Who’s Behind the Rapid Decline in Abortions in the U.S.?

The abortion rate has hit a 30-year low, but anti-choicers had nothing to do with it. The true force behind the drop in the number of abortions is contraception, brought to you by Planned Parenthood and pro-choice activists who have effectively made it universal.

That’s right: universal. About 99 percent of sexually active women have used birth control before and a great majority are still using it. The worrying thing is, however, these numbers were true before conservatives started shutting down clinics left and right.

Slate:
[According to] the Guttmacher Institute, which records the abortion rate by surveying the known abortion providers in the country… between 2008 and 2011, the number of abortions fell to 1.1 million a year, a drop of 13 percent. Overall, abortion has been in a long-term decline for most of the time it’s been legal. In 1981, 29 women per 1,000 ages 15-44 had an abortion. In 2011, it was only 17 per 1,000.

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Why Do We Have Unsafe Abortion in the United States?

In the most recent issue of The New Yorker, Eyal Press, a Nation contributor and the son of an OB/GYN who provided abortions, has a harrowing and important story about the rogue abortionist Steven Brigham, who has owned substandard clinics all around the country. Brigham has been involved in horrifically botched surgical abortions as well as a number of medical abortions that failed because he used methotrexate, a cheaper, less effective and more dangerous drug than the commonly prescribed mifepristone. In some cases, he began a procedure in New Jersey and then had patients driven to Maryland where he would complete it, so as to circumvent New Jersey law governing late-term abortion. One of his patients, an 18-year-old African-American girl who was twenty-one weeks pregnant, had to be airlifted to Johns Hopkins Hospital after her uterus was perforated and bowel damaged.

There have been complaints and investigations about Brigham going back to the 1990s, but somehow he continues to operate, moving from one state to another and opening new clinics when old ones are shut down. On the surface, his case, like that of gruesome Kermit Gosnell, seems like evidence for the anti-abortion movement’s contention that abortion clinics are under-regulated. “The argument about abortion often centers around the morality of killing the unborn,” writes Jillian Kay Melchior in National Review. “But Press’s story really hammers home the impact on the vulnerable women who often find themselves exploited at sketchy abortion clinics.”

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Why Abortion Clinics Need Buffer Zones

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a case that could ultimately determine whether women across the country can maintain safe access to abortion clinics. Depending how the justices rule on McCullen v. Coakley, cities and states may no longer be allowed to enact buffer zones around reproductive health care facilities — a policy that abortion providers say is critical for ensuring the safety of their patients and staff, since protests outside of clinics often turn violent.

Earlier this week, the New York Times and the Associated Press both profiled Eleanor McCullen, the 77-year-old plaintiff in the legal challenge who has become the face of the current Supreme Court battle. McCullen says that buffer zones violate her free speech rights, and points out that she’s hardly a threat to women entering health facilities. “I am 5 feet 1 inch tall,” McCullen said in a filed statement for the case. “My body type can be described as ‘plump.’ I am a mother and grandmother.”

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North Dakota's Efforts to Ban Abortion Put Women Back 100 Years

Conservative state looks to push its agenda on the national level as others compete for title of 'most restrictive'

As Bloomberg reports:

House Bill 1456 would make it a felony for a doctor to perform a non-emergency abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can be as early as five or six weeks. House Bill 1305 would prohibit abortions sought because a fetus has been or could be diagnosed with any genetically inherited defect, disease or disorder.

And ThinkProgress' Tara Culp-Ressler explains how this fits into a national push by anti-choice activists and religious zealots trying participating in a race to erase the gains made for reproductive rights in the last century:

So far this year, anti-choice lawmakers in Arkansas and North Dakota have practically tripped over each other to see which state can impose more abortion restrictions. Arkansas initially pulled into the lead by imposing two stringent restrictions, a 20-week abortion ban and, later, a stricter 12-week ban. But North Dakota may be ready to raise the stakes once again. Republican lawmakers are advancing a “fetal heartbeat” measure to outlaw the procedure after just six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even realize they’re pregnant, and they expect to have enough support to push it though.

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Happy Anniversary Roe v. Wade! Here Are the States Competing To Ban Legal Abortion First.

Today marks the 40^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and thus 40 years of an angry, hyper-religious, sex-phobic movement that has sought every avenue it can to turn back the clock, and return abortion to the black market. Anti-choice efforts have been successful in reducing access to safe, legal abortion, but for the past 40 years, pro-choice forces have maintained at least one clinic in every state in the country.

That might not last. Now various red states compete to see which can be the first to end legal abortion within their borders. As we take stock of where things stand in 2013, here are the three states likeliest to reach that goal in the near future.

Alabama. Alabama already has some of the most restrictive abortion rights in the country, which have been used to hound one of the last remaining clinics (the site of Eric Rudolph’s bombing in 1998) out of business, leaving the city of Birmingham with one clinic. To make things worse, the Alabama Supreme Court recently declared fetuses to be “children” under state law, giving those who believe embryonic personhood is the key to ending legal abortion a foothold. The decision explicitly made an exception for abortion, but anti-choicers hope that by routinely prosecuting pregnant women for “child abuse” or possibly even holding women criminally responsible for miscarriages, the groundwork can be laid for a legal decision banning abortion completely.

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Anti-Abortion Christian Reality TV Show to Try to Shame Women

As if the world really needs another reality show, a new one about five women who have had abortions is set to debut next month on the Christian Internet television network KnockTV.  “Surrender the Secret” will follow the “five women on their journey together to ... healing and self-forgiveness,” according to pro-life website Live Action News.

“There’s a new trend among abortion proponents—convince the world that abortion is not shameful. Convince post-abortive women that any guilt they may feel is unfounded. Convince post-abortive women who have kept their abortion a secret that they should shout about it from the rooftops with pride,” says Live Action News’ Nancy Flanders. “Post-abortive women do need to talk about their choice. However, they don’t need to be and shouldn’t pretend to be proud of it.” 

Because obviously the best place for these women to go through the healing process is on an online reality show that is publicly shaming them for their life choices.

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John Koster, GOP House Candidate: 'The Rape Thing' Does Not Excuse Abortions

John Koster, a Republican congressional candidate in Washington state, said Sunday that "the rape thing" is not a good enough reason for a woman to have an abortion, the Associated Press reported.

Asked at a campaign fundraiser whether he supports abortion rights in some situations, Koster replied that he only supports abortion in cases where a woman's life is in danger.

"Incest is so rare, I mean, it's so rare," he said. "But the rape thing-- you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept the child, gave it up for adoption, and she doesn't regret it."

He added, "On the rape thing, it's like, how does putting more violence onto a woman's body and taking the life of an innocent child that's a consequence of this crime -- how does that make it better? You know what I mean?"

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New debate looms over sex-selective abortion motion

A second abortion-related motion proposed by a backbench Conservative MP could trigger a new debate about the parameters of a woman’s right to choose in Canada.

Mark Warawa’s private member’s motion, which asks the House of Commons to condemn the practice of sex-selective abortions, was tabled last Thursday, one day after MPs voted down a separate motion to study whether a fetus should have rights before it is born.

Pro-choice activists staunchly opposed MP Stephen Woodworth’s fetus-rights motion, suggesting it could open a national debate on a woman’s right to access abortion – something Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised not to do during the last federal election campaign. And although Mr. Harper made it clear that he did not support that motion, 10 Conservative cabinet ministers and nearly half of the party’s caucus voted in its favour.

Mr. Warawa says his motion is unrelated to Mr. Woodworth’s and intends only to formalize what he believes is a cross-party consensus that sex-selective abortions are inappropriate.

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In Texas, Don’t Even Mention Abortion

The Republican-controlled State Legislature in Texas and Gov. Rick Perry are perfectly willing to endanger the general health and welfare of low-income women to further their agenda of eroding abortion rights. And, now, a federal appeals court has given them a green light to do that, at least temporarily.

A federal district judge had placed an injunction on a state regulation that excludes Planned Parenthood affiliates, which do not provide abortions, from receiving state money through the Women’s Health Program pending the outcome of a lawsuit brought by the clinics. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit lifted that injunction on Tuesday. 

It is impossible to overstate the callousness of the state regulation and the harm it will inflict. The program serves more than 100,000 uninsured, low-income women, with the federal government paying 90 percent of the roughly $40 million that it costs. The feds are now phasing out support because the rule violates federal law. 

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This is an editorial in the New York Times.  Tom

Another Abortion Showdown in Virginia

Attorney General Cuccinelli rejects the decision of the Board of Health.

Last Spring, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell was a pretty credible candidate for the vice presidency. Then he tripped over a trans-vaginal ultrasound bill that enraged women throughout the commonwealth and turned—almost overnight—into a great big political cautionary tale. As Alexander Burns explained in Politico, McDonnell’s early support of a law that would have mandated an invasive ultrasound procedure for women seeking abortions “turned McDonnell’s national political fortunes upside down.” (He later switched positions, signing a modified version of that law that did away with the now politically-toxic internal probe.) McDonnell not only became a walking human punch line for a few days, but he also may have finally managed to turn the commonwealth into a blue state: President Obama appears to have opened up a 20-point lead over Mitt Romney among women voters, who, presumably, didn’t want the state probing them for no coherent medical reason.

You’d think the lesson would be clear here: Voters may be deeply conflicted on the question of abortion, but women aren’t going to tolerate state efforts to eliminate it under the guise of protecting their superfragile health. Even voters worried about jobs and the economy aren’t too distracted to notice when the state begins to talk about women as if they just aren’t all that bright. But the message seems to have been lost amid breezy explanations that the Virginia trans-vaginal overreach was a one-off, or that the governor’s tanking poll numbers were unrelated, or that women in the commonwealth just won’t notice a blatantly political government overreach if it happens again.

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Virginia’s Proposed Ultrasound Law Is an Abomination

Under the new legislation, women who want an abortion will be forcibly penetrated for no medical reason. Where’s the outrage?

This week, the Virginia state Legislature passed a bill that would require women to have an ultrasound before they may have an abortion. Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced. Since a proposed amendment to the bill—a provision that would have had the patient consent to this bodily intrusion or allowed the physician to opt not to do the vaginal ultrasound—failed on 64-34 vote, the law provides that women seeking an abortion in Virginia will be forcibly penetrated for no medical reason. I am not the first person to note that under any other set of facts, that would constitute rape under state law.

What’s more, a provision of the law that has received almost no media attention would ensure that a certification by the doctor that the patient either did or didn’t “avail herself of the opportunity” to view the ultrasound or listen to the fetal heartbeat will go into the woman’s medical record. Whether she wants it there or not. I guess they were all out of scarlet letters in Richmond.

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Crazy. Tom

The Death of Roe v. Wade

Supporters and opponents of abortion seem to agree: It's no longer the law of the land.

By Dahlia Lithwick

Supporters and opponents of abortion agree on nothing. One side says this is a conversation about fertilized eggs; the other says it's about fetuses. One side says the debate is about personal autonomy; the other says it's about murder. One side sees exceptions to abortion restrictions for reasons of maternal life or health as necessary to protect life; the other sees them as cunning "loopholes."

Increasingly, however, there is a fundamental assumption both sides seem to share, even if they don't say so, and it may well shape the future of abortion rights in America: Opponents and supporters of abortion appear to have taken the position that Roe v. Wade is no longer the law of the land.

Since the start of this year, 916 measures seeking to regulate reproductive health have been introduced in 49 states. According to the Guttmacher Institute, by the end of March, 15 laws had been enacted in seven states. These laws include an expansion of the waiting period in South Dakota from 24 to 72 hours and a requirement that counseling from "crisis pregnancy centers" include scientifically flawed data on risk factors. There are new regulations in Utah and Virginia governing abortion clinics. Legislation has been introduced in 13 states requiring that women have an ultrasound procedure before having an abortion—and in seven of those states, the woman must view the fetus and listen to a detailed verbal description as well. Measures have been introduced in 17 states copying a Nebraska law banning abortion at 20 weeks, on the theory—again based on questionable medical data—that this is when a fetus can feel pain.

Revealed: The Group Behind the Bills that Could Legalize Killing Abortion Providers

It's no coincidence that bills to expand justifiable homicide laws have popped up in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa. Meet the group that launched the effort.

Americans United for Life at the US Supreme Court in January 2011. Flickr/AUL.

First, it was South Dakota. Then Nebraska and Iowa. The similarly worded bills, which have quietly cropped up recently in state legislatures, share a common purpose: To expand justifiable homicide statutes to cover killings committed in the defense of an unborn child. Critics of the bills, including law enforcement officials, warn that these measures could invite violence against abortion providers and possibly provide legal cover to the perpetrators of such crimes.

That these measures have emerged simultaneously in a handful of states is no coincidence. It's part of a campaign orchestrated by a Washington-based anti-abortion group, which has lobbied state lawmakers to introduce legislation that it calls the "Pregnant Woman's Protection Act" [PDF]. Over the past two years, the group, Americans United for Life, has succeeded in passing versions of this bill in Missouri and Oklahoma. But there's a big difference between those bills and the measures floated recently in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa.

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The Abortion Tax

The Republican plan to prevent your abortion by holding your tax money hostage.

By William Saletan

The Republican platform ridicules Democrats for failing to recognize the difference between public and private money. It complains that Congress "treats well-deserved tax cuts as a kind of spending, so that letting Americans keep more of their earnings is considered the same as more spending on pork projects." Democrats forget that "eliminating … tax reductions" is just another way "to raise taxes," says the GOP:

Today's Democratic Party views the tax code as a tool for social engineering. They use it to control our behavior, steer our choices, and change the way we live our lives. The Republican Party will put a stop to both social engineering and corporate handouts by simplifying tax policy, eliminating special deals, and putting those saved dollars back into the taxpayers' pockets.

Two years after writing that platform, Republicans have captured the House of Representatives. And what's their first item of business? Using the tax code as a tool for social engineering. This week, the House began hearings on two abortion bills: the Protect Life Act and the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Both bills would outlaw the use of federal money for abortions. And to give the government more leverage, they would redefine tax credits as federal money.

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Utah Miscarriage Law Reduces Women to Fetus Incubators

Anti-choicers' plan is to make legal abortion inaccessible and criminalize everything else. What's the point of Roe v Wade if women can't get abortions?

Rally for Healthcare Reform and to Stop Stupak at San Francisco City Hall

Photo Credit: Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr

Last week, Utah governor Gary Herbert signed into law Utah HB 462, known ignominiously as "the miscarriage bill". It was a reworked version of the original bill, introduced by Republican State Representative Carl D Wimmer, adjusted to address criticisms that the initial language "could have got women sent away for lifelong prison terms for falling down stairs or staying in an abusive relationship". The revised version "designates the 'intentional or knowing' miscarriage as criminal homicide" and "stipulates that a woman can be charged with homicide for 'the death of her unborn child', unless the death qualifies as legal abortion".

Thus are the women of Utah left with a new law that criminalizes illegal abortion in a state that increasingly discourages legal abortions.

Utah already requires parental notification and consent for minors seeking abortions, mandates a 24-hour waiting period to terminate a pregnancy, subjects women seeking abortions to state-directed counseling which overtly discourages abortion, and allows public funding for terminations only in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality, or threat to the women's life or physical health. (Don't think you can get away with claiming your psychological health is at risk, ladies! Everyone knows that women would just lie about that to get an abortion because there's nothing conceivably traumatizing about being forced to carry a pregnancy you don't want to term.)

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Tiller's Killer Puts Abortion on Trial

By Sharon Lerner

The murder trial of Scott Roeder, confessed killer of abortion provider George Tiller, is being conducted as a case of savior against savior, which is in fact the title of the GQ piece detailing the events of May 31, 2009, the day Roeder shot Tiller in church. The piece begins on a disturbingly even-handed note: "Both men believed they were doing right..." And, though the judge has ruled that the jury will not be able to consider the killing either manslaughter or second-degree murder, the trial, which began last week in Wichita, Kansas, has unfortunately headed in a similar direction, with Roeder testifying today about his antiabortion beliefs, his religious awakening while watching The 700 Club on TV and his frustration with the legal system--as if any of this could way justify killing.

Perhaps Tiller, a family physician who ran an abortion clinic and one of the few doctors in the country to openly perform the procedure in the third trimester, did have some of the savior in him. His colleagues often referred to him as "Saint George," because he would frequently take cases no other doctor would, like that of an 11-year-old incest survivor. And he clearly believed deeply in what he was doing, as evidenced by the recently released video, in which he describes the predisposition to provide abortion as an "inner calling."

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Update: Scott Roeder was just found guilty of first degree murder. Friday afternoon. Tom

By the way, here is a link to an article about why the judge in this case should have recused himself. Tom

Legal Abortion Is a Fundamental Right -- Why Do We Often Forget That?

By Frances Kissling, The Women's Media Center. Posted January 3, 2010.

It's time to demand that the promise of Roe becomes a reality for women whose choices are already limited by poverty, joblessness and marginalization.

The debate about abortion coverage in health insurance reform is the latest disappointing moment in the efforts of feminists to ensure that the social transformation Roe promised women was equally available to all women, including those who were dependent on the government for health care. To hear President Obama call the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal Medicaid funds for abortion, an “American tradition” is only the most recent of many misstatements about what a fundamental right entails. It seems that prochoice legislators, following the president’s lead, now explicitly consider that throwing women who cannot afford to pay for their own abortions under the bus is a reasonable compromise between those who favor and those who oppose legal abortion and a sensible concession to those who think abortion is immoral.

The compromise is the logical outcome of one of Roe’s essential weaknesses: the fact that the constitutional right to abortion was based on the principle of privacy rather than non discrimination. A private right, even a fundamental one, did not, according to the Supreme Court, require the state to pay for its implementation.

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AbortionWorldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress

Acknowledgments
Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress was
written by Susheela Singh, Rubina Hussain, Akinrinola
Bankole and Gilda Sedgh, all of the Guttmacher Institute,
and Deirdre Wulf, independent consultant. The report was
edited by Peter Doskoch and copyedited by Haley Ball;
Kathleen Randall supervised production.
The authors thank the following colleagues for their comments
and help in developing this report: Elena Prada and
Michael Vlassoff, for reviewing the literature; Alison
Gemmill, for providing research support throughout the
project; and Ann Biddlecom, Sharon Camp, Susan A.
Cohen, Leila Darabi, Patricia Donovan, Stanley K.
Henshaw, Ann Moore, Cory L. Richards and Gustavo
Suárez, for reviewing drafts of the report. Special thanks
are due to Jacqueline E. Darroch and Stanley Henshaw
for assistance with data interpretation and to Evert
Ketting for providing data from various European countries.
All are affiliated with the Guttmacher Institute,
except for Elena Prada and Evert Ketting, who are independent
consultants.

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Here's a link to a story about this report if you don't want to wade through the complete report: Tom

Worldwide abortion rates fall

New Oklahoma law will publicy post details of women’s abortions online.

On Nov. 1, a law in Oklahoma will go into effect that will collect personal details about every single abortion performed in the state and post them on a public website. Implementing the measure will “cost $281,285 the first year and $256,285 each subsequent year.” Here are the first eight questions that women will have to reveal:

1. Date of abortion
2. County in which abortion performed
3. Age of mother

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Slam Bill O'Reilly for His Jihad Against Dr. George Tiller

By Isaac Fitzgerald, AlterNet. Posted June 2, 2009.

O'Reilly's horribly offensive rhetoric helped feed the hate that led to this act of domestic terrorism.

Dr. George Tiller, one of the few OB-GYNs in the country who performed late-term abortions despite threats to his safety, was brutally slain on Sunday in an act of domestic terrorism. Suspect Scott Roeder has been detained for questioning, but while Roeder may have pulled the trigger, another participant in Tiller's tragic death is still at large: Bill O'Reilly.

Gabriel Winant of Salon writes about O'Reilly:

... there's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller's name first appeared on The Factor on Feb. 25, 2005. Since then, O'Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as "Tiller the Baby Killer."

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