This Week in Abortion: Florida Supreme Court Rulings, Access in Jail, and a Mike Pence Op-ed
A collection of good reads, events from the week, and policy insights.
Welcome back to This Week in Abortion - Your weekly substack roundup of good reads, news updates, and policy insights on abortion.
I have some really good, Good Reads and Videos for you this weekend and plenty of news, including rulings from Florida’s Supreme Court.
Reminder: There is a LOT going on out there. This newsletter focuses on the most salient and important updates and always tries to approach things with an open mind. I think I succeed, at least most of the time. If you ever think I’m missing something let me know.
Good Reads and Videos
Putting Planned Parenthood out of business is on every anti-access checklist. A key way they try to do this is by cutting off Medicaid funding for general reproductive health services, like Pap tests and cancer screening. Anna Spoerre explains how this fight is playing out in Missouri, where Planned Parenthood has not received funds for two years. Legislators there are hoping to make this permanent using a legislative model from Arkansas.
The Marshall Project released a report on the confusing and sometimes nonexistent policies for women who are seeking abortions while in jail. This is a must-read for my Illinois policy folks. The article opens with a ridiculous story from Winnebago County.
CNN published a heartbreaking story and photo essay on Samantha Casiano, a mother of three recovering from the trauma of giving birth to a baby without a fully formed skull. Casiano’s words: “I’m her life support. I should be able to release my daughter…I am her mother. That is my right."
The video below does a better job than I could ever do summing up the main points of the anti-access, fertilization-is-life movement. A far-right group in Texas put the video together. It features a meeting that Texas Democrats say local Republicans attended. Newsweek has more on that political drama.
In an Op-ed on Friday, Mike Pence and the CEO of Americans United for Life hoped to shift the focus of the IVF debate onto the Alabama clinic’s failures. And, failures there were. But, wrongful death seems a bit of an outsized punishment for failing to secure a lab. I will say, the authors make an interesting point about IVF laws in Europe being stricter than in the US - something to explore another week. Meanwhile, the clinic in question says the procedure is still too high a risk under Alabama’s new law and it will not provide IVF after this year.
Top Abortion Updates
👎 Ohio voters may have enshrined the right to an abortion in their constitution last November, but the right to an abortion and access to it have never been the same thing. OH Attorney General Dave Yost is asking the courts to ignore the ban on the books while upholding barriers to access like requirements that doctors check for a “heartbeat.” This is not new - states were doing it for decades before Dobbs. But how this gets hashed out in Ohio will be important to watch as other states pursue ballot initiatives with similar language.
👎 Kansas legislators passed a law making “abortion coercion” a crime. Governor Kelly will likely veto the law. But, this is exactly the kind of legislation I expect out of a legislature in a state where voters largely supported abortion access. The act tries to put pro-access lawmakers in a spot without obviously restricting abortion access. No one supports coercion. But, the language for what constitutes a violation is pretty broad and in some instances, coercion could carry up to 25 years in prison. The sponsors also threw in a dash of fetal personhood with specific references to the “unborn child.”
👍 Lizelle Gonzalez is suing the Texas prosecutors who charged her with murder after a self-induced abortion. Gonzalez argues that they knowingly pursued an indictment despite knowing that she was exempt from a murder charge.
👍 Four people were found guilty of obstructing access to a reproductive health facility in Tennessee. Federal law - the FACE Act - prevents people from blocking access to healthcare facilities, providing an important level of protection for clinics. As I’ve noted before, the National Review Ed Board and other anti-access advocates say the Act is used to target free speech. Then again, these individuals were found guilty by juries in anti-access states and the Biden administration says, “The number of FACE Act violations remains relatively low.”
Florida News
Florida’s Supreme Court ruled that the state’s constitution does not protect the right to an abortion, which allowed a four to six-week abortion ban to take effect. In the same breath, they cleared the way for a constitutional amendment to appear on the ballot in the state this November. The amendment would protect the right to an abortion up to viability.
Shutting down access in the state is obviously terrible in the short term. But, the ruling put the ballot initiative into hyperdrive. And, as you’ve read pretty much everywhere by now, the two things together are great for Democrats. So, thank you Brendan Farrington for reminding readers that abortion rights and the Democratic party aren’t exactly the same thing. Voters across parties support abortion access and to win advocates will need them all.
Over to the New York Sun for a conservative take: The Ed Board observed, “It would be remarkable if Dobbs, the product of a court shaped by President Trump, were responsible for trapping him at Mar-a-Lago rather than bringing him back to the White House.”
You do a great job!