This Week in Abortion: C (section) is for Abortion, Federal Budget, and Ballot Measures

A collection of good reads, events from the week, and policy insights.

Welcome back to This Week in Abortion - Your weekly roundup of good reads, news updates, and policy insights on abortion.

Start your weekend with a new report out of Louisiana, reports on ballot measure trickery, summaries of the federal spending bill, and readers on next week’s big Supreme Court case.

Good Reads and Media

• NPR’s Morning Edition covers a new report by the Center for Reproductive Rights. Based on qualitative interviews with 30 clinicians and others, the report finds patient care may have declined because of the pressure that Louisiana’s abortion law puts on doctors. For example, some doctors said that even in emergencies that would result in nonviable pregnancies, they or others had performed higher-risk C-sections rather than standard care abortions. i.e. women were cut open when they did not need to be, with immediate risks to their health and long-term implications for future pregnancies. Jessica Valenti explains that the anti-access movement sees this as the desired tradeoff.

  • As I’ve said before, the heart of the anti-access movement is grounded in an extreme equation: Fertilization (egg + sperm) = Life. What this report highlights is no different than the case of IVF, that “Life” as they define it can’t protect itself and therefore must be protected by the law at all costs.

• In the Washington Post, Lauren Weber and Sabrina Malhi describe some of the misinformation about birth control that is proliferating on social media, driven at least in part by holistic health influencers who are looking to sell their products. Thankfully there are a few good ones out there too, flashback to this Guardian article from last year.

 

• The Supreme Court is hearing the mifepristone case next week. Here are a few primers: 

  • What’s Mifepristone and what is the controversy about?

  • What exactly is the Supreme Court considering? 

  • What are the law dorks (video from Law Dork) saying? 

  • What are the anti-access advocates saying?

  • Can I listen next to the arguments on Tuesday? Yes

Top Abortion Updates

• 🤔 Arizona Senator Eva Burch announced her plans to get an abortion. The AP has footage of her speech in state chambers and more context from her. Sen. Burch is the latest in a growing number of women in the public eye who are talking about their abortions. Last month, Amy Brown - wife of a Nevada Republican U.S. Senate candidate - talked about hers, though in a generally anti-access framing. I have a lot of respect for women who talk about their experiences in either context. It’s important to normalize conversations about abortion, even in Brown’s context where she is saying she regretted getting the procedure - it is one that she as a conservative has had. It’s important to understand that it’s not so rare even in those circles. At the same time, I don’t love that it’s becoming an expectation that women just air all our medical history. (Anyone else stinging from the Kate Middleton saga?) As usual, it’s not a fair standard.

• 🤷 The spending bill that Congress approved this week includes money to keep the lights on for one more year for PEPFAR, a critical HIV/AIDS program. Sadly, but not surprisingly, it also includes the Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal spending on abortion services. 

• 👎 South Dakota changed its law to allow ballot initiative petitioners to revoke their signatures. This is bad form, South Dakota. Ohio legislators did something similar last year and voters were smart enough to see through it.

• 👎 Speaking of, anti-access groups in Nebraska announced plans to run a ballot measure that would constitutionally restrict abortion after 13 weeks without protecting it before then. Taking a page from national proposals, the initiative focuses on banning abortions in the second and third trimesters while leaving the legislature free to do what it wants, including banning abortion, in the first trimester. Although it could effectively allow for a total ban, the media is reporting on it as a “ban after 13 weeks”. This is a countermeasure to the pro-access ballot initiative, which affirmatively protects abortion up to viability. 

• 👎 Trump is signaling that a 15-week ban will be the driving Republican strategy for the election.