USA – How Raphael Warnock Came to Be an Abortion-Rights Outlier

Religious, pro-abortion-rights voices were not always so rare.

Dec 31, 2020
Mary Ziegler

When the Democratic Senate candidate Reverend Raphael Warnock tweeted that he was a “pro-choice pastor,” backlash arrived within minutes. Conservative commentators including Ben Shapiro and Erick Erickson lined up to mock Warnock. A group of conservative Black ministers recently sent Warnock a letter asking him to reconsider his position. Representative Doug Collins, a Republican and an ordained Southern Baptist minister, called the tweet “a lie from the bed of hell.”

In this brief and explosive incident, one of the most significant dynamics of America’s abortion politics was laid bare: the seeming invisibility of pro-choice religious voices. It’s not that pro-choice faith leaders such as Warnock aren’t out there. It’s that, for decades, they’ve been losing the fight for the spotlight.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/liberal-religion-abortion/617491/

Many Abortion Clinics May Not Survive COVID-19 Unless Progressives Take Bolder Action

Many Abortion Clinics May Not Survive COVID-19 Unless Progressives Take Bolder Action

04 Jun 2020
Halley Bondy

The fury of the anti-choice movement is always in Kwajelyn Jackson’s face.

Protesters stand outside of the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, Georgia, where she works. They harass her doctors. They destroy clinic property. They break COVID-19 social distancing rules. They hound her patients, who are mostly poor and black or Hispanic.

Continued: https://shadowproof.com/2020/06/04/many-abortion-clinics-may-not-survive-covid-19-unless-progressives-take-bolder-action/

USA – What’s It Like to Get an Abortion in Georgia

What’s It Like to Get an Abortion in Georgia

by Kimberly Lawson
Nov 25 2019

Georgia made national headlines in May when Governor Brian Kemp signed into law a bill that would ban abortion after 6 weeks and define fetuses as people. While the law has been blocked as legal challenges proceed against it, the reality is that it's already difficult to get an abortion in the state.

What Georgia state law says about abortion:

People seeking abortions in Georgia face a number of restrictions. Abortions are prohibited after 20 weeks unless the pregnant person's life is in danger, their physical health will be severely compromised, or there's a lethal fetal anomaly.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/8xwyqg/whats-it-like-to-get-an-abortion-in-georgia

USA – The Abortion Bans

The Abortion Bans
Fault Lines examines early abortion bans passed in the US, how women are resisting, and whether the laws will stand.
(25 minute video)

13 Nov 2019

In 2019, nine US states passed laws effectively banning abortion in the earliest stages of pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant.

Fault Lines travelled to Alabama and Georgia, two states that passed the most extreme bans, to meet architects of the bills and legislators, clinics and patients on the front lines, and reproductive justice advocates fighting the bans in court.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/faultlines/2019/11/abortion-bans-191112001006272.html

Inside the ‘fake clinics’ where women are persuaded to carry pregnancies to term

Inside the 'fake clinics' where women are persuaded to carry pregnancies to term
‘Crisis pregnancy centers’ give counseling, pregnancy tests – and outnumber abortion providers three to one in Georgia

by Khushbu Shah in Milledgeville, Georgia
Fri 16 Aug 2019

In her office at the Crossroads Pregnancy Center in Milledgeville, Georgia, Pam Alford hung a picture of a grave-filled cemetery in memory of the thousands of the abortions taking place every day in America. Or so says the caption.

Other indications of the center staff’s attitude to abortion fill public areas of the building. Someone has stenciled “life is beautiful” in a hallway. Figurines of Jesus and the cross line the lunch area walls.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/16/georgia-abortion-crisis-pregnancy-centers

USA – Here are the 5 things to watch for next in the abortion debate

Here are the 5 things to watch for next in the abortion debate
Most legislatures in antiabortion states are out for the summer. But bills are still being debated by lawmakers and challenged in the courts.

Caroline Kitchener
June 10, 2019

Since January, when most state legislatures convened for their first session since Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, there has been a flurry of far-right abortion legislation. Nine states have passed bills narrowing the time period in which women can legally access abortion. Alabama has effectively banned abortion altogether. (The bills have not yet taken effect, and many have already been challenged in court.)

While a handful of states stay in session year-round, most state legislatures have adjourned for the year. That means there probably won’t be much more antiabortion legislation passed in 2019.

Continued: https://www.thelily.com/here-are-the-5-things-to-watch-for-next-in-the-abortion-debate/

Post-Roe America Won’t Be Like Pre-Roe America. It Will Be Worse.

Post-Roe America Won’t Be Like Pre-Roe America. It Will Be Worse.
The new abortion bans are harsher than the old ones.

By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist
May 16, 2019

This week, Alabama’s governor signed legislation banning most abortions without exceptions for rape or incest, with sentences of up to 99 years in prison for abortion providers. It follows a measure that Georgia’s governor signed last week effectively banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and that is worded in a way that could lead to prosecutions of women who terminate their pregnancies after that point. Missouri’s Senate approved an eight-week abortion ban on Thursday, also without exceptions for rape or incest. It contains a trigger that will ban abortion outright if Roe v. Wade falls. A Louisiana six-week abortion ban is likely to be next.

You can see, in the anti-abortion movement, a mood of triumphant anticipation. Decades of right-wing politics have all led up to this moment, when an anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court could end women’s constitutional protection against being forced to carry a pregnancy and give birth against their will.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/opinion/alabama-abortion-georgia-roe.html

The Abortion Bans Aren’t Just About Repealing Roe v Wade

The Abortion Bans Aren’t Just About Repealing Roe v Wade

The extreme, dangerous anti-abortion laws in Ohio, Alabama, and Georgia are serving as a distraction from the Right's real agenda: closing every last loophole to abortion access once ‘Roe’ is overturned.

Robin Marty
May 15, 2019

It is 2019 and abortion is still legal. Yes, in each and every state in America.

This seems like something that shouldn’t need to be announced, yet here we are. Over the past few weeks we’ve seen abortion restrictions hit a fever pitch, with Georgia and Ohio signing so-called “heartbeat” bans, which would make abortion illegal within about two weeks after a missed period), and a ban that criminalizes abortion at conception passing in both chambers of the Alabama legislature, which is expected to be signed by the governor.

Continued: https://www.damemagazine.com/2019/05/15/the-abortion-bans-arent-just-about-repealing-roe-v-wade/

USA – How Gerrymandering Leads to Radical Abortion Laws

How Gerrymandering Leads to Radical Abortion Laws
Georgia's "fetal heartbeat" bill never would have passed if the state legislature truly reflected the voters' political preferences.

By David Daley
May 14, 2019

Stacey Abrams still hasn’t conceded that she lost to Brian Kemp in last year’s gubernatorial race in Georgia, and perhaps justifiably so. Kemp, formerly the secretary of state there, administered his own election, shuttered precincts in black communities, and presided over a last-minute voting roll purge that targeted predominantly minority voters. Despite all that help, he eclipsed Abrams by fewer than 55,000 votes—another sign of how purple Georgia has become.

Last week, however, the state legislature enacted—and Kemp signed—one of the most extreme “fetal heartbeat” abortion prohibitions in the nation. HB 481, which declares that “unborn children are a class of living, distinct persons,” limits abortions to the first six weeks of pregnancy. If the law is allowed to take effect in January—rather than being held up in the courts—women who miscarry could be investigated by the state to determine whether their pregnancy ended unintentionally or with the help of a doctor or an abortion pill.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/153901/gerrymandering-leads-radical-abortion-laws