In the Post-Roe Era, Letting Pregnant Patients Get Sicker—by Design

Fearing legal repercussions, doctors in Texas say they are risking grave patient harm to comply with new abortion restrictions.

By Stephania Taladrid
May 6, 2023

Parkland Memorial Hospital is an elegantly landscaped, blue-glass facility gleaming in the concrete expanse of what was once a manufacturing district in Dallas. The sole public hospital in a city of nearly 1.3 million people, it’s also a beacon in the state. People in medical distress travel to see its doctors from rural towns hundreds of miles away, and some of those distressed patients are pregnant.

Half of the counties in Texas, according to state data, lack a single specialist in women’s health: no ob-gyn, no nurse, no midwife who can treat mothers and their babies. But Parkland, one of thirty-two hospitals credentialled to treat high-risk-pregnancy cases, takes all comers. More than ten thousand babies are born there every year, and pregnant people also show up in its hectic emergency room with conditions that threaten their lives. Some patients have hemorrhages and spiralling infections; some are critically ill with cancer or heart disease; some are at acute risk of stroke if they bring their pregnancies to term.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/in-the-post-roe-era-letting-pregnant-patients-get-sicker-by-design

USA – Don’t Report Your Abortion Patients to Law Enforcement

— Self-managed abortion does not legally need to be reported

by Jamila Perritt, MD, MPH, and Jill E. Adams, JD
November 5, 2022

State-based abortion bans throughout the country have been choking off access to abortion care, including clinic-based and telehealth care. While these laws are designed to directly target abortion providers with civil and criminal penalties, they also indirectly increase the likelihood that other people may fall prey to the criminal legal system, particularly those who self-manage their abortion and those who support them. Although only two states have laws prohibiting self-managed abortion, politically and ideologically motivated police and prosecutors in other states are more than willing to warp existing laws and misapply them in order to punish people seeking to manage their own care. As a result, more people will be unjustly interrogated, arrested, and prosecuted for allegedly ending their own pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/101581

05.11.2022

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

American Public Health Association

criminalization of abortion seekers

If/When/How

Jamila Perritt

Jill E. Adams

law enforcement and doctors

National Advocates for Pregnant Women

reporting patients to law enforcement

reporting patients to police

self-managed abortion

USA – COVID-19: An Opportunistic Attack on Reproductive Health

By: Alyssa Fisher
Aug 23, 2020

Entering her 50th year at Choices Women’s Medical Center, founder Merle Hoffman has witnessed a lot. Imagine launching a reproductive health center providing abortions two years before Roe v. Wade legalized it in 1973.

But it’s the COVID-19 pandemic, she says, that has been “one of the most, most challenging times that we’ve faced, I’ve faced.”

Continued: https://womensenews.org/2020/08/covid-19-an-opportunistic-attack-on-reproductive-health/

USA – It’s Time For A Revolution In At-Home Abortion

It's Time For A Revolution In At-Home Abortion
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fiction that most abortions need to be performed in a clinic setting.

By Melissa Jeltsen, HuffPost US
04/08/2020

The callers wanted to know how to end their pregnancies without going outside. Many were afraid to travel for fear of contracting the coronavirus, which spreads through contact with others. Some didn’t have the financial resources to make an arduous, often multi-day trip to an abortion clinic. Others were stuck in states where abortions were temporarily halted by Republican leaders exploiting the crisis to erode access.

Faced with dwindling options, callers to the helpline run by the reproductive rights group If/When/How, were considering “self-managed abortion,” loosely defined as ending a pregnancy without the formal supervision of a health care professional. Calls to the confidential helpline have more than doubled in the past two weeks, according to Jill Adams, the group’s executive director.

Continued: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/abortion-at-home-medication-abortion_n_5e8cd4e6c5b62459a9304428?ri18n=true&ncid=NEWSSTAND0001

USA – She Wanted An Abortion. Feds Say Her Ex Threatened to Bomb the Clinic.

She Wanted An Abortion. Feds Say Her Ex Threatened to Bomb the Clinic.
Court documents show a South Carolina man has been hit with federal charges for interfering with reproductive health care.

by Marie Solis
Oct 7 2019

A South Carolina man named Rodney Allen has been arrested and charged with calling in a fake bomb threat to a Jacksonville, Florida, health clinic in order to prevent a woman he was formerly in a relationship with from obtaining an abortion.

According to a sworn affidavit submitted in federal court last month by FBI Special Agent Robert W. Blythe, these events took place after Allen allegedly sexually assaulted the woman—identified in the affidavit only as A.S.—which resulted in her becoming pregnant. A.S. also alleged that Allen was physically abusive, and had threatened to kill multiple members of her family. The case, USA v Allen, is still in process in a Florida district court. (Blythe did not respond to VICE’s request for comment.)

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kenp7/south-carolina-man-threatened-to-bomb-abortion-clinic-because-ex-girlfriend-was-there-usa-v-rodney-allen

USA – A boom in at-home abortions is coming

A boom in at-home abortions is coming
Advocates say “self-managed abortions” are safe — and in the current political environment, interest is rising.

By Anna North
Jul 9, 2019

After Marie decided to take medication to end her pregnancy, it took several days for the pills to work.

When the uterine contractions started, Marie recalled, she experienced “a lot of bleeding, a lot of pain, a lot of cramps. Just like a bad cycle.” (Marie asked that her last name not be used because of legal concerns.)

Continued: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/7/1/18638649/abortion-pill-internet-misoprostol-mifepristone

USA – What Back Alley? These Women Say DIY Abortion Can Be Empowering

What Back Alley? These Women Say DIY Abortion Can Be Empowering
The pro-choice movement has portrayed non-clinic abortion as a last resort. But some women are trying to change that image.

Emily Shugerman
01.04.19

The image provokes both fear and fury: a wire coat hanger, spattered with blood, symbolizing the drastic measures women may take when abortion access is limited.

Whoopi Goldberg brandished one on stage at the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, urging the younger generation to remember what their forebears used. Protesters at the 1989 March for Women's Equality carried a giant replica, stained red, through the streets of Washington D.C. like a macabre parade float. And the symbol has been ubiquitous since Donald Trump’s election, popping up at marches, in the pages of glossy magazines, and on this site.

The imagery makes Jill Adams, founder of the Self-Induced Abortion Legal Team, shake her head.

Continued: https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-back-alley-these-women-say-diy-abortion-can-be-empowering?ref=scroll

04.01.2019

American Council of Gynecologists and Obstetricians

jailing women for abortion

Jamila Perritt

Jane Collective

Jill Adams

Knoxville Abortion Doula Collective

medication abortion

mifepristone

misoprostol

Physicians for Reproductive Health

Planned Parenthood

prosecuting women for abortion

self-induced abortion

Self-Induced Abortion Legal Team

self-managed abortion

Self-managed Abortion Safe and Supported

USA – Self-Managed Abortion Care Becomes Urgent as Threats to Roe v. Wade Mount

Self-Managed Abortion Care Becomes Urgent as Threats to Roe v. Wade Mount

by Katie Klabusich, Truthout
Published August 19, 2018

When President Trump took office just over a year and a half ago, activists could only make educated guesses about whether his promised onslaught against reproductive health care would truly come to pass. The current picture is worse than expected due to attacks from rogue agency heads throughout the Trump-Pence administration who are collaborating to deny access to care to people across the country.

These agency heads include Betsy Devos at the Department of Education, who is working in tandem with the new division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Civil Rights to reduce access to contraception; Scott Lloyd, who has directed the Office of Refugee Resettlement to deny abortion care to immigrant minors; and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has announced a “religious liberty task force” to shore up already existing “conscience clauses” allowing employees to refuse care.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/self-managed-abortion-care-becomes-urgent-as-threats-to-roe-v-wade-mount/

What would the world be like without Roe v. Wade?

What would the world be like without Roe v. Wade?

Lisa Belkin, Chief National Correspondent
Yahoo News, Jul 26, 2018

Brandishing a wire coat hanger, New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon took the podium at a rally against the nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court earlier this month. Kavanaugh is thought to satisfy Donald Trump’s pledge to appoint justices who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Nixon’s voice shook as she predicted that a newly conservative court would take the country back to a time when women — including her own mother — resorted to self-administered abortions with, yes, coat hangers, or to illegal and unlicensed practitioners to end their pregnancies.

“We must never, ever, ever, go back to a time when any woman feels she has to make this kind of a choice,” she said, raising the hanger high. “And this is why we must fight.”

Continued: https://sports.yahoo.com/world-like-without-roe-v-wade-175227534.html