Melissa Brown, Nashville Tennessean
Jan 8, 2023
Rachel Fulton and her husband had reached the nesting phase of her second pregnancy last fall, pulling up their baby stuff from the basement to dust off and decorating the new nursery.
Despite a few concerning conditions identified early in her pregnancy, Fulton was ecstatic to bring another baby boy home to join their toddler. They named him Titus, from the Bible.
But a November appointment changed everything.
ProPublica reviewed 12 of the nation’s strictest abortion bans. Few changed in 2023, as state lawmakers caved to pressure from anti-abortion groups opposing exceptions for rape, incest and health risks.
by Kavitha Surana
Nov. 27, 2023
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending nearly 50 years of federal protection for abortion, some states began enforcing strict abortion bans while others became new havens for the procedure. ProPublica is investigating how sweeping changes to reproductive health care access in America are affecting people, institutions and governments.
State Rep. Taylor Rehfeldt was speaking on the floor of the South Dakota Capitol, four months pregnant with her third child, begging her Republican colleagues to care about her life. “With the current law in place, I will tell you, I wake up fearful of my pregnancy and what it would mean for my children, my husband and my parents if something happened to me and the doctor cannot perform lifesaving measures,” she told her fellow lawmakers last February, her voice faltering as tears threatened.
Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-ban-exceptions-trigger-laws-health-risks
The strictest abortion law in the US doesn’t allow exceptions for medical emergencies – and efforts to change it face powerful opposition from the right
Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Mon 20 Mar 2023
Months after the implementation of the most stringent abortion ban in the country, conservative lawmakers in Tennessee have publicly acknowledged that the state’s ban poses grave risks to the lives of women.
Now a political debate over how to change the law is centered on questions that would have been considered unthinkable before last June’s reversal of Roe v Wade: like how close to death a woman must be before a doctor may legally treat her if it means terminating her pregnancy, and whether women should be forced to carry embryos with fatal anomalies to term.
Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/20/tennessee-abortion-ban-strictist-in-us
Chloe Akers considers herself a grizzled criminal defense attorney
By CLAIRE GALOFARO, AP National Writer
September 4, 2022
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Chloe Akers considers herself a grizzled criminal defense attorney. Until a few months ago, she didn’t spend much time thinking about abortion — for all her 39 years, abortion was not a crime, so she’d never imagined having to defend someone accused of performing one.
That changed in June, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Akers sat down in her law office and pulled up Tennessee’s new criminal abortion statute.
Facebook
Google+
Twitter
LinkedIn