‘We will not go back’: thousands rally for abortion rights across the US

More than 300 pro-choice protests organized around US against expected reversal of 1973 landmark law that made abortion legal

Oliver Milman and Victoria Bekiempis in New York and Dani Anguiano in Los Angeles
Sat 14 May 2022

Thousands of people were taking part in protests across the US on Saturday to decry the supreme court’s expected reversal of the landmark 1973 law that made abortion legal in America.

Organizers said there were more than 380 protest events in cities including major ones in Washington DC, New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago to demand that the right to an abortion is not stripped away by the court, which is dominated by rightwing justices.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/14/abortion-rights-protests-us-roe-v-wade

Many states are bracing for a post-Roe world. In Oklahoma, it’s practically arrived.

Already, clinicians in Oklahoma are trying to devise strategies to help their patients get to clinics in other states because of a six-week ban. But there are limits to what they can do.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
May 12, 2022

The day after the Supreme Court leak, Andrea Gallegos had already started to cancel patients’ appointments.

A draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed access to abortion, had been published online and verified by the court. In the aftermath, Gallegos, the administrator for Tulsa Women’s Clinic, an Oklahoma-based abortion provider, wasn’t worried about Roe — at least, it wasn’t the first thing she was worried about. To her, there was a bigger, more immediate threat: a six-week abortion ban the Republican governor was expected to sign any day now. The law, a direct copycat of a prohibition currently in effect in Texas, was expected to survive legal challenges. It would take effect immediately.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/05/oklahoma-abortion-clinics-access-limitations/

USA – ’We need to quit tip-toeing around the word abortion’: Rights group says the key to access is open dialogue

Analysis by Alaa Elassar, CNN
Sun May 1, 2022

(CNN) Meg Schurr was 22 years old when she says she was sexually assaulted.

A college student in New York with the dream of working in public health, Schurr's life came to a grinding halt when she discovered she became pregnant as a result of the assault in 2014.

“My pregnancy couldn't have been more unplanned or unwanted -- it resulted from an encounter that I didn't want to have and asked to stop," Schurr told CNN.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/01/us/abortion-stories-legislation/index.html

Planned Parenthood Has Quietly Stopped Providing Abortions in Georgia and Alabama

Independent clinics have been "deeply impacted" by the move in a region with already dwindling access to reproductive health care.

By Susan Rinkunas
Apr 28, 2022

Planned Parenthood quietly stopped scheduling abortions this month at its clinics in Georgia and Alabama and canceled some existing appointments, due to what it said were staffing issues at its Southeast affiliate. The organization said the change is temporary, but did not say when it would resume care. In the meantime, the clinics are referring people to other providers.

“We have elected to scale back some of our services across the affiliate while we onboard new staff at our health centers and at the executive level,” the spokesperson said in response to questions from Jezebel. “This is a temporary change, and we expect to again be operating at full capacity by the end of the month.” There are two days left in the month and it does not appear that abortions will resume in that time frame.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/planned-parenthood-has-quietly-stopped-providing-aborti-1848856363

Oklahoma approves two laws that could immediately end all in-state abortion access

Gov. Kevin Stitt has indicated that he plans to sign both bills, which would end abortion services at clinics in the state and add to a growing abortion desert.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
April 28, 2022

Oklahoma’s legislature has passed two Texas-inspired laws that would allow civil lawsuits against anyone who might “aid or abet” any abortion. Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, has indicated he plans to sign both bills, which would take effect immediately.

One bill, House Bill 4327, would outlaw virtually all abortions, with an exception if the pregnant person’s life were in immediate danger; pregnancy resulting from rape or incest is only an exception if it has been reported to law enforcement. After amendments were added to it, HB 4327 will go back to the House, which has already passed a version of the bill. The other bill, Senate Bill 1503, would create penalties for abortions done after six weeks of pregnancy.

https://19thnews.org/2022/04/oklahoma-abortion-bans-texas-style/

As U.S. abortion access wanes, this doctor travels to fill a void

April 27, 2022
By Gabriella Borter

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., April 27 (Reuters) - Inside Planned Parenthood’s Birmingham, Alabama, clinic, a quiet space with few windows and stock photos of the city lining the walls, a woman tapped her hand against her stomach as Dr. Shelly Tien performed a surgical abortion.

Tien, 40, had flown to Birmingham the day before, and she would return home to Jacksonville, Florida, that night. A week earlier, she performed abortions at a clinic in Oklahoma. She's among an estimated 50 doctors who travel across state lines, according to the National Abortion Federation, to provide abortions in places with limited abortion access.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-abortion-access-wanes-this-doctor-travels-fill-void-2022-04-27/

Dems grow alarmed by lack of fear over Roe’s future

Democrats argue that the party needs to act more aggressively ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling expected this summer on a challenge to Roe v. Wade.

by LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ and ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
04/26/2022

For decades, Democrats insisted that Republicans would invite a major voter backlash if they took aggressive action to curtail abortion rights. Now, as a growing number of GOP-led states do just that, passing a slew of bills curtailing abortion with no exemptions for rape and incest, they fear that voters are uninformed or misinformed about the stakes. And they are sounding the alarm that more is needed to engage voters and warn them that the current slate of laws is just the beginning.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/26/dems-roe-wade-future-00027932

At Oklahoma abortion clinics, each day could be the last for care as new laws loom

No new abortion ban has taken effect, but the impacts are already being felt in clinics across the state.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
April 25, 2022

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — The clinic had stopped scheduling patients weeks ago, but the phones haven’t stopped ringing.

Trust Women has received an average of 134 calls each day in April. Since last September, the tiny clinic in southwestern Oklahoma has doubled the number of patients it saw, thanks to a Texas law that ended in-state access to the majority of abortions and it became a critical access point for the procedure. But in March, abortion stopped at Trust Women, too.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/04/oklahoma-abortion-laws-clinics-care/

USA – ‘This Is Life Or Death For Some Patients.’ How I Help People Access Abortion Care

MOLLY LONGMAN
APRIL 18, 2022

Angela Huntington’s phone has been ringing nonstop lately. The Missourian works at Planned Parenthood, and, this past September, stepped into a newly created role within the organization called a “patient navigator.” This means she takes calls from patients across the country who need an abortion, but who can’t get one in their state — usually due to laws limiting access where they live. Such laws have become more and more common over the last decade, but, in the past year, a number of bills restricting access to reproductive healthcare have passed and made a dire situation even worse, advocates say. In fact, 2021 was “the worst year for abortion rights” in nearly half a century, according to The Guttmacher Institute.

Continued: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2022/04/10939506/abortion-access-help-planned-parenthood

USA – If You Want to Protect Pregnant People From Arrest, Fund Red-State Clinics

Apr 13, 2022
Robin Marty, Rewire News

This past weekend, the murder charge against Lizelle Herrera, a Texas woman accused of inducing her own abortion, made national headlines. According to local activists at Frontera Fund, an abortion fund based in South Texas, Herrera’s arrest allegedly happened after she visited a hospital where, while in the process of miscarrying, she may have provided medical staff with information that made them believe she had induced her own abortion. (The charge was dropped Sunday.)

Whether or not Herrera did something to provoke a miscarriage, the reality is that her arrest and murder charge prove exactly what we have always known: Abortion opponents lie when they claim they will not investigate miscarriages, or that pregnant people will not end up in jail because of their anti-abortion laws. Just like Rosie Jiménez, who died in 1977 because she could not afford a safe abortion, South Texans have become the bellwether of the true harm of abortion bans in the United States.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2022/04/13/if-you-want-to-protect-pregnant-people-from-arrest-fund-red-state-clinics/