Abortion in America: How access and attitudes have changed through the centuries

by: Eliza Siegel, Stacker
Jul 28, 2023

The Postal Service can legally deliver abortion medications in the U.S.—including to states with abortion restrictions or bans—according to a Justice Department decision posted online late Jan. 3. The Postal Service requested that the Justice Department provide guidance on this issue a week after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority voted to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in June 2022. That ruling, which sparked intense debate across the U.S., led to abortion restrictions and bans in many states.

In its decision, the Justice Department ruled that sending, delivering, and receiving abortion drugs by mail is not in violation of the 1873 Comstock Act —which aimed to prevent morally “corrupt” items from being delivered by mail—because there is no way to determine that the intent of the recipient is to commit an unlawful act. There are also no federal restrictions on the drugs in question.

Continued: https://www.ksnt.com/news/abortion-in-america-how-access-and-attitudes-have-changed-through-the-centuries/

Echoing history, reliance upon travel rises for abortion care post-Dobbs

Restricted access adds logistical, emotional and financial burdens for patients, advocates say

BY: KELCIE MOSELEY-MORRIS
JUNE 22, 2023

When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision one year ago, people of childbearing age in states across the country suddenly faced what seemed like a new prospect — having to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles from home to get an abortion.

But historians say it is merely continuing a long tradition of pregnant people seeking out the sometimes lifesaving care they need wherever it can be found, and other people helping them along the way.

Continued: https://missouriindependent.com/2023/06/22/echoing-history-reliance-upon-travel-rises-for-abortion-care-post-dobbs/

Abortion was once common practice in America. A small group of doctors changed that

January 19, 2023
Rund Abdelfatah
6-Minute Listen with Transcript

The 50th anniversary of the Roe V. Wade decision is Jan. 22. NPR's podcast Throughline examines the debate about abortion, which wasn't always controversial.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
This week, it'll mark 50 years since the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion a constitutionally protected right - at least for 49 years. In U.S. history, though, abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America, it was considered a fairly common practice, a private decision made by women and aided mostly by midwives. But in the mid-1800s, a small group of physicians set out to change that. Led by a zealous young doctor named Horatio Storer, they launched a campaign to make abortion illegal in every state. Here are hosts Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah from our history podcast Throughline.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/19/1149924325/abortion-was-once-common-practice-in-america-a-small-group-of-doctors-changed-th

USA – The Coming Rise of Abortion as a Crime

In places where abortion is now illegal, a range of pregnancy losses could be subject to state scrutiny.
By Melissa Jeltsen
JULY 1, 2022

Before last week, women attempting to have their pregnancies terminated in states hostile to abortion rights already faced a litany of obstacles: lengthy drives, waiting periods, mandated counseling, throngs of volatile protesters. Now they face a new reality. Although much is still unknown about how abortion bans will be enforced, we have arrived at a time when abortions—and even other pregnancy losses—might be investigated as potential crimes. In many states across post-Roe America, expect to see women treated like criminals.

On Friday, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending abortion as a constitutional right. Nearly half of U.S. states either are in the process of implementing trigger bans—which were set up to outlaw abortions quickly after Roe was overturned—or seem likely to soon severely curtail abortion access. Reproductive-rights experts told me that in the near future, they expect to see more criminal investigations and arrests of women who induce their own abortions, as well as those who lose pregnancies through miscarriage and stillbirth.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/07/roe-illegal-abortions-pregnancy-termination-state-crime/661420/

How abortion bans could be enforced if Roe v. Wade is reversed

By Tierney Sneed, CNN
Wed June 22, 2022

(CNN)If the Supreme Court issues a ruling that would allow states to ban abortion, as is expected in the coming days, such a decision would raise new questions about how authorities would enforce such bans and whether the anti-abortion movement would stick to its public emphasis on protecting abortion-seekers themselves from prosecution.

What has been the pattern abroad in countries that ban abortion, along with United States' own experience before Roe, previews a complicated and unequal enforcement landscape.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/22/politics/roe-abortion-prosecution-tactics/index.html

Abortion was once common practice in America. A small group of doctors changed that

June 6, 2022
Ramtin Arablouei, Rund Abdelfatah
8-Minute Listen, with Transcript

Abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a fairly common practice. But in the mid-1800s, a small group of physicians set out to change that.

SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
In U.S. history, abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America, it was considered a fairly common practice, a private decision made by women and aided mostly by midwives. But in the mid-1800s, a small group of physicians set out to change that. Led by a zealous young doctor named Horatio Storer, they launched a campaign to make abortion illegal in every state. Hosts Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah from our history podcast Throughline bring us the story.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/06/1103372543/abortion-was-once-common-practice-in-america-a-small-group-of-doctors-changed-th

06.06.2022

The Future of Abortions in America. An access map.

by Irin Carmon, Maps by Marcus Peabody
May 23, 2022

The legal right to abortion is likely to disappear in half the country in a matter of weeks. Abortion itself, and the need for it, will not, and never has. The question is what it will cost medically, financially — and criminally.

In his leaked draft opinion demolishing Roe v. Wade, expected to be finalized in June, Justice Samuel Alito said abortion’s legality is not “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions.” Abortion’s reality unquestionably is. “The historical record clearly shows that generations of women desired and needed abortions, and neither law nor church nor taboo could stop them,” Leslie Reagan writes in her definitive history, When Abortion Was a Crime. She quotes a doctor’s letter from 1888: “I am sure there is no comparison between the number of abortions committed by doctors and the number committed by women themselves,” he wrote. “They talk about such matters commonly and impart information unsparingly.”

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/future-abortion-access-map.html

White nationalists are flocking to the US anti-abortion movement

The white supremacist and anti-choice movements have always been closely linked. But more and more, they are becoming difficult to tell apart

Moira Donegan
Mon 24 Jan 2022

This weekend’s March for Life rally, the large anti-choice demonstration held annually in Washington DC to mark the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, has the exuberant quality of a victory lap. This, the 49th anniversary of Roe, is likely to be its last. The US supreme court is poised to overturn Roe in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, which is set to be decided this spring. For women in Texas, Roe has already been nullified: the court went out of its way to allow what Justice Sonia Sotomayor called a “flagrantly unconstitutional” abortion ban to go into effect there, depriving abortion rights to the one in 10 American women of reproductive age who live in the nation’s second largest state.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/24/white-nationalists-are-flocking-to-the-us-anti-abortion-movement

What Would a Post-Roe America Look Like?

Dec. 10, 2021
By Spencer Bokat-Lindell

In 1973, Americans gained a constitutional right to abortion. In 2022, they may lose it.

Those are the stakes of a case that the Supreme Court heard last week, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, involving a Mississippi law that bans nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/opinion/supreme-court-abortion-roe.html

USA – Pat was an early radical abortion rights activist. Her positions are now common

October 29, 2021
MATT OZUG, SARAH HANDEL, AILSA CHANG

Even in feminist history, Pat Maginnis does not quite command name recognition. "She was not Gloria Steinem," says writer Lili Loofbourow, who profiled the early abortion-rights advocate in 2018. "She was not an attention seeker or a credit seeker."

Maginnis may have lacked a nose for the spotlight. She wasn't one for glamour — she was known to dress in clothes from thrift stores or even those she found on the street. And she employed confrontational tactics that forced the issue into the public eye.

Continued https://www.npr.org/2021/10/29/1047068724/pat-was-an-early-radical-abortion-rights-activist-her-positions-are-now-common