by Jessica Taylor
Mon, March 6th 2023
AUSTIN, Texas — A new bill is bringing abortion access and emergency contraception back into the spotlight. State Senator Sarah Eckhardt (D-Austin) is one of the lawmakers supporting the bill called Rosie’s Law.
Rosie’s Law is named after a McAllen, Texas mother who died from an unsafe abortion in 1977. Organizers say that Medicaid would not cover her care at her local clinic.
Abortion pills are at the heart of the fight over abortion access in a post-Roe world.
By Rachel M. Cohen
Jan 9, 2023
The Biden administration helped expand access to medication abortion last week, with the US Food and Drug Administration finalizing a rule to make the pills more readily available in pharmacies. But this effort to help patients get pills to end a pregnancy could be dwarfed by a major push to restrict access to the medication from anti-abortion leaders and their Republican allies.
As lawmakers head back to state legislatures this month, many for the first time since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June, Republicans face new pressure to restrict access to the combination of abortion-inducing drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, used typically within the first 10 to 12 weeks of a pregnancy. Medication abortion has become the most common method for ending pregnancies in the United States, partly due to its safety record, its lower cost, diminished access to in-person care, and greater opportunities for privacy.
All Texas clinics have halted abortion care, but the anti-abortion movement says its work isn’t over.
Mary Tuma
December 26 2022
MONTHS BEFORE THE U.S. Supreme Court eviscerated nearly 50 years of abortion rights by overturning Roe v. Wade, Texans were already living in a grim post-Roe world. Senate Bill 8 — in effect since September 2021 due to the Supreme Court’s refusal to block the measure — barred abortion care once embryonic cardiac activity is detected, typically at six weeks of pregnancy. Then considered the most restrictive abortion law in the country, SB 8 halted the overwhelming majority of care in the nation’s second most populous state. The draconian law carried no exception for rape, incest, or severe fetal abnormality.
Next came the high court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck the final blow to abortion rights in Texas by allowing a full “trigger” ban to take effect. Performing an abortion in Texas is now a felony punishable by up to life in prison. Adding to the reproductive health crisis, state officials sought to push criminal enforcement of a 1925 pre-Roe ban. Today, all 23 abortion clinics in Texas have stopped providing abortion care at any stage, the most of any state in the nation.
Continued: https://theintercept.com/2022/12/26/texas-abortion-legislative-session/
These new efforts, which test the legal boundaries, have sprung up since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and many states restricted abortion.
By Pam Belluck
Sept. 3, 2022
As bans and restrictions proliferate across the country, abortion pill providers are pushing the envelope of regulations and laws to meet the surging demand for medication abortion in post-Roe America.
Some are using physician discretion to prescribe pills to patients further along in pregnancy than the 10-week limit set by the Food and Drug Administration. Some are making pills available to women who are not pregnant but feel they could need them someday. Some are employing a don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach, providing telemedicine consultations and prescriptions without verifying that patients are in states that permit abortion.
Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/03/health/abortion-pill-access-roe-v-wade.html
A new paper from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project says the confusion may be a harbinger for a post-Roe v. Wade world.
BY ELEANOR KLIBANOFF
JUNE 23, 2022
Doctors worried about getting sued under Texas’ restrictive abortion law have delayed treating pregnancy complications until patients’ lives were in danger, according to a paper from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.
The law, which empowers private citizens to file suit against anyone who “aids or abets” in an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, has caused confusion among providers and complicated treatment for patients facing pregnancy complications, the study found.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/23/texas-abortion-law-doctors-delay-care/
Advocates and abortion providers are reassessing their digital security practices ahead of an expected rise in cyberattacks and surveillance.
by SAM SABIN
06/17/2022
Abortion rights groups are using software that protects privacy and are honing other strategies to combat digital threats that they expect will worsen in a post-Roe world.
Those efforts are gaining new urgency as a looming Supreme Court ruling threatens to open a new wave of security threats for people seeking abortions and their health care providers.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/17/abortion-rights-advocates-digital-security-threats-00040654
The arrest and since-dropped murder charge against a 26-year-old woman stoked widespread outrage and confusion.
By Caroline Kitchener, Beth Reinhard and Alice Crites
April 13, 2022
Calixtro Villarreal’s phone rang Saturday afternoon, about 48 hours after his client, Lizelle Herrera, was arrested and charged with murder — over what local authorities alleged was a “self-induced abortion.”
It was Gocha Ramirez, the district attorney in Starr County, Tex., a remote area on the border with Mexico. Herrera should never have been charged, Ramirez told the lawyer, according to a person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interactions.
Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/04/13/texas-abortion-arrest/
A district attorney said on Sunday that the woman “cannot and should not” be prosecuted.
By Giulia Heyward and Sophie Kasakove
Published April 10, 2022
The murder charge against a woman in Texas in connection with a “self-induced abortion” will be dismissed, a Texas district attorney announced Sunday.
Gocha Allen Ramirez, the district attorney of Starr County, said in a statement that, after reviewing the case, he will file a motion on Monday to dismiss the indictment against the woman, Lizelle Herrera, 26.
Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/texas-self-induced-abortion-charge-dismissed.html
MAR. 15, 2022
By Sarah Jones, New York Magazine
Here is a scientific fact: Ectopic pregnancies are not viable. They occur when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, which dooms the pregnancy and, without treatment, can doom a woman, too. Ectopic pregnancies can lead to hemorrhage and are the leading cause of death for women in the first trimester of pregnancy. Here’s another fact: There is one way to save a woman from an ectopic pregnancy, and that is through termination — an abortion.
A proposed Missouri bill ignores these facts outright. H.B. 2810 would make it a felony, punishable by ten-years-to-life in prison, to perform an abortion after ten weeks of pregnancy, including in cases of ectopic pregnancy, the Springfield News-Leader reports. The bill’s architect, state representative Brian Seitz, offered a familiar justification for his work. “This bill is about protecting life,” he told the newspaper. In a confusing email to Bloomberg News, Seitz claimed that his bill had been misrepresented by critics and that it would do nothing “to curtail that LEGAL activity, as it can present a clear and present danger to the mother.”
Continued: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/the-anti-abortion-movements-deadly-pseudoscience.html
New data suggests overall abortions declined much less than previously known, because women traveled out of state or ordered pills online.
By Margot Sanger-Katz, Claire Cain Miller and Quoctrung Bui
March 6, 2022
The impact of the Texas abortion law was partly offset by trips to out-of-state clinics, and by abortion pills
In the months after Texas banned all but the earliest
abortions in September, the number of legal abortions in the state fell by
about half. But two new studies suggest the total number among Texas women fell
by far less — around 10 percent — because of large increases in the number of
Texans who traveled to a clinic in a nearby state or ordered abortion pills online.
Two groups of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin counted the
number of women using these alternative options. They found that while the
Texas law — which prohibits abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be
detected, or around six weeks — lowered the number of abortions, it did so much
more modestly than earlier measurements suggested.
Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/upshot/texas-abortion-women-data.html
Facebook
Google+
Twitter
LinkedIn