[RD] Abortion, once again

[Lexicus]

In addition, because Texas also has a number of ‘interior border checkpoints’ — where agents surveil for undocumented immigrants —

Kind of amazed that this is allowed to go on

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

A large increase in Florida post roe, that seems strange, they have pretty strict abortion laws.

 

[Farm Boy]

Million a year?

 

[Arwon]

After Roe v. Wade: dwindling US abortion access is harming health a year later

The US Supreme Court’s decision one year ago to revoke the right to an abortion has begun to take a toll on women’s health in the United States, say researchers who have been monitoring the effects of the ruling. Although it is too soon to measure the full impact, a grim picture has begun to emerge.

After the court issued its decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, a landmark 1973 ruling that had protected abortion access in the United States for decades, some states banned abortion. Surveys now indicate that people who experience pregnancy complications in these states have been put in life-threatening situations because physicians couldn’t treat them properly. A study by the Society of Family Planning, an organization focused on abortion and contraception research based in Denver, Colorado, also estimates that in states with bans, such as Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, the average number of abortions has decreased drastically. But they have increased nearly as much in nearby states, such as Kansas, where abortion is allowed, because people travel there to seek care (see ‘A post-Roe landscape’).

This balancing effect means that, overall, the average number of abortions per month in the United States has decreased by about 3%. That might seem like a small reduction, says Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College in Vermont who has been tracking abortion access. But “what that means is that somewhere between one-fifth and one-quarter of people who are trying to get out of the ‘ban states’ to obtain an abortion aren’t making it out”, and are instead continuing with unwanted pregnancies, she says.

Anticipating change
After the Supreme Court issued its decision on 24 June last year, public-health researchers, having long studied abortion access, warned that financial hardships and health harms would increase for the country’s most vulnerable, who lack the resources to travel for an abortion, or to raise a newborn. Researchers also predicted that the decision, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, would particularly affect those who would be unable to book telehealth appointments because of a lack of internet access, thereby increasing disparities.

Anticipating these changes, Myers and her colleagues have been monitoring the distances people now have to travel to get to the nearest abortion facility. According to their unpublished findings, 23% of US women who are of reproductive age have experienced an increase in that travel distance, and are now, on average, more than 300 miles (about 480 kilometres) away from the nearest provider.

Kari White, a public-health specialist at the University of Texas at Austin’s Population Research Center, has focused on the impact of the ban enacted in Texas. Before Roe was even overturned, the state had passed a law prohibiting abortion care after around six weeks of pregnancy, a stage when many people who are pregnant do not even realize it. At the time, it was the most restrictive abortion law in the country, and although it was the subject of legal challenges, the Supreme Court declined to block it, foreshadowing what was to come.

While the six-week ban was in effect, White says, “people were driving in the middle of the night, making a seven-hour trip out and back in a single day because they couldn’t afford to take more time off work” to get an abortion. Now, with a complete ban in Texas and some neighbouring states, such as Louisiana and Oklahoma, sometimes the closest clinic is 600 miles away, she adds. In addition, because Texas also has a number of ‘interior border checkpoints’ — where agents surveil for undocumented immigrants — it is impossible for some people to make those trips, she says.

White notes that, compared with states where abortions are allowed, many of the states that ban abortions already had poor track records for maternal and child health before Roe was overturned, especially among people of colour and those with low incomes. She expects the disparities to worsen — although it’s not yet possible to measure the exact changes, because births resulting from unwanted post-Roe pregnancies only started to happen earlier this year.

Shared experiences
Although one year isn’t long enough to quantify some of the consequences of abortion restrictions, researchers have been interviewing health professionals to get an idea of the big picture. One such initiative, called Care Post-Roe, published its early findings in May.

Daniel Grossman, director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a social-sciences research programme at the University of California, San Francisco, says that he and his colleagues launched the initiative because they had heard that health providers were being advised by their employers not to speak to the media. The researchers wanted to give physicians, nurses and midwives an opportunity to share their stories, albeit anonymously.

The initiative’s findings so far suggest that, in states with abortion bans, the treatment of certain pregnancy complications has been compromised. For example, when a person’s water breaks dangerously early in a pregnancy — before the fetus is able to survive on its own — the standard of care is to offer an abortion to prevent life-threatening infections. According to the providers’ reports, however, in many cases, people had to be sent home and told to return when labour started, or if they had signs of infection.

In one case, an individual later returned to the hospital with sepsis and had to be treated in the intensive care unit. She delivered the fetus, but required a procedure to remove the placenta. “After everything she went through, the patient was still worried that maybe something either she had done or the physician had done could put them at risk for being prosecuted,” Grossman says. “She asked him if this situation would be considered ‘life-threatening enough’, and that’s just so shocking to hear. It highlights the fear that these laws have engendered among physicians and patients.”

So amazingly backwards

 

[Remorseless1]

She was denied an abortion in Texas - then she almost died​

A Texas law that bans all abortions - except in dire medical circumstances - is one of the strictest introduced since the right to the procedure was overturned. Critics say it is forcing many women, and their doctors, to choose between breaking the law and making the right decision for their health.
Amanda Zurawski and her husband Josh had recently bought their dream home. Located in one of the most sought-after areas of Austin, Texas, it had scenic views of a lake and a golf course. With their first child on the way, it was perfect for their growing family.
But their moving day last August was not at all what they had envisioned. Amanda had just been released from the hospital after her life was put at risk when she was denied an abortion.
"It felt like I was living in a dystopian world," Amanda told the BBC. "In the United States, as a pregnant person, you should not be afraid of your life because of the laws."

In the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, giving states the right to ban abortion, 13 states have passed near total bans. Texas is the largest, and one of the strictest, banning all abortions from the moment of conception, except in cases of a "life-threatening physical condition" or "a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function". Breaking the law can carry a $100,000 (£78,000) fine and up to life in prison.
When Amanda learned she was having a daughter, she and her husband were overjoyed. But on the same day that she compiled the guest list for her baby shower, she was diagnosed with a condition that led to not only the loss of her child, but put her in the crosshairs of Texas's abortion ban.

Doctors told her she had cervical insufficiency, which is a weakening of the cervical tissue that causes premature dilation, and that her unborn daughter would not survive. She and her husband were devastated.
"She was a baby that we desperately, desperately wanted," she said.

A standard course of medical treatment for an unviable pregnancy at that stage of development is to terminate, and extract the foetus. Waiting to miscarry naturally can put the mother at risk for infection, which can prove fatal.
But doctors told her they couldn't terminate her pregnancy, as under the state's laws, it was a crime to perform an abortion when there was a foetal heartbeat, unless the mother's life was threatened. Essentially, the message was that she was not sick enough yet to legally justify an abortion.
Three days later, Amanda developed a life-threatening infection and went into septic shock.
"My teeth were chattering uncontrollably, I couldn't put together a sentence," she said. "Imagine when you have the worst flu you've ever had in your entire life, it was that times one thousand; it was awful."

At the hospital, they induced labour and she miscarried her baby, whom she named Willow. She was then immediately sent to the intensive care unit, where she spent the next several days. The sepsis had caused scarring on her uterus and fallopian tubes, which led to one tube being permanently blocked.
It may make conceiving even harder for her in the future.

• The last refuge of abortion access in the south
• For Supreme Court, the abortion battle is just beginning

Amanda is now one of 13 women, and two doctors, who have decided to sue the state of Texas in the hope of changing the ban, to give doctors more leeway in determining when an abortion is necessary.
The state has asked the judge to dismiss the case. On Wednesday, Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation that clarifies that doctors are allowed to use their "reasonable medical judgment" to prevent serious complications caused by ectopic pregnancies or pre-viable premature rupture of membranes, which was the cause of Amanda's sepsis.
Anti-abortion advocates and politicians who support the ban say that the Texas laws were always written clearly, but the new legislation will help make it more explicit.
"If a doctor can foresee that a woman has sepsis that could end up being life-threatening, they can act immediately," said Rebecca Parma, who leads anti-abortion research and advocacy for Texas Right to Life.

She also said that now that abortion has been banned, her group intends to advocate for increased social services to women and the extension of Medicaid, or free health insurance, up to a year after childbirth, to ensure that women's maternal health is not neglected.
But the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is funding the lawsuit on behalf of the women and doctors, said there was no list long enough to encompass all cases where an abortion might be medically necessary.
Their position mirrors that of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which says each patient brings unique medical considerations to the table.
Dr Leah Tatum, a fellow of the organisation, who treats patients at Austin Regional Clinic, says the laws in Texas are written in such an ambiguous way that they cause stress and anxiety for medical providers across the state, who fear being charged with a crime for providing their patients with medical care.
"I'm coming at this from an objective medical standpoint," she said. "A pregnancy has more risk to the patient that is carrying the pregnancy than an early termination would."
"At what point by the law are they considering the patient's life at risk?"
Medicine is not black and white, she said, and cases that fall in the grey are more difficult to interpret within the law. While she is part of a big practice, with lawyers on hand to give advice, she worries for providers who don't have that same support system, particularly in rural areas.
"This is so different from how we were trained and what the national standard is for maternal care," said Dr Judy Levison, a Houston doctor who has been practising for four decades. But she's decided to stop seeing patients, partially because of these bans, and is now one of two doctors who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the state.
She mostly saw low-income patients, and she felt she was being asked to practice medicine in an unethical way.
"Where were they going to get an abortion? How were they going to afford travelling, getting childcare, risking two days not working and risking their employment perhaps? I suddenly felt like my hands had been tied behind my back," she said.
And although the law, and the recent legislation clarifying the law, makes exceptions for when the mother's life is threatened, Texas does not allow abortions in the case of lethal foetal abnormalities, which are medical problems that make the foetus unlikely to survive upon birth.
Taylor Edwards, who is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said that because there was no exception, she was forced to leave Texas for an abortion to terminate her unviable foetus.
"The emotional torture of those two weeks cannot be understated. I don't know how to explain to people how absolutely terrible it is knowing you're carrying around a baby that isn't going to live and you have to be very visibly pregnant," she said.
She is not the only one who has made the decision to leave the state to obtain an abortion. Many have had to travel hundreds of miles to Kansas or New Mexico, sometimes calling a dozen or more facilities to schedule their procedure, says Dr Kari White, of the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Austin.
"This was a really emotionally difficult experience for people, not because they were getting an abortion but because they were unsure whether or not they could get one," she told the BBC.

Like Amanda, Taylor also went through fertility treatments, spending tens of thousands of dollars to conceive, and found out in her second trimester that her daughter Phoebe would not survive.
At her 17-week anatomy scan this past February, the doctor saw the baby's brain matter herniating out of her skull, a condition known as encephalocele. Taylor recalled the moment when the doctor told her that the baby would not survive: "I just started screaming, I don't know what took over me."
She did not want to have to carry her daughter to term, only to give birth to a stillborn baby. But the cost and stress of having to leave the state took a psychological toll on her as well.
Three hours before she was due to fly to New Mexico, the clinic said they had run out of the necessary medication for the procedure. She eventually got an appointment later in Colorado, barely making their 19-week cut-off, after which they would no longer perform the procedure.
In total, the flights, hotel and abortion cost her $6,000 and was not covered by insurance, she said.
"You shouldn't have to deal with it when you're going through the worst experience of your life," she said.
"And then to be thrust into a situation where you're made to feel like a criminal is even worse."
As for Amanda, after losing Willow and moving into their home in Austin, she and her husband discovered that a tree outside of their new home was a desert willow. Every morning they say hello to it, feeling their daughter is close by. Along with the Edwardses, they have started another round of fertility treatment, hoping to have another child.
As the one-year anniversary of the fall of Roe v Wade draws near, both women say they are hopeful - but ready to fight.
"When I look back on the last year and everything that's happened to me personally but also in our political landscape, I see a lot of people mobilising," Mrs Zurawski said. "I've said before I don't think there's anything more powerful than a pissed-off mum and you got a lot of pissed-off mums right now."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65935189

Can't believe anyone would be surprised. The whole point of what is sickening labeled "legislation" produced by Republicans is inflicting cruelty on those the Republicans want to punish for not following what they ludicrously call "Christian morality." I'm betting over the next two years the Supremes get rid of gay rights, voting rights, the right to buy contraceptives or marry someone of a different race, or allowing women to vote. After all, the originalists on the court are correct that in the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights women were not allowed to vote and black people were slaves, and that's what they want -- a 1950 style South Africa in North America.

 

[RobAnybody]

I would not be surprised either. This is the big prize for Republicans - complete control over the Supreme Court & they got it with President Donald Trump of all things, who appointed 3 Justices. They may make some occasional surprisingly not-awful decisions, but on the truly important stuff @Remorseless1 just listed, they've won, for now.

It's going to take years (possibly decades) of unity to undo what happened from 2016-2020 on the Supreme Court. While I have my disagreements with some Democrats/liberals on some issues, & definitely get annoyed at the continually increasing, excruciating levels of purity tests needed to simply not be labelled a Horrible Person Who's Now Dead To Me, I'm never actually gonna vote Republican at the Federal level. Because of this issue. And I'll keep urging others who even just lean a little Left to do the same. Don't "Protest Vote", don't vote Third Party, & don't stay at home on Election Day next year. Don't let The Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good. The Good is still better than The Now.

 

[sophie]

oh wow would you look at that thing happening that people said wouldn’t happen

https://twitter.com/x/status/1678444180903804928

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Your country has gone insane (the politicians, courts, and whoever the snitches were).

My province's Minister of Health is the same moron who was the Minister of Education from 2019-2023. She's insanely anti-choice, and when she was the chairperson of the Catholic School Board here (before running for MLA), she saw nothing at all wrong with approving a "field trip" to bus Catholic high school students to an anti-abortion rally in Edmonton.

She blatantly tried an end run around the Charter of Rights regarding inserting her brand of Christianity into the new elementary school curriculum (social studies); 59 of 61 districts, including her own former colleagues, refused to pilot it, so it hasn't been inflicted on the kids yet.

Now people are worried about what kind of end run around the Canada Health Act she's planning in order to make abortion harder to access (one of the tenets of the Act says that health care must be available in every region of the country, but that's never actually been the case in practice).

 

[Lexicus]

oh wow would you look at that thing happening that people said wouldn’t happen
View attachment 666846

https://twitter.com/x/status/1678444180903804928

Sounds to me like "someone" needs to have an accident

 

[sophie]

Apparently the abortion in question happened before it was made illegal in the state

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Apparently the abortion in question happened before it was made illegal in the state

And they're still being sentenced to a prison term? How is THAT even legal?

 

[sophie]

And they're still being sentenced to a prison term? How is THAT even legal?

ah. they performed an assisted abortion at 29 weeks, and the law pre-Dobbs was 20 weeks

the tapping Facebook for logs is still scary af tho (although also itself not unusual)

 

[Samson]

Senator stalls US military promotions in anti-abortion standoff

One senator’s anti-abortion protest has resulted in the United States Marine Corps — one of the country’s most elite military units — being without a confirmed leader for the first time in 164 years.

Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama has refused to confirm promotions to top military posts until the Pentagon agrees to end its policy of offering leave and travel funds for reproductive healthcare, including abortion.

Tuberville’s strike has left an estimated 265 military positions in limbo. On Monday, General David Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, retired in an official farewell ceremony, leaving his post without a congressionally approved replacement.

The last time the Marines’ leadership failed to have an official successor was in 1859, when the commandant at the time died unexpectedly.

But the dilemma of Berger’s high-profile departure is far from an anomaly. In the coming months, nearly half of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the highest leaders in the Department of Defense — are expected to retire, leaving vacancies that threaten to be filled without Congress’s consent.

In the wake of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade — the case that had previously protected abortion as a constitutional right — the Department of Defense announced it would offer allowances for military service members to travel for reproductive healthcare.

While the department’s policy memo, released in February, does not explicitly name abortion, observers understood it as an attempt to circumvent abortion restrictions that went into place after the Supreme Court’s decision.

“Our Service members and their families do not control where they are stationed,” the Pentagon said in the policy memo.

“The efforts taken by the Department today will not only ensure that Service members and their families are afforded time and flexibility to make private health care decisions, but will also ensure Service members are able to access non-covered reproductive health care regardless of where they are stationed.”

But Tuberville has argued that the policy memo violates the law — namely, the Hyde Amendment, which largely limits federal funds from financing abortion.

 

[Lexicus]

It's so foreign that they would refer to the Marine Corps as "one of the country's most elite military units" lol

 

[Ajidica]

It's so foreign that they would refer to the Marine Corps as "one of the country's most elite military units" lol

Completely off-topic, but that's one of the things that always makes me skeptical of Al-Jazeera. Their copy editing always feels super slapdash.

 

[Arwon]

It's so foreign that they would refer to the Marine Corps as "one of the country's most elite military units" lol

Is it not elite?

 

[Lexicus]

Is it not elite?

Debatable, especially in these days of thr all-volunteer fully mechanized force. More importantly, it's a branch of service and not a unit.

 

[Theov]

Sounds to me like "someone" needs to have an accident

This is the second time you post something where you wish harm onto people. The other time you wanted other people to be killed when you said:

These people who say surrogacy is a crime against god and family should probably be euthanized

It's really not a healthy mindset.
Are you ok?
Moderator Action: Warned for trolling. The_J

 

[Hygro]

Is it not elite?

It is, but not in a special forces kind of way.

 

[Lexicus]

Are you ok?

No, I am Not