Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra published a memo shortly after the Dobbs decision reminding hospitals that EMTALA requires them to perform abortions as part of emergency stabilizing care. Idaho’s ban prohibits abortions except when necessary to prevent the pregnant woman’s death. Read more at Talking Points Memo
ProPublica reviewed 12 of the nation’s strictest abortion bans. Few changed in 2023, as state lawmakers caved to pressure from anti-abortion groups opposing exceptions for rape, incest and health risks. Read more at ProPublica
We have entered an era not of unsafe abortion but of widespread state surveillance and criminalization—of pregnant women, certainly, but also of doctors and pharmacists and clinic staffers and volunteers and friends and family members, of anyone who comes into meaningful contact with a pregnancy that does not end in a healthy birth. Those who … Read more
In reality, the end of Roe didn’t so much send the US back to a pre-1973 landscape of unsafe abortions, but toward a bleak and unprecedented future of criminalized pregnancy. And the abortion underground never disappeared under Roe, anyway. Far from it – in a new book, the feminist historian, critic and poet Angela Hume … Read more
But the amendment voters approved Nov. 7 did not repeal any existing laws in Ohio, prompting some antiabortion activists to step up pressure on elected Republican officials to extend their efforts to halt, delay or significantly water it down. Read more at the Los Angeles Times
At the most recent debate this month, Haley said she would sign “anything” banning abortion that could pass Congress — whether it were at six weeks or 15 weeks. Read more at NBC News
“The reality is that Planned Parenthood and all these … big abortion … they set up their clinics in inner cities,” Johnson told a radio show in May 2022, in comments aired by CNN on Tuesday. “They regard these people as easy prey.” Read more at The Guardian
Despite an unbroken winning streak since Roe v. Wade was overturned, some of the efforts to enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions face substantial challenges. Read more at NBC News
A judge in Nevada rejected a proposed 2024 ballot initiative that sought to enshrine reproductive rights, including abortion, in the state’s Constitution. Read more at The Hill
Liz Kirby, Monroe County Hospital’s CEO, said a physician shortage was behind the closing. After the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, some hospitals in states with strict abortion bans have warned that it could become harder to recruit OB-GYNs, though Kirby said she wasn’t aware of that as a factor in this case. Residency … Read more
