‘Stunning’ threat in Texas abortion case steps up Paxton criminalization crusade

State attorney general threatened to prosecute doctors if they provided abortion care to a woman with a nonviable pregnancy

Mary Tuma
Tue 12 Dec 2023

When a Texas court ruled that a 31-year-old woman with a non-viable pregnancy could have an abortion despite the state’s strict bans, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, responded with a brazen threat to prosecute “hospitals, doctors, or anyone else” who would assist in providing the procedure. The letter he sent Texas hospitals hours after the ruling, threatening first-degree felonies that could result in life in prison, was a “stunning” move indicative of his longstanding crusade to criminalize abortion care, say legal experts and advocates.

“It is extraordinary that Paxton would threaten hospitals and doctors with this letter before even winning an appeal,” Mary Ziegler, a UC-Davis law professor who focuses on reproductive rights, told the Guardian. “It’s a very unusual maneuver, but does certainly reflect his ultimate goal of wanting to go after abortion providers and supporters at all costs.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/12/texas-abortion-ken-paxton-kate-cox

Idaho asks supreme court to decide on law penalizing abortion providers

At issue is a court ruling that the state’s abortion ban conflicts with government rules mandating the provision of emergency care

Carter Sherman
Thu 30 Nov 2023

The US supreme court is on the verge of being dragged back into the abortion wars.

Eighteen months after the court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v Wade and abolished the national right to abortion, the state of Idaho, represented by the conservative legal powerhouse the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), has asked the nation’s highest court to allow a law that penalizes abortion providers. The state is requesting that the court halt a federal court decision finding that Idaho’s ban conflicts with government rules governing the provision of emergency care.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/30/idaho-punish-abortion-provider-supreme-court

30.11.2023

Commentary

Alliance Defending Freedom

emergency abortion

Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act

Do No Harm: Texas Court Rules in Favor of Women Harmed by Abortion Ban’s Inadequate Protection for Medical Emergencies

15 AUG 2023
JOANNA L. GROSSMAN

Earlier this year, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit, Zurawski v. State of Texas, on behalf of several women who needed emergent abortion care when their planned, wanted pregnancies went south either because the pregnancy became non-viable or its continuation threatened the woman’s life or health. In each case, the woman needed abortion care to preserve her life, health, or fertility; yet, in each case, she was turned away by doctors and hospitals because she wasn’t sick enough to make the abortion lawful. The lawsuit arises out of the Texas abortion ban that took effect in August 2022, which prohibits abortions unless a narrow, poorly defined medical emergency exception applies. The lawsuit asked the court to clarify that the exception must be broad enough to allow doctors to use their good-faith judgment about when an abortion is necessary to protect the woman’s life, health, or fertility.

Continued: https://verdict.justia.com/2023/08/15/do-no-harm-texas-court-rules-in-favor-of-women-harmed-by-abortion-bans-inadequate-protection-for-medical-emergencies

USA – THE FIRST “WRONGFUL DEATH” CASE FOR HELPING A FRIEND GET AN ABORTION

The lawsuit’s long game — beyond instilling fear — is establishing fetal personhood, the holy grail of the anti-abortion movement.

Mary Tuma
April 26 2023

“YOUR HELP MEANS the world to me,” a grateful Brittni Silva texted her best friends, Jackie Noyola and Amy Carpenter, last July. “I’m so lucky to have y’all. Really.”

A month after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Houston mother of two experienced an unplanned pregnancy with her now ex-husband and allegedly sought abortion care with the help of her friends. For nearly a year, Texas had imposed a six-week abortion ban, and a full “trigger” ban would be enacted in just a few weeks. Silva needed to act fast and extricate herself from what appeared to be an emotionally unhealthy relationship with a husband she would go on to divorce in February. Her friends offered their unwavering support.

Continued: https://theintercept.com/2023/04/26/abortion-wrongful-death-texas-lawsuit/

“You Would Only Need a Week”: How the Next Republican President Could Ban Abortion Nationwide

The fight over the meaning of a Victorian-era law could mean everything for reproductive freedom.

Madison Pauley
April 17, 2023

Two months before a right-wing judge in Texas threw the legal status of the abortion pill mifepristone into limbo, a group of red-state attorneys general ganged up on executives at CVS and Walgreens, trying to stop them from filling prescriptions for the abortion medication through the mail. In a letter citing a federal law that hadn’t been enforced for half a century, the lawyers warned the chains of future criminal prosecution—never mind that mifeprisone has been FDA-approved for decades and used to end the pregnancies of over 5.6 million US women.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/04/mifepristone-comstock-abortion-medication-pill-texas-court-ban/

Are Texas’s abortion laws being used for state-sponsored spousal harassment?

A Texas man is suing his ex-wife’s friends for helping her get an abortion – whether he wins or not, the lawsuit is sending a terrifying message to women
18 Mar 2023
Arwa Mahdawi

Meet Jonathan Mitchell. The former solicitor general of Texas is not a household name but you’ll be familiar with his work. He’s the architect of the dystopian Texas law that lets private citizens act as vigilantes and sue abortion providers or anyone who “aids or abets” the procedure. As the New York Times noted in a 2021 profile of Mitchell, he’s devoted much of the past decade to “honing a largely below-the-radar strategy of writing laws deliberately devised to make it much more difficult for the judicial system – particularly the supreme court – to thwart them.” In other words: he’s brilliant at finding sneaky ways to inflict his beliefs on everyone else. And he appears to have made it his life’s work to weaponize the law to terrorize and control women.

Mitchell’s latest project is representing a Texas man called Marcus Silva who is currently suing his ex-wife’s friends for helping her get an abortion. Silva is demanding more than $1m in damages from each of the two friends his ex-wife talked and texted with when she planned her abortion as well as the woman who provided abortion pills. He’s also planning to sue the manufacturer of the abortion pills.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/18/are-texass-abortion-laws-being-used-for-state-sponsored-spousal-harassment

18.03.2023

anti-choice abuse

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice harassment

anti-choice hatred

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice terrorism

Three Texas women are sued for wrongful death after allegedly helping friend obtain abortion medication

In the first lawsuit of its kind since Roe v. Wade was overturned, a husband seeks damages from women who allegedly helped his ex-wife obtain the medications to terminate her pregnancy.

BY ELEANOR KLIBANOFF
MARCH 10, 2023

A Texas man is suing three women under the wrongful death statute, alleging that they assisted his ex-wife in terminating her pregnancy, the first such case brought since the state’s near-total ban on abortion last summer.

Marcus Silva is represented by Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general and architect of the state’s prohibition on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, and state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park. The lawsuit is filed in state court in Galveston County, where Silva lives.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/10/texas-abortion-lawsuit/

10.03.2023

News

Aid Access

Briscoe Cain

Charles “Rocky” Rhodes

self-managed abortion

A Trump Judge Could Ban Abortion Pills In the US Within Days

One of the most common and safe abortion drugscould be banned nationwide this week—regardless of a state’s abortion restrictions.

By Carter Sherman
February 21, 2023

One of the most common and safe abortion drugs could be banned nationwide as soon as Friday, thanks to a lawsuit that could impact every state in the country—regardless of that state’s abortion restrictions.

Abortion rights supporters and foes alike are bracing for a ruling in a lawsuit, filed late last year, that accused the Food and Drug Administration of overstepping its authority when it approved the use of the drug mifepristone for abortions. Although the lawsuit was initially regarded as something of a longshot legal oddity among abortion rights activists, that attitude quickly changed once people realized that the suit was sure to be overseen by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump and is widely known for his conservative views on abortion.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkgkd/us-abortion-pill-ban-lawsuit

“It Could End Abortion in America”: Two Tiny Towns At the Center of the Abortion Wars

New Mexico has emerged as one of the key battlefronts in the U.S. war over abortion.

By Carter Sherman
February 13, 2023

SANTA TERESA, New Mexico — When Paulina Caballero’s pregnancy made her so nauseous that she could no longer cook for her kids, she realized that she could not go through with it.

At 29, the Texas native was already a mother of three. She suffers, she said, from a medical condition that leads her to vomit uncontrollably during pregnancy and forces her to spend months in the hospital. During her first pregnancy, she lost 50 pounds. During her second, she lost 80. During her third, 40.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7bmxn/future-of-abortion-war-is-in-new-mexico

USA – New abortion laws jeopardize cancer treatment for pregnant patients

Cancer treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy can be toxic to a developing fetus or cause birth defects.

September 24, 2022
By Charlotte Huff, Kaiser Health News

As abortion bans go into effect across a contiguous swath of the South, cancer physicians are wrestling with how new state laws will influence their discussions with pregnant patients about what treatment options they can offer.

Cancer coincides with roughly 1 in 1,000 pregnancies, most frequently breast cancer, melanoma, cervical cancer, lymphomas, and leukemias. But medications and other treatments can be toxic to the developing fetus or cause birth defects. In some cases, hormones that are supercharged during pregnancy fuel the cancer’s growth, putting the patient at greater risk.

Continued: https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2022/09/24/new-abortion-laws-jeopardize-cancer-treatment-for-pregnant-patients/