“'After going through all this I wondered, why are we not the poster child for abortion rights?' said Riata Little Walker, who traveled from her home in Casper, Wyo., for an abortion in Colorado at 22 weeks, after doctors diagnosed Down syndrome and a heart defect in her fetus, which they said would require surgery and later a transplant if it survived until delivery."
"A leading anti-abortion doctor has been appointed to Texas’ maternal mortality review committee. Dr. Ingrid Skop, an OB/GYN from San Antonio, will be serving in the role designated for a community member representing a rural area.
Skop...is the most visible face of a small but influential national anti-abortion medical community, the first call for anyone looking for an OB/GYN to publicly defend abortion restrictions."
"When her doctor recommended that she not lift more than 25 pounds, her employer wouldn’t let her move temporarily to a role where she didn’t need to lift furniture, even though those roles were available, she said. She was forced to go on leave and then lost her job. Her marriage unraveled and she spent time after the birth in emergency housing."
"A judge in Ohio could rule as soon as Monday in a case that could overthrow the state’s 2019 abortion ban...A ballot measure approved by voters last year already rendered much of that law moot, but parts remain in place including reporting requirements and a 24-hour waiting period, which can add stress and an increased financial burden for those in need of abortion care."
"Many women are not able to travel and are forced to continue pregnancies, despite financial and health risks. We must remember them, stand up for them and continue to fight for the simple dignity of having control over our own bodies." - Dr. Cheryl Hamlin
"In letters sent Thursday to the five largest health insurers and four largest pharmacy benefit managers first shared with The Hill, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) asked for information on how the companies plan to respond to federal guidance designed to improve no-cost access to birth control."
"More than 50 percent of Black girls and women of reproductive age live in states with little to no abortion access, according to a new report.
The analysis from National Partnership for Women & Families and In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda found that nearly 7 million Black women ages 15-49 live in the 26 states that have banned or are likely to ban abortion."
Join Doctors for America in Silver Spring, Maryland June 6-8, 2024 for our biennial National Leadership Conference. This year's theme is “Reclaiming the Voice of Medicine.” Confirmed speakers include: Bernie Sanders, Vivek Murthy, Kavita Patel, Ellana Stinson, Cedric Dark, Alister Martin, and more!
"Almost two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, most Americans still support abortion access.
About 6 in 10 Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of 8,709 adults released Monday.
The share of American adults who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases has increased by 4 percentage points since 2021, according to Pew."
"According to new statistics from the Association of American Medical Colleges, for the second year in a row, students graduating from U.S. medical schools were less likely to apply this year for residency positions in states with abortion bans and other significant abortion restrictions."
"Now, Davis has disclosed his former partner’s abortion to a state district court in Texas, asking for the power to investigate what his lawyer characterizes as potentially illegal activity in a state where almost all abortions are banned."
"Abortion funds were already straining to meet the need of patients. Now, they must raise more money for people traveling longer distances, later in pregnancy when abortions can be more complicated and expensive. This is the post-Dobbs reality: For all the optimism surrounding state ballot measures in November, abortions are increasingly out of reach or financially ruinous for large numbers of people."
"This viscera, this flesh invoked by Sotomayor, was a necessary additive to the cold legal rhetoric, one that put the pregnant body in the center of the room and forced the Court (and anyone listening) to consider the case not in the abstract language of law schools but in the bleeding, chaotic body. Not as it exists in the fairy tales of anti-abortion activists but in its actual existence—porous, fluid, and fragile."
"Earlier this month on the Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick spoke to emergency medicine physician Dara Kass about the health care that happens in the gap between the federal requirement for stabilizing care and the local laws in Idaho and other states that have enacted near-total abortion bans post-Dobbs. Their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. You can listen to the whole episode here."
"The extent to which conversation has been silenced is evident from a STAT survey of 100 hospitals — two from each state — asking to speak with physicians about changes in maternal health care since the Dobbs ruling. Only six institutions made physicians available to speak about their work, and five of them were in states where abortion access remains protected."
"One woman miscarried in the lobby restroom of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to admit her. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.
Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade...
Pregnant patients have “become radioactive to emergency departments” in states with extreme abortion restrictions, said Sara Rosenbaum, a George Washington University health law and policy professor.
“They are so scared of a pregnant patient, that the emergency medicine staff won’t even look. They just want these people gone,” Rosenbaum said."
"The Biden administration has sued Idaho, saying that state’s abortion ban violates EMTALA because its exceptions are too narrow to allow doctors to perform abortions if needed to stabilize a patient. Texas, meanwhile, has sued the Biden administration, saying it's using EMTALA as an end-run around state abortion bans to 'mandate that every hospital and emergency-room physician perform abortions.'"
“On the one hand, you have autonomy and dominion over one’s own body, and also because as the Planned Parenthood 2022 plurality stated, parenthood is a life-altering obligation that falls unevenly on women in our society," Im said. "So because of those rights that are recognized under the constitution, that’s why rational basis isn’t appropriate.”
"A study recently published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons found that states that restricted abortion access from 2018 to 2020 had a 75 percent higher rate of peripartum homicide...than states without restrictions...Firearms were used in 63 percent of all peripartum homicides. These statistics underscore the connection between reproductive rights, domestic violence and gun violence in the United States."
"Trump’s positions on abortion have been a roller coaster for decades. At one point in 2015, during his run for president, he took “five positions on abortion in three days,” according to The Washington Post and as NBC News detailed at the time."
He supported SCOTUS nominees who would overturn Roe v. Wade, which paid off after he left office. Why would anyone trust him to protect abortion access?
"Arizona for Abortion Access — a coalition of organizations including the ACLU of Arizona, Reproductive Freedom for All Arizona and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona — announced they have so far collected more than 500,000 voter signatures, with more than three months left until the July 3 submission deadline.
The required number of valid voter signatures for constitutional amendments is 383,923."
"Although women have been talking about IUD pain for years, the complaint has become more prominent as younger IUD users make the case on social media that women are not given adequate options to manage their pain."
"That statute makes it a crime to perform or attempt to perform an abortion or for health care professionals to assist in an abortion and contains only narrow exceptions. Labrador's letter last year interpreted the criminal statute's "assisting" language as meaning a doctor's license could be suspended for referring a patient for an out-of-state legal abortion."
"The Biden administration and a manufacturer of mifepristone, Danco Laboratories, have argued in legal filings to the Supreme Court that federal judges do not have the scientific and health expertise to evaluate drug safety and that allowing them to do so undermines the FDA’s regulatory authority."
“I heard you say you don't make the law, but I'm here today because I tried to get the Legislature to act when I lobbied last session and couldn't even get an amendment on fetal anomaly out of committee. I tried to get the courts to help us...and they said we needed to wait for you. And now you're saying it's not your responsibility either. So where else am I supposed to go?”