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ISSUE #30
July 19, 2022
The week after Roe and Casey fell was the longest seven days. Even though I knew the decision was coming, it was still unbelievable. On June 24th, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, repealed the constitutional right to abortion granted in Roe v. Wade, returning the question to the states unleashing legal chaos for doctors and their female patients.
If you, too, feel like you’re living in a dystopian reality or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, you are. Your feelings are accurate. You would be correct.
The whole week when driving — I drive a lot, I live in L.A. — I was either in a daze or driving aggressively. One time, I raced a man at a red light next to me just because he was a man. I won. When I saw a mom and her cooing baby in a coffee shop, I was resentful of that little cherub.
States are forcing women to have a children. Laws written by mostly men, and some laws on the books, known as “trigger laws” were written in the 19th century, so those were definitely penned by men. Legislating our uteruses but not the guns that kill our children.
Wisconsin reverted to a law that was passed in 1849, and revised in 1858, which outlaws all abortions except for those necessary “to save the life of the mother.”
1849!
Someone said to me, You’re so angry.
“Good observation,” I said, “What’s wrong with you that you aren’t?”
When I told my partner that Roe was overturned, he replied, “I’m so sorry.”
I wanted to explode.
Sorry!?!
It’s your problem too, partner.
It’s everyone’s problem when women are no longer free to make their own choices.
Anger, just like hope, can feed action. It can help us organize and mobilize.
It’s important to know what is coming next from national antiabortion groups and their allies in Republican-led state legislature. They are advancing even more draconian laws in red states.
Gavin Newsom (democrat), the Governor of California, is investing in abortion to help women from other states. His budget earmarked $40 million in one-time funds to subsidize the cost of providing abortion to low-income and uninsured patients, including those from out of state. The 40M will go towards in-state travel, lodging, child care, and other expenses, but not air travel for those coming from out of state.
I thought this last bit was interesting.
Air travel is one of the biggest expenses for women traveling to California to get the healthcare they need (lodging is too, which is covered). So I’m wondering if the tyrannical legislators in other states pushing laws to ban travel are having a chilling effect on our governor.
Here is what Republican legislators are planning next
There are two ways women in red states can obtain reproductive care as of June 24, 2022:
The abortion pill
Travel to another state for reproductive care
The religious right and their Republican evil doers in Congress are trying to prevent both by working toward a national abortion ban.
Two ways a national abortion ban will go into effect — the endgame for the religious right.
Republicans win in 2022 (the House and Senate) and 2024 The Presidential Election) and they push it through. Minority rule speaking for the majority who do not want abortion to be illegal.
A fetal personhood case makes its way to The Supreme Court. The radical justices who overturned Roe are just waiting for a fetal personhood case. Just like they gleefully took on Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health to overturn Roe v. Wade. If they had recognized Roe as the legal precedent it is, stare decisis and all, they wouldn’t have heard the case, to begin with. They did because the judges, in the majority opinion, lied during their confirmation hearings. They do not respect stare decisis, as each claimed. They just wanted to overturn Roe because they finally had the numbers on the court to do so.
One. Preventing a woman from traveling.
The Thomas More Society, a conservation legal organization, is drafting model legislation for state lawmakers that would allow a private citizen to sue anyone who helps a resident of a state that has banned abortion from terminating a pregnancy outside of that state.
The same strategy is behind a Texas abortion ban enacted last year in which private citizens were empowered to enforce the law through civil litigation.
The National Association of Christian Lawmakers, an antiabortion organization led by Republican state legislators, has begun working with the author of the Texas abortion ban to explore model legislation that would restrict people from crossing state lines for abortions, said Texas state representative Tom Oliverson (R), the charter chair of the group’s national legislative council.
Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel from the Thomas Moore Society said below (this is chilling).
Just because you jump across a state line doesn’t mean your home state doesn’t have jurisdiction. It’s not a free abortion card when you drive across the state line.
Jurisdiction: noun
1. the official power to make legal decisions and judgments.
Meaning, you do not have the legal right to travel to another state to get reproductive healthcare. The state you live in will make legal decisions and judgments regarding your movement.
Republicans and the crazy religious right pushing their religious dogma and doctrine down our throats want to make women a ward of the state, not unlike a child without parents. Women and the doctors who help them will be criminalized and punished when they travel to California to get reproductive care so not to end up with a child that requires a minimum of 18 years to care for.
Unfortunately, this law is difficult to challenge in court because it cleverly makes it so abortion rights groups don’t have a clear person to sue.
The goal: a chilling effect on doctors in surrounding states, to stop them from performing abortions on women from red states, worried that they may face lawsuits if they give healthcare.
Two. Banning abortion pills or “medication abortion.” Abortion pills are the modern miracle that ensures women will not go back to the days of coat hangers and knitting needles and back alley abortions, often resulting in death of the woman.
The abortion pill allows women to seek care privately and manage the process at home. No one can stop the mail. Pills are considered safe and effective up to 10 weeks of pregnancy and account for the majority of abortions in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization.
Because Republican legislators in red states are trying to stop abortions any way they can, the legalities are fuzzy at best. States that are outlawing abortion make no distinction between medication abortion (abortion pills) and surgical abortion.
So pursuing medication abortion within those states will have risks.
There are ways around these roadblocks like traveling out of state or ordering the pills from overseas providers like Aid Access, a European telemedicine service that prescribes abortion pills to women in the U.S.
For women in red states who want reproductive care, there are high-risk and low-risk options when getting these pills. High risk would include ordering them online or having a friend mail them. The low-risk choices include making a medical appointment on the border [of a state where abortion is legal] and having it shipped to a P.O. box.
“So I would say, buckle up, women in the U.S. Just get your abortion pills in your medicine cabinet, so you have it in case you need it,” Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, who runs Aid Access, told CBS News last month.
I live in California. I’m ordering the pills, just in case I need them, my daughter needs them or friends needs them.
If I were living in a red state and needed an abortion, I would not leave any trace for my pursuit of healthcare on anydigital device. If need be, I’d get a burner phone, use a landline to make arrangements and not have any period tracking apps on my phone.
I would most likely travel to a state, get a P.O. box and have the pills delivered there. I would not leave a digital trail because pretty soon, women and any person helping women obtain reproductive care will be prosecuted.
If you are in a red state and receive abortion pills in the mail and get caught, it would be breaking state laws, and that provider could be subject to penalties and license suspension.
As of right now, traveling to access abortion is still legal. People, as of right now, have the right to interstate travel. Thus, the reason Republicans want a federal abortion ban affecting all states.
Women can still travel to states where abortion is legal to get medication abortion prescriptions or pursue surgical abortions.
Low-income women will be most affected. It is expensive to travel, even by car. Gas prices are threw the roof. Women then have to account for food, lodging, and childcare if they’re already mothers, as a large number of women who seek abortions are. This is very cost-prohibitive and designed to do exactly what it’s meant to do, prevent women from accessing the care they need and want and have a human right to access.
The upshot
Abortions will now cost women in red states thousands of dollars. Upwards of $3K when you add up all the costs.
However, compare that to the cost of raising a child you do not want, which is upwards of $272,049, not to mention the resentment that would build from raising a child you never wanted in the first place, but the state forced you to have.
See you next Tuesday. Have a great week!
Jessica - xoxox
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They're also talking about floating abortion clinics in the Gulf of Mexico. I wonder if that will work?