With the landscape of abortion access changing almost daily in the United States, hundreds of thousands of people are not receiving the basic healthcare they need. Danika Severino Wynn, midwife and VP of Abortion Access with Planned Parenthood Federation of America, talks to us about the current state of abortion access in the U.S. and how different states and communities are disproportionately feeling the harm of restrictions and bans.

It may come as no surprise, but in states where abortion bans are already in place, abortion care is extremely difficult to access. Many are having to piece together information about how and where to receive care before driving or flying out-of-state. At the same time, purposeful misinformation is pushed by anti-abortion advocates and politicians in order to shame and confuse patients. In states where abortion hasn’t been banned, providers, clinics, and abortion funds are having to overextend their capacity to provide care and support for those traveling from out-of-state. This results in longer wait times for appointments, which is particularly troubling for time-sensitive abortion care. 

Other sexual and reproductive healthcare is being impacted by these bans, as well. In states where abortion is severely restricted or banned, Planned Parenthood is still on-the-ground and providing a range of sexual and reproductive health care, including birth control prescriptions, cancer screenings, STI testing/screening, and more. In states where abortion is still legal and are seeing increased volume of patients, there are some increased wait times for services, but don’t worry-- Planned Parenthood is still working diligently to ensure appointments are scheduled and kept. 

Links

Planned Parenthood Federation of America on Twitter

Planned Parenthood Federation of America on Facebook

Plan C

Abortionfinder.org
Ineedana.com
Repro Legal Helpline
Repro Legal Defense Fund
Digital Defense Fund

Take Action

Follow Planned Parenthood Federation of America on Twitter and Facebook.

Go to bansoff.org or text ACCESS to 22422 to learn more about how to fight back.

There is power in storytelling. Speak up using a hashtag on social media or share your story through Planned Parenthood. 

Donate to PPFA and to abortion funds!

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Abortion is still legal in more than half of U.S. states, but many people may not be able to access the care they need in the states they live in. As criminalization of pregnancy and abortion becomes increasingly normalized, there are a number of legal considerations to keep in mind when looking for care remembering that those already marginalized are most at risk for criminalization. Rafa Kidvai, Director of the Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How and Liz Ling, Senior Helpline Counsel at If/When/How, talk to us about the new landscape of abortion access in the U.S. and how someone can go about safely and reliably accessing an abortion.

If you’re pregnant and looking for abortion care, you can start with abortionfinder.org and Ineedana.com to find out what type of care is available closest to you. Regardless of where you are, be cognizant of your digital privacy—be aware of your search history, who you are sharing information with, and how often you are sharing information. Pregnancy and abortion criminalization may be bolstered by law enforcement obtaining copies of digital receipts. 

Once you are in front of a medical professional, ask as many questions as you may have. Again, be aware of the people around you at this time and those that may be trustworthy with information regarding your abortion care. Be aware of your digital footprint and turn off your location services on your phone when you go to a clinic. After an abortion, it’s again important to remember who you are sharing information with. If you are contacted or detained by law enforcement, call the Repro Legal Helpline and do not speak without a lawyer present. You can also contact the helpline if you are helping someone access care and need advice or guidance. 

If/When/How’s Repro Legal Helpline is a completely free and confidential resource for anyone who may have questions about reproductive justice—including what your rights are and what state laws are so that you feel fully informed in making a decision. You can receive information on what legal risks you may face based on if and how you choose to end a pregnancy, as well as options and legal barriers that you may specifically face in certain states if you are a young person. The Repro Legal Defense Fund raises bail for those who are criminalized for pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes and self-managed abortion. The defense fund, in addition, pays legal and attorney fees, engages a network of expert witnesses, and creates arguments against junk science that often underlies pregnancy and abortion criminalization. 

Links

If/When/How on Twitter

If/When/How on Facebook

Abortionfinder.org

For more information, check out Boom! Lawyered: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/boom-lawyered/ 

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There has been a flurry of executive and Congressional action after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade. Leila Abolfazli, Director of Federal Reproductive Rights at the National Women’s Law Center, sits down to talk with us about executive and Congressional measures being taken on abortion rights in the United States.

The executive order issued by the Biden administration is split into four main sections that: 1) directs the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on actions to take; 2) convenes private, pro-bono attorneys and Bar associations in an effort to represent patients, providers, and other third parties who lawfully seeking or providing reproductive health care; 3) asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to protect people’s online data when seeking information about or seeking abortion care; and 4) outlines other laws that HHS can support, including strengthening the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and creating an HHS-Gender Policy Council taskforce that coordinates federal agency response to abortion. You can find additional information about this executive order here.

Congress held five hearings after the release of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling in the House Oversight Committee, House Energy and Commerce Committee, House Judiciary Committee, Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee. The House passed a bill called the Ensuring Access to Abortion Act, which would ensure protection of those crossing state lines to receive an abortion. In addition, the House passed the Women’s Health Protection Act which would cement a federal right to abortion. The Respect for Marriage Act passed in the House would protect same-sex marriage, while the Right to Contraception Act passed in the House would protect the right to birth control access. Lastly, the Senate voted on emergency funding for Title X clinics—family planning clinics across

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Television and film often allow people to make sense of the world. With abortion being center stage in many national conversations and with so many myths circulating about this type of care, it is especially important that TV and film represent abortion stories accurately. Steph Herold, researcher studying abortion in television and film at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), sits down to talk with us about abortion depictions onscreen and what Hollywood could include in storytelling to be more representative of those seeking abortion care. 

Television and films have been telling abortion stories for a very long time, but sometimes the depictions aren’t realistic. Often, abortion is portrayed as a risky or unsafe procedure (which is fundamentally untrue—it’s one of the safest medical procedures a person can receive). In addition, characters that receive abortions in television and film don’t often reflect those who receive abortions in real life; most abortion patients in real life are people of color, struggling to make ends meet, many of whom are already parents, yet the character onscreen who receives an abortion is often a young, white, single woman. In addition, characters don’t face barriers to the care they need, including waiting periods, traveling, financial concerns, and gestational bans. Lastly, medication abortion is largely underrepresented onscreen.

Still, over the last couple of years, TV and film have done a better job at telling compassionate and accurate abortion stories. 2020 saw the most abortion stories told on television in a year, and included Never, Rarely, Sometimes Always, Unpregnant, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Premature and St. Francis. Each showed a person accessing different types of abortion with the support of a friend or family member. More characters of color are accessing abortion on TV, including Olivia Pope on Scandal, a queer, Black character on the Bold Type, and Vic on Station 19. 

Links

ANSIRH on Twitter

ANSIRH on Facebook

Abortiononscreen.org

Take Action

Follow ANSIRH on Twitter and Facebook.

Visit abortiononscreen.org and find a list of over 500 TV shows and film that feature an abortion plotline. Watch these pieces of media and consider whether or not the abortion stories are representative—and have conversations about them! 

For more information, check out Boom! Lawyered: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/boom-lawyered/ 

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After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the federal right to abortion was eliminated and sent back to individual states. The United States is now seeing a state-by-state patchwork of laws, court challenges, and disparate barriers to abortion access. Garnet Henderson, independent journalist and host and producer of ACCESS: A Podcast About Abortion, sits down to talk with us about the on-the-ground chaos after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and myths around adoption as an alternative for abortion. 

Clinic staff and abortion providers have been working overtime to try and see as many patients as possible before the eventual overturning of Roe, with some clinics even opening their doors earlier in the day. Texas’s robust network, working to help many people get funds to cover their procedure and transportation out of state, was shut down on the day of the decision. At a clinic in Alabama, 100 patients who had already jumped through the state’s unnecessary barriers and were pre-approved to receive care that day had to be turned away as soon as the Supreme Court ruling was released. Trigger bans and pre-Roe bans are being passed and challenged around the country, contributing to further, fractured confusion and differing levels of accessibility.

A popular anti-abortion talking point is to say that adoption is a suitable alternative to abortion. This is fundamentally untrue; first and foremost, not very many people at all choose to place a child up for adoption after birth, even when the pregnancy was not planned. In general, pregnancy is incredibly difficult and dangerous, particularly for Black people and other people of color. Adoption is an alternative to parenting, not to pregnancy—adoption doesn’t account for the outcome of someone who simply doesn’t want to be pregnant not being pregnant. Adoption can also be a very emotional complex and painful experience for the birth parent and the child, meaning that adoption isn’t an easy or given alterative to a wanted abortion. 

 Links

ACCESS: A Podcast About Abortion

ACCESS on Twitter

ACCESS on Instagram

Garnet on Twitter

What This Later-Abortion Story Tells Us About a Post-Roe Future

INeedAnA.com

Abortion Fund Donation Finder

 Take Action

Find ACCESS: A Podcast About Abortion here and follow on Instagram and Twitter. You can also follow Garnet on Twitter here.

If you can,

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The ways in which abortion is often publicly debated can result in the harmful depiction of the experience of ending a pregnancy in overly simplistic terms. Rev. Katey Zeh, CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and Author of A Complicated Choice: Making Space for Grief and Healing in the Pro-Choice Movement, talks to us about her new book, the myths and stigma that people must wade through when getting an abortion, and the vast amount of feelings and experiences many people may have when accessing care.

A Complicated Choice chronicles the complicated feelings that people have around their abortion experiences. Overall, the book highlights how people can make decisions surrounding abortion and have a lot of nuanced, complex feelings around it—but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the right decision. In addition, many people experience internalized abortion stigma, due to far-reaching myths and rhetoric spread by those who are anti-abortion. This stigma can often display itself as a sense of isolation in one’s experience.

White Christian nationalism intertwines greatly with the stigmatization of and logistical attacks against abortion. Steeped in racism, sexism, classism, and Christian nationalism, these abortion attacks disproportionately harm Black people, Indigenous people, other people of color, the LGBTQ+ community young people, etc.  

Find Reverend Katey Zeh’s book at your local bookstore or on bookshop.org

Links

A Complicated Choice by Katey Zeh

Katey Zeh on Twitter

Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice on Twitter

Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice on Facebook

The Kindreds Podcast

INeedAnA.com

Abortion Fund Donation Finder

AbortionsWelcome.org

Religion and Repro Learning Center

 Take Action

Follow the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice on Twitter and Facebook!

Support your local abortion fund. You can find those nearest you here.

If you are inte

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On Friday the Supreme Court released their decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization where they rejected 50 years of precedent by overturning Roe v. Wade. The decision eliminates the federal right to abortion access and sends it back to the states to decide. This will decimate abortion access in this country, as 26 states are likely to ban abortion in the wake of this decision. Kylie Cheung, staff writer at Jezebel, joins us to talk about the decision and what it means going forward. 

Links:

Welcome to the ‘Total Chaos’ Era of Abortion Access

Kylie Cheung on Twitter

Kylie Cheung Reporting at Jezebel

If you need an abortion I Need An Abortion will help you find the clinic closest to you.

Information about self managed abortion

Repro Legal Helpline

The Repro Legal Defense Fund covers bail and funds strong defenses for people who are investigated, arrested, or prosecuted for self-managed abortion.

Abortion Fund Donation Finder

Donate to independent clinics through Keep Our Clinics

Protect your digital security with Digital Defense Fund

For more information, check out Boom! Lawyered: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/boom-lawyered/ 

Support the show

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As the future of Roe looks increasingly shaky, the implications of its overturning could result in a number of outcomes some of which may not immediately occur to many of us. Pamela Merritt, Executive Director of Medical Students for Choice, talks to us about what the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade may mean for criminalization, health outcomes, and abortion education and training for medical students and residents. 

As the fall of Roe looms, the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes, sexual and reproductive health, and self-managed abortion may become more commonplace. Already, criminalization has crept closer and closer; Texas’s SB8 allows for anyone to sue for those who “aid and abet” in abortion access or care. In a country in which people of color are already hyper-surveilled, these outcomes will be disproportionately felt by Black communities and other communities of color. In an international context, Poland is currently seeking to create a registry of pregnant people using self-reported and investigated information.  

For so many, being able to decide whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term may be a life-or-death decision or can result in extreme health outcomes. For Black pregnant people in the U.S., maternal mortality rates are four times higher than the general population. Putting abortion out of reach means contributing to the persistent maternal health crisis. Abortion bans also impact fertility, access to in vitro fertilization, and the ability to treat fibroids, endometriosis, and polycystic issues. Miscarriage management and treatment of ectopic pregnancies may be up for debate among risk-averse hospital ethics boards.

Roe’s future will have an unknown impact on abortion training and education among medical students and residents. In states that are poised to ban or limit abortion, will residency programs teaching on abortion care and family planning may lose accreditation? Will accrediting programs change their standards of care based on the American Academy of Obstetricians and Gynecologist’s best practices? Likely, in 5 to 20 years, patterns of geographic access to care may become clearer, where providers are legally safer practicing abortion in some areas of the country compared to others. 

Links

INeedanA.com

Abortion Fund Donation Finder

Repro Legal Helpline

Medical Students for Choice on Facebook

Medical Students for Choice on Twitter

National Advocates for Pregnant Women

Policing the Womb 

Personhood Documentary

For more information, check out Boom! Lawyered: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/boom-lawyered/ 

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From how we are preparing for the forthcoming Supreme Court ruling to how we are dealing with burnout, Tarah Demant, Interim National Director of Programs, Advocacy, and Government Affairs at Amnesty International USA, shares her thoughts on the current moment in reproductive health, rights, and justice and asks host Jennie Wetter a plethora of ask me anything (AMA) questions!

Links

INeedAnA.Com

Abortion Fund Donation Finder

Tarah Demant on Twitter

Amnesty International USA on Twitter

Amnesty International USA on Facebook

 Take Action Items

If you need an abortion check out this website to find the clinic closest to you. 

Support your local abortion fund! This resource by Helmi Henkin which will connect you to your local abortion fund.

Follow Tarah Demant on Twitter and follow Amnesty International USA on Twitter and Facebook!

Do what you need to do to recharge. Whether that’s logging off social media, taking part in a beloved hobby, or participating in a rally, take care of yourself in whatever way that you need to.

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In the 2022 state legislative session, over 500 abortion restrictions were introduced, with many extreme and restrictive anti-abortion bills passing. Rachel Sussman, Vice President of State Policy and Advocacy at Planned Parenthood Action Fund, talks to us about what the recent Supreme Court leak that threatens Roe v. Wade means for multiple states in the South and Midwest United States.

Many states have gotten a head start on introducing harmful anti-abortion legislation. In fact, Oklahoma and Idaho have enacted copycats of Texas’s S.8.—a bill that bans abortion after only six weeks of pregnancy and allows for private citizens to enforce the law against each other through legal action. Oklahoma’s law is officially in effect (PPFA has asked for a stay on the law and is waiting on the decision), while the Idaho law has been stopped at the state court level. Florida, Kentucky, and Arizona have all enacted 15-week abortion bans which will go into effect with the upholding of the case at the center of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In addition, Louisiana is contemplating a law that would allow patients to be charged with homicide (which comes with the death penalty in the state) if they receive an abortion. The bill could also criminalize emergency contraception, invitro fertilization, and birth control. (Since we recorded Louisiana lawmakers have taken a step back from this bill for now.) 

There are 26 states that are positioned to ban abortion with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, mostly throughout the Midwest and the South. This will leave entire regions of the country geographically stranded when it comes to access to abortion care. Abortion providers, clinics, and funds in states that will continue to provide abortion care will undoubtedly experience extreme logistical and structural challenges while attempting to absorb the patients traveling from out-of-state. Still, there are several states that are working to support and protect abortion in direct opposition to the Supreme Court’s leaked decision. New Jersey, Maryland, Washington, and Connecticut have all voted to expand the type of medical practitioners who can provide abortions (such as nurse practitioners). Meanwhile, Oregon, California, and Connecticut are discussing usage of state dollars to directly support patients in accessing care.

Links

PPFA on Twitter

PPFA on Facebook

Bansoff.org

Keepourclinics.org

National Network of Abortion Funds

Take Action

Find advocacy opportunities at bansoff.org and follow PPFA on Twitter and

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