Image: Shutterstock, by Ryan Roderick Beiler
Trump says women ‘will no longer be thinking about abortion’ if he wins
“I will fix all of that, women, I will fix all of that,” the GOP presidential nominee said at a rally in North Carolina.
He then doubled down over the weekend on a bizarre all-caps message to female voters that he posted to his Truth Social page late Friday: “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION.” It seems he meant: “I’ll protect you….”
He repeated the message nearly word-for-word during a rally Saturday afternoon in Wilmington, North Carolina, suggesting that women will no longer need to concern themselves with their reproductive rights under a second Trump term. In response, recent polls show his support flagging among women.
[One woman apparently responded that he must be deranged.]
SOURCE: Huffington Post, by Sara Boboltz, 21 September 2024.
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Pregnant as a Crime: A Preliminary Report on the First Year After Dobbs
For the first time, there are preliminary data about pregnancy criminalization in the year immediately after Roe was overturned, from 24 June 2022, to 23 June 2023. A new report by Pregnancy Justice, called Pregnancy as a Crime, documents 210 cases charging people with crimes related to pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth. This represents more pregnancy-related prosecutions identified than in any prior year.
Two important caveats temper this: first, even a number as high as 210 prosecutions represents an undercount of cases; second, the research team had more resources to devote to uncovering cases and focused on a shorter time period than prior researchers. Therefore, it is possible that those resources allowed the team to uncover a higher proportion of cases than in the past.
SOURCE: Pregnancy Justice, E-mail: 24 September 2024.
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Abortion restrictions worsen racial inequities in maternity care
Shifts in abortion law, with some states banning abortions altogether, have had a wide impact on maternal and child health. This generalized crisis heightens an already acute issue for racial minorities accessing health care.
Almost immediately after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, patients of all backgrounds began reporting an inability to access necessary abortion procedures due to delayed medical interventions and inability to access care. Many of the laws that restricted abortion did so by penalizing doctors through threatening medical licenses and sanctions, fees, and even jail time.
SOURCE: Bloomberg Law, by Aziza Ahmed, 23 September 2024
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Deepening the divide: abortion bans further harm immigrant communities
The 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs ruling had devastating consequences for bodily autonomy, economic mobility, and freedom. The ruling exacerbated deeply embedded systemic barriers to all people accessing abortion care, but particularly for immigrants, people in detention, pregnant people, transgender and gender-non-conforming people, and women of reproductive age. Immigrants, especially those who are undocumented and in mixed-status families, are particularly vulnerable to the harmful impacts of abortion bans due to their unique barriers to care and increased risk of criminalization based on immigration status. This fact sheet, written in partnership with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice in 2023 and updated in 2024, highlights how state restrictions on abortion after the Dobbs ruling makes it harder for immigrants to access abortion care. We propose a set of concrete recommendations for Congress and the administration to support immigrant access to abortion.
This is an in-depth, comprehensive description of the consequences (im)migrant women are facing seeking abortion care, with specific examples from the US states with the worst restrictions, and well worth reading.
SOURCE: Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), Fact Sheet, by Deepening the Divide: Abortion Bans Further Harm Immigrant Communities, by Lucie Arvallo, Hannah Liu, Suma Setty, Priya Pandey, and Salen Andrews. National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice and the Center for Law and Social Policy. 17 September 2024. https://www.clasp.org/publications/fact-sheet/deepening-divide-abortion-bans-harm-immigrants-2024/.
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More women are travelling and more doctors are quitting
“The varying [state] bans and restrictions that have been passed after the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion mean that more women are traveling for the procedure – and more doctors are quitting.”
SOURCE: Dr Mimi Zieman, USA Today. 24 September 2024
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… meanwhile, Republican Party members are being two-faced about abortion to save their Congressional seats
“It’s a remarkable new approach as the Republican Party works to prevent losses this November that could wipe out its majority control of the House. It comes in a fast-moving election season with high-profile and gripping stories of women’s lives being upended and endangered by abortion restrictions.
“The new strategy is both sanctioned and promoted by the House Republicans’ campaign arm, an acknowledgement of their failure to grasp the political power of women’s reproductive health care as an issue that would mobilize voters.
SOURCE: AP News, by Lisa Mascaro, 19 September 2024.