This Week in Abortion: Courts and More
This Week in Abortion: Courts and More
A collection of good reads, events from the week, and policy insights.
Lots of good news coming out of the legal world this week, so to balance that out I thought I’d start our recommended reads with a visit to the anti-access space.
I am also trying something new: at the bottom of the newsletter, you will see a “Take Action” section. I will add to this from time to time to get us all moving. Let me know if and when you do take action, or drop more ideas in the comments!
Good Reads
View from the other side: David French recently published an anti-access op-ed arguing that his movement is on a failure trajectory because the current Republican party no longer “recognize[s] the humanity and dignity of both mother and child.” (4 min) Read for yourself and listen to this post-Dobbs podcast interview he did with Substacker Yascha Mounk (starts around minute 35).
A new analysis by public health researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and UC San Francisco shows that it has become substantially harder for active military service members to access abortion care after the Dobbs decision, with travel time rising from a median of 40 minutes to 4+ hours. Even so, Pentagon spending for abortion travel makes up a minuscule fraction of the military’s total expenses. (3 min)
Edward Robert Mcclelland sums up, in a readable way, the legal debate over a law in Illinois (and other states) that restricts how crisis pregnancy centers can talk about abortion. (5 min)
A Bit About Ballot Measures Since the Election
There is a major debate in the access advocacy community about whether ballot measures that protect abortion should allow for bans after viability. Ohio’s ballot measure included an allowance for this, and advocates in Nebraska will try a similar tactic in 2024. Garnet Henderson goes into that debate and a legal challenge in Florida that will affect it. (8 min)
Minnesota Democrats are also mulling over plans to run an abortion measure, in part to secure rights but also in order to boost turnout. Torey Van Oot’s summary serves as a good reminder that the Democratic party and abortion advocacy groups are not one and the same. While it’s clear that a ballot measure will help Democrats get more of their voters to the polls in Minnesota, is it worth the risk for abortion advocates in a state where access is already available?
Top Abortion Updates
👍 Indiana Capital Chronicle reports that abortion providers in Indiana are trying a new lawsuit to stop portions of the state’s ban. A prior suit that argued the right to privacy, lost in the state’s Supreme Court. The new suit argues that the exemption clauses in the ban are too narrow and burdensome.
👍 Seven more women have joined the Texas lawsuit alleging that the state’s law endangered them during pregnancy, bringing the total number of plaintiffs to 20. The state Supreme Court will hear that case at the end of the month.
👍 In Guam, abortion will remain legal until 13 weeks “after the commencement of the pregnancy” thanks to a ruling by the territory’s Supreme Court. However, since there are no providers on the Island the ruling doesn’t change much.
👍 According to NC Newsline, an appeals court in North Carolina canceled a controversial opinion that allowed a child to be removed from their mother for crimes that the mother committed when she was pregnant. The appeals opinion was based on the precedent-setting argument that “life begins at conception.”
👎 In a clear sign that bans work to restrict (or at least shift) access, abortions in NC have gone down since a 10-12 week ban went into place this summer. New requirements for two in-person clinic visits 72 hours apart, even if you are seeking an abortion before 12 weeks, make access especially difficult for anyone planning to travel from outside the state.
The Wider World of Healthcare and Uteri
Last week the Biden-Harris administration announced a collaboration with Upstream, a nonprofit focused on contraception access, “to help health care providers receive free technical assistance, training and education on contraceptive care in primary care settings.” It will be interesting to see how far this goes toward removing barriers to access, since it doesn’t appear to touch on issues like cost or general sex education programs.
Then this week, the administration announced an Initiative on Women’s Health Research that will be led by First Lady Jill Biden and the White House Gender Policy Council.
After attempts to chip away at the state’s abortion ban failed this year, Tennessee advocates have pivoted to securing the right to contraception. See reporting below.
Take Action
Take on crisis pregnancy centers. For a reminder on why CPCs are a problem, visit our prior feature.
You can support online transparency on several websites (Crisis Pregnancy Center Map, The Fake Clinic Database, and Expose Fake Clinics) that crowdsource information on crisis pregnancy centers.
Find crisis pregnancy centers in your neighborhood and look at their websites. How do they describe their services? Do they explicitly say they provide abortion? If not, Google and other search engines should not list abortion as a service, and the user reviews should absolutely point that out.
Flag the centers in comments on Google Maps and go to one or more of the mapping sites above to review and tag them there.
Be aware of the big players in the space: Care Net, Heartbeat International, Birthright International, and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates.