USA – “We backslid”: Doctors talk about how abortion care changed in 2022

"We backslid": Doctors talk about how abortion care changed in 2022
The Dobbs decision was devastating — but not all the news was bad

By MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
DECEMBER 26, 2022

It came as a shock, in spite of everything. Halfway through the year, we knew it was coming. We knew from the years and years of laws systematically chipping away at abortion access. We knew from the closed clinics. We knew, weeks before, when the Supreme Court's draft opinion was leaked in May. And yet, as I sat in the Salon studios on a Friday in June and a female colleague looked over and said, "They overturned Roe," I felt the immediate sense of free fall terror. The impact was immediate and chilling.

In states with trigger laws, the sense of urgency among patients and providers kicked in right away. Rachel Lachenauer, the Director of Patient Experience at the National Abortion Federation, told Salon last June following the decision, "We're getting absolutely inundated today with callers who are saying 'I just got a call from my facility, or I just called them to check in and I've learned that I'm no longer able to access care in my state."

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2022/12/26/we-backslid-doctors-talk-about-how-abortion-care-changed-in-2022/

TEXAS LAWMAKERS PLAN TO FURTHER DECIMATE ABORTION RIGHTS IN UPCOMING LEGISLATIVE SESSION

All Texas clinics have halted abortion care, but the anti-abortion movement says its work isn’t over.

Mary Tuma
December 26 2022

MONTHS BEFORE THE U.S. Supreme Court eviscerated nearly 50 years of abortion rights by overturning Roe v. Wade, Texans were already living in a grim post-Roe world. Senate Bill 8 — in effect since September 2021 due to the Supreme Court’s refusal to block the measure — barred abortion care once embryonic cardiac activity is detected, typically at six weeks of pregnancy. Then considered the most restrictive abortion law in the country, SB 8 halted the overwhelming majority of care in the nation’s second most populous state. The draconian law carried no exception for rape, incest, or severe fetal abnormality.

Next came the high court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck the final blow to abortion rights in Texas by allowing a full “trigger” ban to take effect. Performing an abortion in Texas is now a felony punishable by up to life in prison. Adding to the reproductive health crisis, state officials sought to push criminal enforcement of a 1925 pre-Roe ban. Today, all 23 abortion clinics in Texas have stopped providing abortion care at any stage, the most of any state in the nation.

Continued: https://theintercept.com/2022/12/26/texas-abortion-legislative-session/

Maternal and infant death rates are higher in states that ban or restrict abortion, report says

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN
Wed December 14, 2022

The rates of mothers and newborn babies dying during pregnancy, at birth or postpartum are much higher in states that currently ban or restrict abortions than in states preserving access, according to a new report.

The researchers analyzed data on deaths and other health outcomes using the most recent data available – from 2020 and earlier – and compared rates based on states’ current abortion access policies, as of November, after the Supreme Court decision this summer that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Continued:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/health/maternal-infant-death-abortion-access/index.html

USA – The Anti-Abortion Movement Is More Conspiracy-Addled Than Ever

From rampant antisemitism to groomer panic, pro-life activists are knee-deep in the far-right fever swamp.

Audrey Clare Farley
December 13, 2022

The “pro-life” movement has gone full groomer. Scroll the Twitter feed of the movement’s darling, Live Action founder Lila Rose, and you’ll find as many recent posts about the sexualization of children as you will see missives that are singularly about abortion. Take a gander at the feed of Students for Life, and you’ll find people calling Planned Parenthood staff “groomers.” Turn the television channel to EWTN, a staunchly anti-abortion Catholic network and the largest religious broadcast in the world, and you’ll find hosts decrying Disney’s “transgender grooming” of kids.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/169461/anti-abortion-movement-antisemitic-conspiracy

The Abortion Assault: Nigerian military ran secret mass abortion programme in war against Boko Haram

Since at least 2013, the Nigerian military has conducted a secret, systematic and illegal abortion programme in the country’s northeast, ending at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls, a Reuters investigation has found. Many had been kidnapped and raped by Islamist militants. Resisters were beaten, held at gunpoint or drugged into compliance, witnesses say.

By PAUL CARSTEN, READE LEVINSON, DAVID LEWIS and LIBBY GEORGE in MAIDUGURI, Nigeria
Portrait photography and videos by CHRISTOPHE VAN DER PERRE and PAUL CARSTEN
Filed Dec. 7, 2022

FATI wondered if her life was over.

Nigerian soldiers surrounded the Lake Chad island village where Islamist insurgents held her and many other women captive. Shells exploded. Bullets whipped by. As her captors fled, Fati blacked out in terror.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/nigeria-military-abortions/

07.12.2022

Abortion and authoritarianism: Why women’s freedom threatens male supremacy

The notion that men are superior to women is the root of all human inequality. That's why we must fight it

By ROBERT S. MCELVAINE
OCTOBER 23, 2022

Will America's future be one of democracy and women's control over their own bodies or one of authoritarianism and forced pregnancy? The two issues most motivating Americans to vote for Democrats in the rapidly approaching midterm elections are far more intertwined than is generally recognized.

At a time when right-wing extremists are hellbent on making American states — or, as many intend the whole nation — into the fictional Republic of Gilead, it is appropriate to turn to Margaret Atwood. "Tyrants and dictators like Adolf Hitler and Nicolae Ceausescu have often dictated the terms of fertility and criminalized those who did not comply," she pointed out in 2017. "It's no accident that Napoleon banned abortion. He said exactly what he wanted offspring for — cannon fodder. Lovely!"

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2022/10/23/abortion-and-authoritarianism-why-womens-freedom-threatens-male-supremacy/

After clinic arson, abortion rights advocates in Wyoming step up their fight

Lawmakers want to ban abortion. Advocates are confident that Wyoming’s constitution protects access — and they’re fighting in court to prove it.

Jordan Smith
October 15 2022

THE SUN WAS just coming up on May 25 when Julie Burkhart’s phone rang.

Burkhart had arrived in Casper, Wyoming, a day earlier to check on renovations to a new abortion clinic she was opening on East Second Street. The final cleaning in preparation for opening day was scheduled for the end of the week. That evening she’d done a walk-through; all looked good. But when she heard the voice of one of her contractors on the other end of the line, she knew something was wrong. “I was thinking there’s a plumbing issue,” she recalled. “‘There was a water break, right?’”

Continued: https://theintercept.com/2022/10/15/wyoming-abortion-clinic-arson/

USA – The Long Campaign to Turn Birth Control Into the New Abortion

Now that the fall of Roe v. Wade has ended the constitutional right to abortion, many in the religious right have a new goal: undermining trust in, and limiting access to, hormonal contraception – including the pill.

October 8, 2022

When the Supreme Court’s decision undoing Roe v. Wade came down in June, anti-abortion groups were jubilant – but far from satisfied. Many in the movement have a new target: hormonal birth control. It seems contradictory; doesn’t preventing unwanted pregnancies also prevent abortions? But anti-abortion groups don’t see it that way. They claim that hormonal contraceptives like IUDs and the pill can actually cause abortions.

One prominent group making this claim is Students for Life of America, whose president has said she wants contraceptives like IUDs and birth control pills to be illegal. The fast-growing group has built a social media campaign spreading the false idea that hormonal birth control is an abortifacient. Reveal’s Amy Mostafa teams up with UC Berkeley journalism and law students to dig into the world of young anti-abortion influencers and how medical misinformation gains traction on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, with far-reaching consequences.

Continued: https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-long-campaign-to-turn-birth-control-into-the-new-abortion/

Florida calls teen ‘too immature’ for an abortion. But forced motherhood is fine?

Jill Filipovic
hu 18 Aug 2022

A Florida court has held that a pregnant and parentless 16-year-old is not mature enough to have an abortion – but is, apparently, mature enough to raise a child after being forced into childbirth by the state.

This case illustrates the utter absurdity and deep cruelty of parental consent laws, which are in place in 21 states. While parental consent laws seem reasonable enough on their face – who wouldn’t want to know if their child was having an abortion? – they are in practice alternately duplicative or dangerous. If a parent is supportive of their child’s bodily autonomy and has raised that child into a thoughtful, mature teenager, that teenager will either feel comfortable telling their parents about an unplanned pregnancy, or will have the ability and wherewithal to make their own decision and get themselves to an abortion provider. If a parent is abusive or unsupportive of their child’s basic rights, why should the state put young people at risk by requiring that their parents be notified?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/18/florida-teen-abortion-forced-motherhood

18.08.2022

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“Women Are Going to Die”: A Late Abortion Doctor on the Dangers of Post-Roe America

Abigail Weinberg
July 19, 2022

Abortions that occur after 21 weeks gestation are vanishingly rare, accounting for about 1 percent of all abortions nationwide. The doctors who perform abortions later in pregnancy are even rarer: The 2013 documentary After Tiller cited just four doctors in the United States who performed abortions in the third trimester.

One of them is Dr. Warren Hern. He has operated in Boulder, Colorado, for decades, despite a constant onslaught of violence and harassment.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/warren-hern-boulder-late-abortion-doctor-interview-post-roe/