News & Commentary

Last week, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and Ibis Reproductive Health released a report showing that the states with the most abortion restrictions also have the worst health outcomes for women and children. The report, found here, exposes as false the claims that TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws are for the benefit of women’s health and safety. According to the report, many states that have passed restrictive abortion laws have failed to institute policies that would promote the health and well-being of women and their families. The study defines “well-being” broadly, including health, social, and economic status. 

A recent NPR story, “What Drives Abortion: The Law or Income,” looks at correlations, worldwide, between abortion laws and abortion-related fatalities.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Senator Wendy Davis’ new memoir, Forgetting to Be Afraid, and the two abortions that she discussed in it. Shortly after Davis’s memoir was released, the New York Times published an op-ed piece entitled “This is What an Abortion Looks Like.” In it, Merritt Tierce commends Davis for being so open about her abortions and writes that she respect the level of courage it took for Davis to reveal this very personal piece of her history.

As we enter the election season, some GOP candidates are changing the way they talk about reproductive health care – namely, contraceptives. Several anti-abortion candidates are now including support for over-the-counter contraceptives in their campaigns. These candidates say that they, like their opponents, understand the importance of contraceptive access and affordability. Last week, NPR released a story discussing this change in approach and the subsequent responses. 

Texas senator Wendy Davis’ new memoir, Forgetting To Be Afraid, was released to the general public this past Tuesday. In the book, the now famous senator reveals that she’s had two abortions in her lifetime. Davis and her then-husband decided to terminate one pregnancy 17 years ago after learning that, if the baby survived, she would most likely be in a permanent vegetative state. The baby, named Tate, was developing with a severe brain abnormality. Davis characterized the decision as "the most loving thing that [they] could do for [their] daughter" because they believed that the baby was suffering. In the memoir, Davis also provides details about a second abortion, one that she’s previously talked about in public. This abortion, unlike her 1997 abortion, was medically necessary – the pregnancy was ectopic and could not be carried to term. 

Two major wins were scored for abortion access last week. On Friday, a federal judge in Austin blocked the portion of Texas’s HB2 that would require all abortion clinics to meet the building, equipment, and staffing standards of a hospital surgery center. And on Sunday, a federal judge temporarily blocked a new abortion law in Louisiana that would require doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic. This good news rounds off a month of good news in the world of reproductive rights. For a quick reminder about other wins in the past month, see my blog posts about Mississippi and Alabama. 

A new study led by Dr. Danielle Bessett, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati, has found that many in the U.S. are ignorant about basic facts related to abortion. Out of the 569 people Bessett polled, only 13 percent were able to correctly answer four or five of the survey questions, out of six total. Bessett conducted the survey to investigate the hypothesis that a person’s knowledge about abortion and reproductive health can be shaped by where the state fits on the political spectrum, i.e., the red-versus-blue divide.

August 26 is Women's Equality Day, commemorating the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote 94 years ago. Unfortunately, we are still a long way from full equality for every woman. The mainstream conversation about women's rights over the last century has at best left behind, and at worst ignored, intersectional identities (women of color, transgender women, poor women, immigrant women, etc.). For example, we often see the data that women who work full time earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar men earned. But the figures are astoundingly worse for women of color. African American women earn only approximately 64 cents and Latinas only 54 cents for each dollar earned by a white male.

I spent this past weekend in Downeast Maine, tabling at the 40th Annual Machias Wild Blueberry Festival. I drove through Penobscot, Hancock, and Washington counties and arrived in the Machias area late Friday afternoon. The Wild Blueberry Festival is one of the most popular festival events in Washington County, with attendee estimates ranging from 15,000-22,000. This was the ACLU of Maine’s first time participating in the festival. This was also my first time Washington County. I was looking forward to the opportunity to meet both current and potential ACLU members and to talk about the work our organization has been doing across the state.