A State Supreme Court Just Issued the Most Devastating Rebuke of Dobbs Yet

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK AND MARK JOSEPH STERN
JAN 30, 2024

The Supreme Court’s eradication of the constitutional right to abortion in 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization had an immediate and devastating impact on gender equality in the United States. … [Alito] dismissed his ruling’s ruinous impact on gender equality in a single conclusory paragraph asserting that abortion restrictions could not possibly discriminate against women.

… This week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court responded to that conclusion: no. On Monday, the court issued a landmark opinion declaring that abortion restrictions do amount to sex-based discrimination and therefore are “presumptively unconstitutional” under the state constitution’s equal rights amendment. The majority vehemently rejected Dobbs’ history-only analysis, noting that, until recently, “those interpreting the law” saw women “as not only having fewer legal rights than men but also as lesser human beings by design.” Justice David Wecht went even further: In an extraordinary concurrence, the justice recounted the historical use of abortion bans to repress women, condemned Alito’s error-ridden analysis, and repudiated the “antiquated and misogynistic notion that a woman has no say over what happens to her own body.”

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/pennsylvania-supreme-court-dobbs-sam-alito-abortion.html


States to award anti-abortion centers roughly $250m in post-Roe surge

At least 16 states will fund largely unregulated facilities that try to convince people to continue their pregnancies

Carter Sherman
thu 28 Dec 2023

In the months since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, at least 16 states have agreed to funnel more than $250m in taxpayer dollars towards anti-abortion facilities and programs that try to convince people to continue their pregnancies.

Much of that money is set to go to anti-abortion counseling centers, or crisis pregnancy centers, according to data provided by the Guttmacher Institute and Equity Forward, organizations that support abortion rights. It has been paid out throughout 2023 and will stretch into 2025.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/28/anti-abortion-pregnancy-crisis-centers-taxpayer-money-roe


USA – A woman who mistakenly visited an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center said she was met with pushback for seeking an abortion

'I just was not ready, and words can't make you ready for that'

Hannah Getahun, Isabella Zavarise, and Katie Nixdorf
Dec 5, 2022

Estefanía thought she was making an appointment to get an abortion.  

Fearing she might be pregnant after a missed period, she typed "abortion pill near me" into Google and went to the first clinic that came up on the web page. When she got to The Keim Center in Virginia Beach, it didn't look or smell like a medical clinic — it was too nice, too inviting.

Continued: https://www.businessinsider.com/crisis-pregnancy-centers-target-women-seeking-abortions-with-misinformation-pushback-2022-11


The crisis pregnancy center next door: How taxpayer money intended for poor families is funding a growing anti-abortion movement

By Casey Tolan, Majlie de Puy Kamp and Isabelle Chapman. Photographs by Maddie McGarvey for CNN
Tue October 25, 2022

A few blocks from the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, America’s battle over abortion is playing out under one roof.

On one side of a squat single-story office building, a Planned Parenthood clinic offers reproductive health care and refers patients for abortions. Next door is a branch of Pregnancy Decision Health Center, a crisis pregnancy center that offers counseling and support for pregnant women – but also works to dissuade them from terminating their pregnancies and has been accused of promoting misinformation about abortion.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/us/crisis-pregnancy-centers-taxpayer-money-invs


Crisis Pregnancy Centers, State-Funded Harm, and State-Based Solutions

As the Supreme Court evaluates abortion laws, states should bolster reproductive rights and better regulate CPCs.

Feb 14, 2022
Amal Bass, The Regulatory Review

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to review whether Mississippi’s pre-viability abortion ban is still unconstitutional, and the Court’s failure to enjoin Texas’s near-total abortion ban, have thrown a spotlight on the precarious state of abortion rights in the United States. These cases come after decades of abortion restrictions—mostly at the state level—that have already made abortion inaccessible for many people, especially Black and brown people, individuals living in poverty, and people in rural areas.

For example, the federal Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal funding for abortion care, and Pennsylvania law prohibits the use of state funding. The resulting denial of abortion coverage for people in Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program disproportionately harms Black and brown people who face structural inequities that make them more likely to live in poverty than white people.

Continued: https://www.theregreview.org/2022/02/14/bass-crisis-pregnancy-centers-state-funded-harm-state-based-solutions/


USA – Anti-abortion movement’s big plan: Supercharged “crisis pregnancy centers” and data harvesting

Anti-choice activists roll out bold new strategy to register and track abortion-seekers. Why do they want to know?

By KATHRYN JOYCE
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Oklahoma state Sen. George Burns, a Republican, introduced a new bill this month that would require anyone seeking an abortion in the state to call a designated hotline to receive counseling from "care agents" about abortion alternatives, and also to be screened for the possibility that they are victims of abuse, human trafficking or abortion coercion. The bill, SB 1167 or the "Every Mother Matters Act" (EMMA), is couched as an offer of resources, from housing to employment assistance, to provide "compassionate options for those faced with unexpected pregnancies," as Burns said in a press release. He acknowledges, however, that his "ultimate goal is ending abortion altogether."

So far, generally so familiar. But there's an important new twist here that looks to be the tip of a national iceberg: The Oklahoma bill also provides for the state Department of Health to assign each abortion-seeker who calls the hotline a "unique identifying number." Abortion providers would be required to obtain and record that number, which would also be registered in a DHS database.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2022/02/12/anti-abortion-movements-big-plan-supercharged-crisis-pregnancy-centers-and-data-harvesting/


Advocates Challenge Arizona Court Ruling Medical Use of Marijuana During Pregnancy is Child Neglect

8/21/2021
by CARRIE N. BAKER

Reproductive rights advocates have come out in force to support Lindsay R., an Arizona woman whom the state of Arizona has branded a child abuser because she used medical marijuana while she was pregnant. National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) and 45 leading health organizations, doctors, ethicists, scientific and medical experts, and advocates have filed a brief asking an Arizona Court of Appeals to overturn the state’s action.

When Lindsay was pregnant, she had a life-threatening condition called hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), which caused constant nausea and vomiting. Her condition was so severe she was hospitalized twice during her pregnancy.

Continued:  https://msmagazine.com/2021/08/21/arizona-medical-marijuana-pregnancy-child-neglect/


USA – No, the Real ‘Abortion Divide’ Is Not Between Patients and Protesters

No, the Real ‘Abortion Divide’ Is Not Between Patients and Protesters
The abortion divide is between people who need and deserve abortion access and the well-funded movement colluding with lawmakers to push it out of reach.

Apr 29, 2019
Tara Murtha

PBS’ Frontline recently premiered The Abortion Divide, a short documentary that examines the experiences of several women facing unplanned pregnancies in Philadelphia as they decide whether to carry the pregnancy to term or have an abortion.

The filmmakers follow the women who choose abortion into the Philadelphia Women’s Center (PWC), where they interview patients and doctors. They also showcase the protesters who gather outside PWC to try to shame and intimidate people on their way in and out of the building. They also film inside so-called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs).

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2019/04/29/no-the-real-abortion-divide-is-not-between-patients-and-protesters/