Molly

423 Posts

Abortion in America in the post-Dobbs world

"The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade sparked dramatic shifts in the abortion landscape in the United States — but even more significant changes may lie ahead, legal scholar Mary Ziegler, JD, told listeners at Learn Serve Lead 2023: The AAMC Annual Meeting on Monday, Nov. 6. Those changes cut to the core of the nature of democracy in America, said Ziegler, a professor of law at the University of California Davis and one of the world’s leading experts on reproductive rights. “If you think about what comes next after Dobbs, it’s not just a struggle about how patients relate…
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WSU researchers find 41 percent of U.S. women have no abortion access within 30-minute drive

"More people seeking abortions must travel for care because of bans or restrictions in their home states. Researchers at Washington State University found that 41.4% of American girls and women between the ages of 15 and 49 have to drive more than 30 minutes to access an abortion provider. That totals about 30.8 million women, said senior author Dawn Kopp.  The report, published in the journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, found another 29.3% had no access within a 60-minute drive, and 23.6% did not have access within 90 minutes...."
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‘There is no ban’: Republicans test-drive new abortion messaging

"The ad opens with the sound of a fetal heartbeat. “Most people believe that abortion at the moment of birth is wrong, far beyond any reasonable limit. Not Virginia Democrats,” a female narrator says, just before the sound of a baby cooing and crying. “They fought to make late-term abortions the rule, not the exception.” At the end of the ad, the heartbeat flatlines...."
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Providers can sue over Arizona ban on abortion for genetic anomalies -court

"A U.S. appeals court on Monday revived a challenge to an Arizona law banning abortions from being performed solely because the fetus has a genetic abnormality. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that a group of healthcare providers can sue the state over the law because they are harmed by it, reversing a lower court ruling. The panel did not address the merits of the challenge, finding only that the providers are entitled to pursue it in court...."
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Kansas can’t enforce new law on abortion pills or make patients wait 24 hours, judge rules

"A Kansas judge on Monday put a new state law on medication abortions on hold and blocked older restrictions that for years have spelled out what providers must tell patients and forced patients to wait 24 hours to end their pregnancies. The ruling was another big victory for abortion rights advocates in Kansas, where a statewide vote in August 2022 decisively confirmed protections for abortion access under the state constitution. District Judge K. Christopher Jayaram’s order suspends some restrictions that have been in effect for years. The waiting period had been in place since 1997...."
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Florida’s abortion rate spikes post-Roe

"Abortions surged in Florida after last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade that removed long-standing federal protections for the procedure. Driving the news: Clinician-provided abortions in Florida increased by a total of 20,460 in the year after the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, according to the Society of Family Planning's #WeCount report. Why it matters: Florida — which has a 15-week abortion law — has emerged as an "access point" for out-of-state patients in need of an abortion due to its close proximity to states with more restrictive abortion laws or outright bans...."
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Abortions in the US rose slightly overall after post-Roe restrictions were put in place, study finds

"The total number of abortions provided in the U.S. rose slightly in the 12 months after states began implementing bans on them throughout pregnancy, a new survey finds. The report out this week from the Society of Family Planning, which advocates for abortion access, shows the number fell to nearly zero in states with the strictest bans — but rose elsewhere, especially in states close to those with the bans. The monthly averages overall from July 2022 through June 2023 were about 200 higher than in May and June 2022...."
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Medical exceptions to abortion bans often exclude mental health conditions

"More than a dozen states now have near-total abortion bans following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, with limited medical exceptions meant to protect the patient’s health or life. But among those states, only Alabama explicitly includes “serious mental illness” as an allowable exception. Meanwhile, 10 states with near-total abortion bans (Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming) explicitly exclude mental health conditions as legal exceptions, according to an analysis from KFF, a health policy research organization...."
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Abortion coverage is limited or unavailable at a quarter of large workplaces

"About a quarter of large U.S. employers heavily restrict coverage of legal abortions or don’t cover them at all under health plans for their workers, according to the latest employer health benefits survey by KFF. The findings demonstrate another realm, beyond state laws, in which access to abortion care varies widely across America since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization...."
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Measuring the long-term cost of restricting abortion access

"When Diana Greene Foster and her team at the University of California, San Francisco, started their study on the lives of women who were denied abortions in 2008, they sought to investigate a rather commonly held view: That having an abortion hurt women’s mental and physical health, including by leading to PTSD and drug and alcohol use disorder. A series of laws had been passed based on this belief, introducing compulsory counseling and waiting periods for people seeking abortions, thereby adding barriers to accessing the procedure, especially for patients with lower incomes who couldn’t afford repeated time off work, travel, and associated costs such as…
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Annual Ohio abortion report shows double-digit decrease

"With the end of Roe v. Wade and the battle over abortion bans still waging in the state, the Ohio Department of Health’s annual abortion report showed some of the effects. From 2021 to 2022, the state saw a 15% decrease in “induced pregnancy terminations,” according to the state agency that has tracked abortion statistics since 1976. The data comes as campaigns are in full swing for and against a ballot initiative that would add reproductive rights including abortion into the Ohio Constitution. Voters will decide on the issue during the Nov. 7 general election, after the Ohio Supreme Court…
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Brazil’s Supreme Court considers decriminalizing abortion

"Brazil's highest court is debating whether to decriminalize abortions that occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Why it matters: In Brazil, Latin America's most populous country, religion runs deep, yet polling shows support for a total ban has waned. The country could follow in the footsteps of other major Latin American countries that have expanded abortion rights over the past few years...."
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In Argentina, election fight brews over women’s rights and abortion

 "Argentina's presidential election race is putting abortion access and women's rights in the spotlight, sparking fierce debate in a country that has been a pioneer in expanding reproductive rights in Latin America. The election frontrunner, economist Javier Milei, opposes abortion and wants to hold a referendum on whether the 2020 legalization of abortion before the 14th week of pregnancy should be repealed. He also wants to shut the ministry of women, gender and diversity, which he has called a type of "affirmative action" that is degrading towards women. His closest contenders are economy minister Sergio Massa for the incumbent Peronists and…
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New OB-GYNs are avoiding abortion-restrictive states like Utah

"After completing her residency in New York City, OB-GYN Alex Woodcock came home to Utah in the summer of 2022 to start a complex family planning fellowship at the state’s flagship university. Just as she arrived, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the longstanding precedent that held that abortion access was constitutionally protected. She immediately wondered: “How is this going to impact other people that are applying for fellowships, or even applying for jobs, from the class below me, and where are they going to go? Are people going to want to come to states that are restricted?”…
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