Here’s What Harris and Trump Said About Abortion in the 2024 Presidential Debate
TIME, September 10, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump lambasted one another over their stances on abortion during the presidential debate Tuesday night. Harris pledged that if Congress passes a bill to reinstate the protections that were guaranteed by Roe v. Wade, she would “proudly sign it into law” if elected president. She condemned state-level abortion bans, sharing stories of pregnant women who were unable to get emergency medical care or forced to carry pregnancies to term or because of restrictive laws. She also slammed Trump for his role in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that rolled back abortion rights (Trump appointed three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of overturning the landmark decision). Trump, who has commended the U.S. Supreme Court for overturning Roe v. Wade, continued to falsely insist that most legal scholars wanted Roe overturned, and that the public at large wanted the issue returned to the states. The former President railed against Democrats for their stance on abortion, claiming falsely that Democrats’ position on abortion is so extreme that they support “execution after birth.” Once he finished his remarks, ABC News moderator Linsey Davis pointed out that it is not legal to execute a baby in any state. Harris was also quick to call out Trump’s falsehoods. “Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That is not happening. It’s insulting to the women of America,” Harris said. It echoed much of the same rhetoric Trump used in the previous presidential debate with President Joe Biden, when he falsely said that doctors under the Biden Administration want to “take the life of the baby in the ninth month, and even after birth.”
Missouri Supreme Court Keeps Ballot Measure to Protect Abortion Rights
The Guardian, September 10, 2024
Missouri residents will vote in November on a proposed amendment to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, after the state supreme court ruled Tuesday the measure could be put to voters. The decision marked the culmination of a heated weeks-long battle over the ballot measure, which proposes to protect people’s “fundamental right to reproductive freedom”, including the right to birth control and to an abortion up until fetal viability, or about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion opponents had challenged the measure as invalid, arguing that it violated Missouri law because it did not list the existing laws that it would repeal. The measure, they wrote in court documents, “is a proposal to repeal Missouri’s ban on abortion that does not disclose to voters that it will repeal Missouri’s ban on abortion. It illegally induces Missouri voters to do more than they wish to.” Last week, a lower-court judge ruled to remove the measure but asked for a final ruling from the state supreme court. Still, on Monday, Missouri’s secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, decertified the measure. In front of the supreme court on Tuesday, lawyer Charles Hatfield, who represented Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, told the judges that the decertification, although largely symbolic, represented “open contempt for your authority”. “It’s open contempt for the rule of law,” Hatfield continuing, punctuating his point by slamming his finger down on his podium. “It’s open contempt for the proper administration of justice.” Hours after the hearing, before an evening deadline to finalize the ballot, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled to let voters see the measure.
DeSantis Election Police Question People Who Signed Abortion Ballot Petition
The Washington Post, September 9, 2024
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s election police unit is investigating alleged fraud in signature gathering for the state’s upcoming abortion referendum in a move that critics say is designed to intimidate voters. In the past week, two people reported that an agent from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrived at their homes and asked them about petitions they had signed months ago to add Amendment 4 to the November ballot. One voter, Isaac Menasche, posted on his Facebook page Wednesday that a detective questioned him about his signature and showed him a folder containing 10 pages of his personal information. “The experience left me shaken,” Menasche wrote, adding that he had signed the petition. “Troubling that so much resources were devoted to this.” The investigation comes as Democrats and election experts express concern that DeSantis is using the powers of the state to derail the referendum, which would nullify a six-week abortion ban the Republican governor signed into law last year. The state’s health-care agency recently launched a website that claims the amendment “threatens women’s safety.” “They want people to stay home and to not vote,” Democratic state Rep. Fentrice Driskell said at a virtual news conference Monday. “They want people to read these articles and hear it on social media that the police showed up at somebody’s door and intimidated them and made them feel bad about signing an Amendment 4 petition.” DeSantis defended the actions of his election police unit, saying Monday that the state received “a lot of complaints” about a petition-gathering group, which he did not name. He said the group had submitted “dozens of petitions” on behalf of dead people. A Florida Department of State spokesperson declined to answer a request for more details, pointing only to DeSantis’s remarks.
State Abortion Bans Are Forcing Doctors to Provide Substandard Care – New Study
The Guardian, September 9, 2024
More than two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, state abortion bans are forcing doctors to provide substandard medical care, new research released Monday shows. The study describes how one woman, whose water broke too early on her pregnancy, ended up in the ICU with severe sepsis because she could not get an abortion to end her doomed pregnancy. Her story is one of dozens of narratives collected by the research group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health. Another woman’s liver transplant was canceled because doctors discovered that she was pregnant – even though the pregnancy was unwanted. Yet another was forced to give birth to a baby with anencephaly, a severe and fatal fetal anomaly. By the time the baby was handed over to the mother, the baby’s skin had turned from pink to navy. Since Roe’s demise, more than a dozen states have totally banned abortion. Every state with a ban on the books technically allows abortions in cases of medical emergencies, but the exact details of what constitutes an “emergency” can differ from state to state. Doctors across the country have said that exceptions in abortion bans are worded so vaguely and confusingly that they are unworkable in practice. Ideally, if doctors realize a patient is careening towards a medical emergency, they act as swiftly as possible. Abortion bans, doctors have said, force them to wait to act until patients are on the brink of death.
How Maternal Health and Abortion Access Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
Rewire News Group, September 10, 2024
Alabama currently has the highest maternal mortality rate in the South and has the third highest rate in the country. Across the state, maternity units and hospitals have closed, and many more are at risk of closing. In fact, according to a 2023 March of Dimes report, around 34.3 percent of the state’s counties are considered maternity care deserts, making access to appropriate preventive, prenatal, and postpartum care difficult. Alabama is also one of only ten states that have not adopted Medicaid expansions, leaving many residents uninsured. Yet, despite the many challenges that come with being pregnant and giving birth in Alabama, the state now prohibits abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Lawmakers have essentially mandated that all pregnancies must be brought to term in one of the most dangerous places in the country to give birth. Because of this, some folks must travel far distances at great costs to obtain abortion health care, while others are forced to be pregnant and give birth in a state that already has some of the worst maternal care outcomes in the country. This correlation is not a coincidence, but a direct consequence of policies that undermine people’s autonomy over their bodies and health. People in states with abortion bans are nearly three times more likely to die during pregnancy, birth, or within the first year postpartum. And, like most maternal health-related concerns, Black women continue to be the most impacted.
ICYMI: In Case You Missed It
Today we have released a new analysis on the likely impacts of abortion access on state ballots in the 2024 election. *16.5 million* women live in the 10 states with abortion on the ballot this November. https://t.co/b7YJjiTLab
— National Partnership (@NPWF) September 11, 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.
