@At00micAsh

@At00micAsh you do honestly and literally make me laugh out loud with what passes for thinking in your brain. Now first anytime someone has to resort to personal attacks it proves they have no actual argument. But even your personal attack is so impotent that makes me laugh by itself.

But let's just look at what you have going here.

That is a direct contradiction. When you claim abortion after 6 weeks is murder you are assuming the right to tell her what to do. Based on nothing but a lie. There is no fetal heart beat at 6 weeks.


‘Heartbeat bills’: Is there a fetal heartbeat at six weeks of pregnancy?
The term "fetal heartbeat" is medically inaccurate and misleading, experts say.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/wome...fetal-heartbeat-six-weeks-pregnancy-rcna24435

Another direct contradiction. That is exactly what some red states are doing right now. Banning all abortions including in cases of rape or incest in some states.

Because that is what you do. You bounce around like a pinball from one contradiction to the next and it is just obvious.

Here's another one.

Who gets to decide what is and is not the best for her "well being"? The woman or the state? Because in read states its the government not the woman who dictates what is in her well being.

I know words have no meaning to you but in fact they actually have very precise meanings.
Which you are clearly ignorant of.

gen·o·cide

noun
noun: genocide; plural noun: genocides
the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.


And then cap it off with just an utterly false attack. I like guns. I've had guns all my life. I certainly do not want to ban all guns. But I do object to selling assault weapons and extended magazines to just anyone who walks in off the street and believe they should be banned or at least restricted. Because they are the gun of choice for mass shooters. I am in no danger of being aborted. I am in little to no danger of being shot in a violent crime. But I am in danger of being shot in a mass shooting and so is everyone else because they happen everywhere and no one is safe from them.

And there is no greater and more dangerous hypocrisy than someone trying to claim they care about human life if its a fetus but is just fine with innocent live children being massacred in schools by mass shooters with assault weanons.

 

You see?
The right to kill a fetus must not be impinged upon, so long as some part of the fetus remains within the mothers body.

Stumbler claims it is the only proper course, and anyone not in agreement with him is to be attacked and destroyed.

 

You are absolutely insane!

 

Nebraska Simultaneously Bans 1st-Trimester Abortions, Gender-Affirming Care for Minors

388
Caitlin Cruz
Fri, May 19, 2023 at 4:35 PM MDT



Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Omaha, a freshman lawmaker, speaks, Friday, May 19, 20230, in Lincoln, Nebraska, during debate on a bill that would ban gender-affirming care to minors. Kauth introduced the bill – which has been the flashpoint this session.

In late April, an abortion ban failed to pass in Nebraska—but Republicans weren’t ready to give up on it. So they tacked an abortion ban onto a bill banning gender-affirming care for trans minors, the latter of which they knew they could whip the votes for, and passed the whole Frankenstein bill on Friday afternoon by a vote of 33 to 15. The final bill bans abortion after 12 weeks since a pregnant person’s last menstrual period—effectively 10 weeks into pregnancy—with no exceptions for fetal anomalies, and bans gender-affirming surgeries for everyone under the age of 19.

As the country’s smallest state legislature debated the bill on Friday, protesters chanted in the capitol rotunda so loudly that viewers could hear it on the Nebraska Public Media feed of the legislative body. Shouts of “save our lives” echoed throughout the building. Democrats and Independents had been filibustering the bill for so long that one Republican lawmaker complained on Thursday that she had to miss her grandson’s preschool graduation to be able to vote for it.

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Gov. Jim Pillen (R) is expected to sign the legislation when it hits his desk. Oddly, the abortion ban portion of the bill will take effect just one (1) day after Pillen’s signature, while the trans healthcare portions take effect on Oct. 1.

Activists are already exploring legal options against the legislation. “To be clear, we refuse to accept this as our new normal. This vote will not be the final word. We are actively exploring our options to address the harm of this extreme legislation, and that work will have our team’s full focus,” American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska leader Mindy Rush Chipman said in a statement Friday. “This is not over, not by a long shot.”

The parts of the bill targeting trans care for minors requires the state chief medical officer to design new rules for how trans minors can access gender-affirming care that is not surgical, such as puberty blockers. People already receiving treatment are exempt from those restrictions. And the law will ban state funds from going “directly or indirectly” to “any entity, organization, or individual for providing gender-altering procedures” to those under 19. (State Medicaid hasn’t covered gender-affirming healthcare since 1990 in Nebraska.)

The bill also includes a civil penalty section, allowing citizens to seek “appropriate relief” (aka damages of “actual damages and reasonable attorneys fees) from the health care professional who performed gender-affirming care within two years. (Again: Gender-affirming surgery on trans kids, despite what Republicans repeatedly have been claiming to stoke outrage, is incredibly rare.)

The 17-page legislation has a rape exception to the abortion component, but that means there has to be a doctor willing to “certify in writing that the abortion was performed because of sexual assault or incest.” And the bill describes a fetus as “pre-born child”—an anti-abortion tactic meant to move non-medical, emotionally charged terms into the legislative lexicon. Remember how federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk tried to claim “fetus” wasn’t a scientific term? It’s all a part of the same con.

Friday was a dark day in Nebraska, and State Sen. Megan Hunt (I), the mother of a trans child, said it best during debates: “I am not asking you to sit here through late nights to vote on these bills that we’re dragging out. I’m asking you to love your family more than you hate mine.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nebraska-simultaneously-bans-1st-trimester-223500977.html



And I don't think its gong over very well.


6 arrested after protesters hurl tampons at Nebraska lawmakers before passage of abortion ban
https://nypost.com/2023/05/20/nebra...-at-lawmakers-before-passage-of-abortion-ban/

 

Shooter will be happy, they're going to make that child suffer as much as possible.

Also, do noticed that this is another state that has legislated these laws, despite what the public actually wants. Republicans override the will of the people.

 

8 women join suit against Texas over abortion bans, claim their lives were put in danger

11
NADINE EL-BAWAB
Mon, May 22, 2023 at 6:30 AM MDT




The Center for Reproductive Rights is expected to add eight more women to a lawsuit it filed against Texas over its abortion ban, claiming their lives were put at risk due to the law. This brings the total number of plaintiffs to 15.

The suit alleged that Texas' abortion bans have denied the plaintiffs and countless other pregnant people necessary and potentially life-saving medical care because physicians in the state fear liability, according to a draft of the complaint shared with ABC News.

Texas has several abortion laws in place, prohibiting all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, except in medical emergencies, which the laws do not define. One of the bans — called SB8 — prohibits abortions after cardiac activity is detected, which kept several plaintiffs from accessing care despite their pregnancies being non-viable, according to a draft of the suit.




Under Texas' bans, it is a second-degree felony to perform or attempt an abortion, punishable by up to life in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The law also allows private citizens to sue anyone who "aids or abets" an abortion.

The lawsuit is asking a judge to temporarily and permanently suspend the Texas law due to the uncertainty surrounding the meaning of the exception in the state's abortion bans. The suit also alleged that the abortion bans have caused and threaten to cause irreparable injury to the patient plaintiffs and the patients of physician plaintiffs filing the suit.

The suit is the first to be filed by women impacted by the abortion bans since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, ending federal protections for abortion rights.

The lawsuit is filed against the state of Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Texas Medical Board.

Along with the women who filed the suit after they were unable to access abortion care in the state, two Texas OB-GYNs -- Dr. Damla Karsan and Dr. Judy Levison -- are also plaintiffs who alleged the bans have had a devastating impact on their practice and that of their colleagues, who fear prosecutors and politicians will target them personally and threaten state funding of hospitals if they provide abortion care to pregnant people with emergency medical conditions, according to a draft of the suit.

Levison said she partially retired from her practice of medicine in July 2022 in part because Roe was overturned and she felt she could no longer practice in the way she was trained and as is consistent with her ethical obligations as a physician, according to a draft of the suit.


The lawsuit alleged that despite their being an exception in the bans to save the life of a pregnant woman, inconsistencies in the language of these provisions, the use of non-medical terminology and sloppy legislative drafting have resulted in understandable confusion throughout the medical profession regarding the scope of the exception.

Women added to the lawsuit
Two plaintiffs, Kiersten Hogan and Elizabeth Weller, had their water break prematurely, but were both told to wait until they were sick enough to receive abortion care, according to a draft of the suit.

Hogan was allegedly told that if she tried to leave the hospital to seek care elsewhere she could be arrested for trying to kill her baby, according to a draft of the suit. She was kept in the hospital until she went into labor four days later in the hospital bathroom and delivered her son stillborn.

Weller had to wait until she developed an infection before a hospital approved her abortion despite her losing almost all her amniotic fluid, which a pregnancy is not viable without, according to a draft of the suit.

Kylie Beaton and Samantha Casiano said they were both forced to carry nonviable pregnancies to term.

Beaton had an emergency c-section to deliver and after a few days in the hospital took her son home, she told ABC News. He died hours later, her husband told ABC News. She will have to wait between 16 to 18 months before she could try to get pregnant again, her physicians have told her.



According to the draft of the suit, Beaton and her husband watched their son grow cold in their arms until he died. He could not sit upright or it would put too much pressure on his head, which was abnormally large. When she delivered, the circumference of her baby's head was measuring at 49 cm, the average head circumference for a newborn is 35 cm, according to a draft of the suit.

Casiano was unable to afford to travel out of state for abortion care, so she had to continue her pregnancy, according to a draft of the suit. She went into labor early and after delivering, her daughter only lived for four hours, according to a draft of the suit. She could only afford a gravestone after a story was written about her and members of the public contributed to her fundraising website, according to a draft of the suit.


Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB who treats Lauren Miller, one of the other plaintiffs who had to travel out of state to receive abortion care for a nonviable pregnancy. She is now pregnant again and fears for her safety as a pregnant woman in Texas, according to a draft of the suit.

Dennard, Jessica Bernardo, Taylor Edwards and Lauren Van Vleet's fetuses received fatal diagnoses and they had to travel out of state for abortion care, even while risks to their own health increased, according to a draft of the suit.

Bernardo and her husband had decided to continue her pregnancy after finding out their baby may have Down syndrome, deciding they would love her either way. But, they later found out the baby also had a fatal condition called hydrops that could also pose a threat to Bernardo's life if she develops mirror syndrome. She could experience severe fluid retention that could be fatal to her and the fetus, according to a draft of the suit.

She sought care at a clinic in Seattle, booking expensive flights and a hotel room. At the clinic she was told she was their third patient from Texas that week alone, according to a draft of the suit.

Previous plaintiffs

Five of the plaintiffs were a part of the original lawsuit that was filed in early March.

Amanda Zurawski's water broke and she said she was forced to wait until she was septic to receive abortion care, causing one of her fallopian tubes to be permanently closed.

Lauren Miller said she had to travel out of state to save her life and the life of one of her unborn twins after she learned that the other twin was not viable.

Lauren Hall's fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition and she had to travel to Seattle for abortion care. Hall is now pregnant again and fears that the state is not safe for her and her family, according to a draft of the suit.

Anna Zargarian had to travel across multiple states to receive abortion care after her water broke, risking that she could go into labor or septic shock on the journey, according to a draft of the suit.

Ashley Brandt had to travel out of state for an abortion to save the life of one of her twins. Her Texas physician feared documenting the abortion and listed her condition as vanishing twin syndrome, according to a draft of the suit.


https://www.yahoo.com/gma/8-women-join-suit-against-123000118.html

 

Austin American-Statesman
Grumet: Tragedies mount for women with ill-fated pregnancies under Texas' abortion bans

7
Bridget Grumet, Austin American-Statesman
Wed, May 24, 2023 at 6:01 AM MDT



“My trusted OB/GYN and general practitioner felt so helpless that all they could offer me was a hug as they sobbed," Jessica Bernardo said of her experience that forced her to seek an abortion outside Texas. She's among the women saying they were told they could not end pregnancies with fatal fetal anomalies or that endangered their health are challenging the state's restrictive abortion laws.

Life took a wrenching twist for Jessica Bernardo last fall.

She went from being an elated, expectant mother — listening to audiobooks about pregnancy, teasing her husband about installing child safety gates on the stairs of their Frisco home — to using a private browser on her computer to search for an abortion.

Bernardo desperately wanted the child she named Emma. About 15 weeks into the pregnancy, though, doctors said the child had severe medical conditions and would not survive to birth.

As long as the pregnancy continued, Bernardo was at risk of developing her own complications. Fluid could build up in her heart and lungs. Her kidneys could fail.


But Texas’ abortion laws blocked doctors from intervening just yet.

Bernardo’s health would have to deteriorate first.

“As I grieved,” she said through tears at a press conference, “I couldn't help but think of what I and so many others have gone through as inhumane torture.”

Her story is at once new and horrifyingly familiar. Bernardo publicly shared her ordeal for the first time Monday, months after traveling to Seattle to end her pregnancy and protect her life. But her experience echoes the tragic stories we’ve been hearing for months about Texans who couldn’t get essential care as cherished pregnancies unraveled in a state that treats virtually all abortions as a crime.

“My trusted OB/GYN and general practitioner felt so helpless that all they could offer me was a hug as they sobbed into their shoulders,” Bernardo said. “The state of Texas owes them and us so much more.”

‘This is a public health crisis’
Perhaps you’re thinking: Yeah, I’ve heard this story before.

That’s precisely the problem. These stories continue to happen. Texas hasn’t taken any steps to clarify the maternal health exceptions in Texas’ abortion bans, to ensure women can end a lost pregnancy with dignity, without ending up in the emergency room themselves.

Under Texas’ severe restrictions, doctors are afraid of providing care that could land them in court — facing lengthy prison sentences and six-figure fines — if a patient wasn’t deemed sick enough to terminate a pregnancy.

So some women must wait to get sick enough for care. Or they endure the physical, emotional and financial strain of carrying a doomed pregnancy to term. Or they scramble for the resources to go out of state.

“This is a public health crisis, one that is pervasive, ongoing and government-inflicted,” Molly Duane, senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, told reporters Monday. More stories like Bernardo’s “pile up every day.”

Demonstrating that point, Bernardo and seven other women this week joined the lawsuit that five patients and two doctors filed in March against the state of Texas.

The number of plaintiffs now stands at 15.

The lead plaintiff is Amanda Zurawski, the Austin woman who spoke with me last fall about her devastating experience after her water broke at 18 weeks. Zurawski had to go home for a few days and wait for a life-threatening infection to develop before doctors, under Texas law, could end the pregnancy.

Duane said the plaintiffs filed a motion this week asking for a temporary injunction to block Texas’ abortion bans from applying to cases involving pregnancy complications. A hearing on that motion will probably happen this summer.

Seven more cases join the list
Texans hold mixed views on whether abortion should be allowed as a matter of choice. But Texans overwhelmingly support access to such care when the mother’s health is at risk. This should be an area of the law where we can reach agreement.

Unfortunately, some abortion opponents have said Texas’ existing laws are fine, and the tragic stories of denied care are rare events, rooted in misunderstandings of the law.

Which is why it’s important for Texans to keep hearing what is happening to real patients.

Elizabeth Weller of Kingwood joined the lawsuit this week. In a case similar to Zurawski’s, Weller’s water broke at 19 weeks, but doctors couldn’t intervene until she developed an infection days later.

“The darkest week of my life began as I left the hospital with amniotic fluid still leaking down my leg,” Weller told reporters this week. “With every passing day I felt the state's intentional cruelty. My baby would not survive, and my life didn't matter. There was nothing I could do about it.”

Kiersten Hogan of the Dallas-Fort Worth area joined the lawsuit this week. Her water broke at 19 weeks. Doctors kept her in the hospital for days, hoping the fetus could hold on for a few more weeks. She said hospital staff told her she could face criminal charges if she left and her son didn’t survive. He was stillborn five days later

“Texas law caused me to be detained against my will for five days and treated like a criminal, all during the most traumatic and heartbreaking experience I've had in my life to date,” Hogan told reporters.

Taylor Edwards of Austin joined the lawsuit this week. About 17 weeks into her pregnancy, Edwards learned that the daughter she was carrying had a fatal condition in which part of the brain was protruding outside of the skull. Heartbroken, Edwards had to go to Colorado to end the pregnancy.

Kylie Beaton of Fort Worth joined the lawsuit this week. About 20 weeks into her pregnancy, doctors diagnosed a brain condition in which the fetus’ head grows abnormally quickly. At the 28-week checkup, the baby’s head measured at the size of a 39-week fetus, the cutoff for vaginal delivery, but doctors refused to induce labor.

After Beaton was rushed to the hospital at 35 weeks with abdominal pain, she had an emergency Cesarean with a larger-than-normal incision to accommodate the baby’s head. The child died four days after birth.

Samantha Casiano of East Texas joined the lawsuit this week. About 20 weeks into her pregnancy, she learned the child she was carrying had a serious condition in which parts of the brain and skull would not develop at all. She wanted to put her daughter to rest then. Instead, she had to carry the pregnancy to term, then watch as Halo died four hours after birth.

Lauren Van Vleet of Jarrell joined the lawsuit this week. About 22 weeks into her pregnancy, she learned her child had anencephaly, the same condition as Casiano’s child. Family members in Maryland helped her arrange to terminate the pregnancy there. Terrified of legal liability, Van Vleet avoided texting anyone about her plans.

Dr. Austin Dennard of Dallas joined the lawsuit this week. Last summer, just 11 weeks into her pregnancy, she also received a diagnosis of anencephaly, a condition Dennard knew was not compatible with survival. She traveled out of state to end the pregnancy.

Then in March, she saw one of her own patients, Lauren Miller, was among the first five plaintiffs to sue Texas over its abortion laws interfering with necessary care for pregnancy complications. Dennard decided to join and tell her story, too.

These cases are not aberrations. They will keep happening as long as Texas law puts doctors in fear of prison time and massive fines for ending a pregnancy, even when it’s clear the pregnancy is no longer viable.

How many names will Texas keep adding?

When will enough be enough?


https://www.yahoo.com/news/grumet-tragedies-mount-women-ill-120120122.html

 

Some deaths connected to mifepristone were actually homicides, drug overdoses | Fact check

123
Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
Mon, May 22, 2023 at 2:47 PM MDT·5 min read


The claim: The abortion pill caused 28 maternal deaths and over 4,200 adverse events

An April 12 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows an image of a woman eating a pill.

"The abortion pill has caused at least 28 maternal deaths and over 4,200 adverse events, including hemorrhaging and infections," reads the post, which was shared by the group Wisconsin Family Action.

Similar posts have generated hundreds of interactions on Instagram.

Follow us on Facebook! Like our page to get updates throughout the day on our latest debunks

Our rating: False
The report in question does not say mifepristone directly caused 28 deaths, and many of those deaths came in circumstances that made such a cause-and-effect connection impossible, such as homicides and drug overdoses. The 4,200 adverse events also can’t be causally linked to mifepristone, since much of the data was based on medically unconfirmed reports that can be made by anyone.


Deaths and adverse events not causally linked to mifepristone
Julaine Appling, president of the nonprofit Wisconsin Family Action, referred USA TODAY to the FDA’s page on mifepristone – a drug that blocks a hormone needed for pregnancy – as evidence for the claim that the abortion pill caused 28 maternal deaths.

The FDA website says that as of June 30, 2022, there have been “28 reports of deaths in patients associated with mifepristone since the product was approved in September 2000,” and that includes severe cases of sepsis and two cases of pregnancy located outside the womb. The data comes from an FDA adverse events summary report.

But contrary to the post’s claim, the deaths “cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone” because the database doesn't account for use of other drugs, medical treatments, prior medical conditions and other specifics about each case, according to the report.

The list of 28 women who died after using the drug includes two homicides, a suspected homicide, a suicide and six drug overdoses, the report said.

"The nature of the deaths varies. … Some are plausibly related to the drug, and others are clearly not a result of mifepristone,” said Dr. Caleb Alexander, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. “Mifepristone doesn’t cause you to be a victim of homicide you know... so that's kind of, that's the nature of this reporting."

Fact check: Abortion-related deaths continued after Roe v. Wade, but occurred less often

Amanda Jean Stevenson, a sociologist at the University of Colorado, agreed, noting correlation doesn't prove causation.

“Not only does the FDA not analyze the causal relationships between the reported abortion and reported deaths in these numbers, but the causes of death listed in the report reflect that abortion was unlikely to be the cause of death for many or most of the reported deaths,” Stevenson said.

The post’s claim that the abortion pill caused 4,200 adverse events wrong for similar reasons. Appling referred USA TODAY to a 2018 government accountability office report that says the FDA identified about “4,200 instances of adverse events associated with Mifeprix (the brand name for mifepristone) from Sept. 28, 2000, through June 30, 2017, among the approximately 3.2 million women who have used the drug.”

However, the report notes an adverse event associated with Mifeprix does not necessarily mean that Mifeprix caused the event. Reports come from the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System and are not verified and can be reported by anyone.

“Submission of a report does not mean that the information included in it has been medically confirmed, nor is it an admission from the reporter that the drug caused or contributed the event,” the FDA says on its website.

Research studies show that abortion pills are safe
Medication abortion is safe, and a large number of studies validate this, according to Paula Lantz, an abortion policy expert at the University of Michigan.

The New York Times analyzed over 100 studies spanning countries and decades examining the effectiveness of mifepristone and misoprostol and found that the “vast majority of studies report that more than 99 percent of patients who took the pills had no serious complications.”

A 2018 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine also found that “complications after medication abortion, such as hemorrhage, hospitalization, persistent pain, infection, or prolonged heavy bleeding, are rare – occurring in no more than a fraction of a percent of patients.”

Fact check: False claim that a 12-year-old who gets an abortion in Alabama is jailed for life

And a 2015 study found that the major complication rate among 54,911 abortions performed for women covered by California's Medicaid program was 0.23%. That rate was 0.31% for women who had medication abortion.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

PolitiFact also debunked this claim.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/deaths-connected-mifepristone-were-actually-204745330.html

 

Texas Forced This Woman to Give Birth to a Stillborn Son. She’s Suing
2.3k

Tessa Stuart
Mon, May 22, 2023 at 12:28 PM MDT·4 min read



After multiple miscarriages, Kiersten Hogan thought she would never be able to carry a pregnancy to term. She’d nearly given up hope when in June 2021 she learned she was pregnant. But at just 19 weeks — days after Texas’ Senate Bill 8 went into effect — Hogan woke up at 5 a.m. in excruciating pain. She called 911 and was instructed to unlock her front door and lay on the ground until EMTs arrived. “It was the longest 5 minutes of my life,” Hogan recalled on Monday.

Her water had broken. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she had lost too much amniotic fluid for her son to survive — but hospital staff didn’t tell her that. “They didn’t tell me much about my son’s chances of survival. But the one thing they did make clear repeatedly was that I should not leave,” a tearful Hogan said Monday. “I was told that if I tried to discharge myself, or seek care elsewhere, that I could be arrested for trying to kill my child. So of course, I stayed.”

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Hogan recounted a harrowing five days inside the hospital, where she says religious counselors repeatedly came to visit her, even though she had declined pastoral care. She recalled being terrified of even going to the bathroom — afraid she would go into premature labor, and be arrested.

“On the fifth day in the hospital, while using the bathroom, my son started to enter the birth canal,” Hogan said. “I was rushed to labor and delivery where I gave birth to him stillborn.”

The next morning she was discharged, and told she could return to work the next day, “as if nothing had happened,” Hogan said.

Hogan is one of eight new plaintiffs who joined a lawsuit against the state of Texas on Monday, seeking clarification about what qualifies as a medical emergency under Texas’ medieval abortion bans. Also on Monday, lawyers for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the initial suit in March, asked a district court in Travis County for a temporary injunction blocking Texas’ abortion bans in cases of pregnancy complications as the case continues.

The original suit was filed on behalf of five women who were denied abortion care and two obstetrician-gynecologists who work in the state. It challenges the state’s three, overlapping bans: a criminal ban that pre-dates Roe v. Wade, a trigger ban — now in effect — passed in anticipation of Roe being overturned, and S.B. 8, an de facto ban on abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. All three bans ostensibly include exceptions for medical “emergencies,” but the laws’ vague language has contributed to widespread confusion over what qualifies — and stiff penalties that have made medical providers fearful of offering treatment that could put them in legal jeopardy. Doctors who are found guilty of providing an abortion in violation of the bans can face up to 99 years in prison, a minimum of $100,000 in fines, and the loss of their medical license.

Among the eight women who joined the lawsuit on Monday, some, like Hogan, were forced to give birth against their will to children who survived for vanishingly short periods of time.

Kylie Beaton learned her child had alobar holoprosencephaly, a condition that causes the head to grow at an abnormal speed. By the time she received the diagnosis at 20 weeks, her baby’s head was the size of a 24-week-old. She was past the cut-off for an abortion in neighboring New Mexico. By the time she was 28 weeks pregnant, her baby’s head was the size of a 39-week old fetus. She asked to be induced, but providers refused, citing the state’s abortion ban. At 35 weeks, Beaton was finally granted a cesarean section. Her son survived for four days.

Samantha Casiano learned her baby had anencephaly — a condition in which a fetus develops missing pieces of her brain and skull — at her 20-week scan. It is a fatal diagnosis. Casiano says she was told she would have to go through with the pregnancy, prescribed an antidepressant and sent home. She spent the remainder of her pregnancy accepting well-wishes from strangers, while planning a funeral for her daughter. Her daughter lived for four hours after birth.

After Elizabeth Weller’s water broke at 19 weeks, hospital staff suggested she “pray,” even as they informed her her baby had no chance of surviving without the amniotic fluid. Weller says she was first prescribed antibiotics to prevent infection, then told she could not obtain an abortion because as long as she was on antibiotics she would be too healthy to necessitate the procedure. Her infection ultimately worsened, spreading to the placenta and the amniotic fluid, and the hospital finally induced labor. Her daughter did not survive the birth.

“It breaks my heart that the state that I love is denying me and my neighbors lifesaving healthcare, prolonging our grief and mourning — and for what? Families like mine deserve better,” Weller said on Monday, “Life is fragile enough. Everyone’s reason for seeking out an abortion is personal to them and valid.”

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/texas-forced-woman-birth-stillborn-182841209.html

 

You cannot be talking in public about the tragic and deadly effects our treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republican anti abortion laws are having on women and girls because it makes look bad. That 10 year old should have been made to give birth to her rapist's baby.

This is Sharia Law For Christians enforced by the American Taliban in action. And ignores a crucial fact. No one would have known this 10 year-old was being raped and the rapist caught if the 10 year old had not sought an abortion and the doctor reported the sexual abuse.



Indiana reprimands doctor for talking publicly about Ohio 10-year-old rape victim's abortion
1.1k

NADINE EL-BAWAB
Fri, May 26, 2023 at 3:10 AM MDT·4 min read




The Indiana Medical Licensing Board decided late Thursday to reprimand and fine a doctor after ruling that she violated patient privacy laws by talking to a newspaper reporter about providing an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim from neighboring Ohio.

After an hourslong hearing, the board voted to issue Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Caitlin Bernard a letter of reprimand and a fine of $3,000, but refused a request from Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita to suspend Bernard's license. The board dismissed Rokita's allegations that Bernard violated state law by not reporting the child abuse to Indiana authorities.

Bernard has become a flashpoint in the national debate on abortion rights since performing the procedure on the Ohio girl last June, not long after the United States Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide nearly 50 years ago. The unprecedented Supreme Court decision put into effect an Ohio law that banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Bernard said the girl was six weeks and three days into her pregnancy when she traveled across state lines to Indiana, which at the time allowed abortions to be performed up to 20 weeks after fertilization.

The physician has been under fire from Rokita, a Republican who opposes abortion, and the two have been in a dispute for months. The Indiana attorney general submitted a complaint against Bernard to the state medical licensing board in December, claiming that she violated federal and state law relating to patient privacy and reporting child abuse.

A judge then threw out a lawsuit filed by Bernard and her colleague, Dr. Amy Caldwell, against Rokita to prevent his office from accessing patients' medical records and investigating abortion providers. The judge declined to provide a preliminary injunction against Rokita due to his referral of investigations into Bernard to the Indiana Medical Licensing Board, saying the board now has jurisdiction over the investigations.




PHOTO: Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita speaks on Nov. 8, 2022, in Schererville, Ind. (Darron Cummings/AP, FILE)
Bernard's lawsuit had accused Rokita of infringing on patient-doctor confidentiality and claims that he is targeting physicians who provide legal medical care including abortions, according to court filings.

An Ohio investigation ultimately resulted in a 27-year-old man being charged with the rape of the 10-year-old girl.

Bernard told the Indiana Medical Licensing Board that she complied with the investigation. She said the patient was hospitalized after being given a medication abortion so that the fetal remains could be collected and submitted as evidence.

In her testimony at a hearing in Indianapolis on Thursday, Bernard heavily criticized Ohio and Indiana politicians for politicizing the case.

"I think that if the Attorney General, Todd Rokita, had not chosen to make this his political stunt we would not be here today," Bernard said. "I don't think that anyone would have been looking into this story as any different than any other interview that I have ever given if it was not politicized the way that it was by public figures in our state and in Ohio."




PHOTO: Dr. Caitlin Bernard looks at her phone, May 25, 2023, before a hearing in front of the state medical board at the Indiana Government South building in downtown Indianapolis. (Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar/USA Today Network)
Bernard argued that she does not see abortion as a political issue, but rather a part of comprehensive reproductive healthcare. Bernard said she was one of only two complex family specialists in Indiana and has done interviews with reporters in the past that have not received as much attention.

Bernard told the board that she did not reveal any identifiable information about the patient to the press, but thought it was important for the public to know the impact abortion bans could have on care in the state. She said a hypothetical would not have sent across that message.

"I think that it is incredibly important for people to understand the real-world impacts of the laws of this country about abortion or otherwise," Bernard said in her testimony. "I think it is important for people to know what patients will have to go through because of legislation that is being passed and a hypothetical does not make that impact."

"It does not help people understand what is happening and I think people need to know, again, the real-life impacts of those laws so that they could make their own determinations about whether to support or oppose them, again. Particularly if those laws are about to be passed in their own states," she added.

Bernard also told the board she properly reported the case of child abuse in line with her hospital's guidelines when she reported it to Ohio authorities. Ohio is where the patient lived at the time and where the abuse occurred.

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/indiana-reprimands-doctor-talking-publicly-091007384.html

 

Reading the story shows that the good doctor wasn't disciplined for speaking out about abortion.
She was disciplined for violating HIPPAA regulations.
Disclosing the identity of a 10 year old rape victim to the media is what got the good doctor disciplined.

But, she did a wonderful job of turning the discussion from her politicizing the case to the Attorney General politicizing the case.
A lot of that going around when abortion is the topic.

 

Treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans simply abide democracy. they have to lie cheat and steal so people don't get a chance to vote on abortion because if they do abortion wins.



Ohio banned August elections. Then the GOP planned one that could help preserve an abortion ban.
557

Matt Freed
Adam Edelman
Sat, May 27, 2023 at 5:00 AM MDT


In this article:

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  Mike DeWine
  American politician in Ohio

Earlier this year, Ohio Republicans enacted a law that effectively scrubbed August special elections from the state’s calendar, calling them overly expensive, low turnout endeavors that weren't worth the trouble.

But then, just earlier this month, Ohio state legislative Republicans went ahead and scheduled an August election this year that could make it harder for abortion-rights supporters to amend the state constitution later.

The ballot measure currently up for a vote in August would raise the threshold of support required for future state constitutional amendments to 60%. Currently, just a majority is needed.

And while there's nothing explicitly mentioning abortion, abortion-rights groups contend that they’re designed to make it more difficult for voters to pass a proposed amendment, set to be on the ballot in November, that would enshrine abortion rights in the Ohio Constitution.


It’s an unmistakable contradiction that caught the attention of activists — and now they’re suing to have this August’s special election nixed.

“This election is illegal,” said Dr. Marcela Azevedo, the president and founder of Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, a group that has led efforts supporting the November ballot measure that would legalize abortion. “Based on the decisions made earlier this year, there is no basis for holding this election, other than people’s personal agendas to stop the abortion rights movement from being successful.”

The suit draws heavily on the fact that the newly scheduled August special election would appear to violate statutes, signed into law by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine in January, that eliminated the scheduling of virtually all August special elections.

Supporters of that law — including DeWine and Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose — had said holding August special elections wasn't worth the tens of millions of dollars in costs.

“These unnecessary off-cycle elections aren’t good for taxpayers, election officials or the civic health of our state. It’s time for them to go,” LaRose, who has said he’s likely to run for U.S. Senate in 2024, testified during legislative hearings late last year.

But earlier this month, Ohio Republicans passed a joint resolution that scheduled an Aug. 8 special election to raise the threshold for future ballot measures and impose higher signature-gathering thresholds to put measures before voters.

“This is essentially a brazen, cynical, power grab,” said Emma Olson Sharkey, counsel at the Elias Law Group, a Democratic-aligned firm that filed the suit challenging this summer’s special election in Ohio. “They’re attempting to change their view of this now, based on the fact that this is now what they want to happen.”

“There’s no way to reconcile these arguments,” added David Fox, a partner at the same firm, which filed the suit on behalf of the “One Person One Vote” organization that is drumming up turnout to vote “no” in the August election.

Raising the threshold for passage of any future constitutional amendments would mark a major shift in Ohio, where a simple majority requirement has been in place since 1912.

Four former Ohio governors, including Republicans John Kasich and Bob Taft, and five former Ohio attorneys general, including Republicans Betty Montgomery and Jim Petro, have said they oppose the measure to raise the threshold.

Republican supporters of the freshly passed measures — which, because were adopted through a joint resolution, didn’t require the governor’s signature — have said they would protect the state constitution from efforts seeking to change it funded by out-of-state “special interests.”

GOP supporters of both the January measure eliminating August special elections and the latest measure scheduling one this summer did not address the contradiction when asked by NBC News.

“While we don’t comment on litigation or potential litigation, under Ohio’s constitution, the general assembly has the sole authority to set the time, place and manner for an election,” LaRose spokesperson Rob Nichols said in a statement. “We are fully confident that the election professionals who run our county boards of elections will faithfully deliver another secure, accessible and accurate election for Ohio voters.”

State Rep. Brian Stewart, who sponsored the latest joint resolution but who also supported the January bill, said in a statement that there was no contradiction. He attributed his support for the January bill to concerns over cost and turnout for smaller, local elections in August.

“That concern does not exist in the context of a statewide election, which will be in every community in Ohio,” Stewart said.

DeWine, for his part, has said he supports raising the threshold required to amend the state constitution, though his spokesperson noted to NBC News that the measure scheduling an August election was passed without needing the governor’s signature.

“The Ohio General Assembly generally has the power to set the dates of elections under the Ohio Constitution. Both the elections bill and this separate resolution can be seen as the Ohio General Assembly exercising that power. Our office was not a party to the resolution,” DeWine spokesperson Dan Tierney said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the suit (as well as another filed by the Elias Law Group alleging that the language on the ballot for the Aug. 8 election was designed to intentionally mislead voters), has been granted an expedited process by the Ohio Supreme Court.

The Ohio Supreme Court — on which conservatives hold a 4-3 advantage — is expected to decide on the matter quickly.

If the August election is carried out as scheduled and voters pass the threshold measure, then the proposed amendment in November to enshrine abortion rights would need 60% of voters to pass. If it fails in August, it would need just a majority.

The proposed November amendment is designed to counteract Ohio’s “heartbeat bill,” which snapped into place immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer. That law effectively bans most abortions — but includes exceptions for the health of the pregnant woman and in cases of ectopic pregnancies — though it remains temporarily blocked by a state judge.

Pro-abortion rights groups, however, aren’t holding their breath for a favorable ruling from the state's high court and are continuing their organizing on a “vote no” effort for the August ballot.

“Do I think that the [state] Supreme Court should strike it down as illegal? Absolutely. I think that would be the right thing to do,” said Azevedo. “But I am not confident that they will.”

“So we have to be ready to fully support ‘vote no’ in August,” she said.


https://news.yahoo.com/ohio-banned-august-elections-then-110000903.html

 

Illinois Is the Midwest’s Abortion Refuge. Clinics Are Being Terrorized
185

Tessa Stuart
Fri, May 26, 2023 at 8:00 AM MDT·6 min read




For years, the stately two-story Tudor at 600 N. Logan Avenue in Danville, Illinois, was an ophthalmologist’s office, run by a cataract surgeon with a passion for raising Newfoundland dogs. The building was put up for sale when he retired in 2017, but it wasn’t until this year that a new owner finally began renovations. Since then, the still-empty building has been the site of protests, the subject of a controversial city ordinance and, this past weekend, the target of an arson attack.

Shortly after 4 a.m. on Saturday morning, 73-year old Philip J. Buyno allegedly drove his 2013 Passat — loaded with old tires, firewood, flares, and cans of gasoline and antifreeze — backwards into the building. Buyno lives more than three hours away from Danville, in Prophetstown, Illinois, but he told police he’d heard the building was set to reopen as an abortion clinic, and resolved to burn it to the ground.


When officers arrived at the scene they found the car lodged halfway into the building’s entrance, its driver still inside. The arson attempt, according to the FBI affidavit, quickly devolved into a comedy of errors: “After the Passat got stuck, Buyno was trapped inside and could not get out. Buyno stated that he threw the red gas can out of the window so the gas would spill and he could light the gas on fire, but the can landed in an upright position. Buyno told us that he intended to burn his own car, along with the building, but he never got the chance because he got stuck inside the Passat and then the police arrived.”

In an interview the following day, Buyno was unrepentant. “If I could sneak in with a gas can and a match, I’d go in there again,” he said.

There was no formal announcement that Counseling of Indiana, operators of the Indianapolis-based Clinic for Women, which offers first-trimester abortions and other reproductive health care, was planning to move to Logan Avenue. The building was purchased by an LLC with a different name; outside, the sign still reads Dillman Eye Care. But earlier this year, residents became aware of the clinic’s plans and, encouraged by Mark Lee Dickson, a well-known activist, and a lawyer, Jonathan Mitchell, began organizing to prevent it from opening.

A few weeks before Buyno allegedly drove his car into the building, a closely-divided Danville City Council voted to prohibit the shipping and recieving of abortion pills and “abortion-related paraphernalia” within city limits. Danville’s ordinance was inspired by similar laws passed at the urging of Dickson, the driving force behind the “sanctuary cities for the unborn” movement in Texas. The first of those anti-abortion ordinances — crafted with the help of Mitchell — passed in 2019 and became the inspiration for Senate Bill 8, the Texas law that banned most abortions months before Roe v. Wade was overturned.

“We don’t expect to see this end in Danville. We expect to see other cities throughout the great state of Illinois pass ordinances as well,” Dickson told a local CBS affiliate after the ordinance was passed, adding that other communities are also interested in trying to banning abortion in their boundaries.

Before he allegedly attacked the clinic, Buyno expressed support for the concept. In 2019, he was arrested three times for trespassing at Planned Parenthood in Peoria, Illinois. After his third arrest, Buyno told a fellow activist he would promise to stop trespassing if he could find a city official to talk with about passing an ordinance: “I want to advance the idea of making Peoria a city of refuge for the preborn.”

In an email, Dickson said he’d never had any contact with Buyno and distanced himself from his actions: “Phil Buyno does not represent the peaceful, non-violent, and non-destructive pro-life movement that I am a part of. I find it despicable that someone who claims to value life would do something so stupid to risk both his own life and the lives of others. Phil Buyno is a ‘bad actor’ whose actions are criminal and I hope he gets the just punishment he deserves.”

Since the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the federal right to abortion in June, Illinois, with its robust reproductive health protections, has become a refuge for women seeking abortion across the Midwest. According to the University of Chicago, the state has experienced the second-highest increase in abortions of any state since Dobbs — a 28 percent rise between April and August of 2022. Those figures track with Illinois providers’ own statistics, which show that roughly one-third of patients they’ve treated in the last year have come from out-of-state.

Illinois has also become a destination for abortion providers who can no longer operate in states that have imposed restrictions — including Indiana, where Clinic for Women is based. Indiana lawmakers outlawed abortion last August, but the procedure currently remains legal through 20 weeks of pregnancy while advocates challenge the law in court. (Reached by phone, a representative for the clinic declined to comment for this story.)

As demand for their services spikes, providers in Illinois have also reported increasing hostility. Two Planned Parenthood Centers in Chicago have had their windows smashed in. The Peoria Planned Parenthood where Buyno was arrested in 2019 was firebombed in January. Jennifer Welch, president of Planned Parenthood of Illinois, says she doesn’t expect the Peoria facility to reopen until next year.

“Illinois is a haven for reproductive rights in the Midwest. We know that we’re going to continue to be targeted by anti-abortion extremists and so we really have to remain vigilant,” Welch says. “Whether it’s physical violence, or legislative violence, or ordinances — all of those have the impact of keeping patients from getting the care that they need and deserve. It is a chilling effect on people’s access to care that we really worry about. Even if that Danville ordinance won’t stand, it’s already frightened patients.”

Before officials in Danville passed their ordinance banning abortion pills and paraphernalia, both the ACLU and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul warned they would sue the city to stop it from going into effect. Officials in Danville, staring down the prospect of a long, expensive ordeal defending the ordinance in court, added an amendment at the last minute clarifying the ordinance would only go into effect if a court issued a judgment declaring it legal. Considering Illinois’ existing protections, such an amendment renders the ordinance, in the attorney general’s words, “merely symbolic.”

Symbols have meaning, though. The officials who wrote and passed Danville’s ordinance intended it to send a message — and it did. “From this ordinance, we’ve seen this act of violence,” says Ameri Klafeta, director of Women’s and Reproductive Rights Project at ACLU of Illinois, referencing the failed arson attempt last Saturday. “I think that’s a good example of how this whole situation has created a very clear harm to the clinic and to the community.”

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/illinois-midwest-abortion-refuge-clinics-140031718.html

 

Tennessee Woman Denied Abortion for Ectopic Pregnancy Was Left Infertile

2.6k
Kylie Cheung
Wed, May 31, 2023 at 9:50 AM MDT·5 min read



Photo: BSIP (Getty Images)

A Tennessee woman who was denied an emergency abortion for her life-threatening ectopic pregnancy ultimately became infertile and was forced to have an emergency hysterectomy to save her life, ABC reported on Wednesday. The woman, Mayron Hollis, gave birth prematurely through a cesarean delivery, but for the last several months now, her infant has been in and out of the hospital as Hollis’ staggering medical bills continue to pile up.

Last summer, Hollis and her husband learned she was pregnant shortly after she’d just given birth to their first child in February 2022. The pregnancy concerned doctors, as she’d had a cesarean delivery and become pregnant again in a short amount of time, increasing the risk of a cesarean scar pregnancy—a type of ectopic pregnancy in which the embryo implants in the cesarean scar from a previous C-section.


By August, Hollis learned she did have a cesarean scar pregnancy, that her pregnancy was already bulging out of her uterus, and that she had a placenta accreta—a life-threatening pregnancy complication that occurs when the placenta grows too deeply inside the uterine wall, and part or all of the placenta remains attached to the uterine wall even during delivery. According to the Mayo Clinic, the condition can result in severe blood loss after delivery as well as infertility, as there’s only a narrow window for pregnancies with placenta accreta to be terminated without requiring a hysterectomy.

It was a crushing diagnosis for Hollis and her husband, who had wanted to have another child, prompting them to take time to determine their next step. By the time the couple determined that the risk to Hollis’ life was too significant, Tennessee’s trigger abortion ban had taken effect after the fall of Roe v. Wade last summer. Hollis would need a complex procedure requiring multiple physicians from varying specialties to terminate her placenta accreta without removing her uterus. But as a result of the state’s abortion laws, which at the time featured no exceptions, not enough physicians were willing to provide the care Hollis needed, fearing criminalization. (ABC notes that at the time, an exception to save the life of the pregnant person or prevent permanent bodily injury “only [came] into play when a physician is defending themselves in court,” after they’ve already been charged with a felony for providing abortion care.)

Doctors recommended that Hollis travel to Pittsburgh to get the procedure she needed, but she wasn’t able to, citing her husband’s and her demanding work schedules and inability to afford to take time off. Ultimately, because of Tennessee’s laws, Hollis learned she simply had to continue with her pregnancy, as it didn’t pose an immediate threat to her life. “Because of everything that was going on, they didn’t know what was the right thing to do was. So the only way to save me was for something bad to happen to me,” Hollis told ABC.

As Hollis’ pregnancy progressed, it eventually attached to her bladder, and her accreta progressed to placenta percreta, growing beyond her uterine wall and attaching to surrounding organs, creating the risk that her uterus could rupture. By December, around the 25th week of Hollis’ pregnancy, she experienced severe bleeding and was hospitalized for four days before being released. Hollis told ABC that some doctors she’d spoken to feared “they were gonna have to reconstruct my bladder.” She explained, “They didn’t know if it was gonna touch any other organs—if they could even stop the bleeding if I did start to hemorrhage.”

The following day after Hollis returned home, her severe bleeding resumed, and she returned to the hospital—this time for a cesarean delivery and emergency hysterectomy in one procedure, according to medical records obtained by ABC. “I didn’t want the hysterectomy. But they said that was the only way that they could stop the bleeding to help me, so I didn’t have a choice,” she told the outlet. Had Hollis been able to terminate the placenta accreta earlier in her pregnancy, she might have avoided the life-saving hysterectomy and continued to grow her family.

Since Hollis’ experience, Tennessee legislators added an exception to the state’s abortion laws that would allow for abortion care for ectopic pregnancies similar to Hollis’. But doctors, including one of the physicians who helped treat Hollis, fear this makes little difference in practice. “So much of medicine is gray areas,” Dr. Sarah Osmundson told ABC. “Regulating these complex decisions will result in people getting hurt and will result in people dying.”

Earlier this month, the Health and Human Services Department’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) wrapped its investigation of two hospitals that last year denied a Missouri woman life-saving abortion care, determining that these hospitals had violated EMTALA (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act). A lawyer for the Missouri woman told Jezebel that hospitals across the country—including states with ambiguous abortion bans—need to recognize that “when a patient comes to them” with a life-threatening pregnancy complication, they “do not need to—and must not—wait until the patient is on the brink of death to provide care.”

Since the delivery of Hollis’ newborn on Dec. 13, the infant, Alayna, remained hospitalized for two full months; she was so premature that she spent her first month of life in an incubator. After going home, Alayna has been in and out of the hospital. The longest she’s been at home since February, Hollis told ABC, was for two weeks.

“They really had no answer for me the whole time I was pregnant. It was the scariest thing I ever did,” Hollis said. “[Doctors were] telling me that my pregnancy wasn’t viable, but we can’t send you anywhere and we can’t do anything to help you.” All that she or those around her could do, she said, were “a lot of prayers” and “just having a lot of faith.” And now, she’s left dealing with the aftermath of her pregnancy-related struggles while going “back to work because I don’t have the means to pay for the adequate care that she needs.”


https://www.yahoo.com/news/tennessee-woman-denied-abortion-ectopic-155000857.html

 

How close to death must a woman be to get an abortion in Tennessee?

435
Stephanie Kirchgaessner
March 20, 2023·7 min read




Months after the implementation of the most stringent abortion ban in the country, conservative lawmakers in Tennessee have publicly acknowledged that the state’s ban poses grave risks to the lives of women.

Now a political debate over how to change the law is centered on questions that would have been considered unthinkable before last June’s reversal of Roe v Wade: like how close to death a woman must be before a doctor may legally treat her if it means terminating her pregnancy, and whether women should be forced to carry embryos with fatal anomalies to term.



Will Brewer, the powerful lobbyist of Tennessee Right to Life, a Christian anti-abortion group that wrote the current ban, has been accused of waging a campaign of intimidation against lawmakers who he has said are seeking to “weaken” the law. In public testimony and private meetings, Brewer has said women should only be offered terminations if they are facing acute emergencies – such as when they enter an emergency room “bleeding out” – and suggested some complications can “work themselves out” without medical intervention.

Speaking last week before the West Knoxville Republican Club, Brewer also questioned the veracity of medical diagnoses involving what is known as lethal fetal anomalies.

“Who’s to say with any kind of certainty what a medically futile pregnancy is or a fatal fetal anomaly, which is some condition with the baby that will not allow it to live outside of the womb?” he said.

The political debate is expected to come to a head this week, when two competing proposals – one of them endorsed by Brewer – will face votes in the state’s Republican-controlled legislature.

The fractious political fights shows how radically the battle lines over abortion have shifted since the US supreme court’s decision last June to reverse Roe v Wade, which in effect allowed every state to determine its own rules. In Tennessee, one of 13 states where abortion is currently banned, a “trigger law” came into effect that had been passed in 2019 in the event that Roe was ever overturned. The law states that any doctor who performs an abortion is committing a felony, and must defend themselves in court in order to prove the procedure was done to save the life of the pregnant patient.

In Tennessee, doctors who spoke with the Guardian on the condition of anonymity say anecdotal evidence suggests the state is already seeing an uptick in teenage births and that – since it has been about nine months since the trigger ban took effect – they are anticipating an increased number of babies being born who have life-threatening conditions that will immediately require treatment in neonatal units.

“I’m anticipating those situations to be among people without resources to go out of state” for abortion care, one doctor said.

At least one Republican lawmaker, state senator Richard Briggs, who is also a heart surgeon, has suggested that he co-sponsored the trigger bill without fully understanding its implications. Briggs has proposed a new law so that doctors – using their “good faith judgment” – could perform abortions to prevent or treat medical emergencies. It also allows women to terminate pregnancies if the fetus is not viable.

Briggs said he is still vehemently opposed to abortion. But in an interview, he said the current ban posed risks to the lives of women and girls, and cited a conversation he had with one obstetrician who told him about two pregnant patients she had seen since July who were just 12 years old.

“A fifth-grader … their bodies are not prepared to carry a pregnancy to term. There is irreparable damage that can be done that will render it impossible for her to have children in the future. That is what Right to Life does,” he said in reference to the group that wrote the law.


While the law proposed by Briggs in Tennessee’s senate, and its companion legislation in the house, seemed to initially gain traction, Tennessee Right to Life has staunchly opposed it, and threatened to revoke its support for any Republican who supports it. It has already “un-endorsed” Briggs.

A legal memo obtained by the Guardian that was written for the anti-abortion group by Paul Linton, a longtime advocate in the anti-abortion movement, raised objections to the proposal for allowing medical interventions to “prevent” emergencies.

“It is objectionable because, without requiring an existing condition that would qualify under the definition of ‘medical emergency’, a physician could perform an abortion to ‘prevent’ a condition that might not ever materialize,” he wrote.

In an interview with the Guardian, Linton denied his stance could lead to care being delayed. Asked about the Right to Life’s insistence that women be forced to carry fetuses with lethal anomalies to term, he compared those fetuses to prisoners on death row, saying that just because they were expected to die did not mean a fellow prisoner could – prematurely – murder them.

Tennessee Right to Life has recently endorsed its own alternative legislation to counter the Briggs proposal. Its proposed bill would allow doctors to perform abortions if a woman has already miscarried or has an ectopic pregnancy, and states that doctors could only perform terminations if required in an acute emergency determined by their “reasonable medical judgment”.

Chloe Akers, a Tennessee criminal defense attorney, said the legal standards included in the Right to Life proposal would, in effect, make it easier for prosecutors to convict doctors. This, in turn, could worsen the chilling effect currently preventing care, resulting in even more delays. No doctor has been prosecuted under the current ban.

The reality is you cannot ban abortion and keep women safe

Attorney Chloe Akers

“This proposal will result in significantly more delays and denials of care than Briggs’s bill,” she said. “The reality is you cannot ban abortion and keep women safe,” she said.

For Allie Phillips, the stark reality of the abortion ban hit her late last month, after she was told at 19 weeks of pregnancy that her baby was not viable and that continuing to carry it posed risks to her health. Instead of being offered a termination, Phillips was forced to look out of state for treatment, eventually traveling to New York City. The cost of the trip and procedure – which was not covered by her Tennessee insurance plan – was ultimately paid for with the help of a public appeal for financial help over GoFundMe.

“I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that not only is it men making laws against women’s bodies, but that a politician has the right to tell you what you can and can’t do medically – especially in 2023,” Phillips said. “I can be mad about it, I can cry about it. At the end of the day this is the most traumatic thing that has happened to me.”

One Tennessee obstetrician who spoke on the condition of anonymity described how patient care had been delayed since the implementation of the statewide ban, including for pregnant patients facing acute emergencies caused by issues such as infection or their water breaking prematurely.

In one case, the obstetrician said, a pregnant patient brought to a hospital by an ambulance who required an abortion at 18 weeks faced a delay in care inside the hospital because of bureaucratic hurdles.

“There was all the additional paperwork and calling legal and making sure that anesthesia and nursing teams all understood that we were about to commit a felony, and then making sure we have a team that is comfortable with that,” the doctor said.

In another case, a patient whose pregnancy faced serious complications – the fetus had a heartbeat but there was no amniotic fluid – needed an abortion at 13 weeks but was sent home. She returned a week later showing signs of infection and needed four units of blood.

“It doesn’t seem like a great use of limited resources when there was no chance that pregnancy was going to survive,” the obstetrician said.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/close-death-must-woman-abortion-070005417.html

 

You would think that one of the very reasons for RvW in the first place would have crossed their small, narrow minds before actually writing the law.

Can't expect empathy from heartless assholes!

 

Nope.
Not if you don't have a birthday yet.

 

This South Carolina 6-Week Abortion Ban Does Not Even Allow Exceptions for Mental Health Emergencies
134

Mara Santilli
May 24, 2023·2 min read



In a decision that has been in the works since the overturn of Roe v. Wade last June, South Carolina’s state senate has passed an abortion ban, Senate Bill 474, the “Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act,” that stands whenever a fetal heartbeat is audible, which is often at 6 weeks after conception, CNN reported.


There are not many exceptions to the ban, except for cases of rape and incest, which are considered only up until 12 weeks into the pregnancy – and doctors performing an abortion procedure must report those instances to the local sheriff for legal protection.

Other exceptions include fetal health anomalies or physical health emergencies that might cause danger to the birthing person’s life. Mental health emergencies, such as suicidal ideation as a result of a forced pregnancy that may have been a result of trauma, are not included in the language of exceptions.

Click here to read the full article.

Pregnant people might not feel safe either self-reporting or having their assault or incest reported by doctors, and therefore may choose not to have an abortion. This trauma alone can result in a mental health condition, or exacerbate pre-existing mental health issues.

The bill also uses the language of fetal personhood to mandate biological fathers to pay child support from conception and to separate the fetus from the person carrying it in a medical emergency. That means that doctors are required to expend as much effort saving the life of the fetus as saving the mother if an abortion is medically necessary in an emergency. According to Abortion Every Day writer Jessica Valenti, “the mandate that doctors ‘separate’ a woman from her pregnancy – rather than give her a standard abortion, means that women will be forced to go into labor or have C-sections, even when doing so will be much more physically and emotionally onerous.”

But, as Valenti points out, the mental health of the person carrying a pregnancy is not part of the equation in South Carolina.


South Carolina is not the only southern state imposing abortion restrictions recently.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned on June 24, 2022, 13 states, including Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, almost immediately implemented their trigger bans on abortion, per the Guttmacher Institute. But following that, many states have passed new abortion restrictions, including North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban, going into effect on July 1, 2023. Florida also passed a 6-week abortion ban last month.

Abortion access in the South is now barely possible, and people in those states will have to rely on accessing birth control and emergency contraception to avoid unplanned pregnancies.


https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/south-carolina-6-week-abortion-175201486.html

 

Wisconsin Republicans Try to Justify 1849 Abortion Ban With $1,000 Tax Credit for Fetuses

36
Kylie Cheung
Mon, June 5, 2023 at 12:20 PM MDT



Photo: picture alliance (Getty Images)

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, Wisconsin has been living under a near-total abortion ban originally enacted in 1849. And while the election of a pro-choice judge to the state’s Supreme Court in April bodes well for the ban eventually being overturned, it seems Republicans in the legislature are scrambling to try and make the wildly unpopular pre-Civil War law more palatable with a new package of minuscule proposed amendments—one of which, Rolling Stone notes, is a $1,000 tax credit for embryos. That’s probably just enough to cover the first few sessions of therapy for the trauma of forced pregnancy.

Per the language of the bill, which is transparently meant to bolster support for a law that every single county voted to repeal, the credit would permit parents to claim an exemption on their tax returns for “unborn children for whom a fetal heartbeat has been detected.” Parents of “children” from embryos to the age of 17 can qualify parents to receive $700 to $1,000 per “child.” This legislative package comes after Wisconsin Republicans earlier this year defeated bills to add rape and incest exceptions to the 1849 law. So yes, Wisconsinites may be forced to deliver their rapists’ babies, but at least they’ll receive $1,000 for their troubles if they manage to survive the pregnancy and birth.

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The proposed tax credit mirrors similar bills we’ve seen on the federal and state level that are just back-door ways to soft-launch fetal personhood—which confers legal personhood rights upon embryos at the expense of the pregnant person’s. In February 2022, House Republicans introduced the “Unborn Child Tax Credit.” And in July, within weeks of Roe being overturned, Senate Republicans introduced the “Unborn Child Support Act,” a bill that would require fathers to pay child support starting in the first month of someone’s pregnancy. Last summer, Georgia’s Department of Revenue announced parents could receive up to $3,000 for “any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat,” which is surely enough to compensate for the long-term, devastating economic impacts of being denied abortion care. And in January, Oklahoma lawmakers proposed a bill requiring “the father or second parent of an unborn child” to pay “prenatal child support,” with the bill’s author specifying that “life begins at conception.”

Ironically, by advancing fetal personhood, these policies can directly lead to pregnant people being investigated and criminalized by the state for the outcomes of their pregnancies, which is already happening. In the last 50 years, there have been nearly 2,000 cases of people facing criminal charges for pregnancy loss or self-managed abortion. “If [pregnant people’s] rights are secondary to the fetus or at odds with the fetus, that lends to an environment in which violence—whether it’s state violence like imprisonment or interpersonal violence—can be committed against pregnant people with far less accountability,” a spokesperson for Pregnancy Justice told Jezebel.

Rolling Stone notes that the lawmaker behind Georgia’s “unborn” child tax credit says in a leaked video that the goal is to get policies like this “to the highest court in the land.” The Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe didn’t explicitly mention fetal personhood, but certainly opened the door for it—and that’s exactly the endgame anti-abortion lawmakers are sprinting toward, with help from legislation like the proposed tax credit in Wisconsin.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/wisconsin-republicans-try-justify-1849-182000959.html

 

Louisiana Opts Not to Clarify That Miscarriages, Ectopic Pregnancies Are Exempt from Abortion Ban

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Lorena O’Neil
May 16, 2023·4 min read




A week after rejecting exceptions for rape and incest, the Louisiana legislature’s criminal justice committee rejected two more bills on Tuesday that would clarify that abortion care is legal for miscarriages or nonviable pregnancies today.

Democrat Rep. Candace Newell and Republican Rep. Mary DuBuisson had both introduced legislation attempting to clarify what conditions doctors can still treat under the state’s strict abortion ban. Newell’s bill would have amended the definition of abortion to exclude ectopic pregnancies, so that surgery and treatment for them would be explicitly allowed in Louisiana. DuBouisson’s bill sought to clarify that medical procedures used to treat miscarriages wouldn’t be considered abortions under the ban. (Medically, the terms are often used interchangeably–for example, a spontaneous abortion or missed abortion is the same as a spontaneous miscarriage.)


New Orleans health director Jennifer Avegno testified about the confusion doctors have experienced when faced with pregnancy complications, which can be fatal if left untreated. “The answer doctors get is to call [their] hospital attorney. I don’t know of anything else that interferes with the patient-physician relationship like that,” said Avegno. She spoke to how quickly an ectopic pregnancy, when a fertilized egg grows outside of the uterus, can rupture a fallopian tube, leading to profound bleeding.

But Republican Rep. Dodie Horton said she has spoken with multiple doctors who don’t find the law confusing at all, actually adding that there’s “no question in their mind about what they can or cannot do.” Sure.

Rep. Tony Bacala (R) added that he thinks the law is clear that treatment for ectopic pregnancies is legal, to which Avegno pushed back. “If it was as clear as you’re saying, then my colleagues wouldn’t be confused and they wouldn’t be advocating for this,” she said, noting that doctors are wondering if they can continue practicing in the state, given these restrictions. One healthcare worker testified that there has been a drop in applications to residency programs since the ban went into effect last year.

Ultimately, the arguments for the bill proved ineffective for the GOP legislators on the committee, and Republican lawmakers “deferred” the bill, effectively blocking it from going to the House floor for a full vote. DuBuisson’s bill focusing on miscarriage failed similarly. She tried to stress that she, too, was a “pro-life” Republican, but that the health of pregnant people should not be a partisan issue. “I am and always have been pro-life, but that also means I cherish the lives of women with pregnancies that are deemed nonviable.”

“We are not protecting mothers,” said DuBuisson. “We are leaving them to hemorrhage and carry a dead child until they can die ‘naturally.’ There is nothing natural about leaving a doctor’s office or a hospital with a dead or dying baby inside of you.”

Bacala once again claimed that the abortion ban is already clear enough, to which Du Buisson retorted, “We wouldn’t be at this table if it was so clear.”

Louisiana Right to Life testified that the “abortion industry” is trying to “get its foot back into the door” with these bills.

“I just think, members, that it’s very interesting that the bar continues to move with the Louisiana Right to Life,” DuBuisson said in her closing statement. She said it was difficult for her to believe that legislators could hear the testimony of “women close to death because of having to carry a nonviable pregnancy” and not be moved.

But her fellow GOP legislators, of course, were not moved.

“Yet again, our state lawmakers have chosen to defy medicine, common sense, and the will of their constituents in favor of advancing their own extreme political agendas,” Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s Helen Frink said in a statement. “Even when directly confronted with the chaos and confusion wrought by our state’s total abortion ban, these lawmakers shamefully and repeatedly refuse to take action.”

Today’s bill deferments mean all legislation intended to soften Louisiana’s abortion ban will not make it to the House floor. There is one bill aimed at lessening the criminal penalties for doctors that is currently in limbo.

Louisiana Right to Life and the legislators following their lead have made clear that they feel that conceding that the current abortion ban is vague could jeopardize it in court, whereas potentially putting scores of pregnant people’s lives at risk is apparently a sacrifice they’re willing to make.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/louisiana-opts-not-clarify-miscarriages-183500347.html