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More Latinas Are Living in States With Abortion Bans and Restrictions, New Report Finds

NBC News, October 3, 2023

Latinas remain the largest group of women of color in the nation impacted by current or likely state abortion bans more than a year after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last summer. A new analysis from the National Partnership for Women & Families and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, first shared with NBC News, found that close to 6.7 million Latinas (43% of all Latinas ages 15-49) live in 26 states that have banned or are likely to ban abortions. That’s 200,000 more Latinas than last year when the organizations estimated that almost 6.5 million Latinas were threatened by state abortion bans. Three-quarters of the Latinas who live in states with abortion bans or restrictions are concentrated in Texas, Florida and Arizona, according to the report. They make up almost one-third of all Latinas of reproductive age in the nation. Texas, where abortions are banned, is home to 2.9 million Latinas of reproductive age. Florida and Arizona, where abortions are restricted, are home to 1.4 million and 585,600 Latinas of reproductive age, respectively. More providers, centers and clinics that have long served as entry points for women to receive affordable reproductive health care services such as birth control and maternity care have been closing down in states riddled with abortion bans and restrictions, Lupe Rodríguez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, told NBC News. “The conditions on the ground and politically have actually gotten worse in many states,” she said. “There hasn’t really been any change in terms of shifting the the political and legislative landscape to make it so that anything might have gotten better.” Twenty-six states, most of them in the South and the Midwest, have banned or significantly restricted abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy nongovernmental organization tracking reproductive rights. Abortions remain protected in some capacity in 24 states. More than 3.1 million Latinas affected by these current and future abortion bans are already mothers, according to the report. About 27% of them have children under age 3.

Texas Anti-Abortion Crusader Demands Abortion Patient Information in Court

The Intercept, September 29, 2023

The notorious far-right attorney who helped craft Texas’s bounty-hunter abortion ban, Senate Bill 8, is now attempting to force abortion funds to hand over reams of information on every abortion the organizations have supported since 2021. This includes the city and state where each patient lived, the names of the abortion providers, and the identities of nearly every person who helped the patients access abortion care. Earlier this month, Jonathan Mitchell – himself not a Texan but based in Washington state – served requests to nine Texas abortion funds and one Texas doctor. The brazen attempt to acquire sensitive information about abortion patients and the funds that assist them is a disturbing turn in the ongoing legal battle over Texas’s six-week abortion ban. In August of last year, a coalition of abortion funds and doctors filed a class action lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other state officials. The suit, Fund Texas Choice v. Paxton, aims to challenge Senate Bill 8, or S.B. 8, and its devious method of civil enforcement to evade federal court scrutiny. In response, Mitchell, on behalf of the Texas government, is using the legal discovery process to harass those defending reproductive freedoms. “This is a stunning escalation attacking the free speech and privacy rights of so many people,” Neesha Davé, executive director of Lilith Fund, one of the abortion funds in the case, said in a statement. “We are talking about thousands of people among Lilith Fund’s supporters, followers, donors, clients, and volunteers. It is objectively terrifying to think about what anti-abortion extremists want to do with this personal information and how low they are willing to go to get it. But let’s be clear: under no circumstances will we ever willingly hand over this personal information.” The abortion funds’ case asks a question of law: whether S.B. 8 is constitutional. Details about abortion fund patrons and their medical procedures have no bearing on this specific legal question. Mitchell and his clients in the Texas government are no doubt aware of this; the discovery requests are an intimidation tactic, in the spirit of the bounty-hunter law itself.

Supreme Court to Consider Abortion Pills, Guns, Social Media in Its New Term

NPR, October 2, 2023

The U.S. Supreme Court formally opens a new term on Monday, with all manner of political lightning rods already on its docket, or on their way. Guns, abortion, extreme partisan gerrymandering … you thought those legal issues were gone, or at least resolved? The conservative court seemed to think so, too. But those issues are back this term. Take abortion: When the conservative majority struck down Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, the conservative justices said they were simply returning to the states the question of whether abortion could be legal. Similarly, in another case, the conservative justices ruled that the court was out of the business of policing any form of extreme partisan gerrymandering. And in a broad ruling about gun rights, it said that in the future, gun regulations would be legal only if they were analogous to regulations at the time the Constitution was written. But in one form or another, all those questions are back on the table this term – mainly to take a second look at appeals from the ultra-conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas and parts of the deep South. “The 5th Circuit is ready to adopt the politically most conservative position on almost any issue, no matter how implausible, and no matter how much defiling of precedent it takes,” says Irv Gornstein, director of the Georgetown University Supreme Court Institute, who refers to some of the 5th Circuit rulings as coming from “crazy-town.” It “would be be shocking if at least some of those decisions are not reversed,” he adds. A survey of those 5th Circuit decisions is something of a roadmap to the upcoming Supreme Court term, at least so far. Abortion is almost certain to be front and center because of a 5th Circuit decision that would reinstate restrictions on access to mifepristone, the pill that accounts for more than half of the abortions in the United States today. It was first approved by the FDA in 2000 and then approved in 2021 for safe use via telemedicine and by mail.

Anti-Abortion Groups Are at Odds on Strategies Ahead of Ohio Vote. It Could Be a Preview for 2024

ABC News, September 30, 2023

Abortion opponents in Ohio are at odds not only over how to frame their opposition to a reproductive rights initiative on the state’s November ballot but also over their longer-term goals on how severely they would restrict the procedure. The disagreements, roiling the anti-abortion side just six weeks before Election Day, are providing a window into the challenges the wider movement is preparing to navigate next year. Initiatives to protect reproductive rights are expected in multiple states and abortion will be a central issue in candidate races up and down the ballot. Scattershot campaign messaging in Ohio hints at some of the internal conflict among members of the broad anti-abortion coalition aligned against the constitutional amendment that seeks to protect abortion access in Ohio. Early ads played on voters’ fears by warning that the amendment, known as Issue 1, would be a gateway to teenagers getting abortions and gender-transition surgeries without their parents’ consent. Other efforts focused on advancing legal arguments about the amendment’s specific phrasing, including the meaning of “reproductive health care.” In its first statewide TV ad, which began airing this past week, the opposition campaign Protect Women Ohio went in yet another direction. It combined clips of former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden on screen to try to unite Republicans and Democrats against the proposal’s ability to protect abortions into the ninth month of pregnancy, even though health statistics show later-term abortions are a rarity, generally reserved for life-threatening circumstances. Terry Casey, an Ohio Republican consultant, said the opposition campaign’s reliance on two unpopular politicians in the ad only extends a disjointed approach that ultimately will be unlikely to win the day with voters. “The key thing I’m looking at is, ‘What’s the message on the no side, and is it clear and understandable?'” he said. “So far, I haven’t seen that, nor that they have the money and resources to define the issue to the 11.5 million people of Ohio.”

Planned Parenthood Funding Shift Outrages Anti-Abortion Forces

Tennessee Lookout, September 29, 2023

The Virginia League for Planned Parenthood received extra funds from the federal government that it will give to a Tennessee and North Mississippi group for pregnancy services, a move that raised the hackles of Gov. Bill Lee and TennesseeRight to Life. About $3.9 million for low-cost birth control, contraceptive counsel, sexually-transmitted disease treatment, breast and cervical cancer screenings, pre-pregnancy care and other treatment will go to Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi. The move comes after Tennessee declined to meet federal Title X grant requirements and provide accurate and accessible medical care, including counseling for abortion, according to the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood. Tennessee has received up to $7.5 million for those services. But the state Legislature outlawed abortion a year ago when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, then passed a law this year allowing abortions only in limited circumstances to save the lives of women involved in dangerous pregnancies. Ashley Coffield, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, said, “Victory is rare in Tennessee” but noted the group is celebrating the “return of nonjudgmental access to Title X programs.” “Our governor jeopardized access to birth control, STI testing and treatment and cancer screenings when he refused to comply with Title X requirements for unbiased patient information,” Coffield said in a statement this week. The shifting of funds to Tennessee and Mississippi through Virginia upset Right to Life and Lee the same week as Senate and House leaders created a study group to look into rejecting about $1.89 billion in federal education money. Tennessee Right to Life, which lobbied against abortions for rape victims and most cases in which a pregnant woman’s life is in danger, characterized the federal move as “retaliation” for the state’s “strong pro-life law.” “The Biden Administration is in cahoots with the largest abortion business in the world,” Tennessee Right to Life President Stacy Dunn said. Her husband, former Rep. Bill Dunn, a proponent of the governor’s education voucher program, was hired to work for the Department of Education after leaving the Legislature.

ICYMI: In Case You Missed It

Latinas remain the largest group of WOC in the nation impacted by current or likely state abortion bans. Our new report with @LatinaInstitute shows how reproductive justice and economic justice go hand in hand. Thank you to @Nicolemarie_A for covering 🙏https://t.co/DDxB4XfuIC

— National Partnership (@NPWF) October 3, 2023

 

 

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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.