USA – ‘Good Genes,’ Anti-Abortion Laws, Declining Birth Rates, and What They Have in Common

Liz Parker, Common Dreams
Oct 12, 2025

… in America, promoting good genes and limiting access to birth control and abortion are inextricably tied by two threads: white supremacy and the patriarchy. And they have been for more than 150 years—ever since the first time abortion was criminalized in America in the late 1800s.

In the words of Leslie Reagan (author of When Abortion Was a Crime): “White male patriotism demanded that maternity be enforced among Protestant women.”

Continued: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/anti-abortion-history-us

12.10.2025

Commentary

American Medical Association

When Abortion Was a Crime

Herbal Abortion Is Making a Comeback. So Are the Dangers.

Since the Supreme Court gutted Roe, interest in old folk methods of terminating pregnancies has spiked. But the health and legal risks involved with these treatments are stark.

Julia Sonenshein
September 9, 2025

Though not particularly common in most herb gardens these days, rue can add a bit of bitter and bring balance to a dish gone too sweet or salty. Pennyroyal looks like mint and has a similar, zingy taste. Mugwort is tart. Tansy flowers into perfect yellow buds. Parsley is likely in your refrigerator right now, wilting a bit in your crisper drawer.

These herbs—along with a host of other foods, drinks, and cooking utensils—have all been used as abortifacients, or substances that terminate pregnancies, and have played a role in virtually every region of the world. Their usage has varied depending on the culture, political climate, concepts of gender, influence of faith, or power of the state. In many cases, they were used on this land before the formation of the United States, and they’ve been part of U.S. history since the early colonies.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/198841/herbal-abortion-revival-dobbs-health

A History of Abortion Undergrounds—and a Guide to Starting One

Journalist Rebecca Grant shifts the abortion conversation away from laws and morals to focus on access: getting people the care they seek.

Jessie Kindig
August 4, 2025

On a rainy evening in June 2001, abortion pirates sailed into Dublin harbor. Their converted fishing trawler had a portable clinic bolted to the deck, and the cargo included 20 doses of medication abortion (mifepristone and misoprostol), thousands of condoms, 120 IUDs, and 250 morning-after pills. The ship’s nearly all-female crew included a nurse and a gynecologist and was led by Rebecca Gomperts, a freckled and dark-haired Dutch doctor in her mid-thirties. The boat made its way up the River Liffey and docked close to a waiting crowd of activists and journalists.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/198369/abortion-undergrounds-history-guide

Attacks on Abortion Access Are as Old as White Supremacist Patriarchy Itself. Here’s How We Fight Back.

7/18/2025
by Carmen Rios, Ms. Magazine
Podcast: 63 minutes

In the second episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, advocates, lawmakers and experts explore the real roots of abortion criminalization throughout U.S. history — and lay out visions for where the fight for reproductive freedom must go next.

In 1847, the American Medical Association formed — and kicked off a period known as “the century of criminalization” of abortion in the United States. It wasn’t coincidental that the all-male AMA, formed explicitly to grab power and authority from female practitioners across the United States, focused their initial efforts so heavily on restricting abortion. Like the laws restricting and banning abortion that have shaped our reproductive lives in the centuries since, the sexism was by design.

“If we tell the story of these lands, which were first occupied by Indigenous peoples who were marched off of their lands … exploited, abused, violence put upon them and coercion, there is a reproductive health rights justice story there, too,” legal scholar and Ms. Studios executive producer Michele Goodwin says.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/07/18/abortion-ban-attack-feminist-women-history-white-supremacy/

Anti-abortion states are targeting an emergency healthcare law. Will the supreme court side with them?

Justices to rule whether abortion bans should undo Emtala, the Reagan-era law requiring hospitals to treat emergency patients

Jessica Glenza
Sun 21 Apr 2024

One of the only universal rights to healthcare in the US is to be treated in the emergency room – a place where doctors are required to stabilize patients if their future health or life is in serious jeopardy.

That right, guaranteed by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known across the country by healthcare professionals as Emtala, was borne out of what was once a common practice called “patient dumping” – transferring patients who could not pay from private hospitals to public counterparts, even in emergency situations.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/apr/21/emtala-supreme-court-abortion

“Abortionist”: The Label That Turns Healthcare Workers Into Criminals

The moniker has branded those who help terminate pregnancies as illegitimate, dangerous, and, in turn, allowable targets of violence.

KATIE HERCHENROEDER, Mother Jones
May/June 2024 issue (posted April 15)

In 2007, after Paul Ross Evans pleaded guilty to leaving a bomb outside of a women’s health clinic in Austin, he assured the judge: He never meant for anyone to get hurt. “Except,” he clarified, “for the abortionists.”

For almost two centuries, the moniker “abortionist” has branded those who help terminate pregnancies as illegitimate, dangerous, and, in turn, allowable targets of violence. Before Roe v. Wade, the label turned midwives and doctors into criminals to be cracked down on by the state. After the 1973 decision, right-wing movements continued to deploy the term to imply only back-alley doctors performed abortions.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/abortionist-the-label-that-turns-healthcare-workers-into-criminals/

The History Behind Arizona’s 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban

The state’s Supreme Court ruled that the 1864 law is enforceable today. Here is what led to its enactment.

By Pam Belluck
April 10, 2024

The 160-year-old Arizona abortion ban that was upheld on Tuesday by the state’s highest court was among a wave of anti-abortion laws propelled by some historical twists and turns that might seem surprising.

For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until fetal movement could be felt, usually well into the second trimester. Movement, known as quickening, was the threshold because, in a time before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.

Unlocked: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/health/arizona-abortion-ban-history.html

USA – Dozens of ‘friend of the court’ briefs backing abortion pill access arrive at Supreme Court

BY: JENNIFER SHUTT
FEBRUARY 2, 2024

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has been inundated with dozens of organizations seeking to weigh in on the future of the abortion pill by filing “friend of the court” briefs.

The groups include governors, attorneys general, state lawmakers and members of Congress as well as medical organizations, civil rights groups and pharmaceutical companies — all of whom argue the justices’ ruling will have significant effects on American society and health care.

“Turning back the clock to reimpose unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone will exacerbate existing inequities in maternal health for women of color, low-income women, and those living in rural areas,” wrote a group of more than 16 medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and The American Medical Association.

Continued: https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2024/02/02/dozens-of-friend-of-the-court-briefs-backing-abortion-pill-access-arrive-at-supreme-court/

02.02.2024

News

American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians

American Medical Association

Catholics for Choice

Food and Drug Administration

mifepristone

NAACP Legal Defense Fund

Reproductive Freedom Alliance

How the Far-Right Shaped Abortion Care Long Before ‘Roe’ Was Overturned

Naomi Braine's book Abortion Beyond the Law digs into how self-managed abortion emerges from new technologies while building on previous feminist movements.

NOV 14, 2023
NAOMI BRAINE

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, they upended a way of organizing medical care—and life—that women of reproductive age in the United States largely took for granted. In June 2022, when the Dobbs decision was officially released, abortion had been legal for 49 years, and while it had been increasingly difficult to access in much of the United States, there is a vast difference between “inaccessible” and “illegal.” In states that have banned abortion, doctors (and hospital lawyers) calculate the odds of criminal prosecution and even incarceration as they make decisions about care for pregnant women with health conditions, often critical ones, that are incompatible with continuing a pregnancy. In states like Texas, where support for a person seeking an abortion has been criminalized, abortion funds have scrambled to figure out whether they can still operate and, in many cases, have had to close their doors and/or relocate to a different state.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2023/11/14/how-the-far-right-shaped-abortion-care-long-before-roe-was-overturned/

14.11.2023

Film, Art, Books

American Medical Association

Abortion pill mifepristone: An explainer and research roundup about its history, safety and future

Amid pending court cases and ballot initiatives, journalistic coverage of medication abortion has never been more crucial. This piece aims to help inform the narrative with scientific evidence.

by Naseem S. Miller
November 1, 2023

Access to mifepristone, a medication that’s used for the safe termination of early pregnancy, hangs in the balance while the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to take up a case that could determine the legal future of the abortion medication.

In August, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mifepristone should not be prescribed past the seventh week of pregnancy, prescribed via telemedicine, or shipped to patients through the mail. In September, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to consider a challenge to that ruling.

Continued: https://journalistsresource.org/health/mifepristone-research-roundup/