Harris Will Visit an Abortion Clinic, a First for Any President or Vice President
NPR, March 13, 2024
Vice President Harris is visiting an abortion clinic in Minnesota on Thursday – an extraordinary stop meant to signal the importance the Biden campaign is placing on reproductive rights in the 2024 presidential race.The White House believes this is the first time any U.S. president or vice president has visited a facility that provides abortions along with other reproductive care. Harris has led the White House efforts to fight for reproductive rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The issue has been a winning one for Democrats in elections that took place in 2022 and 2023, and the party has said they believe it will be on top of voters’ minds heading into November. Harris is going to the Twin Cities for the latest in a series of events she has had around the country highlighting reproductive rights. Harris will tour the clinic with its chief medical officer She will get a tour of the abortion clinic with the facility’s chief medical officer and speak with staff, a White House official told NPR, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of the tour. The exact location has not been disclosed. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe, Minnesota passed a new law guaranteeing the right to abortion. Neighboring states – including North Dakota and South Dakota – passed bans. That has meant more women traveling to Minnesota for the procedure. In the last several weeks, she has been to a number of swing states critical for Biden’s reelection, like Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona. Harris has traveled the country talking about reproductive rights since the 2022 Supreme Court decision, and has also led events at the White House on reproductive care, hosting education leaders, state lawmakers and medical professionals.
For Teens in Texas, Getting Birth Control Without Parental Consent Just Got Even Tougher
The 19th, March 12, 2024
Federally funded family planning centers in Texas must receive parental consent before prescribing birth control to teenagers, an appeals court ruled Tuesday, partially upholding a decision from a lower court. The decision was issued by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. It’s the highest profile legal challenge to birth control access since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, and could be appealed to the Supreme Court. The case concerns a potential conflict between Texas and federal laws. Texas requires minors to get parental approval before receiving contraception. But these federal clinics, funded through the national Title X program, had been exempt from that requirement. That is because the federal law creating Title X did not require clinicians to get family consent, instead suggesting that they involve families “to the extent practical.” Prior to this case, federal courts had consistently found that Title X guaranteed minors the right to access birth control without parental involvement. For decades, Texas Republicans have tried unsuccessfully to change that. This case marks their first successful attempt. The Fifth Circuit held that the federal law creating Title X does not trump the Texas restriction, even though federal laws are generally considered to preempt state laws if the two are in conflict. “Title X’s goal (encouraging family participation in teens’ receiving family planning services) is not undermined by Texas’s goal (empowering parents to consent to their teen’s receiving contraceptives),” the court’s judges wrote. “To the contrary, the two laws reinforce each other.”
Biden’s Uneasiness on Abortion Riles Progressives – Again
Politico, March 13, 2024
Joe Biden is highlighting on the campaign trail stories of women struggling to access reproductive health care. But he’s only telling certain kinds of stories. The State of the Union last week was the latest example of how the president is most comfortable lifting up women who have not been able to receive fertility care, contraception and abortions in cases of rape, incest and medical emergencies to demonstrate the consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. He appears less willing – to the chagrin of some abortion-rights advocates – to talk about women who have struggled to terminate unwanted pregnancies for other reasons. That has left activists and elected officials dismayed by what they see as a harmful divide between “good” and “bad” abortions that threatens to undermine a core tenet of the abortion-rights movement: that the decision to terminate a pregnancy should be between a patient and their doctor. “The president is part and parcel of the culture of stigma and shame that surrounds abortion care,” said Dr. Jamila Perritt, president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health. “Privileging certain stories allows us to ‘other’ people.” Biden’s rhetoric is resurfacing long-standing resentments between the progressive wing of the abortion-rights movement and the Democratic Party – which have previously clashed over the “safe, legal and rare” framing as well as language inclusive of transgender people, parental notification policies for minors seeking abortions and whether to allow states to ban the procedure after fetal viability.
As Medical Students Choose Where to Go for Training, States with Abortion Bans Lose Out
The Post and Courier, March 11, 2024
As medical students prepare to find out on Match Day where they will further their training, and possibly spend their careers, fewer of them are applying to go to states with abortion bans or limits, research showed. That could impact South Carolina, which already has a physician shortage, particularly in rural areas. March 15 will be the annual Match Day, when roughly 50,000 medical students across the country will find out where they will spend the next several years in a residency program further refining their skills as a doctor and learning a specialty. Last year was the first Match Day since the Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to implement bans or more severe restrictions on abortion access. In 14 states, abortion is banned except for some limited circumstances, such as to save the life of the mother, while two states, including South Carolina, ban it after six weeks, with exceptions. Those laws were already having an impact on senior medical students as they began to look at where they want to further their training, particularly for those in the obstetrics/gynecology field, research found. The number of applications to states with bans declined by 3 percent overall, and among those looking for an OB-GYN residency, it was more than double the decline compared to states without bans. It appears to be a new element for how students are choosing their residency sites.
Wyoming Banned Abortion. She Opened an Abortion Clinic Anyway
The New York Times, March 10, 2024
It was not such an implausible idea, back in 2020, when a philanthropist emailed Julie Burkhart to ask if she would consider opening an abortion clinic in Wyoming, one of the nation’s most conservative states and the one that had twice given Donald Trump his biggest margin of victory. In fact, Ms. Burkhart had the same idea more than a decade earlier, after an anti-abortion extremist killed her boss and mentor, George Tiller, in Wichita, Kan., where he ran one of the nation’s few clinics that provided abortion late in pregnancy. Dr. Tiller’s work had drawn the wrath of the nation’s anti-abortion groups – his clinic had been blockaded, bombed and flooded with a hose before he was shot to death while ushering his regular Sunday church service. When she reopened it instead of moving, the death threats and stalkers shifted to Ms. Burkhart, or, as they called her, Julie Darkheart. Running a clinic in a red state had worn her down, and she was looking to put Wichita and all it represented behind her. But if Wyoming was even more conservative than Kansas, she understood that it was more Cowboy State conservatism, shaped by self-reliance and small government, less interested in regulating what people do behind their drapes. So she said yes. Then, three months before Ms. Burkhart planned to open her clinic in 2022, the Wyoming Legislature, pushed by a new Freedom Caucus, joined a dozen other states in passing a trigger law that would ban abortion as soon as the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. After the court ruled, other abortion providers in states with trigger bans moved their clinics to safe havens in Illinois, Maryland or Minnesota.
ICYMI: In Case You Missed It
People often think of doctors and nurses when they hear the term abortion providers. However, when we #CelebrateAbortionProviders, we are uplifting EVERYONE who works in abortion clinics — it takes every team member to make abortion care possible. pic.twitter.com/95nps8H2ZH
— National Partnership (@NPWF) March 10, 2024
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Note: The information contained in this publication reflects media coverage of women’s health issues and does not necessarily reflect the views of the National Partnership for Women & Families.
