Abortion-rights groups prepare for more battles following 2022 victories

By Sara Burnett, Associated Press
Dec 1, 2022

CHICAGO (AP) — Emboldened by the results of November’s midterms, abortion rights supporters say they are preparing for even bigger fights in state legislatures and pivotal elections to come, including 2024 races for Congress and president.

Victories for abortion rights ballot measures and candidates who support abortion provided a roadmap for how to win future campaigns, Democrats and leaders of several organizations say. Mobilization efforts brought together women of different races, ages and ideologies who disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this summer to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion, forming more diverse and larger coalitions.

Continued: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/abortion-rights-groups-prepare-for-more-battles-following-2022-victories

01.12.2022

Marjorie Dannenfelser

Mini Timmaraju

Naral Pro-Choice America

Planned Parenthood Action Fund

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America

United States

Human Rights

Pressure and Stress Intensify for Abortion Providers Post-Roe

NOVEMBER 29, 2022
Susan Buttenwieser

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in late June, providers of abortion care have been dealing with emotional devastation, managing severe staff burnout, the possibility of facing criminal charges, and increased harassment from protestors.

Some providers also contended with the prospect of losing their jobs when abortion became illegal in their state, at times within hours of the decision, forcing their clinics to close down. By October, 66 clinics across 15 states had been forced to stop offering abortion care or had closed down entirely. Before the June 24 Dobbs decision, those 15 states had 79 clinics that provided abortion care; by October 2, that number had dropped to 13, all located in one state, Georgia.

Continued: https://womensmediacenter.com/news-features/pressure-and-stress-intensify-for-abortion-providers-post-roe

USA – Googling abortion? Your details aren’t as private as you think

Johana Bhuiyan in New York
Tue 29 Nov 2022

In the wake of the US supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, Google pledged fresh policies to protect people’s abortion-related data. But new research has shown the way our location and other personal data is stored remains largely unchanged, raising fears that intimate details of a person’s abortion search could be used to penalize them.

Google responds to tens of thousands of requests each year from law enforcement agencies seeking access to the vast troves of data collected on its users. In one six-month period in 2021, the most recent data publicly available, Google received nearly 47,000 law enforcement requests, affecting more than 100,000 accounts, and responded with some amount of data to 80% of them. The Dobbs decision sparked concerns that such data could be used to prosecute people seeking abortions in states where it is banned – for instance, if they searched for or traveled to an abortion clinic.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/29/abortion-rights-us-google-roe-dobbs

29.11.2022

Commentary

Featured

abortion surveillance

Accountable Tech

Aditi Ramesh

digital surveillance and abortion

Giliann Karon

Google Maps and abortion

Google searches for abortion

Jackie Singh

Surveillance Technology Oversight Project

Tom Kemp

Winnie King

United States

U.S. Overturn of Roe Will Embolden Anti-Abortion Movements Abroad

11/29/2022
by MICHELLE ONELLO

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ruled that there is no U.S. constitutional right to abortion, will have ripple effects around the world, according to the International Center for Research on Women’s (ICRW) policy brief, “U.S. Foreign Policy Implications of Overturning Roe v. Wade.” While Dobbs did not change existing U.S. foreign policy regarding abortion, the brief argues that it will embolden anti-abortion movements abroad, contribute to global stigmatization of abortion, cause confusion for policy implementation and open the door for new restrictions—all of which will negatively impact the health, economic resources and well-being of women throughout the world.

Dobbs is a reminder that current U.S. foreign aid restrictions “are not aligned with best health care practices nor consistent with human rights and bodily autonomy principles.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2022/11/29/us-overturn-roe-v-wade-abortion-abroad-foreign-policy-helms-amendment-global-gag-rule/

Without Abortion, Doctors in Texas Are Forced to Witness Horrible Outcomes

We’re supposed to be able to give patients choices on how to handle high-risk pregnancy complications. A new paper shows what happens when we can’t.

BY CHAVI EVE KARKOWSKY
NOV 28, 2022

Usually, articles in medical journals are about science; they bring data to their readers, who can use them to provide evidence-based care to their patients.

But sometimes, evidence is an expression of grief or even rage. A recent journal article, “Maternal Morbidity and Fetal Outcomes Among Pregnant Women at 22 Weeks’ Gestation or Less with Complications in 2 Texas Hospitals After Legislation on Abortion,” contains such evidence.

Continued: https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/abortion-texas-roe-v-wade-data-maternal-morbidity.html

28.11.2022

A Woman Wanted an Abortion to Save One of Her Twins. She Had to Travel 1,000 Miles.

“There was no decision, really, because the baby wasn't going to survive... I’m not going to leave my son without a mom.”

By Carter Sherman
November 28, 2022

Early one Friday morning, about six weeks into her pregnancy, a woman started throwing up and didn’t stop for more than 36 hours. She tried drink after drink—ginger ale, tea, Pedialyte—to rehydrate, but the woman kept vomiting. Once chills started to wrack her body, she decided enough was enough. The woman, who VICE News is calling A. for privacy reasons, needed to go to the emergency room.

A., who already has a toddler son, had already been nervous about being pregnant in her home state of Texas. Although A. and her husband had planned for this pregnancy, A. worried that if anything went wrong, Texas’ ban on abortion would prevent her from getting help.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/epz7ap/texas-abortion-ban-woman-travels-to-save-twin

28.11.2022

Commentary

Featured

abortion story

fatal fetal abnormality

Texas abortion ban

traveling for abortion

USA – The case against medical abortion rejects science and embraces falsehoods

BY GREER DONLEY AND PATRICIA ZETTLER, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS
11/27/22

On Nov. 18, a group of antiabortion activists sued the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to try to remove mifepristone from the market. Mifepristone is the only drug that is FDA-approved to terminate a pregnancy. The lawsuit is based on several fundamental mischaracterizations of the FDA’s decision-making and the scientific evidence surrounding medication abortion.  

If this lawsuit is nevertheless successful, it would apply nationally and remove the drug from the market throughout the United States. It is therefore another reminder that the antiabortion movement will not stop with overturning Roe v Wade and banning abortion in half the country— its goal is to stop abortion everywhere. 

Continued: https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3751672-the-case-against-medical-abortion-rejects-science-and-embraces-falsehoods/

27.11.2022

Commentary

Featured

Food and Drug Administration

Post “Roe,” Advocates Fear for the Future of Contraceptive Self-Determination

A climate of misinformation and fear has people feeling they are making their contraceptive choices under duress.

By Garnet Henderson , TRUTHOUT
November 27, 2022

Jacora Johnson, a 22-year-old Texas resident, is facing a difficult and potentially painful decision. They currently use the Depo-Provera shot, a type of birth control that’s administered by a medical provider every three months. In addition to being a highly effective form of contraception, it’s also gender-affirming for Johnson, who is nonbinary.

“I don’t get my menstrual cycle, which is great because that can be dysphoric for me,” they said. Johnson also enjoys having regular check-ins with a doctor. But in Texas, most abortions have been banned since September 2021, when SB 8, the law that encouraged private citizens to enforce it by suing those who “aid or abet” abortions, went into effect.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/post-roe-advocates-fear-for-the-future-of-contraceptive-self-determination/

27.11.2022

USA – For-Profit Abortion Telemedicine Start-Ups Are Proliferating in Wake of “Roe”

Garnet Henderson, Truthout
November 26, 2022

In 2020, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must suspend its requirement that patients pick up mifepristone, one of the pills used in medication abortion, in person. After some back-and-forth under the Trump administration, the FDA permanently repealed the rule, which had long been decried by medical experts as unnecessary, in 2021.

This opened the door for providers to send abortion pills by mail in all but the 19 states that outlaw provision of abortion via telemedicine. (Many of those same states now ban abortion entirely.) This regulation change, along with increased popular interest in abortion access following Roe’s overturn, has led to a proliferation of telemedicine companies offering abortion pills. Some of these companies are run by people with prior experience in abortion care and connections in the reproductive health, rights and justice movements; others are not. Regardless, some abortion access advocates are raising concerns about whether the rise of for-profit telemedicine companies is the best way to serve abortion seekers.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/for-profit-abortion-telemedicine-start-ups-are-proliferating-in-the-wake-of-roe/

USA – What we know (and don’t know) about how abortion affected the midterms

November 25, 2022
Danielle Kurtzleben

Ahead of the midterms, pollsters and strategists and — yes, journalists — were obsessed with voters' top issues. In poll after poll, including polling at NPR, voters reported inflation to be the most important issue. Despite this, a lot of people do not vote with a single issue top-of-mind, and that makes it hard to know how much abortion swayed the midterms.

This year's midterms were certainly unusual — when the president's approval is below 50 percent (as President Biden's is), their party loses 43 House seats in midterm elections, on average. This year, Democratic losses may be in the single digits. As a result, less than six months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, both sides are working to figure out how big a part abortion played in the midterms.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/25/1139040227/abortion-midterm-elections-2022-republicans-democrats-roe-dobbs