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How Florida’s Abortion Law Is Affecting East Coast Abortion Clinics

The Washington Post, May 24, 2024

Clinics up the East Coast have seen a surge in patient traffic since a law banning most abortions in Florida went into effect on May 1 – but so far they have not experienced the collapse in care that many providers had feared before the new restrictions began in the country’s third most populous state, according to new data collected by a research team at Middlebury College. Wait times for abortion appointments have increased at approximately 30 percent of clinics across North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., the areas closest to Florida where abortion remains legal after six weeks of pregnancy, according to the data, which is based on a survey of clinics before and after the law went into effect. North Carolina experienced the sharpest increases, with wait times rising in half of the state’s 16 clinics. The average Florida resident now lives about 590 miles from the nearest clinic that offers abortions after six weeks and will need to wait nearly 14 days to end her pregnancy past that point – up from an average 20-mile drive and five-day wait before the ban, the data shows. The study is a first-of-its-kind look at the practical impact of the new law in a state where 80,000 abortions had taken place each year. The survey was conducted by Caitlin Myers, a professor of economics at Middlebury College in Vermont and a team of undergraduate students, who systematically collected data from 130 clinics in six states and D.C. for the date of their next available appointment for an abortion after the six-week mark. Although the survey offers only one window into the effect of the law, clinic directors and staff said it matched their own observations in the weeks since Florida banned most abortions on May 1.

Planned Parenthood Asks Judge To Expand Health Exception to Indiana Abortion Ban

ABC News, May 29, 2024

Abortion providers are asking an Indiana trial judge this week to broaden access to abortions under the state’s near-total ban. Indiana law allows for abortion in rare circumstances, including when the health or life of the woman is at risk, but only at a hospital. Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are asking a Monroe County judge for a preliminary injunction expanding the medical exemptions and blocking the hospital-only requirement. The bench trial before special Judge Kelsey Blake Hanlon is scheduled for Wednesday through Friday. The Indiana Supreme Court upheld the ban in June, ending a broader legal challenge brought by the same plaintiffs, but said the state’s constitution protects a women’s right to an abortion when her life or health is at risk. The plaintiffs say the ban’s exceptions for protecting health are written so narrowly that in practice, many doctors won’t end a pregnancy even when a woman’s condition qualifies under the statute. According to the complaint, the ban does not account for conditions that may threaten health later in a pregnancy, after giving birth or for conditions that may exacerbate other health problems. The health and life exception allows for an abortion up to 20 weeks into the pregnancy. The plaintiffs also want women to be able to have abortions if medically indicated for psychological reasons. The current statute explicitly rules out the threat of self harm or suicide as a “serious health risk,” which is another reason why the plaintiffs say the state’s definition is unconstitutional. “The uncertainty caused by the Health or Life Exception’s confusing definition of serious health risk and threats of licensure penalties and criminal prosecution chill Indiana physicians from providing abortions necessary to protect their patients’ lives and health,” the complaint says.

Tennessee Governor Signs ‘Abortion Trafficking’ Bill for Minors Into Law

CNN, May 29, 2024

Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee on Tuesday signed a bill into law that criminalizes “abortion trafficking of a minor,” the latest GOP-led state to reduce access to abortion following the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The new law is aimed at preventing assistance to minors seeking to obtain an abortion. It does not apply to the parents or legal guardian of the minor. Under the measure, a person who helps a minor obtain an abortion, or abortion-inducing drugs, without consent from the minor’s parent, could be sued for money damages by the minor, by the minor’s parents, or by the biological father. Tennessee joins a number of Republican-led states that have restrictions on abortion either taking effect or enacted for the first time following the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 that overturned the federal right to an abortion. While abortion is already banned in Tennessee – with no exceptions for rape or incest – the new law creates a new layer of punishment for those seeking to help minors obtain an abortion. The law, which takes effect July 1, applies regardless of whether the pregnant minor “consented to the actions that led to the offense,” according to the law, which is a Class A misdemeanor offense and carries a sentence of 11 months and 29 days in prison. Before the measure was signed into law, Bryan Davidson, policy director at the ACLU of Tennessee, said it “harms young people’s ability to access the support of those they trust when they need it most and is an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment right to free speech and expression.” “It is absurd and cruel to force a pregnant young person to navigate laws and systems that are designed to deprive them of their own bodily autonomy, while simultaneously removing the ability for trusted adults to provide guidance and support when they need it most,” Davidson wrote in a letter to Lee last month.

The Untold Story of the Network That Took Down Roe v. Wade

The New York Times Magazine , May 28, 2024

The story of how an elite strike force of Christian lawyers, activists and politicians methodically and secretly led the country down a path that defied the will of a majority of Americans, who wanted abortion to remain legal, has been hidden until now. The ultimate aim of this behind-the-scenes conservative coalition, which powered one of the most significant political resurgences the United States has ever seen, went far beyond questions of when – and if – a pregnancy can be legally ended. For them, the fall of Roe was not an end but a beginning in their effort to make all abortion illegal and, in effect, roll back the sexual revolution. It was not only a political battle but a spiritual mission, rooted in their Christian faith and their belief that they were fighting for the highest moral stakes of the modern age. Their opponents didn’t see what was coming until it was far too late. After so many decades of taking Roe for granted, supporters of abortion rights had grown dangerously complacent and disorganized in ways that made them slow to appreciate the severity of the threat. This investigation is built on more than 350 interviews with people who had knowledge of these events, including elected officials, lawyers, activists, doctors and ordinary people whose lives were changed by the fall of Roe. The reporting spanned 16 states and Washington, from statehouses to the White House, and a review of previously unreported documents. In the gilded halls of the Mayflower, amid the throngs of lawyers, Tseytlin was thinking about how to get the Supreme Court to take an abortion case. A rarity within the movement, he was not particularly religious; his family had left the former Soviet Union as Jewish refugees when he was a child. But he had long opposed abortion for moral reasons.

Expecting Worse: Giving Birth on a Planet in Crisis

Vox, May 30, 2024

Around the world last year, more than 134 million babies were born. During that same 12-month period when so many lives were just beginning, about 6.8 billion people – nearly 80% of the global population – experienced at least 31 days of extreme heat that was made at least two times more likely due to human-caused climate change. The children being born now will come to know a world that’s not only getting hotter, but also one with a climate that will only become more unpredictable and increasingly at risk of extreme weather and disaster. Yet while we often talk about climate change with the future of these children in mind, rarely do we consider the impact of the crisis now on the people who are giving birth to the generations who will inherit that world. At a moment when reproductive autonomy is under political attack in the US, climate change is making it even more dangerous to have a uterus. The full range of climate-related threats to reproductive health is vast, but together these stories, produced in collaboration with Grist and The 19th, will help you understand a few of the profound effects warming has on people who can get pregnant. International climate change panels have already made clear that women are more vulnerable to climate change than men, with extreme heat, weather, and acute climate disasters aggravating existing gender-based vulnerabilities, like domestic violence, inadequate access to health care, and financial insecurity. But there is another layer of climate impacts that fall along gendered lines: Research shows that climate change takes a particularly profound physical toll on bodies that can bear children – from menstruation to conception to birth. And it’s only now, after years of neglecting to study the climate-related health conditions that affect people who can get pregnant, the scientific and medical communities are beginning to understand the scope of these threats.

ICYMI: In Case You Missed It

As we close out #SexEdForAllMonth, we're revisiting our report with @autselfadvocacy on the barriers to sexual education for disabled folks and how we can ensure that sex ed is truly accessible for all people. https://t.co/GYqxTrAz9B

— National Partnership (@NPWF) May 28, 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.