Planning for the Worst in Trump’s Next Term: Prepare, Don’t Panic, and Don’t Comply in Advance

Amy Hagstrom Miller championed abortion rights in Texas, and she’s ready for the next fight.

Mary Tuma
January 30, 2025

In the frenetic days following the November election, longtime abortion provider Amy Hagstrom Miller spent a lot of time in meetings—some in person, some on Zoom—rallying her troops. As one of the most prominent and tenacious independent abortion providers in the country, with six Whole Woman’s Health clinics in four states, it was a safe bet that she and her staff of 125 would find themselves in the crosshairs of a Donald Trump presidency and the anti-abortion extremists his second term will empower.

Hagstrom Miller could feel the alarm and dread that washed over some of her employees as they contemplated an America in which the 1873 Comstock Act might be enforced to institute a national abortion ban, the abortion pill would come under myriad other relentless attacks, federal appointees would use their bureaucratic powers to target providers in states where abortion remains legal, and patients would face new risks to their physical safety and constitutional rights.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/trump-amy-hagstrom-miller-championed-abortion-rights-in-texas-and-amy-hagstrom-miller-is-ready-for-the-next-fight/

The Underground Network Fighting for Teen Abortion Access in Texas

How a group of nonprofits in Texas is working together to usher minors across state lines for crucial reproductive care

By Olivia Rockeman
Aug 28, 2024

Throughout their early teens, DakotaRei Frausto struggled with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a severe form of premenstrual syndrome, as well as anemia and chronic nausea. In 2021, at age 16, Frausto went to a handful of clinics in their home state of Texas to seek out a birth control prescription, hoping it would help address their symptoms. But each of the clinics brushed off their pain or referred them to brochures rather than getting them in front of doctors, and Frausto, feeling defeated, gave up on trying to access birth control.

Soon after, when Frausto was 17, they started to experience more severe PMDD symptoms than usual. A pregnancy test confirmed they were eight weeks pregnant. “When I did test positive, I knew for a fact abortion in Texas wouldn’t be an option for me,” Frausto said, noting that the state’s six-week abortion ban went into effect in September 2021. “My immediate next thought was: How am I going to scrape together the resources to travel?”

Continued: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a61973788/the-underground-network-fighting-for-teen-abortion-access-in-texas/

USA – Fearing Legal Threats, Doctors Are Performing C-Sections in Lieu of Abortions

Some physicians are doing unnecessary and invasive surgery on pregnant patients “to preserve the appearance of not doing an abortion.”

MARY TUMA
April 17, 2024

When news that Lizelle Gonzalez was suing the local prosecutor’s office for more than $1 million in damages, after being falsely imprisoned for murder over an attempted self-managed abortion in 2022, reproductive rights advocates cheered the move as a pathway to justice for the wrongfully charged southern Texas woman. However, a revelation in the lawsuit gave them pause: At the same hospital that reported her self-induced abortion to authorities, Gonzalez underwent a “classical C-section” for the delivery of her stillborn child, instead of abortion care. Major invasive surgery, Cesarean sections carry much higher risk for health complications, like hemorrhaging, compared with D&E abortion, and can jeopardize subsequent pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/c-sections-abortions-terrifying-new-reality/

18.04.2024

Commentary

Abortion on Our Own Terms

Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health

American Association of Pro-Life OB-GYNs

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Association of American Medical Colleges

Center for Reproductive Rights

Charlotte Lozier Institute

Dr. Daniel Grossman

Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi

Dr. Michele Heisler

Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act

forced C-sections

forced cesarean sections

Physicians for human Rights

Physicians for Reproductive Health

Reproductive Health Impact

A Texas judge ruled a pregnant woman who sued the state seeking an abortion can legally terminate her pregnancy

By Ashley Killough, Ed Lavandera and Andy Rose, CNN
Thu December 7, 2023

…After the ruling, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton warned Cox’s physician she could still face civil and criminal penalties at some point should she perform the court-ordered procedure.

… Molly Duane, Cox’s attorney, … said the fight is far from over, as the ruling only applies to Cox and does not “restore access” to abortion to thousands of other women. She called the state’s argument “callous in the extreme,” and said “they don’t care whether people live or die as long as they’re forced to give birth.”

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/07/us/texas-abortion-ruling/index.html

Texas Woman Asks Court to Allow Her Abortion

A woman who is 20 weeks pregnant, and whose fetus has been diagnosed with a deadly condition, is suing for an abortion under a medical exception to the state’s bans.

By J. David Goodman, NY Times
Dec. 5, 2023

A pregnant Texas woman whose fetus has a fatal condition sued the state on Tuesday seeking an emergency court order to allow her doctor to perform an abortion, despite the state’s strict bans on the procedure.

The lawsuit is believed to be one of the first attempts in the nation to seek a court-ordered abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, allowing states to make their own abortion laws.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/us/texas-abortion-lawsuit.html

Mexico Has Become a Haven for Americans Seeking an Abortion

“Whoever needs our help, we would be happy to serve.”

ABBY VESOULIS

Nov 22, 2023

One last-minute round-trip flight from Biloxi, Mississippi, to Cancún, Mexico, runs about $171 USD; three nights at a three-star hotel there can cost as little as $129. A three-day car rental in the resort town rings in at just $20 per day. And the price for one surgical abortion at MSI Reproductive Choices’ Cancún clinic would be about $350. The total cost for a trip to Cancún to access reproductive health services no longer available in some American states? $710.

Starting November 23, when the international sexual health organization MSI Reproductive Health Services opens the doors to its first Cancún reproductive health center, a pregnant American from a US state where abortion is banned could find the procedure to be both more affordable and more accessible in Mexico. Quintana Roo, the Mexican state where Cancún is located, has become one of at least a dozen Mexican states to decriminalize abortion in the last two years amid a series of judicial rulings that have strengthened reproductive rights, culminating in a September Mexican Supreme Court ruling that made state laws criminalizing abortion unconstitutional nationwide.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/mexico-has-become-a-haven-for-americans-seeking-an-abortion/

Abortion providers on two years of Texas ban: ‘We’re living in a devastating reality’

Senate Bill 8 wiped out almost all abortion care in the second-most populous state in the US, and served as a harbinger of what was to come over the rest of the country

by Mary Tuma
Thu 31 Aug 2023

Nearly a year before the US supreme court eviscerated Roe v Wade, the court allowed an unprecedented abortion ban to take effect in Texas, serving as a harbinger of what was to sweep over the rest of the country.

…. In the two years since, Texas abortion providers – some of the first in the US to experience a nearly post-Roe world – reflect on the devastating and lasting effect of the severe law, the trauma they felt denying patients care, and the struggle they faced when deciding whether or not to flee the state or stay put.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/31/texas-abortion-ban-senate-bill-8

Do No Harm: Texas Court Rules in Favor of Women Harmed by Abortion Ban’s Inadequate Protection for Medical Emergencies

15 AUG 2023
JOANNA L. GROSSMAN

Earlier this year, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit, Zurawski v. State of Texas, on behalf of several women who needed emergent abortion care when their planned, wanted pregnancies went south either because the pregnancy became non-viable or its continuation threatened the woman’s life or health. In each case, the woman needed abortion care to preserve her life, health, or fertility; yet, in each case, she was turned away by doctors and hospitals because she wasn’t sick enough to make the abortion lawful. The lawsuit arises out of the Texas abortion ban that took effect in August 2022, which prohibits abortions unless a narrow, poorly defined medical emergency exception applies. The lawsuit asked the court to clarify that the exception must be broad enough to allow doctors to use their good-faith judgment about when an abortion is necessary to protect the woman’s life, health, or fertility.

Continued: https://verdict.justia.com/2023/08/15/do-no-harm-texas-court-rules-in-favor-of-women-harmed-by-abortion-bans-inadequate-protection-for-medical-emergencies

Travis County judge sides with Texas women denied abortions after dangerous pregnancies

Ryan Autullo, Austin American-Statesman
Aug 4, 2023

A state judge in Travis County ruled Friday that abortions in Texas are lawful in cases of dangerous pregnancy complications, including fatal fetal diagnoses, and that doctors cannot be prosecuted for using "good faith judgment" on when to terminate a pregnancy.

The injunction from District Judge Jessica Mangrum, which the state immediately blocked Friday in filing an appeal, comes two weeks after four Texas women came to her court to give emotional testimony about not receiving an abortion, even as they suffered physically and after doctors deemed their pregnancies incompatible with life. It marked the first time women denied abortions have sued a state since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.

Continued: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/state/2023/08/04/austin-texas-judge-lifts-abortion-ban-for-women-with-risky-pregnancies/70534072007/

Texas Forced This Woman to Give Birth to a Stillborn Son. She’s Suing

Tessa Stuart
Mon, May 22, 2023

After multiple miscarriages, Kiersten Hogan thought she would never be able to carry a pregnancy to term. She’d nearly given up hope when in June 2021 she learned she was pregnant. But at just 19 weeks — days after Texas’ Senate Bill 8 went into effect — Hogan woke up at 5 a.m. in excruciating pain. She called 911 and was instructed to unlock her front door and lay on the ground until EMTs arrived. “It was the longest 5 minutes of my life,” Hogan recalled on Monday.

Her water had broken. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she had lost too much amniotic fluid for her son to survive — but hospital staff didn’t tell her that. “They didn’t tell me much about my son’s chances of survival. But the one thing they did make clear repeatedly was that I should not leave,” a tearful Hogan said Monday. “I was told that if I tried to discharge myself, or seek care elsewhere, that I could be arrested for trying to kill my child. So of course, I stayed.”

Continued https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/texas-forced-woman-birth-stillborn-182841209.html