This Alabama Health Clinic Is Under Threat. It Doesn’t Provide Abortions.

Former abortion clinics in red states are trying to pivot to other services after Dobbs. But they’re finding it’s not so easy.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
05/29/2023

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Patients arriving for an appointment at the West Alabama Women’s Center one year ago would brave a gauntlet of chanting protesters, skirt an idling police car, take seats in a crowded waiting room and wait for one of the clinic’s dozen busy staff members to help them terminate a pregnancy. Over the clinic’s nearly 30-year history, visits also included the risk of being shot, bombed or rammed by a vehicle.

But when Abigail arrived on a Tuesday morning in April, nearly 11 months after the fall of Roe v. Wade, the parking lot was so quiet you could hear the clinic’s windchime tinkling faintly in the hot breeze.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/05/29/alabama-abortion-clinic-problem-00096020

USA – Abortion access advocacy groups slam bill allowing women to be charged with homicide

The bill goes against Alabama’s 2019 law, which expressly states that women who obtain abortions are not to be prosecuted.

By JACOB HOLMES
May 15, 2023

When Alabama passed legislation in 2019 to criminalize abortions in the state, Republicans were clear: the women receiving abortions were not to be criminalized.

But just a year after Roe v. Wade was reversed, Rep. Ernie Yarbrough, R-Trinity, has introduced a bill, HB454, doing just that, eliminating a section in the homicide code preventing prosecutors from charging women for homicide for having an abortion.

Continued: https://www.alreporter.com/2023/05/15/abortion-access-advocacy-groups-slam-bill-allowing-women-to-be-charged-with-homicide/

She was one of Alabama’s last abortion doctors. Then they came for everything she had

Dr Leah Torres has endured the ire of the anti-abortion movement without backing down – but now she faces her most daunting challenge

by Poppy Noor
Wed 22 Mar 2023

Dr Leah Torres doesn’t tell people what she does when she meets them, which makes it hard to make friends. She removes her name from every piece of trash before she puts it out for recycling, in case people walking past see her name and find out where she lives. If a package addressed to her arrives on her porch, she calls everyone she knows to identify who sent it before she opens it – it could be a bomb.

Once, coming back from work in the piercing August Alabama sun, she noticed a gray sedan parked in her driveway. Instinctively, she fled to a neighbor’s house – she barely knew him – but asked if he could walk her home anyway. The car turned out to be a stranger’s; the driver had just pulled over to send a text message. “Still, you never know,” says Torres, her big, almond-shaped eyes conveying concern.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/22/alabama-last-abortion-doctor-leah-torres

Pressure and Stress Intensify for Abortion Providers Post-Roe

NOVEMBER 29, 2022
Susan Buttenwieser

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in late June, providers of abortion care have been dealing with emotional devastation, managing severe staff burnout, the possibility of facing criminal charges, and increased harassment from protestors.

Some providers also contended with the prospect of losing their jobs when abortion became illegal in their state, at times within hours of the decision, forcing their clinics to close down. By October, 66 clinics across 15 states had been forced to stop offering abortion care or had closed down entirely. Before the June 24 Dobbs decision, those 15 states had 79 clinics that provided abortion care; by October 2, that number had dropped to 13, all located in one state, Georgia.

Continued: https://womensmediacenter.com/news-features/pressure-and-stress-intensify-for-abortion-providers-post-roe

Forced Parenthood and Failing Safety Nets: This Is Life in Post-Roe America

The states with the strictest abortion laws are doing the least to help poor families. What could possibly go wrong?
Abby Vesoulis
August 29, 2022

Melissa Kearse, a 38-year-old single mother of five, has never had an abortion. She never wanted one. “I come from a very religious background,” she explains, “where my-body-my-choice is not necessarily my body and my choice.”

But in her home state of Georgia, any choice she did have was stripped away by the state’s conservative legislature, which in 2019 passed a trigger ban on abortion after six weeks gestation that took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this past June. Though Kearse is personally opposed to having an abortion, she is exasperated by Georgia’s call to meddle in this decision, particularly as someone who has struggled to provide for her family and been repeatedly let down by the state’s social welfare programs. “I don’t feel comfortable with somebody telling me what I can and cannot do if you’re not helping me provide,” she says. “If I got pregnant again, I would drown.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/08/abortion-bans-states-social-safety-net-dobbs/

Don’t Trust DIY Abortion Advice on TikTok. These are the risks involved.

By Julia Craven
May 23, 2022

Scouring the internet for answers on “how to have an abortion at home” will dredge up answers that read like school-bus gossip: Some, like douching with Coca-Cola or taking a lot of vitamin C, are unlikely to be life-threatening, but they’re also extremely unlikely to end your pregnancy.

Other methods are blatantly unsafe. They include inserting anything into the vagina, which poses a high risk of infection and sepsis; ingesting toxic substances such as turpentine, bleach, and other household chemicals; and any type of physical trauma, such as hitting oneself in the abdomen or throwing oneself down the stairs. “These are all things that people heartbreakingly try to do to end their pregnancies due to lack of access to clinical care, or lack of information or awareness of safer methods,” says Heidi Moseson, a senior research scientist at Ibis Reproductive Health.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/diy-abortion-what-it-is-and-its-risks.html

‘I became the abortion lady of Mississippi’: the mother of seven who devoted her life to the pro-choice cause

Raised a fundamentalist Christian, Laurie Bertram Roberts grew up believing abortion was evil. Then a pregnancy put her life at risk – and she was denied the termination she desperately needed

Emine Saner
Thu 12 May 2022

When Laurie Bertram Roberts was 17, she was sent home from hospital and almost bled to death. Pregnant and experiencing bleeding, she had gone to the emergency department of her nearest hospital in Indiana twice, and was told she was miscarrying, but, because a scan showed the foetus still had a heartbeat, she was also told there was nothing they could do. What she needed, in order to end a pregnancy that was ending anyway, was an abortion – but she says the Catholic hospital would not provide one. “They had the power to end my pregnancy right there, when I was already bleeding fairly heavily, in a tremendous amount of pain. Instead, they sent my scared 17-year-old self, a mother of two already, home.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/may/12/abortion-lady-mississippi-mother-seven-pro-choice-christian-laurie-bertram-roberts-pregnancy

12.05.2022

Commentary

Featured

Laurie Bertram Roberts

Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund

National Organization for Women

self-managed abortion

A covert network of activists is preparing for the end of Roe

What will the future of abortion in America look like?

By Jessica Bruder
APRIL 4, 2022

One bright afternoon in early January, on a beach in Southern California, a young woman spread what looked like a very strange picnic across an orange polka-dot towel: A mason jar. A rubber stopper with two holes. A syringe without a needle. A coil of aquarium tubing and a one-way valve. A plastic speculum. Several individually wrapped sterile cannulas—thin tubes designed to be inserted into the body—which resembled long soda straws. And, finally, a three-dimensional scale model of the female reproductive system.

The two of us were sitting on the sand. The woman, whom I’ll call Ellie, had suggested that we meet at the beach; she had recently recovered from COVID-19, and proposed the open-air setting for my safety. She also didn’t want to risk revealing where she lives—and asked me to withhold her name—because of concerns about harassment or violence from anti-abortion extremists.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/roe-v-wade-overturn-abortion-rights/629366/

04.04.2022

American Medical Association

Army of Three

Autonomous Pelvic Care

Carol Downer

Choix

Clergy Consultation Service

Danika Severino Wynn

Del-Em device

dilatation and curettage

DIY abortion

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Laurie Bertram Roberts

Letitia James

Lorraine Rothman

lunch-hour abortion

manual vacuum aspiration

Mountain Access Brigade

Plan C

Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood v. Casey

self-managed abortion

Self-managed Abortion Safe and Supported

telemedicine abortion

The End of Roe v. Wade

traveling for abortion

trigger laws

undue burden standard

USA – Minority women most affected if abortion is banned, limited

Feb. 1, 2022
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS and LEAH WILLINGHAM
The Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — If you are Black or Hispanic in a conservative state that already limits access to abortions, you are far more likely than a white woman to have one.

And if the U.S. Supreme Court allows states to further restrict or even ban abortions, minority women will bear the brunt of it, according to statistics analyzed by The Associated Press.

Continued: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/minority-women-most-affected-if-abortion-is-banned-limited/

Mississippi banned most abortions to be the ‘safest state’ for the unborn. Meanwhile, one in three Mississippi kids live in poverty

Sarah Fowler
Nov 26, 2021

Brandon, Mississippi – Drusilla Hicks sinks into her couch. A week ago, she and her three young kids moved into their new home. After unloading the moving truck herself, unpacking all the boxes, and hanging photos on the wall, she's exhausted.

All around her, stacks of folded laundry are perched on every available surface.

Continued: https://www.businessinsider.com/mississippi-defends-abortion-ban-one-in-three-kids-in-poverty-2021-11