USA – The Abortion Battle Over Rising Deaths in Pregnant Women

BY KATHERINE FUNG
ON 3/24/23

A massive spike in U.S. maternal deaths has abortion-rights and anti-abortion groups debating the cause of the nation's most fatal odds for expectant mothers in more than half a century.

A new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week said that maternal mortality—deaths that take place during pregnancy or within 42 days after delivery—shot up by 40 percent in 2021. The figure reaffirms America's position as the most dangerous wealthy country to live in when pregnant or while giving birth.

Continued: https://www.newsweek.com/abortion-battle-over-rising-deaths-pregnant-women-1789982

The Latest Attack on the Abortion Pill Is Forty Years in the Making

If a Texas lawsuit prevails, mifepristone will no longer be available anywhere in the nation, even in states where abortion is legal.

By Sue Halpern, The New Yorker
March 9, 2023

In 1987, Ms. magazine asked me to write about RU-486, a new medication that caused the uterus to expel a fertilized egg before it could gestate. It wasn’t a contraceptive, but it wasn’t what most people considered an abortion, either. At the time, anti-abortion campaigners were brandishing ultrasound images that purported to show fetuses crying out in pain as they were being surgically removed. RU-486, which was developed in France but not yet available in the United States, threatened to stymie this tactic: there would be no fetal development to flaunt. Even the president of the National Right to Life Committee acknowledged that there was little P.R. value in images of what appeared to be menstruating women. This disarming of the pro-life movement, and the drug’s seemingly benign effect, I wrote, “may serve to decimate the ranks of abortion foes.” Étienne-Émile Baulieu, the primary developer of RU-486, which is better known as mifepristone, was even more hopeful. With this drug, he declared, abortion “should more or less disappear as a concept, as a fact, as a word in the future.”

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-latest-attack-on-the-abortion-pill-is-forty-years-in-the-making

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/

USA – The Fight Over Abortion Is Far From Over. Here’s What Will Happen in 2023.

2023 is going to be a big year for anti-abortion policy: Anti-abortion activists could even harness a 19th-century law to curtail talking about abortion.

By Carter Sherman
December 26, 2022

If this is the year that Roe v. Wade fell, 2023 will be the year that kicks off what promises to be a years-long, state-by-state brawl between Americans who believe abortion is essential to freedom and Americans who believe the procedure is murder.

Come January, state legislatures across the country will open for business. Conservative lawmakers will try to narrow the last few avenues to abortion available in red states. Abortion rights activists, buoyed by their victories in the midterms, will push for more ballot measures. Many of these legislative and political showdowns will likely end up in the courts.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkg9p7/abortion

Activists Are Trying to Ban Abortion Pills in Blue States, Forcing Patients to Face Protesters

"If the New York clinics are backed up and you need an abortion, you’re not going to feel like you have access," a law professor told Jezebel.

By Susan Rinkunas
Dec 12, 2022

People in blue states might recognize the threat of Congress passing a nationwide abortion ban under a Republican president in, say, 2025—but two recent under-the-radar actions on abortion pills underscore that no zipcode is safe from Republicans post-Roe v. Wade.

In November, anti-abortion activists filed a lawsuit asking the federal courts to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, the first drug used in a medication abortion. Days later, a different group filed a citizen petition with the FDA in which it weaponized environmental regulations to argue that patients need to bag up the products of conception and return them to abortion providers to dispose of as medical waste.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/activists-are-trying-to-ban-abortion-pills-in-blue-stat-1849883923

Will the world abort women’s rights after death of Roe v. Wade?

BY ELLEN WULFHORST, THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION
Nov 24, 2022

PATTAYA CITY, THAILAND – Women and girls around the world will suffer a knock-on effect from the U.S. decision to roll back abortion rights, experts say, predicting a global clampdown on hard-won female freedoms.

From access to abortion to voting rights, equal pay to equal status, women from Africa to Asia to Europe are expected to feel the fallout of the U.S. decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/11/24/world/women-rights-abortion/

BY ELLEN WULFHORST, THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION
Nov 24, 2022

From access to abortion to voting rights, equal pay to equal status, women from Africa to Asia to Europe are expected to feel the fallout of the U.S. decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/11/24/world/women-rights-abortion/

Abortion Bans Skirt a Medical Reality: For Many Teens, Childbirth Is a Dangerous Undertaking

Oct 9, 2022
Sarah Varney, Kaiser Health News

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Maryanna’s eyes widened as the waitress delivered dessert, a plate-sized chocolate chip cookie topped with hot fudge and ice cream.

Sitting in a booth at a Cheddar’s in Little Rock, Maryanna, 16, wasn’t sure of the last time she’d been to a sit-down restaurant. With two children — a daughter she birthed at 14 and a 4-month-old son — and sharing rent with her mother and sister for a cramped apartment with a dwindling number of working lights, Maryanna rarely got out, let alone to devour a Cheddar’s Legendary Monster Cookie.

Continued: https://www.physiciansweekly.com/abortion-bans-skirt-a-medical-reality-for-many-teens-childbirth-is-a-dangerous-undertaking/

Old Anti-abortion Laws Are Taking on Unintended Meanings

Even where the words remain the same, a shifting political culture has changed the impact of suddenly revived statutes.

By Daniel K. Williams
SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

Abortion opponents seem not to have expected some of the more draconian consequences of the Dobbs decision—that anti-abortion laws would prevent pregnant women who were not seeking abortions from receiving needed treatment for miscarriages, or that women facing dire medical complications from their pregnancies would not be able to get proper care. After all, the anti-abortion laws that were in force in the pre-Roe era before 1973 were almost never used to prosecute doctors treating miscarriages or providing lifesaving care to women, and all of the anti-abortion laws that went into effect this summer (including the one enacted in Indiana in August) specifically allow abortions in cases where they are necessary to save a pregnant person’s life. A National Review article published in late July insisted that no current state anti-abortion law prevents the treatment of miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/abortion-laws-pre-roe/671409/

20.09.2022

Commentary

Featured

American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Human Life Amendment

Mary Ziegler

National Right to Life Committee

pre-Roe abortion bans

pre-Roe laws

prosecuting doctors for abortion

They lost pregnancies for unclear reasons. Then they were prosecuted.

Experts say drug use is rarely the cause of miscarriage or still birth, but prosecution of women who test positive for drugs still happens — and could get more common in the wake of the Dobbs decision

By Cary Aspinwall, Brianna Bailey and Amy Yurkanin, Washington Post
September 1, 2022

Some were already mothers, excited about having another baby. Others were upset or frightened to find themselves pregnant. All tested positive for drugs. And when these women lost their pregnancies, each ended up in jail.

More than 50 women have been prosecuted for child neglect or manslaughter in the United States since 1999 because they tested positive for drug use after a miscarriage or stillbirth, according to an investigation by the Marshall Project, the Frontier and AL.com that was co-edited and published in partnership with The Washington Post.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/01/prosecutions-drugs-miscarriages-meth-stillbirths/

USA – Why Freedom of Speech Is the Next Abortion Fight

A legal battle in Mississippi will test whether states can criminalize those who merely provide information.

By Yascha Mounk
AUGUST 22, 2022

In the middle of July, three big blue billboards went up in and around Jackson, Mississippi. pregnant? you still have a choice, they informed passing motorists, inviting them to visit mayday.health to learn more. Anybody who did landed on a website that provides information about at-home abortion pills and ways to get them delivered anywhere in the United States—including parts of the country, such as Mississippi, where abortions are now illegal under most circumstances.

A few days ago, the founders of the nonprofit that paid for the billboard ads, Mayday Health, received a subpoena from the office of the attorney general of Mississippi. (The state has already been at the center of recent debates about abortion: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, upheld a Mississippi statute by allowing states to put strict limits on abortion.) The subpoena, which I have seen, demands a trove of documents about Mayday Health and its activities. It may be the first step in an effort to force Mayday Health to take down the billboards, or even to prosecute the organization’s leaders for aiding and abetting criminal conduct.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/freedom-speech-mississippi-abortion-rights/671202/

22.08.2022