Trump’s pardons spark fresh fights over abortion clinic safety

Democratic state lawmakers are trying to bolster protections, but those efforts are imperiled by legal fights.

By Alice Miranda Ollstein and Amanda Friedman
03/19/2025

Abortion rights supporters across the country are scrambling to strengthen protections for clinics in response to moves by the Trump administration that they believe will put providers and patients in danger.

Democratic lawmakers have introduced bills in Illinois, Michigan, New York and elsewhere to restrict demonstrations outside of clinics, increase criminal penalties for people who harass doctors and patients, or allocate more funds for abortion providers to buy security cameras, bulletproof glass and other protections.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/abortion-clinic-safety-trump-pardons-00234319

Abortion Providers Feel Like ‘Sitting Ducks’ After Trump Rolls Back Clinic Protections

The president has limited enforcement of the FACE Act — created to safeguard abortion providers and patients — and pardoned 23 people who were convicted of the federal charge.

By Alanna Vagianos
Feb 22, 2025

Julie Burkhart’s career in abortion care started when she was a college student working at a clinic in Wichita, Kansas, during the infamous Summer of Mercy in 1991. Thousands of protesters swarmed the city to rally against abortion clinics — lying on sidewalks to block clinic entrances, throwing their bodies in front of patients’ cars and screaming threats at anyone entering the three targeted clinics. Since then, she has lived through the assassination of her former boss and mentor, Dr. George Tiller, death threats on her own life, stalkers and protesters coming to her home and, most recently, the firebombing of her Wyoming abortion clinic.

Still, this moment stands out among the rest, she told HuffPost.

Continued: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abortion-clinics-face-act-trump_n_67b8df3de4b075fafcec2f5e

Abortion cannot be permitted on mental health grounds, declares Polish church

SEP 5, 2023
Notes from Poland

Poland’s Catholic church has declared that it is not legal, ethical or beneficial to women to allow abortion on the grounds that the mother suffers from a mental health problem. Permitting this would effectively mean “the relegalisation of abortion on demand”, warn the bishops.

Their position – which is contradicted by leading medical bodies – has been rejected by reproductive rights organisations in Poland, who also argue that the church has misinterpreted or misrepresented the law.

Continued: https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/09/05/abortion-cannot-be-permitted-on-mental-health-grounds-declares-polish-church/

Conservatives are hell-bent on reasserting control over women’s bodies—and a fresh hell starts today with what women in the Lone Star State are waking up to.

Molly Jong-Fast, Contributing Editor
Updated Sep. 01, 2021

The Supreme Court declined to act and let Texas’ insane new abortion law stand, for now, in what looks to be the day Roe v. Wade began to die.

As of today, SB8, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law, bans abortions at six weeks, with no exception for rape or incest, while targeting anyone who “aids or abets” another person’s abortion. The idea is to make anyone who helps a woman get an abortion a legal target, even her Uber driver, with any citizen able to collect a bounty on abortion providers.

Continued: https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-law-begins-the-end-of-abortion-as-weve-known-it

Religious zealots only show why abortion should be legal

By Suzanne McLaughlin
22nd August

LAST week a 10-year-old Brazilian girl wearing a little flowery dress and cheap
flip-flops was bundled into a car boot clutching her fluffy toy frog. She was
driven through a back door to a hospital guarded by military police past a
throng of right-wing and religious extremists in order to have a termination.

Abortion is allowed in Brazil in just three instances: to save a woman’s life,
if it is the result of rape and if the child is dead. This little girl was
living through two of these circumstances. She was a victim of rape and her
life was in imminent danger and so the judge in her home area ruled that the
abortion should go ahead.

Continued: https://www.thenational.scot/news/18669689.suzanne-mclaughlin-religious-zealots-show-abortion-legal/

Ireland – ‘Fighting Fake News’ podcast: Abortion referendum could be a magnet for disinformation – former minister

'Fighting Fake News' podcast: Abortion referendum could be a magnet for disinformation - former minister

Kevin Doyle
March 18 2018

ANTI-abortion extremists are likely to use social media to spread disinformation in a bid "to frighten the population into retaining the status quo", former communications minister Pat Rabbitte has said.

The ex-Labour TD, who admits to having his own perspective on the vote, believes the upcoming referendum could be influenced by outside forces who have no issue with using shock tactics.

Continued: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/fighting-fake-news-podcast-abortion-referendum-could-be-a-magnet-for-disinformation-former-minister-36717131.html