Did you know?
Two-thirds (67.5%) of the pregnancy criminalization arrests come from Alabama, Oklahoma, or South Carolina — states that have high court decisions that expanded definitions of “child” to include fetuses, fertilized eggs, and embryos, in effect applied to penalize and regulate pregnant people (Pregnancy Justice).
More than 28 million women of reproductive age live in states where abortion is banned, unavailable or restricted (NBC News).
Taking an NSAID painkiller, like piroxicam, can make the emergency contraceptive, Levonorgestrel, 30% more effective (The Lancet).
Over 1.7 million women, nearly 3% of women of reproductive age in the United States, live in a county without access to abortion and with no access to maternity care. And 3.7 million, or 5.8% of women of reproductive age, live in a county without access to abortion and with no or low access to maternity care (ABC News).
In 2022, in response to Dobbs, eighteen states adopted a total of 77 proactive provisions through the legislative process or executive orders that focused on abortion funding, clinic access and safety, and “shield laws” to protect providers from out-of-state lawsuits for providing abortions (Guttmacher).
Mifepristone is used in a two-drug abortion regimen that has proven safe and effective in numerous studies worldwide. It blocks the hormone progesterone, which is needed for a pregnancy to continue; misoprostol, the second drug in the regimen, then causes uterine cramping to expel the pregnancy. Mifepristone was first approved in France and China in 1988, and as of May 2023, 96 countries have approved its use. The World Health Organization (WHO) abortion care guidelines recommend combined use of mifepristone and misoprostol, or use of misoprostol alone, as safe and effective methods of ending a pregnancy.
The 2022 Violence & Disruption Statistics show increases in major incidents like arsons, burglaries, death threats, and invasions overall; a sharp increase in violence and disruption in states that are protective of abortion rights; and antiabortion centers ramping up efforts to deceive and obstruct patients seeking abortion care. For instance, in 2022, we saw a 100% increase in arsons compared to 2021.
In 2022, many anti-abortion extremists shifted their attention to protective states after dozens of clinics were forced to close in states that banned abortion. Clinics in protective states saw a disproportionate increase in violence and disruption this year, including a 913% increase in incidents of stalking of abortion providers, patients, and staff (2022 Violence and Disruption Report).
March of Dimes defines maternity care deserts as counties with no obstetric care, birth centers, OB-GYNs and certified nurse-midwives. Areas where there is low or no access affect up to 6.9 million women and almost 500,000 births across the U.S.
Mainstream Media Misses from Abortion, Everyday by Jessica Valenti:
“I am begging media outlets, for the love of all that is good, please stop calling the North Carolina abortion ban a 12-week ban. It’s not a 12-week ban, it’s a 10-week ban at best. (The majority of abortions in the state are medication abortions; abortion pills are banned at 10-weeks.)…The same is true for Nebraska, where Republicans are also claiming that their law bans abortion at 12-weeks—but is, in fact, a 10-week ban. (The bill prohibits abortions 12 weeks after a patient’s last menstrual period, as opposed to from fertilization.)”
According to demographic data from Guttmacher Institute:
– 60% of abortions are obtained by women with children
– 50% of abortion patients live below the federal poverty level
– 60% of abortions are obtained by women in their twenties
Pregnancies nine weeks and under have no visible embryo. And at six weeks of pregnancy the so-called “heartbeat” is just electrical activity of cells, before an actual heart is formed. Read more from MYA Network below.
Many doctors in pro-choice states are over-whelmed with out-of-state patients. On a recent Monday, Trust Women, an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas, fielded 16,000 phone calls to their hotline. This year, the clinic is on track to treat about 6,000 patients — the same number of patients who terminated their pregnancies at all clinics, statewide, before the Dobbs v. Jackson decision (Texas Tribune, 2023).
A new report from #WeCount shows that 66,000 people were unable to receive a legal abortion in their home state between April and December of 2022 (Society of Family Planning, 2023).
According to a new analysis, companies are seeing a record number of shareholder resolutions aimed at reproductive health issues. Shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, along with Sustainable Investments Institute and Proxy Impact, found 23 proxy-ballot proposals related to reproductive health, up from four last year and two in 2021 (Prang, 2023).
In 2022, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, state legislatures introduced 86 pieces of legislation that would ban all or most abortions in their state. So far in 2023, state legislatures have introduced another 45 pieces of restrictive legislation (Guttmacher, 2023). Considering that restrictive reproductive healthcare policies often disproportionately harm people experiencing economic insecurity, and because low-income women are over-represented among abortion patients, these laws are intrinsically tied to women’s economic well-being (Jerman J, 2016) (Bernstein, 2019), as well as their health.
Before Roe v. Wade, approximately 800,000 illegal abortions took place annually (Harris, 2020).
Before Roe v. Wade, some hospitals had entire clinical wards dedicated to septic abortion (Ginsberg, 2021).
Beyond the medical risks, continuing an unwanted pregnancy to term is also associated with a higher likelihood of remaining in a relationship with an abusive partner (Roberts, 2014), an increased risk of child psychological and physical abuse and neglect (Guterman, 2015), negative associations with child development (Foster, 2018) (Grossman D, 2022), and an increased risk of subsequently living in poverty (Foster, 2022).
Systemic racism affecting reproductive health shows up today in maternal mortality statistics. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that Black and Indigenous people are two to four times more likely than White people to die during pregnancy or around the time of childbirth. Recent estimates suggest that a nationwide abortion ban would increase maternal mortality by 21% overall and by 33% among Black Americans (Stevenson, 2021) (Kozhimannil, 2022). This increase in maternal mortality is likely an underestimate, as people with underlying serious health conditions will also be forced to continue the pregnancy to term, placing them at greater risk of complications and death (Grossman D, 2022).