Your Data & HIPAA, the Contraception Fight, and Fashion Reboots.
Your Data & HIPAA, the Contraception Fight, and Fashion Reboots.
A collection of good reads, events from the week, and policy insights.
Welcome back to This Week in Abortion - Your substack roundup of good reads, news updates, and policy insights on abortion.
I’m shaking things up this summer. I’ll be sending a newsletter every two weeks instead of every week while bringing you more context, more good reads, and a sprinkle of fun. No abortion jokes come to mind. But, email me yours?
If you like what you read, remember to recommend This Week in Abortion to other substack readers and share it on social media. (Yes, the name stays the same.)
Good Reads
Kelcie Moseley-Morris explains that even when HIPAA applies and you think it’s protecting your data, like at your own doctor’s office, it’s a lot less private than you might think.
Laura Ungar and Tiffany Stanley profile religious couples who wrestled with IVF choices. It’s a good read into a view from the other side, just as the Southern Baptist Convention is considering declaring common practices for IVF immoral. Egg plus sperm equals life. No gray. No compromise. As I’ve said too many times, this is the logic at the heart of the anti-abortion movement.
Meanwhile, Lauren Weber provides a good overview of the contraception fight, including Trump’s recent comments on the possibility of restricting access to birth control. The core forces pushing bans on abortion access are also against contraception. If the anti-abortion ethos is egg plus sperm equals life, then the next level logic is “God rolls the dice.” (Or maybe, “God rolls the dice and women pay the price.”) I think most Republican politicians are perfectly fine with birth control - I’m not so confident those same people will be willing to go up against the antis who are spreading misinformation and doing what they can to chip away at access without enacting obvious bans.
Eric Boodman’s series on sickle cell disease continues to impress. Part two looks at “a kind of whiplash…sickle cell patients pressured to get an abortion by some doctors and pressured not to by others.” It drives home that the medical system doesn’t see these women and has generally decided that they can’t handle bodily autonomy. The stories in the article are also a good example of why Illinois’s specialty helpline for complex abortions is so great.
I appreciated Elizabeth Nolan Brown’s libertarian take on Louisiana’s recent law classifying Mifepristone and Misoprostol as controlled substances. She observes, “[Focusing on Catherine Herring’s horrific story] is a common tactic used by lawmakers trying to grant the state new power: using an extreme and sympathetic example of wrongdoing to justify a wide-reaching change that will be used in matters way beyond that example.” Like many abortion bans, the law “protects” the women who are getting the abortion. Which, on the one hand, yes, please, at least do that. But on the other hand, “it's also somewhat crazy to act like the woman here is not culpable for her actions but someone who helped her get abortion pills is.” Bottom line, this law is deeply problematic and scary because it will be copied across the country next year if not sooner.
More From the News
👎Texas’s Supreme Court ruled against women denied abortions when they say their lives and health were in danger. The Court agreed with the defense’s argument that it wasn’t the law’s fault, it was the fault of the doctors who could and should have provided abortions. Put aside that doctors in the state risk going to jail if they perform an abortion that a prosecutor disagrees with. So as denials of care continue, the pressure is all on the state’s medical board. The board has the impossible task of writing guidelines for performing abortions in Texas. They got an earful from both sides at a public meeting last month.
👎Two men are accused of falsifying 133 petition signatures in support of a pro-access ballot measure in Florida. But, it’s a tiny fraction of what advocates submitted. So even if the two are found guilty the initiative itself is not in jeopardy.
👍👎 A judge removed some significant barriers to obtaining abortion pills in North Carolina while leaving in place a few others, like a requirement for an in-person consultation 72 hours in advance and an ultrasound.
👍 👎 Iowa’s Attorney General will resume emergency contraception funding for rape victims they are discontinuing abortion funding.
A Little Fun
We are cycling through 80s and 90s fashion trends again. SIGH. Every generation hopes the next will make better choices. But they don’t. I guess we all have to make our own mistakes.
As part of all this - the internet tells me - handkerchiefs are making a comeback. And in any case, it’s Pride Month, so let’s take a moment to consider where fashion comes from and appreciate the Hanky Code. Kind of like Grindr - if Grindr was all in person and you could be arrested for downloading it.
