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Weekly Digest
Letter from an Editor | July 16, 2022
Dear John,
As many predicted when Roe v. Wade was overturned, this week we saw Republican officials and prosecutors come for abortion providers and those in need of care.
In a shocking act of cruelty, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita threatened to revoke the license of the physician who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old girl from Ohio, who traveled to Indiana to obtain an abortion after being raped. She was forced to leave her home in Ohio, where a law that bans abortions after six weeks without exceptions for rape or incest prevented her from obtaining an abortion. Her case has received intense scrutiny in the wake of the Roe ruling, with anti-abortion groups and some Republican officials claiming that the story was fabricated—despite the fact that her alleged rapist has been charged in a court of law.
Texas’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration Thursday over federal rules which clarify that even in states with near-total abortion bans, abortions must be provided in cases of medical emergency. Paxton’s suit comes in the wake of a guidance from the department of Health and Human Services, which asserted that in cases where the patient’s life is at risk, federal law requiring emergency medical intervention supersedes state-level abortion restrictions. HHS also made clear that pharmacies have an obligation under federal law to dispense the medications mifepristone and misoprostol to those who need them for treatment of miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, or other health conditions—warning pharmacists not to refuse to dispense them.
Earlier this week, abortion advocates, providers and legal experts testified before committees in the House and Senate, stressing the dangers of the Dobbs ruling, particularly for marginalized communities. Ms. ’s Dr. Michele Goodwin was among them. “Mandated, forced or compulsory pregnancy actually contravene enumerated rights in the Constitution, namely the 13th amendment’s prohibition against involuntary servitude and protection of bodily autonomy—as well as the 14th amendment defense of privacy and freedom. The overturning of Roe v. Wade reveals the Supreme Court's neglectful reading of the amendment that abolished slavery and guaranteed all people equal protection under the law,” she said.
In the Senate, Democratic lawmakers also sought to counteract the Court’s ruinous actions as best they could. Senators Patty Murray and Catherine Cortez Masto took to the Senate floor to call for unanimous consent to pass the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act, which would guarantee the constitutional right to travel across state lines to receive abortion care. The bill was blocked by Republican Senator James Langford, who represents Oklahoma—which now prohibits all abortions from the moment of fertilization with very few exceptions. Legislators in Missouri, Texas and Arkansas are already planning to prohibit women from traveling to other states for abortion.
“Let’s be really clear what that means: They want to hold women captive in their own states,” said Murray from the Senate floor. “They want to punish women—and anyone who might help them—for exercising their constitutional right to travel within our country to get the services they need in another state.”
If the extremist Republican governors and legislators and prosecutors thought women and providers and abortion rights advocates wouldn’t fight back, they were wrong. We are already seeing massive organizing by feminists to pass state laws and constitutional amendments to ensure abortion rights, taking court cases to challenge abortion restrictions as violations of state constitutions, providing support and funding to women and pregnant people who must travel from states where abortion is banned to safe states to secure abortions, and providing information and access to medication abortion no matter where a person lives.
There is no way the movement can be stopped.
For Equality,
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Kathy Spillar
Executive Editor
This Week's Must-Reads from Ms.
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Senate Republicans Block Bill Protecting Right to Travel for Abortion [[link removed]] Doctors Protest Ohio Six-Week Abortion Ban: ‘Greatest Assault on Women’s Rights in Our Lifetime’ [[link removed]]
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President Biden Mobilizes Federal Resources to Support Abortion Access for All [[link removed]] Abortion Providers From Around the World Share the Dangers of Practicing Under Bans [[link removed]]
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Abortion How-To: The Ms. Q&A on Menstrual Extraction With Carol Downer [[link removed]] The Dark Money Behind Abortion Bans: Go Inside Ms. Magazine’s Summer 2022 Issue [[link removed]]
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After a Supreme Court term unlike any other in nearly a century, confidence in what was once a revered body has sunk to a historic low. On the latest episode, we’re recapping the recently ended Supreme Court term—exploring a slate of critical rulings that will have wide-ranging impacts from abortion access to climate change and beyond.
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