Abortion – Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information

“We’ve talked to him many times about this,” Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List President Marjorie Dannenfelser told Rewire in an interview shortly before House Republicans passed a related 20-week ban last October. McConnell, she said, “has no problem bringing it up on the floor as an important thing to get people on record for, to have the conversation, to build the vote ’til next time.”

Abortion opponents are hoping that when the bill comes up next time, Republicans will have increased their Senate majority and ended the legislative firewall between a nationwide prohibition on legal abortion care at 20 weeks, further eroding access as they work to do away with it entirely.

This scenario would require the elusive Senate GOP supermajority, or close to it. Republicans hold 51 seats in the chamber, but two of those belong to Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AK), who have mixed records on reproductive rights, though so far they’ve been reliable “no” votes on 20-week bans. Democrats, meanwhile, have 47 seats and can depend on favorable reproductive rights votes from the two Independents who caucus with them. When it comes to the 20-week ban, Democrats lose three members: Sens. Joe Manchin (WV), Joe Donnelly (IN), and Bob Casey (PA). All three backed the latest version of the legislation.

Within minutes of Monday’s vote, SBA List was at work to unseat Senate Democrats who had opposed it. The organization announced ad campaigns against four of them: Sens. Sherrod Brown (OH), Claire McCaskill (MO), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), and Jon Tester (MT)—all from states that President Trump won.

“Those senators who voted against this life-saving bill need to know that we saw what they did and will fight to hold them accountable—and defeat them,” Dannenfelser wrote in a Tuesday email soliciting donations from supporters.

Political Pitfalls Mar Anti-Choice Strategy

Though anti-choice advocates hope that highlighting the abortion rights positions of vulnerable Democrats may help them secure an allied Senate GOP supermajority, recent polling indicates that Democrats across the board could, in fact, benefit at the ballot box from embracing abortion rights. That’s because according to findings released earlier this month by the nonpartisan research firm PerryUndem, “Republicans have more voters ‘outside the tent,’” or with different positions on the issue, than Democrats.

Dannenfelser and her allies are fudging the facts on abortion, especially later abortion care. The overwhelming majority—89 percent—of all abortions occur within the first trimester. The 1.3 percent that occur after 20 weeks’ gestation, or a little more than midway through the second trimester, can be attributed to a variety of factors, from medical issues that threaten a pregnant person’s health or life, to the discovery of nonviable pregnancies, to GOP-driven state-level restrictions that delay the ability to access care.

Their casting of later abortion care in a particularly negative light doesn’t conform with public opinion either. Americans were evenly split, 46 percent to 46 percent, in their support or opposition to 20-week abortion bans in their state, according to a January 2017 Quinnipiac University poll. But public support was higher in a 2016 Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health survey that injected nuance into the questions. Sixty-one percent of Americans said they opposed legal abortion after 24 weeks. But 59 percent supported it when provided with an example—in this case, Zika—of a severe risk to a fetus’ health.

Altogether, the findings give credence to some basic inferences. By shifting right on abortion, Democrats running for office risk alienating core voters, especially Black women who face disproportionate consequences from anti-choice policies and deliver victories for reproductive rights and Democratsalike, even in traditionally red states like Alabama. And while abortion foes have bet big on demonizing later abortion care, their caricature of it may be a harder sell to the public than they counted on.

Abortion Opponents Challenge the Rules

Though some so-called establishment Republicans and anti-choice groups may have been playing politics in setting up the Senate’s 20-week vote, they still hope to pass the ban sooner rather than later.

At least one lawmaker—Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), a former Bible camp director behind perennial congressional GOP-led efforts to criminalize a common medical procedure used after miscarriages and during second-trimester abortions—downplayed the political machinations behind the Senate’s 20-week ban. “I want to pass it,” Lankford said, according to a CQ Roll Call report. “So our goal is not just to make messages; it’s to get it done.”

Twenty-week abortion bans with varying exceptions have already been enacted in 21 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Federal courts have blocked 20-week bans in two of those states: Arizona and Idaho.

Additional legislative and judicial backstops, however, complicate efforts against legal abortion care and the Democrats who support it.

Legal experts believe 20-week bans are unconstitutional because they undermine a key provision of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case that established the right to an abortion until fetal viability. Fetal viability differs for each pregnancy, but generally occurs around 24 weeks’ gestation. For now, in theory, the courts could stop a nationwide 20-week ban that somehow managed to pass the full Congress and garner Trump’s promised signature into law.

“Pro-life Americans would finally have a groundbreaking victory for life in the U.S. Senate if the vote passed with majority rules as it should,” Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins said in a statement. “It’s time for a rule change.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the Senate bill’s lead sponsor, opposes the change. “It’s frustrating, but you know, we won’t always be in charge, and I think most people in the pro-life community understand that,” he told Politico last year.

And still, intra-movement fighting poses another threat to the strategy around the 20-week ban.

Ultimately, the anti-choice end runs have shown conservatives’ electoral hand. Whether they win is not as certain as it is transparent.

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2018/02/02/vote-20-week-abortion-ban-part-republicans-questionable-midterms-strategy/

New Hampshire Republicans in the state house have put forward a bill that would effectively ban abortion after eight weeks. HB 1511 modifies a so-called fetal homicide bill passed in 2017 by the state’s Republican-held legislature.

The eight-week abortion ban is at odds with the Granite State’s commitment to personal freedoms, Dr. Julie Johnston told Rewire.

“This bill would make it illegal for a woman to have full control of her body after eight weeks of pregnancy,” said Johnston, a family medicine physician in New Hampshire and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health.

Eight weeks seems to be a new marker for anti-choice activists and politicians, said Jessica Mason Pieklo, Rewire’s vice president of law and the courts, who wrote this week about the GOP’s failed 20-week abortion ban in the U.S. Senate.

“By 8 weeks after fertilization, the unborn child reacts to touch. After 20 weeks, the unborn child reacts to stimuli that would be recognized as painful,” the Republican Senate bill stated—although evidence-based physicians refute such claims.

Ushma Upadhyay, an associate professor at the University of California at San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), told Rewire she has grave concerns about New Hampshire’s eight-week ban.

“There is absolutely no science that would support a cutoff at eight weeks. I have no idea what science they are basing it on. Usually, viability is at 24 weeks and even that is debatable,” she said. “The concern is that laws like these will drive many abortions outside of the clinical system and it will cause more harm to women.”

Nearly 90 percent of abortions take place in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, with two-thirds occurring in the first eight weeks. About 1 percent of all abortions in the United States take place after 20 weeks, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute.

“[Denying access to abortion care at] twenty weeks is horrible, even 24 weeks is horrible for many women. I don’t think there is an acceptable cutoff for all people and all situations because there are so many specific situations women are in, and women will need access to abortion throughout the pregnancy,” Upadhyay said. “It really is a medical decision that should be made between the woman herself in consultation with her doctor.”

Devon Chaffee, executive director of American Civil Liberties Union New Hampshire, is concerned that last year’s fetal homicide bill will “lead to a slippery slope that threatens women’s health and women’s rights.”

“In the 2018 legislative session we have already seen legislation proposed that would expand the fetal personhood provisions to effectively ban abortion at eight weeks and erode specific exemptions intended to protect healthcare providers. We are going to have to be ever vigilant moving forward to protect the health and reproductive rights of all women in our state,” she said.

While it is not clear what impact the fetal homicide bill has had yet, Molly Cowan, communications manager of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, pointed out that along with HB 1511, New Hampshire has several other bills filed that are “direct attempts to chip away at reproductive freedom and constitutional rights.” These include a later abortion ban, an “informed consent” bill, religious imposition legislation that would allow health-care providers to “conscientiously object” to performing abortions, and a bill to protect women from so-called coercive abortions, a policy that has been deemed “wildly divorced from reality.”

“In each instance, the New Hampshire Legislature is seeking to disrupt and intervene in the relationship between a woman and her health care provider. Abortion bans, waiting periods, and ‘provider refusal’ bills are bad policy because they would prevent a woman from making her own personal, private decision about her health and medical care,” Cowan said.

Local community organizer Crystal Paradis, who lives in Somersworth, called HB 1511 an “anti-choice attack” against people in her state.

“It redefines a fetus’ embryo stage from the 20th to the eighth week—a huge leap with no medical or scientific basis,” she told Rewire in an email. “This extreme legislation is not in line with our values as Granite Staters. We believe that medical decisions should remain between a patient and their medical provider, including decisions around abortion care.”

Upadhyay said she has a hard time believing an eight-week ban would pass legal muster, given Roe v. Wade, but she agreed that bills curbing access to abortion care using unscientific time markers are a growing trend.

“Women who are denied an abortion due to gestational age are four times as likely to be below the federal poverty level compared to women who received a wanted abortion,” she said, citing a recently released study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Nearly one in four women in the United States will receive abortion care in her lifetime, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The majority, Johnston said, are mothers who make that decision for the sake of their health and family.

“I often see women who are already mothers and become pregnant again despite using birth control and know that they cannot afford the care of another child at that time. These women are hardworking, may have three jobs, and care for several children as a single parent. Many of these patients do not have health coverage for effective birth control,” she said.

One of Johnston’s patients, for example, was diagnosed with breast cancer early on in her pregnancy. Chemotherapy was needed to save her life but could not be administered while she was pregnant. She made the difficult decision with her husband and physician to end the pregnancy so she could receive crucial medical care and live, Johnston said.

“Even when abortion is outlawed, it does not go away,” Johnston said. “We cannot move back on women’s health. We should move forward towards improved access and coverage of methods that prevent pregnancy instead of criminalizing a safe medical procedure.”

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2018/02/01/new-hampshire-republicans-ban-abortion-care-eight-weeks/

Proponents of abortion pill “reversal” aim to gain a foothold in Idaho with Republican legislation to tell those seeking abortion care about the unproven treatment.

Patients would receive a “fetal development packet” with information on “interventions, if any, that may affect the effectiveness or reversal of a chemical abortion” and where to find providers, under a bill introduced Monday by state Sen. Lori Den Hartog (R-Meridian).

Abortion pill “reversal” purports to stop a medication abortion by delivering a large dose of the hormone progesterone before a patient takes the second pill in a series of two required medications to have a medication abortion. Backed by anti-choice lawmakers, legislation advocating for the experimental treatment has appeared in at least ten states since 2015, with limited success. Colorado legislators are also considering an abortion pill “reversal” bill this year.

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has condemned the so-called reversal treatment, saying it is “not supported by the body of scientific evidence.” Abortion rights foes point to a 2012 study of six pregnant patients they say demonstrates the treatment works.

“Some women change their minds or have regrets after taking the first of two pills necessary to complete the chemical abortion,” Den Hartog told Rewire in an email. “I believe it is important for women in Idaho who are considering these choices during a potentially stressful time in their life to know what options might be available to them.”

More than 400 providers of so-called abortion pill reversal have sprung up around the country in a network that includes doctors, physician assistants, nurses, and midwives, according to Sara Littlefield, executive director of the Abortion Pill Reversal program, which is based in Escondido, California. The California nursing board, after much dispute, now offers continuing education credit for a course on abortion pill “reversal.”

Littlefield told Rewire that Idaho has one registered provider of abortion pill “reversal,” and others can be found across the border in Montana, Utah, and Washington state.

Den Hartog sponsored the same bill last year, but told Rewire she held it over to this session to give the legislation more time.

“We worked with the Idaho Medical Association (who took a neutral position on our bill last year) to not have language that compelled a doctor to say something about the protocol treatment,” she told Rewire.

Reproductive rights advocates had criticized the bill last year for advancing “make-believe health care.”

“Abortion reversal is not based in science or medicine. It is not an actual thing,” said Mistie Tolman, Idaho public affairs manager with Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest and Hawaii.

Last year, a panel of medical experts convened by Louisiana lawmakers to study the effectiveness of abortion pill “reversal” found “neither sufficient evidence nor a scientific basis to conclude that the effects of an abortion induced with drugs or chemicals can be reversed.”

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2018/01/31/gop-lawmakers-pushing-make-believe-health-care-across-us/

Senate Republicans tried and failed on Monday to pass the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” a law that would ban abortion at 20 weeks under the false premise that a fetus can feel pain by that point. The measure was unlikely to pass—Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) never had the 60 votes to clear the filibuster threshold, even with the help of three Democratic senators who voted in favor of it.

But the fact that Republicans have set their sights on this particular type of abortion restriction is a key indicator of anti-choice lawmakers’ strategy: legislating to advance the government’s interest in “fetal life.”

Since Roe v. Wade, the courts have identified two avenues through which the government can pass legislation to stifle abortion rights. It can either do so to advance patient safety or to promote its interest in advancing fetal life. Before Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, which in 2016 struck as unconstitutional two Texas anti-abortion provisions, lawmakers largely focused their attention on the “patient safety” path, enacting a panoply of restrictions targeting the business of providing abortions. These included requiring doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital; requiring clinics to have transfer agreements with a local hospital; requiring clinics to meet the same architectural standards as stand-alone surgical centers, even if they did not provide surgical abortions; or requiring providers to adhere to outdated FDA protocol in administering medication abortions.

All in all, the list of restrictions passed in the name of advancing patient safety is long. And it was effective: Through these kinds of measures, for instance, lawmakers came very close to leaving Mississippi without any abortion clinic at all. They also decimated abortion access in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

That was until Hellerstedt. For the first time in over 15 years, the U.S. Supreme Court took anti-choice lawmakers to task for their brazenness in attacking abortion rights.

In Hellerstedt, the Court struck down Texas’ admitting privileges requirement and its ambulatory surgical requirement because, the Court concluded, lawmakers didn’t have any evidence to support their claim that the regulations actually advanced patient safety. If lawmakers were going to restrict abortion rights in the name of protecting abortion patients, Hellerstedt made clear they would have to be able to provide clear evidence that their proposed restriction would meet that goal. Needless to say, that evidence did not exist in the Texas fight and it’s not likely to. Closing clinics and heaping administrative burdens onto providers and patients do not advance patient health and they never did.

Some of these restrictions are still in place, as advocates use the Hellerstedt precedent to get them struck as well. As the fight in Missouri illustrates, though, even that outcome isn’t a guarantee.

Still, we’ll see the immediate impact of the Hellerstedt decision unfold over the next couple of legislative sessions as lawmakers pivot to the other path: legislating to advance fetal life. Already, states like Mississippi, Missouri, and New Mexico are working up pre-viability bans of various sorts. These laws, like a 15-week abortion ban or a “heartbeat ban,” or dilation and evacuation bans, are direct attacks on Roe’s fundamental holding; that the state cannot ban abortion before viability. Like the 20-week bans scattered in 21 states across the country and the repeated attempts by Congress to pass a federal 20-week ban, they are all tests designed to see how far government power to legislate on behalf of a fetus can reach.

It’s reasonable to believe one of these new restrictions will land before the Supreme Court.

There are some early markers that suggest even conservative federal judges see viability as a firm stopping point to the extent of state power to legislate in the name of fetal rights. The Supreme Court, however, has historically given mixed signals here. It refused to take up a challenge to Arizona’s 20-week ban, leaving it blocked, but upheld a pre-viability ban in Gonzales v. Carhart,. But anti-choice lawmakers in both Congress and the states wouldn’t be pushing legislation like the 20-week ban and other direct attacks on pre-viability abortions if they didn’t believe they had the votes of five friendly Supreme Court justices either. So take those mixed signals with a proverbial grain of salt.

Which brings us back to Monday’s vote and the idea of “fetal pain.” McConnell almost certainly knew the bill would fail. But he held the vote anyway. He did so, as anti-choice leaders have stated, in order to put lawmakers on record, thus making them answerable to the anti-choice lobby as midterm elections approach. But he also clearly wanted to make a very public statement: that conservatives have finally dropped all pretense of being concerned for the health of pregnant people and instead will use the full power of the government to legislate on behalf of fetal rights.

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2018/01/30/20-week-abortion-ban-scare-us/