Abortion Ban

With no opposition in the room, a rural Texas county makes traveling for an abortion on its roads illegal

"Commissioners in this rural Texas county that borders New Mexico on Thursday gave their unanimous blessing to a legally dubious policy that effectively outlaws travel on its local roads to seek an abortion. The five-member panel in Cochran County, which sits about an hour west of Lubbock, agreed with Mark Lee Dickson, founder of the “sanctuary cities” initiative, who said the ordinance was needed to finish the work started in the state’s near-total ban, often referred to as Senate Bill 8...."
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Missouri judge rejects secretary of state’s ‘problematic’ summary of abortion initiative petitions

"A Cole County judge rewrote the ballot titles for six initiative petitions seeking to enshrine the right to abortion in the Missouri Constitution, ruling that 13 phrases in the summaries written by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft are “argumentative” or unfairly biased. In a ruling issued Monday morning, Circuit Judge Jon Beetem wrote that the summaries crafted by Ashcroft completely ignored the initiative proposals’ protections for contraceptives and other reproductive health needs...."
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A Nebraska mother who provided an illegal abortion for her daughter and helped dispose of the fetus gets 2 years in prison, report says

"A Nebraska mother who was accused of helping her 17-year-old daughter have an illegal abortion and disposing of the fetus was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday, the Norfolk Daily News reported. The sentence comes after Jessica Burgess, 42, pleaded guilty in July to two felonies – removing, concealing or abandoning a dead human body, and performing an abortion beyond 20 weeks – and a misdemeanor charge of false reporting. CNN has reached out to Burgess’s attorney, the Madison County attorney and the Madison County District Court for comment...."
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Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban takes center stage in gubernatorial election

"Abortion access has rarely been a focal point for Democrats in Kentucky, but that's all changing in the run up to this November's gubernatorial election. In the past few weeks, incumbent Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, has turned the issue into a centerpiece of his campaign against his opponent, Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who has vocally supported Kentucky's near-total ban on abortion. As written, that law currently includes exceptions only for risk of death or debilitating injury to the pregnant person. It has no exceptions for cases of rape and incest– something Beshear has seized on, prompting Cameron to…
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Ohio Supreme Court rules ‘unborn child’ wording can remain in abortion ballot language

"The Ohio Supreme Court handed a partial victory to the state's GOP-controlled ballot board on Tuesday, ruling that the term "unborn child" can remain in the ballot language for a November vote on whether to enshrine abortion protections in the state's constitution. The ruling comes after Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights and five petitioners sued the board over ballot wording that omitted the term "fetus," which is used in the full text of the proposed constitutional amendment. The state Supreme Court rejected the petitioners' argument that the ballot's language "introduces an ethical judgment," saying that it "does not establish that the ballot board’s language constitutes improper persuasion."…
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Planned Parenthood sues to expand South Carolina abortion access under strict new ban

"...The conservative state's all-male Supreme Court last month upheld a so-called "fetal heartbeat" law commonly understood to restrict access after about six weeks of pregnancy, which is before most women know they're pregnant. However, the court's majority opinion noted that the medical definitions written by the Republican-dominated state Legislature gave unclear directions to doctors about when they can provide an abortion. In a footnote, Justice John Kittredge wrote that the court would "leave for another day" whether the language "refers to one period of time during a pregnancy or two separate periods of time." Attorneys for Planned Parenthood believe they…
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Poland’s ‘witch hunt’ of women and girls

"...Women and girls have been put under intense scrutiny for alleged abortion-related activity when they seek urgent health care. Joanna, a 32-year-old woman, told HRW that the police demanded to strip search her in April after she had a self-administered medication abortion, which is legal. Two weeks later, she called her psychiatrist for help with symptoms of severe anxiety. During the call, she disclosed her abortion to her psychiatrist, who called an ambulance and contacted the police. Police arrived at Joanna’s apartment alongside a paramedic and escorted her to two different hospitals. At the second one, she was ordered to…
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Abortion Bans Fuel a Rise in High-Risk Patients Heading to Illinois Hospitals

"When she was around 22 weeks pregnant, the patient found out that the son she was carrying didn’t have kidneys and his lungs wouldn’t develop. If he survived the birth, he would struggle to breathe and die within hours. The patient had a crushing decision to make: continue the pregnancy — which could be a risk to her health and her ability to have children in the future — or have an abortion. “I don’t think I stopped crying for an entire two weeks,” she said. “The whole world felt heavy. … It’s not something anybody should have to go…
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Women, doctors announce legal action against abortion bans in 3 states

"Women in Idaho, Oklahoma and Tennessee filed legal actions against their states over abortion bans, saying they were denied abortions despite having dangerous pregnancy complications. Four women in Idaho -- Jennifer Adkins, Jillaine St.Michel, Kayla Smith and Rebecca Vincen-Brown -- and abortion providers filed a suit against the state, Gov. Brad Little, attorney general and the state's board of medicine, claiming the state's ban has "sown confusion, fear and chaos among the medical community, resulting in grave harms to pregnant patients whose health and safety hang in the balance across the state," according to a copy of the lawsuit shared with…
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