Abortion

Subterms

    More stories

    • 225 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      State of the Union address as it happened: Biden spars with Republicans and announces aid pier for Gaza

      by

      In his third, and potentially last, State of the Union address, Joe Biden eschewed tradition and delivered a barrage of attacks on Donald Trump – who he only referred to as “my predecessor”. It was a sign of how Biden believes Trump’s potential return to the White House poses an existential risk to American democracy, and perhaps also his awareness that he has a lot of support to rebuild to win a second term in November. While Democrats leapt to their feet for Biden’s promises to protect social security, cut child poverty and overhaul the country’s infrastructure, some found the president’s use of the word “illegal” objectionable. Meanwhile, Alabama’s Republican senator Katie Britt delivered the party’s rebuttal, asking: “Are you better off now than you were three years ago?”Here are the highlights:
      The 81-year-old president directly addressed his age, saying “I’ve been told I’m too old” while arguing he is still up for the job.
      Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rightwing nemesis, got unusually close to Biden, then heckled him during the speech over the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
      Six supreme court justices were present at the speech, only for Biden to criticize them directly for overturning Roe v Wade.
      Protesters upset over Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza blocked a road leading to the Capitol ahead of the speech.
      George Santos was in the House chamber for the speech, reportedly to hang out with the people who removed him from office.
      Several Democratic House lawmakers have criticized Joe Biden for describing the undocumented migrant suspected of murdering Georgia nursing student Laken Riley as an “illegal”.Biden made the remark during his State of the Union address, while being heckled by rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blamed the president’s border security policies for Riley’s murder. Biden held up a pin with Riley’s name on it, and called her “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal”.Democrats took issue with that terminology, including Illinois’s Chuy Garcia:Ilhan Omar of Minnesota:And Delia Ramirez of Illinois:“Just ask yourself, are you better off now than you were three years ago?” Katie Britt asks in the Republican rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.Expect that to be a theme of GOP campaigns nationwide, including Donald Trump’s.More, from Britt:
      Look, we all recall when presidents faced national security threats with strength and resolve. That seems like ancient history right now. Our commander-in-chief is not in command. The free world deserves better than a doddering and diminished leader. America deserves leaders who recognize that secure borders, stable prices, safe streets and a strong defense are actually the cornerstones of a great nation.
      Alabama senator Katie Britt is delivering the Republican rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, and responded to his comments on Laken Riley.“Tonight, President Biden finally said her name, but he refused to take responsibility for his own actions,” said Britt.“Mr President, enough is enough. Innocent Americans are dying and you only have yourself to blame. Fulfill your oath of office, reverse your policies, end this crisis and stop the suffering.”One of the most striking moments of the night happened when Joe Biden addressed the topic of immigration – which polls show is a major weakness of his going into the November contest against Donald Trump.As he spoke, the president was heckled by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rightwing antagonist. Greene demanded he say the name of Laken Riley, who is suspected to have been murdered by an undocumented migrant.Biden, who usually wants nothing to do with Greene, took her up on the offer. Here’s what happened:During Joe Biden’s speech, there were several rowdy heckles from Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. Then came an unexpected yell from the public balcony, directly opposite from where I am sitting in the press gallery.A man wearing dark suit, blue shirt and yellow tie cupped his hands and shouted: “Remember Abbey Gate! United States Marines.” Abbey Gate, outside Kabul’s airport, is where 13 US service members were killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan two years ago.His point made, the man voluntarily left before security yanked him out. Biden did not seem thrown off by the interruption as he carried on speaking. But the episode was a reminder that his approval rating has never quite recovered from the chaos in Kabul.Joe Biden rarely discusses his age, but did so directly as he closed his State of the Union address.“I’ve been told I’m too old,” he said, continuing:
      Whether young or old … I’ve always known what endures. I’ve known our north star, the very idea of Americans, that we’re all created equal, deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea. We’ve never walked away from it either. And I won’t walk away from it now.
      “I know it may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while,” said the 81-year-old president, the oldest to ever hold the job.“You get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever,” Biden continued. “I know the American story. Again and again, I’ve seen the contrast between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation, between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future.”Biden appears to be wrapping up, in high spirits.“Let me close with this,” he said, to sardonic applause.“I know you don’t want to hear any more, Lindsey. But I gotta say a few more things,” Biden said. He was presumably talking to South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham.As Joe Biden discussed the war in Gaza, two progressive House Democrats sitting in the audience staged a minor protest.Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush remained sitting and held up signs that read: “Lasting ceasefire now.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      France Votes on Making Abortion a Constitutional Right

      by

      Lawmakers are expected to pass an amendment that would give women “guaranteed freedom” to end their pregnancies, something experts say would be a global first.French legislators are expected to pass a measure on Monday that would make France the first country in the world to explicitly enshrine access to abortion in its Constitution.The constitutional amendment requires three-fifths approval of gathered lawmakers from both houses of Parliament to pass. But since 90 percent of lawmakers supported the measure in earlier votes, the vote is widely seen as a formality before a celebration in the regal setting of Versailles Palace, where the joint session of Parliament is being held.The amendment would declare abortion a “guaranteed freedom” overseen by Parliament’s laws. That means future governments would not be able to “drastically modify” current laws funding abortion for women who want it, up to 14 weeks in their pregnancies, according to the French justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti.The impulse for the change was the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. But it also reflects the widespread support for abortion in France, built over years, and a successful campaign by a coalition of feminist activists and lawmakers.“We are saying today, we don’t envisage a democratic society without the right to abortion — that it’s not an accessory, it’s the core of our society,” said Mélanie Vogel, a senator from the Green Party who was a major force behind the bill. “We are not France anymore without the right to abortion.”Speaking in an interview, Ms. Vogel said, “I want to send a message to feminists outside of France. Everyone told me a year ago it was impossible.” She added: “Nothing is impossible when you mobilize society.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      What Alabama’s IVF ruling reveals about the ascendant Christian nationalist movement

      by

      In the Alabama state supreme court case that dubbed embryos “extrauterine children” and imperiled the future of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the state, the first reference to the Bible arrives on page 33.“The principle itself – that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification – has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God’,” the Alabama supreme court justice Tom Parker wrote in an opinion that concurred with the majority. Attributing the idea to the Book of Genesis, Parker’s opinion continued to cite the Bible as well as such venerable Christian theologians as John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas.For experts, Parker’s words were a stunningly open embrace of Christian nationalism, or the idea that the United States should be an explicitly Christian country and its laws should reflect that.“He framed it entirely assuming that the state of Alabama is a theocracy, and that that is a legitimate way of evaluating laws and policies,” said Julie Ingersoll, a University of North Florida professor who studies religion and culture. “It looks like he decided to just dismiss the history of first amendment religious freedom jurisprudence at the federal level, and assume that it just doesn’t apply to Alabama.”View image in fullscreenDebates over the centrality of Christianity in US life have raged since the founding of the country. But now that Roe v Wade has been overturned and Donald Trump is once again running for president, observers say Christian nationalism has gained a stronger foothold within US politics – and its supporters have grown bolder.“They’re sort of saying the quiet parts out loud,” said Paul Djupe, who studies Christian nationalism as the chair of data for political research at Denison University in Ohio, of Parker’s decision.Today, 30% of Americans support tenets of Christian nationalism, according to a study released earlier this week from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Researchers asked more than 22,000 Americans how much they agreed with statements such as: “The US government should declare America a Christian nation”; “Being Christian is an important part of being truly American”’; and “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.” Ultimately, about 10% of Americans qualify as “adherents” to Christian nationalism, and another 20% are “sympathizers”.White evangelicals are particularly likely to support Christian nationalism: 66% hold Christian nationalist views.View image in fullscreenPRRI did not ask whether people self-identify as Christian nationalists, because many people who may hold those beliefs shy away from the divisive label. Yet over the last several years, conservatives at the local, state and federal level have notched major legal and political victories that have cleared the way for Christian nationalist priorities such as the overturning of Roe v Wade and the proliferation of efforts targeting sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and the separation of church and state in schools. Now, supporters are seeing further opportunity in a potential second Trump term. Whether someone openly claims the label of “Christian nationalist” is almost beside the point, Ingersoll said.“There are all kinds of people who are influenced by it in ways that they’re not even aware of,” Ingersoll said. “Most people couldn’t tell you who Thomas Aquinas was, but that doesn’t matter. They don’t have to know who that is to have been shaped by a form of Christianity that arose from his work. And I think that happens with Christian nationalism all over the place. It’s a way of shaping the public discourse.”Parker has ties to proponents of the “Seven Mountain Mandate”, a theological approach that once seemed fringe within evangelicalism but is now gaining traction. Backed by a network of nondenominational, charismatic Christians known as the New Apostolic Reformation, this mandate calls on its adherents to establish what they believe to be God’s kingdom over the seven core areas of society, including the government. On 16 February, the day the Alabama supreme court issued its ruling, a prominent proponent of the Seven Mountain Mandate released an interview with Parker.View image in fullscreen“God created government and the fact that we have let it go into the possession of others is heartbreaking,” Parker said in the interview, whose existence was first reported by the liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America. The interview took place in front of a framed copy of the Bill of Rights.A spokesperson for the Alabama state supreme court did not immediately return a request for comment from Parker.“It is clear that in the US, there have been two competing visions of the country,” said Robert P Jones, PRRI’s president and the author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future. “They’re mutually incompatible visions of the country, but they really have been: are we a pluralistic democracy, where everybody stands on equal footing before the law, or are we a promised land for European Christians?”‘I’m going to be your defender’Support for Christian nationalism is deeply linked to partisan politics. Residents of red states are far more likely to espouse Christian nationalist beliefs; in Alabama, 47% of people are adherents of or at least sympathetic to Christian nationalism, according to the PRRI survey. More than half of Republicans also hold Christian nationalist beliefs, compared with a quarter of independents and just 16% of Democrats.According to Jones and the PRRI survey, Christian nationalists’ top litmus tests for politicians are support for access to guns and opposition to immigration, although they are also very likely to say that they would only vote for a candidate who shares their opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.The 2015 US supreme court decision Obergefell v Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, sparked a huge backlash among many conservative Christians. Galvanized by the ruling, they threw their considerable electoral power behind Trump, who had announced his presidential candidacy just days before Obergefell was decided.View image in fullscreen“Conservative Christians have long had this kind of worldview that they’re embattled by the broader culture,” Djupe said. The Obergefell decision “was a huge spur and Trump played with it. He came on the scene to run for president about the exact same time saying: ‘You’re about to be persecuted. I’m going to be your defender.’”Trump went to great lengths to reward rightwing Christians for their support. According to one analysis, Trump’s judicial appointees were more than 97% Christian and a majority had some kind of affiliation with a religious group such as churches, the Christian law firm the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Catholic fraternal order the Knights of Columbus – far higher rates than judges who were appointed by Democrats or other Republicans. (The judges were no less well-credentialed.) Trump-appointed judges were also much likelier to vote in favor of Christian and Jewish plaintiffs embroiled in cases over the free exercise of religion.Trump also appointed three of the six US supreme court justices who voted to overturn Roe. The supreme court’s new conservative majority has steadily eroded the separation of church and state embedded in the US constitution.View image in fullscreenThe post-Roe skirmish over abortion rights illustrates another key element of a Christian nationalist worldview: the tendency to not only cast issues in binary terms, but to believe that the opposing side is a force of literal evil.“If you believe that babies are being murdered – which is the rhetoric that you often find in these ‘pro-life’, anti-abortion circles – if you believe that, then that is a very troubling and even diabolical activity,” said Matthew Taylor, Protestant scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies and author of an upcoming book about Christian extremism, The Violent Take It by Force. “There’s no dialogue with the other side … in their mind, you never compromise with demons. You exorcise demons.”Christian nationalists are roughly twice as likely as other Americans to believe that political violence is justified, according to the PRRI survey.‘They’re seeing the energy’In 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican congresswoman from Georgia, openly embraced Christian nationalism. “We need to be the party of nationalism,” she said. “I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”But Greene is something of an outlier. Powerful organizations within the Christian legal movement, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, are not yoked to the charismatic strain of evangelical Christianity that is today more closely linked to Christian nationalism, according to Djupe – even if they often work toward similar aims.View image in fullscreenStill, Djupe believes that the energized charismatic movement is pulling other Christian groups further to the right. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, has ties to the New Apostolic Reformation, which has also been linked to Trump’s rise. Johnson once suggested that no-fault divorces were responsible for school shootings.“They’re seeing the energy, they’re seeing the growth among charismatics, and saying, ‘Hey, you know, there’s clearly something to that formula that’s influential,” Djupe said. I think they’re starting to adopt it.”View image in fullscreenPolitico reported last week that the Center for Renewing America, a rightwing thinktank close to the former president, is drawing up plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas throughout a second Trump administration. The Center’s president, Russell Vought, has also advised another powerful conservative thinktank, the Heritage Foundation, on its Project 2025, a playbook of proposals for a Trump administration 2.0, according to Politico.If Trump does win in November, experts fear what may happen next.“This is a worldview that does cast political struggles into an a kind of apocalyptic struggle between good and evil,” Jones said. “We stop thinking about our fellow citizens as political opponents and we start seeing them as existential enemies. And that really, at the end of the day, is poison to the blood of democracy.” More

    • 213 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Alabama is using the notion that embryos are people to surveil and harass women | Moira Donegan

      by

      Something that’s important to remember about last week’s ruling by the Alabama supreme court, which held that frozen embryos were persons under state law, is that the very absurdity of the claim is itself a demonstration of power. That a frozen embryo – a microscopic bit of biological information that can’t even be called tissue, a flick laden with the hopes of aspiring parents but fulfilling none of them – is equivalent in any way to a child is the sort of thing you can only say if no one has the power to laugh at you. The Alabama supreme court is the final court of review in that state. It cannot be appealed. For the foreseeable future, frozen cells in Alabama have the same legal status there as you or I do. Is this an absurd elevation of the status of an embryo, or an obscene degradation of human beings? The answer, of course, is both.The decision immediately halted almost all IVF procedures in Alabama. Aspiring patents there – including women who had undergone rounds of injected hormone treatments and the invasive, gruelingly painful egg retrieval process in order to create the embryos – will now be unable to have the material implanted in an attempt to create a pregnancy. Hundreds of other frozen embryos – those that are not viable, or not needed by families that are already complete – can now not be destroyed as is typical IVF practice. They need to be continually stored in freezers, or what the Alabama supreme court refers to, in Orwellian style, as “cryogenic nurseries”, a term you almost have to admire for the sheer audacity of its creepiness.But the concept of embryonic personhood, now inscribed in Alabama law, poses dangers well beyond the cruelty it has imposed on the hopeful couples who were pursuing IVF in Alabama, before their state supreme court made that impossible. If embryos and fetuses are people, as Alabama now says they are, then whole swaths of women’s daily lives come under the purview of state scrutiny.Forget about abortion, which would automatically be banned as murder in any situation where fetuses are considered persons – Alabama already has a total abortion ban, without exceptions for rape, incest or health. Embryonic personhood would also ban many kinds of birth control, such as Plan B, IUDs, and some hormonal birth control pills, which courts have said can be interpreted as working by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg. (In fact these methods work primarily by preventing ovulation, but facts are of dwindling relevance in the kind of anti-abortion litigation that comes before Republican-controlled courts.)Further, if embryos and fetuses are children, then the state may have an interest in protecting their lives that extends to controlling even more of women’s daily conduct. Could a woman who is pregnant, or could be pregnant, have a right to do things that might endanger her embryo in a situation where an embryo is her legal equal, with a claim on state protection? Could she risk this embryo’s health and life by, say, eating sushi, or having some soft cheese? Forget about the wine. Could she be charged with child endangerment for speeding? For going on a jog?These scenarios might sound hyperbolic, but they are not entirely hypothetical. Even before the Alabama court began enforcing the vulgar fiction that a frozen embryo is a person, authorities there had long used the notion of fetal personhood to harass, intimidate and jail women – often those suspected of using drugs during pregnancies – under the state’s “chemical endangerment of a child” law, using the theory that women’s bodies are environments that they have an obligation to keep free of “chemicals” that could harm a fetus or infringe upon its rights.Using this logic, police in Alabama, and particularly in rural Etowah county, north-east of Birmingham, have repeatedly jailed women for allegedly using drugs ranging from marijuana to meth while pregnant – including women who have claimed that they did not use drugs, and women who turned out not to be pregnant. In 2021, Kim Blalock, a mother of six, was arrested on felony charges after filling a doctor’s prescription during a pregnancy; the state of Alabama decided that it knew better than her doctor, and they could criminalize her for following medical advice.This is not an extreme example: it is the logical conclusion of fetal personhood’s legalization – the surveillance, jailing and draconian monitoring of pregnant women, an exercise in voyeuristic sadism justified by the flimsy pretext that it’s all being done for the good of children. Except there are no children. Lest this seem like an idea that will necessarily be corrected by political response, or by the ultimate intervention of a federal court on the question, remember that Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs referred repeatedly to “unborn human beings”.There are several ways this supreme court could ban abortion nationwide, and they do not need to enforce fetal personhood to do so – many rightwing organizations, for instance, are encouraging federal courts to revive the long-dormant Comstock Act, from the 1870s, to ban all abortions. Nor will the ultimate national abortion ban necessarily even come from the courts. Any future Republican president will be under enormous pressure to enact a national abortion ban, and they will have many means at their disposal to do so even without congressional cooperation, be it through the justice department or through the FDA. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee in all but name, has floated the idea of a 16-week national ban – a huge restriction on women’s right’s nationwide that would undoubtably be just the opening salvo for even further rollbacks. Meanwhile, his nominal rival, Nikki Haley, responded to the news of the Alabama court ruling by voicing approval of fetal personhood. “Embryos, to me, are babies.”Let’s be clear: they are not. An embryo is not a child. Neither is a fetus. Treating them as such is a legal absurdity that degrades human life and insults the reality of parenthood. But most importantly: there is no notion of when personhood begins that is compatible with women’s citizenship other than birth. If personhood begins while a pregnancy is ongoing – if a person, that is, can be someone enclosed entirely inside another person’s body – then the competition of rights will be humiliatingly, violently, brutally one-sided. None of the opportunities, freedoms or responsibilities of citizenship are available to someone whose body is constantly surveilled, commandeered and colonized by the state like that. No citizenship worth its name can belong to someone who cannot even wield within the bounds of her own skin.It is humiliating to even have to say this: that women matter more than fetuses or embryos, that a frozen cell in a petri dish is not a human being, but we are. It is an absurdity to make this argument, an exhausting waste of our time, a degradation. That, too, is part of the point.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Newsom launches abortion ads in Republican states to fight ‘war on women’

      by

      California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is launching a series of new advertisements in Republican states targeting Republican efforts to criminalize having an abortion and “a war on travel” for reproductive care.The first advertisement by Campaign for Democracy, Newsom’s political action committee (Pac), will air this week in Tennessee, where lawmakers are considering legislation that would make it illegal for anyone who helps a minor obtain an abortion without permission from their parents. Anyone found guilty of the offense could face between three and 15 years in prison.Newsom’s ad opens with a young woman handcuffed to a hospital bed as she cries out for help. “Trump Republicans want to criminalize young women who travel to receive the reproductive care they need,” a voiceover says. “Don’t let them hold Tennessee women hostage.”Newsom unveiled the ad on NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday. The Pac plans to air them in other states like Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma that are considering similar measures.“I worry about the United States supreme court, that again, set the tone and tenor for the debate we’re having today. And again, it’s not just a war on travel. It’s not just a war on reproductive healthcare. It’s also a war on women more broadly defined, including as we know, contraceptives,” Newsom said on Sunday.Trump has reportedly expressed private support for an abortion ban after 16-weeks of pregnancy, according to the New York Times. “Know what I like about 16?” Trump told one of these people, who was given anonymity to describe a private conversation. “It’s even. It’s four months,” he has said, according to the times.Newsom was skeptical Trump would stick to 16 weeks. “He supports a national ban. And if you’re Lindsey Graham and others, they’re going to bring that down well below 16. He will sign a national ban,” he said on Meet the Press.Republicans this week have been scrambling to articulate a position on IVF after a ruling from the Alabama supreme court said that frozen embryos are children. At least three clinics in the state have stopped providing IVF services.Trump on Friday said he supports IVF and urged Alabama Republicans to “act quickly to find an immediate solution to preserve” it. The National Republican Senate Committee, the campaign arm of senate Republicans, has also urged GOP candidates to support IVF.The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, a Republican who leads a state where abortion is essentially banned and has implemented some of the nation’s harshest anti-abortion laws, also treaded carefully when he was asked on Sunday how Texas would respond to the Alabama ruling.“President Trump put out a statement on this and I think that is a goal that we all kind of want to achieve. That is, we want to make it easier for people to have babies, not make it harder,” he said during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. “The IVF process is a way of giving life to even more babies.”Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican who is an ally of Trump, said on Sunday he could support a bill with national protections for IVF.“Like any type of bill that gets drafted on Capitol Hill, I want to see the devil in the details. But, yes, I could – I feel I could broadly support that. Because, like I said, IVF is something that is so critical to a lot of couples. It helps them breed great families. Our country needs that,” he said on Meet The Press. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      A State Court Ruling on I.V.F. Echoes Far Beyond Alabama

      by

      Frozen embryos in test tubes must be considered children, judges ruled. The White House called it a predictable consequence of the overturn of Roe v. Wade.An Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos in test tubes should be considered children has sent shock waves through the world of reproductive medicine, casting doubt over fertility care for would-be parents in the state and raising complex legal questions with implications extending far beyond Alabama.On Tuesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said the ruling would cause “exactly the type of chaos that we expected when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and paved the way for politicians to dictate some of the most personal decisions families can make.”Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as President Biden traveled to California, Ms. Jean-Pierre reiterated the Biden administration’s call for Congress to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law.“As a reminder, this is the same state whose attorney general threatened to prosecute people who help women travel out of state to seek the care they need,” she said, referring to Alabama, which began enforcing a total abortion ban in June 2022.The judges issued the ruling on Friday in appeals cases brought by couples whose embryos were destroyed in 2020, when a hospital patient removed frozen embryos from tanks of liquid nitrogen in Mobile and dropped them on the floor.Referencing antiabortion language in the state constitution, the judges’ majority opinion said that an 1872 statute allowing parents to sue over the wrongful death of a minor child applies to unborn children, with no exception for “extrauterine children.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump privately backs 16-week abortion ban with exceptions, report says

      by

      Donald Trump likes the idea of a national ban on abortion past 16 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother, the New York Times reported on Friday morning.Trump has veered away from taking a firm stance on abortion during his presidential campaign. He has taken credit for the US supreme court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, since he appointed three of the justices who took part in that decision, but he has also suggested that Republicans who take extreme stances on abortion lose elections.“Know what I like about 16?” Trump told one individual, according to the Times, which based its report on two people with knowledge of Trump’s thoughts. “It’s even. It’s four months.”Trump is waiting until after the conclusion of the Republican primary to publicly discuss his position, the Times reported.Since Roe’s demise, voters have repeatedly rejected attempts to curtail abortion rights and supported state-level ballot measures to protect the right to the procedure. Outrage over Roe is also widely credited with defeating the promised “red wave” in the 2022 midterms and leaving Republicans with fewer victories than anticipated.Last year, Virginia Republicans campaigned in a state election on a pledge to ban abortion past 15 weeks, as a kind of “compromise” position. Their efforts to retake control of the state legislature failed.However, the anti-abortion movement, with its coterie of high-powered activists, has made it clear that they would like to see the procedure totally outlawed. Although most Americans consider themselves “pro-choice”, polling shows they are far less supportive of abortions past the first trimester.After publication of the Times article, the Trump campaign sent out a statement dismissing it as “fake news”.“As President Trump has stated, he would sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that everyone will be happy with,” said Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary. Leavitt then celebrated Trump’s role in overturning Roe and falsely accused Democrats, among other things, of supporting abortion “after birth”, which is infanticide and already illegal in the United States.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester of pregnancy. However, someone may have an abortion later on in pregnancy due to a medical emergency.More than a dozen states have enacted near-total abortion bans, several of which do not have exceptions for rape or incest. And doctors have repeatedly said that carve-outs for abortions in cases of medical emergencies have proven so vague as to be unworkable; dozens of women have now come forward to say that they were denied medically necessary abortions.“Now, after being the one responsible for taking away women’s freedom, after being the one to put women’s lives in danger, after being the one who has unleashed all this cruelty and chaos all across America, Trump is running scared,” Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday afternoon. “He’s afraid that the women of America are going to hold him responsible for taking away their rights and endangering their rights at the ballot box in November. That’s exactly what’s going to happen.” More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Anti-abortion centers raked in $1.4bn in year Roe fell, including federal money

      by

      Anti-abortion facilities raked in at least $1.4bn in revenue in the 2022 fiscal year, the year Roe v Wade fell – a staggering haul that includes at least $344m in government money, according to a memo analyzing the centers’ tax documents that was compiled by a pro-abortion rights group and shared exclusively with the Guardian.These facilities, frequently known as anti-abortion pregnancy centers or crisis pregnancy centers, aim to convince people to keep their pregnancies. But in the aftermath of Roe’s demise, the anti-abortion movement has framed anti-abortion pregnancy centers as a key source of aid for desperate women who have lost the legal right to end their pregnancies and been left with little choice but to give birth.Accordingly, abortion opponents say, the centers need an influx of government cash.“Those are the centers that states rely on to assist expecting moms and dads,” Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, told anti-abortion protesters at the March for Life in January. The Louisiana Republican praised the centers for providing “the important material support that expecting and first-time mothers get from these centers”.Earlier this year, under Johnson’s leadership, the House passed a bill that would block the Department of Health and Human Services from restricting funding for anti-abortion pregnancy centers. State governments are also in the midst of sending vast sums of taxpayer dollars to programs that support anti-abortion pregnancy centers. Since the demolition of Roe, at least 16 states have agreed to send more than $250m towards “alternative to abortion” programs in 2023 through 2025. Those programs funnel money towards anti-abortion pregnancy centers, maternity homes and assorted other initiatives meant to dissuade people from abortions.Still, abortion rights supporters say, much of the anti-abortion pregnancy center industry remains shrouded in mystery – including their finances.“Stewards of both taxpayer and charitable funds should insist on a real impact analysis of the industry, whether investments that are being made are achieving their desired outcomes and are cost-effective,” said Jenifer McKenna, the crisis pregnancy center program director at Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch, the group behind the analysis of tax documents. “Taxpayers deserve performance standards and hard metrics for use of their dollars on these centers.”The analysis by Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch examined 990 tax documents, which most US tax-exempt organizations must file annually, from 1,719 anti-abortion pregnancy centers in fiscal year 2019 and from 1,469 in fiscal year 2022. The analysis confirms that the anti-abortion pregnancy center industry is growing: while the centers’ revenue in 2022 exceeds $1.4bn, it was closer to $1.03bn in 2019, even though more centers were included in the earlier analysis.Centers reported receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from private funders between 2018 and 2022. While only a relatively small fraction of the centers reported receiving grants from state and federal governments in both 2022 and 2019, that number is on the rise, according to the Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch analysis memo. In 2022, the centers said they received $344m in such grants, but they received less than $97m in 2019.Just 21 centers identified the federal grants that they received in 2022, the analysis found. Those grants included the Fema-funded Emergency Food and Shelter Program, which is primarily meant for organizations that alleviate hunger and homelessness, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a program for low-income families.This accounting does not represent the full financial picture of the anti-abortion pregnancy center industry. More than 2,500 anti-abortion pregnancy centers are believed to dot the United States – a number that far outstrips the number of abortion clinics in the country.‘What did they do with all that money?’Much of the modern, publicly available information on anti-abortion pregnancy centers comes from one of their biggest cheerleaders: the Charlotte Lozier Institute, which assembles reports on the industry and operates as an arm of Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the top anti-abortion organizations in the United States.In 2019, the Charlotte Lozier Institute said that 2,700 anti-abortion pregnancy centers provided consulting services to 967,251 new clients on-site. In 2022, the Institute said 2,750 centers provided consulting services for 974,965 new clients – an increase of 0.08%.Even though the US supreme court overturned Roe at the halfway point of 2022, it did not appear to result in a crush of new clients – despite anti-abortion advocates’ argument that the pregnancy centers need an infusion of funding to handle post-Roe clients.“The new client numbers alone don’t fully tell the story,” a bevy of Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars – Moira Gaul, Jeanneane Maxon and Michael J New – said in an email to the Guardian, adding that anti-abortion centers and groups have seen an increase in violence following the fall of Roe. (The abortion clinics that remain post-Roe have also faced rising violence. That has not stoppered the demand for their services, as rates of abortions have risen since Roe’s demise.)Anti-abortion pregnancy centers are seeing a dramatic rise in calls for certain kinds of help. Data from the Charlotte Lozier Institute reports show that centers handed out 64% more diapers, 52% more baby clothing and 43% more wipes in 2022, compared to 2019. Demand for new car seats and strollers also increased by about a third.All of these items would presumably go to new parents. The fall of Roe led to an estimated 32,000 more births, particularly among young women and women of color, a 2023 analysis found.The total dollar value of these goods and services was about $358m, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute report. Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch found that the roughly 1,500 centers included in the group’s 2022 analysis reported expenses of more than $1.2bn on their 990 tax documents.“They took in – according to the 990s – $1.4bn, and they spent $1.2bn on expenditures,” McKenna said. “What did they do with all that money? There’s so many questions begged by their own reporting.”The Charlotte Lozier scholars said there were other expenses not listed in the report, such as maternity clothing, property-related payments, fundraising, marketing and staff salaries. Data from their report indicates that, between 2019 and 2022, the number of volunteers who work at the centers fell while the number of paid staffers rose. (Volunteers still make up the overwhelming bulk of the workforce.)“Most non-profits prefer to use staff when possible. Centers are attracting more professionals that desire to help women,” the scholars said. “Many centers are now in a place where they can pay them so they are less reliant on volunteers.”The institute’s report on anti-abortion pregnancy centers in 2022 is a very different document to the reports that it released to cover the centers in 2019 and 2017. The earlier reports span dozens of pages; the 2022 report is only four. A longer report is now in the works, the Charlotte Lozier scholars said, which will include information about government funding of centers.A lack of regulationAlthough anti-abortion pregnancy centers may appear to be local mom-and-pop organizations, in reality many are affiliated with national organizations like NIFLA, Care Net and Heartbeat International. These centers thrive in a kind of regulatory dead zone, providing medical services like ultrasounds. But many are not licensed as medical facilities, leaving them unencumbered by the rules or oversight imposed on typical medical providers.“They are changing their names a lot and changing their names in ways like including ‘clinic’ or ‘medical’ or ‘healthcare’ into their names and dropping things like ‘Care Net’ and other types of wording that might instantly identify them as a CPC,” said Andrea Swartzendruber, an associate professor at the University of Georgia College of Public Health who tracks anti-abortion pregnancy centers.These centers, she said, are “changing their names in ways that make them seem more like medical clinics”.The Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars said “calls for governmental regulation are nothing new” post-Roe and that “such efforts have been ongoing for decades”.“They have been found to be politically motivated and have been largely unsuccessful,” the scholars said. “Abortion facilities are in need of far greater government regulation.”Anti-abortion pregnancy centers’ taxes can also be deeply intricate. The analysis by Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch found that the centers used a variety of tax codes to describe themselves, frequently describing themselves as organizations that provide “family services” or “reproductive healthcare”. They were sometimes listed as organizations that work to outlaw abortions, or as explicitly Christian, religious organizations.The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a charity watchdog group, has previously found that many centers share tax identification numbers with much larger organizations that do multiple kinds of charity work, such as non-profits run by Catholic dioceses. By sharing numbers, these organizations are effectively collapsed into one legal and tax entity, the committee said.The Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars told the Guardian that “this is not our understanding at all”. NIFLA, Care Net and Heartbeat International do not share tax identification numbers with affiliated centers, they said.Just because these particular groups do not share tax identification numbers does not preclude centers from sharing them with other organizations. For example, Care Net is affiliated with a string of Florida pregnancy centers – which, rather than sharing Care Net’s tax ID, are instead listed on tax documents for a wide-ranging charity run by a local Catholic diocese.Anti-abortion pregnancy centers tend to be faith-based. Given the industry’s religious bent, courts have proven reluctant to restrict centers in order to avoid treading on their free speech rights.In 2018, the US supreme court ruled to toss a California law that would have forced centers to disclose whether they were a licensed medical provider. Then, last year, a federal judge in Colorado paused a law that would have banned “abortion reversal”, an unproven drug protocol that aims to halt abortions and is often offered by anti-abortion pregnancy centers. (The first randomized, controlled clinical study to try to study the “reversal” protocol’s effectiveness suddenly stopped in 2019, after three of its participants went to the hospital hemorrhaging blood.)“More regulation could lead to better reporting, which would also then help with reducing all of these risks,” said Teneille Brown, a University of Utah College of Law professor who studies anti-abortion pregnancy centers. “Then the consumers could get some sense of like, ‘Oh, this clinic has had a bunch of violations,’ and if there were regulation, they could actually even shut them down.” More