1). “Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable: At least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state, ProPublica has found. This is one of their stories”, Sep 16, 2024, Kavitha Surana, ProPublica, at < https://www.propublica.org/
2). “Georgia Ban Kills Young Mother”, Sep 16, 2024, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: We are increasingly seeing the actual horrors of the Dark Ages conditions, forced on American women (and those who love them, their families and sexual partners) by the Trump Abortion Bans, that are now in force in over 20 states. In Item 1)., “Abortion Bans Have Delayed ….”, ProPublica has published this fine article that looks, in some detail, at the death of one young woman in Georgia, that took place only a couple of weeks after the Dobbs Decision in July 2022. The ProPublica article notes that their investigation had found at least 2 young women who had died as a direct result of being denied abortion / reproductive health care that was previously the norm under Roe v. Wade. Amber Nicole Thurman died in an Atlanta area hospital after a series of denials of care and a failed attempt to try to go to North Carolina to get the care she needed. The article states in its first paragraphs that:
“In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat.
“She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C.
“But just that summer, her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison. ….
“It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late.”
The full article details what happened to Thurman and how easy it was even for a well-educated and responsible young woman to lose her life, or suffer grievous harm under the current Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth regime that controls women in 22 states.
The Georgia Maternal Mortality Review Committee ruled that her death was “preventable” and that the delay of abortion type care had “a large impact”. It is significant to note that some states, notably including Texas and Idaho, have changed how they collect statistics related to abortion or denial of abortions and health and/or mortality outcomes for women who live in those retrograde places. Texas has set up a phonied up statistical collection system that, in a variety of ways, hides the inevitable increase in maternal deaths and the increase in infant mortality that has resulted from their respective draconian Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth regimes in place.
On average once a week in Idaho, women in duress due to the denial of timely abortion / reproductive health care, are flown out of the state in medical helicopter transfers to places, like Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, that have adequate access to abortion care. The Attorney General of Idaho, a thuggish reactionary named Raoul Labrador, speaking on the steps of the Supreme Court Building during the EMTALA hearings, actually claimed that no such medical helicopter transfers were taking place; and he accused the hospitals and physicians involved of lying to support their political views on the state's notorious Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth regime. It is also worth noting that the average cost of moving a seriously sick woman, who needs an abortion, by medical helicopter is about $70,000 per flight.
In Item 2)., “Georgia Ban Kills Young Mother”, Jessica Valenti briefly discusses the death of Amber Nicole Thurman, and looks at general developments in the politics of abortion. Valenti also points out that these are surely not the only deaths of young women due to denial of needed abortion / reproductive healthcare. For certain 2 women died in Texas and now 2 in Georgia, and the statistics are based on data that is mostly 2 years old. There have undoubtedly been many more as Valenti notes in her article:
“We know that Thurman isn’t the first woman to be killed by an abortion ban. Anyone who works in abortion rights can tell you that many women have died, we’re just not hearing their stories. In part, it’s because abortion rights activists are protecting patients and their families—making sure they know what it’s like to share a story like this publicly. But we’re also not hearing about post-Roe deaths because mainstream publications appear to be struggling with how to report on them.”
It is certainly a fact that in an immense country, where something like 150 million people live in states politically controlled by reactionaries and fascists, and where these red state regimes are now phonying up and hiding the real statistics; that some hundred at least, or more likely hundreds of women have died due to denial of basic abortion and reproductive health care.
This situation is an outrage. Abortion and Reproductive Rights activists have worked to put Abortion Rights state constitutional amendments on the November 5th ballot in 11 states, despite endless machinations to frustrate them by Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth regimes and supporters. Florida and Missouri are the most notable; but there are nine other states with some sort of ballot proposal, including Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, Nebraska, New York and South Dakota. The State Supreme court in Arkansas found an excuse to deny that right to the people of that state. These ballot proposals bear careful scrutiny. While the U.S. is not, by even the least rigorous definition a democracy, it does have some democratic elements. These ballot proposals are certainly one of them. In numerous places such issues as minimum wage, laws that restrict union organizing, marijuana legalization, and ending cash bail have been passed by the people in defiance of reactionary controlled state legislatures. Abortion and Reproductive Healthcare have joined this set of issues.
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Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.
At least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state, ProPublica has found. This is one of their stories.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat.
She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C.
But just that summer, her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison.
Thurman waited in pain in a hospital bed, worried about what would happen to her 6-year-old son, as doctors monitored her infection spreading, her blood pressure sinking and her organs beginning to fail.
It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late.
Why should I trust your reporting?
I (Kavitha Surana) am a reporter that has been covering reproductive health care access since Roe v. Wade was overturned. I’ve spoken with doctors, community workers and patients across the country about how abortion bans have made pregnancy more dangerous in America, and I’ve written about the Republican lawmakers who refused to listen.
If you want to get in touch and learn more about how I work, email me. I take your privacy very seriously.
The otherwise healthy 28-year-old medical assistant, who had her sights set on nursing school, should not have died, an official state committee recently concluded.
Tasked with examining pregnancy-related deaths to improve maternal health, the experts, including 10 doctors, deemed hers “preventable” and said the hospital’s delay in performing the critical procedure had a “large” impact on her fatal outcome.
Their reviews of individual patient cases are not made public. But ProPublica obtained reports that confirm that at least two women have already died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state.
There are almost certainly others.
Committees like the one in Georgia, set up in each state, often operate with a two-year lag behind the cases they examine, meaning that experts are only now beginning to delve into deaths that took place after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion.
Thurman’s case marks the first time an abortion-related death, officially deemed “preventable,” is coming to public light. ProPublica will share the story of the second in the coming days. We are also exploring other deaths that have not yet been reviewed but appear to be connected to abortion bans.
Doctors warned state legislators women would die if medical procedures sometimes needed to save lives became illegal.
Though Republican lawmakers who voted for state bans on abortion say the laws have exceptions to protect the “life of the mother,” medical experts cautioned that the language is not rooted in science and ignores the fast-moving realities of medicine.
The most restrictive state laws, experts predicted, would pit doctors’ fears of prosecution against their patients’ health needs, requiring providers to make sure their patient was inarguably on the brink of death or facing “irreversible” harm when they intervened with procedures like a D&C.
“They would feel the need to wait for a higher blood pressure, wait for a higher fever — really got to justify this one — bleed a little bit more,” Dr. Melissa Kottke, an OB-GYN at Emory, warned lawmakers in 2019 during one of the hearings over Georgia’s ban.
Doctors and a nurse involved in Thurman’s care declined to explain their thinking and did not respond to questions from ProPublica. Communications staff from the hospital did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Georgia’s Department of Public Health, which oversees the state maternal mortality review committee, said it cannot comment on ProPublica’s reporting because the committee’s cases are confidential and protected by federal law.
The availability of D&Cs for both abortions and routine miscarriage care helped save lives after the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, studies show, reducing the rate of maternal deaths for women of color by up to 40% the first year after abortion became legal.
But since abortion was banned or restricted in 22 states over the past two years, women in serious danger have been turned away from emergency rooms and told that they needed to be in more peril before doctors could help. Some have been forced to continue high-risk pregnancies that threatened their lives. Those whose pregnancies weren’t even viable have been told they could return when they were “crashing.”
Such stories have been at the center of the upcoming presidential election, during which the right to abortion is on the ballot in 10 states.
But Republican legislators have rejected small efforts to expand and clarify health exceptions — even in Georgia, which has one of the nation’s highest rates of maternal mortality and where Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women.
When its law went into effect in July 2022, Gov. Brian Kemp said he was “overjoyed” and believed the state had found an approach that would keep women “safe, healthy and informed.”
After advocates tried to block the ban in court, arguing the law put women in danger, attorneys for the state of Georgia accused them of “hyperbolic fear mongering.”
Two weeks later, Thurman was dead.
Thurman, who carried the full load of a single parent, loved being a mother. Every chance she got, she took her son to petting zoos, to pop-up museums and on planned trips, like one to a Florida beach. “The talks I have with my son are everything,” she posted on social media.
But when she learned she was pregnant with twins in the summer of 2022, she quickly decided she needed to preserve her newfound stability, her best friend, Ricaria Baker, told ProPublica. Thurman and her son had recently moved out of her family’s home and into a gated apartment complex with a pool, and she was planning to enroll in nursing school.
The timing could not have been worse. On July 20, the day Georgia’s law banning abortion at six weeks went into effect, her pregnancy had just passed that mark, according to records her family shared with ProPublica.
Thurman wanted a surgical abortion close to home and held out hope as advocates tried to get the ban paused in court, Baker said. But as her pregnancy progressed to its ninth week, she couldn’t wait any longer. She scheduled a D&C in North Carolina, where abortion at that stage was still legal, and on Aug. 13 woke up at 4 a.m. to make the journey with her best friend.
On their drive, they hit standstill traffic, Baker said. The clinic couldn’t hold Thurman’s spot longer than 15 minutes — it was inundated with women from other states where bans had taken effect. Instead, a clinic employee offered Thurman a two-pill abortion regimen approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, mifepristone and misoprostol. Her pregnancy was well within the standard of care for that treatment.
Getting to the clinic had required scheduling a day off from work, finding a babysitter, making up an excuse to borrow a relative’s car and walking through a crowd of anti-abortion protesters. Thurman didn’t want to reschedule, Baker said.
At the clinic, Thurman sat through a counseling session in which she was told how to safely take the pills and instructed to go to the emergency room if complications developed. She signed a release saying she understood. She took the first pill there and insisted on driving home before any symptoms started, Baker said. She took the second pill the next day, as directed.
Deaths due to complications from abortion pills are extremely rare. Out of nearly 6 million women who’ve taken mifepristone in the U.S. since 2000, 32 deaths were reported to the FDA through 2022, regardless of whether the drug played a role. Of those, 11 patients developed sepsis. Most of the remaining cases involved intentional and accidental drug overdoses, suicide, homicide and ruptured ectopic pregnancies.
Baker and Thurman spoke every day that week. At first, there was only cramping, which Thurman expected. But days after she took the second pill, the pain increased and blood was soaking through more than one pad per hour. If she had lived nearby, the clinic in North Carolina would have performed a D&C for free as soon as she followed up, the executive director told ProPublica. But Thurman was four hours away.
On the evening of Aug. 18, Thurman vomited blood and passed out at home, according to 911 call logs. Her boyfriend called for an ambulance. Thurman arrived at Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge at 6:51 p.m.
ProPublica obtained the summary narrative of Thurman’s hospital stay provided to the maternal mortality review committee, as well as the group’s findings. The narrative is based on Thurman’s medical records, with identifying information removed. The committee does not interview doctors involved with the case or ask hospitals to respond to its findings. ProPublica also consulted with medical experts, including members of the committee, about the timeline of events.
Within Thurman’s first hours at the hospital, which says it is staffed at all hours with an OB who specializes in hospital care, it should have been clear that she was in danger, medical experts told ProPublica.
Her lower abdomen was tender, according to the summary. Her white blood cell count was critically high and her blood pressure perilously low — at one point, as Thurman got up to go to the bathroom, she fainted again and hit her head. Doctors noted a foul odor during a pelvic exam, and an ultrasound showed possible tissue in her uterus.
The standard treatment of sepsis is to start antibiotics and immediately seek and remove the source of the infection. For a septic abortion, that would include removing any remaining tissue from the uterus. One of the hospital network’s own practices describes a D&C as a “fairly common, minor surgical procedure” to be used after a miscarriage to remove fetal tissue.
After assessing her at 9:38 p.m., doctors started Thurman on antibiotics and an IV drip, the summary said. The OB-GYN noted the possibility of doing a D&C the next day.
But that didn’t happen the following morning, even when an OB diagnosed “acute severe sepsis.” By 5:14 a.m., Thurman was breathing rapidly and at risk of bleeding out, according to her vital signs. Even five liters of IV fluid had not moved her blood pressure out of the danger zone. Doctors escalated the antibiotics.
Instead of performing the newly criminalized procedure, they continued to gather information and dispense medicine, the summary shows.
Doctors had Thurman tested for sexually transmitted diseases and pneumonia.
They placed her on Levophed, a powerful blood pressure support that could do nothing to treat the infection and posed a new threat: The medication can constrict blood flow so much that patients could need an amputation once stabilized.
At 6:45 a.m., Thurman’s blood pressure continued to dip, and she was taken to the intensive care unit.
At 7:14 a.m., doctors discussed initiating a D&C. But it still didn’t happen. Two hours later, lab work indicated her organs were failing, according to experts who read her vital signs.
At 12:05 p.m., more than 17 hours after Thurman had arrived, a doctor who specializes in intensive care notified the OB-GYN that her condition was deteriorating.
Thurman was finally taken to an operating room at 2 p.m.
By then, the situation was so dire that doctors started with open abdominal surgery. They found that her bowel needed to be removed, but it was too risky to operate because not enough blood was flowing to the area — a possible complication from the blood pressure medication, an expert explained to ProPublica. The OB performed the D&C but immediately continued with a hysterectomy.
During surgery, Thurman’s heart stopped.
Her mother was praying in the waiting room when one of the doctors approached. “Come walk with me,” she said.
Until she got the call from the hospital, her mother had no idea Thurman had been pregnant. She recalled her daughter’s last words before she was wheeled into surgery — they had made no sense coming from a vibrant young woman who seemed to have her whole life ahead of her:
“Promise me you’ll take care of my son.”
There is a “good chance” providing a D&C earlier could have prevented Amber Thurman’s death, the maternal mortality review committee concluded.
Every state has a committee of experts who meet regularly to examine deaths that occurred during or within a year after a pregnancy. Their goal is to collect accurate data and identify the root causes of America’s increasing maternal mortality rate, then translate those lessons into policy changes. Their findings and recommendations are sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and their states publish an annual report, but their reviews of individual cases are never public.
Georgia’s committee has 32 regular members from a variety of backgrounds, including OB-GYNs, cardiologists, mental health care providers, a medical examiner, health policy experts, community advocates and others. This summer, the committee reviewed deaths through Fall 2022, but most states have not gotten that far.
After reviewing Thurman’s case, the committee highlighted Piedmont’s “lack of policies/procedures in place to evacuate uterus immediately” and recommended all hospitals implement policies “to treat a septic abortion on an ongoing basis.”
It is not clear from the records available why doctors waited to provide a D&C to Thurman, though the summary report shows they discussed the procedure at least twice in the hours before they finally did.
Piedmont did not have a policy to guide doctors on how to interpret the state abortion ban when Thurman arrived for care, according to two people with knowledge of internal conversations who were not authorized to speak publicly. In the months after she died, an internal task force of providers there created policies to educate staff on how to navigate the law, though they are not able to give legal advice, the sources said.
In interviews with more than three dozen OB-GYNs in states that outlawed abortion, ProPublica learned how difficult it is to interpret the vague and conflicting language in bans’ medical exceptions — especially, the doctors said, when their judgment could be called into question under the threat of prison time.
Take the language in Georgia’s supposed lifesaving exceptions.
It prohibits doctors from using any instrument “with the purpose of terminating a pregnancy.” While removing fetal tissue is not terminating a pregnancy, medically speaking, the law only specifies it’s not considered an abortion to remove “a dead unborn child” that resulted from a “spontaneous abortion” defined as “naturally occurring” from a miscarriage or a stillbirth.
Thurman had told doctors her miscarriage was not spontaneous — it was the result of taking pills to terminate her pregnancy.
There is also an exception, included in most bans, to allow abortions “necessary in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” There is no standard protocol for how providers should interpret such language, doctors said. How can they be sure a jury with no medical experience would agree that intervening was “necessary”?
ProPublica asked the governor’s office on Friday to respond to cases of denied care, including the two abortion-related deaths, and whether its exceptions were adequate. Spokesperson Garrison Douglas said they were clear and gave doctors the power to act in medical emergencies. He returned to the state’s previous argument, describing ProPublica’s reporting as a “fear-mongering campaign.”
Republican officials across the country have largely rejected calls to provide guidance.
In 2023, a group of Tennessee Republicans was unable to push through a small change to the state’s abortion ban, intended to give doctors greater leeway when intervening for patients facing health complications.
“No one wants to tell their spouse, child or loved one that their life is not important in a medical emergency as you watch them die when they could have been saved,” said Republican Rep. Esther Helton-Haynes, a nurse who sponsored the bill.
The state’s main anti-abortion lobbyist, Will Brewer, vigorously opposed the change. Some pregnancy complications “work themselves out,” he told a panel of lawmakers. Doctors should be required to “pause and wait this out and see how it goes.”
At some hospitals, doctors are doing just that. Doctors told ProPublica they have seen colleagues disregard the standard of care when their patients are at risk of infection and wait to see if a miscarriage completes naturally before offering a D&C.
Although no doctor has been prosecuted for violating abortion bans, the possibility looms over every case, they said, particularly outside of well-funded academic institutions that have lawyers promising criminal defense.
Doctors in public hospitals and those outside of major metro areas told ProPublica that they are often left scrambling to figure out on a case-by-case basis when they are allowed to provide D&Cs and other abortion procedures. Many fear they are taking on all of the risk alone and would not be backed up by their hospitals if a prosecutor charged them with a crime. At Catholic hospitals, they typically have to transfer patients elsewhere for care.
When they do try to provide care, it can be a challenge to find other medical staff to participate. A D&C requires an anesthesiologist, nurses, attending physicians and others. Doctors said peers have refused to participate because of their personal views or their fear of being exposed to criminal charges. Georgia law allows medical staff to refuse to participate in abortions.
Thurman’s family members may never learn the exact variables that went into doctors’ calculations. The hospital has not fulfilled their request for her full medical record. There was no autopsy.
For years, all Thurman’s family had was a death certificate that said she died of “septic shock” and “retained products of conception” — a rare description that had previously only appeared once in Georgia death records over the last 15 years, ProPublica found. The family learned Thurman’s case had been reviewed and deemed preventable from ProPublica’s reporting.
The sting of Thurman’s death remains extremely raw to her loved ones, who feel her absence most deeply as they watch her son grow taller and lose teeth and start school years without her.
They focus on surrounding him with love but know nothing can replace his mother.
On Monday, she would have turned 31.
Georgia Ban Kills Young Mother
Click to skip ahead: A Death in Georgia looks at a horrific ProPublica story about a young mother who was killed by an abortion ban. Criminalizing Pregnancy tells the story of a woman in South Carolina charged with murder for her miscarriage. In the States, news from Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and New Hampshire. Ballot Measure Updates looks at Florida and Missouri. In the Nation, some quick hits. 2024 news gets into JD Vance’s apology tour. And in Keep An Eye On, a crisis pregnancy center in Massachusetts hacked into an abortion clinic’s records to send messages to patients.
A Death in Georgia
An abortion ban has killed a woman in Georgia. ProPublica has the story of Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old medical assistant and mother who died in a hospital, surrounded by people who could have saved her but didn’t.
Reporter Kavitha Surana—one of the best abortion rights journalists in the country—painstakingly details the way that Thurman was killed by a state that claims to allow abortions to save women’s lives.
You should read the entire story, if you can, but the key details are that Thurman took abortion medication to end a 9 week pregnancy, and later went to an Atlanta hospital because not all of the fetal tissue had expelled. The standard of care for the rare complication would have been to give Thurman antibiotics and remove the remaining tissue. Because of Georgia’s abortion ban, Piedmont Henry Hospital only did the former.
In fact, despite diagnosing Thurman with sepsis, the hospital waited 20 hours before removing the source of her infection—and by then, it was too late.
Over the next few days and weeks, we’re going to hear all sorts of bullshit from anti-abortion activists and lawmakers. They’re going to say that Thurman died not because of Georgia’s abortion ban, but because of abortion medication. Or they’ll blame the hospital for supposedly not understanding the law, which they’ll say of course allows for abortion when necessary to save someone’s life. That, too, will be a lie.
We know that Thurman isn’t the first woman to be killed by an abortion ban. Anyone who works in abortion rights can tell you that many women have died, we’re just not hearing their stories. In part, it’s because abortion rights activists are protecting patients and their families—making sure they know what it’s like to share a story like this publicly. But we’re also not hearing about post-Roe deaths because mainstream publications appear to be struggling with how to report on them. That’s why I’m so grateful to ProPublica and Surana for their coverage here.
ProPublica says they’ll be reporting on more deaths in the coming days, and I’m sure we’ll hear more stories like Thurman’s. The question is whether their names will reach beyond the pages of these publications. I really hope they do.
For more on why we aren’t hearing about post-Roe deaths, read my column below:
Criminalizing Pregnancy
I hate to hit you with one horror story after another, but I figured better to rip the bandaid off at the top of the newsletter. A 22 year-old college students was charged with “homicide by child abuse” in South Carolina after suffering a miscarriage. Thankfully, a grand jury declined to pursue charges against the student last week, but this is just another example of the kind of criminalization nightmare we can expect to see again and again.
In fact, Amari Marsh’s story sounds strikingly similar to Brittany Watts’—the Ohio woman who was charged with ‘abuse of a corpse’ after flushing her miscarriage. In Marsh’s case, she was several months into her pregnancy when she had a miscarriage. Even though Marsh called 911 for help, local news outlets reported that the young woman “gave birth” into her toilet and covered the fetus with toilet paper. Like Watts, Marsh is also Black; we know that Black women are much more likely to be criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes.
Here’s Pregnancy Justice Legal Director Karen Thompson on the case:
“There’s no rulebook for pregnancy loss, and we do know that Amari did nothing wrong and never should have been charged. The state’s justification of its charge—that Amari waited a whole 10 minutes to call 911—underscores the fact that being pregnant in America is in and of itself a reason for suspicion, especially if you’re Black. Our country has a long history of controlling Black bodies, and it seems hellbent on continuing this deeply disturbing tradition through the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes.”
What’s also important to remember is that even though these charges were dropped, it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t incredible harm done. Marsh says that while she’s relieved the case is over, “they will never fully understand what they put me through.”
“While facing a murder charge and the possibility of decades in prison, I still had to process my pregnancy loss. I’m now working to rebuild my life through counseling, and I’m back in school.”
To show some support to Marsh, consider donating to her GoFundMe here. And for more on criminalization, read Abortion, Every Day’s coverage of the issue here and here.
In the States
Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban is officially off the books, nearly five months after the state legislature voted to repeal the law. For those who need a refresher: The Arizona Supreme Court had ruled in support of the ban—a law created before women had the right to vote—which led to a huge national backlash. Republicans running in national races (like Trump) were concerned that the law would hurt them on election day, so they convinced several Arizona Republicans to vote with Democrats to repeal the law.
Now, abortion is legal in the state up until 15 weeks, and there’s a pro-choice measure on the ballot this November. Read more about why Arizona’s ban was such a national tipping point here.
A reminder that abortion medication will become a controlled substance in Louisiana on October 1st—a move that has already put pregnant people’s lives in danger, with hospitals removing the medication from their obstetric crash carts. (Controlled substances have a specific protocol for prescriptions and must be locked up.) KUOW spoke to emergency room physician Jennifer Avegno, head of the New Orleans Health Department, about what this means for patients and providers.
In New Mexico, the Democrat running to for reelection in a competitive House seat is focusing on abortion rights as his opponent attacks him on immigration policy. The New York Times covers it as a battle of political messages—with Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez betting on abortion to bring him home a win. I really like that Vasquez is going after Republicans for talking about abortion as a “states’ rights” issue:
“That is now the de facto position of folks who want to limit women’s reproductive health care. We’ve seen the consequences of what this means for women.”
It’s so vital that we’re pointing out what this message really is: cowardice.
The Democrat running for New Hampshire governor, former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig, reiterated her support for abortion rights in a local television segment this weekend. Craig also said her opponent Kelly Ayotte has spent her entire career “attacking reproductive freedom,” and that “she is saying anything she can to be elected.” (Ayotte, like most Republicans, has been trying to play down her anti-abortion extremism.)
I missed this last week out of Indiana: A judge denied abortion rights activists’ attempts to broaden an ‘exception’ to the state’s total abortion ban that would have made it easier for doctors to give women health- and life-saving care.
The abortion providers who brought the suit argued that the ban’s so-called exception was narrow and vague, and that it’s putting patients’ lives at risk. While the judge acknowledged that the law put doctors in "the incredibly unenviable position" of sorting out when to give care under threat of prosecution, and that providers had offered “significant and compelling evidence,” she still ruled that the ban could remain as is. A nightmare.
Finally, let’s end with some good-ish news—because I could not love this more. A 93 year-old man in Oklahoma bought a billboard declaring, “Women, the Republican party does not respect you…vote Democrat.” When a local news outlet asked Burt Holmes why he bought the billboard, he said, “Because I think women can win the next big election in the country if they will get out and vote.” Burt knows what’s up!
Quick hits:
USA Today on the North Dakota ruling repealing the state’s abortion ban;
CVS locations in Massachusetts are now offering prescriptions for hormonal contraceptives;
And Mother Jones updates readers on some of the good news we had last week in abortion rights in Nevada, North Dakota, Missouri and Nebraska.
Ballot Measure Updates
If you’re a regular reader, you know that one of the most common anti-abortion attacks against pro-choice ballot measures is to claim that they not only erase parental rights—but allow children to get gender-affirming care without parental consent. Essentially, Republicans know that abortion rights are incredibly popular, so they’re banking on anti-trans bigotry instead.
We saw that messaging pop up recently in Missouri, where Sen. Josh Hawley told an audience that Amendment 3, which would restore abortion rights in the state, would allow activists to “sterilize” their children.
“This is about an effort to come into our schools, behind your backs without your knowledge, to tell our kids that there’s something wrong with them and to give them drugs that will sterilize them for life, to push them towards procedures that will fundamentally change their bodies, irrevocably for life and there will be nothing we can do about it.”
Absolute insanity. While Hawley makes shit up about the pro-choice amendment, more than 800 doctors and medical professionals have signed onto a letter supporting the measure:
“Missourians are being denied abortions and forced to continue life-threatening pregnancies, risking their health and lives. Doctors can’t treat patients with heartbreaking pregnancy complications until they are on the brink of death. Otherwise, they could be put in jail…No one should ever have their health deteriorate or need to flee to receive care, nor should anyone have to carry a pregnancy against their will.”
It’s no wonder that Missouri’s abortion rights ballot measure campaign has doubled its fundraising since it was approved for the ballot last month. Not only are voters seeing the consequences of abortion bans first hand, the increase in donations may be thanks to voters’ fury over Republicans in the state trying to keep abortion off the ballot. Remember, the Missouri Supreme Court had to force Republicans to keep the issue on November’s ballot after a conservative judge ruled that the measure was “invalid.”
Meanwhile, abortion rights organizations in Florida are suing over a website launched by the state Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) that claims Amendment 4 puts women’s lives in danger. It’s illegal for the state to use taxpayer funds to lobby against a citizen initiative, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans from weaponizing Florida agencies to keep abortion banned. Read more about the Florida GOP’s dirty tricks here.
Also: I’m seeing more coverage of the doctors in Florida coming out against Amendment 4, so I just want to remind folks that these extremist doctors were organized by the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG). That’s the downright batshit organization that says abortion is never necessary to save a woman’s life and that doctors should give patients c-sections instead of abortions, even if the fetus isn’t viable. So yeah, maybe don’t listen to them.
One last thing: I joined Dahlia Lithwick at her Slate podcast “Amicus” to talk about the attacks on ballot measures, along with Lauren Brenzel, the campaign director of Amendment 4 in Florida. You can listen to our conversation here.
In the Nation
TIME magazine on the threat of the Comstock Act should Harris lose;
ProPublica has published a FAQ on abortion medication’s safety (tl;dr, it’s safe);
NPR looks at the “DIY Medicine Movement” and those who are taking their health in their own hands, including those seeking abortions;
Basketball player Steph Curry cited abortion rights as one of the reasons it was “an easy choice” to endorse Kamala Harris;
And POLITICO profiles Hadley Duvall, the young Kentucky woman who has been campaigning for Kamala Harris and is credited with winning re-election for Gov. Andy Beshear.
2024
It wasn’t so long ago that JD Vance said that Donald Trump would veto a national abortion ban—a comment we knew was bullshit, especially given Republicans’ tricky definition of ‘ban.’ But now Vance is walking those comments back, saying he “learned his lesson” on speaking for Trump. Because remember, during the presidential debate last week, Trump refused to say whether he’d veto a ban and chastised Vance, saying, “I didn’t discuss it with JD.”
In an appearance on “Meet the Press” his weekend, Vance claims that he and Trump “still haven’t discussed” the possibility of a national abortion ban. I doubt that’s true, but even if it was—it’s not a good look for the candidates. Abortion is perhaps the most important political issue of the election and you simply haven’t talked about it?
Vance continued by saying the idea of a national ban is “not realistic” and that Trump “has been clear, a national abortion ban is not on the table.”
What was interesting to me about the interview is the way that Vance repeated this “back to the states” talking point that Republicans are so fond of:
“He wants abortion policy to be made by the states because he thinks, look, Alabama is going to make a different decision from California, and that’s okay. We’re a big country. We can disagree.”
As I’ve written so many times before, this is their way of trying to distance themselves from abortion and avoid voters post-Roe anger. Republicans think that they can just shrug the issue off and Americans won’t notice. But with stories like the one from ProPublica coming out—with more women dying—they’re going to have to do a lot better than that.
“They must refuse to let Mr. Trump and other Republicans suggest that leaving decisions about abortion up to the states is a benign proposition and continue to point to the wide-ranging impact of abortion bans on pregnancy care, miscarriage treatment and training opportunities for an entire generation of doctors. Ms. Harris would do well, even, to devote an entire speech to the issue, laying out her plan to take action in support of abortion rights, with or without Congress.”
Former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, in a New York Times op-ed laying why Kamala Harris needs to take her abortion rights support “to an eleven.”
Keep An Eye On
I’m going to leave you with an absolutely wild story out of Massachusetts that shows you how far anti-abortion activists are willing to go to stop women from having abortions. A new lawsuit brought by abortion clinic Four Women Health Services alleges that the crisis pregnancy next door hacked into their records and sent patients messages canceling their appointments or directing them to their fake ‘clinic’ instead. From the Boston Globe:
“AWHC interfered with the care of at least four patients in this way, the lawsuit alleges. One woman booked an appointment online with Four Women for birth control. Within minutes, somebody from AWHC called to tell the woman they could not give her birth control, but that she could come to a diaper giveaway instead. Another woman messaged Four Women to schedule an appointment for an abortion. Within two minutes of uploading her insurance information to the clinic’s system, the woman got a call from someone at AWHC, who told her she was required to go there for an ultrasound first.”
Attorney Matthew Patton, who filed the suit, said, “Instead of just blocking the doors, they are getting into women’s pockets through their cellphones.”
I wish I could say I was surprised, but we know that anti-abortion groups don’t give a flying fuck about women’s privacy. Remember, it was just this past May when Abortion, Every Day found that the country’s largest and most powerful network of crisis pregnancy centers had shared their clients’ private health with corporate employees and thousands of center trainees.
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