Author: Shoshanna Ehrlich

Shoshanna Ehrlich is professor emerita of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her books include Who Decides: Who Decides: The Abortion Rights of Teens and the co-authored Abortion Regret: The New Attack on Reproductive Freedom. She is currently a legal consultant with Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts, with a particular focus on the reproductive rights of teens.

Grassroots Power: How Amarillo Became the First City to Reject a Abortion Travel Ban

On Nov. 5, 2024, voters in the Texas Panhandle city of Amarillo resoundingly defeated (59 to 41 percent) a proposition that would have declared their town a “sanctuary city for the unborn.” Amarillo now enjoys the distinction of being the first city in the U.S. where voters rejected a post-Roe abortion travel ban.

The defeat marks a powerful repudiation of Mark Lee Dickson, founder of the antiabortion group Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn—due in large measure to the activism of the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance. The alliance was launched when six local women met at a coffee shop to debrief after Dickson’s initial presentation, which several of them had attended. The women immediately recognized that the ordinance posed a threat they needed to take seriously.

Reading the Warning Signs: How Trump’s Administration Could Crack Down on Abortion

During the presidential campaign, Trump forcefully avowed he did not support a national abortion ban—a position consistent with two-thirds of the electorate—gloating instead that he was responsible for sending the issue back to the states where it belongs. He also distanced himself from the “virally unpopular” Project 2025—the far-right playbook for the next conservative administration.  

However, warning signs suggest that Trump may have been pandering to the electorate on both scores. Notably, when his remarks on the campaign trail about a national ban are considered alongside his existing ties to Project 2025, his boast about returning control over abortion to the states may well prove to have been stopgap measure en route to a blanket ban, although perhaps by way of a back-channel strategy.

A former Trump official chillingly predicted that Trump’s track record of having “adopted the most pro-life policies of any administration in history … is the best evidence … you could have of what a second term might look like.’”  

‘Significant Victory’: Ninth Circuit Court Mixed Ruling ‘Frees Idahoans to Talk With Pregnant Minors About Abortion’

In April of 2023, Idaho passed the nation’s first abortion “trafficking” law (travel ban) making it a crime to procure an abortion for a minor. The law was challenged by reproductive rights advocates, who argued that the legislature had created a statute that makes unclear when lawful mentoring support stops, and unlawful conduct begins. Agreeing with the plaintiffs, in November of 2023, a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction preventing the law from going into effect.

On Dec. 2, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a mixed decision in the case. Although not a complete win, as Wendy Heipt of Legal Voice, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs put it: The “decision is a significant victory … as it frees Idahoans to talk with pregnant minors about abortion healthcare.” 

“Encouragement, counseling, and emotional support are plainly protected speech under Supreme Court precedent,” wrote the Ninth Circuit Court last week, “including when offered in the difficult context of deciding whether to have an abortion.”

Trump’s Chilling Promise to ‘Protect Women’ Puts ‘Women Not on a Pedestal, but in a Cage’

On the campaign trail, Trump boasted that under his presidency, “women will be happy, healthy, confident and free” and that we will also magically be freed from the stress of “thinking about abortion.” 

Trump’s back-and forth with women at his rallies may, at first glance, be viewed as an act of paternalistic beneficence for our collective best interest. After all, who would not prefer to be “happy, healthy, confident and free” over being “abandoned, lonely, and scared?” But, as history makes clear, paternalistic protectionism reinforces male supremacy. It is premised on the deeply subordinating and essentialist view that women are “weak and incapable of taking care of themselves.” Accordingly, we require protection for own good, with the resulting loss of self-agency and decisional autonomy.

Republican AGs Want Access to Health Records of Out-of-State Abortion Seekers. Texas’ Ken Paxton Is Leading the Charge.

Since the fall of Roe, cross-border abortion travel has doubled. To guard against the threat of having—as President Biden put it—the medical records of abortion patients “used against them, their doctor, or their loved one just because they sought or received lawful reproductive healthcare,” a new HIPAA rule issued last year enhances the privacy protections for reproductive healthcare.

Attorneys general from 19 abortion-hostile states submitted a formal letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in opposition to the proposed enhanced privacy rule, based on its disregard for fetal personhood. The AGs failed in their mission to prevent the proposed 2024 rule from becoming final—so Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton took matters into his own hands. The Texas challenge will be heard by Republican appointee Judge James Wesley Hendrix in Lubbock, Texas. It is anticipated that he will be sympathetic to the state’s position.

Do Parents Have the Right to Control Their Daughters’ Sexuality?

Title X, the federally funded family planning program that provides confidential family planning services to teens has once again come under attack. In separate lawsuits, two Texas parents have alleged that by allowing their daughters to obtain contraceptives in the absence of their consent, the program has effectively divested them of their “God-given right to ensure their daughters remain virgins until marriage.”

This attack is on Title X is nothing new. The rights of parents to control the upbringing of their children has long been a rallying cry of Christian conservatives as they battle against the ostensible indoctrination of their children “with a secular worldview that amount[s] to a godless religion.” As they see it, a particularly pernicious aspect of this “godless religion” is the belief that  “’teen promiscuity is … normal and acceptable conduct.”

Over the course of four decades, courts have consistently held that although Title X encourages parental involvement, it does not require it based on the recognition that “confidentiality [is] a crucial factor in attracting teenagers to Title X clinics and reducing incidence of teenage pregnancies.”

Decisions Belong to the Pregnant Teen: Montana Court Strikes Down State’s Parental Consent Act

The Supreme Court of Montana used state constitutional grounds to strike down the Consent Act, which required minors to obtain parental consent for an abortion. The court’s analysis of these justifications determined that they were clearly intended to obfuscate the antiabortion animus behind the Consent Law.

Having revealed the baselessness of the underlying justifications for discriminating against teens who choose abortion over childbirth, it becomes readily apparent that these are antiabortion laws—plain and simple—that aim to divest teens of control over this reproductive choice.

A New Tennessee Law Claims to Protect Parental Rights, Leaving Teens Without Routine Healthcare

In addition to enacting a strict abortion ban and trafficking law to punish those who assist minors with abortion access, Tennessee has also taken Justice Thomas’ injunction to heart that the time has come to reassess constitutional protections for birth control. Towards this end, on July 1, the state’s newly enacted Family Rights and Responsibilities Act aimed at bolstering parental authority went into effect with minmal fanfare.

Public healthcare providers may no longer provide teens with routine sexual and reproductive healthcare, including birth control, pregnancy testing and treatment of STIs, in the absence of parental consent.

Tennessee Is the Second State to Criminalize Minor ‘Abortion Trafficking.’ Activists Are Pushing Back.

In May 2024, following Idaho’s lead, Tennessee became the second state in the country to criminalize the ‘abortion trafficking’ of minors, making it a class A misdemeanor.

Late last month, Nashville Democratic Rep. Aftyn Behn and abortion rights attorney and activist Rachel Welty brought a lawsuit in federal district court challenging the trafficking law on constitutional grounds and asking to have it permanently enjoined.