This Is What It Was Like to Be an Abortion Escort Before Roe Ended

A volunteer and a legal scholar take you into a job that is about to become much more dangerous.

a. l. Dawson and J. Shoshanna Ehrlich
June 30, 2022

All across the country, with its wildly uneven distribution of reproductive health services, anti-abortion protesters continue to wage a war of attrition against abortion access—often transforming the public spaces in front of clinics into hostile zones that clients must navigate in order to access essential care.

It will only get harder now that the Supreme Court has gutted Roe with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. While abortion access has become increasingly difficult in recent years, particularly for marginalized communities in abortion-hostile regions, we will soon face the grim reality that abortion most likely will be banned in at least 25 states. (Oklahoma didn’t even bother to wait for the Supreme Court to institute such a ban, which the governor signed at the end of May.) At the same time, abortion clinics that still remain are anticipating more protests by emboldened and potentially more aggressive anti-abortion activists who are seeking to transform the nation into a unified abortion wasteland.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/06/this-is-what-it-was-like-to-be-an-abortion-escort-before-roe-ended/

Scotland – Doctors call for action over abortion protests as patients face ‘deplorable intimidation and harassment’

Group of 76 clinicians urge government to introduce buffer zones following large demonstration outside Glasgow hospital

Chiara Giordano
Apr 15, 2022

Scores of doctors have called for action after a large anti-abortion protest was held near a hospital in Glasgow.

More than 100 anti-abortion activists from the 40 Days for Life campaign group gathered outside the city’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital on Sunday.

Continued: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/doctors-call-for-action-abortion-protests-b2058654.html

Liberals introduce bill to provide sick pay, ban intimidation of patients and health-care workers

Bill C-3 would make it illegal to intimidate or obstruct health-care workers, patients seeking care

Peter Zimonjic · CBC News
Posted: Nov 26, 2021

The Liberal government has introduced legislation to provide workers in federally regulated sectors with 10 days of sick pay — while also making it an offence to intimidate or prevent patients from seeking care, or to interfere with health professionals trying to deliver it.

Bill C-3, which amends the Criminal Code and the Canada Labour Code, was unveiled today by Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan and Justice Minister David Lametti.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberals-sick-pay-intimidation-health-care-1.6264441

26.11.2021

Featured

News

anti-choice interference

anti-choice intimidation

anti-choice protesters

The new anti-abortion tactics of the far right in the Americas

ISABELLA COTASTEPHANIA CORPI
OCT 24, 2021

An EL PAÍS investigation in five Latin American countries has found that a network of centers affiliated with the far-right US organization Heartbeat International (HI) promote themselves online as feminist support groups and use misleading language in favor of abortion, but in reality they work to manipulate and institutionalize women to get them to carry their pregnancy to term.

Five female reporters and one male reporter went undercover to centers in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Mexico between 2019 and 2021, as a follow-up to an OpenDemocracy investigation into HI’s operations in the region.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-10-24/the-new-anti-abortion-tactics-of-the-far-right-in-the-americas.html

24.10.2021

Commentary

Featured

Research

adoption and abortion

anti-choice deception

anti-choice intimidation

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misogyny

Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health

Centers to Help Women

CLACAI

crisis pregnancy centres

El Pais investigation

Fanny Cordero

Fundación Hogar Margarita

Gretchen Sisson

Heartbeat International

Latin American Consortium against Unsafe Abortion

Miguel Ángel Salazar

National System for the Integral Development of the Family

PANI

Privacy International

Ron Archer

Susana Chávez

Susana Vallina

undercover investigation of CPCs

Vida y Familia A.C.

Women’s Institute of Comprehensive Health

For These Abortion Clinic Escorts, The Vitriol From Protesters Has Gotten Way Worse As States Try To Restrict Access

“You never know who’s going to show up when you call 911. Nothing has ever come of it.”

Nicole Fallert, BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on October 16, 2021

Christine is used to being called a witch. As a volunteer escort at EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville, Kentucky, she’s accustomed to crowds of anti-abortion protesters shouting the word at her while she accompanies patients into the clinic. “Devil” and “Nazi guard” are also frequently used.

Christine, who has been an escort for eight years, said patients are never prepared for the harassment that awaits them as they attempt to enter the building.

Continued: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolefallert/abortion-clinic-escorts-protesters-concern

Abortion clinic protests banned in WA as safe access zones bill approved to protect women

By Rhiannon Shine
Aug 12, 2021

Protesting outside abortion clinics will no longer be allowed in any Australian jurisdiction, after laws to introduce safe access zones in Western Australia passed State Parliament.

The Public Health Amendment (Safe Access Zones) Bill 2021 passed the Labor-dominated Legislative Council today.

Continued: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-12/wa-abortion-clinic-protests-banned-under-safe-access-zones-bill/100366664

An Abortion Provider Discusses His Biggest Fears Over Texas’ Abortion ‘Bounty’ Law

Will other states follow Texas’ lead? Will clinics be able to withstand the potential onslaught of lawsuits? “We have no idea what this is going to look like,” says Dr. Bhavik Kumar.

JULY 16, 2021
By TESSA STUART

Dr. Bhavik Kumar has been a Texas abortion provider for six years, with the last two at the Planned Parenthood Center for Choice in Houston, Texas. He started practicing shortly after House Bill 2 — the last Texas abortion law to go all the way to the Supreme Court before it was struck down as unconstitutional — went into effect. In the three years between the law’s passage and the Supreme Court’s decision, HB2 forced roughly half of Texas’ abortion providers to shut their doors.

A new bill, passed by the Texas State Legislature in May and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in June, has the potential to be even more disruptive. Instead of outlawing abortion outright, the new law empowers private citizens to sue doctors like Kumar, nurses, members of his staff, as well as anyone else who “aids and abets” an abortion — family members who drive patients to the clinic, faith leaders who provide counseling, abortion funds — for $10,000 each. The ban applies to abortions that take place after heart activity can be detected in the embryo — six weeks gestation, or roughly two weeks after a woman’s missed period, when many women don’t even know they are pregnant yet.

continued: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/sb-8-texas-abortion-law-10000-dollar-bounty-1194953/

We Need a Left Strategy for Confronting the Anti-Abortion Movement

The anti-abortion movement has grown increasingly militant in recent years — and increasingly successful. The liberal pushback isn’t cutting it. We need a leftist strategy to defend abortion rights.

BY ANNE RUMBERGER
July 14, 2021

Abortion access has been uneven and inadequate for decades. But with the recent announcement that the Supreme Court will hear a major abortion case next term concerning a Mississippi state law that would ban almost all abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, the threat has reached new levels.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization strikes at the heart of the precedent set in Roe v. Wade in 1973 that abortion is permitted until fetus viability, generally at around twenty-four weeks. As it hears the case, the Supreme Court will consider one clearly delineated question: whether or not “all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” Mary Ziegler, author of Abortion and the Law in America, said recently that the court taking up the case could result in overturning Roe, but it could also get rid of viability as the point at which states can ban abortion.

Continued: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/anti-abortion-movement-choice-reproductive-justice

14.07.2021

Commentary

Featured

Alliance Defending Freedom

Anne Rumberger

anti-choice intimidation

anti-choice protests

anti-choice restrictions

anti-choice terrorism

anti-choice violence

At the Well

Bevelyn Beatty

Child Evangelism Fellowship

clinic blockades

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Edmee Chavannes

Father Fidelis Moscinski

Flip Benham

Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act

Marjorie Dannenfelser

Mary Wagner

Mary Ziegler

Monica Migliorino Miller

National Abortion Federation

Operation Rescue

Operation Save America

overturning Roe v. Wade

New Zealand – Why we need safe areas outside abortion clinics

Terry Bellamak | Guest writer
March 8, 2021

This week, a bill that would ensure pregnant people seeking abortion don’t have to be confronted by angry mobs outside of clinics is expected to have its first reading. Terry Bellamak explains why safe areas are so crucial for vulnerable patients.

Last March, New Zealand legalised abortion. The new law changed many things for the better – no more seeking approval of certifying consultants, no more having to lie to come within the grounds in the Crimes Act. But due to a procedural misstep, safe areas did not make it into the final version. MPs asked too late for a roll call vote. To be fair, it was late at night.

Continued: https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/08-03-2021/why-we-need-safe-areas-outside-abortion-clinics/

How Anti-Abortion Terrorism Fueled The MAGA Attack On The Capitol

LAUREN RANKIN
LAST UPDATED JANUARY 15, 2021

Last week, the world watched in horror as a pro-Trump mob, urged by the President himself, attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Thousands of angry people, rushed the Capitol building, overwhelming the law enforcement officers who were staged outside. They smashed windows and broke down doors; thousands of them flooded into the Capitol building itself. For several hours, they occupied congressional offices and triumphantly paraded through the House and Senate floors, wreaking havoc and calling for violence against and death for politicians and police officers, alike. By the end of the seditious melee, five people were dead.

One of the people there was John Brockhoeft, who posted online about his presence at the Capitol. Brockhoeft isn’t just any Trump supporter. He’s also a convicted anti-abortion terrorist.

Continued: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/01/10265551/anti-abortion-terrorism-capitol-riot-attack