USA – The Supreme Court Could Gut Access to Birth Control This Year

By Susan Rinkunas
January 27, 2025

With Donald Trump back in the White House, access to contraception is, sadly, not something that people can bank on anymore — whether they know it or not. This issue didn’t get much airtime during the chaotic 2024 campaign, but birth control has been in conservatives’ crosshairs for years. And while Trump’s administration will undoubtedly attack it, he’ll likely have additional help from his appointees to the Supreme Court.

On Jan. 10, the justices agreed to hear a case, Braidwood v. Becerra, that threatens the Affordable Care Act’s insurance coverage of preventive care. A group of conservative Texas employers who object to paying for birth control and pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV argue that the Affordable Care Act can’t require preventive services be covered without costs like copays because the panels that determine coverage are unconstitutional.

Continued: https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/the-supreme-court-could-gut-access-to-birth-control-this-year/

Abortion bans are killing women — and states like Texas want to hide the truth

As the laws’ predictable harms come to light, anti-abortion groups want us to look away.

Dec. 3, 2024
By Susan Rinkunas

Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision two and a half years ago, state abortion bans have restricted pregnant women’s access to emergency medical care. And as the predictable harms — up to and including death — come to light, some states are acting as if they want to hide them from the public.

…from 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal deaths in Texas increased by 56%, compared with 11% nationwide. But rather than investigate, the state is essentially admitting that the bodies are piling up faster than the state can address them. Its solution is not to dedicate more time and effort — like, perhaps, increasing the size of the 23-member committee — but to simply brush these women’s lives under the rug and skip ahead to 2024.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/texas-georgia-women-deaths-abortion-ban-rcna182540

USA – Abortion Ballot Measures Aren’t Safe From the Courts

People are understandably excited about statewide votes on abortion, but they could be gutted by a future Trump administration or by conservative judges.

By Susan Rinkunas
June 6, 2024

There could be nearly a dozen constitutional amendments codifying the right to abortion on the ballot this fall—and some could even overturn active abortion bans, like in Florida, Missouri, and South Dakota.

But abortion ballot measures are not a magic fix: They don’t immediately undo bad laws, as evidenced by Ohio advocates having to file multiple lawsuits to challenge past restrictions, and they can’t bring back clinics that closed. And there’s one more vulnerability we’re not talking about: Pro-choice ballot measures aren’t safe from a future Trump administration, or the conservatives on the Supreme Court.

Continued: https://www.jezebel.com/abortion-ballot-measures-arent-safe-from-the-courts

How Hobby Lobby Could Be Trump’s Reproductive Rights Wrecking Ball

The 2014 Supreme Court ruling is even more consequential as we stare down the possibility of Trump’s reelection—and a revival of the Comstock Act.

Susan Rinkunas
March 25, 2024

When Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell 10 years ago, he provided answers to questions that no one had asked—at least, officially. The plaintiffs, two businesses owned by Christians, objected to a mandate in the Affordable Care Act requiring health insurance providers to cover types of birth control known as emergency contraception, or E.C. Colloquially known as the “morning-after pill,” E.C. works after sex to prevent pregnancy by blocking sperm from fertilizing an egg or by preventing the release of an egg in the first place. But anti-abortion activists believe that morning-after pills and IUDs prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus, which they say is tantamount to an abortion.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/179622/hobby-lobby-comstock-alito-contraception

There Are Now Tests That Can Detect If Someone Took Abortion Pills

The chilling development comes out of Poland, where prosecutors have already used the tests to investigate pregnancy outcomes, reports the New York Times.

By Susan Rinkunas, Jezebel
Sept 14, 2023

Scientists in Poland have reportedly developed lab tests that can detect whether people have taken abortion pills—and those tests are already being used to investigate pregnancy outcomes under the country’s abortion ban. This is an alarming development, to say the least, and unfortunately, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before a U.S. state replicates the effort.

According to a bone-chilling piece in the New York Times, Polish scientists have developed tests that can identify both mifepristone and misoprostol, the drugs typically used in a medication abortion. (Though some people do use misoprostol alone.) The studies were part of a research project funded by the Polish government where researchers were able to find evidence of misoprostol in the placenta and mifepristone in a woman’s blood sample. A spokesperson for a prosecutor’s office in Wroclaw confirmed to the Times that Polish authorities have already used the tests to investigate pregnancy outcomes.

Continued; https://jezebel.com/there-are-now-tests-that-can-detect-if-someone-took-abo-1850839647

Send in the Abortion Boats!

Or try something else, but you gotta do something for Texans, Joe Biden.

By Susan Rinkunas
Dec 15, 2021

After Texas’ six-week abortion ban took effect in September, President Joe Biden promised a “whole of government effort” to fight the law. That response so far appears to include more money for birth control (not a solution!) and a Department of Justice lawsuit against the state.

On Friday, the Supreme Court dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuit, and while it said that a challenge by abortion providers could move forward, they can only do so on very narrow grounds, and the court let the law stay in effect. There is another challenge to the law in state court, but there is no relief in sight for pregnant people in the second biggest state in the country.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/send-in-the-abortion-boats-1848212765