How to Protect US Reproductive Rights in 2024

We need more people who believe in abortion as a human right to stand up for telemedicine abortion and protect access to mifepristone.

JULIE F. KAY
Dec 31, 2023

To paraphrase Charles Dickens, 2023 has been the “best of times and the worst of times” for abortion rights in America. Where you live, how much money you have, and whether you’re more than six weeks pregnant determine whether you can access your human rights.

The best news this year is that telemedicine abortion shield laws came to full fruition in five states. These new laws provide medical providers with protection from criminal and civil charges or license revocation so they can provide abortion pills by telemedicine nationwide.

Continued: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-reproductive-rights-2024

31.12.2023

Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine

severe fetal anomalies

shield laws

telemedicine abortion

“You Know What? I’m Not Doing This Anymore.”

There’s a quiet new crisis brewing in Texas following the abortion ban. It could get much worse.

BY SOPHIE NOVACK
MARCH 21, 2023

For three days last fall, Leah Wilson entered her pregnant patient’s hospital room and checked the fetus for a heartbeat. She was waiting for it to stop. The woman’s water had broken at just 19 weeks of pregnancy, well before viability, causing an infection in her uterus. The fetus would not survive, but until it died, or the woman’s condition worsened, there was little the hospital would do, said Wilson, who was her nurse at the time.

Typically in this kind of situation, doctors would terminate the pregnancy to prevent a life-threatening infection or other serious complication. But this patient was in Texas, where abortion is no longer legal.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/texas-abortion-law-doctors-nurses-care-supreme-court.html

Silent majority’ of Poles favor strict abortion law

Anna Maria Jakubek, Agence France-Presse Warsaw
Sun, November 29, 2020

While mass protests against a court verdict backing a near-total ban on abortion have taken on an increasingly political flavor in Poland, the devout Catholic country is far from turning pro-choice.

Surveys show that Poles have grown comfortable with existing abortion legislation - among Europe's most restrictive - adopted in 1993 as part of a church-state compromise after the collapse of communism.

Continued: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/11/29/silent-majority-of-poles-favor-strict-abortion-law-.html

29.11.2020

severe fetal anomalies

‘Traumatized’ Poles look abroad after abortion ruling

Anna Maria Jakubek and Isabel Guigui
Agence France-Presse Warsaw and Berlin
Wed, November 11, 2020

Abortion charities are reporting a sharp increase in the number of Polish women turning to them for help after a constitutional court ruling last month to tighten legislation.

For Ciocia Basia (Aunt Basia), a Berlin-based group helping Polish women with abortions in Germany, the ruling worsens a situation already complicated by the pandemic.

Continued: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/11/11/traumatized-poles-look-abroad-after-abortion-ruling-.html

‘A backlash against a patriarchal culture’: How Polish protests go beyond abortion rights

Mass demonstrations have exposed underlying anger at political and religious interference in people’s everyday lives

by Jon Henley, Europe correspondent, and Kasia Strek in Warsaw
Fri 6 Nov 2020

For 14 nights they have marched, enraged by a near-total ban on abortion that has stirred a generation to stage the largest mass demonstrations that Poland has seen since Solidarność toppled the communist regime in the 1980s.

Until soaring coronavirus numbers and a looming national lockdown made it almost impossible, up to a million people nightly defied a government ban on protests, taking to the streets from Warsaw to Łódź, Poznań to Wrocław, Gdańsk to Kraków.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/06/a-backlash-against-a-patriarchal-culture-how-polish-protests-go-beyond-abortion-rights

Colorado Abortion Ban Could Be Felt Nationwide

October 31, 2020

Sarah McCammon

Last year around this time, Tammy, her husband, and their young son were
getting ready for a big expansion of their family: she was expecting twins –
one boy and one girl.

The family celebrated around Christmastime with a gender reveal party, complete
with matching onesies reading, "Little Brother" and "Little
Sister."

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/31/929637426/colorado-abortion-ban-could-be-felt-nationwide

Poland’s abortion protests in pictures

OCT 26, 2020

On Thursday, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruled that abortions in cases where the foetus is diagnosed with serious and irreversible birth defects are unconstitutional. Given that these represent around 98% of the 1,000 or so legal terminations that take place annually in Poland, the ruling would in effect introduce a near total ban on abortion.

In response, tens of thousands of protesters – the majority of them women – have taken to the streets of towns and cities around the country, in defiance of coronavirus restrictions strictly limiting the size of gatherings.

Continued: https://notesfrompoland.com/2020/10/26/polands-abortion-protests-in-pictures/

27.10.2020

irreversible birth defects

Poland Constitutional Tribunal

pro-choice protests

severe fetal anomalies

Thousands join Poland protests against strict abortion laws

Protests follow ruling that law allowing abortion of malformed foetuses is incompatible with constitution

Agence France-Presse in Warsaw
Sat 24 Oct 2020
Poland: scuffles erupt as thousands protest against abortion ban – video report

Thousands of people marched in cities across Poland on Saturday in the third straight day of protests against a near-total ban on abortion, with some promising further action in the coming days.

The protesters were reacting to Thursday’s ruling by Poland’s highest court that an existing law allowing the abortion of malformed foetuses was incompatible with the constitution.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/24/thousands-join-poland-protests-against-strict-abortion-laws

How the US right-to-life movement is influencing the abortion debate in Australia

How the US right-to-life movement is influencing the abortion debate in Australia

August 21, 2019
Prudence Flowers

As the abortion decriminalisation bill gradually makes its way through the NSW parliament, opponents have been increasingly drawing on their long relationship with the right-to-life movement in the United States to lobby against the measure and try to push for more restrictive amendments.

This has been a trend in the anti-abortion movement in Australia for a while now. Activists have adopted some of the most successful elements of the US movement’s rhetoric and tactics in recent years in an effort to influence the debate in Australia.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/how-the-us-right-to-life-movement-is-influencing-the-abortion-debate-in-australia-121974

What’s missing from the conversation about late abortions, explained by a doctor

What’s missing from the conversation about late abortions, explained by a doctor
Abortion opponents are accusing doctors of infanticide. Here’s the reality of abortion late in pregnancy, according to a doctor.

By Anna North
Mar 12, 2019

The Senate voted last week on a bill to put in place requirements for the care of babies born after attempted abortions.

It failed, but debate around the issue continues. At an especially contentious time in the abortion debate, opponents of the procedure have focused their attention on abortions that happen late in pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/2019/3/11/18246702/born-alive-abortion-survivors-bill-virginia-2019