Abortion opponents know they will lose on the merits if they’re honest. And so they lie. Which is exactly how we get bills that suggest abortion pills are addictive, and threaten to jail women who haven’t had abortions, but who simply possess extremely safe and common medicines.
Category: Health
Louisiana’s Criminalization of Abortion Care Demands We Embrace Reproductive Justice
On Tuesday, the Louisiana House passed legislation criminalizing two drugs commonly used for abortion care: mifepristone and misoprostol. The bill received final legislative passage Thursday, and the governor is expected to sign it into law any day now. Instead of working to address the maternal mortality crisis, the infant mortality crisis or the climate crisis (and the list of crises goes on), Louisiana’s lawmakers are looking to lock up our neighbors for up to five years for possessing these life-saving drugs. The move is pigheaded, embarrassing and downright dangerous—but not surprising.
When they’re using the same tools they used to wreak havoc on Black and brown communities for decades to criminalize anyone for simply possessing abortion care drugs, we know that our collective struggle transcends abortion rights alone.
Keeping Score: Abortion Bans Drive Away Young Workers; Far-Right Groups Mobilize to Suppress Voting Rights; Biden Has Confirmed 200+ Judges
In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.
This week: Young workers are avoiding states with abortion bans; 70 percent of likely voters support a ceasefire in Gaza; far-right groups are mobilizing to spread election conspiracies; potential new abortion restrictions in Louisiana; an update on Flint, Michigan; over 80 percent of men of color support abortion; Justice Samuel Alito is under fire for flying a “Stop the Steal” symbol; the Louisiana state legislature rejects a bill that would have allowed rape and incest victims aged 16 and younger to have an abortion and moves to add abortion pills to the list of controlled dangerous substances; and more.
Texas Medical Board’s Proposed Abortion Guidance *Still* Doesn’t Clarify When Doctors Can Legally Perform Abortions
Doctors, lawyers and advocates say the state board’s new guidance still doesn’t clarify when doctors can legally perform abortions.
“Unfortunately, the increased requirements for documentation are truly unworkable,” testified Dr. Richard Todd Ivey, a Houston OB-GYN. “These decisions should be made by a patient in consultation with their physicians, because that is the practice of medicine. We as physicians want to work within the confines of the law, but we cannot do so if our hands are tied.”
Protect More Than Women’s Bodies on Campus
Research shows that among college students, women report more mental health issues than men. The work to protect women’s bodies is so important and still needed—but it is also important that we take steps to proactively protect the mental health of our female students.
The year I went up for tenure, I had a series of unexpected and traumatic experiences. I know I am not the only faculty to experience a mental health breakdown at a high-stress and highly important time in my academic career. In fact, mental health problems in academia are under-discussed and relatively common.
‘For the First Time in a Long Time, They Have Hope in Alabama’: What Rep. Marilyn Lands’ Win Means to Voters
When Rep. Marilyn Lands won her race for the 10th District seat in Alabama in March with 63 percent of the vote, she did not expect to beat her Republican opponent by such a large margin.
After having an abortion herself, Lands made reproductive freedom the heart of her winning campaign this year. She has found that sharing her story has had a profound impact on her relationship with voters.
When an Abortion Ban Is Not Enough: Louisiana Seeks to Add Abortion Pills to List of Controlled Dangerous Substances
In February, Texas attorney Mason Herring pleaded guilty to slipping abortion-inducing pills into his wife Catherine Herring’s drink without her knowledge or consent. She subsequently gave birth to a baby 10 weeks premature with significant developmental delays.
Catherine Herring’s brother, Thomas Pressly, a Republican state senator from Louisiana, drafted a bill in collaboration with Louisiana Right to Life which creates the new crime of “coerced abortion by means of fraud.” Although the bill was initially framed narrowly in terms of holding men such as Herring accountable for heinous behavior, Pressly makes clear that “throughout the process, I have been trying to determine what other steps I can take to control the rampant illegal distribution of abortion-inducing drugs that ended up hurting my sister.”
‘Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America’: The Ms. Q&A with Shefali Luthra
Roe v. Wade was overturned on June 24, 2022. But according to Shefali Luthra, author of Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America, “it had been on the verge of collapse for decades.” After all, most Medicaid recipients had lost insurance coverage for the procedure in 1977 and a plethora of restrictions—from parental consent and notification requirements for minors, to mandated counseling sessions to dissuade people from ending their pregnancies—had long kept procedural abortion out of reach for large segments of the population.
Undue Burden digs into this lack of preparedness by introducing diverse people who have been directly impacted by the decision—people who have had to travel hundreds of miles to have an abortion, people whose highly-anticipated pregnancies became untenable, a trans man who became pregnant shortly after beginning his transition, and a young couple who lacked the emotional and financial resources to welcome a second child, among them. Their stories are juxtaposed with those of overwrought clinicians as well as staff at abortion funds. The result is a poignant and dramatic look at the stakes of losing Roe and a compassionate assessment of the human toll wrought by Dobbs.
Jailing Girls for Men’s Crimes (2010)
From the Summer 2010 issue of Ms.: “In 10 years, we will look back and consider it ludicrous that we ever prosecuted children for prostitution.”
(For more ground-breaking stories like this, order 50 YEARS OF Ms.: THE BEST OF THE PATHFINDING MAGAZINE THAT IGNITED A REVOLUTION, Alfred A. Knopf—a collection of the most audacious, norm-breaking coverage Ms. has published.)
Our Abortion Stories: ‘Many Women Are Not Able to Travel and Are Forced to Continue Pregnancies. We Must Remember Them.’
Abortions are sought by a wide range of people for many different reasons. There is no single story. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls. (Share your abortion story by emailing myabortionstory@msmagazine.com.)
In this edition of Our Abortion Stories, women share how abortion has shaped their lives and how abortion restrictions in Mississippi have created challenging work environments for providers.