wipe the floor with Donald Trump. On November 7, abortion helped Democrats take back the Virginia House, keep the Kentucky governorship, and secure a Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat. In Ohio, 57 percent of voters approved enshrining abortion access in the state Constitution; it was the seventh time abortion has faced a direct vote since Dobbs and the seventh time it’s won.

Abortion wins. Abortion rights activists have known this. Voters have often chosen to defend abortion when they get a direct vote, including in red states. What’s changed is that Democrats have finally started treating abortion like an issue they can win on—and in the wake of Dobbs, they’re doing just that.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/abortion-democrats-elections/

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

A brief history of abortion – from ancient Egyptian herbs to fighting stigma today

September 21, 2023
Alisha Palmer

You might be forgiven for thinking of abortion as a particularly modern phenomenon. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that abortion has been a constant feature of social life for thousands of years. The history of abortion is often told as a legal one, yet abortion has continued regardless of, perhaps even in spite of, legal regulation.

The need to regulate fertility before or after sex has existed for as long as pregnancy has. The Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Ebers is often seen as some of the first written evidence of abortion practice.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-abortion-from-ancient-egyptian-herbs-to-fighting-stigma-today-213033

How a trial in Texas changed the story of abortion rights in America

August 9, 2023
By Sarah Varney

During the five decades that followed Roe v. Wade, lawsuit after lawsuit in states across the country chipped away at abortion rights. And again and again, the people who went to court to defend those rights were physicians who often spoke in clinical and abstract terms.

"The entirety of abortion rights history is a history of doctors appearing in court to represent their own interests and the interests of pregnant people," said Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin. But in July, in a Texas courtroom, the case for abortion was made by women themselves who had been denied abortions and sued the state to clarify the exceptions to its ban, which makes it illegal to perform an abortion unless a patient is facing death or "substantial impairment of a major bodily function."

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/08/09/1187378801/texas-abortion-law-trial-reproductive-rights

How Meta Created a Wild West for Abortion Misinformation

New cases from Meta’s Oversight Board highlight Meta’s haphazard approach to reproductive health.

BY JENNIFER NEDA JOHN
JULY 31, 2023

In March, a member of an anti-abortion Facebook group shared a post describing what it claimed was “pro-abortion logic”: “We don’t want you to be poor, starved or unwanted. So we’ll just kill you instead.”

That same month, another Facebook user shared a link to a news article covering a South Carolina bill that would have criminalized abortion as homicide, thus making it eligible for the death penalty. In the caption, the user criticized lawmakers’ logic that “it’s wrong to kill so we are going to kill you.” On Instagram, another post struck the same tone, criticizing the idea of being “so pro-life” that “we’ll kill you dead if you get an abortion.”

Continued: https://slate.com/technology/2023/07/abortion-misinformation-meta-oversight-board.html

‘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/

USA – We’re Thankful for Our Abortions

Many people who have abortions celebrate their experience. Here’s why my colleagues and I at We Testify are thankful.

By Nikiya Natale
Nov 24, 2022

This time of year is… complicated. For many people, this season calls for reflection and gratitude. This year I find myself reflecting not only on all the people I love and cherish but also on the outcomes and impact of the midterm elections, and on why our nation celebrates the complicated holiday of Thanksgiving at all.

This holiday is founded on the unforgivable genocide of Native Americans, and my commitment to justice for all people makes it difficult for me to celebrate things I am thankful for. And the harsh reality is that the utter disregard for all Indigenous people in the 1800s fuels the same systems of white supremacy that dehumanize all of us today. Black lives are taken by the police and the prison-industrial complex, any sense of LGBTQ+ peace and tranquility has been obliterated by gun violence and hate, and, ultimately, the small promise of abortion access guaranteed by Roe v. Wade was stripped away by an illegitimate Supreme Court.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/thankful-for-abortions/

24.11.2022