The Six-Week Abortion Ban in Florida Is Only the Beginning

The history of these bans suggests they’re far from the anti-abortion movement’s endgame.

BY MARY ZIEGLER
MAY 01, 2024

Florida has long been a destination state for abortion-seekers in a region defined by sweeping criminal bans. And, despite being under Republican control, Florida had long been a place with one of the highest abortion rates in the nation. Yet this week, a six-week ban signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in April 2023 is set to go into effect. Florida’s law will cut off access for a large number of patients, many of whom will have to travel as far as North Carolina and Virginia, where clinics have already reported long waiting periods and struggles to meet demand.

Six-week bans block a sizable share of abortions—as of 2021, nearly 60 percent of procedures in Florida occured after that point in pregnancy. But the history of six-week bans like Florida’s suggests that this will not be the stopping point for the anti-abortion movement. Six-week bans were designed to be a stopgap in the fight for fetal personhood.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/florida-six-week-abortion-ban-only-the-beginning.html

Empty clinics, no calls: The fallout of Oklahoma’s abortion ban

By Caroline Kitchener, The Washington Post (not behind paywall)
Jun 4, 2022

Whenever a new patient pulls into the parking lot at the Tulsa Women’s Clinic, Tiffany Taylor rushes to flick on the lights. She turns off her indie folk playlist, looks out at the empty waiting room and prepares to deliver a speech she has recited about a dozen times since the Oklahoma legislature passed a bill last month banning abortions from the moment of fertilization.

“I’m so sorry,” the nurse says to anyone who wanders in, asking about abortion. “But there’s this new law.”

Continued: https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2022/06/04/empty-clinics-no-calls-the-fallout-of-oklahomas-abortion-ban/

Florida becomes 1st state to try to mirror Texas fetal ‘heartbeat’ abortion law

Bill would ban abortion after 6 to 8 weeks and allow people to sue doctors who perform them

Thomson Reuters
Posted: Sep 22, 2021

A Florida Republican lawmaker has filed a bill that would ban abortions after six to eight weeks and allow members of the community to sue doctors for terminating pregnancies in what may be the first effort to mirror a similar new law in Texas.

The bill by state Rep. Webster Barnaby would ban abortions after regular cardiac contractions are detected in an embryo, known as a fetal heartbeat even though the heart has not yet developed, about six to eight weeks into pregnancy. That is before many women know they are pregnant.

Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/abortion-law-florida-texas-1.6186255

Argentina on brink of historic vote to legalise abortion

Senate to debate bill that would make it first major Latin American country to allow terminations

Tom Phillips, Latin America correspondent and Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires
Mon 28 Dec 2020

Argentina is on the verge of making history as the first major Latin American country to legalise abortion. Its 72-member senate will convene on Tuesday to debate a bill that was approved by the lower house earlier this month to the delight of pro-choice activists.

Pro-choice and anti-abortion campaigners will gather in the plaza near Buenos Aires’s congress building on Tuesday afternoon and remain there until the early hours of Wednesday when a vote is expected.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/28/argentina-on-brink-historic-vote-legalise-abortion

Will Argentina legalize abortion?

Will Argentina legalize abortion?

EDITOR: Ellen Nemitz, Curitiba
March 17th, 2020

Green and blue: Argentina is divided between the two colors representing “in favor” and “against" abortion, respectively. Alberto Fernandez, president of Argentina, can now be the support the “green scarf” movement needs. On March 1st, during the oficial opening of legislative activities for 2020, Fernandez affirmed he would write and send himself, within 10 days, a bill to Congress to legalize — and not just decriminalize — the pregnancy interruption in first steps.

Due to the Coronavirus outbreak, though, the legislative agenda is being rescheduled and the submission of the project was postponed, so details are still not known. Nonetheless, this will certainly not be the end of the new attempt to legalize abortion in Argentina — the last one was in 2018, but, although the Congress passed the bill, the Senate disapproved it under Mauricio Macri’s administration, who declared himself “in favor of life".

Continued: https://www.fairplanet.org/editors-pick/will-argentina-legalize-abortion/

17.03.2020

Ireland – People before Profit wants abortion as early and as late as needed

People before Profit wants abortion as early and as late as needed
Party will support Government’s proposition for abortion within first trimester

April 27, 2018
Sarah Bardon

Any legislation that replaces the Eighth Amendment should not be reconsidered for a Dáil term, People before Profit has said.

The party launched its campaign to remove Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution in the forthcoming referendum on May 25th.

Every member of the party is canvassing for a Yes vote and its message is one of trusting women and giving them the choice, it said.

Continued: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/people-before-profit-wants-abortion-as-early-and-as-late-as-needed-1.3476984

27.04.2018

UK – Women must be allowed to take abortion pills at home – anything else is a double standard

Women must be allowed to take abortion pills at home - anything else is a double standard

29 March 2018

“I was counting down the seconds until I arrived home. I collapsed almost as soon as I got inside.”

Claudia almost miscarried in a taxi on the way back from an abortion clinic. Hers is just one story among thousands from women in Britain, all because of rules that are 50 years old.

Now, the Women's Equality Party (WEP), of which I am leader, is asking Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to bring vital healthcare provision for women up to date - with no change to the law necessary.

Continued: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/women-must-allowed-take-abortion-pills-home-anything-else/

U.S.: Telling the story behind Roe v Wade: ‘The play illuminates choice’

As Roe, a stage production centered on the landmark abortion case of the 1970s, hits Washington DC, playwright Lisa Loomer discusses its prescience

David Smith in Washington (The Guardian)

Monday 9 January 2017 16.13 GMT

In a normal election year, without the dozens of distractions, it would have been a jaw-dropping moment. “Do you want to see the court overturn Roe v Wade?” Donald Trump was asked during the final presidential debate. His initial answer meandered but then became blunt: “That’ll happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the [supreme] court.”

He went on to accuse his opponent, Hillary Clinton, of advocating that babies be ripped out of their mother’s wombs just before birth, a bogus claim she dismissed as “scare rhetoric”. But come election day, he won and she lost.

Now Trump is bound for the White House and a stage play about Roe v Wade, the 1973 case at the supreme court that firmly established a woman’s right to abortion, is arriving in Washington DC, with remarkable prescience. The first night curtain will go up just 40 hours before the bellicose billionaire is sworn in as US president.

[continued at link]
Source: The Guardian

09.01.2017

U.S. Supreme Court and abortion

US: A Century of Abortion Onscreen, 1916-2016

Dec 20, 2016, Rewire
by Gretchen Sisson

The end of 2016 marks the close of a century since the first silent film in the United States addressed abortion. In these past 100 years, film, television, and our popular culture have addressed abortion in evolving ways: from the pre-code films of the 1920s, to the exploitation films of the 1940s, to television plotlines in support of legal abortion in the 1960s, to the alternately stigmatizing and stigma-busting portrayals of the 1990s and early 21st century. The incorporation of abortion into onscreen storylines has been done for shock value, for sex educational purposes, for humor, for drama, and for horror. This presentation is not an exhaustive list of abortion stories in U.S. film and television (there are over 200 of them!), but it is meant to illustrate some of the notable examples, groundbreaking firsts, and trends that have emerged over time.

[continued at link]
Source: Rewire

Ireland: Lynda McCarthy: Our fight for abortion rights will go global

By Lynda McCarthy
Nov 7, 2016

WE ARE Irish and the whole world cheerfully tries to claim our heritage as their own, and why wouldn’t they?

We are Irish and you cannot claim Saoirse Ronan or Katie Taylor, Britain – they’re ours, thank you very much.

We are Irish, and in the four corners of the earth, they have bars and parades to celebrate us, they dye their rivers green in solidarity on Saint Patrick’s Day.

[continued at link]
Source: Sunday World

07.11.2016

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going to England for abortion