‘Abortion access will be restored in the US’

The people of Georgia have been subjected to a confusing legal battle that ultimately led to a six-week abortion ban. For some in the state, all hope is not lost

by Tina Vásquez
July 18th, 2023

Kwajelyn Jackson is known throughout the South—and increasingly, across the country—as one of the reproductive justice movement’s most powerful voices. She is the executive director of the Feminist Women’s Health Center (FWHC) in Atlanta, where she has been central to the fight against anti-abortion laws in the state.

Under Jackson’s leadership, FWHC has transformed into a multigenerational, multiracial organization and a clinic operationalizing reproductive justice as part of patient care. The work is not easy, especially in a state like Georgia, which has been subjected to a byzantine array of anti-abortion laws, court battles, and injunctions that confuse people about whether they can access abortion care.

Continued: https://prismreports.org/2023/07/18/abortion-access-georgia-one-year-post-roe/


War on women: The link between white supremacy, “men’s rights” and anti-abortion politics

My research finds a strong connection between white supremacy, support for "men's rights" and anti-abortion views

By ANTHONY DIMAGGIO
APRIL 1, 2023

Efforts by Republicans and their allies to roll back abortion rights continue, with a looming federal ban on the abortion pill mifepristone, which accounts for more than half of all pregnancy terminations each year. That case is being decided by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, and was litigated by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian advocacy group that was also involved in the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision last year, which overturned Roe v. Wade and the nationwide right to abortion. Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, has adopted various terms used by anti-abortion advocates in his comments from the case, referring to "chemical abortion" and "mail-in abortion," for example, phrases that are widely rejected in medical professional settings. His language has led to concerns that the judge is tipping his hand to the anti-abortion movement, and will likely declare a national ban on mifepristone.

The right-wing Christian dimension to the anti-abortion movement has long been obvious, and even as the proportion of evangelical Christians has steadily declined in American society, the religious right has become a highly influential force in the Republican Party. What is missed in this discourse, however, is any discussion about the ways that both white supremacist and male supremacist ideology appear to be driving the contemporary push to outlaw abortions in America.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2023/04/01/on-women-the-link-between-supremacy-mens-rights-and-anti-abortion/


USA – The anti-choice movement won’t stop at criminalizing abortion

Anti-abortion advocates already seek to erode other rights and will continue casting a wider net to criminalize abortion support networks

by Tina Vásquez
July 22nd, 2022

In the weeks since the Supreme Court issued its decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that overturned Roe v. Wade and struck down our Constitutional right to abortion, the country has turned into an even more hostile place for marginalized people.

In states like Arizona and Texas, which have some of the largest undocumented populations in the nation, providers have stopped offering abortion care or packed up to move to a neighboring state, leaving undocumented people who cannot risk Border Patrol checkpoints with virtually no options. The risk of criminalization is so great that abortion funds have paused operations in states with trigger bans and laws that target people who provide abortion support. In effect, the Supreme Court ruling that the right to abortion is not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history or tradition” has strapped a ticking time bomb onto other fundamental human rights. How long before right-wing lawmakers come for contraception? How long before they come for interracial marriage and gay marriage? How will this ruling be used as justification to further whittle away at trans rights?

Continued: https://prismreports.org/2022/07/22/anti-choice-movement-wont-stop-at-abortion/


For Decades, We’ve Helped Open Abortion Access. Here’s Where We’ll Go Post-‘Roe.’

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel of abortion care—we need to build on it.

Jun 2, 2022
National Network of Abortion Funds & Abortion Care Network

Abortion funds and independent abortion clinics are grateful for the outpouring of support in the wake of the devastating Supreme Court draft decision leak in early May. In a moment when discriminatory, racist, patriarchal systems are working hard to isolate us from each other and our collective power, so many of you know that turning to the people on the forefront of abortion access in each of our communities is an important way to fight back together.

Thank you for plugging in with your communities and each other, spreading the word that abortion is still legal no matter where you live in the United States, and comforting your loved ones with the knowledge that there are still avenues of support (including you).

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2022/06/02/for-decades-weve-helped-open-abortion-access-heres-where-well-go-post-roe/


USA – I’m Black. I Thought White Feminism Would Keep Abortion Safe.

White women who once saw Roe as core to second-wave feminism seem not to be putting up much of a fight. Is it time for Black women to pick up the mantle?

05/27/2022
Erin Aubry Kaplan

When I was in my 20s, I had an abortion. Actually, I had more than one. It’s taken me more than a month even to write those sentences — a single, simple truth I had to break into two parts to make palatable. The impending official demise of Roe v. Wade has forced me to look at the depth of my reticence about this. People have lauded me over the years for allegedly brave things I’ve said in columns, for putting myself “out there,” but I’d never shared this. I always told myself it was because abortion wasn’t relevant to racial justice, which is the bulk of what I write about. Yet I’ve written about plenty of personal matters that are ostensibly nonracial — depression, money, crises with my dogs, my unfolding struggle with alopecia. All these things at some point have racial implications, as most things in America do. Those things certainly include abortion rights. But I left it alone.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/abortion-feminism-essay-white-black-00032987


USA – ‘Pushed to the margins’: Why some activists and lawmakers say abortion bans are a form of White supremacy

The threat to abortion access has underscored the economic hardships and maternal health crisis that Black and brown women face.

by Nicquel Terry Ellis, CNN
Wed May 18, 2022

The first time Kenya Martin got an abortion, she was a 19-year-old college student who felt she wasn't old enough or mature enough to raise a child.

The second time, Martin was a 26-year-old single mom making $12 an hour as a bank teller, could barely afford childcare or health insurance and was in a custody battle with her daughter's father. Martin would later have four more abortions, each time knowing she did not want another child.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/18/us/abortion-ban-women-of-color/index.html


USA – Harassment at Abortion Clinics Is Already Bad. It’s Worse When You’re Black.

We need to explicitly name white supremacy and racism as the core drivers of abortion bans and restrictions, as well as violence and harassment.

Apr 21, 2022
MiQuel Davies, Rewire News

Abortion providers and people accessing abortion care are at high risk of violence and harassment. We know this from the well-documented history of providers being murdered, clinics dealing with arson and regular hate mail, and protesters stationed daily outside many abortion clinics, where they harass providers and patients.

What we don’t always talk about—or name explicitly—is that the violence and harassment faced by patients and providers who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color is often heightened and racialized. At Physicians for Reproductive Health, we know this is true from the countless experiences of physicians in our network as well as those working day to day on the ground, especially in hostile states. Unfortunately, this reality is often dismissed or minimized in an attempt to disassociate racism and white supremacy from attacks on abortion rights.
Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2022/04/21/harassment-at-abortion-clinics-is-already-bad-its-worse-when-youre-black/


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


USA – This Is the Anti-Abortion Movement’s Next Big Move

Anti-abortion activists are already pushing for a world where a fetus has more rights than pregnant people.

Mar 10, 2022
Caroline Reilly, Rewire News

For decades, anti-abortion lawmakers have operated under the false pretense that their only target was abortion providers. Pregnant people, depicted mostly as victims of the predatory abortion industrial complex—or some other unhinged, alarmist framework—were safe from their wrath.

But their tone has shifted as of late. The concept of fetal “personhood,” which defines life as beginning at conception, has become mainstream, and those advocates are pushing for the laws around abortion to reflect that.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2022/03/10/this-is-the-anti-abortion-movements-next-big-move/


How White Nationalists Are Hijacking the Anti-Abortion Movement

The growing overlap between anti-abortion activism and far-right extremism has started to spill into the real world in high-profile ways.

By Tess Owen and Carter Sherman
Feb 3, 2022

On New Year’s Eve, a fire ripped through the last Planned Parenthood in East Tennessee, turning the Knoxville abortion clinic into a hunk of rubble. As the ruins smoldered, some anti-abortion activists and members of the far-right celebrated online.

A Telegram meme account affiliated with the Proud Boys, a far-right street-fighting gang, responded to the literal fire with a string of fire emojis. “Aww, what a shame,” they wrote. “That will set their genocidal plans and baby parts market back for months.”

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7n4bq/white-nationalist-anti-abortion-movement