The GOP’s New Tactic to Block Abortion Votes Is Startlingly Successful

By Mary Ziegler
Sept 12, 2024

Conservatives have once again turned to the courts to keep people from voting on reproductive rights. Missouri and Nebraska were set to be among the 10 states where voters will weigh in directly on abortion rights, but anti-abortion groups have gone to court to block either one from moving forward. The conservative Missouri Supreme Court rejected this gambit earlier this week, while a ruling from the Nebraska Supreme Court is expected soon. But whatever happens, it’s worth paying attention to the strategy in these cases: a kind of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose plan that either blocks voters from deciding about abortion rights or confuses the electorate about what is being decided.

A group of anti-abortion advocates and lawmakers had sued Missouri Attorney General Jay Ashcroft for having certified the ballot measure. Nebraska’s high court is considering two suits, one filed by a neonatologist opposed to abortion, a second by an Omaha resident.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/gop-blocks-abortion-votes-missouri-nebraska.html

12.09.2024

Commentary

abortion ballot measures

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice deception

anti-choice intimidation

anti-choice lies

anti-choice manipulation

ballot initiatives on abortion

An Abortion Provider Debunks Trump’s Debate Talking Points

By Andrea González-Ramírez, the Cut
Sept 11, 2024

One of Donald Trump’s biggest weaknesses this presidential election is his anti-abortion stance, particularly the role he played (and routinely brags about) in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. During Tuesday’s presidential debate, he attempted to neutralize that weakness by painting Democrats as the extreme party when it comes to abortion rights, repeating falsehoods about patients seeking the procedure “in the ninth month” of pregnancy and having “post-birth abortions.”

This inflammatory rhetoric hinges on voters’ unfamiliarity with abortion care later in pregnancy. Despite what 67 percent of Americans think, only a small percentage of abortions occur after 21 weeks of gestation and they become even rarer further into pregnancy. Providers say these later terminations tend to be medically complex cases that are logistically and financially challenging for many patients.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/trumps-abortion-debate-lies-debunked.html

Harris was strongest at debate when talking about abortion while Trump relied on tired old lies

Carter Sherman
Wed 11 Sep 2024

Throughout his 2024 campaign for president, Donald Trump has avoided giving straight, consistent or accurate answers to questions about abortion – and in his first debate appearance against Kamala Harris, Trump kept up that streak.

Moderators introduced abortion, one of the biggest issues in the election, by asking about the most recent example of Trump’s incoherence on the topic: his position on a Florida ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state’s constitution. Over the last few weeks, Trump initially suggested that he would vote in favor of the measure – which would restore abortion rights in a state that has banned the procedure past six weeks of pregnancy – before quickly backtracking amid outrage from his anti-abortion base.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/11/abortion-harris-trump-debate

11.09.2024

News

abortion in presidential debate

Anguish, gratitude and fear of violence at a Colorado clinic for late abortions

Women are increasingly arriving at the Boulder Abortion Clinic, one of the few in the U.S. providing abortion services at or after 28 weeks of pregnancy, when their lives are in danger.

Sept. 10, 2024
By Dasha Burns, Abigail Brooks and Jason Kane

BOULDER, Colo. — Behind bullet-proof doors in a generic office park is one of only five clinics in the country where women can access the rarest — and most controversial — abortion procedures.

Women come here desperate, says Dr. Warren Hern, who has run the Boulder Abortion Clinic since 1975.
“It ranges from the 12-year-old kid who’s pregnant from her stepfather to the 45-year-old woman who desperately wants to have a baby and finds out that she has a fatal illness that is incompatible with being pregnant,” he says.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/anguish-gratitude-fear-violence-colorado-clinic-late-abortions-rcna170451

10.09.2024

Commentary

Boulder Abortion Clinic

Dr. Warren Hern

fatal fetal abnormalities

later abortions

third-trimester abortion

USA – State abortion bans are forcing doctors to provide substandard care – new study

Research group describes health workers waiting until patients ‘on brink of death’ before providing care

Carter Sherman
Mon 9 Sep 2024

More than two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, state abortion bans are forcing doctors to provide substandard medical care, new research released Monday shows.

The study describes how one woman, whose water broke too early on her pregnancy, ended up in the ICU with severe sepsis because she could not get an abortion to end her doomed pregnancy. Her story is one of dozens of narratives collected by the research group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, which is housed at the University of California, San Francisco.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/09/state-abortion-bans-doctor-care-pregnancy

09.09.2024

News

Research

Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health

It’s time for a permanent repeal of the global gag rule

by Maniza Habib, opinion contributor
Sept 8, 2024

Project 2025, the policy agenda created by conservative activists and spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation, envisions sweeping changes to U.S. government policy. Among them, buried within the more than 900-page document, is a vast expansion of the global gag rule, which family planning providers across the world warn threatens abortion rights worldwide, even in countries where it is currently legal.

Project 2025 refers to the rule by its more innocuous sounding name, the “Mexico City Policy,” but a gag order is what it is. It prohibits foreign non-governmental organizations that receive U.S. funding from promoting, providing or referring patients to abortion services (with some exceptions for rape, incest and pregnancies that are life-threatening), or even advocating abortion law reform. Just mentioning the a-word would jeopardize their U.S. funding and their work, and for many non-profits, their very existence. So they aren’t allowed to talk about it.

Continued: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4866475-project-2025-global-gag-rule/

08.09.2024

Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance

Doctors Are Leaving Conservative States to Learn to Perform Abortions. We Followed One.

Abortion has been heavily restricted in many states post-Roe — and abortion training has all but disappeared, too. Inside one doctor’s journey to obtain that education at any cost.

By Alice Miranda Ollstein
Sep 6, 2024

WILMINGTON, Delaware — The doctor was about midway through her month of training, her head swimming with the new skills she was learning, when a heavy, tattooed patient in her 20s walked into the clinic to terminate an early pregnancy.

In the cramped exam room, closely supervised by the abortion provider who would perform the procedure itself, the doctor began running through the setup tasks she had observed and practiced over the previous weeks: injecting the painkiller lidocaine into multiple spots around the patient’s cervix and inserting a speculum into her vagina.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/06/doctor-abortion-training-journey-00170741

U.S. States with strictest abortion laws offer the least support for women and families

Researchers evaluated states on access to maternal and family social services, childcare assistance and supplemental nutritional programs for families with children.

Sept. 4, 2024
By Kaitlin Sullivan

States with abortion bans are falling short in helping low-income families, experts say. New research from Northwestern Medicine in Chicago compared state abortion laws to public programs meant to help families, such as paid parental leave and state-funded nutrition programs for families with children.

“States with the most severe abortion restrictions have the least public infrastructure to support families,” said Dr. Nigel Madden, a maternal-fetal medicine physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who led the study published Wednesday in the American Journal of Public Health.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/states-strictest-abortion-laws-offer-least-support-women-families-rcna169578

04.09.2024

Commentary

Research

anti-choice contempt for women

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice misogyny

Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health

Caitlin Myers

Diana Greene Foster

Dr. Nigel Madden

Family and Medical Leave Act

Once a liability for Democrats, abortion gets new life with Harris as nominee

'It was a little frustrating that Biden can barely say the word abortion,' activist says

By Nina Heller
September 4, 2024

Reproductive rights groups say they are more confident that Vice President Kamala Harris will be able to appeal to voters, with some citing frustration with President Joe Biden’s abortion messaging.

Abortion access and reproductive rights have been a central theme in Harris’ campaign since she ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket, with reproductive rights groups hopeful that the Harris campaign can use her message on the issue to further fuel voters’ enthusiasm for her.

Continued; https://rollcall.com/2024/09/04/once-a-liability-for-democrats-abortion-gets-new-life-with-harris-as-nominee/

USA – Anti-abortion groups warn Trump’s row back on position risks losing votes

Republican candidate’s comments seen by Democrats as hypocritical ‘sadden’ anti-abortion activists

Carter Sherman
Fri 30 Aug 2024

Over the last two weeks, Donald Trump has publicly backed away from multiple anti-abortion positions – a move that Democrats see as hypocritical and that, anti-abortion activists warn, risks alienating voters who have long stood by him.

On Thursday, Trump said that, if elected, he would make the government or insurance companies cover in vitro fertilization – a type of fertility assistance that some in the anti-abortion movement want to see curtailed. Trump also seemed to indicate that he planned to vote in favor of a ballot measure to restore abortion access in Florida, which currently bans abortion past six weeks of pregnancy. “I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” Trump told NBC News in an interview.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/30/trump-ivf-anti-abortion-groups