Tag: Anti-Abortion Extremism

The Abortion Pill and the Hypocritical Oath

The lead plaintiff in the mifepristone case heard before the Supreme Court this week is a shadowy organization calling itself the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM). The group’s name is clearly intended to evoke the Hippocratic oath, popularly understood as the commitment of doctors to “first do no harm.”

To claim, as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine does, that forcing a woman or child to give birth against her will, even if childbirth will seriously injure or even kill her, honors the principle of “do no harm” is perverse, but also very revealing. It makes clear that the “harm” that AHM and other anti-abortion ideologues care about is wholly imaginary.

They Never Deserved to Be Called ‘Pro-Life’

Less than three weeks after Alabama’s State Supreme Court unleashed massive chaos and hardship by ruling that frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) must be considered children, the state legislature passed a bill providing immunity to clinics that provide IVF and people who access that care. Alabama’s stridently anti-abortion governor hastily signed the legislation into law. Are we supposed to be grateful?

Protecting and supporting families is not the focus of the Republican Party. They prove that every day by opposing food and nutrition assistance, childcare subsidies, paid family leave, Medicaid expansion and other programs that help families be healthy and thrive.

Supreme Court Is Considering Nationwide Restrictions on Most Common Abortion Method: Medication Abortion

Not content with overturning Roe v. Wade, the anti-abortion movement now wants to restrict medication abortion—even in states where abortion remains legal.

But a decision to place more restrictions on medication abortion will not stop people from getting abortion pills—it will merely reshape, not extinguish, the landscape of access to abortion pills.

The Upcoming SCOTUS Abortion Pill Case Could Be the Next Dobbs

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next week, on Tuesday, March 26, in a case against the abortion pill mifepristone, filed against the FDA and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of anti-abortion doctors and dentists. The Court will issue its ruling by summer—just months before the fall election, when voters will decide on the next U.S. president and control of Congress.

“This case is not based on any kind of medical or scientific fact around abortion. It’s purely based on politics,” said Elisa Wells of the abortion pill advocacy group Plan C. “The fact that it’s been allowed to progress so far in the court system is outrageous.”

(This article originally appears in the Spring 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox!)

Biden Takes on Republican-Led Abortion Bans in State of the Union

Biden’s State of the Union forcefully outlined the need for reproductive healthcare access and sounded a three-fold warning to the American people about: the dangers of abortion bans passed by Republican lawmakers at the state level; Republican obstruction in Congress to restore abortion rights at national level; and the federal abortion ban Republicans seek to enact. 

“There are state laws banning the right to choose, criminalizing doctors, and forcing survivors of rape and incest to leave their states as well to get the care they need,” Biden said in his Thursday night address. “Many of you in this chamber and my predecessor are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom. My God, what freedoms will you take away next?”

When Every Miscarriage Is a Murder Scene, Poor Women Pay the Highest Price

The Alabama Supreme Court recently shocked the nation when it held that the word “child” includes frozen embryos. Treating an embryo as the equivalent of a child upends the fertility industry, as it threatens to end in vitro fertilization (IVF) services and puts the status of embryos already in storage in serious question.

While these implications are important to untangle, the brunt of the effects of fetal personhood will fall not upon families with the resources to undergo IVF, but rather on poor and non-white women. Every decision made by a pregnant person could be second-guessed by the government. Every step outside of the most risk-averse approach to pregnancy puts the pregnant person under the microscope of the state.

War on Women Report: Anti-Abortion Group Tracks Planned Parenthood Visits; Texas Man Will Spend Five Months in Jail for Slipping Pregnant Wife Abortion Pill

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U.S. patriarchal authoritarianism is on the rise, and democracy is on the decline. But day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. The fight is far from over. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report: Modern surveillance tools pose an increasing threat to pregnant people and those helping them access care; a groundbreaking study proving the safety and effectiveness of telehealth abortion; in rare bipartisan move, Congress expanded the child tax credit for the next three years, lifting 400,000 children above the poverty line by 2025; rest in power, Nex Benedict; and more.