Abortion Care

Abortion-Rights States Begin Shielding Digital Data Near Clinics

"States positioning themselves as abortion safe havens are beginning to shield location information that can be gleaned from mobile phones, and to protect the privacy of other data that can show who is visiting a health-care facility. Beginning this summer, Washington, Connecticut, and New York are establishing first-of-their-kind data privacy safeguards for health-related information, in part to prevent anti-abortion groups from targeting people who terminate their pregnancies. A similar Nevada law will take effect next March...."
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Ohio abortion clinics continue to help out-of-state patients as bans are put in place

"As groups await legal battles on abortion, as well as hope for a November ballot initiative to include reproduction rights in the Ohio Constitution, abortion clinics are also looking to help surrounding states where bans have taken hold. Indiana has been the most recent state surrounding Ohio to see an abortion ban approved — set to start on August 1 — and with it struggles for Planned Parenthoods in the state to care for patients, even those seeking other reproductive services. While Ohio awaits the state Supreme Court’s decision in a case regarding an indefinite pause to the six-week abortion ban in the state,…
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What it’s like for doctors in Wisconsin to follow an 1849 abortion law in 2023

"The three women sitting around a table at a busy lunch spot share a grim camaraderie. It’s been more than a year since an 1849 law came back into force to criminalize abortion in Wisconsin. Now these two OB-GYNs and a certified midwife find their medical training, skill, and acumen constrained by state politics. “We didn’t even know germs caused disease back then,” said Dr. Kristin Lyerly, an obstetrician-gynecologist who lives in Green Bay...."
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Tearful Texas doctor recalls being forced to travel out of state for abortion

"Emotional testimonies from women and doctors continued into the second day of court hearings on the confusion surrounding exceptions under Texas’s restrictive abortion ban. On Thursday, Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN doctor herself, delivered a tearful testimony as she recounted her experiences of being forced to travel out of state for an abortion due to a nonviable pregnancy. Eleven weeks into the pregnancy last year, Dennard, who is pregnant again, learned that her baby had anencephaly, a rare and fatal condition affecting the development of the brain and can also pose a serious health risk to the mother. Explaining the condition,…
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Blue-state doctors launch abortion pill pipeline into states with bans

"...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...."
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Woman suing Texas over abortion ban vomits on the stand in emotional reaction during dramatic hearing

"A hearing in a lawsuit challenging Texas' abortion ban opened Wednesday with dramatic testimony from three women who experienced serious pregnancy complications but were denied abortions. One of the plaintiffs in the suit, Samantha Casiano, vomited on the stand while discussing her baby's fatal birth defect, which she said also put her life at risk...."
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Biden’s HIPAA expansion for abortion draws criticism, lawsuit threats

"The Biden administration’s effort to wield the nation’s premier health-privacy law to protect abortion rights is under fire from Republicans who accuse the president of overreaching — and from Democrats who call it too weak. The Department of Health and Human Services is preparing to release a final rule later this year that would expand the protections of the decades old Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, with the aim of shielding people who seek, obtain or provide abortions from red state probes — one of the most concrete steps the administration has taken to defend abortion rights since…
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Tennessee AG asserts right to out-of-state abortion, transgender care medical records

"Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has joined Republican counterparts in 18 states in an effort to prevent the federal government from shielding the medical records of those who cross state lines to obtain legal abortion or gender-affirming care from investigations in their home state. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed a new privacy rule for certain medical records in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of abortion rights last year...."
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Maryland Is Becoming the Patron State of Abortions

"...Soon after her Charleston clinic was forced to cease providing abortions, Quiñonez-Alonzo spent a day looking at potential locations for a new clinic. Standing in a parking lot of one property in rural far-western Maryland, less than two miles from the West Virginia border, the realtor pointed in the distance. “She said, ‘You see those mountains over there? That’s West Virginia, actually,’ ” Quiñonez-Alonzo recalled. The visual proximity to the state held a symbolic resonance. “That sentence really cemented in my mind: This is the building,” Quiñonez-Alonzo said. “This has to be the building where Women’s Health Center of Maryland…
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An illegal abortion killed my great-great-grandmother. A century later, what’s changed?

"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...."
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‘It’s demoralizing’: Idaho abortion ban takes toll on medical providers

"...Now that federal protections for abortion have been gone for more than a year and Idaho is approaching the anniversary of its near-total abortion ban, the state has seen an exodus of OB-GYNs and other medical providers, leaving Seyb as one of the last remaining maternal-fetal medicine physicians in his state...."
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More self-managed abortion internet searches in states with restrictions vs. without

“...Data suggest that there may be an increased number of emergency department-related visits for self-managed abortions in states where abortion has become illegal,” Sean D. Young, PhD, a co-author of the research, told Healio. “Emergency providers/staff and/or policymakers might begin to monitor internet search data to gain a pulse on potential emergency resources and needs resulting from self-managed abortions...”
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After court rulings, Oklahoma doctors are still confused about when abortion is legal to save a patient’s life

"...But an Oklahoma law from 1910 that outlaws most abortions is still in effect. That law says abortions are allowed only when necessary to preserve a mother’s life. Otherwise, medical professionals can be charged with a felony and face up to five years in prison. But doctors still aren’t certain when they can perform the procedure. Other states that have banned most abortions including Utah, Georgia and Louisiana have laws with more specific language, permitting terminating a pregnancy to prevent serious, irreversible damage to a life-sustaining organ, but Oklahoma’s law contains no specifics or clear definitions....."
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