How close to death must a woman be to get an abortion in Tennessee?

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

Are Texas’s abortion laws being used for state-sponsored spousal harassment?

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.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/18/are-texass-abortion-laws-being-used-for-state-sponsored-spousal-harassment

18.03.2023

anti-choice abuse

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice harassment

anti-choice hatred

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice terrorism

FBI investigating growing attacks on abortion and reproductive health clinics

Christine Fernando, USA TODAY
Jan 30, 2023

The FBI is asking for the public's help in investigating a spate of unsolved attacks against reproductive health facilities nationwide after an Illinois man was charged Wednesday with setting fire to a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Tyler W. Massengill, 32, of Chillicothe, just north of Peoria in central Illinois, was arrested Tuesday after being accused of “malicious use of fire and an explosive to damage, and attempt to damage" the Peoria clinic, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/01/30/peoria-planned-parenthood-fire-illinois-man-arrested/11132693002/

Six Months After Roe v. Wade Demise, Abortion Opponents are Shaken and Angry

No arrests after more than 122 attacks on churches, pregnancy centers

BY JULIA DUIN
12/30/22

Attacks on abortion clinics are nothing new in the U.S., but a surge of incidents targeting abortion opponents in the name of a shadowy group called "Jane's Revenge" and others has left anti-abortion groups shaken—and angry with law enforcement agencies.

The increase in such violence began after the leak in May of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision of its intent to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling that since 1973 had granted a nationwide right to abortion.

Continued: https://www.newsweek.com/six-months-after-roe-v-wade-demise-abortion-opponents-are-shaken-angry-1769837

USA – Anti-abortion priest Pavone defrocked for blasphemous posts

By: Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
Sunday, Dec. 18, 2022

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican has defrocked an anti-abortion U.S. priest, Frank Pavone, for what it said were “blasphemous communications on social media” as well as “persistent disobedience” of his bishop who repeatedly told him to stop his partisan activism for Donald Trump.

A letter to U.S. bishops from the Vatican ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Christophe Pierre, obtained Sunday, said that the decision against Pavone, who heads the anti-abortion group Priests for Life, had been taken Nov. 9, and that there was no chance for an appeal.

Continued: https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/faith/2022/12/18/anti-abortion-priest-pavone-defrocked-for-blasphemous-posts

Before Roe, a Baptist Preacher Performed Abortions in Secret. Now He’s Helping Texans.

Dr. Curtis Boyd’s career encapsulates our long-fought abortion wars.

CECILIA NOWELL
Dec 14, 2022

The first thing Dr. Curtis Boyd did when he arrived at work one cloudy Monday morning in January was turn on his radio. It was 1973, and Boyd, an ordained Baptist minister, had been providing underground abortions for five years, most recently out of a mountaintop house in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The only people who knew the location of his clinic were members of the Clergy Consultation Service, a national network of faith leaders that discretely connected patients to reliable, and safe, doctors. As far as Boyd knew, he was the network’s only provider in the Southwest.

A group of Texas women had flown in that morning for appointments, but Boyd was distracted. A Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade was expected any day now. He kept one ear tuned to the news as he readied himself for the day. When the story broke that the Supreme Court had recognized the right to an abortion, Boyd and his nurse “looked at each other somewhat in shock” and then embraced. “It’s over, it’s over, thank God at last it’s over,” he says. He no longer had to live in fear that he—or worse, one of his patients—might end up in jail.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/12/curtis-boyd-abortion-clergy-consultation-service-preacher-texas-new-mexico-roe/

As U.S. abortion bans take midterm centre stage, a clinic helping Canadians faces a crunch

By Rachel Gilmore Global News
November 3, 2022

Dr. Warren Hern has clear memories from the years before Roe v. Wade granted women the right to an abortion.

He and his medical school classmates would stay up all night caring for sick women. At first, he said he didn’t understand why they were so ill. Then he learned the women had all tried to get illegal, unsafe abortions — and many were dying as a result.

Continued: https://globalnews.ca/news/9244370/abortion-midterms-united-states-canada/

USA – There’s A Dishonest Right-Wing Furor Over Recent Arrests Of Anti-Abortion Activists

Prominent conservatives are claiming the Biden administration launched a "war on pro-lifers" after the Justice Department arrested several protesters for blocking access to abortion clinics.

By Alanna Vagianos
Oct 8, 2022

It’s been a federal crime for nearly 30 years to intimidate or interfere with any person trying to obtain or provide reproductive health care services. But two recent indictments by the Department of Justice for such violations have enraged some influential conservatives, who are now stoking a false narrative about a supposed war against the religious right.

It started with prominent anti-abortion minister Mark Houck, who late last month was arrested on federal charges that he allegedly twice assaulted a 72-year-old patient escort outside of a Planned Parenthood in Philadelphia. If proven, it would be a clear violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 law that makes it a federal crime to use force or the threat of force to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person trying to obtain or provide reproductive health care services.

Continued: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/right-wing-arrests-anti-abortion-activists_n_634082dbe4b028164534c4ee

“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/

The Anti-Abortion Movement Killed People. Now Victims’ Families Face A Post-Roe World.

Bombings, assassinations and kidnappings: The anti-abortion movement has always had a violent wing that left families shattered.

By Christopher Mathias
Jun 13, 2022

If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks, it will mark the culmination of a decades-long, multimillion-dollar legal effort by the American conservative movement to end abortion rights and force many pregnant people to give birth.

It will also be the culmination of a
multi-decade terror campaign.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anti-abortion-violence-murdered-families-roe-v-wade_n_62a37f2ae4b0cdccbe4fa969