This Week in Abortion, “You’re the Only One I’ve Told”

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

Welcome back to your weekly roundup of good reads, legal updates, and legislative tracking on abortion. Our feature this week is a review of a book that Mollie thinks is a good entry into both the emotional decision-making and the science of having an abortion. Next week we will be revisiting the past year and diving into the anniversary of the End of Roe v Wade.

🔔 If you are in Virginia, the party primaries for your state senator and representative are THIS COMING WEEK. 🔔

Check out BallotReady.org to find out who your candidates are and their basic positions on abortion. We hope you’ll google from there, even the Dems are seeing some diversity of opinion on the policy details for abortion access. Emily’s List has put out endorsements that you can rely on to signal who in the race is dedicated to full access at all stages and/or is more likely to make this a number one issue for them.

“Good” Reads

• The news that three-time Olympic champion Tori Bowie died of pregnancy complications, is a reminder that pregnancy carries a risk for anyone bearing it, whether or not it’s by choice. The risk is especially acute for Black women, who are often dismissed and mistreated by our health system. Bowie’s former teammate Allyson Felix is drawing attention to the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act and related legislation.

• Vox and Capital B have more on this in their joint edition this month of Vox’s The Highlight where Akilah Wise asks: What’s behind Black women’s excessive rate of fibroids?

• North Carolina’s Herald Sun had a long piece on swing districts and how and why legislators decided to vote on the recent veto override.

  • As a reminder, the veto override moved the state’s abortion ban from 20 weeks to 12 weeks and will go into effect July 1st. 

  • Interestingly, at least one legislator reported feeling far more pressured and “attacked” by the pro-access advocates. There are many reasons this could have been said, and worth taking with both a grain of salt and with the understanding that “kindness” in politics can have many meanings. 

• The World Health Organization (WHO) released a new clinical handbook to support abortion care. While more technical than most of this readership likely needs, it is refreshing to remember that beyond the politics there are folks working to make healthcare for women safer and educating healthcare professionals on new advances.   

• The Center for Countering Digital Hate released a really interesting and well-researched report showing that Google generated over $10 million in advertising revenue from anti-access groups and distorted search results related to reproductive health. Some interesting findings include: 

  • 37% of Google Maps results for abortion clinics in “Trigger Law” states are actually fake clinics. 

  • Google made $2.6 million from ads promoting organizations that specifically promote abortion reversal (which we’ve covered before as not a real thing).

State and Local Events of the Week

👍 The State of California opened a legal hotline for anyone in the country who may be facing penalties for seeking, assisting, or providing abortions in any state. They partnered with the Southern California Legal Alliance for Reproductive Justice (at UCLA) for these pro-bono services. Keep the number handy and share it widely: (310) 206-4466.

👍 Minnesota’s legislature passed a health and human services spending bill that repealed many of the state’s restrictions on abortion. This includes eliminating waiting periods, requirements that abortions be done in a hospital, restrictions post-viability and stopped funding for crisis pregnancy centers. Regulations related to reporting and parental consent remain in place.  

👍 Oregon legislators finally returned to work, allowing abortion protections to pass the Senate. It looks like the “negotiations” resulted in parental consent rules for minors seeking an abortion being put back in the law. The House will likely approve in short order. We are calling this one a win for access.

😕 Starting in August, Louisiana doctors will have the option to offer patients an official, state-issued, “commemorative certificate” of their miscarriage.

• On a personal level, we understand the beauty in this and the closure it could bring to many women and families. From a movement-building standpoint, we believe it significantly advances the fetal personhood agenda for the anti-access movement and could be a slippery slope into using data generated from these in unintended ways. 

Legal Updates

👍 Abortion will remain legal up to 20-weeks in Iowa after their Supreme Court deadlocked in a 3-3 ruling, meaning the lower court’s ruling (which was pro-access) stands. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern surfaced this gem from the arguments:

👎 Anti-access activists in Colorado and Florida are challenging laws that prevent them from approaching people near abortion clinics. The laws protecting patients from harassment are pretty strongly established, so we shall see how this plays out.

👎 Students for Life Action, a group active in opposing the pro-access ballot initiative in South Dakota, is suing the state in an effort to avoid listing its top five donors on campaign material, a campaign finance law that has been on the books for 10+ years.

👎 On a global scale, two cases captivated the media: 

• First, a woman was sentenced to 2 years in prison in the UK for a late-term medical abortion. Abortion in the UK is banned after 24 weeks, and this case is raising questions about viability and decriminalizing the practice altogether. 

• Second, in Poland, where abortion is effectively banned, protests happened across the country as new information emerged showing the hospital where a woman died last month from sepsis was at fault for not inducing an abortion early enough to save her life. 

👉Two men were arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Planned Parenthood in California back in March.  

Feature: Book Review “You’re the Only One I’ve Told”

This week Mollie finished listening to the book “You’re the Only One I’ve Told” by Dr. Meera Shah. This is not a new book, as it was published in 2020, but it was recommended in a few places so it seemed like a good one to add to the library.

Dr. Shah’s compilation is an easy entry into the topic of abortion and a nice read (or listen) for such a heavy subject. The stories are framed in a human-centered way, not antagonistic or emotionally raw. And her experience as a physician provides context and science in a way that can sometimes be missing in anecdotal stories alone. You don’t need any prior knowledge or preconceived notions to find interest and empathy with the stories.

The book is not aimed to change hearts and minds but lift up experiences that have been left out of traditional stories of abortion and reproductive care. Shah seemed extremely intentional in her selection of stories from people of color and non-cisgender roles. Mollie was reminded of the power of storytelling, that the black-and-white nature of policymaking often defies the lived experience, and that leading with compassion is always the right answer.