If Trump wins the election, this is what’s at stake

Women and doctors describe heart-wrenching decisions under what may be the US’s strictest abortion ban in Idaho

Carter Sherman in Boise, Idaho
Mon 21 Oct 2024

When Jennifer Adkins and her husband were considering having a second child in Idaho, they vaguely thought how the state’s near-total abortion ban could affect them. But Adkins’ first pregnancy had gone so smoothly, she didn’t even use an epidural when she gave birth. Her next pregnancy, she expected, would be similar.

But in April 2023, 12 weeks into her second pregnancy, an ultrasound scan shattered that hope.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/21/idaho-abortion-trump

Democrats Aren’t Afraid to Say “Abortion” Anymore

At the Democratic National Convention, the party’s bold new messaging on reproductive rights takes center stage.

Abby Vesoulis, Mother Jones
Aug 21, 2024

In a coveted primetime speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Monday night, three women shared the stage to speak about their harrowing personal experiences with pregnancy and abortion.

Amanda Zurawski told the story of how she was denied an abortion after going into pre-term labor well before her desired pregnancy was considered viable; the Texas woman developed a life-threatening case of sepsis and spent three days in an intensive care unit. Kentucky’s Hadley Duvall recounted how her stepfather raped her when she was 12, resulting in an (obviously) unwanted pregnancy that she (thankfully) did not carry to term due to a miscarriage. Kaitlyn Joshua discussed being turned away from two hospital emergency rooms that refused to treat her active miscarriage due to Louisiana’s strict abortion laws.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/08/democrats-arent-afraid-to-say-abortion-anymore-dnc-chicago/

USA – The New Faces of Abortion Rights

Democrats used to talk about abortion in abstract terms. Now Harris campaign volunteers are getting specific and changing the debate.

By Peter Slevin
August 9, 2024

The crowd that greeted Kamala Harris in a high-school gym outside Milwaukee last month was delighted to the point of delirium. People roared when she said that, as a former prosecutor, she knows “Donald Trump’s type.” They cheered again when she spoke up for affordable child care and an assault-weapons ban. But when she said, “We trust women to make decisions about their own body,” the response was so loud that it nearly drowned out the end of the sentence. She shouted above the din, “And not have their government tell them what to do.”

… To make that emotional connection with voters, Meghan Mohr has helped more than a dozen women to talk about their abortions on the campaign trail. The women, called abortion storytellers, have introduced Harris at events, and they are training others to give their own testimonies in the hope of highlighting the stakes in November.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-new-faces-of-abortion-rights

Idaho – When “abortion travel” becomes a nightmare: A tale of no good choices

She wanted a baby — but her fetus had no chance of survival. How Idaho's abortion laws led to devastating trauma

By NICOLE KARLIS
JUNE 12, 2024

Rebecca Vincen-Brown was still in her first trimester of pregnancy, in the late fall of 2022, when things started to go wrong. She had blood drawn for a standard genetic test called noninvasive prenatal testing, or NIPT, which can detect increased risks for various chromosomal disorders. The results of the test took slightly longer than normal to come back, and when they did, Vincen-Brown received a troubling phone call: The test was “inconclusive” because not enough fetal DNA was detected in her blood.

NIPT cannot diagnose fetal disorders conclusively, but the possibilities were troubling: Her fetus might have triploidy, trisomy 13 or trisomy 18, rare and serious genetic conditions involving either an extra set of chromosomes or an extra copy of one chromosome. While the specifics vary, most infants born with these conditions will live only days or weeks, and almost none will survive to adulthood.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2024/06/12/when-abortion-travel-becomes-a-nightmare-a-tale-of-no-good-choices/

‘They have no options’: Texas court dims hope of timely abortion care for high-risk patients

Kristen Anaya was told she must be on the cusp of death before doctors would give a life-saving abortion

Mary Tuma
Sat 8 Jun 2024

After four rounds of in vitro fertilization, Kristen Anaya and her husband were elated to discover Anaya was finally pregnant - with a baby girl - last April. The 42-year-old Dallas-area woman called IVF a “long and emotional journey”. Despite the cost and struggle, the process was well worth it for Anaya, who wanted to grow her family.

However, the good news would give way to an unexpectedly grueling and traumatic pregnancy that forced her to suffer for days before receiving care, due to Texas’s severe abortion bans.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/08/texas-abortion-high-risk-patients

Texas Supreme Court Rules Against Women Denied Abortion Care Despite Dangerous Pregnancy Complications

Center for Reproductive Rights
May 31, 2024

Today the Texas Supreme Court denied claims brought by 20 women denied abortion care despite facing dangerous pregnancy complications and refused to clarify exceptions to the state’s abortion bans.

The ruling in the high-profile case, Zurawski v. State of Texas, left physicians without clarity about the circumstances under which they can use their own medical judgement to provide abortion care without fear of prosecution.

Continued: https://reproductiverights.org/zurawski-v-texas-ruling-texas-supreme-court/

USA – The Lie at the Heart of the Latest Supreme Court Abortion Case

‘Life of the mother’ exceptions are nothing more than a politically expedient lie designed to distract from the violence inherent in the maintenance of abortion bans.

4/22/2024
by TESS GRAHAM

Idaho will attempt to defend its extreme abortion ban at the Supreme Court this Wednesday. Like many other abortion bans in the United States, the Idaho law contains a so-called life exception, which purports to allow an abortion when “necessary to prevent the death” of the pregnant person. But do these exceptions actually preserve the lives of patients in practice? As Mayron Hollis, Amanda Zurawski, the family of Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, and countless other women can attest, the answer is no. And the truth is, they’re not designed to.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/04/22/abortion-exception-life-health-of-mother-death/

USA – What It Takes to Claw Back Abortion Rights in Court

Feb 19, 2024
By Andrea González-Ramírez, the Cut

Any day now, the Texas Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling on Zurawski v. State of Texas, the first-of-its-kind legal challenge brought forward last year by 20 women who say that they were denied abortion care in the face of severe and dangerous pregnancy complications. The case seeks to clarify what circumstances qualify as medical emergencies under the state’s three overlapping abortion bans, which threaten providers with up to life in prison, in addition to a civil penalty of no less than $100,000.

Molly Duane, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, came up with the case’s legal strategy and has since filed similar lawsuits in Idaho and Tennessee. … “Brittany Watts, Kate Cox — these are not isolated incidents,” she says. “The cruelty, the confusion, the absolute terror that is pervasive throughout the medical community and is impacting patients every single day, all that was by design.” I talked to Duane about the reasoning behind this focus on medical exceptions and the long game that is trying to claw back some abortion rights through the courts.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/zurawski-v-texas-and-clawing-back-abortion-rights-in-court.html

Texas Is Still Targeting Kate Cox After Her Historic Abortion Win

BY MARY ZIEGLER
DEC 08, 2023

Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, states required minors seeking abortion without the involvement of their parents to seek a court order. Today, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Woman’s Health Organization, an adult woman had to do the same thing, even when her life and fertility were at risk. While a judge ruled in her favor on Thursday, issuing a temporary restraining order granting her doctor the right to perform the procedure without facing penalties, the state of Texas is still determined to stop her.

Kate Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant with her third child, learned that her child had full trisomy 18, a genetic condition that is almost always fatal in utero or the first year after birth. Physicians warned her that continuing the pregnancy put her at high risk of developing gestational diabetes and hypertension—and that a third Cesarean section might also deprive Cox of the ability to have another child. Her physician nevertheless turned away her request for an abortion, concerned about “the loss of her medical license, life in prison, and massive civil fines.”

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/12/texas-targeting-kate-cox-historic-abortion.html

Texas Supreme Court heavily scrutinizes both sides in case challenging abortion bans

Bayliss Wagner, Austin American-Statesman
Nov 29, 2023

Texas' highest court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case that will decide whether medical exceptions to Texas abortion bans are written clearly enough to protect women who face serious health risks during pregnancy.

The 22 plaintiffs in the case include several women forced to wait until they were sick with sepsis, a life-threatening condition, to terminate pregnancies that premature ruptures of membrane had already rendered nonviable; two women who traversed hundreds of miles for abortions of a nonviable twin to protect their and their healthy babies' lives; and a woman forced to carry a nonviable pregnancy to term, then watch her baby's skin turn purple and her eyeballs bleed as she slowly suffocated to death.

Continued: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/state/2023/11/29/texas-supreme-court-hears-case-challenging-texas-abortion-bans-health-risks-pregnancy-women/71727577007/