‘It’s a public health risk’: nurse decries infection control at US anti-abortion crisis center

A Kentucky nurse tried to hold a pregnancy center accountable for the problems she saw – but such facilities are subject to little regulation

Laura C Morel
Thu 2 Feb 2023

At 52, Susan Rames was looking for a way to give back. She worked part-time at a Kentucky hospital as a postpartum nurse and, with her three children nearly grown, she had some extra time during the week.

Motivated by her Christian faith, Rames decided to volunteer at ALC Pregnancy Resource Center, a crisis pregnancy center whose mission is to discourage people from seeking abortions.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/02/kentucky-crisis-pregnancy-center-anti-abortion-malpractices

These states will have abortion on the ballot in November

By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
September 5, 2022

Voters in a small number of states will decide in November how those states should handle the abortion issue. Abortion rights have taken on an increased significance and become a top focus in the midterm elections after the US Supreme Court's ruling this summer that there was no longer a federal constitutional right to the procedure.

In its August primary, Kansas was the first state in the nation to let voters weigh in on abortion since the high court overturned Roe v. Wade, and Kansans overwhelmingly chose to reject a state constitutional amendment that would have given state lawmakers the green light to help enact more restrictive abortion laws,

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/05/politics/2022-midterm-elections-abortion-ballot-measures/index.html

Kentucky Enacts Near-Total Abortion Ban

Abortion is now effectively illegal in Kentucky, with the state enacting the country’s harshest restrictions so far. We need a mass movement to fight for safe, legal, and free abortion, on demand.

Otto Fors and K.S. Mehta
April 16, 2022

On Wednesday, Kentucky lawmakers essentially banned abortion. Effective immediately, abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy are illegal, except in medical emergencies, with no exceptions for rape or incest.

While abortions before 15 weeks technically remain legal, other provisions in the legislation will make it virtually impossible for doctors to perform the procedure. For example, providers must comply with onerous and invasive reporting requirements about the pregnant person’s past pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Providers also need to maintain admitting privileges at local hospitals — an enormous barrier, given that hospitals can deny such privileges at their discretion. Providers who want to prescribe medication abortions, which account for more than half of all abortions in the state, must now also register with the state, but since Kentucky lacks this kind of registration system, they have no way of performing the procedure.

Continued: https://www.leftvoice.org/kentucky-enacts-near-total-abortion-ban/

16.04.2022

Kentucky abortion law

Kevin Stitt

Myers Abortion Facility Database

Tracking new action on abortion legislation across the states

By Caroline Kitchener, Kevin Schaul and Daniela Santamariña
Updated April 14 (originally published March 26, 2022)

Two states this week approved bills that ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, the latest actions as Republican-led states move swiftly to restrict abortion access. Kentucky’s ban, passed by the Republican-led legislature over the Democratic governor’s veto, took effect immediately. Florida’s governor signed a ban this week that is set to take effect in July.

While a lot of the bills this year look similar to bills we’ve seen before, the stakes are completely different. In recent years, the most restrictive bans were blocked by the courts, ruled unconstitutional because they violated Supreme Court precedent established in Roe v. Wade, which has protected the constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 years.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2022/abortion-rights-protections-restrictions-tracker/

Abortion access under renewed threat in Oklahoma and Missouri

By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
Sun April 10, 2022

(CNN)While abortion rights advocates could secure several victories in US states in the coming days, they're sounding the alarm about an Oklahoma bill that would ban nearly all abortions that's likely to be signed into law. Here are some of this week's moves in state legislatures and by state leaders you may have missed.

Oklahoma sends near-total ban on abortion to governor
Oklahoma legislators passed a bill on Tuesday that would make performing an abortion illegal in the state, except to save the life of the pregnant woman in a medical emergency.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/09/politics/state-abortion-legislation-round-up-oklahoma-missouri/index.html

Abortion: The great divide

OCTOBER 10, 2021
CBS NEWS

EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville is on the frontlines of the abortion conflict – one of just two clinics in Kentucky that provides abortions. Three-thousand women come here for those services each year, and every one of them must run a gauntlet of protesters. "This is not healthcare; this is killing human beings," said one woman standing outside the entrance.

Dr. Ernest Marshall co-founded the clinic in 1980. He told correspondent Rita Braver that there's a simple reason he offers women abortions: "You can never be equal if you can't control your reproduction."

Continued: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/abortion-the-great-divide/

States Are Using the Cover of COVID-19 to Restrict Abortion and Healthcare for Women

States Are Using the Cover of COVID-19 to Restrict Abortion and Healthcare for Women
With constituents distracted by the deadly pandemic, Republican state legislatures across the country are ramping up efforts to limit access to abortion

By Alex Morris
March 30, 2020

On March 18th, as the reality of the coronavirus crisis was becoming painfully apparent to Americans, the Idaho legislature was turning its attention to healthcare concerns of another kind: making sure that women were denied access to abortion at some nebulous future date. Across the country, state legislatures had gone into recess, heeding the social distancing advice of medical professionals. Not Idaho. For at least an hour on the floor of the House, there was vigorous debate over Senate Bill 1385, a so-called “trigger law” that would immediately criminalize abortion in the state if Roe v. Wade were overturned or a constitutional amendment gave states the right to criminalize it themselves. Under the law, performing an abortion would be a felony, except in instances of officially-reported rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother. “Everyone needs to face the consequences of their own personal choices,” Representative Megan Blanksma said in her closing debate, just before the bill passed 49-18 and made its way to Governor Brad Little’s desk to be signed, which it was last Tuesday.

Continued: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/covid-19-abortion-planned-paranthood-975324/

USA – As Coronavirus Rages On, So Does Anti-Abortion Harassment and Extremism

As Coronavirus Rages On, So Does Anti-Abortion Harassment and Extremism

3/25/2020
by Micaela Brinsley, Ms. Magazine

In clinics in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Kentucky, anti-choice protesters have continued to show up at clinics that provide abortion services, refusing to comply with the pressure for people to practice social distancing and shelter-in-place.

Witnesses have reported protesters gathering in front of clinic doors, walking up to patients, and even “shoving unwanted pamphlets and gift sacks into confused patients’ hands” and through car windows—blatantly ignoring public health recommendations for people to stand six feet apart from one other.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2020/03/25/as-coronavirus-rages-on-so-does-anti-abortion-harassment-and-extremism/

USA – The Supreme Court just let a dangerous and intrusive abortion law stand

Opinion: The Supreme Court just let a dangerous and intrusive abortion law stand

By Ruth Faden
Dec. 11, 2019

This week, the Supreme Court announced, without explanation, that it would not hear a challenge to Kentucky’s so-called Ultrasound Informed Consent Act, which requires women to submit to a narrated ultrasound before receiving an abortion.

The court’s inaction leaves a dangerous law on the books, one that endangers not only women’s rights but also medical ethics.

Continued: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-12-11/supreme-court-dangerous-intrusive-abortion-law

11.12.2019

Ultrasound Informed Consent Act

USA – How Health Officials in Pro-Life States Are Quietly Dismantling Abortion Access

How Health Officials in Pro-Life States Are Quietly Dismantling Abortion Access
Without the fanfare of a bill signing or a Supreme Court decision, the first state without an abortion clinic is in sight.

Rosemary Westwood
July 31, 2019

One spring day in 2017, Dr. Ernest Marshall received an inauspicious letter from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, the state's health agency. Marshall, a Louisville native with a round face and a trimmed mustache, has been an OB-GYN and teacher with the University of Louisville School of Medicine for nearly four decades. For just as long, he's owned what is now the state's last abortion clinic. EMW Women's Surgical Center sits on a stretch of sprawling, sparsely populated real estate in downtown Louisville, across from a cinema-sized money lender and down the block from a Subway restaurant.

Continued: https://psmag.com/social-justice/how-health-officials-in-pro-life-states-are-quietly-dismantling-abortion-access

31.07.2019