Abortion access under renewed threat in Oklahoma and Missouri

By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
Sun April 10, 2022

(CNN)While abortion rights advocates could secure several victories in US states in the coming days, they're sounding the alarm about an Oklahoma bill that would ban nearly all abortions that's likely to be signed into law. Here are some of this week's moves in state legislatures and by state leaders you may have missed.

Oklahoma sends near-total ban on abortion to governor
Oklahoma legislators passed a bill on Tuesday that would make performing an abortion illegal in the state, except to save the life of the pregnant woman in a medical emergency.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/09/politics/state-abortion-legislation-round-up-oklahoma-missouri/index.html

Kamala Harris is invigorating abortion rights activists

By Paige Winfield Cunningham
August 20, 2020

Joe Biden has been less willing than other Democrats to lurch leftward on abortion rights.

But the presidential nominee could hardly have given the issue a louder cheerleader than Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), his vice-presidential pick.

In her speech last night to the Democratic National Convention, Harris made only passing mention of reproductive rights, speaking of how minority Americans are feeling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic more acutely than White Americans.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/20/health-202-kamala-harris-is-invigorating-abortion-rights-activists/

USA – “Failed” abortions, a period-tracking spreadsheet, and the last clinic standing: the controversy in Missouri, explained

“Failed” abortions, a period-tracking spreadsheet, and the last clinic standing: the controversy in Missouri, explained
Hearings will determine if Missouri will be the first state without an abortion clinic.

By Anna North
Oct 31, 2019

At a hearing over an investigation of Missouri’s lone abortion clinic, a state official testified to something that has disturbed reproductive health advocates in the state and beyond: With the help of state medical records, his office had created a spreadsheet tracking patients’ menstrual periods.

The goal, according to the Kansas City Star, was to investigate “failed” abortions, instances in which the patient needed to return a second time to complete the procedure. The idea was apparently that, by gathering data on patients’ periods, state officials would know who was still pregnant after a scheduled abortion.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/2019/10/31/20939890/missouri-abortion-clinic-hearing-periods-roe-wade

Trump’s anti-abortion rhetoric is getting out of control

Trump’s anti-abortion rhetoric is getting out of control
His latest lie is that the mother and the doctor decide whether or not to "execute the baby" after it's born and wrapped up in a blanket.

Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani
Apr 28, 2019

President Donald Trump’s anti-abortion rhetoric is getting more extreme by the day.

At a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Saturday night, Trump described a violent scene, claiming that a doctor and mother together decide whether or not to execute a baby after it’s born.

Continued: https://thinkprogress.org/trumps-anti-abortion-rhetoric-execute-baby-later-abortion-f0997b13c664/

28.04.2019

Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act

USA – How Six-Week Abortion Bans Are Fueling a ‘Radical’ Year for Abortion Law

How Six-Week Abortion Bans Are Fueling a 'Radical' Year for Abortion Law
The bans mark an unprecedented year for abortion legislation—and a potential political turning point.

Rosemary Westwood
Apr 12, 2019

The projected political reckoning of abortion rights has arrived. Abortion bills, as expected, dominated state legislatures in early 2019, pushing the issue ever closer to the United States Supreme Court.

Among the 28 states considering abortion bans in the first four months of the year, a handful of the most conservative are aiming to ban abortion at just six weeks' gestation—when an embryonic "heartbeat" (doctors use the term cardiac activity, and embryos don't have hearts so much as tissues that will become the heart) can be detected. Abortion rights groups say the measures are so extreme that they effectively amount to outright abortion bans, since few women who want abortions would be able to access them before the cut-off, or perhaps even know they're pregnant.

Continued: https://psmag.com/social-justice/how-six-week-abortion-bans-are-fueling-a-radical-year-for-abortion-law

USA – The Abortion Divide Gets Deeper

The Abortion Divide Gets Deeper
With Roe threatened, red and blue states are pulling even further apart.

Michelle Goldberg
March 29, 2019

This week, a Georgia state representative, Ed Setzler, the sponsor of a bill that would ban most abortions as soon as a fetal heartbeat could be detected, spoke to a conservative group in the Atlanta suburbs about the legal fight he’d embarked on. “We need to maximize our influence over the next couple of weeks and then close this deal,” he said. Then, he continued, conservatives must mobilize behind Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, as “he recruits the best legal team in the nation to take this to the highest court in the land.”

With the ascension of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, as well as a host of other judges appointed by Donald Trump to lower courts, anti-abortion forces are engaged in a game of legislative whack-a-mole. Sensing their chance to either eviscerate or overturn Roe v. Wade, Republicans are pushing a barrage of anti-abortion measures at the state level, seeing which one goes all the way to the top.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/opinion/abortion-heartbeat-ban-georgia.html