USA – In Medicine, a Lack of Courage Has Helped Put Roe in Jeopardy

Jan. 21, 2022
By Eyal Press

This Saturday marks the 49th, and quite possibly the last, anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in every state. Roe’s precarious future can be attributed to various factors: the tenacity of the anti-abortion movement, the addition of three conservative justices to the court during Donald Trump’s presidency, the opportunities that pro-choice advocates may have missed. But if, as is widely expected, the Supreme Court upholds a Mississippi statute that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and overturns or guts Roe later this year, I will be thinking about something else: not the legal precedent, but the role that lawlessness and terrorism — and the medical community’s response to it — played in hastening Roe’s demise.

The act of terrorism that particularly haunts me took place on Oct. 23, 1998. That evening, an obstetrician-gynecologist named Barnett Slepian was standing in the kitchen of his home in Amherst, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo, when a sniper’s bullet struck him in the back. He collapsed to the floor and, within a few hours, was pronounced dead. At the time, Dr. Slepian was one of three abortion providers in the Greater Buffalo area. One of the others was my father, Shalom Press, an obstetric gynecologist who performed abortions on certain days in his private practice.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/opinion/roe-v-wade-abortion-doctors-violence.html

Group whose anti-abortion ad Amy Barrett signed accused of promoting harassment of doctors

In one case, a doctor whose name was published by Indiana group was warned by FBI of kidnapping threat against her daughter

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington
Fri 14 Jan 2022

An Indiana group whose anti-abortion campaign was endorsed in a signed advertisement by Amy Coney Barrett before she became a supreme court justice, keeps a published list of abortion providers and their place of work on its website, in what some experts say is an invitation to harass and intimidate the doctors and their staff.

In one case, court records show, a doctor whose name was published by the group, which is called Right to Life Michiana, was warned by the FBI of a kidnapping threat that had been made online against her daughter.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/14/anti-abortion-group-indiana-amy-coney-barrett

Abortion in the Surveillance State

The digital platforms people rely on to access or learn about abortion are also being wielded to spy on and punish them.

By Kylie Cheung
November 22, 2021

Shortly after Texas enacted Senate Bill 8, a near-total abortion ban that’s primarily enforced by citizens spying on and policing each other, Texas Right to Life launched what can really only be called a snitch hotline, calling on the nosiest of neighbors and worst of people to submit “tips” about people they suspected to be seeking or helping people seek abortions.

Things didn’t go as planned for the hotline, once the teens of TikTok and other Very Online abortion rights advocates caught wind of it. Good Samaritans across the internet joined forces to inundate the hotline with false tips, Shrek memes, furry porn, and other generally ludicrous submissions, rendering the thing useless for anyone but ride-or-die Shrek fans. The hotline — which likely would have been weaponized by abusive ex-partners or anti-abortion activists seeking to make an easy $10,000 by suing people who help others have abortions — has since been dropped by several hosting services.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/abortion-in-the-surveillance-state-1848076906

Texas abortion ban is an early glimpse of what post-Roe America would look like for women

By Katherine Dautrich, Isabelle Chapman, Majlie de Puy Kamp and Casey Tolan, CNN
Fri October 22, 2021 (CNN)

Nicole began her morning with a simple prayer: "Please let my car start today."

She had already gotten the mandatory ultrasound, scrounged up $595 and taken time off work. But at that moment -- with her pregnancy at exactly six weeks -- getting an abortion in her home state boiled down to her hatchback's temperamental engine turning over.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/us/texas-abortion-ban-invs/index.html

A Texas Doctor Says He Defied The Abortion Law, Risking Lawsuits

September 19, 2021
SHARON PRUITT-YOUNG

Texas outlawed abortions past the six-week mark in a law that went into effect on Sept. 1. Dr. Alan Braid, a Texas physician, says he performed one anyway just a few days later.

In an opinion piece for The Washington Post on Saturday, Braid, who's
been practicing for more than 40 years, explained his decision as a matter of
"duty of care." The new law, known as S.B. 8, not only makes performing
an abortion after about six weeks illegal, but makes it so that anyone who aids
anyone else in getting one — by performing the procedure or even by giving them
a ride to the clinic where they have the procedure done — runs the risk of
being sued for at least $10,000.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/19/1038717122/a-texas-doctor-says-he-defied-the-abortion-law-risking-lawsuits

Texans seeking abortions have options — but they’re very limited

The state now has the nation’s most restrictive abortion law

Caroline Anders
September 5, 2021

A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to stop a restrictive Texas abortion law from taking effect, allowing the state to prohibit medical providers from ending a pregnancy after detecting an embryo’s cardiac activity.

In effect, the law bans Texans from getting abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

https://www.thelily.com/texans-seeking-abortions-have-options-but-theyre-very-limited/

Texas abortion clinics brace for near shutdown as new law is enacted: ‘We have to comply’

Jeremy Blackman, Austin Bureau
Aug. 12, 2021

The National Abortion Federation has told doctors in Texas it will stop referring patients and sending money to clinics that offer abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

In North Texas, the Texas Equal Action Fund will likely “pause” its ride share program that helps women reach abortion appointments.

Continued: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Texas-abortion-clinics-brace-for-near-shutdown-as-16382541.php

Long Drives, Costly Flights, And Wearying Waits: What Abortion Requires In The South

August 2, 2021
SARAH VARNEY

Just a quick walk through the parking lot of Choices-Memphis Center for Reproductive Health, in this legendary music mecca, speaks volumes about access to abortion in the American South. Parked alongside the polished SUVs and weathered sedans with Tennessee license plates are cars from Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida and, on many days, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

Choices is one of two abortion clinics in the Memphis metro area, with a population of 1.3 million. While that might not seem like much for women seeking a commonplace medical procedure, it represents a wealth of access compared with Mississippi, which has just one abortion clinic for the entire state of 3 million people.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/08/02/1022860226/long-drives-costly-flights-and-wearying-waits-what-abortion-requires-in-the-sout

‘Insidious,’ ‘draconian,’ ‘cruel’: New Texas abortion law empowers vigilantism, experts say

Abortion advocates in Texas say the law will encourage their opponents to flood courts with lawsuits that will cripple their ability to operate.

July 24, 2021
By Adam Edelman

For Anna Rupani, harassment comes with the job.

As the co-executive director at Fund Texas Choice — a practical-support abortion fund in Texas that helps women travel to places, both in and out of the state, where they can receive abortion care — she’s been the target of protests, violent threats, online bullying and terrifying mail.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/insidious-draconian-cruel-new-texas-abortion-law-empowers-vigilantism-experts-n1274642

We Need a Left Strategy for Confronting the Anti-Abortion Movement

The anti-abortion movement has grown increasingly militant in recent years — and increasingly successful. The liberal pushback isn’t cutting it. We need a leftist strategy to defend abortion rights.

BY ANNE RUMBERGER
July 14, 2021

Abortion access has been uneven and inadequate for decades. But with the recent announcement that the Supreme Court will hear a major abortion case next term concerning a Mississippi state law that would ban almost all abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, the threat has reached new levels.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization strikes at the heart of the precedent set in Roe v. Wade in 1973 that abortion is permitted until fetus viability, generally at around twenty-four weeks. As it hears the case, the Supreme Court will consider one clearly delineated question: whether or not “all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” Mary Ziegler, author of Abortion and the Law in America, said recently that the court taking up the case could result in overturning Roe, but it could also get rid of viability as the point at which states can ban abortion.

Continued: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/anti-abortion-movement-choice-reproductive-justice

14.07.2021