USA – Our comprehensive guide for protecting your access to birth control, medication abortion, and emergency contraception before Donald Trump takes office

Dec 16, 2024
Cameron Oakes, Rewire News

After Donald Trump was re-elected to a second term as president of the United States, the alarm over reproductive health-care access that began after the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade came to a head. Clinicians, prescribers, and pharmacies reported a surge in purchases and requests for abortion pills, emergency contraception, and birth control.

… To better understand how the reproductive health-care landscape could change under the Trump administration, RNG spoke to half a dozen experts about what they’re anticipating and how people can prepare before January 20.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2024/12/16/how-to-protect-your-reproductive-health-during-trumps-second-presidency/

16.12.2024

Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act

Make no mistake: this Trump presidency will continue to attack abortion rights

Just because Trump is publicly distancing himself from abortion does not mean Republicans won’t enact a national ban

Moira Donegan
Tue 12 Nov 2024

Abortion rights initiatives were on the ballot in 10 states on Tuesday, and won in seven of them. One of the losers was prop 4, Florida’s abortion rights measure, which received a whopping 57% of the vote but failed to meet the state’s unusually high 60% threshold, meaning that the state’s six-week ban will remain in place. Asked about the Florida abortion rights proposition ahead of the election, Trump said that when he went to cast his ballot near Palm Beach, he would vote against it.

It has always been a little hard to believe that Donald Trump personally hates abortion, even if it is abundantly clear how little he thinks of women. Trump, after all, has claimed to have numerous conflicting positions on abortion rights throughout his life. And his brand of masculinity is boorish, vulgar, and above all, sexually entitled – far from the priggish, repressed moralism of more classical anti-abortion figures like Mike Pence.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/12/trump-presidency-abortion-restrictions

12.11.2024

Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act

Supreme Court decision allows pregnant people in Idaho to access emergency abortion care — for now

By Jen Christensen, CNN
Thu June 27, 2024

Pregnant people in Idaho should be able to access abortion in a medical emergency in Idaho, at least for now.

The Supreme Court formally dismissed an appeal over Idaho’s strict abortion ban on Thursday, blocking enforcement of the state’s law where it conflicts with federal law. With Thursday’s decision, the state would not be allowed to deny an emergency abortion to a pregnant person whose health is in danger, at least while the case makes its way through the courts.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/26/health/emtala-emergency-care-scotus/index.html

Will SCOTUS Allow Pregnant Women to Die?

6/24/2024
by CARRIE N. BAKER, Ms. Magazine

A decision from the U.S. Supreme Court will be coming any day now in two cases, Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States, about whether states can prohibit doctors from treating women with life-threatening pregnancies until a patient’s condition deteriorates to the point where they are about to die.

The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) filed an amicus brief in these cases describing several of the more than 70 documented cases of women almost dying—and at least one who did die—when they were denied emergency medical care because of abortion bans enacted across the country after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. And “the true number of cases is likely significantly higher,” according the NWLC brief.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2024/06/24/emtala-supreme-court-women-die-abortion-bans-pregnant/

USA – Fearing Legal Threats, Doctors Are Performing C-Sections in Lieu of Abortions

Some physicians are doing unnecessary and invasive surgery on pregnant patients “to preserve the appearance of not doing an abortion.”

MARY TUMA
April 17, 2024

When news that Lizelle Gonzalez was suing the local prosecutor’s office for more than $1 million in damages, after being falsely imprisoned for murder over an attempted self-managed abortion in 2022, reproductive rights advocates cheered the move as a pathway to justice for the wrongfully charged southern Texas woman. However, a revelation in the lawsuit gave them pause: At the same hospital that reported her self-induced abortion to authorities, Gonzalez underwent a “classical C-section” for the delivery of her stillborn child, instead of abortion care. Major invasive surgery, Cesarean sections carry much higher risk for health complications, like hemorrhaging, compared with D&E abortion, and can jeopardize subsequent pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/c-sections-abortions-terrifying-new-reality/

18.04.2024

Commentary

Abortion on Our Own Terms

Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health

American Association of Pro-Life OB-GYNs

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Association of American Medical Colleges

Center for Reproductive Rights

Charlotte Lozier Institute

Dr. Daniel Grossman

Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi

Dr. Michele Heisler

Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act

forced C-sections

forced cesarean sections

Physicians for human Rights

Physicians for Reproductive Health

Reproductive Health Impact

‘Idaho’s seen as a war zone’: the lone abortion activist defying militias and the far right

Jen Jackson Quintano is her region’s only abortion rights organizer. Faced with a ‘culture of silence’, she’s platforming women – and changing minds

by Cassidy Randall
Tue 12 Mar 2024

Last January, Jen Jackson Quintano stepped into a theater in Sandpoint, a tiny city in northern Idaho, to debut a production that could best be described as The Vagina Monologues meets The Moth – a night of Idahoans sharing stories about their own reproductive agency.

Quintano was nervous. Idaho, where Republicans outnumber Democrats five to one, has one of the most punitive abortion bans in the country. Further, Quintano lives in a region of the state that keeps making national headlines for bold displays of armed intimidation by militia, white supremacists, and Christian nationalists. This was not necessarily a safe place to talk about abortion.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/12/abortion-rights-idaho-stories

USA – Hospitals Finally Face Consequences for Denying Emergency Abortion Care

Biden administration warns hospitals will be held liable if they turn away patients who need an emergency abortion.

MAY 4, 2023
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO

For the first time since the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade threw the abortion access landscape into a tailspin, the Biden administration found two hospitals violated federal law when they refused to provide an abortion to Mylissa Farmer last August. It’s an important and sadly necessary step that should hopefully clarify to hospitals in states that have banned abortion that state bans do not trump federal law.

Farmer’s story is horrific and yet increasingly common in our post-Roe reality. In August, she was about 18 weeks pregnant when her water broke, which is a medical emergency at this stage in pregnancy. She was also living in Missouri, a state that immediately banned abortion after the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. And despite the fact that hospitals cannot deny abortions to patients in medical emergencies like Farmer was experiencing, two separate hospitals, one in Kansas and the other in Missouri, did just that.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2023/05/04/hospitals-finally-face-consequences-for-denying-emergency-abortion-care/

04.05.2023

Commentary

emergency abortions

Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act

EMTALA

Mylissa Farmer

National Women’s Law Center

Many Hospitals Refuse To Provide Reproductive Care, Even In States Where Abortion Remains Legal

Emily Stewart
NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Voter approval of ballot measures protecting abortion rights in three states on Election Day was an important first step toward addressing the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Since that ruling, at least 13 states have implemented restrictions rendering access to abortion almost nonexistent. Still more states have applied extreme limits. People seeking abortion care are being forced to travel to other states, or figure out how to obtain medication abortion through the mail (which may not be their preference). Health providers are struggling to determine what pregnancy emergency care they can provide without violating newly-enacted abortion bans. Too many are unable to overcome these hurdles to get the care they need.

Continued: https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/many-hospitals-refuse-provide-reproductive-care-even-states-abortion-remains-legal

Her miscarriage left her bleeding profusely. An Ohio ER sent her home to wait

November 15, 2022
Selena Simmons-Duffin
8-Minute Listen with Transcript

Christina Zielke and her husband were excited when she got pregnant in July. It was her first pregnancy at age 33 – everything was new. But during the ultrasound at her initial prenatal appointment in Washington D.C., there was no heartbeat. Bloodwork taken a few days apart showed her pregnancy hormone levels were dropping.

A doctor from her Ob-Gyn's office called her to confirm that the pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage. They laid out her options: Take medication to make the pregnancy tissue come out faster, have a dilation and curettage or D&C procedure to remove the pregnancy tissue from her uterus, or wait for it to come out on its own.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/15/1135882310/miscarriage-hemorrhage-abortion-law-ohio

Exclusive: New Biden abortion rights push addresses both women and men

By Nandita Bose, Reuters
Aug 16, 2022

Cheered by a decisive win for abortion rights in a Kansas vote and eyeing November midterm elections, the White House is launching a push for abortion access that aims to influence men as well as women, sources with direct knowledge told Reuters.

The Biden administration's three-prong playbook leans on two specific federal statutes to target states that limit abortion, communicates to voters the impact on women, and accentuates how forced pregnancies negatively affect both women and men.

Continued:https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-white-house-pushes-three-part-plan-abortion-rights-2022-08-16/

16.08.2022