All Women's Health & Medical Services

04/11/2023

RU486: The RU486, also known as the Abortion Pill, is a safe and effective way to end an early pregnancy in the privacy of your home. The process consists of taking two medications: mifepristone is taken at the doctor’s office to stop the growth of the pregnancy, then misoprostol is taken at home ...

03/19/2023

Paragard: Paragard (also known as the Copper IUD) is a non-hormonal method of birth control that provides pregnancy prevention for up to 10years. Paragard is a small, T-shaped device that’s placed in the uterus by your health care provider. The device is made of plastic and a small amount of coppe...

01/20/2023

Nexplanon: Nexplanon is a small, thin and flexible rod-like implant that prevents pregnancy for up to 3 years. After the device has placed in your arm by your health care provider, hormone is slowly released into the body to prevent ovulation. Considered to be over 99% effective, it is easy-to-use,....

09/21/2021

The day was jampacked at a Planned Parenthood clinic in southern Illinois when a woman who had just driven over 12 hours from Louisiana for an abortion procedure erupted into tears during her healt…

09/20/2021

Kristi Noem Bans Telemedicine Abortion in South Dakota—Again
https://abortion-blog.com/2021/09/20/kristi-noem-bans-telemedicine-abortion-in-south-dakota-again/

Why did Kristi Noem sign an executive order prohibiting telemedicine abortion if South Dakota already prohibits telemedicine abortion? Political optics.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed an executive order last Tuesday banning telemedicine abortion, even though South Dakota law already effectively bans telemedicine abortion.

“[The Biden Administration is] working right now to make it easier to end the life of an unborn child via telemedicine abortion. That is not going to happen in South Dakota,” the Republican governor said in a statement.

Noem’s executive order:

requires medication abortion be prescribed by a physician licensed in South Dakota after an in-person examination
makes it illegal to deliver abortion pills via courier, telemedicine, or mail
prohibits medication abortion from being dispensed at schools or on state grounds
orders the health department to collect more data on the incidence of medication abortion in the state
Let’s be clear about something: Medication abortion using mifepristone and misoprostol is a common and safe way to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester. (A similar protocol is also commonly used for miscarriage management.) Telemedicine offers increased abortion access to pregnant people, particularly those living in abortion deserts.

Medication abortion is the future, and restricting medication abortion is—like all abortion restrictions—an attack on access for the most marginalized people.

Access to abortion by mail became even more critical during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and in April the Biden administration lifted federal restrictions on providing abortion medication by mail for the duration of the public health crisis.

The thing with Noem’s order, though, is that it’s mostly for political optics.

South Dakota law already effectively blocks the use of telemedicine for abortion care, as Susan Rinkunas wrote for Rewire News Group last December:

The state requires patients to undergo counseling 72 hours before their procedure, not including weekends and holidays—the most restrictive waiting period in the country. That counseling must be done in person, which effectively bans prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine, and the physician providing the abortion, not a nurse or another staffer, must do the state-mandated counseling.

Days before issuing the executive order, Noem announced on Twitter that she had asked a legal adviser (who she calls her office’s “unborn child advocate”) to look for ways to make South Dakota’s abortion laws even more strict, in the wake of the Supreme Court allowing a six-week abortion ban to go into effect in Texas.

Source: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2021/09/13/kristi-noem-bans-telemedicine-abortion-in-south-dakota-again/

09/19/2021

Our Abortions Are Our Business—No Explanation Required
https://abortion-blog.com/2021/09/19/our-abortions-are-our-business-no-explanation-required/

Two weeks ago, Texas passed a law banning access to abortion, with the Supreme Court’s failure to block the legislation signaling a dark future for Roe v Wade.

On social media, people were quick to respond with outrage and dismay. The hashtags , and were all trending on Twitter in the hours and days following the legislation.

One viral thread, retweeted over 29K times at the time this article was written, gave a number of powerful examples of people (presumably patients of the original poster’s) who had sought abortions. The thread also explained their justifications for doing so:

“Tonight I’m thinking about Jill, whose partner removed condoms during s*x, flushed her birth control pills down the toilet, and yanked out her IUD. Eight and a half weeks.

“Tonight I’m thinking about Chelsea, impregnated by an abusive husband she managed to escape from only days ago. Fifteen weeks.

“Tonight I’m thinking about Kate, who was r***d in her group home. Eleven weeks.”

The thread goes on to tell still more stories of pregnant people who sought abortions: a Hmong woman who had never heard of birth control or seen a doctor before she was eight weeks pregnant. A trans man whose pregnancy was causing overwhelming feelings of gender dysphoria. A woman who had been trying to get pregnant for over a decade only to conceive five fetuses at once, making hers an extraordinarily high-risk pregnancy.

These are all moving, compelling stories. I myself retweeted this thread, because it demonstrates quite powerfully that abortion is healthcare and a human right, one which must be accessible to all people regardless of socioeconomic status, race, location or any other factor.

Yet, what is missing in the examples I shared above, and what is all too often missing in discourse about reproductive rights in general, are the more “average” abortion stories, those in which women tell of their choices to exercise reproductive rights not because their own life or the life of their fetus was in grave danger; not because they were r***d or impregnated against their will; not because they had been consistently denied access to birth control; but simply because right now was not the right time.

By placing emphasis on the most dire circumstances causing women to seek abortions—r**e, in**st, high-risk pregnancies, abusive partners—we quite effectively highlight the violence and abuse that so many women encounter in this country. But we also risk diminishing a simpler truth: Women do not need to find themselves in violent or threatening circumstances such as these in order to exercise their right to terminate a pregnancy.

Perhaps more importantly, there is no need for people to share their reasons for making this personal healthcare decision at all. When we provide abortion opponents with justifications or explanations for why women seek abortions, we reinforce the stigmatization of having an abortion and of speaking publicly about it—both of which can further limit people’s ability to access reproductive rights in turn.

Women do not need to find themselves in violent or threatening circumstances in order to exercise their right to terminate a pregnancy.
It is undeniable, and frightening, and infuriating that an enormous number of women seek abortions because they were r***d, many while they were underage, many by men in their own families. It is also undeniable that many seek abortions because they lack access to birth control, prenatal care and healthcare more generally. Still more women seek abortions because they fear the alarmingly high maternity and infant mortality rates in this country, which are among the most abysmal in the developed world, and are disproportionately higher among women of color. But although traumatic and unjust circumstances like r**e, abuse, or a higher likelihood of maternal mortality are certainly powerful examples of why one might get an abortion, these are not the only reasons to exercise that right.

It has been well-documented that, overall, women continue to bear more of the burden of having and raising children and maintaining households than do men. There is arguably no such thing as an equal partnership in parenting, starting with the simple fact that a cis man has no role in gestation, which consumes a woman’s body entirely for nine months, and changes it permanently thereafter. Evidence has also shown that mothers do more of the “invisible labor” of childrearing than do fathers, and sacrifice more professionally, even in the most seemingly equal of partnerships.

Women need reproductive rights because we are r***d, and s*xually assaulted and because men do things to us without our consent. We need reproductive rights because things can and do go terribly wrong during s*x and pregnancies.

But we also need reproductive rights because we still do not live in a world with gender equality, and birthing and raising children continues to be a huge contributing factor to this inequity. For these reasons alone, everyone deserves the right to choose if a pregnancy is not right for her right now.

Everyone also deserves to exercise her right to abortion with privacy and dignity, free from stigmatization. This starts with recognizing that one needn’t ever offer an explanation or justification for seeking an abortion: What a woman does with her body is always solely her business.

Source: https://msmagazine.com/2021/09/13/why-do-people-get-abortions/?fbclid=IwAR1GTByKbNUxYHsJvbg5VQM_xI0nOTMzpkn_HuCX3-b9xGcBLf7wUqh-IAs

09/18/2021

Fighting for More Than Access: Why the Quality of Your Abortion Matters
https://abortion-blog.com/2021/09/18/fighting-for-more-than-access-why-the-quality-of-your-abortion-matters/

Being an abortion counselor has taught me the importance of having more candid conversations about abortion that center bodies and lived experiences.

Abortion access has multiple dimensions.

There’s the legal right to an abortion, but that doesn’t make it accessible—since January, 16 states have enacted a record-breaking 83 abortion restrictions, including the extreme abortion ban that went into effect in Texas at the beginning of this month.

Then there’s financial accessibility, which is hampered by the Hyde Amendment preventing federal funds like Medicaid from paying for abortion.

But what does the language of access have to do with people’s actual abortion experiences, or what it feels like to have your cervix dilated or to pass the pregnancy?

I have spent six years working as an abortion counselor, offering financial, logistical, and emotional support to clients. From 2017-2018, I interviewed 27 people from around the country about their abortion experiences. They described their abortions step by step, and I asked them what they were thinking, feeling, and physically experiencing at every stage of the process. They told me what surprised them and what made them feel comfortable. Some told me about the disappointment or frustration they felt when their experiences with abortion differed from their expectations.

From my work and my interviews, I’ve concluded that providing better support starts with having more candid conversations about abortion that center bodies and lived experiences. The way we talk about abortion has consequences.

What kinds of abortions do people want? And where do these ideas come from?
Two-thirds of my respondents describe abortion as “normal.” For many, that means they desired a clinical and emotionally detached experience. They echo the words I’ve heard so often in the pro-choice movement: that abortion is health care and that only its stigma separates abortion from other medical procedures. Normalizing abortion is a strategy to increase legal access by decreasing stigma; for many patients, that rhetoric seems to have influenced the way they understand their own abortions.

Sam, a 25-year-old artist and doula, said normalizing the telling of their story is what resonates with their abortion experience. “My abortion was a normal part of my life, and I experienced this thing that a lot of people experience,” they said. (Respondents’ names are pseudonyms to protect their privacy.)

The other word that kept coming up was “natural.” That’s how over a third of folks described their experiences, particularly with medication abortion, contrasting it to procedural abortions that involve dilation and aspiration. “It seemed less invasive,” Hermione, 27, said, “and the pills didn’t seem like such a big deal.” Some people compare their medication abortions to a miscarriage or a heavy period.

While medication abortion is safe and increasingly common, it is not inherently more natural than any other abortion method. The allure of a “natural” abortion, though, seems to follow the logic of the “natural childbirth” movement, which encourages pregnant people to follow their natural instincts and to take responsibility for their birth (or in this case, their abortion).

Actual abortion experiences vary
Whereas the concept of a “normal” or “natural” abortion might seem one-size-fits-all, actual experiences are far more varied. For example, like many of my survey participants, RJ, 33, worried about whether her medication abortion was complete after bleeding lasted for a month afterward. “I would call my doctor,” she said, “and be like, ‘Is this normal?’”

While technically no longer pregnant, some people feel their abortion “isn’t over” until their next period. I’d never considered that an abortion could be understood as lasting an entire month, and neither had these respondents. When we fail to discuss this variation, we leave people unequipped to navigate the nuances of their own experience.

Even if someone wants a “normal” or “natural” abortion, their experience might not meet those expectations. Holly, for instance, had planned to set up a mini-altar to commemorate her medication abortion. “But I was just writhing on the floor all day, not paying attention to my crystals or my tea,” she said. “It’s humbling. I had all these rituals, but the day of … none of that s**t mattered.”

Racial and class hierarchies can make it even more difficult for a patient to achieve their desired abortion. In terms of medication abortions, not all people have the ability to control their environment. For example, I have worked with clients who cannot have a medication abortion because they lack stable housing or a private place to pass the pregnancy.

Meanwhile, Valerie, 27, struggled to have the “normal” abortion she desired, given the racism she encountered at the clinic. She recalls being shuffled from room to room without explanation, along with the other Black women being seen that day. “Whenever I tell this story,” she said, “I say that we were herded like cows.”

Valerie’s experience sharply differs from many white participants who describe positive encounters with clinical staff. One white participant, Julie, said there was a person whose job at the clinic was to “hold [her] hand and look into [her] eyes, which was comforting.”

How to better support abortion patients
Practical support: Practical supports, including rides to and from the clinic, doula services, and child care, give a patient more control over their environment, thus enabling them to create the kind of abortion experience they desire. Many abortion funds already strive to provide practical support, in addition to financial support, for their clients.

Remember that someone might need different kinds of support at different stages of the abortion process. For example, Sandy, 30, wanted company while acquiring the medication but preferred solitude when passing the pregnancy.

Comprehensive options counseling: When discussing the differences between various abortion options, counselors can unintentionally shape their clients’ expectations. In my work as an abortion counselor, I tell clients that some people feel comfortable having a doctor by their side, while others feel that a medication abortion is more natural. But I also try to point out concrete differences: for example, that vacuum aspiration takes less time and has a faster recovery period, or that medication abortion can occur at home or at another preferred location.

This doesn’t mean counselors need to remove words like “natural” from their vocabulary. But they should put it into context. I might say that “some people prefer the medication abortion because it feels more natural, but it’s different for everybody.”

Body talk: Candid conversations about abortion should also occur outside the clinic. Although these discussions might be perceived as graphic and thus harmful to abortion’s public image, body talk can help people navigate their own abortions. So we should avoid euphemism and explain what the process of vacuum aspiration and medication abortion look and feel like. If someone asks, we can talk about pain, cramps, and discomfort. And we should create space for people—across the political spectrum—who do feel attached to their pregnancy. After all, not everybody describes or experiences their abortion in clinical terms.

Abortion storytelling groups such as We Testify and Abortion Out Loud (formerly the 1 in 3 Campaign) have already begun to disrupt dominant abortion discourses by elevating lived experiences. But we need more shared language to discuss abortion, so that people can articulate their varied needs and receive the support they deserve.

So yes, we’re fighting for folks to be able to get an abortion. But the quality of your abortion experience also matters. We can care about both.

Source: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2021/09/17/fighting-for-more-than-access-why-the-quality-of-your-abortion-matters/

08/07/2021

07/27/2021

Republicans’anti-abortion crusade is not just dangerous, it is costly or the first time in decades, the House Appropriations Committee passed a spending bill last week without a ban on f…

07/26/2021

If Mississippi Were Truly Pro-Life It Would Stop Banning Abortion
https://abortion-blog.com/2021/07/26/if-mississippi-were-truly-pro-life-it-would-stop-banning-abortion/

Mississippi has a health-care crisis. By asking the Supreme Court to ban abortion, attorneys for the state are deepening it.

Mississippi’s justification for unconstitutional abortion restrictions has long revolved around the assertion that the laws, like the 15-week ban recently taken up by the Supreme Court, protect women and children.

But the reality is now, and has long been, that Mississippi women and children’s health and economic security is not prioritized.

“There are just so many different intersections that we meet at here in Mississippi as Black women when it comes to all of those things that ultimately affect our reproductive rights and our reproductive justice,” said Jackson-based community organizer Amanda Furdge. “The lens is like a kaleidoscope—you’re just turning the dial and seeing what you’re going to land on.”

Furdge points to inequities in health care, child care, and education access that disproportionately impact women of color in Mississippi. “We’re talking about the things that we need all the way into 2021 that we’ve been asking for since our mothers and grandmothers have been asking for them,” she said.

When it comes to the most basic health, education, and poverty outcomes, Mississippi consistently ranks at the bottom.

More infants die here before their first birthday than anywhere else in the United States and most developed countries. The state’s infant mortality rate, while improved recently, is still nearly 9 deaths for every 1,000 births—comparable to Turkey and Brazil. Black infants die at nearly double the rate of white infants.

The racial disparity mostly tracks back to premature births, which can largely be thwarted by wraparound care before, during, and after pregnancy—something out of reach for many due to health insurance barriers. Nearly 1 in 5 women of reproductive age in Mississippi lack health insurance, compared to 13 percent nationwide.

“For us as Black women who are born and raised here in Mississippi and knowing Mississippi’s history as it pertains to Black people in general—but particularly Black women and how we are valued or not valued—we come from the lens of still trying to get equal pay, still trying to get adequate, fully funded child care and adequate, fully funded public education,” Furdge said.

Mississippi is the last state without an equal pay statute. It has restrictive barriers around accessing low-income child care and support programs, and it hasn’t fully funded its public education system since 2007.“There’s nothing about the moves that [the state legislature] has made that backs up this idea that they’re trying to act in the interest of protecting women and/or children.”
-Izzy Pellegrine, sociologist and researcher at Mississippi State University

And a higher rate of people die during pregnancy, labor, or postpartum than in most other states. The state’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee points to Medicaid expansion—or at least extension during the postpartum period—as one part of the solution. The state has refused both, despite new incentives from the Biden administration and evidence that comprehensive health insurance saves lives, particularly during pregnancy and postpartum.

Pregnant people can access Medicaid insurance, but it cuts off two months after they give birth, just as many postpartum complications start to arise. In Mississippi, 86 percent of maternal deaths happen after labor, including more than a third after six weeks—a period in which health insurance is critical to accessing life-saving care.

Mississippi is one of 12 states that hasn’t adopted Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which could have provided health insurance to about 166,000 Mississippians and cut uninsurance rates in half.

Even for folks here with insurance, barriers pop up along the way. Half the state sits in maternity care deserts, which means big pockets of areas don’t have obstetric hospitals, birth centers, OB-GYNs, or certified nurse midwives.

No evidence of protecting women and kids
Aside from expanding Medicaid, researchers here point to evidence-based policies that would help Mississippians plan pregnancies: comprehensive s*x ed and improved access to birth control. These policies not only save lives but have a side effect of reducing abortion.

There’s a long list of interventions to decrease infant mortality and unintended pregnancies, and increase access to prenatal care, Izzy Pellegrine, sociologist and researcher at Mississippi State University, said. “But that’s not what we’re doing.”

Mississippi public schools have two options for s*x ed curriculum: abstinence-only or abstinence-plus, both of which revolve around preventing s*x before marriage. Classes are separated by gender, instructors cannot physically demonstrate birth control methods, and parents must opt-in.

“It’s just a little bit difficult to square the idea that our priorities are protecting women and children when the outcomes we are trying to protect people from are ones we know how to prevent, and we’re not taking the steps to prevent those,” Pellegrine said. “There’s nothing about the moves that [the state legislature] has made that backs up this idea that they’re trying to act in the interest of protecting women and/or children.”

Mississippi’s teen pregnancy and teen STI rates are among the highest in the nation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 41 percent of Mississippi high school students have had s*x. Of those, 52 percent did not use a condom and 69 percent forwent contraceptives like birth control pills or an IUD the last time they had s*x.

“If what we really want to do is improve outcomes, s*x ed we know for sure is the place to start,” Pellegrine said. “It would be a lot cheaper for us to do a better job at s*x ed than for us to continue these embattled abortion restrictions.”

From 2012 to 2018, the state spent nearly $1 million defending abortion restrictions that were almost all overturned by federal courts. And that was before the current 15-week ban or the subsequent six-week ban moved through the appeals stage.

Further, Pellegrine points out that most of the state is already under a de facto abortion ban because of years of TRAP laws—targeted regulation of abortion providers—that chipped away at access, forcing more Mississippians seeking abortion care to leave the state—at a higher rate than everywhere except Missouri and South Carolina.

“If we think about how abortion access is structured, for most women in Mississippi, we’re already living in an effectively post-Roe situation,” Pellegrine said.

‘A problem of class resources’
Most national coverage points out that abortion bans disproportionately impact women of color in Mississippi, where 72 percent of abortion patients are Black, painting the picture that only Black women seek abortions here. Not only does the state have the highest proportion of Black residents—nearly 40 percent of the population—in the country, the barriers to abortion care and health care in general disproportionately impact those living in poverty, of which a third of Black Mississippians are.

White pregnant people tend to leave the state for abortion care, “but that’s really a problem of class resources,” Pellegrine said.

“And the relationship between race and class is obviously deeply interwoven and especially in a place that has a history like Mississippi. But it’s not a function of racial differences in acts, it’s the relationship between race and class and how that shapes access to health care.”

Furdge, the community organizer, adds that abortion restrictions come down to race and gender power dynamics that have always been at play here.

“You know human beings, you know women and children intimately who directly benefit or not from the way that laws are being made and carried out,” she said. “If [lawmakers] really cared, they would put themselves in our shoes. You don’t even have to walk, you can just try them on and see how they fit.”

But Furdge also points to the legacy of grassroots organizers in Mississippi, particularly Black women like Fannie Lou Hamer and Myrlie Evers-Williams, and hopes national groups will help build off Mississippi momentum. She invoked a quote from Hamer: “Mississippi is not actually Mississippi’s problem, Mississippi is America’s problem”—and not just because the current 15-week case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, has the power to threaten abortion access for much of the country.

“We’re doing pretty OK, other than the bogus laws, and we’re working on that,” Furdge said. “As far as community, we got each other’s back. I believe we have one of the strongest and most grassroots, most loving, family-oriented, organizing structures in Mississippi than anywhere else.”

Source: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2021/07/23/if-mississippi-were-truly-pro-life-it-would-stop-banning-abortion/

07/25/2021

Abortion Rights Remain Strong in CO as Surrounding States Look to Dismantle Them Ahead of Supreme Court Case
https://abortion-blog.com/2021/07/25/abortion-rights-remain-strong-in-co-as-surrounding-states-look-to-dismantle-them-ahead-of-supreme-court-case/

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear a case that could do away with or weaken the constitutional right to an abortion, Colorado is situated among states with highly restrictive anti-abortion policies that could cut off access to the procedure for their residents if Roe falls.

Colorado is considered an abortion safe haven due to its lack of restrictions on abortion, so the state could have a critical role to play for people across the country who are seeking abortion care in a post-Roe America.

And while people already travel to Colorado from all over the country for abortion care due to laws in other states that make abortion inaccessible, particularly for abortions later in pregnancy, it could eventually become one of the only states in the region where abortion is legal at all depending on the outcome of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The case concerns a Mississippi law banning abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy, a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade’s ruling that abortion cannot be heavily restricted prior to viability, which usually occurs around 24 weeks, though there’s no hard and fast line. Upholding the Mississippi law means delivering a devastating blow to Roe, and while it’s difficult to predict the outcome, both abortion rights advocates and foes see the case as the likely beginning of the end of the federal right to an abortion.

Over half of women live in states that would likely ban abortion if that happens, and it’d be up to Colorado and a handful of other states that are considered abortion safe havens–including states on the East and West coast and a handful of states in the central U.S.–to provide access for huge pockets of the United States.

For example, many states in the region, including Utah, Idaho, Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and North and South Dakota have so-called “trigger bans” that would prohibit abortion immediately if Roe were overturned, some of which were passed this year.

Some states, like Utah, Idaho, and Arizona, have gestational bans on abortion occurring after 15 weeks but prior to viability that have been blocked by courts but could take effect depending on the outcome of the case.

Arizona doesn’t have a trigger ban, but does have a law on the books from before Roe was decided that bans abortion. Roe made the law unenforceable, but state officials could choose to enforce it if the court reverses Roe.

New Mexico had a similar pre-Roe abortion ban on the books up until this year when state lawmakers repealed it, a move that cemented New Mexico’s status as an abortion care safe haven in a potential post-Roe America. If Roe falls, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada will serve as islands of abortion access in a sea of hostility that spans the West, the Midwest, and the South.

A Fresh Onslaught of Restrictions
Even before the court’s announcement in May that it would hear the Mississippi case, anti-abortion state lawmakers were delivering a sustained assault on abortion rights and access. Now, they’re as emboldened as ever by the possibility that once-unconstitutional measures could be upheld by an increasingly conservative judiciary at all levels of the federal court system, thanks to the Trump administration and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented focus on nominating and confirming hundreds of judges. As a result, it’s been the worst year on record for abortion rights as 2021 state legislative sessions draw to a close.

Those legislators passed a whopping 90 abortion restrictions this year alone, more than any other year since Roe was decided in 1973, according to a report from the Guttmacher Institute.

“The 2021 abortion restrictions amplify the harm of earlier ones,” the report states. “Each additional restriction increases patients’ logistic, financial and legal barriers to care, especially in regions where entire clusters of states are hostile to abortion.”

Colorado is surrounded by these clusters.

“Our doors are open and we’re not going anywhere, but the thing we’ve been worried about and have warned people about for years is happening,” said Jack Teter, Regional Director of Government Affairs for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM), which encompasses Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Southern Nevada.

Teter pointed out that Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada already serve a high number of out-of-state patients, including patients from nearly every state in the country, due to restrictions that are currently in place. He said the demand for abortion access in Colorado is only going to increase.

For example, when Texas lawmakers ordered abortion clinics to shut down in the spring of 2020 as covid-19 began to ravage the United States, PPRM saw a 1200 percent increase in patients from Texas, according to Teter, which provided a snapshot of what a post-Roe future could look like.

“These barriers to access disproportionately harm women of color, rural folks, and undocumented patients,” Teter said. “For many of our patients for whom healthcare broadly and reproductive health care specifically has been historically out of reach, this will make it even worse for those communities.”

Anti-abortion state lawmakers are doing everything they can to restrict abortion and pass laws that might be unconstitutional now, but could be enforceable later depending on the Supreme Court’s decision.

“They’re limiting abortion access to the highest extent that they constitutionally can, which is strong indication that as soon as they can do more, they will,” Teter said.

In Texas, lawmakers shocked abortion rights advocates and legal experts with a first-of-its-kind abortion restriction that deputizes citizens to enforce a ban on abortion.

The law, which passed in May and is set to go into effect Sept. 1, not only bans essentially all abortions prior to six weeks of pregnancy, but enables private citizens to sue anyone who performs or helps someone obtain an illegal abortion and awards them at least $10,000 if they win the lawsuit. It essentially creates an abortion bounty hunt, providing an incentive for citizens to catch their neighbors, friends, classmates, and coworkers in the act of violating the ban, including by helping someone pay for a procedure, providing information about where they can get one, or simply giving them a ride.

The scope of the law is far-reaching, and it’s unclear what kind of impact it could have on Texas patients attempting to travel out of state to seek abortion care and whether they’ll be able to get the logistical and financial support they need.

“All of that uncertainty and fear, it creates a chilling effect for patients, it scares their friends, and it creates a situation in which someone might say, ‘hey can you drive me to my appointment,’ and someone’s like, ‘I don’t know, can I?’” said Teter. “It’s horrifically cruel.”

It’s a new, untested approach to restricting abortion that may be copied by other states who are seeking to criminalize care. And Teter says this is just the beginning.

“This is just starting,” he said. “The Supreme Court decision hasn’t even happened yet. This is the first pass. This is the first legislative session.”

Oklahoma and Idaho also passed bans on abortion at six weeks this year, in addition to a slew of other restrictions. Several states, including Arizona, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Montana, passed restrictions on abortion via telemedicine, which allows abortion medication to be prescribed remotely and picked up at a local health center or delivered via mail.

In many states in the region, people seeking abortion medication, a safe and effective method for ending early pregnancies, will have to drive potentially hundreds of miles simply to take a pill in a doctor’s office. That, of course, requires that you have a car and can afford gas, or have the ability to buy a plane ticket.

In some states, the landscape of abortion rights and access shifted this year due to Republican election wins.

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte’s 2020 election win, for example, gave Republicans total control over state government for the first time in 16 years. As a result, lawmakers in Montana, where over half of all women live in a county without an abortion provider, passed several anti-abortion measures, including restricting abortion to 20 weeks or earlier, prohibiting health insurance plans purchased through the state exchange from covering abortion, banning abortion via telemedicine, and requiring abortion providers to offer patients the option to view an ultrasound, a measure designed to shame and coerce patients.

While Montana’s constitution affirms the right to an abortion, meaning abortion would be legal in Montana if Roe fell, lawmakers have demonstrated that they’ll restrict abortion in any way they can to the extent that the constitution allows. In fact, they nearly passed an initiative that would have asked voters to add a constitutional amendment that defines life as beginning at conception and would have banned all abortion, but were just five votes short.

A Grave Threat in Kansas
The situation in Kansas is similar to that of Montana: while these states have abortion protections in their constitutions, anti-abortion lawmakers are in charge, and they’ve shown they’ll do everything in their power to strip reproductive rights from their constituents.

In Kansas, voters will soon be asked to decide on a ballot initiative that would amend the state’s constitution to explicitly state that there is no right to an abortion.

The measure, which was just barely approved by a two-thirds majority in Kansas’ Senate, would overturn the Kansas Supreme Court’s 2019 decision that declared abortion a “fundamental right” under the state’s bill of rights. While the measure doesn’t explicitly ban abortion, it adds language to the constitution declaring that abortion rights are not protected and that state lawmakers can regulate it as they see fit. Given the strong anti-abortion majority in Kansas’ legislature, a ban on abortion is implied.

“This could pave the way for all-out bans or other types of laws that block access,” said Myfy Jensen-Fellows, Volunteer and Community Engagement Manager for Trust Women, which runs abortion clinics in underserved communities in Kansas and Oklahoma. “We know that this is particularly devastating for marginalized communities. Many people already have to travel great distances, outside of their communities, to access care.”

What’s more, the measure will appear on the state’s August 2022 primary ballot, something abortion rights activists say is all the more concerning.

“The date of this ballot measure is a strategic move,” Jensen-Fellows said. “There tends to be a much lower voter turnout during primary elections, which in Kansas tends to favor Republican turnout.”

While voters who are not affiliated with a major political party are not allowed to vote for candidates in primary elections in Kansas, all registered voters in the state are eligible to vote on statewide ballot questions, something Jensen-Fellows has been a source of confusion.

“While we believe there is a path forward, there is a need for public education on the matter and get out the vote efforts,” she said.

How Safe Are Our Rights in Colorado?
Colorado’s shift to the left has brought about significant policy change when it comes to reproductive rights, but the state has yet to enact abortion protections in state law, meaning that while the state has relatively few restrictions on abortion, it doesn’t guarantee abortion rights independently of Roe.

But with pro-choice majorities in Colorado’s House of Representatives and Senate, in addition to the Governor’s Mansion, it’s highly unlikely that the state would enact a law restricting abortion.

For Teter, Colorado’s lack of a law that affirms abortion rights isn’t a cause for concern given the state’s history of protecting those rights at the ballot box and at the Capitol.

“Abortion access is safe here,” Teter said. “It’s safe here because the voters in this state have demonstrated multiple times that they’re not interesting in banning abortion or making it difficult to access. It’s safe here because of our strong legislative majorities.”

He has a point: While these kinds of constitutional and statutory abortion protections can serve as a backstop if Roe falls, even states that do have them, like Montana and Kansas, are under threat when anti-choice state lawmakers who search for every possible avenue to restrict abortion are in power.

Teter said that while pro-abortion rights lawmakers in other states are forced on the defensive, Colorado’s political landscape affords advocates the opportunity to focus their efforts instead on expanding reproductive health access, particularly for underserved communities.

“In Colorado, where we know that both public opinion and political majorities support access to abortion care, we can instead focus on expanding access for patients,” Teter said.

For example, this year, Colorado passed legislation that provided contraceptives for undocumented immigrants, expanded abortion access for s*xual assault survivors, set clearer health care standards for pregnant women who are incarcerated, and more.

Teter said it’s about making sure our house is in order and that Coloradans are cared for as we prepare for a post-Roe era. That way, we can focus more of our efforts on helping the woman driving hundreds of miles from Bismarck to Denver for care.

Source: https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2021/07/abortion-rights-remain-strong-in-co-as-surrounding-states-look-to-dismantle-them-ahead-of-supreme-court-case/38271/