1). “The Abortion Election Is Almost Here”, Oct 28, 2024, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
2). “ ‘A Trojan horse’: how the right is using ‘parental rights’ to fight abortion ballot measures: With 10 states set to vote on abortion-related measures, anti-abortion activists are trying to disrupt a streak of wins”, Oct 28, 2024, Carter Sherman, The Guardian, at < https://www.theguardian.com/
3). “How the DeSantis Administration Is Targeting Florida Amendment 4 on Abortion: Florida’s government is trying to undermine a ballot measure that would allow voters to restore abortion rights in the state”, Oct 28, 2024, Caroline Val, Teen Vogue, at < https://www.teenvogue.com/
4). “Doctors Agreed Her Baby Would Die 3 Months Before She Was Forced to Give Birth: Deborah Dorbert campaigns for Florida’s abortion ballot measure after 'politicians interfered with me getting my medical treatment' ”, Oct 24, 2024, Tessa Stuart, Rolling Stone, at < https://www.rollingstone.com/
5). “On the Ballot: Missouri Abortion Rights Explore the ongoing debate surrounding Amendment 3 and reproductive rights in Missouri”, Oct 28, 2024, Cody Boston & Nick Haines, Flat Land, Text and Video, duration of video 8:03, at < https://flatlandkc.org/news-
6). “ 'I cannot vote for someone like that': Ohio women voters fume at Bernie Moreno’s abortion 'joke': Running neck-and-neck against Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Trump-backed Republican angered women with dismissive comment”, Oct 25, 2024, Tatyana Tandanpolie, Salon, at < https://www.salon.com/2024/10/
7). “Texas Woman Who Nearly Died From Abortion Ban Featured in Searing New Harris Ad: 'It almost cost me my life, and it will affect me for the rest of my life,' Ondrea says in the ad, blaming Donald Trump for Texas' abortion laws”, Oct 25, 2024, Kylie Cheung, Jezebel, at < https://www.jezebel.com/texas-
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: The first presidential election since the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Dobbs Decision is already underway. That move towards the dark ages was taken by the Discredited Partisan Hack Supreme Court with its 6 fanatic Justices, (placed there largely by the political machinations of Leonard Leo, Donald J. Trump, and Mitch McConnell); and it occassioned the emergence of the 25 states that have imposed draconian Trump Abortion Bans. The constant polling and media stories of moves of a few percent, up and down, among small slices of voters in the seven swing states once again ignores the existence across the entire country of young women who are outraged by the callous disregard for their well-being exhibited by the right-wing politicians and operatives in the entire U.S.
Item 1). “The Abortion Election ….” and Item 2). “ ‘A Trojan horse’: ….” both look at the overall situation. Item 3). “How the DeSantis Administration ….” and Item 4). “Doctors Agreed Her Baby Would Die ….” both disuss the situation in Florida where the openly fascist Governor, Ron DeSantis has instigated several extremist responses to the public popularity of Proposal 4.
Item 5)., “On the Ballot: Missouri Abortion Rights ….”, Item 6)., “ 'I cannot vote for ….” (a story about the Ohio Senatorial Race and the effect of Abortion Rights on that race) and Item 7). “Texas Woman Who Nearly Died ….” look at the political situation, and how that has been affected by abortion rights struggles, in Missouri, Ohio, and Texas respectively.
So Class Strugglers, if there are political races where some retrograde Rethug creep looks like he might win, suck it up and vote for the Democrat!! The stakes are too high to be a fanatical skeptic.
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The Abortion Election Is Almost Here
Click to skip ahead: In The Abortion Election, a look at how the Harris campaign is going all in on abortion in the last days before the election. Language Matters looks at Trump’s shifting messaging on abortion and the difference AED is making in the media. In the States, news from Nebraska, New York, Iowa and more. Ballot Measure Updates in New York, Missouri, Maryland, Florida, and Arizona. 2024 news looks at “ghost voters,” and a bit of shameless self-promotion. In the Nation, some quick hits. Finally, in New Merch Alert—we have stickers!
The Abortion Election
Let’s talk about Kamala Harris and abortion. The campaign has been going all in on on abortion in these last days before the election—from Friday’s rally in Houston and that powerful ad to Michelle Obama’s incredible speech.
It’s a marker of how much has changed since Roe was overturned. I mean truly, if someone would have told you two years ago that the Democratic presidential nominee would give speech about abortion in Texas with just days to go until the election, would you have believed them?
Part of the focus on abortion is because the Harris campaign believes there’s an untapped demographic of women voters who don’t necessarily understand that Donald Trump is anti-abortion. I know, I know—but leave aside how mind-boggling it is that a voter wouldn’t know that about Trump. Harris’ campaign can see that when voters are made aware of Trump’s anti-abortion bonafides, it makes a difference.
That’s why the vice president hammered the point home in her CBS Evening News interview this weekend. When asked about the fact that Trump says he’d veto a national ban, for example, this is how Harris responded:
“He says everything—come on, are we really taking his word for it? He said that women should be punished. He has been all over the place on this. But I'm too busy watching what he's doing to see what he has said."
Even what Trump says, though, is pretty fucking bad! That’s why Michelle Obama’s speech in Michigan was so perfect and powerful. It wasn’t just that she called on men to step up—which was vital on its own—but that she honed in on Trump’s clear disdain for women:
“So please, please do not hand our fates over to the likes of Trump, who knows nothing about us, who has shown a deep contempt for us. Because a vote for him is a vote against us, against our health, against our worth.”
That really is the heart of the matter: Because this election isn’t just about getting men to vote for us, but getting them to stop voting against us. This is why I wrote a column this summer asking where “the protectors” were: We’ve seen the gender gap in the polls, and it’s infuriating to know that so many men—husbands, fathers, and sons—would align themselves with a man who treats women as if they’re less than human.
And while Michelle Obama didn’t say men should be ashamed for voting for Trump, the implication (to me, at least) was clear. It was this line, in particular, that had me standing and cheering:
“To anyone out there thinking about sending out this election or voting for Donald Trump or a third-party candidate in protest because you’re fed up, let me warn you: Your rage does not exist in a vacuum. If we don’t win this election, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women will become collateral damage to your rage.”
Watch her speech here or read an excerpt here.
A final note about Harris’ ramped up focus on abortion: One of the remarkable things about her speech on Friday is that she called things what they were. For example, Harris mentioned the fact that several Texas counties have passed travel bans—and she called them travel bans. That is no small thing.
If you’re a regular reader, you know better than anyone that anti-abortion activists and organizations rely on shady language—and that they’re depending on their bullshit messaging about ‘anti-trafficking’ ordinances becoming the norm. Harris is making clear she’s not falling for it.
Language Matters
We’re not done talking about language yet! The New York Times has an interesting interactive piece up today looking at the language Donald Trump has used on abortion rights, and how it’s shifted right along with the political winds. For example, Trump has only referred to himself as ‘pro-life’ once this year, and mentioned support for a federal ban once—as opposed to mentioning the same 50 times last year. They also tracked a massive increase in how many times Trump mentioned abortion ban ‘exceptions.’ Definitely worth checking out.
I also want to give ourselves a pat on the back: Every day I see more proof of how Abortion, Every Day’s work on Republicans’ sneaky terminology has shifted mainstream media coverage. Sticking with the Times for a moment—remember that it wasn’t so long ago that we had to pressure the publication to stop reporting that JD Vance opposes a national abortion ban.
That’s because reporters didn’t understand that when Vance said he supports a ‘minimum national standard,’ he was talking about a national abortion ban. Thanks to newsletter’s relentless focus on the issue—and this community’s support in getting the word out—we were able to get a correction.
Just as great: Last week, the Times finally explained how Republicans are using the term ‘minimum national standard’ and asked the Trump campaign how he distinguishes between the term and an abortion ‘ban.’ A spokesperson simply responded: “He will not support a federal abortion ban.” That tells you everything you need to know.
All of which is to say: We’re making a difference, so let’s keep it up!
In the States
It’s been three months since Iowa enacted its 6-week abortion ban, and healthcare providers are speaking up about the impact the law has had on patients. Planned Parenthood announced in a press conference this week that there’s been a “huge drop” in the number of Iowans being served. From Kristina Remus, a patient services advocate:
“We are extremely limited in the patients that we can see in Iowa. Most are forced to seek care in other neighboring states, including Minnesota, Nebraska and Illinois.”
Meanwhile, Nebraska has put out a health alert claiming that the state’s abortion ban is perfectly safe. The alert came from Dr. Timothy Tesmer, the chief medical officer of the state health department, who said he wanted to clarify they law because there are radio and television ads that include “incorrect and misleading information.”
It was just last week that Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen held a press conference with Tesmer and a gaggle of anti-abortion extremist doctors to do the same—insist that the state’s ban doesn’t put anyone’s health or life in jeopardy.
It’s not a coincidence that this urgent health alert comes just days before Nebraskans will vote on abortion rights. Republicans are trying their damndest to make voters believe that they have no need to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution.
Something noteworthy: Nebraska’s health alert marks the second time that Republican leadership there has followed in the anti-abortion footsteps of Florida. Like Pillen, Gov. Ron DeSantis also held a press tour last week with extremist doctors to claim the state’s 6-week ban was safe. And last month, the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) sent out an ‘alert’ to the medical community warning of “misinformation.”
We’ve also seen South Dakota do something similar: Remember the truly bizarre video released by the state health department that claimed to help doctors figure out when they’re allowed to save women’s lives?
In better news: It’s the one year anniversary of New York City making abortion medication available via telehealth. We were the first public health system in the country to do so!
NYC Health + Hospitals says that in the last year, they’ve provided thousands of virtual visits—with the average wait time coming in at less than 7 minutes—and that they’ve mailed over 800 abortion medication kits. More of this please! We need increased access to abortion medication everywhere, even in pro-choice states like New York.
“Instead of providing needed medical treatment, my colleagues and I would find ourselves discussing, ‘Did she need to have a 30% chance of death or irreversible harm? Or does it need to be at least 50%?’”
- Tennessee OBGYN Nikki Zite in a must-read piece about her work post-Dobbs
Ballot Measure Updates
I know nothing should surprise me anymore, but this sign really does take the cake. Shared by a Twitter user, it reveals how Republicans are fighting New York’s abortion rights ballot measure: They’re simply lying to voters.
For voters who have no idea that Prop 1 is an abortion rights measure and that this phrase is an anti-trans dog whistle, “protect girls sports” sounds downright terrific!
The good news is that this kind of messaging shows just how desperate Republicans are and how badly they’re losing on abortion rights. In many states where abortion is on the ballot, they’re not even bothering arguing the issue anymore—just pivoting. The bad news, of course, is that in too many cases, voters believe them. And I am really concerned that not enough New Yorkers know about Prop 1; I would be devastated if it was my home state that broke abortion rights’ winning ballot measure streak.
But again, this isn’t just happening in New York. You all know this has been a Republican tactic in every state where abortion is on the ballot. Carter Sherman at The Guardian gets into that strategy this week, looking at how conservatives are using ‘parental rights’ and anti-trans messaging to fight against pro-choice ballot measures.
In Missouri, for example, the anti-abortion campaign opposing Amendment 3 claimed this week that the measure allows for ‘abortions up until birth,’ eradicates parental consent, and that the measure has a “provider immunity clause.” In other words, they’re saying patients won’t be able to hold abortion providers liable for malpractice. It’s pure absurdity.
In pro-choice states like Maryland, anti-abortion groups aren’t arguing against the pro-choice measure as much as they’re claiming it’s not necessary. In an op-ed this week, two anti-abortion activists claim that voters don’t have to worry because “nothing has changed” in the state since Roe was overturned.
We’ve seen this argument before in pro-choice states, but I wanted to flag this column for a particular reason: the president of Democrats for Life of America, Kristen Day, was a co-author on the piece. That means we’re getting a hint at what kind of national anti-abortion messaging we might be seeing more of soon. Indeed, Day writes in the op-ed that Republicans don’t really want to target abortion at all anymore—even nationally:
“On a national level, and on a state level, there are no plans or paths to enact any federal limitation on abortion. The votes aren’t there. And Republicans weakened protection of life from its platform priorities. They don’t have the appetite to engage.”
It’s wild that they think Americans will buy it. Still, I’m willing to bet we’ll see this claim start to gain steam as an anti-abortion message: The GOP will insist that they’re backing off abortion rights, even as they enact ever-sneakier restrictions.
Finally, let’s take a brief look at how pro-choice amendments are doing in the polls: Polls for Florida’s Amendment 4 continue to go up and down—largely, I imagine, thanks to the multi-million dollar state-led campaign opposing the measure. For more on the attacks against in Florida, check out this Teen Vogue interview with Lauren Brenzel, the campaign director for Amendment 4.
In South Dakota, a new poll shows that support for Amendment G has slipped slightly. Finally, Arizona voters seem poised to pass a constitutional protection for abortion rights, dismissing Republicans’ insistence that the state’s 15-week ban is a ‘reasonable compromise.’
Related: Rolling Stone asks whether support for Arizona’s abortion rights measure will drive votes for Democrats—or if the ability to vote for abortion access will make some Republicans and independents more comfortable supporting Trump because they’ll be less worried about reproductive rights.
Quick hits: WFSU reports on Republican women who are supporting Florida’s Amendment 4; Missouri doctors are canvassing for the pro-choice measure there; and what’s next for abortion in Ohio now that the state’s ban has been struck down.
Do you count on Abortion, Every Day for your reproductive rights news and analysis? Well, we count on you, too! The newsletter wouldn’t exist without paying subscribers, so please consider showing your support today:
2024
I told you earlier in the newsletter how the Harris campaign is counting on an untapped group of women voters who maybe not be clued in to Donald Trump’s anti-abortion extremism. But that’s not the only demographic Democrats are hoping will bring home a win for them next Tuesday.
The Hill reports on “ghost voters”—folks who are mostly overlooked in national polls and traditional outreach because of irregular or nonexistent voting history. In this case, the Harris campaign believes that there are young women under 35 years old who are “low propensity” voters but will be motivated to the polls by abortion rights.
After all, that’s what happened in the 2022 midterms: young women who were disgusted by Roe’s demise came out the polls in much higher numbers than expected. The hope is that we’ll see the same thing happen next week.
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake warns, however, “There is a potential for a ghost voter on both sides.”
By the way: If you want predictions about the election, conservatives and the anti-abortion movement, but haven’t bought my new book—maybe this column at The Washington Post will convince you: “Antiabortion activists talk in code. So Jessica Valenti wrote a key.”
Columnist Kate Cohen writes that the book “helps you spot the toxic truths beneath the shifting rhetoric” of anti-abortion politicians, and provides just about the best description ever:
“You know the chemical that allows detectives to see bloodstains at a crime scene that’s been scrubbed? It’s like that: luminol in hardcover.”
And remember, no matter what happens next week, we’ll still need those predictions and decoding. So consider picking up Abortion today.
In the Nation
The 19th profiles Hadley Duvall, the young woman sharing her story of childhood sexual abuse in order to drive support for abortion rights and Harris;
Bloomberg on how abortion rights is dominating state Supreme Court races;
MSNBC has launched a new project: “One in Four: How Abortion Access Shapes America.” The headline refers to the fact that 1 in 4 American women will have an abortion in her lifetime;
Finally, a community of writers has put together a virtual reading for tomorrow evening to raise money for the Harris campaign. You’ll probably recognize a few of the names participating, so check out the full list and reserve your ticket here.
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‘A Trojan horse’: how the right is using ‘parental rights’ to fight abortion ballot measures
‘Legal experts say these claims are overblown.’ Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images With 10 states set to vote on abortion-related measures, anti-abortion activists are trying to disrupt a streak of wins
A Maryland ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution is, a Maryland activist claims, a “Trojan horse to trick pro-choice Marylanders into voting away parental rights”.
Opponents of a New York referendum, which is meant to cement protections for abortion rights, have started calling it the “Parent Replacement Act” and claim it would expand rights for transgender minors.
Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, has said that his state’s ballot measure would “mandate constitutionally, all reproductive health services, and that includes transgender treatments for minors”.
In the two years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, support for abortion rights has soared. Seven states have voted on abortion-related ballot measures, and in every state, voters have sided with supporters of the procedure, including in deep-red states like Kentucky and Ohio. Now, in the run-up to election day, 10 states are set to vote on their own abortion measures – and anti-abortion activists across the country are trying to disrupt that streak using the specter of “parental rights”.
Where will abortion be on the ballot in the 2024 US election? Read more These measures, they say, could strip parents of their right to make decisions for their children – an argument that, in the years since the Covid pandemic broke out, has become an increasingly potent weapon in US culture wars.
Legal experts say these claims are overblown.
“It’s a vast oversimplification of what’s happening,” said Nicole Huberfeld, a professor who leads the Boston University School of Law’s reproductive law program.
More than 30 states say minors cannot obtain an abortion without notifying a parent or obtaining their consent. If a state with such a law – called a “parental involvement law” – passes a measure expanding abortion rights, the law would not immediately be struck down, according to Huberfeld. Instead, a court would need to rule on the issue. And, although the exact wording of each measure would ultimately determine how it was interpreted, Huberfeld said: “I don’t see these issues as being real issues.”
She continued: “They are fear and confusion campaigns. There are efforts to try to confuse the people who will be voting on these ballot initiatives, to make it so that they don’t understand what they’re voting on.”
Meanwhile, because some forms of gender-affirming care can affect people’s ability to reproduce, opponents have suggested that measures to protect reproductive healthcare would also protect minors’ access to gender-affirming care. But experts say that it has not been firmly established that gender-affirming care legally falls under the banner of reproductive health.
“Even if you accept that it could have this wild, expansive meaning, there still are ways within the text of the amendment that allow the government to pass laws around this topic,” one law professor told the Missouri Independent after Hawley’s comments.
Nevertheless, touting these claims has become a go-to strategy in the anti-abortion playbook. Michigan and Ohio, which respectively passed abortion-related ballot measures in 2022 and 2023, were both hit with messaging around parental rights and warnings from anti-abortion activists that the measures would erase parental involvement laws around abortion and gender-affirming care. Both states still require minors to obtain consent from their parents before undergoing an abortion. And while Michigan permits gender-affirming care for minors – and did so before the ballot measure passed – a judge recently upheld Ohio’s ban on it.
Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which is backing abortion-rights measures in several states, believes claims about parental rights are a calculated distraction.
“It does reveal that our opponents really do understand that the electorate is not with them on the core, fundamental issue of abortion,” Hall said. “There’s no other reason they would be trying to change the subject so dramatically.”
‘Florida invented this playbook’
The most heated and high-profile abortion-related measure of the election is playing out in Florida, which currently bans the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy – and is arguably the headquarters of the modern-day parental rights movement.
“Amendment 4 would remove the requirement for parental consent for minors seeking an abortion,” Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, posted on X last week. “Amendment 4 would undermine the foundation of parental rights in Florida.”
He also shared an ad featuring Dr Grazie Christie, a radiologist, calling Amendment 4 “too extreme and not what it seems”. In the ad, Christie says: “Amendment 4 would make abortion the only medical procedure a minor could undergo without parental consent.”
Since the pandemic ignited debates around Covid safety measures in schools, the idea of parental rights has become a rallying cry among activists who claim government institutions are intruding on parents’ rights to make decisions for their children. Moms for Liberty, the far-right group that advocates for book bans and limiting discussions about race and LGBTQ+ identities, calls Florida home. The state also passed the nation’s first “don’t say gay” bill, which aims to block teachers from speaking about sexual orientation and gender identity. (A settlement later allowed teachers to talk about these topics as long as the discussion is not part of formal instruction.)
Now, Florida is a battlefield over Amendment 4, which would roll back the state’s six-week abortion ban. More than $70m has been poured into the fight over the amendment, which needs to garner 60% of the vote to pass – a threshold that no post-Roe abortion-related ballot measure has met.
“Florida did invent this playbook, and I’m hoping that this is a time where we get to put this playbook to bed,” said Lauren Brenzel, the campaign director of Floridians Protecting Freedom, the coalition spearheading the campaign for the amendment.
Floridians Protecting Freedom has sued Florida officials at least twice – once for attempting to block a TV ad in support of abortion rights and once over a state-run website that suggested that, among other things, Amendment 4 could “open discussions about the role of parental involvement in a minor’s decision to have an abortion”. Aaron Bos-Lun, the Florida-based deputy executive director of the abortion-rights group Men4Choice, said he had recently been barraged by anti-abortion ads that talk about Amendment 4 and its alleged impact on Florida’s parental consent law requirements.
“When we canvass, when we talk with voters – whether that’s on the phones or at the doors – there’s definitely been an uptick of people who have heard some piece of misinformation about the ballot initiative,” Bos-Lun said.
Parental involvement laws involving abortion have long been popular with American voters. In 2022, 70% of Americans said they supported laws requiring minors to notify their parents about their decisions to get abortions, including 57% of self-identified Democrats, the Pew Research Center found. Even since Roe fell, boosting support for abortion rights, activists have struggled to get even their allies in state legislatures to consider repealing them.
Amendment 4 explicitly declares that it “does not change the legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion”. Anti-abortion activists claim the amendment would permit Florida minors to only notify their parents that they want an abortion, not to obtain their consent, as Florida law currently requires.
But Floridians Protecting Freedom says the amendment does not aim to change Florida’s parental consent law. Louis Virelli, a professor of constitutional law at Florida’s Stetson University College of Law, agreed.
“Amendment 4 leaves enough space for courts to say: ‘Yes, legislature, you can regulate parental consent.’ That is a certainty,” Virelli said. “There is no good-faith argument that says it absolutely, unequivocally prohibits them.”
With parental rights being invoked in some of the United States’ biggest culture-war issues – abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, vaccines – Huberfeld sees a clear through-line.
“This is a new tool in the toolbox of anti-medicine, anti-public health campaigns,” Huberfeld said. “This is just another feature of how that’s playing out.”
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How DeSantis's Admin Is Sabotaging a Florida Voting Campaign to Restore Abortion
Florida’s government is trying to undermine a ballot measure that would allow voters to restore abortion rights in the state.
CHANDAN KHANNA/GETTY IMAGES This story was written by Teen Vogue's 2024 Student Correspondents, a team of college students and recent graduates covering the election cycle from key battleground states.
Are you registered to vote? Check your voter registration here.
“It’s the First Amendment, stupid.”
These were the words of a federal judge who ordered the Florida Department of Health to stop threatening television stations over a particular pro-abortion advertisement. The commercial, created by the Yes on 4 campaign, references the upcoming Florida ballot measure known as Amendment 4 that would overturn the state’s strict abortion ban, and it features a woman from Tampa named Caroline. Caroline was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer two years ago while pregnant and, she says in the ad, would have been denied a potentially life-saving abortion had the ban been law at the time.
The ad makes the case for abortions as medical care, emphasizing that without the procedure, Caroline and her unborn child would have died — also leaving Caroline's firstborn daughter without a mother. In response to the ad, a Florida Department of Health (DOH) official — allegedly at the direction of Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration — sent cease-and-desist letters to TV stations statewide, threatening them with criminal charges if they continued to run it. One CBS station in Fort Myers buckled under the pressure, according to Florida Politics, though it has reportedly put the ad back on the air.
Trending Now
The official who sent the letters, Florida's DOH general counsel John Wilson, has since resigned. But the DeSantis administration has hit back against the federal judge’s ruling on the letters, arguing that the ad “is spreading false factual information” because the six-week law includes exceptions when the pregnant person’s life is at risk.
Another contentious point in Florida’s fight over abortion access includes parental consent requirements for minors seeking the procedure. Some ads running on Florida televisions today claim that Amendment 4 would leave parents out of the conversation if their pregnant teen were to seek an abortion in the Sunshine State. In reality, though, Amendment 4 would not reverse current Florida law requiring parental consent; but the amendment could open the door to legal challenges against the consent law, which would put the legislation's fate in the hands of the courts, according to PolitiFact.
To sort through the growing tensions and misinformation on this issue, Teen Vogue spoke with Lauren Brenzel, the campaign director of Yes on 4. During the interview, we asked Brenzel about the arduous journey of getting Amendment 4 on the ballot for voters — which included a lengthy, statewide petition process — and what young people in Florida and across the country should learn from the state’s attempts to censor the campaign.
This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Teen Vogue: A central claim for many conservatives and pro-life voters is that they want abortion to be a states' rights issue. What has this process shown you in terms of the difficulty of that process in Florida vs. when abortion was federally protected?
Lauren Brenzel: It has been an incredibly challenging road from day one of this issue. The reality is that politicians seem most comfortable with states' rights when it’s them controlling the process and not the people having a say in their constitution. We've seen numerous attempts by our government to try to silence the will of the people, and now it is so important that everybody turns out and votes for this — because the only power we have is getting to that 60% [vote] threshold [needed to pass the constitutional amendment].
TV: The DeSantis administration was told by a federal judge to stop threatening television stations in Florida about Yes on 4’s ad. Florida Democrats also filed criminal complaints against the state after Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration ran an ad directing viewers to a website that makes a case against Amendment 4. What is your reaction to all of this?
LB: This is all trying to silence patients who have had abortions, and that's a really disturbing precedent being set. We have to hear from people who are impacted by abortion. We can't trust our politicians to continue to be the voice on this issue; patients and providers should be the voice. We know that the government isn’t ready to hear abortion stories because that's what wins the hearts and minds of people. Ultimately, regular people think of abortion as health care, not a political issue.
We've really been trying not to get distracted and continue to focus on the main message, which is that we need to pass Amendment 4 because there is no other way to end Florida's extreme abortion ban [in the near future]…. We won [a favorable ruling in] a federal lawsuit that was led with the ACLU of Florida and other attorneys to stop the Department of Health from trying to threaten criminal [charges] on television stations for running the Caroline ad….
But our main focus is in making sure we continue to share accurate information about Florida's abortion ban and just how horrible it is. That includes sharing stories from women like Anya Cook, who is from South Florida and lost half of the blood in her body because she was denied access to an abortion.… It's only a matter of time before we see a woman die in Florida because of a lack of medical care.
TV: Many people campaigning against Amendment 4 argue and are even running commercials that claim parents with teens who get abortions will not have any consent in the matter. Can you clear up misinformation about this, and explain what voting yes to Amendment 4 will mean for teens in Florida overall?
LB: It’s disheartening to see people believing the lies that our opposition tell.… We can't keep believing anti-abortion activists and their lies. Their main purpose and their main goal is to ban abortion in every state in the nation….
Parental notification is already protected in Florida's constitution. For our initiative, we made it very clear that we weren't trying to repeal that part of the constitution. There's no reason to believe this initiative would automatically erase parental consent. The Florida Legislature is in charge of figuring out how this initiative is going to be implemented, and the idea that our current legislature as it stands would repeal parental consent is laughable, given the composition of our state's legislature.
What the focus of this initiative is repealing is Florida's six-week abortion ban. These politicians know that, but they're willing to lie to voters to protect their abortion ban.
TV: What are some other points you think young people nationwide should take from Florida’s contentious fight over abortion?
LB: It's easy for people to feel really disaffected by politics right now. The reality is that a vote is one tool in our toolbox. Voting doesn't mean you can't perform other kinds of activism. It doesn't mean you can't get involved with things like mutual aid groups, and it doesn’t mean you can't protest your government. It doesn’t mean any of that — it is one tool in our toolbox, and it is five seconds of your day.
We have to get out there and vote because if we can't take that tool in our toolbox, the opposition certainly will take it and utilize it to their legal advantage — while they continue to use other tools in their toolbox, like silencing our voice, using taxpayer dollars to try to ban abortion, and criminally threatening our free speech.
We have to — we just have to take the time to do it — and not think of it as the end-all-be-all, but simply as part of a strategy to make our voices heard.
TV: Anything else you'd like to mention?
LB: It is critical that folks understand just how harmful Florida’s abortion ban is. We are the third largest state in the nation. You can look at a state like Texas to see how harmful an abortion ban is, because they're the second largest state in the nation. There has been a huge increase in [infant] mortality in that state.
We anticipate a pretty similar outcome in Florida, with the caveat that we are a state entirely surrounded by water, and we are farther from states that do not have abortion bans on the books. We are putting people in a really dangerous circumstance by having this abortion ban last past this November.
It is so rare that everyday people get the opportunity to undo an abortion ban.… We have the opportunity here to make a systemic change in this moment, and we have to do everything we can to win.
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Doctors Agreed Her Baby Would Die 3 Months Before She Was Forced to Give Birth
Deborah Dorbert campaigns for Florida’s abortion ballot measure after “politicians interfered with me getting my medical treatment”
Deborah and Lee Dorbert. ANTONIO BECCERA Deborah Dorbert was five months pregnant in November 2022 when she learned that her baby was not going to live. Late in the second trimester of her pregnancy, a scan revealed that his kidneys and lungs were failing to develop; a specialist diagnosed the baby with Potter syndrome, a condition that occurs when there is a lack of amniotic fluid in the uterus. He would not survive more than a few hours past birth, Deborah and her husband, Lee, were told.
Her doctor advised that the safest option for Deborah would be to induce, and end the pregnancy as soon as possible. But because of restrictions that had taken effect in Florida that summer, a week after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, that option was not available to her. Instead, Deborah was forced to carry her pregnancy to term: three and half more months, living with the knowledge that her child was going to die.
Deborah and Lee are sharing their story in television ads supporting Amendment 4, a Florida ballot initiative that would enshrine the right to abortion in the state, including in cases like hers.
Here, in their own words, are Deborah and Lee Dorbert’s accounts of the devastating diagnosis, the excruciating months that followed, her traumatic birth, their son’s short life, and the months of grief that have followed his death.
Deborah: I was born and raised in Florida. Lee was born in West Virginia and then moved to Florida in middle school. We met at Publix, our grocery retailer here.
Lee: I was actually working as a Kellogg’s vendor at the time. It was a part-time job, and I would go into her store every Wednesday. I would always walk the long way around the store to try to find her and see where she was. Little by little, I talked with her every time I could.
Deborah: We’ve been together 10 years. Our son is six years old. He just got into karate, which he’s really loving. He’s big into books and dinosaurs and Legos. He was about to turn four, when we decided that it was maybe time to give Kaiden a sibling. He was at that age where he wanted someone to play with.
Everything was going smoothly — besides being nauseated all the time and tired. But otherwise, my second pregnancy wasn’t any different than my first.
At the beginning of November, I went to see my doctor for my routine, monthly checkup. She noticed that I hadn’t had my anatomy scan done, so she scheduled my scan for the day before Thanksgiving. I was 23 weeks pregnant then. I went to that appointment with my four-year-old son. The ultrasound tech took us back to the room and got us all situated, and then she began doing the anatomy scan. She was calling the baby’s different body parts, like the hands and the feet, and Kaiden started to follow along and started calling out hands when he saw them, and the feet, and the head.
Then things quickly changed. The ultrasound tech started asking me questions — if I was experiencing different symptoms. Was I leaking any amniotic fluid? Was I feeling wet at all? I told her no to all those questions. And then she stopped doing the ultrasound, and she excused herself from the room, and she went and got my [OB-GYN]. I remember the ultrasound tech and my OB walking back in the room, and that’s when I knew something was up, because I wasn’t scheduled to see my OB that day. She asked the ultrasound tech to go over certain spots on the ultrasound, and I remember her looking at me with this look, and she proceeded to tell me that I had the right to know what she was looking at, especially going into the holiday.
She told me that she could not see the baby’s kidneys. She could not see the kidney on one side, she could see a partial kidney on the other. I remember asking her, was my baby going to live? And she said, ‘Not without a kidney transplant.’ And I remember crying. She told me to hang out in the room for a little bit, because she was going to try to get me into the maternal fetal medicine doctor as quickly as possible. She left the room, and I remember just crying the whole time, and my son coming up to me and saying, ‘Mommy, it’s going to be okay,’ because he had no clue what was happening.
After a little while waiting in the room, the nurse came back in and told us that we could go, that they’re working on trying to set up the appointment, and as soon as they knew, they were going to call me ASAP. I left that appointment with my son, and I got on the phone with Lee.
Lee: When she first called me and told me everything, I immediately left work and started to head home. On my drive home, I’m only thinking: She’s overreacting. It’s not — it can’t be. That can’t be what the doctor said. You know: Everything’s going to be okay. When I met her and really started to understand what was going on, things started to really hit me. But I still tried to stay positive. We don’t know for sure yet, until we see the maternal fetal medicine doctor. We’ll get a clear indication there.
Deborah: We had our appointment with the maternal fetal medicine doctor set up for a week later. Obviously, we were scared and anxious, hoping that this was just all a dream — that this wasn’t reality.
They took us back to the room, and the tech ended up doing a level II ultrasound. I remember the whole time we were just waiting for her to say, ‘Here’s the baby’s kidneys! Here’s the baby’s kidneys!” But she never mentioned the kidneys, and she was trying so hard to find out the sex of the baby, but with there being no amniotic fluid, it was very hard for her. She ended up leaving the room and getting the doctor. The doctor came back into the room, and asked us what we knew, because sometimes patients don’t know why they’re being sent there. We told him, and then he proceeded to tell us that the baby’s kidneys did not develop, and the lungs were underdeveloped, and there was no amniotic fluid.
He diagnosed the baby with Potter syndrome, and told us that Potter syndrome is a life-threatening condition, not compatible with life. He told us the backstory of the doctor that discovered Potter syndrome, and how the babies [with the condition] don’t live long after birth — maybe a few minutes to a few hours, or they’re born stillborn.
He talked about the added risks with the pregnancy — a higher chance of developing preeclampsia and, if the baby goes stillborn, obviously there’s added risk there. He told us our options: I could get pre-term induced and go ahead and have the baby, or we could go full-term. But no matter what the decision was, the baby was not going to survive after birth. He would die.
He left the room so we could figure out how we wanted to proceed. After talking together — obviously, we were crying and shocked, feeling numb — we decided we wanted to go ahead and get induced. Because of the added risk to my life, it does not make sense to continue pregnancy to full-term, not knowing what could happen to me. He came back in the room and he told us he recommended getting pre-term induced, but he told us that the abortion laws might hinder me from getting induced, that he would have to reach out to the lawyers and the hospital administration to get the OK. He put us in touch with his coordinator, who handles everything, and told us to continue to see my OB to be monitored.Lee: It just hits like a ton of bricks getting a confirmation from the maternal fetal medicine doctors… It just didn’t seem real.
Deborah: I continued to see my OB every two weeks, and then it got to a point where it was just getting so hard for me to go into the office, and she told me what symptoms to look out for and to call her immediately [if I experienced any]. It was right before Christmas that we got a call from [the maternal fetal medicine specialist’s] office. I was told that I could not get pre-term induced due to the law until my life was on the line.
I was being forced to carry the baby to full-term, even though the baby had a life-threatening condition and would not survive outside the womb. From 23 weeks all the way to 37 weeks, I was forced to carry the baby.
Lee: I just felt angry. I knew I was gonna have to essentially stand by and watch her go through this, watch her be in pain, watch her suffer. I was mad.
Deborah: I became numb. And angry. And frustrated. I’ve got my son, I was finding out my [other] son was dying before he was even born, and it just made me angry. And I was sad. It was a lot for me to process, and that’s probably why I fell into depression during those months.
It was brutal. I was depressed, I was experiencing a lot of physical pain, and there wasn’t anything the doctors could prescribe me, because I was still pregnant. At the time, I was doing Instacart, but I kind of slowed down on doing that because it was kind of unbearable to go out into public and see people, and acquaintances. You could have people coming up to ask you, ‘Is this your first or second child? Are you excited?’ And I didn’t know how to answer. I was like, ‘Yes and no.’ And they give you that look like, no? I would say ‘I found out my son has a life-threatening condition and he’s going to die after birth.’ And it leaves me in this awkward position with these people because they don’t know what to say. So, it was very hard going out to Publix, or out anywhere, because you’d get these people congratulating you. This is so exciting! Sometimes I would just agree with them and say, ‘Yeah,’ because I just didn’t want to get into those conversations.
I cried a lot. I was just always in pain, and it just felt like there were days I could not get out of bed. My four year old son needed me, but I couldn’t be a mom because I was struggling with my mental health and physically. Wondering: How am I gonna find the strength to give birth and watch my son die? At the same time, I was planning his funeral before he was even born.
My parents were there, calling us, checking up on us. I was seeing my primary doctor, and my OB — they were a big support system, they would check in to see how I was doing. I started talking to a therapist to help prepare me for birth. I tried to lean into those people, but at the same time, I kind of pushed them away, because I was just broken-hearted.
My OB mentioned the possibility to me about going out of state [to obtain care sooner], but she said it would probably be very costly, and there was a good chance that insurance wouldn’t cover the cost. And she said she could not guarantee that there would be no legal repercussions.
We were just starting to get ourselves out of financial hardship after Covid, my husband had just got a good job, and so it was just financially [infeasible to go out of state]. And, it also scared us — not knowing what the legal repercussions were. Would we get fined? Would we go to jail? We had a four-year-old that still needed his parents here. He still didn’t know what was going on, because we were still trying to protect him.
How do you tell a four-year-old child that their sibling is going to die?
Deborah: It was the day before Thanksgiving when we first heard the baby’s kidneys didn’t develop, and it was right before Christmas when we found out we could not get induced. I was 37 weeks on March 3, when I got induced.
Early in the morning, I was already starting to experience contractions. I got to the hospital around 7:00 a.m., and they got me all set up in the room. By that time, I was about two centimeters [dilated]. They called my doctor to give her the update. They have on-call doctors there that do the deliveries, but my doctor promised me that she would be there to deliver the baby, so they went ahead and started to induce me. That was just really hard. The contractions were very painful. I couldn’t get out of bed. I was in bed most of the day, just feeling these contractions, and just trying to find the strength within me to give birth. It wasn’t until later that evening that I decided that I needed an epidural.
Shortly after I got the epidural, the contractions got stronger, and it was time to go ahead, and because I was going into active labor. My doctor got off her eight-hour shift at the office, she came back up to the hospital to deliver the baby.
We only had two nurses assigned to my room because, with everything going on, we just didn’t want a lot of people in there. They were the only ones that could come into the room besides the approved doctors.
Before I pushed him out, I felt so defeated, like I could not push anymore. My doctor decided to cut me a little bit to make it a little easier for me, because I was just feeling defeated, like I had no more strength — because I knew what was coming.
Lee: That was a very nervous energy while she was going through labor and starting to be induced. We were ready to be able to start moving past this, but at the same time dreading what was coming. I remember standing next to her as she’s delivering, and telling her she’s doing great, to keep going, stay strong, everything’s going to be OK. And knowing, you know, that you know it wasn’t. It wasn’t going to be okay.
Deborah: Shortly after nine o’clock, I remember my doctor handing me a baby boy that was blue and cold. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t crying. And I remember her putting him on my chest, and the next thing I hear is him gasping for air. I just felt numb and just cried because my son was suffocating. He was struggling to breathe, and not knowing how much pain he was feeling, and feeling like there wasn’t anything I could do.
My husband read him a book. That became our family’s favorite; we gave it to Kaiden. It’s called I’ll Love You Forever. It’s about a mama bear and a baby polar bear, it just goes through the different seasons, but relating it to love with each season. We read him the book, and I remember my husband holding him, and singing him “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley, and my parents held him for a little bit.
Lee: I remember after he was born, usually, you hear cries. You hear the doctors talking, and the nurses working. All I heard was silence. The nurses and doctor were still talking to each other, and I just heard silence. It seemed like a never-ending silence. And all I could do was wrap him up in the blanket, and all I could think was to sing to him, and I couldn’t get anything else through my head, other than Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” so I just sang that on repeat to Milo as I held him in my arms.
Deborah: The room was just so quiet and dark and just cold, and I remember my husband walking him back over to me, saying, “I think he has passed.” He laid him on my chest, and the nurses came over to listen to his heartbeat. There, the nurses said that they could not hear his heartbeat, but they had to get the NICU [neonatal intensive care unit] doctor to come down to confirm, so the NICU doctor came down to listen, and she could hear just a very faint heartbeat, and she went ahead and did an exam on him. And by the time she was done with his exam, he had passed. He took his first and last breath on my chest. He was only alive for 94 minutes.
After that, they just took some pictures of him, they gave him a haircut and did some hand and foot molds, and then they stamped his handprint and footprint in the book for Kaiden, so Kaiden had something to cherish of his brother’s.
After that, my parents had left, and the doctor had already left, and it was just the nurses. My husband went to sleep because he was tired, and it was just a lot of emotions. I remember the nurse leaving — they have these “cuddle cots” now that you can leave the baby in the room for up to 24 hours after they passed. She put him in the “cuddle cot” next to me, because I just could not sleep. I just went through labor. My milk supply was coming in, and I was just exhausted.
And at one point in the night, we said our final goodbyes, and I asked the nurse to go ahead and take him down to the morgue. It was just too hard to bear. That was the last time I saw him before he got cremated.
I got discharged the next morning, because my doctor wanted me to go home to heal. It was going to be the best place for me to start recovering. And I just remember leaving the hospital and telling my husband that I forgot my baby, and just breaking down crying.
The next few weeks were just excruciating. I was recovering from the birth, and postpartum. It was hard to dry up my milk supply because there wasn’t anything I could do. My doctor recommended frozen cabbage leaves. I was healing from postpartum, my hormones are all over the place.
Lee: They were hard [weeks]. A lot of days of not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to do anything. For the both of us, I think we had to force ourselves to stay busy. Always had to find little projects for us to do to keep our minds off of it. Every day was a different feeling, different emotion to have to fight with.
Deborah: Two weeks later, we finally had his funeral. We did just a little memorial ceremony. There’s a little place at the mausoleum where some of his ashes are, and some of the ashes we got made into different glass figurines.
I fell into a deep depression and eventually got diagnosed with PTSD, because it’s just a lot of trauma to try to work through and try to heal from, postpartum, you know? It just was a lot — I was grieving the loss of my child, but at the same time trying to recover from postpartum and birth.
We were left with excruciating hospital bills — not only labor and delivery, but also the [neonatal intensive care unit] bills because we had to use NICU for the baby. And there were a lot of bills left over that insurance didn’t cover. Obviously I eventually needed to see a psychologist, and my son needed to see a psychologist. Obviously insurance doesn’t cover psychology visits.
All of the bills afterwards started to pile up — medical bills and then the funeral bills as well.
Lee: It was close to $40,000.
Deborah: I did a lot of research and talked to a lot of therapists and doctors before we told [Kaiden] to make sure we told him the right terminology to best help him understand. The day before I went and got induced, that week, we read him a lot of books on death and the loss of a sibling to help him understand. And I remember that night before we were gonna go to the hospital, we sat him down and told him that the baby’s body had stopped working, and that he became an angel. He didn’t get it at first, and then he just started crying, saying that he did not want to be an angel, that he wanted to stay here with me and daddy. And he just cried. And when we came home from the hospital, we obviously had those little mementos, and we showed him, and we told him that his brother was an angel. It took Kaiden a while to really understand it, and, honestly, he was sad. Eventually, we took him to see a therapist because he was starting to make stories about imaginary siblings, and he was just really having a hard time processing his brother’s death, and handling his own grief.
He saw a therapist for a couple of months, and now he’s starting to say his brother’s name, Milo, and asking if he will see his brother Milo again. How far is it to heaven where he’s at? Is he up there amongst the stars? You think he has toys up there? On [the] one-year anniversary [of Milo’s birth and death], we ended up going to the beach, and we had painted shells to leave in honor of Milo.
Afterward, we went out to dinner, and I remember Kaiden looking at us and saying, ‘Can we get a cake and candle for my brother? I want to blow out a candle for my brother.’ The restaurant didn’t have one, so we went to Publix and got a cake and a candle. He picked it out, and he came home and he was like, ‘We need to sing my brother a happy birthday song.’ He sang him a happy birthday song, and he blew out his candle and made a wish for him.
There are days where he’s fine — kids are resilient when it comes to this.
We’ve had a couple of conversations on whether we want to have another child, but because of everything I went through, all the trauma, I just am too afraid to get pregnant again. I know I probably would not survive if I had to go through this again.
We went back and forth on whether we wanted to [speak out in favor of Amendment 4], but we felt that this was our way to honor our son’s legacy — by speaking out and sharing his story to make sure no other parent ever has to experience the horrific pain and heartbreak that I went through. To give doctors and women their rights back.
I was put in this position because the government and politicians interfered with me getting my medical treatment. We’ve contemplated getting up and moving out of the state, but it’s not feasible, because my husband has a good job here. Our son’s in a good school, and school is his safe place. He’s happy there, and that’s what’s important. He is our saving grace. Without Kaiden, I don’t know where we would be.
We are rebuilding our lives with grief, because we will never go back to our old lives or our old selves. To this day, we are still navigating it all, and it is hard. It has shattered every aspect of our life, not only ourselves, but financially, our family, our marriage — it just kind of shatters every aspect of life, in ways you wouldn’t think.
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On the Ballot | Missouri Abortion Rights
Sponsor MessageIntroduction
Amendment 3 presents Missouri voters with the decision to overturn the state’s abortion ban and enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution. Its inclusion in Missouri’s November ballot is a direct result of a citizen-led campaign that gathered more than 380,000 signatures. If passed, Amendment 3 would overturn Missouri’s abortion ban, allowing abortion up to the point of fetal viability.
Transcript
Dr. Iman Alsaden [Chief Medical Officer at Planned Parenthood Great Plains]: I was a child who was told often that I wasn’t dressing the right way or acting the right way and doing what I was supposed to be doing with my body and so this work is very personal to me. That’s the fuel that keeps me going when I am burned out and tired from traveling all over and seeing patients that are quite frankly also burned out and tired because of the amount of hoops they have had to jump through.
There were 210 prosecutions for pregnancy-related complications in our country, and 1/3 of those happened in Oklahoma. So, we are in a region of our country where the risk is quite high. Politicians will always say, “We’re never trying to prosecute pregnant people,” and that’s quite frankly not true.
Mallory Schwarz [Executive Director at Abortion Action Missouri]: Missourians for years before the Dobb’s decision were already going to Kansas and Illinois. Even those here in Kansas City or in Saint Louis, who may have had a quick jaunt across the river, are being displaced because there are patients coming from around the country.
We saw in Missouri the first state to deny a pregnant person, carrying a dead fetus inside her, care at multiple emergency rooms because those hospitals, those providers, were scared.
Threatening physicians the way that this ban does, means that new providers, medical students, and residents don’t want to come to Missouri. Especially in Missouri, a state with one of the highest rates of maternal mortality and morbidity in the nation, that will have a long-term impact on our state.
The opportunity to vote ‘Yes’ on Amendment 3 means that we can rebuild a level of abortion access that our state has never had before. It defers to physician’s judgement to determine fetal viability and it allows patients to be able to have open and honest conversations with their providers.
Stephanie Bell [Spokesperson for Missouri Stands With Women]: All Missourians are on the same team that we want good healthcare for mothers and we want to preserve life. We have significant concerns about the initiative allowing late-term abortions up until the moment of birth, it would allow young minors to obtain abortion without parental notification and consent, and that provider immunity clause should be a very significant concern for Missourians. And, we’re encouraging all Missourians to vote ‘No’ on this initiative.
Mallory Schwarz: Our opposition will say anything to distract from the crisis that their abortion ban has caused. It is a public health crisis.
Emily Wales [President & CEO at Planned Parenthood Great Plains]: I think there was some term about post delivery abortions, and these are just not situations that happen, they’re not real healthcare. The nice thing is that the courts have dealt with that head on. The Court of Appeals got to shoot down particular things and say “these are not reasonable outcomes.”
So we are going to have language that people understood, restore access as much as possible and also make that access meaningful. When we had Roe (v. Wade) in effect here, it was not substantive right. We didn’t have access, we had trap laws that were shutting down clinics and so we knew that we needed something stronger than Roe and that is what Amendment 3 will be. But, we also wanted to meet Missourians where they were and understand what language would allow providers to do the work they need to do to ensure that lifesaving care is available. Also, what words in the language make sense to Missouri’s voters.
Woman on Megaphone: These proposed abortion initiatives fail to provide a genuine solution to the complex issue of reproductive justice.
Justice Gatson [Reproductive Justice Advocate at Real Justice Network]: You will actually be embedding a ban to the state’s constitution because of the viability language. Those folks who need care, and they fall outside of these weeks, they won’t get it. In our constitution, we will criminalize them, we will criminalize the people who provide the care for them. This is not good.
Bonyen Lee-Gilmore [Vice President of Communications at National Institute for Reproductive Health]: Before Roe was decided by the Supreme Court, advocates were asking for abortion rights, period. Justice Harry Blackman (Supreme Court Justice), created this concept of a viability limit to figure out a way to find a compromise between abortion rights and allowing the government to have some sort of interest in pregnancy decision making.
Viability is vague and it can be defined and if you don’t hold the power in the state you have to think of who has the power to define when a fetus is viable. This leads to stories like Brittany Watts in Ohio who was investigate for her miscarriage and the judge cited Ohio’s viability limit as a justification to refer her case to the Grand Jury.
We’re also talking about criminalization of pregnant people, investigations of pregnant people who are navigating pregnancy outcomes like miscarriage or stillbirth. Whenever we are introducing police into the framework, we are now talking about a heightened targeting of women of color.
Justice Gatson: We can not follow this ‘reproductive rights’ model, because we can not trust the courts to do what’s necessary for us. We’re really just opening ourselves up to a whole bunch of harm that we really don’t have to do. We can wait, we can get the language right, and we can go for it again next year. We’re told over and over again, “we can’t wait, we can’t wait, we can’t wait.”
We can wait for this one, it’s important to get this one right.
Bonyen Lee-Gilmore: We have been conditioned to meet the Roe standard. Now we’re in a different time. There was pretty groundbreaking research conducted by PerryUndem where they tested the Michigan abortion ballot and they tested that with the viability limit against a clean version. The clean version did double digits better. They did not trust that the government would enforce that with any sort of goodwill and they expressed a complete reduction of government interference at all at any point. But, the movement hasn’t quite caught up to that.
We have an opportunity to rewrite these policies so that we’re centering the most marginalized people, and so the invitation to advocates across the country is really to think about whether we need to negotiate against ourselves at the gate.
Emily Wales: I think it’s fair for Missourians to be anxious about that. The nice thing is we’ve been battling this in 5 different phases just to get on the ballot and again and again the courts have seen this amendment language and the process for what it is. We also wrote this language in a way that the legislature has to meet national clinically accepted standards like The Society for Family Planning. They set the professional expectations and definitions for this care, and we are not going into this conversation with the legislature in a naïve way. We’re going to be ready for that.
Dr. Iman Alsaden: There’s always a disconnect between the law and medicine, which is why the viability piece is tricky. I know that there are a lot of people that have different, different opinions about it. Think about all the people that it would restore access to and I would also encourage those people to think about the fact that they are often providing care for places that already have fetal viability standards.
Abortion affects all of us. If you don’t know somebody that has been affected by abortion, first thing, you probably do. Second thing, you will, and we should try to give people their rights back and we can continue to work around the rest for now.
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“I cannot vote for someone like that”: Ohio women voters fume at Bernie Moreno’s abortion “joke”
POWELL, Ohio — A small group of Ohioans gathered last Friday morning at the former restaurant-turned-Fred Astaire Dance Studios in Powell, Ohio, a small suburban town some 18 miles north of Columbus, to hear Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown speak alongside local voters in a late-campaign press conference to call out controversial abortion comments made by his challenger, luxury car dealer Bernie Moreno.
The speakers — two central Ohio Republican voters and one Independent — addressed the handful of attendees huddled by the farthest wall from the studio's entrance around the stone brick fireplace and a black podium outfitted with a "Bernie Moreno thinks he knows better than Ohioans" sign.
Ann Fischer, the Independent voter from Dublin, opened the remarks by describing how an abortion once saved her life.
"I am only able to stand here before you today because I was able to receive a life-saving abortion in 1992 after experiencing an ectopic pregnancy. I could have died and most likely would have died. But at 4 a.m., the emergency surgery saved my life," she said, choking back tears.
"Bernie Moreno is not on our side. He doesn't respect the will of Ohio voters, and he certainly doesn't respect me or the countless women like me for whom this issue isn't hypothetical, it's personal. I cannot vote for someone like that," Fischer said between sniffles, adding: "I'm not going back 50 years. I'm voting for Sherrod Brown."
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Though Ohioans officially voted to protect their access to abortion last fall, the hot-button issue has re-entered the fray in the state's Senate race as incumbent progressive Brown and Trump-backed Moreno face off for his seat. The highly contentious toss-up contest, which is key to either party's control over the upper chamber during the next presidency, has hinged on the subject of abortion rights for the last month as Moreno faces backlash over his comments about Ohio women voters.
In a now-viral moment during a Warren County town hall in September, Moreno accused suburban women of being single-issue voters when it comes to abortion rights, singling out older women and calling it "a little crazy" to prioritize abortion access in their voting decisions.
“You know, the left has a lot of single-issue voters,” Moreno said. “Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ … OK. It’s a little crazy by the way, but — especially for women that are like past 50 — I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.'”
"It's not just a single issue. It has so many other issues involved in it."
Moreno's comments, first reported by local publication NBC4i, immediately sparked outrage. Earlier this month, more than 1,200 Ohio women across party lines signed an open letter to the Cleveland businessman telling him they didn't find his comments funny and wouldn't be voting for him because of it.
Since then, Brown's campaign has seized on the ongoing backlash from Moreno's comments, mentioning it in media appearances, hosting events like Friday's presser and running response ads in a bid to show Ohio voters that Moreno is out of touch with their wants before they cast their ballots.
“While Sherrod stands with the majority of Ohioans who believe that a woman has the right to make her own health care decisions, Moreno has made it clear he thinks he knows better," campaign spokesperson Maggie Amjad told Salon in a statement. "Moreno went so far as to mock Ohio women for caring about this issue and has repeatedly said he will overturn the will of Ohio voters by voting for a national abortion ban and that he is ‘100% pro-life with no exceptions.’”
A spokesperson for Moreno said at the time of the initial blowback that the businessman made the comment as a "tongue-in-cheek joke about how Sherrod Brown and members of the left-wing media like to pretend the only issue that matters to women voters is abortion." Moreno echoed that sentiment during an appearance on former Fox News host Megyn Kelly's show last week.
During Friday's event, Brown offered a pithy rebuttal.
"I don't think people should joke about women's health," he told reporters, noting Moreno's stance on abortion. "That's not a joking matter."
The Moreno campaign did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
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Brown, who has held elected office in the state since the 1970s, has worked to establish an image as a defender of reproductive health and freedom of choice. Earlier this year, he signed onto a Senate proposal supporting federal birth control protections that Republicans blocked.
Moreno has voiced support for a 15-week national abortion ban during the state's primary and told a Cincinnati radio host in 2022 that he's "absolute pro-life, no exceptions," according to The Columbus Dispatch. In July, he received an endorsement from SBA Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion organization that has vowed to support candidates who back a 15-week ban.
For his part, Moreno slightly moderated his stance to align with the national GOP platform as the 2024 election cycle progressed. The luxury car salesman has since indicated he backs the Republican Party policy of allowing states to decide for themselves (though he still personally supports a 15-week ban) and for some exceptions in cases of rape, incest and the pregnant person's health, according to The Hill.
Marcie Seidel, the Republican former chief of staff for the first lady of ex-Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, said in her remarks at Friday's event that she felt insulted by Moreno's September comments and urged her fellow Republicans to vote for Brown.
While she said she is pro-life herself, she described her stance as all-encompassing, including advocacy for policies that address poverty, housing and food insecurity, improved healthcare for mothers and children, treatment for mental health and substance use disorders, and better gun regulations. "That's pro-life," she said.
Seidel, who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris and said she has never voted for former president Donald Trump, told Salon that she defected from the Republican Party because she could no longer recognize it. She said she rejects the notion that abortion is a single issue.
"It's not just a single issue. It has so many other issues involved in it, and what [Americans] need to know is that personal freedom, I believe, is at stake," she said in an interview, emphasizing that, though she's pro-life and isn't against others opposing abortion, she believes every patient should decide for themselves what's right for them.
"We start taking that freedom away from people — what's next? I don't know," she added.
Ohioans voted 57% to 43% last fall to enshrine a right to reproductive care, including access to abortion care up through the point of fetal viability, into the state's constitution. Voters in the state navigated confusion around the labeling of the ballot issue, a sneaky referendum attempting to raise the threshold for a ballot measure to take effect, and deceiving language approved by Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose all in an off year.
Delaware County, the Republican-leaning region where Powell sits, had one of the highest rates of voter turnout in the state during that election (60.69%) and overwhelmingly voted to protect abortion access, making the state's paused six-week trigger ban unconstitutional.
"It's clear that people in Delaware, like people everywhere, believe that decisions should not be made by politicians," Brown told reporters Friday. "These decisions are intensely, intensely personal decisions to be made by women and their doctor securely. That's separated. It's not a partisan issue."
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Brown said he's heard Republicans, Independents and Democrats all speak out for allowing women to make abortion care decisions with their doctors and speak out against Moreno's comments.
"Ohio women understand the stakes of this election," he added.
Still, the furor over Moreno's comments and abortion access may not be enough to sway Ohioans amid the barrage of attack ads from both campaigns and their affiliates alongside the state's allegiance to the Republican Party. Polls show Brown and Moreno neck-and-neck, with the Decision Desk HQ and The Hill polling average placing Moreno 0.2 percentage points ahead of Brown. With a national decline in split-ticket voting and a state that overwhelmingly voted to elect Donald Trump in the last two election cycles, the Democrat faces an uphill battle that courting moderate and disaffected Republicans may not be enough to overcome.
Delaware County, which supported Trump in 2016 and 2020 and backed Brown's challenger in 2018, also makes clear the high stakes of the race for the Cleveland progressive amid his attempts to court Republican voters.
Peeking out from the red and orange leaves of an unusually warm Ohio autumn, "Trump-Vance" and "Bernie Moreno" signs sporadically dotted yards along the snaking, wooded roads heading east to State Route 315, a main highway of central Ohio. Unlike in the solidly blue capital city just miles south, not a "Sherrod Brown" sign was in sight.
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Texas Woman Who Nearly Died From Abortion Ban Featured in Searing New Harris Ad
“It almost cost me my life, and it will affect me for the rest of my life," Ondrea says in the ad, blaming Donald Trump for Texas' abortion laws.
By Kylie Cheung | October 25, 2024 | 2:00pmPhoto: Screenshot
We’re 10 days away from Election Day, and Kamala Harris is making her final pitch to voters in the consistently red state of Texas. Harris will appear alongside Beyoncé at a Friday evening rally in Houston that will reportedly focus on the perils of the state’s total abortion ban. On Thursday, her campaign released a two-minute spot, featuring a Texas woman named Ondrea, who shares how she almost died as a result of Texas’ abortion. The ad includes photos of Ondrea’s open wounds on the operating table and the remaining scarring.
Texas’ abortion ban offers a narrow, vague exception to save the pregnant person’s life. But because doctors face the threat of life in prison, and because pregnancy complications are time-sensitive and rarely straightforward, patients like Ondrea, whose water broke at 16 weeks, can still be denied emergency abortion care. “Because I live in Texas, I was denied the abortion care I needed, despite being told that my daughter would not survive,” Ondrea says in the ad. “I was terrified. And I just had to wait.”
Not long after losing her daughter, things took a turn for the worse. “I was robbed a chance to grieve, because immediately after her birth, I was in the worst pain of my life,” she says. “I’d developed a massive septic infection and I went from burying my daughter to fighting for my life. … I remember thinking just ‘God allow me to be peaceful when I go.'”
The ad then cuts to audio of Trump declaring, “First of all, I’m the one who got rid of Roe v. Wade and I’m proud to have done it,” as well as his 2016 comment that “there has to be some form of punishment” for people who have abortions. The ad simultaneously features graphic images of Ondrea’s open wounds as she underwent surgery. “Even though my wound is physically closed now, there are a lot of parts of me that still feel open,” she says through tears. Ondrea’s husband, Cesar, mourns that “now we may never ever get to be pregnant again.”
In September, the Gender Equity Policy Institute reported that maternal deaths in the state increased by a staggering 56% between 2019 and 2022, compared to an 11% increase nationwide during the same time period. “There’s only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality,” the organization’s president told NBC. “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban [SB 8, which took effect in September 2021] as the primary driver of this alarming increase.” The data also showed glaring racial disparities: The maternal mortality rate among white women in Texas doubled from 20 deaths per 100,000 to 39.1. Among Black women, like Ondrea, the maternal mortality rate spiked from 31.6 to 43.6 per 100,000 live births.
Ondrea is one of over two dozen Texas women who have shared their harrowing experiences of being denied emergency abortions under the state’s laws. In March 2023, a group of these women sued the state, arguing the medical exception attached to the abortion ban is too ambiguous. Like Ondrea, lead plaintiff Amanda Zurawski recounted almost dying of sepsis after being denied a timely emergency abortion for her nonviable, life-threatening pregnancy; she survived, but her future fertility was severely impaired because one of her fallopian tubes permanently closed. The Texas Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the women’s lawsuit in May.
“It almost cost me my life, and it will affect me for the rest of my life,” Ondrea says in the ad. “I almost died because I was denied a medical abortion. … If these laws continue, it will cost more lives.”
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