USA – ‘Rolling Thunder’: Inside conservatives’ strategy to curb abortion pill access

Abortion opponents hope a new report will spur the GOP to ban abortion pills and defund Planned Parenthood.

By Alice Miranda Ollstein
May 7, 2025

The nation’s most influential anti-abortion groups have a new plan to roll back access to the procedure for millions of Americans in what they’re calling the “biggest opportunity for the pro-life movement” since toppling Roe v. Wade.

The effort, which the groups have privately named “Rolling Thunder,” is the movement’s first concerted attempt under the second Trump administration to target abortion pills, and aims to convince the FDA, Congress and courts to crack down on their use.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/07/anti-abortion-pill-gameplan-rolling-thunder-00331933

07.05.2025

Commentary

abortion pills

American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs

Americans United for Life

Angela Vasquez-Giroux

anti-choice anti-science

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice dishonesty

anti-choice extremism

anti-choice junk science

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misogyny

Brittni Frederiksen

Colson Center for Christian Worldview

Dr. Christina Francis

Ethics and Public Policy Center

FDA

Food and Drug Administration

Marjorie Dannenfelser

Marty Makary

mifepristone

Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood Action Fund

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

RollingThunder

Ryan Anderson

safety of abortion pills

Students for Life

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America

United States

Activism

Anti-choice

USA – The Bad Data Backing Josh Hawley’s Attack on Abortion Pills

A new study being used to call for mifepristone restrictions relies on vague and dubious definitions of drug-related complications.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown
May 5, 2025

The abortion pill mifepristone "is not safe and effective," argue the authors of a new study that uses insurance claim data to examine adverse reactions to the pill. They claim to have found a "serious adverse event" rate of 10.93 percent, and they say this finding justifies renewed restrictions on mifepristone.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) seems to agree. The day the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC) released its new mifepristone study, Hawley wrote to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chief Marty Makary, urging the commissioner to "follow this new data and take all appropriate action to restore critical safeguards on the use of mifepristone."

Continued: https://reason.com/2025/05/05/the-bad-data-backing-josh-hawleys-attack-on-abortion-pills/

05.05.2025

Commentary

abortion pills

anti-choice deception

anti-choice hypocrisy

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misogyny

Food and Drug Administration

Josh Hawley

Marty Makary

misoprostol

safety of abortion pills

United States

Anti-choice

Health

USA – The Bogus ‘Category 5 Hurricane’ Hitting the Abortion Pill

By Ross Pomeroy
May 2, 2025

A new report from the Ethics & Public Policy Center, a religious conservative think tank, is being hailed amongst right-wingers as “the statistical equivalent of a category 5 hurricane hitting the prevailing narrative of the abortion industry.”

According to the report, the rate of serious adverse events amongst women who used mifepristone to medically induce an abortion is not 0.5 percent, but rather 11 percent. Mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone (needed for a pregnancy to continue), is commonly used with the ulcer prevention drug misoprostol to safely and effectively end pregnancies at fewer than ten weeks gestation.
Some on the right are using the report to cudgel FDA Commissioner Martin Makary to restrict or even ban the use of mifepristone. Makary last week said he has “no plans to take action” to restrict the availability of mifepristone. He did, however, leave the door open to take action if the data changed.

Continued: https://www.splinter.com/the-bogus-category-5-hurricane-hitting-the-abortion-pill

‘I lost control of my life’ How one Russian region made abortions almost impossible to get — without passing any new laws

April 24, 2025
Source: Glasnaya

The Russian government declared 2024 the Year of the Family. In practice, this meant tighter restrictions on reproductive rights, including limiting access to certain emergency contraceptives, outlawing so-called “childfree propaganda,” and sending priests with anti-abortion films into schools, universities, and women’s clinics. Officials and lawmakers also spent the year debating the prospect of a nationwide abortion ban.

Although no such ban has been passed yet, in some regions it’s already become a de facto reality. In places like the Republic of Karelia, women face so many barriers to accessing abortion services that many are forced to travel to neighboring regions for care. Despite national laws that still protect the right to abortion, local restrictions in Karelia have made the procedure increasingly difficult to obtain. Meduza has translated a report by the independent outlet Glasnaya detailing the growing obstacles women face when seeking abortions in the western Russian region.

Continued: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/04/24/i-lost-control-of-my-life

USA – Lawmakers Are Trying to Hold Crisis Pregnancy Centers to Account

Post-Dobbs, the GOP has given them millions in taxpayer dollars.

Laura C. Morel, Mother Jones
April 10, 2025

Last month, during an Indiana state legislative hearing, Republican Sen. Jeff Raatz from Richmond, a small city in the eastern part of the state, discussed a resolution he filed declaring that the state’s General Assembly “strongly supports pregnancy care centers in their unique, positive contributions to the individual lives of women, men, and babies—both born and unborn,” the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported. “We have hospitals in rural Indiana that have no OB-GYNs,” Raatz said during the session. “Why not have an innocent individual stand alongside someone and help them make decisions and connect them with resources?” Abortion is banned in Indiana with limited exceptions.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/lawmakers-are-trying-to-hold-crisis-pregnancy-centers-to-account/

A tale of two conferences: women against women as ‘poison of patriarchy’ returns and abortion fight intensifies

Last week, anti-choice campaigners emboldened by current US politics met in New York at the same time as UN delegates gathered to address the widespread inequalities women face. The battle to protect rights has never felt more urgent

Isabel Choat in New York, The Guardian
Sat 22 Mar 2025

In a meeting room on the 27th floor of a swish Manhattan hotel, Denise Mountenay is telling the audience that the right to abortion is “Nazi thinking.” Mountenay regrets her own abortions, and says she has been called by God to spread the word that she and other women “were lied to, deceived, pressured into making the most horrible choice: to choose death instead of life”.

She goes on to list reasons why abortion is “not a safe procedure. [That’s what] they want woman to think – that is a lie.” Many of her claims, including that abortion leads to breast cancer, have been thoroughly disproved by scientific studies.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/mar/22/women-rights-un-anti-abortion-choice-poison-of-patriarchy-returns

22.03.2025

Commentary

69th Commission on the Status of Women

anti-choice bullshit

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice deception

Campaign Life Coalition

International Planned Parenthood Federation

MSI Reproductive Choices

Nelly Munyasia

Oxfam

Pan-African Conference on Family Values

Project 2025

Richard and Helen DeVos Centre for Life

sexual and reproductive health and rights

Sima Bahous

Southern Poverty Law Center

New threats to abortion rights hit Puerto Rico as advocates share how to fight back

Abortion is legal in the U.S. territory, but a new wave of anti-abortion proponents are pushing for more restrictions, with some success

by Mariela Santos-Muñiz
March 20th, 2025

Nearly three years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion rights across the country have been dangerously eroded. But the impact on reproductive rights didn’t affect just the 50 states: The case also altered the landscape in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory in the Caribbean made up of about 3.2 million people.

Reproductive rights are still intact in Puerto Rico, as there are legal grounds to support them. The Penal Code considers abortion a crime, but not if it’s performed in the interest of the pregnant person’s health, and the El Pueblo de Puerto Rico vs. Pablo Duarte Mendoza case established that that standard encompasses both the physical and mental health.

Continued: https://prismreports.org/2025/03/20/puerto-rico-abortion-advocates/

Court upholds Polish mayor’s decision to dissolve anti-abortion protest over image of foetus

Mar 17, 2025
Notes from Poland

A court has upheld a decision by the city of Toruń to dissolve an anti-abortion protest because it featured a graphic image purporting to show an aborted foetus.

The organiser of the protest has condemned the ruling, which she says “violates the constitution, the law, freedom of speech and freedom of religion”.

But the city’s mayor welcomed the court’s decision, saying that, while he supports free speech, it must be expressed in a manner consistent with the law and without violating the dignity of others.

Continued: https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/03/17/court-upholds-polish-mayors-decision-to-dissolve-anti-abortion-protest-over-image-of-foetus/

17.03.2025

News

Agnieszka Szumilas-HermanowiczOrdo Iuris

anti-choice lies

anti-choice propaganda

anti-choice protesters

Bartosz Malewski

graphic images of aborted fetuses

New York Times’ Shameful Reporting on Planned Parenthood Bolsters Right-Wing Attacks on Reproductive Healthcare Access

Why is the New York Times publishing scurrilous accusations against Planned Parenthood while ignoring the $1.7 billion unregulated antiabortion pregnancy center industry that endangers the lives of American women and girls?

PUBLISHED 2/21/2025
by Carrie N. Baker and Jenifer McKenna

The New York Times published a 3,000-word investigative report recently, claiming to have found “scores of allegations” against Planned Parenthood for misconduct, medical malpractice, mismanagement and labor violations. Released within a month of Trump’s inauguration and published on the front page of the Sunday print edition above the fold, the article appears timed to provide ammunition for the ongoing right-wing attacks on reproductive rights.

The New York Times has piled onto Trump’s executive orders obliterating reproductive rights for many Americans and his pardons of antiabortion terrorists who invaded and blocked reproductive health clinics, Republicans’ baseless lawsuits meant to bankrupt Planned Parenthood, and escalating political attacks from all three branches of the federal government aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/02/21/new-york-times-planned-parenthood/

Scotland – Woman, 74, charged under abortion protest law

Feb 20, 2025
David Wallace Lockhart & Angus Cochrane, BBC Scotland News

A 74-year-old woman has become the first person to be arrested and charged under a Scottish law banning protests outside abortion clinics.

She was arrested close to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow and was charged in connection with breach of an exclusion zone.

Officers removed a sign from the area - which had been held by the woman who was arrested - that read "coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want".

Continued: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39vky8wr0do

20.02.2025