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Tag: pregnancy
Abortion Rights

Ohio Approves Abortion Rights Clause In State Constitution

Ohio decided to vote "yes" on Issue 1 Monday, enshrining abortion rights in the state's constitution, The Associated Press reports.

With approval of the amendment, The Washington Post reports, "Ohio would be the seventh state to protect abortion access since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal abortion standard in June 2022."

Per AP, "Opponents had argued that the amendment would threaten parental rights, allow unrestricted gender surgeries for minors and revive 'partial birth' abortions, which are federally banned," but "Public polling shows about two-thirds of Americans say abortion should generally be legal in the earliest stages of pregnancy, a sentiment that has been underscored in both Democratic and deeply Republican states since the justices overturned Roe in June 2022."

According to the report, "Issue 1 specifically declared an individual's right to 'make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions,' including birth control, fertility treatments, miscarriage and abortion."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

New York City Advertising Abortion Access On Billboards In Southern Cities

New York City Advertising Abortion Access On Billboards In Southern Cities

If you happened to be driving around the Atlanta, Georgia, area recently, you may have caught a glimpse of a huge, looming billboard stating, "Abortion. Safe + Legal for All in New York City." That billboard is just one of the 36 that began appearing in January in cities such as Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia, as well as in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, the Augusta Chronicle reports.

The signs are a campaign of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's Abortion Access Hub, a confidential phone line connecting callers to abortion providers in the city's five boroughs. Its effort, which was rolled out in November, has allotted about $500,000 in total for the out-of-state signs in addition to online ads via Facebook, Google, and Snapchat, according to the Chronicle.

The health department paid outdoor advertising company Lamar $138,370 for the billboards and contracted OpAD Media Solutions in August for nearly $240,000 to provide what the city's OpenData website describes as "strategic media planning, buying, and placement" in digital, print, video, and social media and more.

In an email to the American Independent Foundation, a spokesperson from the health department said: "In New York City, access to abortion care is legal, protected, and a critical component of public health. … We want anyone who might be in need of reproductive healthcare to know that we're here to provide it."

Two pro-choice activists who spoke with the American Independent Foundation have mixed reactions about the billboards.

"It definitely does underline or underscore, again, the immense access problem that we have with abortion in this country that we've always had, but that clearly has been made exponentially worse by the Dobbs decision," Angela Vasquez-Giroux, vice president of communications and research at NARAL Pro-Choice America, said.

She added that this is an "all-hands-on-deck, new reality" and that the billboards "highlight a desperate need"; but, she said, "There's also a ton of people, the Atlanta mayor included, who are working really hard on the ground in Georgia to get pro-choice champions elected to do whatever they can to turn around those bad laws."

Roula AbiSamra, the state campaign director of Amplify Georgia, a nonprofit made up of seven reproductive health and justice organizations in the state, explained, "The same people most impacted by barriers to health care generally, and abortion access specifically, are the same people who can't easily hop on a flight to New York."

AbiSamra views the billboards as a "Band-Aid that we're putting on a huge problem, which is that people don't have access in their communities."

According to the Chronicle, the ads were placed by the health department specifically in Georgia, Florida, and Texas because abortion is severely restricted in those states.

In November, the Georgia Supreme Court reinstated the state's six-week abortion ban after a brief one-week block. Six weeks is a time before most people know they’re pregnant. Florida law bans abortion after 15 weeks' gestation, and patients are required to make at least two appointments — including one for in-person counseling — before terminating a pregnancy, the Guttmacher Institute reports.

Texas has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, with policies that include restrictions on medications necessary for an abortion, bans on the use of telehealth appointments in abortion care, and prohibitions against the use of Medicaid and private health insurance for abortion care except in extremely limited circumstances.

The budget of New York City includes $1 million for abortion care and “supports anyone who is unable to fully pay for an abortion and is living in or traveling to New York,” the New York City Council announced last September.

Amplify and its collaborators work to make sure that Georgia residents have access to funds to cover expenses associated with abortions, including travel, for those who need it. But AbiSamra says for many residents, traveling out of town for their reproductive health needs just isn't feasible.

"Who does medical tourism really work for? Even with abortion funds, the difficulties to leave your state and go somewhere else to get care are not solved simply by knowing that you can do it," she said.

To date, no state in the nation has passed a law outlawing people from traveling out of state for an abortion, but as Politico reported last year, Missouri lawmakers are trying.

Missouri Republican state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman added an amendment to a bill in March 2022 that was intended, Coleman said, to prevent a Planned Parenthood clinic in Illinois from offering abortion services to patients traveling from her home state.

The Washington Post reported that the measure would have allowed private citizens to sue anyone involved in a Missourian receiving abortion care, both inside the state and outside it, from the hotline staffer scheduling a visit to the clinic to doctors performing the procedure to anyone who transports abortion medication into the state.

To date, it remains legal for Missourians to leave the state for abortion services.

In an email to the American Independent Foundation, Drexel University law professor David Cohen referred to "The New Abortion Battleground," an article he co-authored, published in January by the Columbia Law Review, that discusses the legalities of patients traveling out of state to receive abortion services. Cohen and his co-authors write: "After Roe, state prosecutors and legislators will likely try to impose civil or criminal liability on their citizens who travel out of state to obtain an abortion, those who help them, and the providers who care for them. … Though targeting cross-border abortion provision has been almost nonexistent until this point, antiabortion states are likely to attempt it in the post-Roe future."

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

What Abortion Opponents Should Do Now -- If They Actually Want To Help Women

What Abortion Opponents Should Do Now -- If They Actually Want To Help Women

What is the pro-life movement? I've always imagined it to be broader than just efforts to make abortion illegal. In the wake of the 2022 elections, in which voters rejected candidates whose abortion postures were perceived as extreme, those who care about the welfare of unborn children might want to rethink their focus.

Arguably, the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision has been a legal tangle. A number of states had adopted so-called "trigger laws" during the regnancy of Roe v. Wade, specifying that if and when Roe was overturned, abortion would be restricted in a variety of ways. Idaho's law, for example, prohibited abortions except in cases of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother. Louisiana's law did not permit exceptions in cases of rape or incest, but only for the life of the mother or "serious permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ of the pregnant woman." Utah's law contains an exception for "severe fetal abnormality." In 11 states, bans have been blocked by courts. Litigation continues and is likely to persist for years as courts grapple with cases that reveal the limitations and ambiguities of the laws.

In Ohio, a ten year-old rape victim was forced to travel to Indiana for an abortion. Pro-lifers initially thought the story was invented, but it was true. Ohio's law, like Louisiana's, permitted abortion when a "medically diagnosed condition ... so complicates the pregnancy of the woman as to directly or indirectly cause the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function." It's common knowledge that pregnancy is dangerous for very young girls, but under Ohio's law, would being ten qualify as a "medically diagnosed condition"?

Voters have demonstrated a clear preference for laws that permit abortion in the early stages. Kansas led the way last August by rejecting a constitutional amendment that would have permitted the legislature to adopt strict limits. In the midterms, abortion restrictions were defeated across the board. It's safe to say that the legal strategy of outlawing abortion is facing a prolonged backlash at the hands of voters.

What can the pro-life movement realistically expect to achieve with the narrow focus on the law? Thirteen mostly low-density states have adopted abortion bans (for now). How many fewer abortions will there be in America as a result? The states with the highest numbers of abortions are mostly blue. The District of Columbia has the highest rate with 32.7 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age. New York is second, followed by New Jersey and Maryland. The bottom ten states for abortion are all red, and most are sparsely populated: Wyoming, South Dakota, Kentucky, Idaho, and more like that. And, as you can surmise from the geography, most abortions are sought by Black (38 percent) and Hispanic (21 percent) women. Whites account for 33 percent.

Today the majority of abortions in America are medication abortions. A number of states have moved to ban abortifacients, but considering our national success rate at restricting cocaine, fentanyl, and heroin, such laws are going to be leaky at best.

While the rate of abortion has decreased dramatically since 1990, the percentage of poor or low-income women getting abortions has increased sharply. According to the Alan B. Guttmacher Institute, 75 percent of women terminating pregnancies in 2014 were either poor or low-income.

Their reasons for seeking abortions vary, but women often cite economic hardship among the chief motivators. So the pro-life movement is, in essence, adding a nuisance factor for poor and minority women in red and purple states.

The accusation against the pro-life movement that I've always thought was unjust was that they cared little for actual mothers and babies and simply wanted to control women, or worse, to harm women. The blinkered legal strategy tends to give that accusation a whiff of plausibility. Why not concentrate on concrete reforms that can make a difference in women's lives?

We need a huge push to get contraceptives into the hands of all women who want them. Half of women with unintended pregnancies had not used birth control in the month they conceived. Many cite cost as a factor. A doctor's appointment should not be necessary to obtain oral contraceptives. All of the major medical groups agree. So, let's kickstart a campaign to permit the over-the-counter sale of birth control pills.

Every abortion is a tragedy. And while it's unrealistic to use the law to forbid women to abort if that's what they are determined to do, there are thousands of expectant mothers who wish there were an alternative. They need financial and moral support and we should provide it. Wouldn't it be better to devote time and money to support groups for struggling moms than to limiting the exceptions to pregnancy termination in Louisiana? Every child should be welcomed in love. The pro-life movement should concentrate on helping more women to avoid unintended pregnancies, and ensuring that expectant mothers who really just need financial or practical or emotional support can find it.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the Beg to Differ podcast.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Top Anti-Abortion Group Would Force Raped Child To Carry Pregnancy

Top Anti-Abortion Group Would Force Raped Child To Carry Pregnancy

The top attorney for the far-right anti-abortion group National Right to Life Committee says the 10-year old Ohio girl forced to travel to Indiana to obtain an abortion after being raped should have given birth to her rapist’s baby.

James Bopp, Jr., who worked to help overturn the 2020 election results by filing lawsuits favoring Donald Trump, is general counsel for National Right to Life. He tells Politico the model legislation he drafted and is attempting to have states pass would have banned the child rape victim from being able to have an abortion – adding he would hope she understands.

“She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child,” Bopp said.

Bopp “told Politico on Thursday that his law only provides exceptions when the pregnant person’s life is in danger.”

That comes as some experts are noting that “life of the mother” restrictions may be even more draconian – and subject to interpretation of law enforcement authorities or others – than previously understood.

Referring to the case of the 10-year-old child, attorney Ken White says “some people suggest that they’re relying on the exception for protecting the life of the mother,” to allow her to have an abortion in her home state of Ohio.

“But that strikes me as a grave risk for anyone involved in the abortion,” he adds, “in that it relies on prosecutors agreeing that the abortion is ‘necessary’ to prevent the death of ‘risk of serious and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function’ of the 10 year old.”

“Since some heartbreakingly young children do, in fact, give birth and survive,” White continues, “are we really going to trust prosecutors, in THIS environment, with plenty of ‘medical experts’ out there ready to take money to testify however prosecutors want, not to charge doctors over this? The doctor is supposed to take that risk?”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.