USA – Abortion Bans Upended Their Lives—Now They’re Fighting Back, One Story at a Time

Across the country, abortion storytellers are putting the struggle for reproductive freedom into powerful new words.

Regina Mahone, The Nation
April 7, 2025

Shanette Williams sat patiently on the stage of an auditorium in Austin, Texas, staring at the photograph of her daughter Amber that was resting in her lap. The photo appeared on the front of a rose-dappled pamphlet, below the words “Celebration of Life” and “September 16, 1993–August 19, 2022.”
Occasionally, Williams looked up, out past the audience of 200 or in the direction of the other women who shared the stage with her, each recounting the horrors they had experienced under new, extreme abortion bans. Then it was Williams’s turn to speak.

“Good morning, everyone,” she said. “My name is Shanette.”

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/abortion-in-america-storytelling/

Woman’s arrest after miscarriage in Georgia draws fear and anger

Experts say the arrest is part of a pattern of criminalizing pregnancy that has accelerated since the fall of Roe v. Wade.

April 5, 2025
By Bracey Harris

On March 20 in rural Georgia, an ambulance responded to an early morning 911 call about an unconscious, bleeding woman at an apartment. When first responders arrived, they determined that she’d had a miscarriage. That was only the start of her ordeal.

Selena Maria Chandler-Scott was transported to a hospital, but a witness reported that she had placed the fetal remains in a dumpster. When police investigated, they recovered the remains and Chandler-Scott was charged with concealing the death of another person and abandoning a dead body. The charges were ultimately dropped; an autopsy determined Chandler-Scott had had a “natural miscarriage“ at around 19 weeks and the fetus was nonviable.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/georgia-arrest-miscarriage-fetal-personhood-rcna199400

Why US abortion restrictions matter beyond borders

To restore its position as a global advocate for human rights, the United States must ensure access to abortion within its borders.

March 10, 2025
By Jena Merritt

Abortion is healthcare—essential, life-saving, and fundamental to bodily autonomy. However, access to this critical service has become increasingly uncertain in the United States. Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, state-level restrictions have created a patchwork of access, leaving many without options. While the immediate effects are felt domestically, the ramifications extend far beyond US borders, influencing global attitudes toward reproductive rights.

Continued: https://www.openglobalrights.org/why-US-abortion-restrictions-matter-beyond-borders/

The CDC Hasn’t Asked States to Track Deaths Linked to Abortion Bans

The Biden administration hasn’t delivered on its goals of measuring the public health impact of abortion bans. Experts say it’s a missed opportunity to study how the laws may lead to deaths and long-term injuries.

by Kavitha Surana, Robin Fields and Ziva Branstetter
Dec. 20, 2024

After the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022, President Joe Biden issued an executive order tasking the federal government with assessing the “devastating implications for women’s health“ of new state abortion bans.

Experts were warning that these bans would interfere with critical medical care and lead to preventable deaths. And the states that passed the laws had little incentive to track their consequences.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-ban-deaths-cdc-maternal-health-care

Are Abortion Bans Across America Causing Deaths? The States That Passed Them Are Doing Little to Find Out.

The same political leaders who enacted abortion bans oversee the state committees that review maternal deaths. These committees haven’t tracked the laws’ impacts, and most haven’t finished examining cases from the year the bans went into effect.

by Kavitha Surana, Mariam Elba, Cassandra Jaramillo, Robin Fields and Ziva Branstetter
Dec. 18, 2024

In states with abortion bans, ProPublica has found, pregnant women have bled to death, succumbed to fatal infections and wound up in morgues with what medical examiners recorded were “products of conception” still in their bodies.

These are the very kinds of cases state maternal mortality review committees are supposed to delve into, determining why they happened and how to stop them from happening again.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-bans-deaths-state-maternal-mortality-committees

A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a “Crime” to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital

Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors delayed emergency care. She’d told her husband that the medical team said it couldn’t act until the fetal heartbeat stopped.

by Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana
Oct. 30, 2024

Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.

The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/josseli-barnica-death-miscarriage-texas-abortion-ban

Resolution supporting abortion as a human right introduced in U.S. Congress

Ipas
Sept 27, 2024

A resolution condemning the criminalization of abortion in the United States and urging governments at all levels—federal, state and local—to uphold abortion as a human right was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on September 24 with tremendous support—96 original co-sponsors.

Representative Nikema Williams of Georgia introduced the measure, which also commends state and local governments’ leadership for introducing and passing similar resolutions in their states and counties—including Austin, Texas; Mount Ranier, Maryland; Montgomery County, Maryland; and the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro in North Carolina.

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/resolution-supporting-abortion-as-a-human-right-introduced-in-u-s-congress/