USA – ‘Very clear’ or ‘narrow and confusing’? Abortion lawsuits highlight confusion over emergency exceptions

N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAY
Jan 27, 2024

A North Dakota judge's recent decision to deny a request blocking part of the state's restrictive abortion law highlights an issue abortion-rights advocates say is impacting doctors nationwide: The exceptions in strict abortion laws can be vague, causing medical providers to question when they can perform an abortion in a medical emergency.

A lawsuit in North Dakota is one of several recently filed by advocates seeking to clarify and expand the circumstances under which doctors can provide abortions during medical emergencies in states with strict abortion bans. Mary Ziegler, a professor of law at University of California, Davis, said the emergency exceptions written into these laws can be confusing for physicians and, given their high penalties, can lead doctors to "err on the side of protecting themselves and not providing care to patients."

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/27/abortion-lawsuits-emergency-medical-exceptions/72339103007/

Republicans Are Using Exceptions to Sell Their Abortion Bans. It’s a Scam.
Exceptions for rape, incest, and medical emergencies are incredibly hard for pregnant people to actually use—and that’s a feature, not a bug.

By Carter Sherman
April 27, 2023

This week, North Dakota’s governor signed into law one of the country’s most extreme abortion bans. It outlaws almost all abortions—and only allows people to get abortions in cases of rape or incest if they undergo the procedure within the first six weeks of pregnancy.

The ban is, for now, an act of political theater. No one is going to an abortion clinic in North Dakota, because the last clinic in the state moved to Minnesota months ago. But the exceptions in the ban are also likely meaningless. Many people do not even realize that they are pregnant at six weeks, and many sexual assault survivors can take far longer to come forward, if they ever do.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3wvq/republicans-abortion-ban-exceptions

27.04.2023

Opinion

abortion exceptionalism

near-total abortion ban

rape and incest exceptions

State Abortion Rulings Post-Dobbs Begin Defining Scope of Rights

Jan. 17, 2023
Mary Anne Pazanowski

State top courts have begun weighing in on whether their laws provide greater protection for abortion rights than the federal constitution, with mixed results.

A majority of South Carolina’s Supreme Court justices recently held that the state constitution’s guarantee against unreasonable invasions of privacy extends to abortion. But the Idaho Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion, holding that there’s no fundamental right to abortion in the state constitution.

Continued:: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/state-abortion-rulings-post-dobbs-begin-defining-scope-of-rights

17.01.2023

American Civil Liberties Union

anti-choice restrictions

Brennan Center for Justice

Center for Reproductive Rights

Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Moving Backwards on Abortion Rights: Inside One Family’s Efforts to Expand Access

My Republican grandpa and Democratic mom both championed abortion rights as state lawmakers.

BY KATRINA FROELICH
MAY 27, 2022

It’s an interesting time to be a woman in America. While scrolling Instagram to see the latest fashion updates from the Met Gala, you might suddenly see a cutesy graphic that lets you know that a leaked draft opinion reveals that the Supreme Court intends to overturn Roe v. Wade. The modern woman finds out that they’re losing their abortion rights via pretty pink font, perfectly primed to be reposted.

Although I was raised in a family that always saw me as a person capable of making decisions about my body, the Supreme Court of the United States does not. I am the daughter of a Colorado legislator and the granddaughter of a North Dakota legislator. Both have cast pro-choice votes in two different centuries. Now, in many parts of America, I will have fewer rights than either my mother or my grandfather could have ever imagined.

Continued: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/roe-abortion-access

Republicans Want a New Weapon in the War on Abortion: Murder Charges

“If you want to spout, ‘My body, my body choice,’ you need to spend some time in our Arizona penal system,” said one state lawmaker.

by Carter Sherman
29.1.21

The U.S. anti-abortion movement is built on the belief that getting an abortion is tantamount to killing a child. Now, some abortion opponents want to turn that idea into law.

Legislators in at least three states—Arizona, North Dakota and Mississippi—introduced bills for the 2021 legislative session that would allow prosecutors to charge abortion providers with murder, as part of a massive wave of anti-abortion legislation that’s flooding statehouses across the country. So far this session, at least 143 abortions restrictions have been introduced in 25 states, and there's likely more to come.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/akdaa4/republicans-want-a-new-weapon-in-the-war-on-abortion-murder-charges

Medication abortion reversal is “devoid of scientific support,” judge rules in North Dakota

Medication abortion reversal is "devoid of scientific support," judge rules in North Dakota

By Kate Smith
September 10, 2019

A judge in North Dakota ruled against the state's recent law requiring physicians to tell patients that their medication abortions may reversed, a claim he called "devoid of scientific support, misleading, and untrue."

In a 24-page decision issued Tuesday morning, Judge Daniel Hovland granted the American Medical Association and Red River Women's Clinic — North Dakota's only abortion provider — a preliminary injunction against North Dakota House Bill 1336, which would have required physicians to tell patients "that it may be possible to reverse the effects of an abortion-inducing drug if she changes her mind, but time is of the essence," according to the law's text.

Continued: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/medication-abortion-reversal-is-devoid-of-scientific-support-judge-rules-in-north-dakota-today-2019-09-10/

Hollywood rarely tells the truth about abortion. ‘Little Woods’ is different.

Hollywood rarely tells the truth about abortion. ‘Little Woods’ is different.

By Renee Bracey Sherman
April 23, 2019

Pop culture has made some progress since 1956, when an addition to the Motion Picture Production Code that governed Hollywood movie-making declared, “The subject of abortion shall be discouraged, shall never be more than suggested, and, when referred to, shall be condemned.” But even by contemporary standards, in which characters are allowed to have abortions and movies can depict those decisions positively, Nia DaCosta’s debut feature film, “Little Woods,” is a politically urgent revelation.

Rather than making the decision to have an abortion the major source of tension in the film, DaCosta starkly depicts the sacrifices that families make to afford health care, dramatizing the recent onslaught of restrictions on abortion. And her character’s choices place abortion in conversation with our national debate about opioid addiction and drug trafficking to illuminate these well-worn subjects in new ways.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/23/hollywood-rarely-tells-truth-about-abortion-little-woods-is-different/

If ‘Roe v. Wade’ Goes, Women May Have to Drive Hours for Abortions. It’s Already Happening in North Dakota

If ‘Roe v. Wade’ Goes, Women May Have to Drive Hours for Abortions. It’s Already Happening in North Dakota
One in five women in North Dakota travels more than 280 miles to get an abortion. That drive could become longer if ‘Roe v. Wade’ is repealed.

Torey Van Oot
07.11.18

Holly Alvarado was 22 and just weeks from deployment in the U.S. military when she realized she was pregnant. She knew she wasn’t in a place emotionally or financially to have a child. She called a Planned Parenthood and asked how—and where—she could get an abortion.

At the time, Alvarado was stationed in Grand Forks, North Dakota, a city on the Minnesota border just 90 miles south of the Canadian border. The sole abortion clinic in the state, a two hour drive from her home, wasn’t able to see her before her departure. The next closest provider was more than four hours away in Minnesota.

Continued: https://www.thedailybeast.com/if-roe-v-wade-goes-women-may-have-to-drive-hours-for-abortions-its-already-happening-in-north-dakota

USA -The effect of a documentary: Charlotte, NC

USA -The effect of a documentary: Charlotte, NC
Dec 12, 2017
by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion

Care in Chaos, a documentary by the US feminist news wire, Rewire, recently received the “Best Documentary Short” award from the Nevada Film Festival. It examines how policing practices and policies in Charlotte, North Carolina and Fargo, North Dakota impede or facilitate access to reproductive health care. Providers throughout the country work every day to serve patients, often under siege from an anti-choice movement driven by ideology and disrespect for women’s lives. As Care in Chaos shows, local authorities can make the difference in whether women can obtain critical care.

Right after the documentary’s release, they write, they saw real policy action. The city of Charlotte revised its sound permits to stop anti-choice protesters harassing patients and staff with loudspeakers and amplifiers. Now it’s easier for women in Charlotte to access comprehensive reproductive healthcare.

Watch the film "Care in Chaos" (21 minutes): https://rewire.news/videos/2017/07/11/care-in-chaos/

Source: http://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/usa-the-effect-of-a-documentary-charlotte-nc/