USA – How Viability Limits End Up Criminalizing Pregnancy

Pregnancy Justice’s legal director, Karen Thompson, warns: “We are in dangerous territory. This is our reality now.”

Nina Martin, Mother Jones
June 30, 2025

When Karen Thompson became the legal director at Pregnancy Justice a year and a half ago, she was still learning about the reproductive justice issues at the heart of the organization’s mission. But after 20 years focused on the criminal justice system, first at the Innocence Project and then at the ACLU of New Jersey, she did know a lot about racial profiling, government surveillance, law enforcement overreach, and wrongful convictions. And to her, the parallels between her earlier work and the increasing criminalization of pregnancy and abortion in post-Roe v. Wade America could not have been clearer. “We are seeing all the same kinds of issues in the repro space that people in the criminal defense space have been talking about for years,” Thompson says.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/06/pregnancy-justice-karen-thompson-viability-limits-fetal-personhood-criminalizing-pregnancy/

30.06.2025

The abortion activists who say bringing back Roe is not enough

Abortion rights groups split with mainstream movement over support for former legal framework of ‘viability’

Susan Rinkunas
Sun 21 Jan 2024

Since the devastating loss of Roe v Wade, the abortion rights movement has seen historic levels of support for its cause, particularly through major victories on state ballot initiatives, with more expected this November. But as advocates move to re-enshrine the right to abortion at the state level, a struggle has emerged over whether to reproduce Roe’s legal framework – or go further.

…A number of ballot campaigns slated for November seek to bring back that standard – but a group of advocates is banding together to declare that the broader movement is engaging in harmful compromises when it could instead use the momentum to push for “clean” policies that don’t draw a strict limit to abortion access.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/21/abortion-activists-future-roe-v-wade

Why ‘viability’ is dividing the abortion rights movement

By Associated Press AP
Jan. 16, 2024

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Reproductive rights activists in Missouri agree they want to get a ballot measure before voters this fall to roll back one of the strictest abortion bans in the country and ensure access. The sticking point is how far they should go.

The groups have been at odds over whether to include a provision that would allow the state to regulate abortions after the fetus is viable, a concession supporters of the language say will be needed to persuade voters in the conservative state.

Continued: https://ny1.com/nyc/brooklyn/ap-top-news/2024/01/16/disputes-over-viability-are-dividing-abortion-rights-groups-and-complicating-ballot-measure-efforts

Restore Roe, or Go Beyond It? The Question Is Fracturing the Abortion Rights Movement

“We have an opportunity here to build something better, and we’re not even talking about it.”

MADISON PAULY
SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

Not long after Election Day last November, Pamela Merritt joined a call with other abortion-rights activists in Missouri to discuss a daring proposal: sidestepping the state’s ruling Republicans by directly asking voters whether to add abortion rights to their state constitution. The group hoped to capitalize on a recent trend. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022, pro-choice voters had been showing up to the polls in force, rejecting anti-abortion ballot initiatives in Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana. They went even further in California, Michigan, and Vermont, passing state constitutional amendments to guarantee, among other things, the right to choose abortion.

This unbroken string of victories has energized advocates who see ballot initiatives as a key tool in the post-Roe world, especially in states controlled by Republicans. Even in Missouri, where the anti-abortion movement was so successful that only one clinic remained by 2022, national progressive organizations smell opportunity. “Right now, every single state is dealing with a pro-abortion, riled-up base that wants a Kansas,” Merritt says, referring to the special election about abortion last year that drew greater turnout than any primary in the state’s history. “There’s pressure.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/09/roe-v-wade-abortion-rights-amendment-missouri-pro-choice-ohio-arizona-planned-parenthood-viability-limits/

11.09.2023