Abortion news and discussion

[YellowKing]

I'm pretty sure my mom is voting for Trump this year solely because she 100% believes the lie that Harris supports aborting nine-month old babies. Despite the fact that her vote is actually supporting laws that would have killed her daughter-in-law and led to her grandkids never existing. It's damn criminal the amount of psychological manipulation out there.

I know politicians have always spun their perspective, used half truths and lies of omission. But the level of outright blatant deceit going on in modern politics is incomprehensible.

[Daehawk]

No offense meant YK but if your mom has that bad a brain there aint much you could do to change it.

[YellowKing]

Yeah, and I'm not trying to. There's nothing I can say that's going to override her faith. She's super religious so that plays into it a great deal. She's always put the church's beliefs over her own. When NC voted on gay marriage, she voted against it. Not because she believed it (she has many gay friends and had no problem with gay marriage), but because the pastor told her to vote against it. I'm sure the church is probably standing up there strongly implying which way the congregation needs to vote.

[hepcat]

Little Napoleon DeSantis is now threatening tv stations airing ads supporting abortion rights.

And a federal judge just issued a temp restraining order against this crap and noted "To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

[Isgrimnur]

County judge strikes down Ohio abortion ban, citing voter-approved reproductive rights amendment

The most far-reaching of Ohio’s laws restricting abortion was struck down on Thursday by a county judge who said last year’s voter-approved amendment enshrining reproductive rights renders the so-called heartbeat law unconstitutional.

Enforcement of the 2019 law banning most abortions once cardiac activity is detected — as early as six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they’re pregnant — had been paused pending the challenge before Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Christian Jenkins.
...
“Despite the adoption of a broad and strongly worded constitutional amendment, in this case and others, the State of Ohio seeks not to uphold the constituional protection of abortion rights, but to diminish and limit it,” he wrote. Jenkins said his ruling upholds voters’ wishes.
...
Issue 1, the amendment Ohio voters passed last year, gives every person in Ohio “the right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions.”

[Republican Attorney General Dave] Yost acknowledged in court filings this spring that the amendment rendered the Ohio ban unconstitutional, but sought to maintain other elements of the 2019 law, including certain notification and reporting provisions.

Jenkins said retaining those elements would have meant subjecting doctors who perform abortions to felony criminal charges, fines, license suspensions or revocations, and civil claims of wrongful death — and requiring patients to make two in-person visits to their provider, wait 24 hours for the procedure and have their abortion recorded and reported.

[hepcat]

Okay, this one REALLY pisses me off.

A Trump supporting group is putting out ads claiming that Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have agreed with Trump on reproductive rights, and that Trump does not support abortion bans.

Why did Ruth Bader Ginsburg agree with Donald Trump’s position on abortion?

Because RBG believed that the federal government shouldn’t dictate our abortion laws.

Donald Trump also does not support a federal ban on abortion.
On this issue, great minds think alike

.
Oh fuck you, you worthless lying sacks of shit. Burn in hell.

[Victoria Raverna]

A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms.

It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.

Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.

By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.

Hours later, she was dead.

[Punisher]

Is there a realistic possibility of her family suing the hospital and/state for this or because the docs were following a law, regardless of the outcome they are all safe from it?

[Alefroth]

Sure seems like a wrongful death and/or malpractice suit would be valid. Maybe hold them accountable for the death of the fetus, too.

[LawBeefaroni]

Is there a realistic possibility of her family suing the hospital and/state for this or because the docs were following a law, regardless of the outcome they are all safe from it?

A diagnosis of sepsis and they sent her home? What state law demands that?

The Texas law may have contributed but the hospitals in this case don't see to have their hands tied. I'd expect 2 of the 3, and possibly all 3, have severe liability here.

[Smoove_B]

He's not even waiting for January:

Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York doctor for unlawfully providing abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents in direct violation of state law.

Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, a New York doctor and founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, unlawfully provided a Collin County resident with abortion-inducing drugs that ended the life of an unborn child and resulted in serious complications for the mother, who then required medical intervention. Texas laws prohibit a physician or medical supplier from providing any abortion-inducing drugs by courier, delivery, or mail service. Additionally, no physician may treat patients or prescribe Texas residents medicine through telehealth services unless the doctor holds a valid Texas medical license.

Dr. Carpenter knowingly treated Texas residents despite not being a licensed Texas physician and not being authorized to practice telemedicine in Texas. Attorney General Paxton requested the court enjoin Dr. Carpenter from violating Texas law and impose civil penalties of no less than $100,000 for each violation of the law.

“In this case, an out-of-state doctor violated the law and caused serious harm to this patient. This doctor prescribed abortion-inducing drugs—unauthorized, over telemedicine—causing her patient to end up in the hospital with serious complications. In Texas, we treasure the health and lives of mothers and babies, and this is why out-of-state doctors may not illegally and dangerously prescribe abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents,” said Attorney General Paxton.

Can't wait to see how this shakes out.

[Unagi]

I'm guessing some of the "complications" were because of the laws in Texas.

[Smoove_B]

*sigh*

The CDC Hasn’t Asked States to Track Deaths Linked to Abortion Bans :

After the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022, President Joe Biden issued an executive order tasking the federal government with assessing the “devastating implications for women’s health“ of new state abortion bans.

Experts were warning that these bans would interfere with critical medical care and lead to preventable deaths. And the states that passed the laws had little incentive to track their consequences.

Biden directed the secretary of Health and Human Services to make sure federal agencies were “​​accurately measuring the effect of access to reproductive healthcare on maternal health outcomes.” He called on the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to drive targeted research and data-collection efforts.

But the Biden administration has missed a critical opportunity to illuminate how abortion bans are interfering with maternal health care, leading to deaths and irreversible injuries: The CDC has not pushed state committees that review maternal deaths to examine the role these new laws have played.

Official comment:

When asked why the CDC has not created a checkbox to track deaths related to abortion access, a spokesperson for HHS, the CDC’s parent agency, said that the CDC “receives feedback from states on data fields.” The spokesperson noted that the discrimination checkbox was “added based on state requests” after a work group went through a multiyear process.

The spokesperson also said the lack of a checkbox does not mean HHS failed to meet the goals of Biden’s order. The spokesperson forwarded a 73-page update on the maternal mortality crisis that had been sent to Congress this past July. The report is packed with information on progress combating major maternal health risks: task forces to support mental health, initiatives to respond to the opioid crisis, research on intimate partner violence.

It doesn’t include a single reference to abortion access.

Perspective:

Researchers who track reproductive health lament the failure to think creatively and act urgently to monitor the fallout of abortion bans while the department had a chance.

“The Biden administration’s lost opportunity is that it viewed Dobbs as a political moment to gain advances for the Democratic Party,” said Tracy Weitz, the director of the Center on Health, Risk, and Society at American University. “It did not take this seriously as a public health crisis.”

The window is closing as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office. There is little chance a Republican administration will try to collect data that helps shed light on the impact of abortion bans, which were uniformly passed by Republican-majority state houses.

What could happen as Trump takes over:

If Project 2025 is any guide to how the Trump administration will approach abortion, the CDC may soon start a very different project: launching a mandatory, nationwide surveillance program aimed at portraying abortion care as dangerous.

The conservative blueprint for reshaping the federal government recommends that the agency require all states to report detailed data on abortions, miscarriages and stillbirths or risk losing federal funding.

It states that the CDC “should ensure that it is not promoting abortion as health care.” Instead, “It should fund studies into the risks and complications of abortion.”