USA – Abortion Bans Upended Their Lives—Now They’re Fighting Back, One Story at a Time

Across the country, abortion storytellers are putting the struggle for reproductive freedom into powerful new words.

Regina Mahone, The Nation
April 7, 2025

Shanette Williams sat patiently on the stage of an auditorium in Austin, Texas, staring at the photograph of her daughter Amber that was resting in her lap. The photo appeared on the front of a rose-dappled pamphlet, below the words “Celebration of Life” and “September 16, 1993–August 19, 2022.”
Occasionally, Williams looked up, out past the audience of 200 or in the direction of the other women who shared the stage with her, each recounting the horrors they had experienced under new, extreme abortion bans. Then it was Williams’s turn to speak.

“Good morning, everyone,” she said. “My name is Shanette.”

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/abortion-in-america-storytelling/

USA – Malpractice lawsuits over denied abortion care may be on the horizon

Sunday, June 25, 2023
Harris Meyer

A year after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many physicians and hospitals in the states that have restricted abortion reportedly are refusing to end the pregnancies of women facing health-threatening complications out of fear they might face criminal prosecution or loss of their medical license.

Some experts predict those providers could soon face a new legal threat: medical malpractice lawsuits alleging they harmed patients by failing to provide timely, necessary abortion care.

Continued: https://www.capradio.org/articles/2023/06/25/malpractice-lawsuits-over-denied-abortion-care-may-be-on-the-horizon/

USA – It’s Time to Call Abortion Bans What They Are—Torture and Cruelty

The US must learn from other countries where denials of abortion are considered intentional, state-inflicted torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

By Payal Shah and Akila Radhakrishnan
June 9, 2023

On August 24, 2022, Mayron Hollis sought an abortion after receiving news that her pregnancy was endangering her life and its continuation would likely result in uterine rupture and organ damage. Unfortunately, August 24 was also the day that Tennessee’s near-total ban on abortion went into effect. Denied care in her own state and unable to travel to one where she could get the care she needed, Hollis was forced to endure a dangerous pregnancy and birth, where she ultimately suffered severe hemorrhaging and lost her uterus, destroying her ability to give birth to any more children.

There are many terms to describe Mayron Hollis’s experience of being denied an abortion in Tennessee—harrowing, agonizing, unconscionable—but we should also call it what it is: torture and cruelty.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/abortion-bans-torture-cruelty/

Prominent Colorado abortion provider calls Dobbs decision ‘throwback to another century’

Dr. Warren Hern, who has performed thousands of abortions in nearly 50 years of practice, says, ‘This is the worst situation I’ve seen in this country in my life.’

By Rebekah Sager
June 01, 2023

For nearly five decades, Dr. Warren Hern has specialized in providing abortions to people who need them in the late stages of pregnancy. He says he is unwavering in his commitment to helping people obtain abortion care.

Hern tells the American Independent Foundation that pregnant people travel to his Boulder, Colorado, office because they know he will provide abortions in the first, second, or third trimester if needed.

Continued: https://americanindependent.com/prominent-abortion-provider-dobbs-decision-throwback/

01.06.2023

Commentary

Deborah Dorbert

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

USA – The short life of Baby Milo

By Frances Stead Sellers, Thomas Simonetti and Maggie Penman
May 19, 2023

Milo Evan Dorbert drew his first and last breath on the evening of March 3. The unusual complications in his mother’s pregnancy tested the interpretation of Florida’s new abortion law.

Deborah Dorbert discovered she was pregnant in August. Her early appointments suggested the baby was thriving, and she looked forward to welcoming a fourth member to the family. It didn’t occur to her that fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a half-century constitutional right to abortion would affect them.

Continued: https://wapo.st/41XRJzA

19.05.2023

Commentary

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice restrictions

Because of Florida abortion laws, she carried her baby to term knowing he would die

By Elizabeth Cohen, Carma Hassan and Amanda Musa, CNN
Tue May 2, 2023

A Florida woman, unable to get an abortion in her state, carried to term a baby who had no kidneys. Deborah Dorbert’s son Milo died in her arms on March 3, shortly after he was born, just as her doctors had predicted he would.

“He gasped for air a couple of times when I held him,” said Dorbert, 33. “I watched my child take his first breath, and I held him as he took his last one.”

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/02/health/florida-abortion-term-pregnancy/index.html

Florida couple unable to get abortion will see baby die after delivery

Doctors’ interpretation of state law prevents procedure, family tells Washington Post, despite baby’s fatal illness

Maya Yang
Sat 18 Feb 2023

In a few weeks, a Florida couple will have to bid farewell to their child shortly after the baby is delivered, a gut-wrenching reality created by the US supreme court’s elimination of nationwide abortion rights last year.

Because of a new Florida law that bans abortion after 15 weeks except under certain circumstances, Deborah Dorbert has become one of many women having difficulty accessing necessary abortion procedures after the supreme court overturned the rights granted by the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/18/florida-abortion-law-couple-birth

18.02.2023