1). “Four States Consider Bills to Punish Abortion Patients As Murderers”, Jan 16, 2025, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
2). “Mississippi Bill: Life in Prison for Aiding Teen Abortions”, Jan 13, 2025, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/
3). “Republican states can move ahead with abortion pill lawsuit in Texas”, Jan 16, 2025, Brendan Pierson, Reuters, at < https://www.msn.com/en-us/
4). “Trump is lying about his 'moderate' abortion stance — he will ban it nationwide: Trump lies constantly, and history shows he and the GOP will repay evangelicals with a national abortion ban”, Sep 20, 2023, Amanda Marcotte, Salon, at < https://www.salon.com/2023/09/
5). “ 'There will be no rebuilding': Bracing America for the implementation of Project 2025: Donald Trump's return to power further undermines America's self-image of greatness”, Jan 14, 2025, Chauncey DeVega, Salon, at < https://www.salon.com/2025/01/
6). “People are fleeing abortion bans states: report: A new analysis found abortion-ban states are losing 36,000 residents per quarter post-Dobbs”, Jan 14, 2025, Nicole Karlis, Salon, at < https://www.salon.com/2025/01/
7). “Democratic states train non-doctors on providing abortions to expand US access: From Washington to Connecticut, pharmacists and healthcare workers pioneer efforts to limit abortion barriers”, Jan 13, 2025, Carter Sherman, The Guardian, at < https://www.theguardian.com/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: The attacks on Women's Reproductive Health-care Rights and Access to safe Abortion continue to increase. Item 1)., “Four States Consider Bills ….”; Item 2)., “Mississippi Bill: Life in Prison ….”; & Item 3)., “Republican states ….”, look at different aspects of this. The most shocking is the report in Item 1)., that lists 5 states (South Carolina, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Indiana & Texas) where there are serious legislative attempts to define abortion as murder, and in 4 of those states the death penalty would be applied. There is a movement of vicious right-wingers called Abortion Abolitionists and they are eager to begin executing women who had the temerity to leave one of these fascist controlled Red States to get a legal abortion elsewhere. Item 2 discusses a Mississippi bill that would allow zealous Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth prosecuters to send grandmothers or mothers to prison for life if they so much as gave their granddaughters/daughters gas money to get to an out-of-state abortion clinic. Alabama already has laws prohibiting minors from leaving the state to obtain a legal abortion in a blue state and imposing harsh penalties for anyone aiding them in doing so. The Alabama Attorney General has stated that doing so is “organized crime” and he will use RICO laws to prosecute grandmothers, friends, uber-drivers and the like. Item 3 discusses the fact that Kansas, Missouri, and Idaho petitioned notorious Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth Federal Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, in Amarillo, Texas, to allow them to continue with their attempt to block the access of women, in their respective tyrranical states, access to medication abortion.
In Item 4)., “Trump is lying ….”, Amanda Marcotte discusses the political realities of abortion, she is the author of an oustanding series of article over the past 10 years plus about the abortion struggles in Salon. Marcotte writes that it looks pretty well inevitable that Trump will move to end abortion, as a sop to his extremist Republican base, that gives him cover to pursue his real agenda, tax cuts for the rich and the general dismantling of the Federal Government including the looting of the funds for Social Security and Medicare / Medicaid. Item 5)., “ 'There will be no rebuilding': ….” largely discusses the same sort of questions, with Chauncy DeVega's incisive analysis.
The fact is that the long term Republican War on Women continues and has become more virulent and vicious than ever before. And as Amanda Marcotte presciently wrote 13 months before the 2024 election, in Item 4).:
“Donald Trump does not care about the issue of abortion. That's why if he's elected, he will sign a national ban on the procedure the second he has a chance. If, heaven forbid, he gets back to the White House, it will be because the Christian right carried him. Banning abortion in all 50 states will be a way to pay them back, without having to give up anything he cares about. (Emphasis added)
“This should be obvious, and yet, somehow, many in the press are being fooled by Trump's latest public posture about abortion, even though it's transparently dishonest. ….
“ 'You will win on this issue when you come up with the right number of weeks,' Trump asserted about a topic that has dogged the Republican Party at the ballot box since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“Trump then went on to talk about this medical procedure like he was negotiating alimony for his next ex-wife.
“ 'We're going to agree to a number of weeks or months or however you want to define it,' he said, boldly claiming, 'Both sides will come together. And for the first time in 52 years, you'll have an issue that we can put behind us.' ….
“Evangelical voters know Trump doesn't care about abortion and has likely caused a few himself. But that's why they're right to believe he'll sign any ban put in front of him, no matter how draconian. Trump takes a wholly transactional view of politics, and his only concern is amassing power for himself. Certainly, he doesn't care how many women die or are maimed because of a ban. If he wins the White House, he'll want to keep the religious right on his side, and giving them a total or near-total ban on abortion is a way to do that that costs him nothing. (Emphasis added)
“In a political environment where very little is predictable, there is one thing we can count on: If Trump is returned to the White House, a national abortion ban is a near-certainty. After all, if Trump wins, that means Republican turnout was high and Republicans are probably taking Congress, as well. Looking at state legislatures should kill any hope that Republicans will show constraint on this issue. Republicans keep banning abortion, despite strong public opposition. And when voters turn out to protect abortion rights in the states, Republican politicians retaliate by passing more laws to curtail voting rights.
“For Trump, who opposes democracy, this is a win-win.
“Anti-choice fervor in the GOP is driving anti-democracy fervor, which only makes it easier for Trump to sell his 'why not end democracy altogether' plan. Giving evangelicals an abortion ban will just ensure their support for Trump's unsubtle yearning to be dictator-for-life. And if it makes Trump less popular with the larger public, well, that's why he wants to destroy democracy. The end goal is to put his power out of the reach of voters. (Emphasis added) ….
“This will all be much worse if Trump takes office again, starting with the near-inevitable national abortion ban he'll sign. He won't be worried about voter backlash. After all, he won't legally be able to run for a third term, so his focus will be on trying to find a way to install himself illegally in office on a permanent basis. To get that done, he will need the most fanatical forces in the GOP on his side. One way to do that is give them what they want, which is an abortion ban. From Trump's personal point of view, there's no downside and only upside to banning abortion. And the smartest bet of all is that Trump will always do what he thinks benefits him, no matter who gets hurt in the process.” (Emphasis added)
Item 6). “People are fleeing ….”, discusses the evidence that people are starting to leave, or decide not to take a job or other opportunity and move to, the Trump Abortion Ban Red States. A study (conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER) that used change of address data from the Post Office, found a small but significant movement of people, presumably younger people, away from the Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth Regimes in the Red States. That study actually only documented moves out of Trump Abortion Ban Red States. The avoidance of young people (particularly women of reproductive age) to take advantage of career or educational opportunities in Forced-Pregnancy / Forced-Birth Regime Red States has been manifested in difficulty recruiting professional staff or losing professional staff due to the harsh laws enacted in those states. One can only surmise that recruitment will become even more difficult, if executions of women for seeking out-of-state abortions begin in places like Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Indiana (N. Dakota does not have the death penalty so women there could only be sentenced to life imprisonment). There is a link to the NBER study embedded in the article
Finally Item 7)., “Democratic states train ….”, discusses some of the initiatives in the Blue States to assist andprotect those who provide abortion services in their own territory. The volume of women fleeing from Trump Abortion Ban Red States has overwhelmed the ability of Abortion and Reproductive Health Care clinics from caring for all the women who arrive at their doors.
Abortion Rights are one of the key issues in the upcoming and ongoing struggles against the establishment of a fascist regime in the U.S. Some think that White Women, who voted overwhelmingly for abortion rights state constitutional amendments, but who still voted narrowly for Trump, will be outraged enough to actually repudiate him and his overall agenda. Marcotte and DeVega seem to be of the opinion that it is too late and a Trumpian dictatorship is inevitable. If so, the flow of refugees in the world will be reversed, with the U.S. becoming a net generator of political and socioeconomic refugees rather than a destination for such people; a stark change from the situation up until now.
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Four States Consider Bills to Punish Abortion Patients As Murderers
Click to skip ahead: In All Eyes On Extremism, four (maybe five) state bills that would punish abortion patients as murderers. In Care Denied, a South Carolina woman was denied miscarriage care. In the Courts, the case against mifepristone & the FDA is back. In the States, North Carolina’s CPCs are getting millions in taxpayer dollars to pay for…fitness equipment? In the Nation, Pence is lobbying against RFK Jr., and Trump’s AG pick signals she’ll protect anti-abortion harassers. Keep An Eye On an increase in abortion patients who used ‘fertility awareness’ apps. Finally, Anti-Abortion Strategy looks at the latest in local ordinances.
All Eyes On Extremism
We’ve all heard Republicans claim over and over again that they have no interest in punishing women for having abortions. But if that’s really the case, why are four states considering legislation that would punish abortion patients as murderers? And why have a dozen legislators in a fifth state promised to do the same?
Right now, legislation proposed in South Carolina, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Indiana would reclassify abortion as a homicide and prosecute abortion patients accordingly. In South Carolina, Oklahoma and Indiana, that could mean giving women the death penalty. In Texas, which also has the death penalty, twelve lawmakers have pledged to bring forward similar legislation.
Is this what being ‘pro-life’ looks like?
Before I tell you how we got here—and who is behind this push—let’s take a closer look at those bills. I’ve reported previously on the one in South Carolina: The ‘Equal Protection Act’ doesn’t only classify abortion as a homicide, but defines personhood as beginning at fertilization. That means conservatives who believe emergency contraception and IUDs stop the implantation of a fertilized egg could argue that these are actually abortions. (In other words, birth control could be punishable by the death penalty.)
I’ve also reported on ‘equal protection’ efforts in Oklahoma, where at least one politician, state Sen. Dusty Deevers, is a self-identified ‘abolitionist.’ Deevers is behind newly-introduced Oklahoma Senate Bill 456, which would make “killing” an embryo or fetus punishable in the same way any other homicide would be.
In North Dakota, House Bill 1373 would change the definition of a ‘human being’ in state code around homicide and assault to include “an unborn child” beginning at fertilization. Indiana House Bill 1334 does the same. So much for not punishing women!
One of my 2025 predictions was the normalization of abortion ‘abolitionists’—those who believe that abortion patients should be punished as murderers. Because while Republicans want us to believe that bills and beliefs like this are far from the mainstream, all the evidence proves otherwise. When South Carolina introduced their bill in 2023, for example, it was co-sponsored by two dozen legislators. And charging abortion patients with homicide is codified in the Texas GOP’s platform!
As Deevers wrote on Twitter earlier this month, “Abolitionism is becoming the position of grassroots conservatives across the country…” Terrifying.
But that shift isn’t happening organically—these maniacs have spent a whole lot of time doing behind-the-scenes work. Abortion, Every Day has uncovered, for example, that the above bills were all drafted with the help of the same organization—and likely one person: Bradley Pierce of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, a so-called abortion ‘abolitionist.’
For years, Pierce has been lobbying lawmakers to punish women who have abortions and drafting model legislation for them. In fact, it appears Pierce was the driving force behind the Texas GOP changing their platform to include language on ‘equal protection’—which, as you know, is code for prosecuting abortion patients as murderers. It’s also his group that’s working to convince Texas legislators right now to author or co-author an ‘equal protection’ bill.
That’s why it’s so important that we’re shining a light on operators like Pierce—someone Republicans want Americans to think is an outlier, even as he drafts legislation!
Here’s the other thing: Even though these bills are unlikely to pass (at least for now), that doesn’t mean they’re not important. The strategy here is to normalize extremism by reintroducing radical legislation again and again. Conservatives know that the more accustomed Americans become to seeing it, the less outraged they’ll get over time. They’re waiting for the moment that instead of inspiring letters to their representatives or angry TikToks, voters respond with a shoulder shrug.
We can’t let that happen.
Care Denied
Another day, another horror story. A South Carolina woman was denied miscarriage treatment because of the state’s abortion ban. Christine Glang was 9 weeks along when she found out that her pregnancy was no longer viable; she was miscarrying, but her body wouldn’t expel the tissue on its own. As so many women do, Glang needed a D&C.
But because breaking South Carolina’s ban comes with potential prison time and a revoked medical license, her doctor wasn’t willing to help. At least, not yet—they wanted to wait 11 days in order to conduct another ultrasound.
“I was already carrying dead fetal tissue inside of me for three weeks,” Glang said. "And I knew the longer I waited, I ran the risk of infection, sepsis, my future fertility, and even my life.” So she paid thousands out-of-pocket, traveled to Virginia—bringing her daughter’s stuffed animal with her for support—and had an abortion there.
Legally, Glang should have been able to get care because her fetus had already expired. But as we’ve seen in other states, many health care providers are simply not willing to take the risk because the consequences are so steep and the fear is just so great.
This is why I say ‘exceptions’ aren’t real: It reminds me of this 2022 Mississippi Today investigation: Even though Mississippi has a rape ‘exception,’ the publication couldn’t find a single doctor in the state willing to give a sexual violence victim an abortion.
Watch the full segment on Glang’s story below:
In the Courts
Back in October, Abortion, Every Day broke the news that three Republican-led states had revived a legal attack against mifepristone. The short version is that the Attorneys General of Kansas, Missouri, and Idaho want to make abortion medication illegal for minors entirely, use the Comstock Act to stop the shipping of abortion medication, and force the FDA to go back to their pre-2016 rules on the drug.
The suit itself is truly wild, with some of the most telling anti-abortion arguments you can imagine—from claims that women who self manage their abortions develop PTSD because they associate their home with abortion, and fake ‘science’ insisting that the medication messes with the “reproductive system of the adolescent female.” (I know, yuck.)
Leaving aside the actual content of the complaint, the other sketchy thing was that the suit was filed with Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk—the ultra-conservative asshole in Amarillo, Texas who ruled in favor of the previous mifepristone suit. None of these AGs are from Texas, obviously, but they really wanted to get their case in front of Kacsmaryk because of his anti-abortion extremism.
In order to do that, they filed their case as an “intervening” complaint—piggybacking off that old mifepristone case. Very sneaky! Even more sneaky? Today, Kacsmaryk ruled that the three states that are not Texas can move forward with their lawsuit. (There’s a good thread here about the legal nitty-gritty.)
More on this case and the absolute shit-show around it soon, but in the meantime you can read AED’s explainer below:
In the States
Back in 2023, North Carolina Sen. Natasha Marcus gave an epic speech exposing how millions in state funding for crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) were being sent to people’s homes and empty lots. It was the perfect illustration of just how unregulated these fake clinics are—and how they allow Republicans to funnel taxpayer dollars to religious groups.
That speech came to mind as I read The Assembly's incredible investigation into North Carolina CPCs. Reporters found that less than a quarter of state funds actually went toward services or support for pregnant people. Instead, millions of taxpayer dollars were spent on office decorations, travel, and even exercise equipment for employees. (How many diapers do you think a treadmill could buy?)
And like many anti-abortion states, North Carolina has been jacking up CPC funding: In 2022, these groups went from $5.7 million a year in taxpayer dollars to nearly $10 million. By 2023, that number ballooned to $12.4 million.
Then there’s how they treat women. The Assembly revealed one group lied to a pregnant woman, telling her abortion was illegal. Another called the police on a teenage girl—violating her medical privacy—in an effort to stop her from getting an abortion. And because CPCs aren’t medical facilities bound by HIPAA (despite what they claim), they can share personal information without consequence.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: We’re not paying enough attention to how dangerous these groups are. CPCs are the anti-abortion movement’s enforcement arm, and Republicans are leaning on them more than ever. As the GOP ramps up their focus on them, so should we.
Quick hits:
Wisconsin’s Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu says lawmakers may try to pass a 14-week ban if the state Supreme Court rules against a stricter law;
The Idaho Capital Sun has more on Idaho’s largest health system suing the AG over emergency abortion care.
In the Nation
Speaking of the world’s worst people: POLITICO reports that Mike Pence’s organization, Advancing American Freedom (AAF), is lobbying hard against RFK Jr.’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, citing his past supportive statements on abortion rights. In a letter to senators, AAF wrote that “while RFK Jr. has made certain overtures to pro-life leaders that he would be mindful of their concerns at HHS, there is little reason for confidence at this time.”
Back in November, I laid out a political timeline of Kennedy’s public abortion stance—and it’s definitely over the place. But as I wrote then, it’s clear that Kennedy is now being coached by anti-abortion leaders and will be happy to do whatever Trump wants. Case in point: The brain-wormed conspiracy theorist reportedly assured Republican Sen. Josh Hawley—whose wife Erin Hawley is an attorney with anti-abortion powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom—that he’s fully on board.
Hawley went on a Twitter tear last month assuring conservatives that Kennedy “committed to me to reinstate President Trump’s pro-life policies at HHS.” According to Hawley, Kennedy promised to hire all ‘pro-life’ deputies; reinstate the Global Gag Rule and ‘conscience’ protections; ban Title X funds from going to groups that “promote abortion”; reverse a Biden-era nondiscrimination rule; and end “taxpayer funding” for abortions (which isn’t really a thing). Kennedy also told Hawley that he would be open to rolling back access to mifepristone by reverting to the FDA’s pre-2016 rules.
But that’s not enough for Pence’s group. The ultra-conservative Daily Wire reports that AAF gave Republican senators a list of questions grill Kennedy on, including when in pregnancy he believes abortion should be banned by the federal government, his position on abortion medication is, and whether he’d require states to collect abortion data.
I’m worried about all of it—and more. Remember, the extremist group Students for Life is already gearing their campaigns toward a Kennedy-led HHS. They’re leaning into his conspiracy-fueled “Make America Healthy Again” nonsense, falsely claiming that abortion medication poisons groundwater and harms the environment. Their goal? To push Kennedy into restricting access to the drug or imposing cruel rules, like forcing women to bag their blood and bring it to doctors—a tactic designed to shame and punish women for self-managing their abortions.
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Mississippi Bill: Life in Prison for Helping Teens Get An Abortion
Click to skip ahead: In Legislation Watch, new bills from Mississippi, Kentucky, Nebraska and Wyoming. In Stats & Studies, young people are fleeing anti-abortion states. In the States, news from Washington, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana and more. Attacks on Democracy looks at the latest in Florida. In the Nation, a few quick hits. Anti-Abortion Strategy flags yet another ‘free speech’ lawsuit from an anti-abortion activist. In the Courts, birth control coverage heads to the Supreme Court.
Legislation Watch
State legislatures are coming back into session and whew do we have a lot to talk about. Let’s start with Mississippi, where a Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill that would punish anyone who helps a teen get an abortion with 20 years to life in prison.
In keeping with conservatives’ attempts to disguise their extremism as concern for children, Rep. Mark Tullos is calling his bill the “Safeguarding Teens from Out-of-State (Abortion) Procedures (STOP) Act.” I know, it’s a mouthful! But we know what this bill is really about: Like similar laws passed in Idaho and Tennessee, this is an attempt to strip young people of their right to travel for healthcare.
Tullos has clearly taken lessons from recent court battles. Unlike the Idaho and Tennessee laws, which make it illegal to “recruit, transport, or harbor” a teen seeking an abortion, his bill focuses only on “transporting” and “harboring.” By omitting any reference to “recruitment,” Tullos is clearly trying to avoid the legal challenges that have plagued those other states.
Because remember, judges have rightly ruled that the term "recruitment" violates free speech, because it could criminalize something as simple as sharing a clinic URL. Leaving out that word, however, doesn’t make the Mississippi bill any less harmful than the others.
The STOP Act would make providing “lodging, shelter, transportation, or money” to help a teen get an abortion a felony. That means a grandmother who lends her 17 year-old grandchild gas money to leave the state could be punished with life in prison. The bill would also allow civil actions to be brought against anyone found to have ‘aided and abetted’ a teen abortion.
What’s more, the bill wouldn’t just make it illegal to drive a teen out of Mississippi for an abortion—it would also criminalize driving a teen through the state, potentially targeting people who don’t even live in Mississippi.
As WJTV points out, Tullos seems to understand that his bill is unconstitutional: He wrote that each provision of the bill is severable—a way to make it easier for a court to deem some parts of the legislation unconstitutional, while leaving others intact. This is what happened with Idaho’s law: a court invalidated the provision about “recruiting” but upheld the language on “harboring” and “transporting.”
None of this is about protecting teenagers. The real goal here is to criminalize what I call “the helpers”—abortion funds, friends, family, or anyone in the community who supports teens in making their own pregnancy decisions. But it’s also about normalizing travel restrictions for women of all ages. They’re just using teenagers as test cases. For more, check out the column I wrote when Republicans first started proposing these laws:
In better legislation news, Nebraska Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh has proposed a bill that would prohibit prosecutions based on pregnancy outcomes—whether it’s abortion, miscarriage, or stillbirth. It’s an important move, given the rise in criminalization since Dobbs. And with Republicans so eager to let citizens sue each other over abortion, I was relieved to see that Legislative Bill 53 would also block civil lawsuits against people for their pregnancy outcomes.
In Wyoming, a Republican lawmaker has introduced legislation that would mandate women view ultrasounds and hear the fetal ‘heartbeat’ before being allowed to use abortion medication. Per usual, this is about shaming women—not healthcare.
In Kentucky, a Republican has filed a bill to add a few so-called “exceptions” to the state’s abortion ban. Rep. Ken Fleming’s legislation would let rape and incest victims end their pregnancies in the first six weeks and make an exception for certain nonviable pregnancies.
Fleming filed a similar bill last year, citing his daughters as the motivation. But like most abortion ban ‘exceptions,’ the bill was written as narrowly as possible—more of a PR move than legislation to expand care. For example, many people don’t know they’re pregnant before six weeks; sexual violence victims, in particular, are more likely to be in denial or still processing their trauma. (Not to mention, young victims are less likely to know about their bodies or pregnancy.)
And while allowing abortion in cases of lethal fetal abnormalities is incredibly important—this is one of the issues I’ve been intently focused on these last few years—the language of Fleming’s bill leaves a lot to be desired. House Bill 203 defines a nonviable pregnancy as a “condition diagnosed before birth from which an unborn child would die at birth or shortly thereafter, or be stillborn.” But what does ‘shortly thereafter’ birth mean? If a newborn could survive for a few days, is that a lethal condition? What about a few weeks?
A Kentucky Democrat has also filed legislation to add exceptions to the state’s ban: Sen. David Yates says, “I’ve been around in government a long time, and I think it’s dangerous when government makes decisions for you.” Yates’ bill would allow for abortions for sexual violence victims up until ‘viability,’ and his language around fatal anomalies is much broader than the Republican bill: Senate Bill 35 would allow abortions “because of a lethal fetal anomaly or the fetus is incompatible with sustained life outside the womb.”
Both bills call for abortions to be permitted in cases of “incomplete miscarriages.” Unbelievably, miscarriage care is not allowed in Kentucky if there’s still a fetal heartbeat—a dangerous standard that has killed women.
Stats & Studies
To no one’s surprise, a new study finds that abortion bans are driving people to leave anti-choice states. The National Bureau of Economic Research reports that the 13 states with total abortion bans lost 128,700 residents in the year following Roe’s demise.
Using change-of-address data from the U.S. Postal Service, the researchers found that these states are losing more than 36,000 residents per quarter. They also found that those in single-person households were most likely to move; that indicates it’s probably young people fleeing these states.
The study also looked ‘abortion hostile’ states—those that didn’t have total abortion bans, but “abortion access was either directly impaired or perceived to be under threat.” These states, too, lost residents.
Other studies and polls have shown a similar trend since Roe was overturned, especially around young people. A 2024 poll from CNBC/Generation Lab, for example, found that 62% of young people wouldn’t live in a state with an abortion ban, with 45% reporting that they would “definitely” or “probably” reject a job offer in one. Similarly, a 2024 Redfin Survey reported that nearly 1 in 10 Gen Zers who plan to move cite abortion rights as a reason.
It’s not just young workers—college students, medical students, residents, and doctors are also steering clear of anti-abortion states. A NBC poll found that 1 in 3 students would change schools if they were in a state with a ban. And a 2024 study from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) revealed that residency applications dropped by double digits in states with bans.
All of which is to say: People don’t want to live in states where they and their loved ones can’t access healthcare or are treated as less than fully human. Maybe if the Republicans in these states don’t care about our lives or rights, they’ll care about their bottom line. Researchers wrote, "States with bans may face challenges in attracting and retaining workers, especially younger workers, which could impact economic growth and development.”
In the States
Montana Republicans are asking the Supreme Court to step in on a fight over parental consent. Last year, the state’s Supreme Court struck down a Republican law mandating that doctors get notarized consent from a parent or guardian before performing an abortion on a minor, ruling that it violated minors’ right to privacy and equal protection under the state constitution.
But Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen wasn’t happy with that decision, so now he’s asking the nation’s highest court to weigh in. In his brief, he claims that “a child’s right to privacy does not supersede a parent’s fundamental right to direct the care and upbringing of their child.”
Knudsen and Gov. Greg Gianforte have been relentless in trying to restrict abortion, despite clear protections in the state constitution—a task made even harder after voters recently passed a pro-choice ballot measure. My guess? This plea to the Supreme Court is a last-ditch effort, because they know it might be the only way they can restrict abortion rights in Montana.
Arizona abortion rights lawmakers and activists are working to repeal restrictions in light of November’s pro-choice ballot measure win. But with the current makeup of the legislature, it won’t be easy. Erika Mach of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona acknowledged the uphill battle, saying, “It will be a challenge.” Still, she added, “We’re prepared to make any strides we can when it comes to repealing the 40-plus restrictions we have on the books.”
Good news out of New Mexico: The state Supreme Court has ruled against towns and counties that passed anti-abortion ordinances in violation of state law. Across the country, anti-abortion activists have been pushing local governments to pass ordinances restricting women’s right to travel—like those in Texas—or pushing local versions of the Comstock Act, which bans mailing “obscene” materials, including abortion pills.
Since Roe was overturned, several of these ordinances have passed in New Mexico. But as expected, the state Supreme Court ruled that local governments must adhere to state law. In a statement, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham applauded the decision, saying that healthcare decisions are personal and that “they’ll stay that way” in the state:
“Let me be crystal clear: as long as I’m governor, New Mexico will fight any attempt to limit reproductive healthcare access, whether those challenges come from local ordinances, other states, or the federal government.”
The bad news? This decision inches anti-abortion activists closer to their real goal: getting the Comstock Act in front of the Supreme Court. As you know, that’s the endgame.
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Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has directed the state health department to adopt an emergency rule in anticipation of Donald Trump’s inauguration, requiring hospitals to do two things: 1) Prohibit withholding care based on a person’s pregnancy status, and 2) Prohibit prioritizing an embryo or fetus over the health of the pregnant person unless that’s what the patient wants.
Washington is already a pro-choice state, but taking proactive and explicit steps like this makes a lot of sense. What I am curious about, however, is what these rules mean for religious institutions—which house nearly half of the hospital beds in the state.
In other Washington news, Governor-elect Bob Ferguson has launched a committee to take on Project 2025, with Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates CEO Jennifer Allen as co-chair.
Quick hits:
The Daily Progress profiles Virginia Del. Amy Laufer, who is working to codify abortion rights;
The Arkansas Times profiles five reproductive rights leaders in Arkansas;
And in Louisiana, the New Orleans health department has created a map of where people can find misoprostol, which is now a controlled substance in the state.
Attacks on Democracy
Well this is gross: Three governors who actively worked to quash voters’ will on abortion are getting a ‘pro-life’ award next month. Priests for Life will be honoring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen—all of whom used their offices to lobby against pro-choice ballot measures.
DeSantis, in particular, went all in, weaponizing state agencies to defeat Amendment 4. He launched a taxpayer-funded disinformation campaign against the abortion rights measure, orchestrated a bogus ‘voter fraud’ investigation, and even threatened TV stations with criminal charges for running ads supporting the amendment. It was a mess. And despite the majority of Floridians voting to restore abortion rights, his attacks on democracy succeeded in defeating Amendment 4.
Apparently, even that was too close for comfort. DeSantis held a press conference today to propose changes to the state’s ballot measure process. “The citizen initiative has really been transformed into a special interest initiative,” he claimed.
DeSantis suggested new rules for verifying petition signatures, changing how ballot language is written, and holding ballot initiatives as stand-alone elections. In other words, he’s doing everything he can to override the will of voters.
I guess he’s already campaigning for next year’s ‘award,’ too.
In the Nation
Nicholas Kristof at The New York Times writes about the consequences of the global gag rule.
POLITICO on AI abortion training;
Carter Sherman at The Guardian reports on effort in Democratic states to expand who can provide and prescribe abortions.
And in international news, there’s been an “unprecedented” rise of pregnancy-related prosecutions in the U.K.
Anti-Abortion Strategy
You all know I’ve been expecting a wave of bogus “free speech” arguments from anti-abortion activists looking to harass women outside clinics—I even called it in my 2025 predictions. Conservative legal groups are eager to overturn the Supreme Court decision that allowed for buffer zones. But apparently, they’re not stopping at clinic buffer zones.
An anti-abortion activist is now suing over a San Diego ordinance that establishes buffer zones outside religious institutions, medical facilities, and schools—and it’s the school part that’s got Dan Blythe in a twist. The anti-abortion extremist wants to be able to hand out leaflets to high school students, but the ordinance stops him unless the students actually want his materials.
I just had to share this quote from his complaint, which is pretty much exactly what you would expect from an anti-abortion asshole:
“The ordinance prohibits plaintiff from engaging in this activity unless he has first gained the consent of each student whom he is approaching and to whom he is offering leaflets…Obtaining consent is an unrealistic requirement for distributing literature to multiple people arriving in waves and leaves plaintiff unable to engage in the critical literature distribution aspect of his free speech activity.”
Calling consent “unrealistic” is just a *chef’s kiss* perfect encapsulation of who these men are. A federal judge will rule on the case after hearing arguments last week.
In the Courts
Here we go: The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that health plans cover preventative care—including birth control. The Washington Post has the run-down, but here’s the gist: Becerra v. Braidwood Management Inc. was brought by a Christian business that doesn’t want to cover PrEP (the medication that helps prevent the spread of HIV).
Their argument? That PrEP “encourage[s] and facilitate[s] homosexual behavior.” In other words, total assholes. But it doesn’t stop at PrEP—they’re coming for birth control, too. In their filing, the plaintiffs claim the ACA forces them to cover “all F.D.A.-approved contraceptive methods, including methods that some regard as abortifacients.”
And there it is. If you’ve been reading for a while, you know Republicans have spent years laying the groundwork to argue that certain contraceptives—like emergency contraception and IUDs—are actually abortions. This case is another move to further that lie, and to strip Americans of affordable contraceptive care. I don’t need to tell you why that’s so scary, especially now that Roe is gone.
Oh, and you’ll never guess who the lawyer is behind the case: Jonathan Mitchell. That’s right, the architect of Texas’ abortion ban and the maniac who has been recruiting aggrieved men to sue anyone who help their partners or exes get abortions.
I’ll have more for you in the coming days, but you can find background on the case at the National Women’s Law Center and KFF.
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Republican states can move ahead with abortion pill lawsuit in Texas
By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) - Three Republican-led states can go forward with their lawsuit that seeks to restrict the availability of the abortion pill mifepristone, a judge ruled on Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, ruled that Idaho, Missouri and Kansas can continue their case against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in his court, where they last year joined a lawsuit originally brought by anti-abortion groups and doctors.
Those original plaintiffs dropped their case after the U.S. Supreme Court found they did not have legal standing to challenge the FDA's regulation of mifepristone.
The FDA had argued that the states' claims should be dismissed because, with the original plaintiffs gone, they had no connection to Kacsmaryk's court.
Mifepristone has been approved by the FDA since 2000 for use along with another drug, misoprostol, to terminate pregnancy. Medication abortion accounts for a majority of abortions in the United States.
In their 2022 lawsuit, the newly formed Texas group Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and other abortion opponents sought to have mifepristone pulled from the market altogether. In April 2023, they won an order from Kacsmaryk granting the request, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, finding it was too late to challenge the original approval.
The 5th Circuit nonetheless found that the FDA had acted unlawfully in loosening restrictions on the drug since 2016, including by approving it for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, up from seven, and allowing it to be prescribed by telemedicine and dispensed by mail.
On appeal, the Supreme Court found that the plaintiffs had no standing because the FDA's actions did not harm them, without addressing the merits of their case.
Neither Kacsmaryk's nor the 5th Circuit's order was allowed to take effect while the FDA appealed, and mifepristone's availability has so far remained unchanged.
The Republican states have argued they have standing to sue because their Medicaid health insurance programs will likely have to pay to treat patients who have suffered complications from using mifepristone. They have also said they should be allowed to remain in Texas even without the original plaintiffs because it would be inefficient to send the case to another court after nearly more than two years of litigation.
A group of Democratic-led states is separately pursuing a case seeking to block the FDA from imposing any further restrictions on mifepristone.
It is not clear how Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who during his first term appointed Kacsmaryk and two of the three 5th Circuit judges in the case, will handle mifepristone and the lawsuits over it after taking office next year. Trump said during his campaign that he would not ban the drug.
(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Jonathan Oatis)
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Trump hasn't "moderated" on abortion — he'll ban it first chance he gets
Donald Trump does not care about the issue of abortion. That's why if he's elected, he will sign a national ban on the procedure the second he has a chance. If, heaven forbid, he gets back to the White House, it will be because the Christian right carried him. Banning abortion in all 50 states will be a way to pay them back, without having to give up anything he cares about.
This should be obvious, and yet, somehow, many in the press are being fooled by Trump's latest public posture about abortion, even though it's transparently dishonest. During his recent NBC News interview with Kristen Welker, Trump tried to strike a "moderate" pose on abortion. Referring to what the press misleadingly calls a "six-week" ban (it's really a two-week ban) on abortion in Florida, Trump said it was "a terrible mistake" for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to sign the draconian legislation.
"You will win on this issue when you come up with the right number of weeks," Trump asserted about a topic that has dogged the Republican Party at the ballot box since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Trump then went on to talk about this medical procedure like he was negotiating alimony for his next ex-wife.
"We're going to agree to a number of weeks or months or however you want to define it," he said, boldly claiming, "Both sides will come together. And for the first time in 52 years, you'll have an issue that we can put behind us."
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The pomposity of that statement should have been a reminder that Trump should be assumed to be lying about his abortion position, just as he lies about most things. And yet, much of the press took his statements at face value, even going so far as to report that he had angered anti-choice activists, which of course, only helps bolster Trump's false claims of moderation.
From Trump's personal point of view, there's no downside and only upside to banning abortion.
Never-Trump Republican Matt Lewis swallowed Trump's bait whole in a Daily Beast response that assumes Trump's "true" position is pro-choice. "[A]t some point, Trump's presidency might even be a net-negative for pro-lifers," Lewis wrote, arguing anti-choice voters "will have no one to blame but themselves" for believing Trump will back their cause. But Lewis is wish-casting here. It's a fantasy to think that all of these anti-abortion Republicans will wake one day, rueful that they sold out their "family values" to back a guy who wouldn't even ban abortion for them. However, the evangelical voters who appear ready to hand Trump the GOP nomination soon are making a very safe bet. They know that Trump is just lying to Welker and that he will sign a national abortion ban if he wins — likely within a few weeks of being inaugurated.
Evangelical voters know Trump doesn't care about abortion and has likely caused a few himself. But that's why they're right to believe he'll sign any ban put in front of him, no matter how draconian. Trump takes a wholly transactional view of politics, and his only concern is amassing power for himself. Certainly, he doesn't care how many women die or are maimed because of a ban. If he wins the White House, he'll want to keep the religious right on his side, and giving them a total or near-total ban on abortion is a way to do that that costs him nothing.
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In a political environment where very little is predictable, there is one thing we can count on: If Trump is returned to the White House, a national abortion ban is a near-certainty. After all, if Trump wins, that means Republican turnout was high and Republicans are probably taking Congress, as well. Looking at state legislatures should kill any hope that Republicans will show constraint on this issue. Republicans keep banning abortion, despite strong public opposition. And when voters turn out to protect abortion rights in the states, Republican politicians retaliate by passing more laws to curtail voting rights.
For Trump, who opposes democracy, this is a win-win.
Anti-choice fervor in the GOP is driving anti-democracy fervor, which only makes it easier for Trump to sell his "why not end democracy altogether" plan. Giving evangelicals an abortion ban will just ensure their support for Trump's unsubtle yearning to be dictator-for-life. And if it makes Trump less popular with the larger public, well, that's why he wants to destroy democracy. The end goal is to put his power out of the reach of voters.
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It's always wiser to look at what a politician does more than what he says, but with Trump, it's triply important. No other politician lies as much as Trump. No other politician has been less interested in keeping his promises. Trump himself doesn't even really bother to hide that he's lying. To one audience, he pretends to be "moderate" on abortion. To others, he brags that "I was able to terminate Roe vs. Wade." There is simply no relationship between what he says and what he does. What he says is worse than useless.
On the "what he does" front, the track record is clear: Trump gives all the power to fundamentalist Christians.
During his first term, Trump nominated judges from a list compiled by the far-right Federalist Society, which was initially founded for the purpose of banning abortion. Trump also let anti-choice radicals use White House powers to wage war on birth control access, filling health care offices with people who oppose any effort to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Trump's Department of Health passed rules making it harder for women to use their insurance to pay for birth control, and his administration repeatedly tried to cut funding for contraception services for low-income women. Trump officials spent the entire four years of his administration trying to destroy Planned Parenthood altogether.
This will all be much worse if Trump takes office again, starting with the near-inevitable national abortion ban he'll sign. He won't be worried about voter backlash. After all, he won't legally be able to run for a third term, so his focus will be on trying to find a way to install himself illegally in office on a permanent basis. To get that done, he will need the most fanatical forces in the GOP on his side. One way to do that is give them what they want, which is an abortion ban. From Trump's personal point of view, there's no downside and only upside to banning abortion. And the smartest bet of all is that Trump will always do what he thinks benefits him, no matter who gets hurt in the process.
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"There will be no rebuilding": Bracing America for the implementation of Project 2025
Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election was an extreme failure for the United States as both a nation and a country. He has open contempt for democracy and the Constitution. He is publicly promising and threatening (and putting in place the means) to rule as the country’s first elected dictator on “day one.” Trump, like other such autocrats and authoritarians, means what he says both literally and figuratively.
A country consists of a defined territory and borders, founding documents, laws and institutions. The United States failed to protect its democracy by putting an autocrat and his larger authoritarian populist movement and cadre of kleptocratic allies in control of its governing institutions — including Congress. This is a great failure of the United States as a country.
A nation consists of shared values and ideas, myths, narratives, stories and a sense of shared community and identity (and perhaps even destiny) that tie together a people. One of the tenets of America as a nation is a belief in American Exceptionalism. Be it a “shining city on a hill” or “the world’s greatest democracy,” Trump's return to power further undermines America's self-image of greatness. The United States has now been brought down to the level of being common, and just another of many examples across the centuries, of how a failing and sick democracy succumbs to demagogues, strongmen and authoritarians and their false promises of renewed greatness and easy solutions to complex problems.
To that point, the international democracy and human rights advocacy and watchdog organization Freedom House gave the United States 83 points in its annual ranking of freedom around the world. This is similar to countries such as Croatia, Panama and Romania. Mongolia and Argentina, for example, scored higher than the United States.
In total, the 2024 election and the Trumpocene embody a moral crisis and civic collapse for the United States. Donald Trump is a damning indictment of the country’s political culture.
"I think on the Republican side, there is no morality right now," former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger explained to Salon in a recent interview:
Is there room for it? Yes. I think there is still morality in the Democratic Party. One of the things that I've appreciated over the last four years is my new alliance with liberals, and what I call this is an alliance to defend democracy….. That's where we're at now. I think there is still morality left in the Democratic Party, and I think there has to be morality. Otherwise politics just becomes an exercise of power, which it generally is — but I still think it's driven by good people who go into it for the right reasons.
For many Americans — especially those White Americans who believed in the many lies of America’s inherent greatness and goodness, and that authoritarianism and fascism are something “over there” and not something with centuries of history in the United States in the form of such regimes as American Apartheid and Jim Crow, White on Black chattel slavery and other great crimes against nonwhite people — Trump’s return to power is shocking, unbelievable and a type of epistemic crisis.
James Baldwin spoke to these feelings in his 1965 essay “White Man’s Guilt”:
People who imagine that history flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it) are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world. This is the place in which it seems to me, most white Americans find themselves. Impaled. They are dimly, or vividly, aware that the history they have fed themselves is mainly a lie, but they do not know how to release themselves from it and they suffer enormously from the resulting personal incoherence.
In an attempt to make better sense of our collective emotions (and tumult and upset) in these days before Trump’s return to power, reflect on the previous year and the election and what may come next, I recently spoke to a range of experts.
Cheri Jacobus, a former Republican, is a political strategist, writer and host of the podcast "Politics With Cheri Jacobus."
In retrospect, we all should have been more keenly aware of the fact that we are a 50/50 nation in modern presidential elections. The country is split down the middle. Not only does it make it "easier” or more "necessary" to cheat with the Electoral College but places our democracy and elections in severe jeopardy. Whoever the nominee of each party, and no matter their crimes, indictments, sins, lies, theft, treason, or apparent mental illness, they are a coin toss from the presidency from the get-go.
Once Merrick Garland allowed and facilitated Trump to skate on the worst acts imaginable not only against individuals but against our democracy and national security we were in deep trouble. The minute Trump was able to announce he was running for president it was clear it was to avoid prison. And Merrick Garland knew it. And enabled it.
"There will be no rebuilding. There will only be mass looting of our tax dollars, greasing of palms, favors to help the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the destruction of the middle class, further ensuring we cannot fight back. "
It also meant Trump was the presumptive nominee of the GOP, thus placing the nation in unprecedented danger AT THAT MOMENT. We failed to fully grasp it at the time.
Talk of a Biden landslide and later a Harris landslide was foolish. A razor-thin close race was already baked in at that moment. And so was the cheating, just as it was in 2016 when Trump and Putin's cheating worked and in 2020 when it did not, largely due to the pandemic and mailed-in ballots. It is nearly impossible to cheat unless the race is close, and in America, it has been close for many presidential elections.
Regrettably, few of us treated it as such or recognized the impact of the moment. We held onto the illusion (delusion?) that our democracy was intact, even though our Department of Justice and Merrick Garland had already by that time, ensured it was not. It was already slipping through our fingers like we were trying to hold onto a handful of water. "Disappearing" Trump's many crimes effectively took them off the table as impactful campaign issues for persuadable voters.
Since Election Day, we've seen our institutions that we already knew were floundering, now openly selling out to the coming fascism and the authoritarian Trump regime, with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski groveling their way down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring and beg for mercy and with ABC News and George Stephanopoulos settling a defamation case brought by Trump. The case was extremely winnable for ABC News, yet they groveled their way to Trump to beg for mercy — and, of course — access.
Trump and his administration and agents and other enablers will crash the Biden economy — one of the best in decades — to "rebuild" it again — except they will only keep the first half of the promise. There will be no rebuilding. There will only be mass looting of our tax dollars, greasing of palms, favors to help the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the destruction of the middle class, further ensuring we cannot fight back.
Randolph Hohle is a professor of Sociology at SUNY Fredonia and author of "Racism in the Neoliberal Era" and "American Housing Question: Racism, Urban Citizenship, and the Privilege of Mobility." He studies the nexus of racism and political economy.
As I look back on 2024 and what transpired with the election, more and more I feel disgusted with the Democratic Party. The party elites are afflicted with hubris and incompetence. It’s not often that I agree with Kellyanne Conway when she lambasted the Harris campaign for thinking endorsements from Dick Cheney and Elizabeth Cheney are a good thing while they leave so many winning political issues on the table (e.g., healthcare).
"I’m concerned that Republicans will implement Project 2025 and that it is going to trigger a recession similar to that of the early 1980s."
Biden no longer has the cognitive capacity to work anywhere, especially as president. He wouldn’t step aside. The Democrats didn’t hold a primary because party elites believed they knew better than the voters. They made it easy for Trump.
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As for the outcome of the election, there is more clarity in hindsight. I think mainstream political analysts downplayed this notion of a “vibecession” because GDP growth (which was 3.1% in October 2024) was really good. The problem is we don’t feel GDP growth in everyday life. What we do feel is the impact of high interest rates on our credit cards, home equity loans (if you have one). We feel the Fed’s intended outcome is to increase interest rates to slow down job growth. Trump owns the domain of feelings politics: anger, resentment, outrage and even joy from revenge and winning.
I’m concerned that Republicans will implement Project 2025 and that it is going to trigger a recession similar to that of the early 1980s. I’m also bracing myself for having the news cycle revolve around Trump again. It’s mentally exhausting to follow and track the administration with the non-stop drama.
As for these being the “good times”? I agree. The Biden administration did some good things with the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. There are some good long-term investments in those acts. I don’t think we will see good policy for a while. Even if it’s just hyperbole, Trump’s obsession with immigration and the border is not a productive economic policy and doesn’t do anything for working people. Allowing the Big Tech robber barons to dictate a regulatory environment over AI, quantum computing, and energy won’t be good for the country. This is going to be a long four years.
Dr. Justin Frank is a former clinical professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center and the author of "Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President."
2024 was a year of sudden hope that was just as suddenly dashed when Trump won re-election. The sudden hope was the almost ecstatic reaction to Biden’s decision not to run for reelection. While there wasn’t a lot of time to mount a campaign, Harris, I thought, did pretty well and surely won the enthusiasm of many people — just not enough, it turns out. As a psychoanalyst, it reminded me of the incredible gap that often exists between fantasy and reality, and how powerful fantasies and wishes distort and color genuine perception.
Trump’s return was surprising to me despite my full awareness of his very dangerous personality and mind. I was less aware of his ability to connect with so many people since I always felt his bluster was easy to see through. As the folk wisdom suggests, you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. What was missing was the word “enough” – you can fool enough of the people enough of the time to get elected. And I don’t think it was just fooling people; Trump ran against a Black woman — meaning Harris already had two strikes against her when she came up to bat, but still almost won. I usually am much more mindful of America’s deep-seated racism and misogyny, but I lost sight of it along the way in the summer of 2024 and into the election. So I couldn’t believe the people who predicted a Trump victory. I’m also aware of the strength of “wishing makes it so” which led to my own denial of the genuine racism and sexism that looms so powerful in the privacy of the voting booth.
As I think about Inauguration Day, my first feeling is non-feeling. Apathy is a danger that has always been unfamiliar to me both as a psychoanalyst and as a political activist. But this time I feel resigned to bad news on a regular basis and don’t have the energy to respond to each Trump transgression. I will try to focus on those individuals and groups who are trying to do good work in defense of American democracy and human decency.
If we devolve into the nightmare that Trump’s return to power will mean for the country, we must try to keep a larger perspective. This means maintaining our relationships with friends and family and the larger community. We should strive to find those happy times amidst what will be so much darkness and pain.
It must be one we can put into a larger perspective. That perspective is not about “good times” but about healthy times with people who can keep their visions and ability to think and speak alive and well. Those happy times will be the fuel for us to endure.
Peter McLaren is Emeritus Professor of Education at University of California, Los Angeles. He is one of the architects of critical pedagogy and the recipient of numerous international awards for this work in education. He is the author of over forty books and his writings have been translated into twenty-five languages.
As I reflect on 2024, it remains nearly impossible to articulate the maelstrom of emotions that consumed me—a tumult of fear, anger, and despair, clashing relentlessly and offering no clear resolution. My friends, my colleagues, and I cast our votes for Harris, driven less by enthusiasm than by a profound disdain for the Democratic Party’s mishandling of crises, particularly in the Middle East. Yet the alternative — a vote for Trump — was utterly unthinkable as if only the most gullible or willfully ignorant could embrace the venomous rhetoric and unrelenting chaos he embodied. Trump’s candidacy and victory embody the decay of democratic norms in America. I was confident Harris would not just win but achieve a landslide in the popular vote, though the specter of the Electoral College still loomed like an ever-present shadow, injecting uncertainty into even the most hopeful predictions.
I clung to the belief that the majority of Americans would understand the stakes — that electing Trump again would mean dismantling the architecture of democracy and reassembling it into something menacing and unrecognizable. Surely, I thought, voters could see the obvious: Trump was a fascist. But then, like a lightning bolt, it struck me —most Americans simply didn’t care. The realization was crushing, a bitter truth about the apathy of my adopted country. Since immigrating to the U.S. in 1985 and becoming a citizen in 2000, I've believed in the resilience of the American electorate and its capacity to discern the dangers of demagoguery. By 2024, that belief was shattered. Surely, by now, they should have seen through Trump. But they hadn’t — or worse, they had, and it didn’t matter. And my native Canada looks like it is tilting right. A recent poll reveals that Canadians view Donald Trump more favorably than Justin Trudeau, according to the Abacus Data poll.
When Trump emerged as president-elect, a wave of horror swept over me, intensified by the moral cowardice of prominent liberals who capitulated to his orbit of oligarchs — trading resistance for complacency in a brazen betrayal of Timothy Snyder’s urgent warning: “don’t obey in advance.” Even more unsettling is the drift of self-proclaimed leftists toward the gravitational pull of right-wing populism, foolishly believing they could forge alliances with figures like Trump and the right-wing libertarians and techno billionaires who preside over a new feudalism in some shared crusade against “the establishment.” They seem blind to the destructive forces they legitimize in the process.
With Trump’s personalist rule and its cronies and incompetent nominees to run the administration and the looming betrayal of Ukraine by Trump in its war for survival and freedom against the Russian invaders, it feels as though the country stands on the brink of an uncharted precipice, every concession, every acquiescence, nudging us closer to the abyss. In the face of this chaos, I find myself desperately searching for any fragile foothold, any sense of stability, though none seem to exist. I haven’t felt this unmoored since the dark days of 2016.
When Trump spoke of a publicly televised trial for Liz Cheney over the January 6 report, my mind raced to darker places, conjuring the ghost of Roland Freisler, the venomous voice of the People's Court in Nazi Germany. The words seemed to echo from a shadowy past, where justice was twisted into a theater of cruelty, where the gallows were strung with piano wire on meat hooks. Of course, such horrors thankfully won’t occur in Trump’s administration. But can’t you see them slinking through the corridors of Trump’s mind?
It’s impossible to ignore Trump’s rise to the most famous poem in the English language, Yeats’s The Second Coming, looming over this moment in history, its prophetic lines reverberating with unsettling clarity. Trump’s rise appears as a chilling fulfillment of Yeats’s apocalyptic vision — a stark warning of what unfolds when history veers toward chaos and when the best lack conviction and the worst are consumed by passionate intensity. Trump, the “rough beast slouching toward Washington,” embodies the unraveling Yeats foresaw — a figure of disruption whose ascent marks a profound fracture in the democratic order. “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” Yeats declared, and the nation’s once-sturdy institutions now falter under the weight of authoritarian ambition and widespread complicity. The “widening gyre” foretells the polarization of society, the centrifugal forces tearing the collective fabric into ideological extremes. Meanwhile, “the blood-dimmed tide” surges forward in a deluge of disinformation, corruption, and violence, threatening to submerge justice and truth in the murky waters of a Trump-led America.
I won’t watch the Inauguration. I’m sure Trump will bask in his glory, proclaiming the crowd size is the largest in presidential history. And later I’ll follow stories about how world leaders sucked up to Trump. And there will be emails from friends and colleagues worldwide offering their condolences to me for having to live through more Trump years and offering their solidarity which I will appreciate.
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People are fleeing abortion bans states: report
A new analysis has found tens of thousands of people, likely young folks, who live in states with strict abortion bans, are fleeing. The working paper, which is not yet peer-reviewed, was published by the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research. It found that since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade via the Dobbs decision in June 2022, states with near-total abortion bans have lost more than 36,000 people per quarter. People who lived in single-person households were more likely to move out of the abortion-ban states. The researchers looked at change-of-address data from the U.S. Postal Service.
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“The effects are more prominent for single-person households than for family households, which may reflect larger effects on younger adults,” the researchers wrote. The researchers said they also found “suggestive evidence” of people leaving states that were “hostile” towards abortion in other ways.
Since Dobbs, which gave states the right to ban abortion, many states have gone above and beyond to further clamp down on access to abortion care. According to KFF’s dashboard, 12 states have completely banned abortions. Six states restrict abortion access between 6 and 12 weeks of gestation. Four restrict access between 18 and 22 weeks. In contrast, 14 states have enshrined reproductive rights, including abortion access, into their state constitutions.
The new research suggests that these states will face long-term economic consequences as a result of their hostile attitude toward abortion.
"Over a 5-year period if these numbers are sustained it would be roughly equivalent to a loss of almost 1 percent of their population compared to if no ban was implemented in their state and they protected abortion instead," Daniel Dench, one of the researchers, told Salon via email.
Dench emphasized that their analysis method accounted for "any differences in underlying migration trends present before the abortion bans occur."
"As a result, we can say that these are causal estimated effects of abortion bans on net out-migration (those leaving minus those entering)," he said. Notably, there were no details about demographics such as race, gender and marital status. "There are still many unanswered questions about how the bans are affecting business formation, employment, and wages."
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Democratic states train non-doctors on providing abortions to expand US access
From Washington to Connecticut, pharmacists and healthcare workers pioneer efforts to limit abortion barriers
Democratic states across the country are embarking on a pioneering effort to increase access to abortion by teaching people who are not doctors to offer and perform the procedure.
In Washington state, a first-of-its-kind pilot program called the Pharmacist Abortion Access Project announced this week that it trained 10 pharmacists to prescribe abortion pills; so far, they have prescribed abortions to 43 people.
With Roe v Wade gone and abortion now all but eliminated in a dozen or so states, the project is the latest attempt to expand access to the procedure in the parts of the country that still allow it. Connecticut and Delaware have in recent years passed legislation to permit physician assistants, midwives and some nurses to perform abortions, while Oregon, Maryland and Illinois are now devoting millions of state dollars to programs that train similar professions in the procedure.
“Even in Washington state, where abortion is legal, people are facing barriers to accessing abortion care – especially people who are struggling to make ends meet, who live in rural areas or don’t have easy access to reproductive health care,” said Beth Rivin, the Pharmacist Abortion Access Project’s managing director and president of Uplift International, which partnered with the online pharmacy Honeybee Health to dispense the abortion pills. “This expands abortion access by bringing a new profession into abortion provision.”
Of the states that still allow abortions, 14 say that only physicians may perform the procedure, according to a tally by the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion restrictions. But in the years since the US supreme court overturned Roe in the 2022 decision Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, physicians – already in short supply in the US – have struggled to get training in how to provide abortions.
Abortion rights supporters have long said that non-physicians should be permitted to provide abortions earlier on in pregnancy if they involve pills or simpler procedures. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the preeminent membership organization for OB-GYNs in the US, supports allowing certified nurse-midwives, nurse practitioners and physician assistants to perform abortions, since studies have found no “significant difference” in the complication rates of medication abortions performed by doctors compared to other trained clinicians.
“Let’s free up providers who can do the complex cases to do complex cases,” said Kylea Laina Liese, associate professor at the Department of Human Development Nursing Science at the University of Illinois. In 2024, the University of Illinois College of Nursing became one of three organizations to receive $2m from the state’s public health department to expand abortion training – money that Liese is now using to train the first cohort of physicians and non-physicians.
Midwives, nurse practitioners and physician assistants, Liese said, “are much more likely to represent the communities that they work in. That’s something that’s really missing in abortion care. Being able to have Bipoc communities get their reproductive and sexual health services from providers that look like them and that they trust – it lowers those burdens.” More than 60% of all practicing US physicians identify as white, while far smaller fractions identify as Black, Indigenous or people of color.
In addition to increasing access, advocates say, these programs can help destigmatize abortion by moving it out of the silo of specialized abortion providers and clinics. In Maryland, where the state health department has awarded more than $10m to the University of Maryland to train new abortion providers, the program is also looking to teach emergency room doctors and pediatricians – the kind of specialties that don’t typically offer abortion training.
“My dream for all primary care is: you see someone has a positive pregnancy test, you tell them they have a positive pregnancy test, and then you’re able to offer them any option that they choose,” said Jessica Lee, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who is helping run the program.
Don Downing, co-director of the Pharmacist Abortion Access Project and a professor emeritus of pharmacy at the University of Washington, was surprised by how many patients and pharmacists were interested in the project.
“I really thought, about two or three years ago, that we might have difficulty finding pharmacists who are willing to prescribe a medication abortion,” Downing said. “Well, it turns out the pharmacists were as upset as I was with the Dobbs decision, and we got our 10 pharmacists – we wanted to keep it small – in very quick order.”
Pharmacists’ ability to prescribe medication varies from state to state. In Washington state, the Pharmacist Abortion Access Project takes advantage of decades-old law, which authorizes pharmacists to prescribe drugs. Recent changes in the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of the common abortion pill mifepristone also expanded the types of providers who can prescribe and dispense the drug to include certified non-physicians.
But those changes could prove to be short lived. Shortly after Roe fell, anti-abortion activists filed a lawsuit asking a court to roll back the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone. That case ultimately reached the US supreme court last year, which unanimously ruled to preserve access to mifepristone – but did so on technical grounds, leaving the door open for further attacks on the drug. That lawsuit is now continuing in a lower court. Abortion pills now account for roughly two-thirds of all US abortions.
There is also the prospect of narrower rollbacks. The incoming Trump administration could reverse more recent changes to mifepristone’s regulation – including changes that have enabled pharmacists to prescribe the drug.
“It’s pretty frightening,” Downing said. “It’d be like saying pharmacists can’t provide flu shots anymore or Covid shots.”
If those rollbacks happen, Liese and Lee said that their states’ respective programs would focus on teaching providers how to offer surgical abortions as well as medication abortions that only use the drug misoprostol (which is safe but can lead to more complications).
Whatever happens, Rivin hopes that other blue states will try to replicate the Pharmacist Abortion Access Project. In New York – which already permits some non-doctors, such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners, to perform abortions – lawmakers introduced a bill that would effectively allow pharmacists to administer abortion pills. That bill stalled, but a similar measure has already been introduced this year. Legislators have also introduced a bill to create a state training program for abortion providers.
“Our model is definitely a model that those states might be interested in. It’s more important than ever in 2025 and for the next few years,” Rivin said. “So we’re encouraging leaders in those states to get in touch with us.”
