Six months after Dobbs and the death of Roe v Wade, anti-abortion lunatics are furious that tens of thousands of women, medical staff, and abortion advocates and activists haven't been put in state prisons yet, and they are doing everything in their power to change that even as Republicans realize that abortion cost them dozens of races across the country last month.
The largest anti abortion organization in Texas has created a team of advocates assigned to investigate citizens who might be distributing abortion pills illegally.
Students for Life of America, a leading national antiabortion group, is making plans to systematically test the water Erin Brockovich-style in several large U.S. cities, searching for contaminants they say result from medication abortion.
And Republican lawmakers in Texas are preparing to introduce legislation that would require internet providers to block abortion pill websites in the same way they can censor child pornography.
Nearly six months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, triggering abortion bans in more than a dozen states, many antiabortion advocates fear that the growing availability of illegal abortion pills has undercut their landmark victory. Now they are grasping for new ways to crack down on those breaking the law.
Antiabortion advocates had hoped the June decision would significantly decrease the number of abortions in the United States. But abortion rights activists have ramped up efforts to funnel abortion pills — a two-step regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol that is widely regarded as safe — into states with strict new bans, working with rapidly expanding international suppliers as well as U.S.-based distributors to meet demand.
Now many conservatives are complaining that the abortion bans are not being sufficiently enforced, even though much of the illegal activity is happening in plain sight, as abortion rights advocates seek to reach women in need. Leaders interviewed on both sides of the debate had not heard of any examples of people charged for violating abortion bans since Roe fell, a crime punishable by at least several years in prison across much of the South and Midwest.
“Everyone who is trafficking these pills should be in jail for trafficking,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who has started to speak with Republican governors about the prevalence of illegal abortion pill networks. “It hasn’t happened, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.”
Abortion bans include penalties only for people involved in facilitating illegal abortions, not for the pregnant women themselves.
The push on the right for enforcement reflects the extent to which both sides of the abortion battle are recalibrating after a tumultuous year that has challenged many long-held assumptions about the politics of the issue — and left the state of abortion access in the United States hard to assess. Interviews with more than 30 of the most influential advocacy group leaders, policymakers and litigators on the abortion issue found that far from settling the decades-old abortion question, the fall of Roe has triggered a major new phase of combat set to play out over the next few years in courtrooms, state capitals and the next presidential election.
The real issue is that at some point, any Republican 2024 hopeful is going to have to come out and say they are going to ban abortion medication nationwide, and that's going to get them destroyed in the general election.
The best example of the disconnect is here in Kentucky, where Rand Paul easily won reelection by smashing Charles Booker by 20+ points, but the state's constitutional amendment eliminating the right to an abortion lost by almost 5 points.
Republicans finally caught the car they were chasing, and they are getting dragged all over the road now. And don't believe them when they say they won't criminalize women getting abortions, because they are absolutely going to and they have lied about every other aspect of this.
New research released Wednesday adds to a growing body of evidence showing a link between more restrictive abortion policies and higher rates of maternal and infant mortality.
The analysis comes from the Commonwealth Fund, an independent research organization focused on health policy. It found that strict restrictions on abortion are associated with poorer access to health care for pregnant people and infants, which in turn raises the risk of negative outcomes such as mental health challenges and death.
According to the report, states that heavily restricted abortion access in 2020 had maternal death rates that were 62% higher than they were in states where abortion was more easily accessible.
The disparity may be aggravated by state-level changes after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, the report says.
People of color, those who are uninsured and those who live on low incomes or in underserved areas already face additional risks that threaten their lives during pregnancy, such as difficulty accessing consistent pre- and post-natal care, said Dr. Laurie Zephyrin, the senior vice president for advancing health equity at the Commonwealth Fund.
"Then, on top of all that, you're adding this variation in abortion services, reproductive health services, by states," Zephyrin said. "We're just adding on to an already fractured system."
62% higher rates of infant and mother mortality, and that was before Dobbs. And of course, the people suffering the most are Black women.
The cruelty is the point.
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