A group that supports people who need out-of-state abortions in the Deep South sued Alabama’s Republican attorney general Monday, following his threats to prosecute anyone who assists residents who want to travel out of state for an abortion. Read more at The Hill
Reproductive health has been hit particularly hard. According to the Alabama Department of Public Health, only 16 of Alabama’s 54 rural counties have hospitals providing obstetric services. Seven counties have no hospitals at all. As of 2020, 40 percent of the state was considered a “maternity care desert” with virtually no access to services in … Read more
Tuberville has effectively blocked promotions for roughly 200 senior military officials in key regions over the Pentagon’s abortion policy, which allows service members to take leave and provides travel reimbursements for those who need to travel to get an abortion. That is a more common need since the end of Roe. Read more at The … Read more
South Carolina House passes six-week abortion ban If all three of these bans go into effect, North Carolina will be the only state in the South to allow abortion through the first trimester. The procedure is currently banned in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee; it is only allowed up to six weeks in Georgia. … Read more
Freshman Alabama Rep. Ernie Yarbrough (R) has announced new legislation called the Abolish Abortion in Alabama Act, which would classify abortion as homicide and allow women and people seeking abortions to be charged with murder. Read more at Jezebel
Women in Alabama who end pregnancies using abortion pills can be prosecuted. Read article at al.com
But that may be changing. A bill introduced Thursday in Oklahoma’s Senate would amend the state’s abortion restrictions, eliminating language that clarifies pregnant people are protected from prosecution. Under that bill, which has not yet been assigned to a legislative committee and has no co-sponsors yet, pregnant people could face felony charges if they induce … Read more
This week, Steve Marshall, Alabama’s Republican attorney general, said he sees a path to prosecuting women for having abortions in his state. This was a bit of a faux pas: a moment of letting slip the mask that the anti-abortion movement always tries to keep on. Read more at The Guardian
Advocates argue that fetal personhood is a short, slippery slope to nearly unfettered regulation of anyone who may be pregnant: strenuous physical activity, smoking, drinking and medical procedures, like chemotherapy, are potentially risky to fetuses, for example. In practice, it has led to criminalization and increased state control over women – mostly Black women, historically, … Read more
Stories like Banks’s and Burns’s – the needless and disproportionate incarceration, the loss of freedom and recourse inflicted on them on the basis of their pregnancies, the cruelty justified by authorities as “protection” for a fetus – are becoming more common. Alabama criminalizes more women for pregnancy than any other state. Just last year, Kim … Read more
