Tag: Amy Coney Barrett

Abortion How-To: The Ms. Q&A on Menstrual Extraction With Carol Downer

Before Roe v. Wade, one of the ways women bypassed the medical system to get necessary abortions was a technique feminists called “menstrual extraction,” using a syringe, flexible plastic tubing and a mason jar to extract the contents of the uterus.

Ms. spoke with activist Carol Downer about her experiences teaching people to perform menstrual extractions and how the procedure could help post-Roe.

“How in the world can that Supreme Court sit up there and deny this thing to us? How can they get away with that? You can guarantee that Amy Coney Barrett has not seen her own cervix.”

Access to Birth Control Is in Danger if Roe is Overturned

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In a post-Roe world, legislators—most of whom have no medical expertise and cannot get pregnant themselves—in one state could assert that life begins at fertilization, while a neighboring state could say life begins at birth.

Next, all hormonal contraception and IUDs might be outlawed just because some people believe they interfere with implantation and therefore “endanger” the new “life.” Defining personhood as starting at fertilization also has significant implications for in vitro fertilization, a process that creates fertilized eggs.

We’re the Women Who Chose Adoption Over Abortion. Ask Us Why Abortion Rights Matter

Over the years friends have asked my advice about their unplanned pregnancies or their daughters’. I don’t give advice. What I say is that I’m thrilled that my son walks the earth, but that the emotional cost was so much higher than I’d imagined. That there was no ‘clean slate’ afterward, only loss. That if I were faced with the same circumstances a second time, I would probably choose an early abortion. That what saved me in the end was the ability to make the choice myself.

The Political Religions That Brought Down Roe

The Catholic Church has been the principal religious opponent to advances in birth control and abortion rights and access. But to achieve its goals, it needed allies in its long-term campaign of resistance. It took some time, but they found them. 

How conservative Christianity has been systematically waging a half-century war on Roe v. Wade will be the stuff of books and graduate theses. Here are some of the major themes that that they will contain.  

‘This Is An Emergency’: America Left Reeling in Wake of Likely Roe v. Wade Reversal

Late Monday night, shock waves could be felt across the U.S. after a leaked draft opinion signaled the Supreme Court’s majority decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case concerning a 15-week abortion ban out of Mississippi. The leaked opinion, if and when it takes effect at the end of the Supreme Court’s term (likely in June), represents the biggest blow to women’s constitutional rights in the last 50 years. 

Reactions from feminists, lawmakers, reproductive rights advocates and legal scholars have been pouring in as America begins to grapple with the gravity of what abortion access will look like in a post-Roe world.

Tracing the History of a Job That Shouldn’t Exist: The Role of Clinic Escorts in America’s Fight for Abortion Rights

Their actions started relatively quietly. But then came the megaphones, the screaming, the death threats and the outright violence.

Bodies on the Line by Lauren Rankin examines the role of clinic escorts in America’s fight for abortion rights, and chronicles the history of anti-abortion extremism.

Pregnancy and Childbirth Endanger Women’s Lives and Health: “Pregnancy Is Not a Benign Condition”

During oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson, Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested now that all 50 states have “safe haven” laws that allow mothers to relinquish parental rights after birth, the burdens of parenthood discussed in Roe and Casey are irrelevant, and the decisions are obsolete. Putting aside the callous assumption that giving up a baby is not burdensome, the argument ignores the physical and psychological effects of pregnancy, labor and childbirth.

“Legal abortion has reduced deaths of women from unsafe abortion to almost zero and has had important positive effects on other aspects of maternal and child health,” said Dr. Warren M. Hern, director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic. “It has been one of the greatest public health successes in the history of medicine.”