Abortion Bans – REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS ALERTS

11 Mar

OB/GYNs ‘vote with their feet’ as workforce declines in states that restricted abortion

MollyLatest News, United Statesabortion ban states, Abortion Bans, Abortion Rights, Abortion Rights States, Health care, OB/GYN, Reproduction Rights, Reproductive care, Statistics, Study, travel for work, United States, workforce decline

“Modest but significant decreases in OB/GYN practitioners occurred in states with full abortion bans following the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Association, a study showed. However, results of the case-control study revealed the workforce of such practitioners ultimately grew overall across all states…”

13 Feb

Two New Studies Provide Broadest Evidence to Date of Unequal Impacts of Abortion Bans

MollyLatest News, United Statesabortion ban impacts, Abortion Bans, abortion statistics, abortion study, United States

“In two new papers, researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and colleagues estimate that abortion bans in 14 states resulted in 22,180 additional live births and 478 additional infant deaths above what would have been expected in the absence of these bans. Texas imposed what was then the country’s most stringent abortion ban on September 1, 2021. Additional states have enacted abortion bans since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its landmark Dobbs decision in June 2022. The researchers limited their analysis to the first 14 states that imposed a complete or six-week abortion ban to allow enough…

02 Nov

Birth control on the ballot as abortion bans increase barriers to family planning

MollyLatest News, United StatesAbortion Bans, Ballot, Birth Control, Contraception, Healthcare, Reproductive care, United States, Voting

"Millions of Americans will be able to vote on November ballots whether to protect access to contraception. In states where tensions have long boiled over reproductive rights, family planning experts say women face mounting barriers to getting birth control. The fear, confusion and anxiety over abortion has extended to their ability to prevent a pregnancy...."

10 Oct

AJPH Study Shows That Most Abortion Restrictive US States Provide the Least Support for Pregnant Women

PatLatest NewsAbortion Bans, American Journal of Public Health, Healthcare, Reproductive rights, United States

The United States Supreme Court’s ruling on the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case in June 2024 revoked constitutionally guaranteed access to abortion for women. Since the ruling, 14 US states have placed a complete ban on abortions, while others have banned abortion during the 6 to 18 weeks gestation period. In the US, minoritized people and people of low socioeconomic status suffer from disproportionately low access to safe abortions — a situation made worse by the geographical barriers created by post-Dobbs abortion restriction policies. However, people who support post-Dobbs restrictions insist that the policies can help protect children, women and families.

06 Apr

Majority of women in states with abortion bans believe access should be legal

MollyLatest News, United StatesAbortion Bans, Abortion Care, Healthcare, Poll, Reproductive rights, Statistics, United States, Women

"Nearly two years after the Supreme Court ended the federal right to abortion, more than a fifth of reproductive-age adult women in states with abortion bans have struggled to access abortion care themselves or know someone who has, according to first-of-its-kind polling released Friday by the nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research group KFF. A majority of these women — 67 percent — believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the survey taken February 20-28, 2024...."

27 Dec

‘Jane Roe’ is anonymous no more. The very public fight against abortion bans in 2023

MollyUnited StatesAbortion Bans, Abortions, Jane Roe, Nonviable Pregnancy, Roe v Wade, Texas, United States

"As 2023 comes to a close, so too does the first full year of the post-Roe era in America. Some of the year's developments were expected, like more conservative states enacting abortion restrictions. Others were surprising, like the fact that there were more abortions nationally in the year after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health decision than the previous one. In the final weeks of the year, the country followed the story of Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two in Texas, as she sought to end a tragic pregnancy to ensure she could have a future one...."

24 Oct

Medical exceptions to abortion bans often exclude mental health conditions

MollyUnited StatesAbortion Bans, Abortion Care, Healthcare, Medical exceptions, Mental health, Mental illness, United States

"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...."

27 Jul

Maternal Deaths Are Expected to Rise Under Abortion Bans, but the Increase May Be Hard to Measure

MollyUnited StatesAbortion Bans, Abortion Care, abortion service travel, Healthcare, Illinois, Maternal Death, Missouri, Nonviable Pregnancy, Travel for Care, United States

"Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, doctors have warned that limiting abortion care will make pregnancy more dangerous in a country that already has the highest maternal mortality rate among industrialized nations. The case of Mylissa Farmer, a Missouri woman, is one example. Last August, her water broke less than 18 weeks into her pregnancy, when her fetus was not viable. She was at risk for developing a life-threatening infection if she continued the pregnancy. Yet during three separate visits to emergency rooms, she was denied abortion care because her fetus still had a heartbeat. Doctors specifically cited the state’s…

20 Jul

Blue-state doctors launch abortion pill pipeline into states with bans

MollyUnited StatesAbortion Bans, Abortion Care, Abortion Pills, Aid Access, Healthcare, Shipping, State Laws, United States

"...Previously, Aid Access allowed only Europe-based doctors to prescribe abortion pills to women in states where abortion is restricted and then shipped those pills internationally, leaving patients to wait weeks. The telemedicine shield laws, enacted over the past year in New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Vermont and Colorado, explicitly protect abortion providers who mail pills to restricted states from inside their borders...."

16 Jul

An illegal abortion killed my great-great-grandmother. A century later, what’s changed?

MollyOpinion, United StatesAbortion Bans, Abortion Care, Abortion Rights, Arizona, Healthcare, Illegal Abortion, Opinion Piece, United States

"In 1921, my great-great-grandmother Anna died because abortions were illegal. She got pregnant — with her 11th child — when she was 40 years old, a full-time homemaker, married to a produce peddler in New York City.... I’m 16 years old, a junior in high school, looking to the not-so-distant future in which I’ll be attending college far from home. What if I were to get pregnant against my will? What if I were to get pregnant in my teens, without the means of raising a child? My story is different. I am frightened by what might happen to me...."