Christine Fernando, USA TODAY
March 25, 2023
As a detective led her through the charred remains of the clinic, Julie Burkhart was heartbroken. Everything was black and melted. The smell was overwhelming. Fire and smoke damage had engulfed the building from the basement to the attic.
“I knew then that we were going to have a long road ahead,” said Burkhart, president of Wellspring Health Access in Casper, Wyoming.
By LORNE COOK
Mar 24, 2023
BRUSSELS (AP) — The way Justyna Wydrzyńska sees it, Ania was a victim of domestic violence just like she was. Another child and she’d be trapped. It was 2020. The pandemic lockdowns. Everyone worried that Poland’s borders might close, halting travel and postal services.
Looking to help someone she identified with, Wydrzyńska gave Ania the abortion pills she kept on hand for herself. “I just sent the pills, just shared them, because I thought it would be good for her to have this tool and decide whatever she wants (and can) leave without another kid and be able to get free from this violent relationship,” Wydrzyńska told The Associated Press in Brussels on Thursday.
The strictest abortion law in the US doesn’t allow exceptions for medical emergencies – and efforts to change it face powerful opposition from the right
Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Mon 20 Mar 2023
Months after the implementation of the most stringent abortion ban in the country, conservative lawmakers in Tennessee have publicly acknowledged that the state’s ban poses grave risks to the lives of women.
Now a political debate over how to change the law is centered on questions that would have been considered unthinkable before last June’s reversal of Roe v Wade: like how close to death a woman must be before a doctor may legally treat her if it means terminating her pregnancy, and whether women should be forced to carry embryos with fatal anomalies to term.
Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/20/tennessee-abortion-ban-strictist-in-us
A Texas man is suing his ex-wife’s friends for helping her get an abortion – whether he wins or not, the lawsuit is sending a terrifying message to women
18 Mar 2023
Arwa Mahdawi
Meet Jonathan Mitchell. The former solicitor general of Texas is not a household name but you’ll be familiar with his work. He’s the architect of the dystopian Texas law that lets private citizens act as vigilantes and sue abortion providers or anyone who “aids or abets” the procedure. As the New York Times noted in a 2021 profile of Mitchell, he’s devoted much of the past decade to “honing a largely below-the-radar strategy of writing laws deliberately devised to make it much more difficult for the judicial system – particularly the supreme court – to thwart them.” In other words: he’s brilliant at finding sneaky ways to inflict his beliefs on everyone else. And he appears to have made it his life’s work to weaponize the law to terrorize and control women.
Mitchell’s latest project is representing a Texas man called Marcus Silva who is currently suing his ex-wife’s friends for helping her get an abortion. Silva is demanding more than $1m in damages from each of the two friends his ex-wife talked and texted with when she planned her abortion as well as the woman who provided abortion pills. He’s also planning to sue the manufacturer of the abortion pills.
Mar 4, 2023
By Agustina Latourrette, BBC World Service
María was 23 when she decided to have an abortion. At the health centre where she had gone for treatment, she says she overheard one doctor saying to a colleague: "When will these girls learn to keep their legs closed?"
María lives in Salta, a religiously conservative province in north-west Argentina, where many healthcare workers are still against abortion. She was eventually given a pill to end her pregnancy, but she says the nurses were reluctant to treat her and wanted to make her feel guilty: "After I expelled the pregnancy tissue, I could see the foetus."
Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-64784660
In their auditions for the highest court in the land, each of them was at least materially misleading.
BY BILL BLUM
FEBRUARY 20, 2023
The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, issued last year, overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), and dismantled the federal constitutional right to abortion. One of the lingering questions in the aftermath of Dobbs is whether any of the five justices who voted to take that drastic step lied about their views on abortion during their respective confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
A strong argument can be made that each of them either lied or made materially misleading statements.
Continued: https://progressive.org/latest/unequal-justice-supreme-court-justices-abortion-lie-blum-20223/
One of the most common and safe abortion drugscould be banned nationwide this week—regardless of a state’s abortion restrictions.
By Carter Sherman
February 21, 2023
One of the most common and safe abortion drugs could be banned nationwide as soon as Friday, thanks to a lawsuit that could impact every state in the country—regardless of that state’s abortion restrictions.
Abortion rights supporters and foes alike are bracing for a ruling in a lawsuit, filed late last year, that accused the Food and Drug Administration of overstepping its authority when it approved the use of the drug mifepristone for abortions. Although the lawsuit was initially regarded as something of a longshot legal oddity among abortion rights activists, that attitude quickly changed once people realized that the suit was sure to be overseen by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump and is widely known for his conservative views on abortion.
Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkgkd/us-abortion-pill-ban-lawsuit
In the first full legislative session after Roe v. Wade was overturned, states across the country are looking to further restrict or better protect abortion rights. ProPublica looked at what abortion legislation is on the table in 2023.
by Megan Rose
Feb. 8, 2023
For 50 years, Roe v. Wade shut down the biggest ambitions of the anti-abortion movement. Last summer, the Supreme Court overturned that decision, unleashing a flurry of abortion legislation across the nation. And anti-abortion advocates have eager partners in Republican-controlled legislatures across the country.
“It’s exciting because our hands have been untied,” Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, said. “We’re going to see what we can do and do it.”
Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/us-abortion-legislation-2023
Two Polish hospitals refused to terminate the pregnancy of an underage rape victim. The case has sparked controversy over the country's restrictive legislation, with women's rights activists insisting it must be eased.
Jacek Lepiarz
February 5, 2023
A scandal is raging in Polish politics and in the media, concering the shocking case of a 14-year-old rape victim. The girl, who is from the Podlaskie region in northeastern Poland and has mental disabilities, was raped by her own uncle and became pregnant as a result. She was unaware of her condition, but her aunt noticed it and tried to help her get an abortion.
Although the girl had written confirmation from the public prosecutor that she was pregnant as the result of a crime, which gave her the right to a legal abortion, two hospitals in the region refused to carry out the procedure. The province of Podlaskie on the Belarusian border is a bastion of the right-wing conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS), which has been in power in Poland since 2015.
Continued: https://www.dw.com/en/poland-outcry-over-abortion-law/a-64586531
Letter from Republican attorneys general warns pharmacies sale of abortion pills by mail in their states would violate laws
Associated Press
Thu 2 Feb 2023
Attorneys general in 20 conservative-led states have warned CVS and Walgreens that they could face legal consequences if they sell abortion pills by mail in those states.
A letter sent on Wednesday from Andrew Bailey, the Republican Missouri attorney general, to the nation’s largest pharmacy dispensing companies was cosigned by 19 other attorneys general, and warned that sale of abortion pills would violate federal law and abortion laws in many states. Missouri is among states that implemented strict abortion prohibitions last summer after the supreme court ruling overturning Roe v Wade.
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