GOP legislatures in some states seek ways to undermine voters’ ability to determine abortion rights

Legislative efforts in Missouri and Mississippi are attempting to prevent voters from having a say over abortion rights

By CHRISTINE FERNANDO Associated Press
January 28, 2024

CHICAGO -- Legislative efforts in Missouri and Mississippi are attempting to prevent voters from having a say over abortion rights, building on anti-abortion strategies seen in other states, including last year in Ohio.

Democrats and abortion rights advocates say the efforts are evidence that Republican lawmakers and abortion opponents are trying to undercut democratic processes meant to give voters a direct role in forming state laws.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/gop-legislatures-states-seek-ways-undermine-voters-ability-106743537

‘Feels horrible to say no’: abortion funds run out of money as US demand surges

A lifeline for many in states with abortion restrictions, abortion funds are being pushed to the brink due to rising costs and a drop in donations

Carter Sherman
Fri 22 Sep 2023

Laurie Bertram Roberts never expected Americans to keep forking over money to pay for other people’s abortions. But the abortion fund director didn’t think it would get this dire.

When the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, people donated tens of thousands of dollars to Roberts’ organization, the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, which is dedicated to helping people afford abortions and the many costs that come with it. But, in August, Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund had to stop funding abortions. It’s now closed until January 2024.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/22/us-abortion-funds-run-out-of-money-demand-surges

To Protect a Mother’s Health: How Abortion Ban Exemptions Play Out in a Post-‘Roe’ World

By Christopher O’Donnell, Tampa Bay Times
JULY 31, 2023

This pregnancy felt different.

After the heartache of more than a dozen miscarriages, Anya Cook was 16 weeks along. She and husband Derick Cook spent a Sunday last December sharing the news with his parents and looking at cribs.

As they left a restaurant in Coral Springs, Florida, that evening, Cook’s water broke. Her husband rushed her to the nearest emergency room.

Continued: https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/to-protect-a-mothers-health-how-abortion-ban-exemptions-play-out-in-a-post-roe-world/

31.07.2023

Commentary

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Anya Cook

Broward Health Coral Springs

Jennifer Griffin

Laurie Bertram Roberts

Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund

Texas Policy Evaluation Project

Denied an abortion, she raised a child: One Mississippi mom shares her story

"I love my child to the ends of the earth. That doesn’t make what happened any less unfair.”

June 30, 2023
By Danielle Campoamor

Laurie Bertram Roberts remembers the emotion that consumed her when, as a 19-year-old single mom of two, she needed an abortion.

Fear.

She was only three months postpartum and recovering from a C-section when she found out she was pregnant again. She's now 45, but vividly remembers desperately searching for the nearest clinic, poring over every weathered phonebook she could find as her newborn slept in her arms.

Continued: https://www.today.com/parents/moms/abortion-mississippi-mom-had-baby-rcna90226

30.06.2023

Commentary

Equal Rights Advocates

Laurie Bertram Roberts

maternal mortality

Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund

USA – Most abortion bans include exceptions. In practice, few are granted

Jan. 21, 2023
By Amy Schoenfeld Walker, The New York Times

Last summer, a Mississippi woman sought an abortion after, she said, a friend had raped her. Her state prohibits most abortions but allows them for rape victims. Yet she could not find a doctor to provide one.

In September, an Indiana woman learned that a fetal defect meant her baby would die shortly after birth, if not sooner. Her state’s abortion ban included an exception for such cases, but she was referred to Illinois or Michigan.

Continued: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/most-abortion-bans-include-exceptions-in-practice-few-are-granted/

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

‘I became the abortion lady of Mississippi’: the mother of seven who devoted her life to the pro-choice cause

Raised a fundamentalist Christian, Laurie Bertram Roberts grew up believing abortion was evil. Then a pregnancy put her life at risk – and she was denied the termination she desperately needed

Emine Saner
Thu 12 May 2022

When Laurie Bertram Roberts was 17, she was sent home from hospital and almost bled to death. Pregnant and experiencing bleeding, she had gone to the emergency department of her nearest hospital in Indiana twice, and was told she was miscarrying, but, because a scan showed the foetus still had a heartbeat, she was also told there was nothing they could do. What she needed, in order to end a pregnancy that was ending anyway, was an abortion – but she says the Catholic hospital would not provide one. “They had the power to end my pregnancy right there, when I was already bleeding fairly heavily, in a tremendous amount of pain. Instead, they sent my scared 17-year-old self, a mother of two already, home.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/may/12/abortion-lady-mississippi-mother-seven-pro-choice-christian-laurie-bertram-roberts-pregnancy

12.05.2022

Commentary

Featured

Laurie Bertram Roberts

Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund

National Organization for Women

self-managed abortion

What The Fight For Abortion Rights Means To All Of Us

Black Information Network
December 30, 2021

Earlier this month, the US Supreme Court took up a case involving Mississippi’s abortion ban law. The case could overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that secured abortion rights for people across the US in 1973 –– a situation which reproductive justice advocates say will impact us all.

“Choices are being made for us before we can even make choices for ourselves,” Laurie Bertram Roberts, Co-Founder of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund and Alabama Reproductive Freedom Fund told the Black Information Network.

Continued: https://chicagodefender.com/what-the-fight-for-abortion-rights-means-to-all-of-us/

30.12.2021

14th Amendment

Alabama Reproductive Freedom Fund

Black Information Network

black women and abortion

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

economics and abortion

interracial marriage

Laurie Bertram Roberts

Loving v. Virginia

maternal mortality

Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund

reproductive justice

Roe v. Wade

U.S. Supreme Court

Mississippi banned most abortions to be the ‘safest state’ for the unborn. Meanwhile, one in three Mississippi kids live in poverty

Sarah Fowler
Nov 26, 2021

Brandon, Mississippi – Drusilla Hicks sinks into her couch. A week ago, she and her three young kids moved into their new home. After unloading the moving truck herself, unpacking all the boxes, and hanging photos on the wall, she's exhausted.

All around her, stacks of folded laundry are perched on every available surface.

Continued: https://www.businessinsider.com/mississippi-defends-abortion-ban-one-in-three-kids-in-poverty-2021-11

Texas Abortion Ban Sends Women Out of State, Draining Aid Funds

Ayanna Alexander, Bloomberg News
September 10, 2021

(Bloomberg Law) -- Nonprofits that aid women seeking abortions plan to steer more of their funds to sending women out of state to get the procedure in the face of new Republican restrictions across the South, but the list of destinations is shrinking.

The added time and expense will drain resources from the abortion funds, which help women who can’t afford the procedure on their own. The new restrictions will hit low-income Black women, who are a significant portion of their clientele, the hardest. Texas’s new restrictions, which ban abortions after six weeks and allow anyone to sue providers suspected of violating the measure, only ratchet up the pressure on abortion funds as more Republican-led states watch to see if the law survives legal scrutiny.

Continued: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/texas-abortion-ban-sends-women-out-of-state-draining-aid-funds-1.1650462