More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Abortion providers can be independent clinics or affiliated with a hospital or larger healthcare organization. Each one provides safe, wanted abortions to pregnant people. Abortion providers often face harassment and violence, despite widespread support for abortion access.
A new film about self-managed abortion with pills explains how people in the U.S. are finding abortion pills online and using them safely on their own. Accessible, informative and engaging, ‘Abortion: Add to Cart’ provides a roadmap for how people can have safe abortions post-Roe—even in states that ban abortion.
When states coerce and force women, girls and people with the capacity for pregnancy to remain pregnant against their will, they create human chattel and incubators of them. Today, Texas, Mississippi and other states with ‘trigger’ bans make clear that the essences of chattel bondage and the draft have returned, but only for women, girls and pregnant-capable people.
Overturning Roe v. Wade will unleash devastating rollbacks on abortion across the United States, while also impacting U.S. foreign policy. Already, the Helms Amendment, Siljander Amendment, global gag rule and other restrictions form a collective—and deadly—U.S. foreign policy package that has had disastrous impacts on global health, including an increase in maternal mortality, unsafe abortions and HIV infections, as well as a decline in the overall quality of healthcare.
While the forthcoming decision, and its catastrophic fallout, is not likely to have an immediate global impact, it will undercut efforts to remove these restrictions and embolden the anti-abortion lobby to further instrumentalize U.S. foreign policy to promote its ideology.
Abortion rights should never depend on someone’s zip code. Each state must do its part to ensure legal and more equitable access to abortion care.
Amber Gavin works at independent woman-owned abortion clinic, A Woman’s Choice. Israel Cook is a state legislative fellow at the Center for Reproductive Rights. Both women share what makes them hopeful for the future of abortion care.
“Many people already live in a post-Roe reality. Yet this does not have to be our future. Advocates, providers, lawyers and everyday people across the country can build a future where we uplift and center the voices and ideas of Black people, people of color, disabled people, immigrants, young people and more.”
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a total ban on abortion (H.B. 4327) into law. This citizen-enforced total ban on abortion—beginning at fertilization—takes immediate effect, making Oklahoma the first state in the country to outlaw abortion while Roe v. Wade still stands.
“This is not one more ban. This is a first,” said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains. “Today’s ban—which encourages bounty hunters to sue their neighbors or strangers for accessing abortion care at any stage of pregnancy—is a reversal of history happening in front of our eyes. Once signed, abortion will be illegal in Oklahoma. Full stop.”
Laws requiring parental consent for minors requiring abortion care do not help teenagers—they only delay much needed healthcare for vulnerable youth.
States overwhelmingly allow a teenager to independently consent to pregnancy care and medical treatment for her child, and even to give up her child for adoption, without notice to her parents, yet require parental notice or consent for abortion
For nearly 50 years, as anti-abortion legislators in states around the country have chipped away at the constitutional right to a safe and legal abortion, they have done so with the steady drumbeat of violence at their back. In the face of the recent leak of a draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito that confirmed that the Supreme Court is set to overturn Roe v. Wade, abortion advocates and providers are bracing for a surge in clinic violence.
When Hana found out she was pregnant, she was five weeks along. As a college student living near Boston, she had numerous options for abortion healthcare. But she ended up at an anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy center” she thought was an abortion clinic. Despite the lies and coercion she experienced at the CPC, Hana persisted in her search for an abortion and eventually found real healthcare, but she worries about CPCs harming other people. Ms. spoke with Hana about her CPC experience, the effect it had on her, and why she’s speaking out now.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I was absolutely terrified. I am a teenager, in my first year of college, and far away from home—the one thing I knew was that I could not bring a child into my world. I felt so lost, like a child who lost their mother in a supermarket. I needed someone to help guide me through this, someone I could trust. I made the mistake of trusting these people, who did not hesitate to abuse it, and it has forever changed me.”
The release of the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning abortion rights has left many people wondering about continued access to abortion. Reproductive rights advocates have been working hard to create an infrastructure of information and support for accessing and using abortion pills, no matter what happens when the Supreme Court issues its final ruling.
Here’s an easy guide to information about abortion pills.