This Week in Abortion - August 27
This newsletter is a collection of abortion-related reads and events from the week curated by me, Rachel Leven.
If you can only look at two things this week, I suggest the first "Good Reads" article and the EMTALA cases under the "Legal Round-Up", both cover highly relevant policy issues.
Good Reads:
This article explains in detail a strategy from the anti-rights camp to deliver full personhood rights and privileges to a fetus from contraception. I admire those leading this push for their clarity of thought: egg + sperm = person, period. The pro-rights camp just does not have a good (winning) answer to "what is the value of a fetus"? Two law professors proposed an answer earlier this summer.
City Cast Chicago had an interesting segment on abortion doulas this week, something I didn't know existed. The law professors above note the need for the pro-rights side to acknowledge the feeling of loss that can come from abortions, which this segment touches on.
Events in the News:
Access to at-home abortions will soon become permanent in England and Wales including remote consultations. (Hey, I'm feeling international this week)
Kansas referendum recount unsurprisingly confirms pro-rights results. Also unsurprisingly, the standard election BS continues with unfounded calls for a second recount.
As of today, in Texas, Idaho, Tennessee, and Oklahoma abortion, in most cases, is now considered a felony. Providers were already shutting down after prior restrictions and bans, but these laws take the pressure that much further.
Google and Yelp announced they will improve labeling related to crisis pregnancy centers. Google will mark whether a clinic "Provides abortions" or "Does not provide abortions," as determined by a self-reported survey in addition to other related changes. Yelp is taking a simpler approach, it is adding a consumer notice specifically to crisis pregnancy centers.
Legal Round-Up:
Federal judges announced rulings in two EMTALA-related cases this week. In Idaho, a judge "barred the state from enforcing a strict abortion ban in medical emergencies over concerns that it violates a federal law on emergency care." Meanwhile, a judge in Texas made the opposite call. An exemption provided for things like ectopic pregnancies likely worked in favor of Texas's anti-abortion law. I encourage you to click on the links above as both articles include quotes from the rulings. And/Or, listen to this video discussing the cases together. This week the Biden Administration also reminded governors of their obligations under this law. (No legal expert, but this has that Headed to the Supreme Court feeling.)
A state judge blocked North Dakota’s trigger abortion ban agreeing that it "could cause irreparable injury to women across the state and harm to interested parties." The ban would prohibit most abortions in the state and was set to go into effect this Friday. (In any case, the state's only clinic already moved to Minnesota)
The Michigan Court of Appeal on Wednesday declined to take up an appeal that would overturn an injunction on the state's abortion ban.