#us abortion ban

[animentality]

[whydidisavethistomyphone]

This is the same logic as “be gay do crimes” because if something out of your control, like your sexuality, makes you a criminal, then you’re already a criminal, why are you obeying the law? What do you have to gain from it?

We have human rights so we don’t have to fight, steal or kill for the basics. It seems like the people in charge have forgotten how the world used to work.

[reasonsforhope]

THANK FUCKING GOD

"The Supreme Court on Thursday [June 13, 2024] unanimously preserved access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion decision since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.

The nine justices ruled that abortion opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication, mifepristone, and the FDA’s subsequent actions to ease access to it. The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.

Abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy in 14 states, and after about six weeks of pregnancy in three others, often before women realize they’re pregnant.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of the majority to overturn Roe, wrote for the court on Thursday that “federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions.”

The opinion underscored the stakes of the 2024 election and the possibility that an FDA commissioner appointed by Republican Donald Trump, if he wins the White House, could consider tightening access to mifepristone, including prohibiting sending it through the mail...

Kavanaugh’s opinion managed to unite a court deeply divided over abortion and many other divisive social issues by employing a minimalist approach that focused solely on the technical legal issue of standing and reached no judgment about the FDA’s actions...

While praising the decision, President Joe Biden signaled Democrats will continue to campaign heavily on abortion ahead of the November elections. “It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states,” Biden said in a statement...

About two-thirds of U.S. adults oppose banning the use of mifepristone, or medication abortion, nationwide, according to a KFF poll conducted in February. About one-third would support a nationwide ban...

More than 6 million people [in the U.S.] have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and primes the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of a second drug, misoprostol. The two-drug regimen has been used to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks gestation...

Biden’s administration and drug manufacturers had warned that siding with abortion opponents in this case could [have] undermined the FDA’s drug approval process beyond the abortion context by inviting judges to second-guess the agency’s scientific judgments. The Democratic administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone, argued that the drug is among the safest the FDA has ever approved."

-via AP, June 13, 2024

--

Note: A massive relief and a genuine victory - this will preserve access to the medication used in 2/3rds of abortions last year, for at least another 2 years. (Probably minimum time it will take Republicans to get their next attempt before the Supreme Court.)

Still, with this, a sword that has been hanging over our heads for the last two years is gone. There will be a new one soon, but we just bought ourselves probably at least 2 years. The fight isn't over, but this is absolutely worth celebrating.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[benjaminallhope-fulltimemind]

This is far from surprising, Republicans love to talk a lot about how they care about life but they really don't. True care would be establishing a national childcare system, true care would be preventing school shootings, true care would be eradicating student lunch debt! But it was never about care but rather control, they seek to control women's bodies and use children as a cudgel like they do with other groups. Do not be deluded, Republicans will gladly strip women of their rights if we do not put up a united fight, they will strip us of all our rights if we do not vote them out of office. Vote blue and vote Democrat, it's the only feasible way short of violent tactics to prevent the loss of the rights we hold dear.

[tiltedsyllogism]

Well, this is hideous.

But there is one silver lining here, which is that AZ Attorney General Kris Mayes has already released a statement declaring that she will not prosecute anyone, either doctor or abortion-seeker, under the terms of this law.

I wasn't familiar with Kris Mayes (I don't have any ties to Arizona and don't generally keep up with AGs) so I googled her, and friends: she won the 2022 AG race by 280 votes. If 281 fewer people had cast their votes for the democrat in the AZ race for attorney general in 2022, Mayes would have lost to Abraham Hamadeh, who identifies as pro-life and who went on record saying he would enforce whatever abortion law was on the books.

It's too early to know how exactly this will shake out, but it seems pretty damn important that Arizona's chief legal officer is vehemently opposed to this near-total abortion ban instead of, you know, in favor of it.

It's a garbage fire situation, but it could be a lot worse -- and if you cast a vote for Kris Mayes in the 2022 election, you are part of the reason why it's not. Like, really super for real.

Vote. Don't let anyone talk you out of it.

[whocanbelieve]

BINGO 39 minutes into the debate.

Got this template from Twitter, an @misslynneNYC

There are lots of other bingo templates, this is just the one I saw first.

[my-midlife-crisis]

[allthebooksandcrannies]

So *checks notes* children and young adults are mature enough to give birth and have a child, something that among adults has around a 7% regret rate, but they're not old or mature enough for gender affirming care or surgeries which have a regret rate around 1%?

Make it make sense please

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Just a few years ago, maternal mortality was the rare reproductive justice issue that seemed to transcend partisan politics. In late 2018, Republicans and Democrats in Congress even came together to approve $60 million for state maternal mortality review committees (MMRCs) to study why so many American women die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Donald Trump—not exactly famous for his respect toward pregnant women and new mothers in his personal life—signed the bill.

But some Republicans’ enthusiasm for these committees began to wane at around the same time abortion rights advocates began warning that draconian restrictions on reproductive care would only push the shamefully high US maternal mortality rate—the worst among affluent countries—even higher. Nor did conservatives, like Idaho lawmakers, appreciate the policy recommendations that came out of many MMRCs.

Texas, whose record on maternal mortality (and maternal health more broadly) has been an embarrassment since long before Dobbs, has a history of controversial attempts to play down potentially unwelcome findings from its MMRC. After the Dobbs decision, when the state committee was working on its report examining maternal deaths in 2019, Texas officials decided to slow-roll its release until mid-2023—too late for lawmakers to act on its recommendations. “When we bury data, we are dishonorably burying each and every woman that we lost,” one furious committee member told the Texas Tribune. Ultimately, officials released the report three months late, in December 2022. Soon afterward, the Legislature reconfigured the MMRC, increasing its size—but also ejected one of its most outspoken members.

Now Texas officials have stirred up the biggest furor yet, appointing a leading anti-abortion activist to the panel. Dr. Ingrid Skop, an OB-GYN who practiced in San Antonio for 25 years, will join the MMRC as a community member representing rural areas (even though she is from the seventh-largest city in the US). But she also represents a largely overlooked segment of the anti-abortion movement: researchers who seek to discredit the idea that abortion restrictions are putting women’s lives in danger. To the contrary, Skop and her allies argue that abortions are the real, hidden cause of many maternal deaths—and that abortion restrictions actually save mothers’ lives.

One of several doctors suing to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, the medication abortion drug at the center of one of this term’s blockbuster Supreme Court cases, Skop has been a familiar face on the anti-abortion expert-witness circuit for more than a decade. She has frequently testified in favor of strict abortion bans in court cases, state legislatures, and before Congress. In a high-profile case this winter, she submitted an affidavit stating that a Dallas woman named Kate Cox— who was seeking a judge’s permission to terminate a nonviable pregnancy—did not qualify for an abortion under Texas’s medical exception. The Texas Supreme Court rejected Cox’s petition, and to get medical care, the 31-year-old mother of two had to flee the state. Apparently, Skop’s hard-line stance against abortion-ban exemptions extends to children. At a 2021 congressional hearing, she testified that rape or incest victims as young as 9 or 10 could potentially carry pregnancies to term. “If she is developed enough to be menstruating and become pregnant, and reached sexual maturity,” Skop said, “she can safely give birth to a baby.”

Skop’s relatively new role as vice president and director of medical affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, has solidified her standing in the anti-abortion firmament. Lozier, which has positioned itself as the anti-abortion alternative to the Guttmacher Institute, described Skop’s role as “coordinat[ing] the work of Lozier’s network of physicians and medical researchers who counter the abortion industry’s blizzard of misinformation with science and statistics for life.” Elsewhere on its website, Lozier notes that Skop’s “research on maternal mortality, abortion, and women’s health has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals.”

What her Lozier bio doesn’t mention is that three of the studies Skop co-authored about the purported risks of abortion were retracted by their publisher this February. Attorneys representing Skop and her fellow anti-abortion doctors had cited the studies in the FDA-mifepristone case. As my colleague Madison Pauly reported, an independent review of the papers found “fundamental problems,” “incorrect factual assumptions,” “material errors,” “misleading presentations,” and undisclosed conflicts of interest between the studies’ authors (including Skop) and anti-abortion advocacy groups (including Lozier). In a rebuttal on its website, Lozier called the publisher’s move “meritless,” adding, “There is no legitimate reason for [the] retractions.”

Skop’s work on maternal mortality hasn’t received the same attention as those papers—yet. But her reflections on maternal deaths in the US have raised plenty of eyebrows.

Skop has argued repeatedly that abortions are directly and indirectly behind the rise in maternal mortality in the US. In a 53-page “Handbook of Maternal Mortality” she wrote for Lozier last year, she says that CDC maternal mortality data can’t be trusted in part because “there is much unreported maternal mortality and morbidity associated with legal, induced abortion, often obscured due to the political nature of the issue.” She claims that a history of abortions puts women at risk in pregnancy, childbirth, or during the postpartum period—whether from maternal complications she contends are linked to prior abortions, or from mental health problems, such as drug addiction and suicide, purportedly caused by abortion regret.

In another paper co-written with some of the same co-authors as in her retracted studies, Skop and her colleagues call for an overhaul of how states and the CDC collect maternal mortality data, urging the inclusion of “mandatory certification of all fetal losses,” including abortions.

And whereas the vast majority of public health experts predict that maternal deaths and near-deaths will increase in states with abortion bans, Skop takes the opposite view. In yet another Lozier paper, she lists 12 reasons why states with abortion bans will have fewer maternal deaths. For instance, she argues, because of abortion restrictions, women will have fewer later-term abortions, which tend to be more dangerous to women than first-trimester procedures. (In fact, researchers report, that state bans have led to an increase in second-trimester abortions.) She claims that since women who don’t have abortions won’t have mental health problems supposedly associated with pregnancy loss, their alleged risk of postpartum suicide would be reduced. (In fact, the idea that abortion regret is widespread and dangerous has been thoroughly debunked.) Skop makes a similar argument about abortion’s purported (and disproven) link to breast cancer, arguing that fewer abortions will mean fewer women dying of malignant tumors.

Much of Skop’s advocacy work has been done in collaboration with colleagues who share her strong ideological views. MMRCs, by contrast, have a public health role that is supposed to transcend politics—their focus is on analyzing the deaths of expectant and new mothers that occur within a year of the end of the pregnancy. Typically, committee members come from a wide range of professional backgrounds: In Texas, these include OB-GYNs, high-risk pregnancy specialists, nurses, mental health providers, public health researchers, and community advocates. Panels also aim to be racially and geographically diverse, the better to understand the communities—Black, Indigenous, rural, poor—where mothers are at disproportionate risk of dying. In a country that hasn’t prioritized maternal health, MMRCs are uniquely positioned to identify system failures and guide policy changes that can save lives.

Texas’s most recent maternal mortality report found that 90% of maternal deaths were preventable, racial disparities in maternal outcomes weren’t improving, and severe childbirth complications were up 23%—all before the state’s abortion bans took effect.

It remains to be seen how someone with Skop’s background and agenda will fit in with her new colleagues, especially at this dire moment for women in the state. Maternal health advocates aren’t optimistic: “This appointment speaks volumes about how seriously certain state leaders are taking the issue of maternal mortality,” Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, told The Guardian. “It is another sign that the state is more interested in furthering their anti-abortion agenda than protecting the lives of pregnant Texans.”

Skop, contacted through Lozier, didn’t respond to a request for comment. In a statement to the Texas Tribune, Skop said she was joining the Texas MMRC because questions about maternal mortality data deserve “rigorous discourse.” “There are complex reasons for these statistics, including chronic illnesses, poverty, and difficulty obtaining prenatal care, and I have long been motivated to identify ways women’s care can be improved,” she said. “For over 30 years, I have advocated for both of my patients, a pregnant woman and her unborn child, and excellent medicine shouldn’t require I pit one against the other.”

Meanwhile, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists criticized Skop’s appointment, asserting that members of any maternal mortality review committee should be “unbiased, free of conflicts of interest and focused on the appropriate standards of care.”

“The importance of the work done by MMRCs to inform how we respond to the maternal mortality crisis cannot be overstated,” the group said in a statement. “It is crucial that MMRC members be clinical experts whose work is informed by data, not ideology and bias.”

[jacks-weird-world]

Jack was Today at the Kamala Harris’ campaign’s “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour inside the Independence Visitor Center in Old City, Philly.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[miamignonette]

i can’t believe that there are people who need it spelled out for them that if they vote third party or refuse to vote at all then trump will be elected and he will not only continue to support the genocide of palestinians (remember when he said he wanted israel to “finish the job”????????) he will also make literally everything else worse too. like are you guys not realizing how essential it is that we don’t let him in the white house again?

[thechekhov]

I’ve had some comments on my ‘please vote’ post, asking me to tell them who to vote FOR. Because you’re correct - I did not offer any strategy on specifics. (Because right now, we’re all voting within our own states, and I cannot possibly give you the rundown on EVERY SINGLE PERSON within your county/district.) 

But as someone who probably has at least a few younger people following me who may not have heard this yet, I will say: 

Vote for yourself. 

Don’t simply vote for who your parents praise the most, even if you think you agree politically. Go to https://www.vote411.org/ and look up candidates and read their websites and stances. 

Vote for others. 

Vote not for what would be best only for your well-off parents, but what would also be good for others in your community. You might think ‘why would I care about This Thing, I’m not personally affected by it. I don’t need public transportation, my family has 2 cars!’ Think about who might need that affordable railway. Think about why changes in the law are trying to be made and by whom. 

And last - vote godlessly. 

I know, I know, I’m a withered, jaded old atheist. But listen - I have no issue with faith. If it helps you, if it heals you, or sustains you, that’s swell. 

But remember that you share this country with people who are of various other faiths, and those who are faithless, and that this land was never meant to be a ‘Christian’ nation. 

No single religion owns the USA. Separating church and state is integral to fairness and equity. What you believe in, and how you conduct your personal life is your own business. But pushing the bible, or any other religious doctrine into government never ends well. 

Your relationship between you and your god is private, and should have no effect on how you vote. Voting is about building together a community that works for everyone, not just you. Laws are built not to signal your virtue to a deity, but to help bring about fairness and due process, to balance inevitable harm with available justice. 

[tomorrowusa]

With Kamala Harris (and a Democratic Congress) you get reproductive freedom. With "Weird Donald" Trump you lose freedoms.

Kamala Harris jumped into the presidential race with a broad pledge to “restore reproductive freedom.” The Harris campaign specified Monday that she’s calling for restoring Roe v. Wade. While many abortion-rights groups are championing her bid for the White House, some activists are frustrated with her position on the issue and plan to keep pushing to go further than President Joe Biden. The Harris campaign told POLITICO the stance the vice president took in a September interview with “Face the Nation” hasn’t changed — support for restoring Roe, which protected abortion until the point of fetal viability, around 22 weeks of pregnancy. “I am being precise. We need to put into law the protections of Roe v. Wade,” Harris said in that interview. “And that is about going back to where we were before the Dobbs decision.”

Weird Donald is trying to label Kamala as an "abortion radical". But her position is basically that of the US in between 1973 and 2022. In '22 the GOP US Supreme Court overturned 49 years of established law and told women that they had no federal right to abortion. All three Trump justices voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

It's Weird Donald who is the true "abortion radical". The convicted felon and adjudicated sex offender is pandering to extreme fundamentalist Christians who wish to make America a theocratic equivalent of Iran – but with Jesus instead of Muhammad.  

Kamala's position aligns with that of most Americans.

Polling shows that while there is broad support for access to abortion, most people believe there should be some restrictions. A YouGov/The Times poll last week found that 31 percent of voters think there should be no restrictions on abortion, while another 32 percent support abortions in most cases with some restrictions, and 30 percent believe the procedure should only be allowed in special circumstances.

Iowa just became the latest red state to ban nearly all abortions.

On Monday, as Iowa became the 18th state to ban nearly all abortions, the Harris campaign announced a “Fight for Reproductive Freedom” week of action that will include dozens of events across battleground states. Harris, in a video released Monday, lambasted the Iowa law as another “Trump abortion ban.”