1). “The Week in Abortion: 1.15.24 - 1.19.24”, Jan 21, 2024, Jessica Valenti, Abortion Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
2). “My Prepared Remarks to Senate Dems: Republicans knew women would die. They planned for it”, Jan 17, 2024, Jessica Valenti, (duration of video 7:34), Abortion Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
3). “Senator Murray, Senate Democrats Host Abortion Rights Briefing Ahead of Roe v. Wade Anniversary”, Senate Hearing, Jan 17, 2024, (duration of video 2:31:35), at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?
4). “Idaho Banned Abortion. Then It Turned Down Supports for Pregnancies and Births: Pregnancies and Births: Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, the state’s GOP-led Legislature has disbanded a maternal mortality committee, failed to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage and turned down federal grants for child care”, Oct. 3, 2023, Audrey Dutton, ProPublica, at < https://www.propublica.org/
5). This is the GOP on Abortion, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s (DSCC) website, at < https://www.goponabortion.com/ >
6). “The end of Roe v. Wade was a catastrophe. It could still get much worse. Republicans intend to enact a nationwide ban on abortion that voids any state law codifying reproductive rights”, Jan. 22, 2024, By Rep. Katherine Clark, House Democratic Whip, MSNBC, at < https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/
Introduction by dmorista: Today, January 22, is the 51st anniversary of the original Wade v. Roe decision. And various advocates for Women's Freedom and Full access to healthcare, including reproductive healthcare and abortion care, are commemorating it with discussions about the horrific fate women are now suffering in the U.S., (with at least one confirmed death of a woman due to restrictive abortion laws in the leading fascist dominated state, Texas, and undoubtedly many more deaths of vulnerable pregnant women). These discussions also include demands for an advance beyond what the Wade v. Roe decision achieved, especially after the decades of chipping away at it by reactionary forces. Jessica's 1st article: “The Week in Abortion: ….” discusses a variety of issues about the endless struggles over reproductive Health Care.
In Item 2, “My Prepared Remarks ….”, the 7:34 introductory statement by Jessica Valenti, in front of the Senate's Abortion hearing, was presented in full. Item 3 “Senator Murray, Senate Democrats ….” records the testimony by Dr. Austin Dennard who also appeared before the sub-committe. She is an OB-GYN who is a 6th generation Texan who had to flee Texas to obtain an abortion for a fetus with anacephaly (no head) that was illegal in Texas. Her discussion of that abortion, and a previous abortion also due to a fatal fetal defect in Texas, before Roe v. Wade was overturned (and presumably before Texas' Bounty Hunter law Senate Bill 8, was passed) is presented in Item 3 from 5:45 – 14:37, and then later from 107:10 – 114:00 she discusses, with Senators Patty Murray and Elizabeth Warren, the effect that the draconian Forced-birth Laws in Texas have had on her practice of Reproductive Medicine.
In Item 4): “Idaho Banned Abortion. ….” the fact that over the last year Idaho passed draconian forced-birth laws but would not even take Federal Money to fund services for pregnant women and families with very young children. The attitudes and motivations of the supporters of these harsh reactionary policies were revealed in the article where it noted that:
“.... Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center and a leading anti-abortion lobbyist, is not bothered by the lack of government support. Pregnancies, births and child care are not the purview of the government, he said, but of families, communities, charities and, most of all, churches.
“ 'The Bible is clear, and the history of Christendom broadly is clear, that it’s the church’s responsibility to meet the needs of the poor and to ensure that people have the services that they need to live flourishing lives,' Conzatti said.” (Emphasis added).
Even more revealing is the fact that Idaho, to hide the deadly consequences of their actions have quit collecting mortality statistics from pregnancies in the state. The same article notes that:
“No action set Idaho apart from other abortion-ban states more than when the Idaho Legislature allowed its Maternal Mortality Review Committee to die this year. The committee had been granted unique powers to review private health care and other records of women who died during or within a year after pregnancy and draw conclusions about the root causes of those deaths.
“Its budget of $10,000 a year came only from federal funds, so keeping the committee going seemed pro forma. Every single state, New York and Texas alike, had put one in place. But in Idaho, a lobbyist for an ultraconservative political nonprofit stood up and spoke against it at a hearing.”
The Democrats have come to the realization that they can harvest votes based on the harsh forced-birth statements and pronouncements of Republican Politicians, and this could be very critical in the upcoming election that is unfavorable for the Democrats in the Senate, though that could be a winner for Democrats in the House races.
Item 5). “This is the GOP on Abortion” is a link to the Democratic Senate Senatorial Campaign Committee. It features Republican Senate candidates from nine “swing states” with links to their real positions on abortion, that most of them are now busily trying to hide and deny.
Item 6). “The end of Roe v. Wade ….” is a good summary discussion of the current realities of Abortion Rights and how the upcoming elections could affect that situation. Included is a link to a panel discussion from MSNBC's “Morning Joe” show, entitled “Joe Scarborough: Trump Made an Incredible Political Mistake Last Night”. The overall discussion in the link, that is over 10 minutes long, is fairly good. But the best part is Trump's declaration, from a clip of a Fox News Interview, where he takes “credit” for overturning Roe v. Wade due to his appointing 3 ultra-reactionaries to the U.S. Supreme Court and their Dobbs decision in 2022. This has been an increasing point of vulnerability for the Republicans.
And now there is a new political ad, produced by the Lincoln Project, that features several clips where Trump claims credit for overturning Roe v. Wade showing, in contrast, women who have been forced to suffer horrible suffering due to the new draconian forced-birth laws passed by the various Red States. So far I have only heard it and cannot find it online, but it will show up. It elaborates on the clip from the Joe Scarborough link from Item 6. If anybody can find that ad, please post it in the comments to these articles (NB note - I could not find that particular one but put one called "Promises" by the Lincoln Project today at the top of this article. If someone finds the other one, I will put it up)
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The Week in Abortion
Whew. It’s been quite a week in abortion rights—and for Abortion, Every Day! I’m still reeling from the huge response to the Senate briefing, and the incredible support you all offered along the way. At last count, my remarks on Wednesday were viewed by over 1 million people on Instagram alone—including over 300,000 views for the full 7-minute testimony. And those are just numbers from the videos that I uploaded! Clips were also shared by other activists, organizations and outlets, like the Center for Reproductive Rights and The Meteor.
All of which is to say, once again, thank you—for the words of encouragement, the hundreds of suggestions, thoughts and questions (I read every single one!), and for watching and sharing the briefing. A huge thank you also goes to Grace, for digging up all the background I needed to prepare. I feel very lucky to have such an incredible community behind me. Onward!
The Power of Abortion Stories
Speaking of the Senate briefing—I’m sure you remember the incredible testimony of Dr. Austin Dennard, the Texas OBGYN who was denied an abortion in spite of her dangerous and doomed pregnancy. Today, the Biden-Harris campaign released an ad featuring Dr. Dennard talking directly to the camera about her experience—and putting the blame squarely on Donald Trump:
“At a routine ultrasound, I learned that the fetus would have a fatal condition and that there was absolutely no chance for survival. In Texas, you are forced to carry that pregnancy. And that is because of Donald Trump.”
The New York Times reports that the ad is being aimed at younger voters and suburban women, and that it will air during the season premiere of “The Bachelor” and on other channels with high-female viewership.
It’s a smart move by the Biden campaign: Dr. Dennard is compelling, her story is horrific, and it’s important to remind Americans that all of this unnecessary suffering is a direct result of Trump’s SCOTUS picks.
I’m sure that the Biden-Harris folks also looked at the incredible impact that a similar ad had in Kentucky’s gubernatorial race. Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection has been credited in large part to an ad featuring Hadley Duvall, a young woman who spoke about being raped by her stepfather as a child:
“This is to you, Daniel Cameron. To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none.”
Women’s personal stories are becoming a bigger and bigger part of Democrats’ 2024 strategy—which makes sense. Voters should know about the real life suffering that bans cause, and we know that abortion storytelling helps to change votes.
I just wish that women did not have to lay bare our pain in order for people to see us fully human and vote accordingly. Watch Dr. Dennard’s powerful ad below:
2024
The campaign ad featuring Dr. Dennard is part of a broader push on abortion rights by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who will mark this week’s Roe anniversary in a joint appearance in Virginia. And while the Biden-Harris campaign is focusing heavily on Donald Trump’s culpability, law professor Mary Ziegler made this important point to The New York Times:
“There’s a problem, potentially, for Biden, in the sense that young people don’t know what practically Biden can do that he hasn’t already done. What the administration hasn’t messaged effectively is what Trump could do. The reality is that things could get much worse, regardless of Congress.”
It’s a horrifying thought—the idea of things getting even worse—but that’s absolutely right. And it’s important that voters understand every detail of what could happen should Trump be re-elected. In a perfect world, Biden would relay that very real danger to voters while also offering a pro-active, enthusiastic, abortion rights plan.
Conservative Cruelty
It wouldn’t be a week in abortion rights without some good old-fashioned misogynist nightmares! On Friday, I told you about one of the more disturbing anti-choice strategies I’ve been tracking: the move to force women into labor or c-sections when they need emergency abortions.
Why the fuck would anyone ever want to force women who could be treated with a ten minute abortion into unnecessary vaginal delivery or a major surgery? Because they are desperate to divorce abortion from healthcare, and if women have to suffer or die as a result so be it.
Essentially, the anti-choice movement argues that abortion is never necessary to save someone’s health or life. We know that’s false—pregnancy is dangerous, and there are many, many circumstances in which the only way to stop a pregnant woman from dying is to stop her from being pregnant.
But anti-abortion activists believe they have a workaround: They force doctors to give women c-sections or make them deliver vaginally, then say, “See! They didn’t need an abortion after all!” Never mind that they put someone through mental and physical anguish—all in service of a political talking point.
This week, that strategy took hold in Wisconsin, where Republicans introduced a 14-week abortion ban that would only allow for care when a patient’s life is at risk, and even then doctors must “terminate the pregnancy in the manner that, in reasonable medical judgment, provides the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive.” (aka c-sections or vaginal deliveries)
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will veto the bill, thank goodness. But this kind of mandate is already in effect in other states, and the legislation makes crystal clear that this is the future Republicans want.
In more post-Dobbs horror stories (I’m sorry), we were still waiting for any sort of public outcry over the death of Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick—the young woman killed by Texas’ abortion ban. Since The New Yorker published Yeni’s story—making clear that it was the state’s abortion policy that led to her death—there has been almost no follow up coverage from other outlets, nor has there been the kind of outrage that Ireland saw after the death of Savita Halappanavar.
And as I reported this week, the anti-abortion movement is pulling out all the tactics that Abortion, Every Day has been predicting since Roe was overturned: They’re blaming doctors, activists, even Yeni herself.
They will do anything to avoid telling the truth: that Texas’ abortion ban—and the ideology that passed it—killed Yeni. (Read more about the anti-abortion ecosystem, including religious hospitals, here.)
Finally, Kate Cox—the Texas woman who became a viral example of Republican cruelty—spoke out this week about her experience. She talked to CBS News Sunday Morning about being denied an abortion even after her pregnancy was diagnosed with a fatal fetal abnormality—and how much she just wanted to stay in her home state: “I wanted to come home, cry on my own pillow, hold my babies, be near my doctors.”
Ballot Measure Updates
We had a few major updates this week on pro-choice ballot measures, the biggest coming out of Missouri: After introducing multiple measures, abortion rights groups in the state have decided on one in particular to start gathering signatures on. (You can read the proposed amendment from Missourians for Constitutional Freedom here.)
The measure protects abortion rights until ‘viability’, which would be defined on the “good faith judgement” of a health care professional. If a doctor determines that someone’s life, physical health or mental health is at risk, the government wouldn’t be able to intervene regardless of ‘viability’.
As you know, ‘viability’ standards have been the center of a lot of disagreement among pro-choice groups. Some believe the restrictions will preempt conservative claims that they support abortion ‘up until birth’, while others know those attacks will come regardless.
You know where I stand. I’m also concerned that the allowance for mental health exceptions will Republicans even more fodder than if there was no ‘viability’ standard at all. That said, the coalition of groups pushing the amendment are serious powerhouses who’ve been fighting for Missouri abortion rights over decades. And Mallory Schwarz, the executive director of Abortion Action Missouri, said the the measure meets voters in the state where they’re at:
“Many members of our coalition are out talking about abortion with Missourians every day, and we know that Missourians often have complex or nuanced positions on abortion, but there is one thing that they are aligned in, and it’s that they want to end the abortion ban…we are confident this is our best path forward.”
The good news is that a 2022 poll showed that the majority of Missouri voters oppose the state’s abortion ban—and we know that when abortion rights are put directly to voters, abortion rights wins. The campaign for the measure also raised more than $1 million on the first day it launched.
The bad news is that Republicans have already spent months attacking the measure, using many of the same tactics we saw in Ohio and more. (Some background here.) There’s also a newly-formed anti-abortion group, Missouri Stands with Women, co-opting feminist rhetoric in opposition to the amendment: they claim women and girls “deserve protection from the potential risks posed by unrestricted abortions.”
Pro-choice activists will have to gather more than 170,000 signatures in order to get the amendment in front of voters. And Abortion, Every Day will keep you updated every step of the way.
In other ballot measure news: Virginia Democrats are postponing their pro-choice ballot measure until the 2025 session—but thankfully that won’t push back when voters will actually see the amendment.
In Montana, the Republican Attorney General has blocked a pro-choice measure this week, arguing that the proposed amendment is “legally insufficient.” Attorney General Austin Knudsen made an argument that anti-abortion groups in Ohio tried around Issue 1: that the proposed amendment “logrolls multiple distinct political choices into a single initiative.” (It didn’t work in Ohio, so hopefully the same will be true in Montana.)
Knudsen also argues that his move blocking the amendment and voters’ ability to have a say on abortion is actually just his way of protecting voters: He says the measure “denies voters the ability to express their views on the nuance” of abortion. Just incredible.
Finally, an Oklahoma Republican wants to change the state’s constitution to define life as beginning at conception. Rep. Jim Olsen’s legislation would have to be passed by both lawmakers and voters. Given the recent history of abortion rights ballot measures, I’m not really sure how Olsen thinks this is going to go down in his favor!
State News
A new Kentucky bill would allow women to get child support during pregnancy—a move that could enshrine fetal personhood and allow the state to surveil pregnant people.
Minnesota Democrats want to include abortion rights protections in their state Equal Rights Amendment.
Two Texas lawyers are asking the state medical board to clarify what constitutes a medical exception under the state’s abortion ban.
A Maine Republican says she opposes a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights because it doesn’t also protect men’s “reproductive autonomy.”
A new Indiana poll shows that the majority of voters in the state—nearly 60%—want abortion to be legal.
And in the Southeast, ProPublica reports that while a record number of women were elected to statehouses last year, the region lags behind—some legislatures there are more than 80% male.
Keep An Eye On
Google came under fire this week after a report from The Guardian showed that the tech giant is still not deleting user location data for abortion clinic visits. Despite vowing to protect patient privacy, 2022 data showed that Google was saving all of their map data along with abortion-related web searches. (Information that could be used to power abortion-related prosecutions.)
After more promises to do better, The Guardian reports that Google has only made nominal changes: “The rate of retention of location information decreased from 60% of tested cases, a measurement taken five months after Google’s pledge, to 50% of tested cases in the most recent experiment.”
Researchers who tested Google in a handful of states (including Texas, North Carolina and New York) found that abortion patients’ location data might still be retained “with the same odds as a coin flip.”
In related news, Bloomberg Law reports that Accountable Tech and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over the privacy breaches.
Abortion, Every Day can’t do this work without you! The newsletter is 100% reader-supported and relies on paid subscriptions to bring you the abortion rights news you care about:
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My Prepared Remarks to Senate Dems
Good morning. My name is Jessica Valenti, and since Roe was overturned, I’ve been documenting the harms caused by abortion bans in a newsletter called Abortion, Every Day.
I cover everything from legislation and court battles to anti-abortion strategy and language, but the topic I find myself writing about the most, I’m sorry to say, is suffering.
And while Americans know about some of the suffering caused by abortion bans, thanks to the bravery of women like Dr. Dennard, there are hundreds of other stories that go unreported.
I have spoken to a 21 year old woman in Texas who was denied an abortion even though her fetus developed without a head, and a hospital worker in South Carolina who watched a college student die after attempting to end her own pregnancy.
I get more messages than I could ever answer.
And while I could share stories that would shock and sicken you in the way I’m shocked and sickened every single day, I wanted to use my time here to stress that this incredible suffering—this cruelty that treats American women as less than human—is all by design.
Despite Republican assurances that cases like Dr. Dennard’s are the result of legislative growing pains, or doctors simply not understanding the law—despite claims that their bans just need to be “tweaked” or “clarified”—I want to make clear that all of this pain and suffering was not just expected. It was planned for.
Anti-abortion lawmakers and activists would have voters believe that they had no idea this is what post-Roe America would look like.
But they had 50 years to plan for this moment, and they made that plan carefully, strategically and callously.
Every raped child forced to give birth, every cancer patient denied care, and every woman arrested after having a miscarriage, was accounted for and strategized over.
But with Americans getting angrier and angrier at what abortion bans are doing to their families and communities, Republicans are desperate to hide that truth from voters.
They need us to believe that they’re not the cruel extremists their laws show them to be. And they certainly don’t want us to know that they planned for women’s deaths in the same way they strategize over a talking point or a poll.
And I mean that literally.
For months, I’ve been tracking a conservative campaign to sow distrust in maternal mortality numbers. Republicans know that the data is going to show that their laws kill women, and so they’re preemptively claiming maternal death numbers aren’t accurate.
Some states have even disbanded their maternal death review committees entirely. And because the people most likely to die are the most marginalized among us, their hope is that no one will care.
I’ve also documented how the anti-abortion movement laid the groundwork, over months, to blame doctors for women’s deaths: as if the people working under threat of losing their license or jail time are the problem, and not the laws that prevent them from doing their jobs.
All of which is to say: when Republicans feign surprise or compassion over post-Roe horror stories, they are lying.
They knew that women would suffer and die as a result of their laws, they decided it was a tradeoff worth making, and everything they’ve done since Roe was overturned has been in service of hiding that fact.
Most of those lies are hiding in plain sight. When Republicans tell Americans that the national 15 week ban they’re proposing is a ‘reasonable middle ground’, they leave out the fact that the law would force women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term.
Their ‘compromise’ would do to any American capable of pregnancy what Texas tried to do to Kate Cox. And again, this isn’t an oversight—it’s a deliberate part of a much broader extremist strategy.
Right now, there is a quiet but well-funded campaign led by the most powerful anti-abortion groups in the country that is focused entirely on pressuring and forcing women to carry doomed pregnancies to term.
They’re not only trying to do away with exceptions for nonviable pregnancies—they’re trying to eradicate prenatal testing altogether. It’s a lot easier to force women to carry a dying fetus to term if they never get diagnosed to begin with.
When I tell people about this, the question I get asked most often is why? Why would anyone want to deliberately create a world where women are forced to be “walking coffins”?
It is inexplicable, until you understand that this has nothing to do with families or babies, but enforcing a worldview that says it’s women’s job to be pregnant and to stay pregnant, no matter what the cost or consequence.
But because Republicans don’t have the bravery to admit that truth—and because they’re afraid of voters, who are more pro-choice than ever—they lie.
They talk about ‘compassion’ because they know their laws are cruel. They use the word ‘consensus’ while passing bans that voters don’t want. And they call Democrats ‘extremists’ while fighting for the right to deny women life-saving abortions in emergency rooms.
And because Republicans know that voters overwhelmingly oppose their bans, they claim to be softening on abortion by pushing one of the biggest lies in abortion politics: “exceptions.”
Again and again, Republicans deliberately propose and pass exceptions that no one will ever qualify for. The only purpose they serve is to allow extremist lawmakers to feign moderation or pretend as if they’ve conceded something.
And frankly, any Republican who claims exceptions are real should have to do so in front of all of the people who’ve been told that they don’t qualify for care even as they went septic, or had their uterus removed.
They should have to defend themselves in front of women like Kate Cox and Dr. Dennard, or Brittany Watts, who wasn’t just denied care by a religious hospital when her water broke too early for her pregnancy to survive, but was arrested when she miscarried at home.
The only Republican exception that holds an iota of truth is the one about women’s lives—though not in the way they think. When you look at any Republican ‘life of the mother’ exception, they all contain a caveat. And that caveat says that women whose lives are at risk can be given abortions, unless the risk is because she’s suicidal.
I want to stress how telling that is. Republicans know that forcing people to be pregnant against their will make them want to kill themselves. And they enshrined, into law, that they don’t care.
In a moment when we’re hearing so many extreme horror stories, it can be difficult to get back to that foundational cruelty: that to force someone to be pregnant against their will, for any reason, at any point, causes profound existential harm.
Abortion is healthcare, but it is also freedom. That’s why every abortion denied is a tragedy. And, increasingly, Americans understand that. They don’t want the government involved in their decisions about pregnancy at any point.
The first time I came to DC was in 1992. I was 13 years old, and my mother brought me here for the pro-choice March for Women’s Lives.
I remember men on the sidelines screaming at us, and I remember how confused I was over why they hated us so much.
Today, my 13 year old daughter is in the room, and it’s her first time in Washington. Yet somehow, she’s here with less rights than I had thirty two years ago. And I think we should be ashamed of that.
My deepest hope is that she doesn’t need to follow in the steps of her mother and grandmother, and come here decades from now to defend her daughter’s humanity.
Thank you for your time.
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Idaho Banned Abortion. Then It Turned Down Supports for Pregnancies and Births.
Series:
Post-Roe America: Abortion Access Divides the Nation
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending nearly 50 years of federal protection for abortion, some states began enforcing strict abortion bans while others became new havens for the procedure. ProPublica is investigating how sweeping changes to reproductive health care access in America are affecting people, institutions and governments.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.
When the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade, it greenlighted the kind of near-universal abortion restrictions that Idaho lawmakers had spent the previous two years crafting. Gov. Brad Little said the state should turn to helping women who might otherwise have terminated pregnancies.
“We absolutely must come together like never before to support women and teens facing unexpected or unwanted pregnancies,” said Little, a Republican who supports the abortion ban. About 1,700 to 2,000 people a year in Idaho had abortions before the court ruling. “Families, churches, charities, and local and state government must stand ready to lift them up and help them and their families with access to adoption services, health care, financial and food assistance, counseling and treatment, and family planning.”
But since the June 2022 decision, Idaho has failed to deliver — even as other conservative states with abortion bans took steps to enhance their safety nets for families during pregnancy and after birth.
Idaho legislators disbanded a state committee that investigated the root causes of maternal deaths, making it the only state in the nation with no such mortality review.
They allowed two bills to die that would have put Idaho on the same track as nearly every other state with abortion restrictions — including Florida, Kentucky and Texas — by extending postpartum Medicaid coverage to 12 months. Idaho’s Medicaid coverage ends two months after birth, the minimum under federal law.
They turned down $36 million in federal grants to support child care this summer, while other states with new abortion restrictions — Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri among them — made investments in early childhood education and day care. Idaho lawmakers at the time attributed the decision to a pending audit of a different batch of grants.
Democrats generally support these kinds of measures, but Idaho Republicans dominate the state capitol and therefore control which bills move forward.
Rep. Brent Crane, a longtime Republican leader who chairs the House State Affairs Committee, said GOP lawmakers last year had hoped to put forward bills to improve health care and support for kids and families after the Supreme Court struck down federal protections for abortion rights. They instead got bogged down in debate over exceptions to the abortion ban.
“Idaho has some work to do,” Crane said. “Be patient with us.”
The need is urgent, according to Emily Allen, policy associate for the nonprofit Idaho Voices for Children. The state, she said, needs health care funding and other support in place to adjust to life after the abortion ban.
“Things have changed,” Allen said. “We can either bury our head in the sand, or we can respond with good policy that is very family-centric.”
But Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center and a leading anti-abortion lobbyist, is not bothered by the lack of government support. Pregnancies, births and child care are not the purview of the government, he said, but of families, communities, charities and, most of all, churches.
“The Bible is clear, and the history of Christendom broadly is clear, that it’s the church’s responsibility to meet the needs of the poor and to ensure that people have the services that they need to live flourishing lives,” Conzatti said.
No action set Idaho apart from other abortion-ban states more than when the Idaho Legislature allowed its Maternal Mortality Review Committee to die this year. The committee had been granted unique powers to review private health care and other records of women who died during or within a year after pregnancy and draw conclusions about the root causes of those deaths.
Its budget of $10,000 a year came only from federal funds, so keeping the committee going seemed pro forma. Every single state, New York and Texas alike, had put one in place. But in Idaho, a lobbyist for an ultraconservative political nonprofit stood up and spoke against it at a hearing.
Fred Birnbaum, legislative affairs director of Idaho Freedom Foundation, said studying the causes of Idaho’s roughly 10 to 15 preventable maternal deaths each year risked inviting a push for more government support to help keep people from dying. And government support was anathema to his group.
“You know the old saying, ‘All roads lead to Rome,’” said Birnbaum, who testified against the committee’s creation on similar grounds in 2019. “Well, all government-created committees lead to the call for more government spending.”
Birnbaum’s assessment was partly correct. Idaho’s maternal mortality committee had made recommendations that could increase public spending, such as extending Medicaid coverage postpartum, expanding access to naloxone to prevent death from opioid overdose and providing better housing and child care support. But of the 52 recommendations in the committee’s final report, most called for no new government spending.
The role of such committees has not been so controversial in other Republican-led states.
The Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, for example, has been around for about a decade and is now “part of the entire effort” to reduce tragic outcomes from pregnancy and birth, said Chris Van Deusen, director of media relations for the Texas Department of State Health Services.
The Texas committee’s findings in 2018 that patients had bled to death in childbirth helped push the state to adopt recommendations and protocols for hospitals to train their employees to measure blood loss and to educate people on what is abnormal bleeding. Birth-related hemorrhage deaths started to fall the following year, Van Deusen said.
He said the committee has generally had the support of Texas lawmakers, who voted last year to adopt one of its recommendations and extend postpartum Medicaid coverage to 12 months.
Advocates for the creation of Idaho’s committee in 2019 pointed out how other states had helped reduce maternal death rates: seat belt laws in Nevada; substance use disorder treatment in Michigan; urgent messages to doctors and hospitals in Florida.
Lucky Bourn, the longtime Republican coroner of Minidoka County and a member of the maternal mortality committee, said its demise means Idaho will have no window into maternal deaths in the wake of its abortion ban, because the committee’s final report used data from 2021.
“I was very disappointed in the Legislature when they did not continue the funding of it,” Bourn said. “The thought that comes to my mind is, ‘With the change in the abortion laws in the state of Idaho, do you think that might have a correlation in the rise of the mortality rate of the women who don’t want to be pregnant?’”
The number of maternal deaths since the abortion ban took effect has not yet been reported. The committee believed it would have had 10 maternal deaths to evaluate from 2022 if it had continued.
ProPublica identified at least two deaths during pregnancy and childbirth that the maternal mortality committee could have evaluated. One death was from complications during childbirth in 2022, according to the woman’s obituary. The other was a murder-suicide this year that claimed the life of the pregnant mother and her toddler, according to the sheriff in the rural North Idaho county where she lived.
Little’s staff told ProPublica that he will bring forward a proposal in 2024 “to continue the work of this important committee.”
Lawmakers are also poised to consider other proposals that have previously gone nowhere. Idaho House Majority Leader Megan Blanksma, a Republican from Elmore County, said she is working on bills that would improve prenatal and postpartum health care, resume the study of maternal deaths and “support young families.”
Blanksma also said she will revive legislation to extend Medicaid coverage for postpartum care to a full year, a concept she said she dropped last session because of the ballooning cost of Medicaid.
“We are working on a full package to introduce come January,” Blanksma told ProPublica.
Conzatti, the anti-abortion lobbyist, advocates a more hands-off approach from the state.
Idaho has at least 16 “pregnancy resource centers” spread across every region of the state. Many in Idaho are Christian-oriented organizations that offer counseling, referrals and some material support like diapers. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the centers’ goal back when Roe v. Wade was in effect was to persuade women to carry their pregnancies to term rather than have abortions.
Few Idaho centers offer medical care beyond pregnancy tests and “heartbeat” ultrasounds.But those centers are where Conzatti said people who have unplanned pregnancies should now look to for help. They embody his vision of a world before legalized abortion and before Medicaid got involved in the lives of poor families.
Crane, the Republican House leader, wouldn’t rule out state-funded support for pregnancy centers if there’s political will for it among lawmakers.
“Every option is on the table,” he said.
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NB note - the following piece could not be loaded into Blogger - I think there are too many graphics and a video (not youtube).
This is the GOP on Abortion, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s (DSCC) website, at < https://www.goponabortion.com/
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Opinion | The end of Roe v. Wade was a catastrophe. It could still get much worse.
Today is the 51st anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. Until last year’s anniversary, we could commemorate how far we have come in the fight for equality. But now, we are reminded of just how much freedom we have lost.
The overturning of Roe in June 2022 meant a swift and brutal transition for those living in states governed by extremists. Health centers were shuttered. Doctors faced jail time for honoring their Hippocratic oath. And patients were abandoned.
Donald Trump and the MAGA Republican Party have made their views clear: They are proud to have denied health care to pregnant women.
For those who could travel to get the care they needed, it meant fleeing from their homes and across state lines to get abortion care. Often, that brought the threat of a bounty on a spouse or friend who helped them make the trip.
For those who couldn’t travel, it meant enduring a health care system that no longer prioritized their well-being. It meant being forced to continue a pregnancy, no matter the stakes or risks.
In Tennessee, a woman excited to grow her family was denied a lifesaving abortion because a trigger ban had gone into effect that same day. As a result, she had to undergo an emergency hysterectomy — preventing her from ever having another child.
Donald Trump and the MAGA Republican Party have made their views clear: They are proud to have denied health care to pregnant women, and they intend to enact a nationwide ban on abortion that voids any state law codifying reproductive rights.
They have already rushed toward that goal with lawsuits seeking to impose a national ban on the abortion pill and overturn the right to receive emergency medical care. The GOP has filed legislation criminalizing interstate travel — while rallying more than 190 House Republicans to vote against access to birth control.
Joe Scarborough: Trump made an incredible political mistake last night
They will not stop until every woman in every state, county and ZIP code is forced to surrender their bodily autonomy to politicians.
When Republicans dismantled our constitutional abortion rights, they struck a catastrophic blow against women’s freedom and dignity — against the very idea that our lives are of equal value. Right-wing abortion bans, book bans and drag bans are all wrapped up in the same dangerous belief that a certain kind of person is more worthy than another.
This year’s election will determine whether that ideology seeps into every corner of the country or whether we start regaining ground toward equality. We must vote for freedom.
Katherine Clark, the Democratic whip, represents Massachusetts' 5th Congressional District in the House of Representatives.
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