Florida’s abortion ban has an exception for fatal fetal anomalies. So why was this woman forced to go to Virginia?

In November, Florida voters will have a chance to codify abortion rights. It could be the only way that people with medically complex pregnancies could access the procedure in the state.

Shefali Luthra, Reproductive Health Reporter
October 15, 2024

Emily Friend decided to paint the nursery a delicate green. She had originally settled on purple — gentle and welcoming, a color she hoped would make her baby feel at home. But Friend, who lives between Arcadia and Port Charlotte, in Southwest Florida, couldn’t find room furnishings to match the hue. So she and her boyfriend decided on a delicate green that felt joyful, perfect even if it wasn’t their first choice.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/10/floridas-abortion-ban-fetal-anomalies/

The GOP’s New Tactic to Block Abortion Votes Is Startlingly Successful

By Mary Ziegler
Sept 12, 2024

Conservatives have once again turned to the courts to keep people from voting on reproductive rights. Missouri and Nebraska were set to be among the 10 states where voters will weigh in directly on abortion rights, but anti-abortion groups have gone to court to block either one from moving forward. The conservative Missouri Supreme Court rejected this gambit earlier this week, while a ruling from the Nebraska Supreme Court is expected soon. But whatever happens, it’s worth paying attention to the strategy in these cases: a kind of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose plan that either blocks voters from deciding about abortion rights or confuses the electorate about what is being decided.

A group of anti-abortion advocates and lawmakers had sued Missouri Attorney General Jay Ashcroft for having certified the ballot measure. Nebraska’s high court is considering two suits, one filed by a neonatologist opposed to abortion, a second by an Omaha resident.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/gop-blocks-abortion-votes-missouri-nebraska.html

12.09.2024

Commentary

abortion ballot measures

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice deception

anti-choice intimidation

anti-choice lies

anti-choice manipulation

ballot initiatives on abortion

The Six-Week Abortion Ban in Florida Is Only the Beginning

The history of these bans suggests they’re far from the anti-abortion movement’s endgame.

BY MARY ZIEGLER
MAY 01, 2024

Florida has long been a destination state for abortion-seekers in a region defined by sweeping criminal bans. And, despite being under Republican control, Florida had long been a place with one of the highest abortion rates in the nation. Yet this week, a six-week ban signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in April 2023 is set to go into effect. Florida’s law will cut off access for a large number of patients, many of whom will have to travel as far as North Carolina and Virginia, where clinics have already reported long waiting periods and struggles to meet demand.

Six-week bans block a sizable share of abortions—as of 2021, nearly 60 percent of procedures in Florida occured after that point in pregnancy. But the history of six-week bans like Florida’s suggests that this will not be the stopping point for the anti-abortion movement. Six-week bans were designed to be a stopgap in the fight for fetal personhood.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/florida-six-week-abortion-ban-only-the-beginning.html

‘In 24 Hours, You’ll Have Your Pills’: American Women Are Traveling to Mexico for Abortions

Since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, more women have been crossing the border to Mexico for abortion medications and procedures.

CARMEN VALERIA ESCOBAR
APR 3, 2024

At 6 pm, after a long day at work and with her children out of the house, Tania (not her real name) takes four pills and waits for them to melt under her tongue. Six hours later, the pills having dissolved and dispersed through her body, she begins to expel blood clots that she doesn’t look at. She bleeds, but she was told that this could be normal; her belly is in great pain, but she was also told that this would be normal. She cries in the darkness of her room in San Diego. She is afraid to be alone.

The pills that Tania took traveled amid the more than 90,000 people who cross the border every day between Tijuana, in Mexico, and San Diego. At the world’s busiest border crossing, the lines can stretch for blocks. People pass by hostile immigration officers searching for “illegals” among the thousands making the journey. Hidden in a suitcase are boxes of mifepristone and misoprostol, two abortifacients used in conjunction with one another. When Tania took them, she put them under her tongue to speed up the effect, as she was instructed. Mifepristone stops the production of progesterone, while misoprostol, which was originally indicated to treat ulcers, causes contractions and bleeding similar to a miscarriage.

Continued: https://www.wired.com/story/american-women-abortions-mexico/

Florida Supreme Court Rules on Abortion

The Court allows 6-week ban & for voters to decide in November

JESSICA VALENTI
APR 01, 2024

The Florida Supreme Court came down with two abortion rulings today, one good and one very, very bad.

The Ron DeSantis-packed Court ruled that privacy protections in the Florida constitution don’t apply to abortion—undoing decades of precedent. A response to a challenge against the state’s 15-week ban, this decision means that a newer, 6-week ban—one that DeSantis signed into law last April—will go automatically into effect within 30 days. As we know, a 6-week ban in practice is not that different from a total ban.

Continued: https://jessica.substack.com/p/breaking-florida-supreme-court-rules

It’s 2023, but certain men are desperately grasping for control of women’s bodies

Barrington Salmon
DECEMBER 30, 2023

America harbors a profound and deep-seated hatred for women. The misogyny is pervasive, leaching into just about all areas of life, tainting, polluting and poisoning relationships, the home, marriages, the workplace, friendships, education, intimacy and the privacy of the bedroom.

This toxic brew continues to percolate into the pores of the US consigning the distaff gender to second-class citizenship and systematic discrimination. This despite women comprising approximately 51.1 percent of the U.S population.

Continued: https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/12/30/its-2023-but-certain-men-are-desperately-grasping-for-control-of-womens-bodies/

15-week abortion bans are the center of Republican debate. Experts say that cutoff is arbitrary.

Anti-abortion politicians have recently linked 15-weeks to fetal pain. That benchmark has been moving for years — and it's still not accurate.

Shefali Luthra
December 6, 2023

The Republican debate over abortion has centered around one number: 15. Backers of a 15-week federal ban tout it as a compromise measure, even in the face of recent electoral defeat.

Anti-abortion advocates hope congressional candidates will embrace this measure, and they’re pushing GOP presidential candidates to promise they would sign such a bill.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2023/12/15-week-abortion-bans-arbitrary-number-republican-debate/

“I Was So Naive”: The Painful Stories Behind Abortion Restrictions

A couple trying to conceive, an ultrasound technician, and a gay pastor share their experiences with abortion in post-Roe America.

BY ABIGAIL TRACY
NOVEMBER 30, 2023

As Anya Cook sat at the hairdresser, she thought she might die. The night before, her water had broken. But being only about 16 weeks along in her pregnancy—six weeks before a fetus can potentially survive on its own outside the uterus—she’d known something was wrong; her husband, Derick Cook, had rushed her to the emergency room at the Broward Health hospital in Coral Springs, Florida. After a wait of more than 45 minutes in the emergency room—amniotic fluid still seeping from Anya’s body—a doctor had informed her that she would lose the child, but, given Florida’s strict abortion ban, there was nothing they could do. She’d been sent away with antibiotics and told she would have to wait to have her miscarriage alone.

She went to get her hair done the next day. “One thing my grandmother always said, ‘You make yourself look presentable so when they catch you dead, you’re already ready,’” she tells me. It was never the plan to deliver her baby in the bathroom of a hair salon. Anya recalls with vivid detail the sound of her fetus hitting the bowl of the toilet as blood poured out of her, dripping down her legs. After hours of surgery, Anya lost roughly half the blood in her body. The doctors asked Derick whether they should prioritize saving Anya’s life or her uterus. “That was very confusing,” he says. “I just went with the best answer: Save my wife and her uterus.” Since then, Anya has had to undergo a string of surgeries as a result of the complications she suffered.

Continued: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/11/painful-stories-behind-abortion-restrictions-post-roe

USA – Faced with abortion bans, doctors beg hospitals for help with key decisions

Vague state laws, and a lack of guidance on how to interpret them, have led to some patients being denied care until they are critically ill

By Caroline Kitchener and Dan Diamond
October 28, 2023

Amelia Huntsberger pulled up a list of the top administrators at her northern Idaho hospital, anxious last fall to confirm she could treat a patient with a potentially life-threatening pregnancy complication. But it was a Friday afternoon — and no one was picking up.

Huntsberger said she called six administrators before she finally got ahold of someone, her patient awaiting help a few rooms away. When she asked whether she could terminate a pregnancy under Idaho’s new abortion ban — which allows doctors to perform an abortion only if they deem it “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman” — the OB/GYN said the decision was punted back to her.

Unlocked: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/28/abortion-bans-medical-exceptions/

USA – Fifteen-Week Abortion Bans Are No Compromise The GOP is haggling over when to ban abortion. So are some Democrats.

By Irin Carmon
Oct 5, 2023

The mainline anti-abortion movement has a problem it thinks a 15-week abortion ban can solve. Accomplishing its cherished dream of overturning Roe v. Wade has come at a cost. Many Republicans are squirming away from the anti-abortion cause as politically toxic, to the point that presidential front-runner Donald Trump seems to think he can blow off the movement entirely. Meanwhile, right-wing activists are fretting that abortion is still too accessible, with patients circumventing state bans via interstate travel or abortion pills by mail. New Guttmacher data even suggest the absolute number of legal abortions went up in the first half of this year.

Continued: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/abortion-bans-15-week-debate-republicans-democrats.html