In the latest move by states to curtail abortions, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has signed an executive order to stop giving state money to any doctor or group affiliated with providing abortions.
The move is part of a growing trend. More than four decades after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed abortion legal, states are trying to place restrictions on when and how the procedure may be performed, or to cut off funding for groups that perform abortions.
South Carolina’s move is also another salvo aimed at Planned Parenthood, the largest single provider of abortions in the country, and a popular target among conservatives who oppose abortion. The group was the subject of a bill signed quietly by President Trump in April that allowed states to deny some federal funding to the nonprofit group’s operations.
“There are a variety of agencies, clinics, and medical entities in South Carolina that receive taxpayer funding to offer important women’s health and family planning services without performing abortions,” McMaster said in a statement. “Taxpayer dollars must not directly or indirectly subsidize abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.”
It is already illegal to use federal dollars for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger.
Planned Parenthood officials say that abortions make up a small fraction of the services they provide, and that federal funding supports the other healthcare services the group offers.
Planned Parenthood tweeted shortly after McMaster signed the executive order, saying state residents would hold the governor accountable and ending with a one-word admonishment: “Shame.”
Trump’s signing of the bill overturned a regulation that stopped states from denying federal Title X family planning funds to places that also provide abortions. Planned Parenthood — which has three locations in South Carolina, only one of which offers abortions — fell under the scope of that bill, which narrowly passed earlier this year with Vice President Mike Pence casting a tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
South Carolina is just the latest state to take aim at Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that allowed abortion. The executive order follows the state’s decision last year to ban doctors from performing abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy. That law also doesn’t allow for an exemption if the fetus has a fatal defect in the womb, and also makes no exceptions for rape or incest cases.
Carole Joffe, a professor at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at UC San Francisco, notes that conservatives who oppose abortion rights have been steadily passing restrictive state laws and making abortions almost unattainable in some states.
Some states may only have one abortion provider, making it difficult and expensive for many low-income women to get abortions. The lack of access due to tough state restrictions, Joffe says, has effectively made abortion not an option for some women.
“Trump’s election may change this and the women’s marches may change this, but historically, Democrats have been much more mobilized around presidential elections and congressional races,” she said. “Republicans have done a much better job in bringing people though the pipeline of local races — school board, then state assembly and state senate. Democrats haven’t paid as much attention at this level.”
When Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and Democrats controlled both houses in Congress, Republicans got to work. In the 2010 midterm election, the GOP cashed in at the congressional and state legislative level and among governorships.
State legislatures swung to the GOP as well — with 25 states entirely controlled by Republicans. There are only five states where Democrats are in control of both the governor’s seat and the legislature. Republicans also hold 33 governor’s seats.
The Guttmacher Institute, which advocates for reproductive rights including abortion, reported that since Republicans began dominating at the state level after President Obama’s election, hundreds of state measures have been passed that have choked off access to abortions.
Iowa and Kentucky joined about 16 other states that restrict abortions after 20 weeks — though federal courts have said they violate Roe vs. Wade. Tennessee passed a law requiring that two doctors confirm a fetus is not viable before an abortion can be provided at 20 weeks or later, except in a medical emergency.
Arkansas and Texas joined Mississippi and West Virginia in passing bans on a procedure used in the second trimester referred to as dilation and evacuation — though the courts have stepped in to block the bans. Last week, however, Arkansas appealed that federal court order.
The Guttmacher Institute reported this year that the abortion rate in the United States declined 14% between 2011 and 2014 — a record low as the number of procedures fell below 1 million annually.
McMaster’s executive order was praised by National Right to Life, an antiabortion nonprofit, and the Susan B. Anthony List, which has fought to defund Planned Parenthood.
Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, said that until Roe vs. Wade can be overturned — something she is optimistic about if Trump gets to appoint another U.S. Supreme Court justice — the state strategy has been effective, and she applauded McMaster’s executive order.
“There is no reason tax dollars should be used to pay for abortions,” Tobias said. “And organizations that provide abortions or have them offered on site shouldn’t receive those public funds either.”
In response to steps taken by anti-abortion activists, abortion rights advocates gather outside an independent clinic in Louisville, Ky., in July. (Image courtesy of @NatAbortionFed/Twitter)
Emily Wells is an Ear to the Ground blogger at Truthdig. As a journalist, she began as a crime reporter at the Pulitzer-winning daily newspaper, The Press-Enterprise…
A new report by the Abortion Care Network shows that in the past five years, almost one-third of independent abortion clinics have been forced to close.
Independent clinics traditionally provide the majority of U.S. abortion care. “Anti-abortion politicians and extremists are forcing these clinics to close at an alarming rate,” said Nikki Madsen, executive director of the Abortion Care Network.
The 12-page report paints a bleak picture of the state of abortion access at the nation’s remaining independent clinics. Fifty-six clinics have closed in the past two years, and 145 have shut down since 2012, leaving 365 left in the United States. Texas, a state leading the nation in harsh anti-abortion restrictions, saw the most independent clinics close: 20. But progressive states like California also had a high number of closures—15 between 2012 and this year.
Today, Kentucky and four other states—Mississippi, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming—are down to a single independent abortion clinic. In Arkansas, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Nevada, independent clinics are the sole providers of surgical abortions after 10 weeks. Without these clinics, the report suggests, the only option for pregnant people would be a medication abortion. Independent clinics are also more likely to offer abortion at every stage of pregnancy.
For women in need of safe abortion care, the closure of these clinics is disastrous. “Meaningful access would absolutely not be available without these clinics,” Madsen told Bustle. “Independent abortion care providers make the right to abortion a reality, they provide the most abortions in the U.S., and in several states are the only place a woman can go to end her pregnancy. The way that these restrictions are coming out are specifically with the goal to close clinics, and they have nothing to do with women’s healthcare or the wellbeing of women.”
Women often prefer independent abortion clinics over other venues such as hospitals because the clinics charge less. The economic accessibility of these clinics matters: Those hit hardest by the closures come from economically marginalized communities and are more likely to be people of color. Nearly half the women who seek abortions live below the poverty line. Colorlineswrites:
Because they are independent and often for-profit, it’s hard to pinpoint the demographics of the women who go to independent abortion providers. So while we know that, according to 2013 data, 14 percent of Planned Parenthood patients are black, 22 percent are Latina and most are on Medicaid, independent providers can choose whether or not to collect race data about their patients. Women of color, particularly blacks and Latinas, have the majority of abortions in this country, and are therefore likely to be using an independent provider.
Independent clinics are also more likely to provide broader women’s health services—the majority of clinics providing abortions after the first trimester are independent. The Abortion Care Network report estimates that without these independent providers, access to abortion after 16 weeks would decline by 76 percent, and access after 19 weeks would be virtually nonexistent.
While Planned Parenthood is an easy target for anti-abortion activists, it also has more visibility and resources to fight back against TRAP laws aimed at making safe abortion harder for women to acquire. Smaller independent clinics often lack the funds to fight, making them easier targets for shutdowns.
In past months, events in Kentucky have highlighted the nationwide offensive against independent abortion clinics. Anti-abortion activists went to extreme measures to attack the state’s last remaining abortion clinic, harassing patients and providers and projecting an abortion procedure on a 12-by-18-foot screen.
The Kentucky legislature is under Republican control, and Republican Gov. Matt Bevin has been vocally anti-choice. Since Bevin’s election in 2015, the state has passed measures making it more difficult to get an abortion, banning the procedure after 20 weeks of pregnancy and requiring that doctors “narrate ultrasounds in detail,” even to patients who object. The ACLU has filed a challenge to the ultrasound measure, and the case is scheduled for September.
As more clinics close throughout the country, the “healthy ecosystem of abortion care” will be jeopardized, Madsen said. “Abortion care cannot become a monopoly” of clinics that survive.
(CNN)In 1973, when President Richard Nixon proclaimed August 26 Women’s Equality Day — commemorating the day in 1920 that women won the right to vote — a woman could still be denied housing by a real estate broker or credit by a bank, simply because of her gender.
Employers could fire a woman who became pregnant. Many states had “head and master” laws giving husbands final authority in the family, and in no state was marital rape a crime. As late as 1977, two-thirds of all Americans still believed that men should earn the money and women should take care of the home.
So it was something of an understatement when Nixon noted that “much remains to be done” to attain “full and equal participation of women” in society. Indeed, the events of the last year and a half — from the “Access Hollywood” video in which the man who is now president uses vulgar words about women’s genitals, to challenges to women’s reproductive rights, to the routine, vicious online attacks on women by what sometimes seems to be an army of trolls — suggest that, 44 years later, much still remains to be done.
Today the blatant discrimination described above, for example, is illegal, and Americans overwhelmingly support, at least in principle, the ideal of gender equality. In one recent survey, 93% of adults said women should have equal rights.
But the very popularity of the ideal of gender equality, combined with the fact that inequalities are now perpetuated in more subtle ways than in the past, has led some people to conclude that there is nothing more to strive for. The same poll above found that fully 20% of respondents believed gender equality has already been achieved and no more work is needed.
This view ignores the minority of Americans who deeply resent the women’s movement, falsely claiming that women’s gains have come at men’s expense. And it overlooks some serious recent setbacks for women.
Still, it’s worth emphasizing the good news
Some of the most dramatic improvements for women have been in personal relationships. Rates of intimate partner violence have fallen steadily since the early 1970s, a decline that has accelerated since the early 1990s. Rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment are still too widespread, but women have new options to expose the perpetrators and fight for justice.
Marriages are more equal. In the 1970s, a woman with more years of formal education or higher earnings than her husband faced an increased chance of divorce. Today, the extra divorce risk associated with women’s higher achievements has disappeared.
Fathers have doubled the time they spend interacting with their children, and tripled the routine physical care, such as changing diapers, that many men used to shun. That carries a bonus for both sexes: Couples who share housework and childcare equally now report the highest levels of marital and sexual satisfaction.
More remains to be done
Ivanka Trump has proposed a paid parental leave policy, but it is nowhere near as comprehensive as the work-family policies that are standard in most advanced nations and include flex time, universal health care, and affordable, quality child care. In the absence of such support systems, it’s no accident that American parents report much lower happiness compared with non-parents than in any other of 22 countries recently studied.
Similar limits exist to the very impressive gains American women have made in education and earnings. In 1973, women earned just 57 cents for every dollar earned by men — a gap of 46 cents. By 2015, the gap had fallen to 17 cents — even lower for childless women, who earn 96 cents for every man’s dollar.
Not yet equal
Indeed, women have “caught up” in their earnings largely because of their high rates of college completion, which allow them to pull ahead of less-educated men and women. But they still lag behind men with the same education.
Today, according to sociologist Philip Cohen, the average female with a BA makes much more than a male high school graduate, but 28% less than the average man with a BA.
This reversal is confusing to many men who grew up seeing their low- or middle-earning fathers making more money than almost any woman. As a result, some men blame their economic plight on the increase in gender equality rather than on the real culprit — the acceleration of wage inequality.
Meanwhile, although women on the higher rungs of the pay ladder are doing much better than middle and low wage-earners of both sexes, they actually face a wider gender wage gap in comparison to their male counterparts than in the past. In consequence, some high-powered women focus on the glass ceiling rather than the sinking floor that holds back so many men and women alike.
Racial disparities add more complexities to the gender equality picture. Despite the rise of an affluent African-American and Hispanic middle class, minorities continue to fare worse than their white counterparts, even as white low wage workers also lose ground.
Between 1980 and 2015, white women narrowed the gap in hourly wages with white men by 22 cents, but black and Hispanic women narrowed the gap with white men by only 9 and 5 cents respectively.
And the wage gap between white men and black and Hispanic men didn’t budge at all.
Nixon called it
There’s no question that women’s lives and options are better than when Women’s Equality Day was first proclaimed. But progress has been slow on the earnings equality front, and there have been some recent big setbacks in politics and culture.
In 1964, two former presidents, Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman, were proud to co-chair a fund-raising committee for Planned Parenthood. Today, the very existence of Planned Parenthood is under attack. And even though two-thirds of voting age adults support wide access to reproductive health care and pregnancy prevention, the Trump administration plans to defund a national teen pregnancy prevention program, returning to abstinence-only sex education.
In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy included a woman’s right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. Yet over the last six years, states have passed 369 laws aimed at restricting women’s access to abortion.
The new administration has seemed singularly uninterested in recruiting and promoting women, and it recently repealed the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order, scrapping two rules that are essential protections for women workers.
The Fair Pay order required wage transparency, so people can actually see if they are being paid less for the same job than a colleague. The Safe Workplaces order prohibited forced arbitration for sexual-harassment cases, which often protect perpetrators by keeping proceedings out of the public eye.
And our President has used “the bully pulpit” more to encourage than to stop bullying. On top of this comes the surfacing of a newly-invigorated white supremacy movement, which is also a male supremacy movement that claims the “only real duty” of a white woman is to reproduce, while black and Hispanic women should be discouraged from doing so.
The good news here is that this retrograde movement is small and, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll, most Americans (64%) realize it poses a threat to the US. Unfortunately, more than a third (34%) believe it does not — representing yet another way in which it is abundantly clear that, as Nixon said, much remains to be done for women’s equality.
GERMANTOWN, MD – Sarah Singer (holding a crucifix) from Gaithersburg, MD winces as she was listening to a speaker give details about what a late-term abortion entails. A memorial, prayer vigil, and a press conference was held by various anti-abortion groups in February 2013 after the death of a 29 year-old woman who apparently died from abortion complications at Germantown Reproductive Health Services . Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post (Michael S. Williamson/THE WASHINGTON POST)
A Maryland abortion clinic, one of only a few that provides late-term abortions to women in the United States, plans to close its doors and is under contract to be purchased by an antiabortion group that has worked for many years to shut it down, according to an official with the coalition that has plans to buy it.
If the sale goes through this fall, the new owners of the Germantown clinic will soon be owned by the Maryland Coalition for Life, a grass-roots organization that has staged regular protests at the clinic and, in 2011, opened up a crisis pregnancy center across the parking lot to counsel women against choosing abortion.
“It’s a miracle. You fight for something for seven years, and all of a sudden it’s handed to you,” said Dennis Donnelly, media director for the coalition. He said that a donor came forward this summer, and the group raised additional funds to make an offer to buy out the owners of the facility.
The clinic — Germantown Reproductive Health Services — has been operating for more than 20 years, but it became a central target for antiabortion activists nationwide when LeRoy Carhart, a Nebraska doctor who performs late-term abortions, came to work there in late 2010.
The owners of the property declined to comment for the story, under an attorney’s advice. The Washington Post is not publishing their names due to their privacy concerns. They also own an abortion clinic in Prince George’s County that does not provide late-term procedures. The fate of that clinic is unclear.
Three other members of the Maryland Coalition for Life did not respond to interview requests, and one who is closely involved with the deal declined to comment.
Carhart issued a statement Thursday that said the clinic will continue to provide care for patients “until we’re forced to close our doors.”
“I am doing everything in my power to keep my practice open, and I am considering options looking toward the future,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking that anyone would want to take health care away from women and families by targeting our clinic.”
Local abortion rights activists said that Carhart had assured them Thursday that he would continue to provide late-term abortions at a new clinic he was in the process of opening somewhere in the region.
“I have spoken to Dr. Carhart and he is in the process of trying to get his facility operating,” said Diana Philip, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland. “It will be the same clinic staff and they are hoping not to have any interruption in providing this service.”
The new clinic could be operating this fall, she said.
Carhart is one of a few physicians in the country who offers abortions in the later stages of pregnancy, usually defined as beyond 26 weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period. Many states have banned surgical abortions after 20 weeks, and not many doctors have experience with the technique.
Advocates for abortion rights say there is an unmet demand for late-term abortions, particularly from women who learn late in their pregnancies about fetal abnormalities and sometimes from women, who are young or living in stressful circumstances and do not find out they are pregnant until late.
The Germantown clinic was one of three facilities where the procedure was regularly performed, Philip said, with the others in Boulder and Albuquerque.
The Maryland clinic has drawn patients from a huge portion of the country. “Without it, you’re talking about people in the eastern United States traveling to Colorado and New Mexico,” Philip said.
Carhart, a retired Air Force surgeon, began providing late-term abortions at his clinic near Omaha in 2009 after George Tiller, a mentor who performed the procedures, was assassinated while attending church in Wichita.
Carhart, now 75, began commuting long-distance to Maryland to work at the Germantown clinic after Nebraska made it illegal to perform most abortions beyond 20 weeks.
Protests were organized as soon as he arrived. Picketers were a regular presence near the clinic. They launched letter-writing campaigns and candlelight vigils.
Some activists picketed outside the Montgomery County middle school attended by the daughter of one of the clinic’s landlords during back-to-school night, waving a large banner that showed the owner’s photo, name, phone number and the words “Please STOP the Child Killing.”
A few months after Carhart arrived, the coalition opened a crisis pregnancy center across the parking lot from the clinic to counsel women to choose alternatives to abortion. As part of the coalition’s “Kick Out Carhart” campaign, the organization has attempted to document the number of women who came and go each day. The website also has posted pictures of ambulances outside the facility.
In 2013, a 29-year-old woman died after having a late-term abortion at the clinic. The case garnered national attention from antiabortion activists and intensified calls to close it down. Maryland health officials who investigated the case ultimately found “no deficiencies” in her care.
Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, said the clinic’s closure represents a hard-won victory, after years of protests against Carhart. “We were there the first day the dreadful Mr. Carhart showed up. And we are delighted to see him leave,” Newman said.
He said the closure is another example in a long line of clinics that have been shuttered because “we forced them out of business.” Newman said the Wichita headquarters of the antiabortion organization he works for is located in a former abortion clinic that was put up for sale after it fell behind in rent.
Since 2012, 145 independent abortion clinics — nearly a third — have closed, according to a report released this week by the Abortion Care Network, an association of abortion providers that are not affiliated with doctor’s offices, hospitals or Planned Parenthood.
The closures have coincided with a wave of strict new laws favored by antiabortion politicians, but that’s not the only reason the clinics are being shuttered. Even in blue states, clinics are struggling to keep afloat as physicians retire and as they struggle to make ends meet.
The U.S. abortion rate in 2014 fell to the lowest level since Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationally, according to a report published in January by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.
20 years after The Vagina Monologues, I’d like to say that feminists have won. But patriarchy is a virus and we are in the midst of a massive outbreak
Brooke Shields and Andrea Martin perform Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues on V-Day 2001. Photograph: Scott Gries/Getty Images
The first time I ever performed The Vagina Monologues, I was sure somebody would shoot me. It might be hard to believe, but at that time, 20 years ago, no one said the word vagina. Not in schools. Not on TV. Not even at the gynaecologist. When mothers bathed their daughters, they referred to their vaginas as “pookis” or “poochis” or “down there”. So when I stood on stage in a tiny theatre in downtown Manhattan to deliver the monologues I had written about vaginas – after interviewing over 200 women – it felt as if I were pushing through an invisible barrier, and breaching a very deep taboo.
But I did not get shot. At the end of each performance of The Vagina Monologues there were long lines of women who wanted to talk to me. At first, I thought they wanted to share stories of desire and sexual satisfaction – the focus of a big part of the play. But they were lining up to anxiously tell me how and when they had been raped, or assaulted, or beaten, or molested. I was shocked to see that once the taboo was breached, it released a torrent of memories, anger and sorrow.
And then something I never could have expected took place. The show was picked up by women all over the world who wanted to break the silence in their own communities about their bodies and their lives.
Memory one. Oklahoma City, the very heart of the Republican heartland. A tiny warehouse. The second night, word has gotten out about the play and there are too many people and not enough seats, so people arrive with their own lawn chairs. I am performing under what is essentially a light bulb. In the middle of a monologue, there is a great scuttling in the crowd. A young woman has fainted. I stop the play. The audience takes care of the woman, fanning her and getting her water. She stands up and declares what the play has emboldened her to say, for the first time: “I was raped by my stepfather.” The audience hugs her and hold her as she weeps. Then, at her request, I continue with the show.
Memory two. Islamabad, Pakistan. The The Vagina Monologues is banned. So I attend an underground production where brave Pakistani actors are performing the play in secret. There are women who have come all the way from Taliban Afghanistan in the audience. Men are not allowed to sit in the audience, but instead sit in the back, behind a white curtain. During the performance, women cry and laugh so hard their chadors fall off.
Memory three. Mostar, Bosnia. The performance is to commemorate the restoration of the Mostar Bridge, which was destroyed in the war. The crowd is comprised of both Croats and Bosnians, who had been slaughtering each other so recently, and there is tension and uncertainty. Women read a monologue about the rape of women in Bosnia. The audience weeps, wails, screams out. The actors stop. Audience members console each other, hold each other and weep together – Croats holding Bosnians, and vice versa. The play resumes.
Memory four. Lansing, Michigan. Lisa Brown, a state representative, is reproached and silenced by state legislature for using word “vagina” in protesting a proposed bill restricting abortion. You are not allowed, she is told, to say that word. Two days later I fly to Lansing and join Lisa Brown and 10 female house members on the steps of the Statehouse for an emergency performance of The Vagina Monologues. Close to 5,000 women attend, demanding that our body parts be named and recognised in our own democratic institutions. The taboo is broken. We can speak and be seen.
Shortly after the play was launched, with a group of other feminists, I helped form a movement called V-Day, to stand with all the women (cisgender, transgender and gender non conforming in all our colours) who were carrying out these fights across the world. Since then V-Day activists, through their productions of the monologues have raised more than $100m to support centres and shelters for rape and violence survivors, to fund hotlines, to confront rape culture.
And now, 20 years later, I wish for nothing more than to be able to say that radical anti-racist feminists have won. But patriarchy, alongside white supremacy is a recurrent virus, like herpes. It lives dormant in the body politic and is activated by toxic predatory conditions. Certainly in the US, with an openly racist and misogynist predator-in-chief, we are in the midst of a massive outbreak. Our job, until a cure is found, is to create hyper-resistant conditions that build our immunity, and will make more outbreaks impossible. It starts where The Vagina Monologues, and so many other acts of radical feminist resistance, begin – by speaking out. By saying what we see. By refusing to be silenced.
They tried to stop us even saying the names of some of the most precious parts of our bodies. But here’s what I learned. If something isn’t named, it is not seen, it doesn’t exist. Now more than ever it’s time to tell the crucial stories and say the words, whether it’s vagina, “my stepfather raped me” or “the president is a predator and a racist.” When you break the silence you realise how many other people have been waiting for permission to do the same thing. We will not be silenced again.
Councillor Sarah Doucette is fighting back against the young anti-abortion protesters who’ve taken to the streets of Toronto.
Anti-abortion activists have ramped up signage in some of Toronto’s high-traffic intersections. Here, activists hand out flyers on Wednesday at the corners of Yonge St. and St Clair Ave. (RANDY RISLING / TORONTO STAR) | ORDER THIS PHOTO
As Toronto’s increasingly young anti-abortion movement ramps up its graphic on-street displays, at least one city councillor is fighting back.
On Saturday, Councillor Sarah Doucette (Ward 13, Parkdale-High Park) joined concerned families in her neighbourhood of Swansea to counter-protest against what she calls “vulgar” signs imposed on people in her community against their will.
After neighbourhood residents filed complaints with Toronto police about those carrying graphic billboards in their busiest intersections, they were told protesters weren’t breaking any laws.
So long as they don’t block traffic or harass people, the posters aren’t technically illegal.
Now Doucette, after talking to police several times, is taking her cause to city council to pass a bylaw that ban these types of signs.
The group calls itself the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform. With an office in Mississauga, it hired 19 high school and university “interns” this summer to spend four months spreading its message on street corners.
In Calgary (home to the group’s other office), bylaws like the one Doucette hopes this city will pass have already been enacted.
“We’re not stopping them from standing on the street, talking to people or handing out flyers, but we’re just stopping them being in people’s faces. You really cannot get away from them. That’s where people are feeling it is harassment,” said Doucette, who insists they are a distraction to drivers.
Parents in the Swansea area use a Facebook group to warn each other about the whereabouts of the signs.
Sometimes, police will visit the protesters to tell them not to harass people. But that’s difficult when they frequently change intersections.
“I don’t think anyone is against freedom of speech,” Doucette said. “Women find them very upsetting if you have lost a baby, this is very hard to see these sorts of images. Residents are just saying to me, ‘We don’t want to be going about our day-to-day lives and be confronted with these giant images.’”
The protests target busy intersections during Toronto’s lunch-hour rush, leaning over their chest-high posters as crowds of people — and children — impatiently wait to cross the street.
On Wednesday, nearly a dozen of the group’s interns stood on both of the south corners at Yonge St. and St. Clair Ave.
Many stopped to argue with the protesters. Others shielded their children’s eyes or shut the front of their strollers. Some yelled at them to turn their boards around, or stopped their cars at red lights to yell profanities about the vulgarity of the images. While most bypassed them or ignored their handouts, some stopped to talk to them.
“If you’re going to argue that this is a person, you can’t treat them like an object in the image,” said Sarah Hamilton, who is anti-abortion but still stopped to argue with the protesters over their tactics.
“Using their image to display is objectifying them.”
The protesters call abortion a human rights violation and claim “300 children are dismembered, decapitated and disemboweled” every day in Canada. They are ultra-polite in the face of anger and tell passersbys that if the images offend them, that they should be offended by abortion — not the signs.
“I think it’s a lot worse to bring a child into the world that’s going to be unloved than to not bring it into the world,” said Shoshana Abramovitz, who stopped for nearly half an hour to talk with one of the protesters. “You should have the right to choose. It’s pretty hard (to look at).”
On Wednesday, 22-year-old Oriyana Hrychyshyn was in charge of the interns and stood behind a sign of her own. The night before, on a phone call, her boss Devorah Gilman was reciting the same lines.
“We want to put an end to abortion in our country,” Hrychyshyn said. “They’ve been trained to go out day-in-day-out on the street and expose the realty of abortion and what it does to pre-born children.”
They are backed by Westminster Chapel at High Park’s senior pastor Rev. Joseph Boot, who calls the group one of Canada’s “most important educational organizations” and says they are re-educating the country on “the true nature of this hidden atrocity.”
But Kathi Ziolkowski said the group doesn’t represent Christian values. She is a 47-year-old mother of two who grew up in a deeply religious family, and has tried to explain to the protesters the impact of their images on her community.
“If they did want people to understand the sanctity of life, that might not be the way that’s going to win people over,” she said. “Maybe if there were other ways, rather than trying to use shock and sensationalism, they might be more successful.”
“This kind of act, which is intended not only to intimidate abortion providers and Planned Parenthood … is also intended to intimidate people who support Planned Parenthood.”
USPS said it’s unknown whether the threats were from a postal service employee or another person. Shutterstock
Religious imposition laws are designed to shield private individuals and businesses from complying with nondiscrimination laws based on a religious objection to that service.
Planned Parenthood mailers defaced with threatening messages were found last week in the mailboxes of several residents in Apple Valley, Minnesota. The mailers were defaced with the words “death” and “die,” and reproductive rights advocates view the incident as part of an escalating attack on abortion providers.
The U.S. Postal Service is reportedly investigating the incident.
Nika Davies, a resident of Apple Valley, told KMSP that she found the mailers “disconcerting” because she could not identify who had sent the mailers. “I didn’t feel threatened until later and then thought, ‘I don’t like getting anything that says “death” on it,’” Davies said.
Planned Parenthood operates 17 reproductive health care facilitiesthroughout Minnesota, including Apple Valley, a suburb of the greater Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. The Planned Parenthood Apple Valley clinic does not provide abortion services.
duVergne Gaines, director of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Clinic Access Project, told Rewire that abortion providers have long been a target of intimidation and harassment, but the apparent targeting of Planned Parenthood supporters is especially troubling.
“This kind of act, which is intended not only to intimidate abortion providers and Planned Parenthood … is also intended to intimidate people who support Planned Parenthood. I think that is something I find very insidious about this particular act,” Gaines said.
Gaines believes that the increasingly hostile rhetoric from lawmakers opposed to abortion rights and misinformation campaigns that have been propagated by conservative media have contributed to a hostile climate for abortion care providers.
“I think that the rhetoric by some of these lawmakers is irresponsible and reckless,” Gaines said. “It places physicians and women’s health care providers in the scope of these extremists, and helps declare an open season on them.”
State Rep. Erin Maye Quade (D-Apple Valley), told KMSP that her parents received one of the defaced mailers, and it seems like a “targeted attack” on the people who received the mailers. “We know there is heavy rhetoric surrounding the issue of pro-choice, anti-choice, so having ‘die’ on your mail is not only a crime, but it is very scary,” Quade said.
This year abortion clinics have been subjected to large scale protests and threats of violence. Radical anti-choice activists descended on Louisville in May and laid siege to Kentucky’s last remaining abortion clinic, and an abortion clinic in Virginia received a bomb threat in April.
Abortion clinics throughout the country face an unrelenting and increasing amount of anti-choice harassment and threats, according to a report by the National Abortion Federation (NAF).
In 2016, clinics across the country reported nearly 43,000 incidents of hate mail and internet harassment, compared to nearly 26,000 incidents in 2015. Clinics reported nearly 62,000 instances of picketing during 2016, compared to around 22,000 instances in 2015.
“There are providers in every state of the union that are experiencing this rise in extremely virulent protests whose conduct is crossing the line from free speech into possibly stalking, trespassing, threatening,” Gaines said. “That is happening now on such a large and wide scale that it is incredibly concerning.”
Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota told Rewire that the organization could not comment on the incident due to the ongoing investigation.
The USPS confirmed that there is an investigation into the incident, and said in a statement to KMSP that it is unknown whether the threats were from a postal service employee or another person.
A pair of new scientific reviews conclude that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs (AOUMs) not only fail to protect kids, but also violate their human rights.
Published online yesterday in the Journal of Adolescent Health, the study reviews looked at the use, prevalence, and impact of AOUMs in U.S. classrooms and internationally based on the most up-to-date research in the field. Authored by the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine and a team of researchers from Columbia University, the University of North Carolina, the Guttmacher Institute, and the Children’s National Medical Center at George Washington University, among others, both reviews found that AOUMs have consistently been “a failure” in deterring teens from risky behaviors, and have gobbled up millions of dollars and learning-hours along the way.
Overall, the groups concluded that AOUMs, which are the only form of sexual and reproductive education in a number of U.S. cities and towns, have been ineffective at delaying teen sex or reducing sexual risk behaviors, and often do substantially dis-serve young learners in other ways. According to the expert groups, those ways include violating adolescent human rights, stigmatizing or excluding certain groups therein, reinforcing “harmful” gender stereotypes, withholding medically accurate information, and thereby undermining public health programs.
In a press release from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, the researchers explained that such programs frequently ignore LGBTQ+ and other student groups in their framework and culture, and have been “widely rejected by health professionals” for failing to provide useful, science-based information on sexual health practices.
Co-author Leslie Kantor, vice president of Education at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and an assistant professor of Population and Family Health at Mailman, commented that “Young people have a right to sex education that gives them the information and skills they need to stay safe and healthy.” She continued, “Withholding critical health information from young people is a violation of their rights. Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs leave all young people unprepared and are particularly harmful to young people who are sexually active, who are LGBTQ, or have experienced sexual abuse.”
Co-author John Santelli, professor of Population and Family Health at Mailman School and lead researcher for the collaborative review, commented that the “weight of scientific evidence shows these programs do not help young people delay initiation of sexual intercourse.”
“While abstinence is theoretically effective, in actual practice, intentions to abstain from sexual activity often fail,” Santelli said. “These programs simply do not prepare young people to avoid unwanted pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases.”
The researchers also noted that, given the “rapidly rising age” at which folks around the world are getting married, people are increasingly spending more of their youths with ‘single’ status, and aren’t waiting for their nuptials to start learning about the sexual side of relationships, and of themselves.
Hiroo Yamagata
A sign in Ghana advises women to avoid sex as a way of preventing HIV/AIDS infection. (Credit: CC BY-SA Courtesy Hiroo Yamagata via Wikimedia Commons)
The researchers noted that the spread of AOUMs in recent years has created meaningful setbacks to the development and efficacy of HIV prevention, sex education, and family planning programs at home and worldwide. According to reviewed data, the number of schools requiring study of human sexuality fell from 67% in 2002 to just 48% by 2014, with rates of required HIV prevention education dropping from 67% to 41% in the same period. Meanwhile, the number of students who report having had some instruction on birth control methods has fallen by close to 25% since the mid ’90s.
And while numerous studies over the past couple decades have suggested that AOUMs, unlike comprehensive sex education programs, are ineffective, Congress has continued pouring precious funds into the former. Researchers reported that more than $2 billion has been spent on domestic abstinence-only programs between 1982 and 2017, and $1.4 billion in foreign aid for AOUMs. At present, domestic funding for such programs is $85 million per year, and states are prohibited from using the funds to discuss contraception, except to focus on its failure rates.
“Adolescent sexual and reproductive health promotion should be based on scientific evidence and understanding, public health principles, and human rights,” Santelli added. “Abstinence-only-until marriage as a basis for health policy and programs should be abandoned.”
Ginny Ehrlich, CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, commented by email that the research provides “an extremely valuable synthesis” of hundreds of individual studies and over a decade of research suggesting firmly that AOUMs haven’t been achieving their namesake goal.
“All of our young people deserve the information and tools they need to avoid an unplanned pregnancy, [and] the evidence is clear; there are more than 40 quality sex education programs that show that they reduce teen pregnancy and/or related sexual risk behaviors, including delaying sex, increasing use of contraception, and reducing the number of sexual partners,” Erlich wrote. “And 79 percent of people in the United States–across party lines–believe that teens should receive more information about abstinence and birth control and sexually transmitted infections. It only stands to reason that even those who believe strongly that teens should wait to have sex should prioritize results and evidence over ideology.
Rev. Marie Alford-Harkey, President and CEO of the non-profit Religious Institute, which works with thousands of religious leaders in support of “comprehensive sexuality education,” also praised the researchers’ insights and recommendations. By email, she commented that the work demonstrates how giving young people accurate, thoughtful info and guidance on moral decision-making “is both honest and effective at promoting sexual health and safety.”
She also noted that the expert reviewers denounced an “immoral” decision by the Trump Administration to cut funding to 81 Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs, which have historically been far better at protecting students than AOUMs.
“Not only are abstinence-only-until-marriage sexuality education programs ineffective, as this research shows, but they also violate the religious value of honesty, the moral agency of young people, and the dignity of worth of all people,” Alford-Harkey continued. “These programs do a disservice to our communities by propping up one narrow religious view of sexuality and withholding from young people vital information about their bodies and their sexual and reproductive health.”
She added, “We believe that sexuality is God’s life-giving and life-fulfilling gift [and] advocate for sexuality education that provides medically and scientifically accurate information, helps young people develop the capacity for moral discernment, and challenges harmful stereotypes and misinformation about gender roles and LGBTQ people.”
According to a new report released by the Abortion Care Network, the fate of independent abortion clinics is more precarious than ever, despite their vital role in providing the majority of abortion care services to patients seeking abortions across the United States.
Community-based independent clinics — which perform about 60 percent of abortion procedures and provide care to three out of every five people in the country who need an abortion — have closed at alarming rates in the past five years, according to the ACN report.
Since 2012, 145 independent clinics have closed, due to restrictive anti-abortion legislation, financial pressures, and anti-abortion extremism. This has reduced the number of clinics by a third. In 2017 alone, 10 independent abortion clinics have already been forced to shutter their doors.
For women in need of safe, reliable abortions, as well as a myriad of other, general healthcare services, the rapid fire closure of these independent clinics can be devastating. “Meaningful access would absolutely not be available without these clinics,” Nikki Madsen, executive director of the Abortion Care Network, tells Bustle. “Independent abortion care providers make the right to abortion a reality, they provide the most abortions in the U.S., and in several states are the only place a woman can go to end her pregnancy.”
“The way that these restrictions are coming out are specifically with the goal to close clinics, and they have nothing to do with women’s healthcare or the wellbeing of women,” she adds.
In addition to independent clinics, abortion services are also offered in private physicians’ offices, Planned Parenthood clinics, and hospitals. However, independent clinics are unique because they are more likely to provide second trimester abortion care, have deep ties to their communities, and often fill other healthcare gaps, like LGBTQ care and broader women’s health services. Abortion care is also significantly cheaper in a clinic than hospitals, which accounts for 4 percent of all abortion services, according to the report.
“Independent abortion care providers are like your local, independent bookstore or family business in your community. They know their neighbors, they care about the people who walk in their doors, and they’re focused on meeting the healthcare needs of their local community,” Madsen says. “They were founded to provide care when no one else would.”
The interior of the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo Credit: Jessica Ma
That commitment to the community is obvious at the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1976, the non-profit clinic has provided abortions, as well as a full gynecological clinic with wellness exams, STI and STD testing, and Pap smears, among other services, for decades.
“The need is not going to disappear as the clinics disappear.”
However, they have also faced challenges: To receive an abortion in Georgia, a woman must receive state-directed counseling that includes information to discourage her from having the procedure, the parent of a minor must be notified before an abortion is provided, and health plans will only cover an abortion if her health is endangered.
“That legislation passed in 2014, and it not only restricted abortion coverage through market place coverage but also through any state-based, state-employee plans,” Kwajelyn Jackson, the Center’s Community Education and Advocacy Director, tells Bustle about the health plan constraints. “So, not having coverage for your abortion care is an additional burden on folks who are uninsured, underinsured, and who’s plan just counts them out, forcing people to come up with alternative ways to cover the cost of the abortions they need.”
In the last six years, states have passed 338 laws that make abortion care more difficult to access, according to the report. These regulations comprise of Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers laws, or “TRAP” laws, which place burdensome, hazy requirements on providers, with standards often impossible to meet.
For instance, in 2013, a HB2 law passed in Texas required facilities performing abortions in the state to meet expensive, hospital-like standards, like minimum sizes for rooms and doorways, as well as a requirement that providers have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. While the law was ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court in the 2016 case of Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, on the grounds it imposed an “undue burden,” on women seeking an abortion, it still resulted in the closure of half of Texas’s clinics, due to the overwhelming financial barriers involved with reopening a clinic.
“Just the fact that these restrictions are imposed is outrageous,” says Rachel Jones, Principal Research Scientist with the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights. “And I think independent clinics have a harder time implementing them or meeting them because they don’t have this pool of money.”
Jones highlights that while Planned Parenthood is a brand name with a large network and resources, independent clinics often struggle to obtain name recognition or institutional support. This can make it especially difficult to fight against burdensome laws.
Michael Loccisano/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
“The climate of the local, state, and federal policymakers has made it very challenging, but what I try to focus on is the fact that our communities tend to feel otherwise,” Jackson says. “We know that, through conversations we’re having on the ground, that most of the folks we engage with are really supportive of the work that we do and want us to continue to be able to exist and provide safe, quality care to people.”
She says that if the Feminist Women’s Health Center was forced to close, the impact would be noticeable across the entire region, especially since so many of their patients travel to Atlanta from other states for second trimester abortion care, or 14 to 23 weeks after the last menstrual period.
Across the country, the majority of clinics providing abortion care after the first trimester are independent — without these providers, access to an abortion after 16 weeks would decline by 76 percent, while access after 19 weeks would be nearly non-existent, according to the report. “The need is not going to disappear as the clinics disappear. And so, if one of the clinics in Georgia cease to exist, we could see a ripple effect across the whole Southeast,” Jackson tells Bustle.
Madsen encourages folks to reach out to their representatives and legislators about the importance of independent abortion clinics, whether that be via phone call or email. She also says it’s crucial to physically support their local clinics — through volunteering, raising awareness among friends and family, or even throwing a fundraiser in the neighborhood.
“These clinics have been so committed to their communities and I think anytime their community shows their commitment back to them, they’re so grateful,” she says, pausing to add, “Communities need these clinics, but these clinics need their communities too.”
Republican legislators and anti-choice activists refuse to accept overwhelming evidence showing that abortion is an exceedingly safe medical procedure.
HB 13, sponsored by Rep. Giovanni Capriglione (R-Southlake), would require physicians who provide abortion care to submit a report on each abortion complication treated.
Teddy Wilson / Rewire
Religious imposition laws are designed to shield private individuals and businesses from complying with nondiscrimination laws based on a religious objection to that service.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) last week signed a bill that will increase medically unnecessary reporting requirements for abortion providers. Supporters of the new regulations say they are needed to ensure the accuracy of data collected by the state.
Anti-choice lawmakers and activists have a complicated relationship with truthful facts and figures, as pro-choice advocates have shown.
Reproductive rights advocates contend that the Texas GOP law is part of a national effort by anti-choice activists to manufacture evidence to support the claim that abortion care is unsafe, despite the overwhelming evidence that abortion is a safe and heavily regulated medical procedure.
‘The Data Shows Abortion Is Safe’
When Abbott called lawmakers back to Austin for a special session, he included legislation aimed at “strengthening the laws applicable to the reporting of abortions and abortion complications” on his priority agenda.
The bill defines what qualifies as an abortion complication with a long list of adverse outcomes: shock; uterine perforation; cervical laceration; hemorrhage; aspiration or allergic response; infection; sepsis; damage to the uterus; incomplete abortion; an infant born alive after the abortion; or the death of the patient.
A facility that violates this law would be subject to a civil penalty of $500 for each violation, and a third violation could result in the revocation or suspension of the facility’s license.
Under prior Texas law, each facility that provides abortion services must submit an annual report to the Department of State Health Services (DSHS). These reports document each abortion performed at the facility— including patients that experienced complications.
Since 2013, Texas has required facilities that provide abortion services to report the occurrences of complications from abortion. The data shows that complications are exceedingly rare. There were 25 complications out of 54,310 procedures in 2015; 22 complications out of 53,882 procedures in 2014; and 30 complications out of 61,912 procedures in 2013.
This low rate of complications from abortion care raised questions about the intent of the Republican-backed legislation. During a committee hearing on the bill, Rep. Jessica Farrar (D-Houston) cited the low rate of complications from abortion in the state and asked Capriglione, “what problem you’re trying to get at.”
“We don’t really have unbiased or complete information when it comes to abortion complications,” Capriglione said.
Andrea Ferrigno, corporate vice president of Whole Woman’s Health, told Rewire that claims made by GOP lawmakers and anti-choice activists were based on the “biased assumption” that abortion is not a safe medical procedure.
“Just because the data shows information that you don’t agree with doesn’t mean that it’s incorrect,” Ferrigno said. “The data shows abortion is safe with a very low complication rate, and just because you don’t like that outcome doesn’t mean it’s incorrect.”
Capriglione and other lawmakers claim the state’s abortion statistics are biased or incomplete. There is, however, a bevy of regulation and oversight over the reporting and collection of the data. DSHS officials conduct annual on-site inspections of each abortion clinic licensed by the state, and these inspections include an audit of the clinic’s records and documents.
Texas has a history of aggressively regulating and policing abortion clinics. Providers have described their relationship with the DSHS surveyors who conduct the onsite inspections as “adversarial.”
Ferrigno said that the clinic staff’s interactions with state officials can vary, and there are inconsistencies with how the state’s surveyors conduct on-site inspections and audits.
“We have to pay attention and be aware that there may be an attitude during the inspection, depending on the comfort of that surveyor in coming into an abortion clinic,” Ferrigno said.
While some of the state’s surveyors are “incredibly professional,” Ferrigno said that sometimes surveyors who appear to be personally opposed to abortion rights can attempt to penalize the clinic for violations that do not exist in the regulations.
“They tend to be very aggressive, they tend to be incredibly rude,” Ferrigno said. “We oftentimes have to notify our attorneys right away because we’ve experienced a lot of inappropriate behavior from surveyors in the past.”
‘It’s About Trying to Couch Abortion as Dangerous’
Abbott was joined by GOP lawmakers last Tuesday for a private ceremony to sign a pair of anti-choice bills passed during the special session. The governor said in a statement that HB 13 would result in more accurate data.
“The health and safety of women is of the utmost importance, and we must have the most accurate data available in order to create good policy,” Abbott said. “This bill is an important step toward providing Texas with critical information when abortions are performed.”
Abbott’s comments echoed the rhetoric Texas lawmakers used to justify the passage of the anti-choice omnibus law known as HB 2, a law that would eventually be partially struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, for abortion providers these regulations are not about the “health and safety of women,” but about increasing the regulatory burden for providers and choking off access to abortion care.
“There are all these administrative requirements that are just meant to further stigmatize abortion care, and to add administrative obstacles that at the end of it all add no benefit to the practice of medicine,” Ferrigno said. “Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures. This type of reporting doesn’t prove anything. It doesn’t identify any trends that would bring any type of medical benefit to the practice of abortion care.”
Ferrigno said the legislation is duplicative since Whole Woman’s Health and other abortion providers in Texas already report complications from abortion to the state. “The time frame might be different, but the cases are reported nonetheless,” Ferrigno said.
Abortion clinics today are required to submit an abortion complication report within 30 calendar days after the complication is discovered. This report must include detailed information about the patient, the facility, and the types of complication.
Under the new law, physicians will be required to submit abortion complication reports by the “third business day after the date on which the complication is diagnosed,” and abortion clinics and other medical facilities will be required to submit a complication report within 30 days after the complication was diagnosed.
These layers of reporting requirements will require that a single abortion complication be documented in least three separate reports.
‘Well Beyond Any Public Health Purpose’
Capriglione and other lawmakers repeatedly called into question the accuracy not just of the data collected by the state of Texas, but also data collected by research organizations and federal agencies.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1969 began compiling abortion statistics to document the number and characteristics of pregnant people who obtained legal induced abortions. The CDC does not track the number of abortion complications, but the agency’s annual surveillance reportdoes track the “relatively small number” of abortion-related deaths.
The Guttmacher Institute, which independently surveys abortion providers throughout the country, also compiles and publishes data on abortion.
Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, told Rewire that the abortion statistics produced by the CDC and the Guttmacher Institute are “quite accurate,” and that there are very few other medical procedures that have the kind of data that is available for abortion.
Nash points to data from both the federal and state level that proves the safety of abortion care. “There are some states that do require reporting for complications, and you can look at the data coming from those states and also see that abortion is very safe.”
Nash told Rewire that after abortion was legalized in the United States, collecting data on abortion served a real public health purpose. But in recent years abortion opponents have proposed new laws that significantly increase reporting requirements for abortion providers.
“What we’ve seen recently, and what we’ve seen proposed by abortion opponents, has gone well beyond any public health purpose,” Nash said. “It’s about targeting providers. It’s about trying to couch abortion as dangerous.”
Forty-six states require medical facilities and physicians that provide abortion services to submit regular reports to state agencies, and 27 states require providers to report post-abortion complications, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Many of the provisions in these laws are similar to those found in model legislation by Americans United for Life (AUL), the self-described “legal architect” of the anti-choice movement. The organization creates copycat legislation and distributes the anti-choice proposals to state lawmakers, who then push the measures through legislatures.
The organization advocates for a federal law to create a national database of abortion statistics and for increased reporting requirements for states.
Denise Burke, vice president of legal affairs at AUL, told Rewire in an email the voluntary reporting system used by the CDC results in “inaccurate, unreliable, and incomplete” data, and that reporting requirements are needed to “facilitate reliable scientific studies and research” about the safety of abortion care.
In 2010, the GOP-controlled Arizona state legislature was among the first states to pass legislation requiring abortion providers to report abortion complications and submit annual reports to the state and requiring the state Department of Health Services to publish an annual report.
The data published in the state’s annual report shows there have been very few complications resulting from abortion procedures reported in the state: From 2011-2015, less than 1 percent of abortions procedures in the state resulted in complications.
Arizona reported that 82 patients experienced complications out of 12,479 abortion procedures in 2015; 137 patients experienced complications out of 12,747 abortion procedures in 2014; 102 patients experienced complications out of 13,254 abortion procedures in 2013; 76 patients had complications out of 13,129 abortion procedures in 2012; and 60 patients experienced complications out of 14,401 abortion procedures in 2011.
Nash told Rewire that the Supreme Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt showed that “evidence matters,” and the state of Texas did not present evidence that the restrictions benefited the health and safety of abortion patients.
“Part of the motivation in further trying to identify complications from abortion could be that they are trying to develop an evidence base to try to show that restrictions are working,” Nash said.
Laws that target abortion providers with excessive regulations force physicians to spend more time on administrative issues and less time with patients, which may have a negative impact on health-care outcomes.
“You’re trying to add administrative work for physicians, who should be focused on patient care,” Ferrigno said. “The physicians want to spend time with patients talking about what matters most to them, what are their concerns, what are their health-care outcomes.”
Ferrigno told Rewire that laws like HB 13 are just another example of lawmakers undermining the “health and safety of women” they claim to protect.
“This legislation is trying to put barriers between the doctor and patient,” Ferrigno said. “They’re putting paper before people, and that is not patient-centered care.”
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