Report finds independent abortion clinics face more threats, decline post-Dobbs

It’s a tough time to run an abortion clinic.

By Caroline Catherman
December 11, 2024

In May 2023, a man drove a car through a future reproductive health clinic in Danville, Illinois. He arrived with bottles of gasoline, a hatchet, road flares, and matches with plans to set it on fire, authorities reported.

While no one was harmed, the clinic, Affirmative Care Solutions, hasn’t been able to open.

Affirmative Care Solutions Director LaDonna Prince said this is just one example of growing hostility toward her shrinking profession.

Continued: https://www.healthcare-brew.com/stories/2024/12/11/report-independent-abortion-clinics-more-threats-decline-post-dobbs

11.12.2024

Abortion Care Network

Affirmative Care Solutions

Communities Need Clinics

EMW Women’s Surgical Center

funding for abortion clinics

Viewpoint – A Mennonite recipe for abortion

By: MaryLou Driedger
Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024

Last month I went to see the play The Recipe at Winnipeg’s Warehouse Theatre. The script was the work of well-known Manitoba Mennonite writer Armin Wiebe. It featured characters Wiebe developed for his highly successful 1984 novel The Salvation of Yasch Siemens and its sequels all set in the fictional community of Gutenthal.

The recipe referenced in the title of Wiebe’s drama was, to the surprise of some theatre goers, actually a home remedy for bringing on a woman’s period. It was, in essence, a natural medicinal alternative to a clinical abortion.

Continued: https://www.thecarillon.com/local/2024/12/07/column-viewpoint-a-mennonite-recipe-for-abortion

07.12.2024

Mennonite abortion remedy

Canada – Abortion numbers in the NWT remain publicly undisclosed

Conservative candidate says she's pro-choice, but rights group has labelled party as anti-choice based on voting history

Devon Tredinnick
Dec 5, 2024

The NWT Health and Social Services Authority will not release a breakdown of data on abortions performed through the Northern Operations for Women (NOW) Program, citing privacy concerns.

However, Joyce Arthur, the executive director for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, maintained that withholding such information adds to the stigma surrounding abortion. "There's no reason not to be upfront about it and transparent as with any other healthcare procedure," she said, noting there could also be some concern over outing people who provide abortions, though there's much less harassment towards them then there used to be in the 1990s.

Continued: https://www.nnsl.com/home/abortion-numbers-in-the-nwt-remain-publicly-undisclosed-7672039

05.12.2024

News

Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada

Cathay Wagantall

Joyce Arthur

Kimberly Fairman

Northern Operations for Women

NWT Health and Social Services Authority

USA – What It Really Means to Get an Abortion After ‘Fetal Viability’

By Chantelle Lee
December 4, 2024

Kate Dineen was about 33 weeks pregnant with her second child when an ultrasound revealed that her baby had suffered a catastrophic stroke in utero and would likely either die before birth or have a short and painful life.

“This was a deeply wanted pregnancy. Everything had been progressing smoothly,” Dineen, now 41, says. “I was just shocked by the diagnosis first, and heartbroken by the diagnosis, and also certain that I wanted to try and obtain a termination so that I could protect my son from pain and suffering. I knew in that moment that I wanted to make the decision.”

Continued: https://time.com/7199856/abortion-fetal-viability-pregnancy/

Abortion bans are killing women — and states like Texas want to hide the truth

As the laws’ predictable harms come to light, anti-abortion groups want us to look away.

Dec. 3, 2024
By Susan Rinkunas

Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision two and a half years ago, state abortion bans have restricted pregnant women’s access to emergency medical care. And as the predictable harms — up to and including death — come to light, some states are acting as if they want to hide them from the public.

…from 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal deaths in Texas increased by 56%, compared with 11% nationwide. But rather than investigate, the state is essentially admitting that the bodies are piling up faster than the state can address them. Its solution is not to dedicate more time and effort — like, perhaps, increasing the size of the 23-member committee — but to simply brush these women’s lives under the rug and skip ahead to 2024.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/texas-georgia-women-deaths-abortion-ban-rcna182540

Why Trump’s next presidency poses a new global threat to women’s health

Rachel Schraer
Dec 3, 2024

Immediately after Donald Trump clinched a second term in the White House, mail orders of abortion pills spiked across the U.S. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood, the country’s biggest provider of reproductive health services, saw an eightfold increase in appointments for long-acting contraceptive devices known as IUDs.

The reality of another Trump presidency appears to have stoked fears among many Americans that their access to abortion and contraception could be further restricted. But the issue stretches beyond U.S. borders. Around the world, hundreds of millions of women who had no say in Trump’s election could lose vital health services because of his decisions.

Continued: https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/why-trump-s-next-presidency-poses-a-new-global-threat-to-women-s-health/ar-AA1vbYiK

Fellowship opens door to comprehensive abortion access coverage in U.S., France

Lara Salahi
December 2, 2024

Ariel Cohen, a health policy reporter for CQ Roll Call, recently completed a comprehensive series of six stories examining abortion care policies in the United States and France. This in-depth reporting project, made possible through AHCJ’s International Health Study Fellowship, allowed Cohen to spend two weeks in France, comparing and contrasting the abortion policies and practices of both nations.

Her work comes at a critical time, as the U.S. grapples with the aftermath of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, while France moves to enshrine abortion rights in its constitution.

Continued: https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2024/12/fellowship-opens-door-to-comprehensive-abortion-access-coverage-in-u-s-france/

02.12.2024

Interviews/Podcasts

Ariel Cohen

Association of Health Care Journalists

CQ Roll Call

International Health Study Fellowship

USA – Study of Crisis Pregnancy Centers Reveals Misleading and Dangerous Claims

A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine provides the first national assessment of crisis pregnancy centers and their operations

December 02, 2024
Mika Ono

A new study from scientists at the University of California San Diego introduces a powerful new approach to understanding the operation of crisis pregnancy centers, non-profit organizations dedicated to an anti-abortion agenda. The study published in JAMA Internal Medicine provides the first account of the practices of crisis pregnancy centers (CPC) operating in the United States.

"While our study shows crisis pregnancy centers provide valuable community services, like parenting classes, there is a clear need for consumer safety measures to prevent the promotion and use of their questionable medical services," said John W. Ayers, Ph.D., who is deputy director of informatics at the UC San Diego Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute, in addition to scientist at UC San Diego’s Qualcomm Institute, co-creator of ChoiceWatch.org and study coauthor.

Continued: https://today.ucsd.edu/story/study-of-crisis-pregnancy-centers-reveals-misleading-and-dangerous-claims

USA – “We Never Assumed Anything”: A Lifetime of Providing Abortion Care

In their new book We Choose To, Dr. Curtis Boyd and Glenna Halvorson-Boyd reflect on their decades helping women who needed abortions—before, during, and after Roe.

Regina Mahone
November 29, 2024

Five years ago, when Curtis Boyd, MD, and Glenna Halvorson-Boyd, PhD, RN, set out to write a book about their lives and 50-year-career providing abortion care in Texas and New Mexico, Roe was still the law of the land. But their book, which was published in September, made its debut two years after that landmark case was overturned and just a few short months before Donald J. Trump will retake the White House. As they explain in the Afterword of We Choose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion Care Before, During, and After Roe (Disruption Books), the work they devoted their lives to, expanding access to abortions, is being undone—and once Trump is back in power, that reversal will only accelerate. We can expect that Trump will seek out ways to impose international abortion bans like the global gag rule, and his supporters would like to see him enforce the Comstock Act, which would ban mailing abortion pills. Knowing all of that, Glenna’s question in the Afterword hits hard: “Why did we bother?”

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/curtis-glenna-boyd-abortion-provider-interview/

Canada – What is abortion access like in the NWT?

Emily Blake
Thursday November 28, 2024

While many people face challenges accessing healthcare in the North, advocates say a program is helping people access reproductive choice and abortion services in the NWT.

The Northern Options for Women (or Now) Program has existed for more than a decade.

The confidential program offers pregnancy options counselling, ultrasound evaluation, abortion services, prescriptions for birth control after abortions, and referral to other support services to people experiencing unwanted or abnormal pregnancies and miscarriages.

Continued: https://cabinradio.ca/212107/news/health/what-is-abortion-access-like-in-the-nwt/