USA – We Are Not Prepared for the Coming Surge of Babies

The post-Roe rise in births in the U.S. will be concentrated in some of the worst states for infant and maternal health. Plans to improve these outcomes are staggeringly thin.

By Melissa Jeltsen
DECEMBER 16, 2022

A typical pregnancy lasts about 40 weeks. Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that created a constitutional right to abortion, was reversed less than six months ago. This means the U.S. is currently at a unique inflection point in the history of reproductive rights: early enough to see the immediate effects of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—closed clinics, a rapidly shifting map of abortion access—but too soon to measure the rise in babies born to mothers who did not wish to have them. Many of these babies will be born in states that already have the worst maternal- and child-health outcomes in the nation. Although the existence of these children is the goal of the anti-abortion movement, America is unprepared to adequately care for them and the people who give birth to them.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/12/abortion-post-roe-rise-in-births-baby-care/672479/

USA – When a Right Becomes a Privilege

The main difference between the women who will make it to an abortion provider in a post-Roe world and those who won’t? Money.

By Melissa Jeltsen, The Atlantic
May 15, 2022

When New York legalized abortion in 1970—three years before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade—a shrewd entrepreneur named Martin Mitchell saw an opportunity. The 31-year-old Detroit-area man chartered a tiny private plane and began advertising frequent flights from Michigan, where elective abortion was illegal, to Niagara Falls, New York, where it was not. For $400, a woman got transportation, an abortion by a licensed doctor at a clinic near the airport, and lunch, before being flown home the same day.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/05/roe-v-wade-abortion-access-poor-women/629858/

The end of Roe will mean more children living in poverty

How “pro-life” states are failing new parents and babies.

By Dylan Scott
May 12, 2022

Almost half the United States is ready to outlaw abortion, if given a green light by the Supreme Court, something it’s expected to do in the next few months. But many of those states are not willing to give new babies and their families the educational, medical, or financial support they need to lead a healthy life. That could leave tens of thousands of future children unnecessarily disadvantaged and living in poverty.

The precise effect on new births from the 22 states set to enact broad abortion bans if Roe v. Wade is overturned is impossible to predict. But public health experts like Diana Greene Foster — the lead researcher on the Turnaway Study, an enormous survey project that tracked the long-term effects of receiving or being denied an abortion — expect a meaningful increase in the number of women with an unwanted pregnancy who nevertheless give birth. Middlebury College economics professor Caitlin Knowles Myers anticipates as many as 75,000 people who want an abortion but can’t get one will end up giving birth in the first year after Roe is overturned.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23057032/supreme-court-abortion-rights-roe-v-wade-state-aid

Half of U.S. Women Risk Losing Abortion Access Without Roe

By Weiyi Cai, Taylor Johnston, Allison McCann and Amy Schoenfeld Walker
May 7, 2022

Around 64 million women and girls of reproductive age live in the United States, and more than half of them live in states that could seek to ban or further restrict access to abortion if the Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Many of the millions of people who live in these states would be able to seek legal abortions elsewhere, but the barriers to access — including financial resources, time off work and child care — may be hard for some to overcome.

Continued: (please try to use your free stories first as I can only share so many unblocked links over a month) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/07/us/abortion-access-roe-v-wade.html

Most Women Denied Abortions by Texas Law Got Them Another Way

New data suggests overall abortions declined much less than previously known, because women traveled out of state or ordered pills online.

By Margot Sanger-Katz, Claire Cain Miller and Quoctrung Bui
March 6, 2022

The impact of the Texas abortion law was partly offset by trips to out-of-state clinics, and by abortion pills

In the months after Texas banned all but the earliest
abortions in September, the number of legal abortions in the state fell by
about half. But two new studies suggest the total number among Texas women fell
by far less — around 10 percent — because of large increases in the number of
Texans who traveled to a clinic in a nearby state or ordered abortion pills online.

Two groups of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin counted the
number of women using these alternative options. They found that while the
Texas law — which prohibits abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be
detected, or around six weeks — lowered the number of abortions, it did so much
more modestly than earlier measurements suggested.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/upshot/texas-abortion-women-data.html

Latin American Abortion Laws Hurt Health Care and the Economy—a Lesson for a Post-Roe U.S.

A region with some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws has started to tentatively move in the opposite direction

By Emiliano Rodríguez Mega
on January 4, 2022

As the U.S. braces for the possible rollback of abortion rights later this year, seismic shifts are happening south of the border. A series of recent legal and legislative decisions has begun to loosen restrictions in Latin America, a region with some of the world’s harshest antiabortion laws. And they could chart a path toward reform for governments that still advocate for the procedure to remain illegal. The health and economic consequences of keeping longtime bans in place may provide cautionary lessons for the U.S. as a Supreme Court decision to scrap Roe v. Wade appears to be imminent.

El Salvador has stood out for its aggressive pursuit of pregnant people who seek an abortion or have a miscarriage. Since 1998 the country has upheld a total ban on abortion, even in cases of rape, incest and high-risk pregnancy. As a result, about 181 women were prosecuted between 2000 and 2019 for getting an abortion or suffering an obstetric emergency, according to data compiled by a human rights group.

Continued: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/latin-american-abortion-laws-hurt-health-care-and-the-economy-a-lesson-for-a-post-roe-u-s/

04.01.2022

Caitlin Knowles Myers

Carmen Martínez López

Center for Reproductive Rights

Center for the Study of State and Society

Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion in El Salvador

Damian Clarke

Global Gag Rule

Inter-American Court of Human Rights

jailing women for abortion

jailing women for miscarriage

obstetric complications

restrictive abortion laws

Roe v. Wade

self-managed abortion

total abortion ban

Veronica Cruz

Yana van der Meulen Rodgers

Who Gets Abortions in America?

New York Times
By Margot Sanger-Katz, Claire Cain Miller and Quoctrung Bui
Dec. 14, 2021

The portrait of abortion in the United States has changed with society. Today, teenagers are having far fewer abortions, and abortion patients are most likely to already be mothers. Although there’s a lot of debate over gestational cutoffs, nearly half of abortions happen in the first six weeks of pregnancy, and nearly all in the first trimester.

The typical patient, in addition to having children, is poor; is unmarried and in her late 20s; has some college education; and is very early in pregnancy. But in the reproductive lives of women (and transgender and nonbinary people who can become pregnant) across America, abortion is not uncommon. The latest estimate, from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group that supports abortion rights, found that 25 percent of women will have an abortion by the end of their childbearing years.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/14/upshot/who-gets-abortions-in-america.html

14.12.2021

Commentary

Featured

Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health

Caitlin Knowles Myers

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Chief Justice John Roberts

Guttmacher Institute

Rachel Jones

Ushma Upadhyay

who has abortions in America

Roe v. Wade Might Be Overturned Soon — This Is Worse Than You Think

MOLLY LONGMAN
OCTOBER 20, 2020

Angel Kai’s* heart sank when she found out she was pregnant again. The 20-year-old had delivered her second child only three months prior. She was on unpaid maternity leave from her job in Amarillo, TX, and she’d just received a $130 electricity bill in the mail that she didn’t know if she’d be able to pay. “Everything that was happening financially was just bad,” she remembers. “I couldn’t have another kid. I knew getting an abortion would be the best thing, because I couldn’t walk up the street to get a soda if I wanted one at the time. We were that tight on money.”

It turned out, though, that Angel couldn’t even afford the abortion she knew she wanted. Her health plan was offered under state-funded Medicaid, which, in Texas, only covers abortion in cases of life endangerment, rape, and incest. So, Angel Googled “abortion financial help.”

Continued: https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2020/10/10112297/what-happens-if-roe-v-wade-overturned-state-abortion-laws

20.10.2020

American Civil Liberties Union

American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

Americans United for Life

Caitlin Knowles Myers

Catherine Glenn Foster

constitutional amendment to ban abortion

crisis pregnancy centers

Laurie Bertram Roberts

Marcela Howell

Mary Ziegler

Medicaid abortion

Mississippi Freedom Fund

National Abortion Federation

National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda

National Network of Abortion Funds

National Women’s Law Center

Noel León

Planned Parenthood Action Fund

self-managed abortion

Talcott Camp

Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers

TRAP laws

traveling for abortion

trigger laws

women's abortion stories

Women’s Health Protection Act

What Happens if Roe v. Wade Is Overturned?

By Quoctrung Bui, Claire Cain Miller and Margot Sanger-Katz
Ne York Times
Oct. 15, 2020

The almost-certain confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court has increased the chances that Roe v. Wade will be weakened or overturned. If that were to happen, abortion access would decline in large regions of the country, a new data analysis shows.

Legal abortion access would be unchanged in more than half of states, but it would effectively end for those living in much of the American South and Midwest, especially those who are poor, according to the analysis. (The analysis incorporates more recent data on research we wrote about last year.)

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/15/upshot/what-happens-if-roe-is-overturned.html