How close to death must a woman be to get an abortion in Tennessee?

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

Are Texas’s abortion laws being used for state-sponsored spousal harassment?

A Texas man is suing his ex-wife’s friends for helping her get an abortion – whether he wins or not, the lawsuit is sending a terrifying message to women
18 Mar 2023
Arwa Mahdawi

Meet Jonathan Mitchell. The former solicitor general of Texas is not a household name but you’ll be familiar with his work. He’s the architect of the dystopian Texas law that lets private citizens act as vigilantes and sue abortion providers or anyone who “aids or abets” the procedure. As the New York Times noted in a 2021 profile of Mitchell, he’s devoted much of the past decade to “honing a largely below-the-radar strategy of writing laws deliberately devised to make it much more difficult for the judicial system – particularly the supreme court – to thwart them.” In other words: he’s brilliant at finding sneaky ways to inflict his beliefs on everyone else. And he appears to have made it his life’s work to weaponize the law to terrorize and control women.

Mitchell’s latest project is representing a Texas man called Marcus Silva who is currently suing his ex-wife’s friends for helping her get an abortion. Silva is demanding more than $1m in damages from each of the two friends his ex-wife talked and texted with when she planned her abortion as well as the woman who provided abortion pills. He’s also planning to sue the manufacturer of the abortion pills.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/18/are-texass-abortion-laws-being-used-for-state-sponsored-spousal-harassment

18.03.2023

anti-choice abuse

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice harassment

anti-choice hatred

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice terrorism

If You Want to Know What Republicans Think About How Americans Feel, Ask Walgreens

March 17, 2023
By Mary Ziegler

The corporate culture wars have reached a turning point: A number of companies that once championed social justice and equity seem to be beating a hasty retreat.

Walgreens is trapped in a political firestorm. The pharmacy chain, which had sought certification so its stores could fill prescriptions for the abortion medication mifepristone, announced last week that it will not dispense the pill in the 21 states where Republican attorneys general have threatened legal action. Walgreens, which said it came to this conclusion before the threats began, won’t dispense the drug in several G.O.P.-controlled states where abortion remains legal. There was a swift backlash, with Gov. Gavin Newsom announcing that California would not renew a multimillion-dollar contract with Walgreens and others calling for a nationwide boycott. The hashtag #boycottwalgreens has taken off on Twitter.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/opinion/walgreens-abortion-pill-attorneys-general-states.html

17.03.2023

Opinion

Comstock Act

corporations in culture wars

Walgreens mifepristone

United States

Anti-choice

Human Rights

USA – The sole US supplier of a major abortion pill said it would not distribute the drug in 31 states

A list circulated in January by the distributor to Walgreens and CVS underscores the uncertainty surrounding abortion pills in the post-Roe era.

By Rachel M. Cohen
Updated Mar 17, 2023

Earlier this month, Politico broke news that Walgreens, the nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain, assured 21 Republican attorneys general that it would not dispense abortion pills in their states should the company be approved to dispense them. The decision was met with sharp protest by Walgreens customers, abortion rights activists, and Democrats, who accused the pharmacy of caving needlessly to pressure.

But fear of state prosecution is not the only factor shaping Walgreens’ decision-making. Another previously unreported constraint on the company is that its sole supplier of Mifeprex — the brand-name drug for the abortion pill mifepristone first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000 — circulated a list to its corporate clients in January naming 31 states that it would not supply the abortion medication to. Vox spoke with two sources who had reviewed that list recently.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/3/15/23639267/walgreens-abortion-pill-mifepristone-mifeprex-misoprostol

USA – The Abortion Pill Case Is About Who Makes the Rules in America

BY SUSAN MATTHEWS
MARCH 15, 2023

Right now, the country is waiting on one judge in Texas to make a ruling. The ruling is supposed to determine whether access to a drug that, as part of a two-step process, causes an abortion will be curtailed. At least, ostensibly, that is what the ruling is about—whether the Food and Drug Administration was wrong to approve this drug when it did so 22 years ago. This ruling will certainly have serious, dramatic effects on access, and therefore on real women’s lived lives. ….

But this case is not really about whether mifepristone remains accessible, and FDA-approved. What this case is actually about is the same thing every abortion battle over the past five decades has been about: Who has power in America?

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/ignore-judge-matthew-kacsmaryk-abortion-pill-ruling.html

15.03.2023

Opinion

Food and Drug Administration

Polish activist found guilty in abortion case to appeal sentence

Justyna Wydrzynska was convicted on Tuesday, three years after providing a woman with abortion pills.

By Gouri Sharma
Published On 15 Mar 2023

A Polish activist found guilty of facilitating an abortion has told Al Jazeera that she plans to appeal her sentence in a case that is testing the nation’s strict abortion laws.

On Tuesday, a court in the capital, Warsaw, convicted Justyna Wydrzynska three years after she sent the pills to a woman who was reportedly in an abusive relationship. Alongside eight months of community service, she was handed a fine, and will now have a criminal record.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/15/polish-activist-found-guilty-in-abortion-case-to-appeal-sentence

15.03.2023

News

Abortion Dream Team

International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network

Polish court convicts activist for helping woman get abortion pills

Justyna Wydrzynska sentenced to community service after telling court she sent pills to victim of domestic violence

Weronika Strzyżyńska and agencies in Warsaw
Tue 14 Mar 2023

A court in Poland has convicted an activist for helping a pregnant woman access abortion pills, sentencing her to eight months of community service in a landmark case over abortion rights in the predominantly Catholic country.

“I do not feel that I am facing the court alone,” said Justyna Wydrzynska at the hearing on Tuesday. “Behind me are my friends and hundreds of women I have not had the luck to meet yet.”

Continued : https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/mar/14/polish-court-convicts-activist-for-helping-woman-get-abortion-pills

Trump-appointed judge limits information on medication abortion lawsuit

The suit could determine whether US women can access abortion drugs, but judge is trying to limit disruptions and protests

Edward Helmore in New York
Mon 13 Mar 2023

A judge in Texas overseeing a lawsuit in which a conservative group is challenging the legality of the abortion drug mifepristone scheduled the first hearing in the case for Wednesday, but directed that court officials not make the timing public until the evening before.

According to sources cited by the Washington Post, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a US district court judge in Amarillo appointed by Donald Trump in 2019, ordered the hearing kept out of the court docket as a way to try to limit disruptions and protests, and also asked that lawyers arguing the case do not disclose information.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/13/federal-judge-limits-information-medication-abortion-lawsuit

13.03.2023

News

Alliance Defending Freedom

Carl Tobias

Danco Laboratories

Food and Drug Administration

Three Texas women are sued for wrongful death after allegedly helping friend obtain abortion medication

In the first lawsuit of its kind since Roe v. Wade was overturned, a husband seeks damages from women who allegedly helped his ex-wife obtain the medications to terminate her pregnancy.

BY ELEANOR KLIBANOFF
MARCH 10, 2023

A Texas man is suing three women under the wrongful death statute, alleging that they assisted his ex-wife in terminating her pregnancy, the first such case brought since the state’s near-total ban on abortion last summer.

Marcus Silva is represented by Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general and architect of the state’s prohibition on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, and state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park. The lawsuit is filed in state court in Galveston County, where Silva lives.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/10/texas-abortion-lawsuit/

10.03.2023

News

Aid Access

Briscoe Cain

Charles “Rocky” Rhodes

self-managed abortion

How a pastor is trying to revive a 150-year-old US law to ban abortion

Mark Lee Dickson is trying to get the federal anti-obscenity law at the heart of ordinances enforced across the US

Cecilia Nowell
Thu 9 Mar 2023

When Amy Hagstrom Miller closed her Texas abortion clinic after Roe v Wade fell, the founder and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health wanted to reopen just across the border in New Mexico, to make care as accessible as possible to Texans who could no longer access it in their state. But anti-abortion advocates had other plans.

Hagstrom Miller was considering purchasing a building in the border town of Hobbs when, last November, the city passed an ordinance banning abortion and declaring itself “a sanctuary city for the unborn”. Earlier this year, the towns of Clovis and Eunice followed suit, as did the counties of Roosevelt and Lea. Hagstrom Miller and her team decided instead to open their new clinic in Albuquerque, a more progressive city about 200 miles from the Texas border, where they hope providers and patients will feel more welcomed. The clinic is currently awaiting approval of its licensing paperwork before officially opening.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/09/pastor-push-national-abortion-ban-sanctuary-cities-for-the-unborn