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      The abortion rights movement can learn from the Aids activism of the 80s and 90s | Moira Donegan

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      The abortion rights movement can learn from the Aids activism of the 80s and 90sMoira DoneganAct Up employed a multiplicity of tactics and responses while maintaining a laser-focused singleness of purpose It was already chaos, and now, it was going to get worse. The US supreme court’s decision wasn’t exactly a surprise – everyone knew it was coming – but the rage in the room felt palpable. The language of the opinion had been taunting and cruel; the punishment from the court felt vindictive, personal. People were already dying for lack of access to healthcare; the ruling would push people in need even further to the margins. Now, the most vulnerable faced criminalization, harassment and even death, and for what? For the conservative Christian values that none of them had voted for? For a regressive, punitive, and cruel vision of gender and sexuality that most of the world had long since left behind?The ruling was Bowers v Hardwick, and the year was 1987. The supreme court, in a virulently homophobic opinion, had upheld a Georgia law criminalizing gay sex between consenting adults. At the time, the Aids crisis was gripping gay America. Out of bigotry and indifference, both the federal government and the pharmaceutical sector were dragging their feet. Meanwhile, thousands of people, mostly gay men and IV drug users, were dying slow, painful, premature deaths, at the margins of a society that hated them and feared their disease.The moral stakes couldn’t have been more clear: a backwards and oppressive understanding of gender was creating needless suffering and death. It wasn’t the birth of Act Up, the radical grassroots activist group that confronted the Aids crisis in America, but it was the moment when Act Up was energized into the powerful force it would become. At the group’s regular Monday night meetings at New York’s Lesbian and Gay Center, the crowd swelled with outraged queers ready to be organized.The reproductive rights movement now faces a similar moment of rage and revival. Since the Dobbs opinion reversed Roe v Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, there has been an outpouring of pro-choice sentiment from previously unorganized or apolitical citizens. Meanwhile, an onslaught of horror stories is pouring out from conservative states: miscarrying patients going into septic shock before they can be treated; women forced to carry dead or doomed fetuses for weeks; little girls, raped and impregnated by men they thought they could trust, fleeing their states to get the abortions that will allow them to reclaim what’s left of their childhoods. This is just the beginning: there will be more of these stories, many more, and they will get worse.Like the gay community in 1987, American women are now faced with a moment of profound terror, anger, and grief whose full extent is yet to be seen. A slogan advanced in recent years by the pro-abortion group We Testify attempts to destigmatize the procedure: everyone loves someone who’s had an abortion. Soon, everyone will know someone who has needed an abortion, and struggled to get it.Moments of feminist rage aren’t uncommon in American politics, but the ability to harness women’s anger for political ends has been a trickier feat, especially in recent years. The Women’s March, which followed Donald Trump’s election, drew in giant numbers for street protests, but was unable to harness its support toward a specific agenda. The organization was hobbled by infighting and lack of direction. Later, the #MeToo movement was able to generate public conversation and remove a number of high-profile abusers from positions of power. But #MeToo was not able to translate its moral authority into a political platform.Act Up offers a different model, one with a proven record of success. Like feminists and abortion rights supporters now, Act Up was composed of people of varying backgrounds, commitments, and ideologies. They had different priorities, skills, and ideas; different perspectives and styles. But they all shared the same goal: to combat the Aids crisis, and to improve the lives of people with Aids.The writer and teacher Sarah Schulman, an Act Up veteran, attributes the group’s success to “a strategy of difference facilitating simultaneity of response”. In other words, a lot of different kinds of people were using different tactics, all in pursuit of the same things. Under this broad but well-defined agenda, the group was able to transform its varied constituency into an asset – not a liability.Over the five years that it was most active and influential, 1987-1992, the group was able to successfully lobby to lower drug prices, get more people included in trials, extend Aids benefits to women, and cut red tape to get more treatments to market. Their loud, aggressive, and irreverent public demonstrations at the FDA building and in the offices of pharmaceutical executives were carefully targeted and publicized, meant to garner publicity and also to be as uncomfortable and inconvenient as possible to the powerful people who were standing in their way. Now, the mainstream media scolds protesters for holding demure vigils outside the home of Brett Kavanaugh in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Back then, Act Up went down to DC to protest outside a politician’s home, too. They found out the address of the rightwing, anti-gay North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, and with the news cameras rolling, put a giant condom over his house.Maybe one of the great lessons of Act Up is this willingness to embrace irreverence and joy, something the reproductive rights movement, to their great credit, have also embraced. But another virtue is that the group employed a multiplicity of tactics and responses while maintaining a singleness of purpose.Feminism, as a movement, has long had a problem of unsustainably expanding responsibilities. Because women exist in all walks of life, any social problem can be cast as a feminist problem. But no movement can take on responsibility for every injustice in the world. Like Act Up, the reproductive rights movement would be wise to assign itself an expansive understanding of a narrow remit.Act Up aimed to combat the Aids crisis and improve the lives of people with Aids, a purview that enabled different factions within the group to take on issues of drug access, housing discrimination, sex education, and the power of the Catholic church. Likewise, the reproductive rights movement would be wise to dedicate itself only to the emergency at hand: abortion access, and the lives of people who need abortions. It is there that they can do the most good for those affected, and it is where they can reshape, as Act Up did, both the public debate and the facts on the ground.Much of this is already happening. In the years that the right has been ascendant and abortion supporters have been on the defensive, large, national non-profit advocacy groups have mostly been on the back foot. But in the places they have vacated, a vast network of small but mighty local organizations, and abortion funds, have stepped in to help those seeking abortions with material needs. These groups represent an essential intervention in material service provision. They can also form the foundation for what feminism needs now: an organized political movement.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsAbortionOpinionUS politicsAids and HIVLGBTQ+ rightsHealthcommentReuse this content More

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      ‘The world flipped upside down’: Will end of Roe galvanize Democrats’ base in midterms?

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      ‘The world flipped upside down’: Will end of Roe galvanize Democrats’ base in midterms? Democrats believe that signs of a brewing backlash after the loss of reproduction choice will reshape the battle for control of Congress and and statehouses this fallFor years, Democrats warned that abortion rights were under grave threat. Across the US, antiabortion activists in red states chipped away at access and pushed for conservative judges to secure their gains. Yet for many Americans, the prospect of losing the constitutional right to abortion that had existed since 1973 remained worrying but remote.That all changed in June, when in Dobbs v Jackson, the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, the 49-year-old ruling which had established the right.Since then, bans have taken effect in at least 10 states. Republicans are rushing ahead with new restrictions and stirring fears that other rights, including same-sex marriage and access to contraception, could be vulnerable too.And yet, from rural Minnesota to ruby red Kansas and a conservative corner of Nebraska, there are signs of a brewing backlash that Democrats believe will reshape the battle for control of Congress and statehouses this fall.Republicans are “the dog that caught the bus”, said Cecile Richards, a former head of Planned Parenthood. “This is what they’ve been wanting for years. Now they own it.”White House officials, Democratic candidates and party strategists say the loss of reproductive choice has not only galvanized their once-disillusioned base but is strengthening Democrats’ appeal among independent and Republican-leaning women in suburbs who were key to the party’s recent victories.The landslide vote to protect abortion rights in conservative Kansas earlier this month further emboldened Democrats – and emphasized that Republicans risk overreaching on one of the most emotionally charged issues in American life.“The world just completely flipped upside down after the Dobbs decision,” said Richards, now co-chair at American Bridge 21st Century, a liberal super Pac. “We’re no longer defending a right. We now actually have to fight to get a right back.”‘A top-tier issue’Republicans doubt abortion will be a decisive factor in a midterm election shaped by anxiety over high gas prices and inflation and an unpopular Democratic president.“Every public and private poll shows inflation and the economy are the top issues headed into the midterms,” said Mike Berg, a spokesman for the Republican National Congressional Committee. “Democrats are desperate to talk about anything else because they have a disastrous record on both of those issues.”But Democrats are forging ahead, lashing Republicans over their uncompromising stances and sometimes bizarre rhetoric on abortion.Underscoring their confidence in the salience of abortion this election cycle, Democrats are spending heavily on television ads on the subject. One particularly searing ad from Stacey Abrams, the nominee for governor in Georgia, features a somber montage of women warning that women could be “criminalized” for seeking abortions if Brian Kemp, the Republican governor, is re-elected.“The only way to stop this attack on the women of Georgia,” the women say, “is to stop Brian Kemp.”Many of their ads aim to use Republicans’ words against them, as part of a broader effort by Democrats to cast the GOP as too extreme.In Michigan, where voters may decide to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution in November, the Democratic Governors Association launched an ad attacking the Republican nominee, Tudor Dixon, over her opposition to abortion, without exception for rape or incest.In a similar vein, an ad from the the Democratic nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, features his far-right opponent, Doug Mastriano, saying “I don’t give a way for exceptions”, including when the life of the mother is at risk. Polling has shown that most Americans support at least some abortion rights. According to the Pew Research Center, around 60% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases while just 8% say it should be illegal with no exceptions.The aggressive messaging from Democrats is a reminder of how rapidly the politics of abortion have shifted.Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster and strategist who has studied public opinion on abortion, said: “Six months ago, if you asked voters, ‘What’s the top priority that you want elected leaders to focus on,’ abortion might get 3%, 4%, 5% at most. Now it really is a top-tier issue, only behind inflation and the economy.”Murphy said anti-abortion’s resounding defeat in the Kansas referendum showed voters were motivated by the opportunity “to stop something bad from happening”. To channel that fury, she said, Democrats must convince voters Republicans are not just opposed to abortion but a threat to it.Some Democrats are adopting Republican language about government overreach on issues like masking to accuse their opponents of infringing on individual rights and freedoms when it comes to women’s reproductive health. It is all part of a broader strategy to cast Republicans as extremists determined to strip Americans of a right they have come to rely.The pitch is similar to Democrats’ messaging in 2018, when they stormed to victory in the House after lashing Republicans over attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, said Camille Rivera, a Democratic strategist.“As we learned with Obamacare, once you have a right, you don’t want really don’t want that right taken away,” she said.Another key question for this November is just how much abortion rights will resonate among independent women in battleground suburbs who have deep concerns about the economy. Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist, said abortion was usually not the first issue raised in focus groups with swing voters. But when prompted, the discussion around abortion often became personal.“The thing that happens when you start talking to a group of women about abortion is they immediately start telling stories about complications and the things that can go wrong during a pregnancy,” she said in a recent interview.What is clear, Longwell said, is that women, even those who call themselves “pro-life”, are “deeply uncomfortable with the idea of getting between women and their doctors on decisions that could put their lives at risk”.‘We are living it’Republicans are largely shying away from the issue on the campaign trail. With total bans proving deeply unpopular, some candidates are softening their rhetoric, emphasizing support for exceptions and for the health and well-being of women. In Nevada, a battleground state, the Republican candidate for Senate, Adam Laxalt, has argued that his personal opposition to abortion would not change protections already in place.“My views have not shifted the policy in Nevada, nor has the ruling in the Dobbs case,” Laxalt wrote earlier this month. “Voters in 1990 determined that Nevada is and will remain a pro-choice state.”But the issue is hard to ignore. Harrowing stories have spread. A 10-year-old girl who was raped had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to get an abortion. Weeks later, Indiana became the first state in the post-Roe era to adopt a near-total ban. This week, a judge in Florida told a 16-year-old she was not “not sufficiently mature” to decide whether to have an abortion.“We are no longer speaking about this as a hypothetical,” Murphy said. “We are living it.”Among Kansans who registered to vote in the wake of the Dobbs ruling, Democrats held an eight-point advantage, according to data from TargetSmart. Among those newly registered voters, 70% were women.Elsewhere, in a pair of post-Roe special House elections, Democrats outperformed expectations, boosted by strong turnout in suburban areas.In Minnesota’s first district, the Democrat lost by just four points. Donald Trump won there by more than 10 in 2020. The trend was more pronounced in a June election in Nebraska’s first district. Two years ago, Trump won there by nearly 15 points. This year, the Republican won by six.Analysts caution against drawing firm conclusions from such a small sampling. Republicans only need to win a handful of seats to gain control of the House, as they are favored to do, while the 50-50 Senate remains agenuine toss-up.A special election in New York on Tuesday may offer more clues. In the most competitive House race since Roe fell, the Democrat, Pat Ryan, has made abortion central to his campaign. The Republican, Marc Molinaro, has focused on the economy and inflation.Urging New Yorkers to vote, Ryan said “choice” and “freedom” were both “on the ballot”.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Roe v WadeUS politicsAbortionHealthDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      The Guardian view on the Kansas abortion vote: voice of America | Editorial

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      The Guardian view on the Kansas abortion vote: voice of AmericaEditorialThis week’s vote to defend women’s rights mirrors US opinion on the issue more generally and may shape the midterm elections Nearly 20 years ago, the political writer Thomas Frank authored a bestseller to which he gave the title What’s the Matter with Kansas? It was one of the first books of the post-Bill Clinton era to try to nail the rightwing populism redefining middle America. Mr Frank, who is himself from Kansas, chose the title deliberately. Despite an earlier history of grassroots antitrust activism, 20th- and 21st-century Kansas had dug in ever deeper against progressivism; no Democratic presidential candidate has now won there since 1964. Donald Trump, who epitomises everything about which Mr Frank wrote, carried Kansas with ease in 2016 and 2020.At the heart of Mr Frank’s argument was the view that culture war campaigns on abortion and gay equality have been crucial in persuading economically insecure Kansas voters to move ever more solidly rightwards. Much of the book focuses on how the Democratic party itself contributed to the shift. The consequence of this process seemed to reach an even darker place in 2009 when the pro-choice doctor George Tiller was murdered in the Kansas city of Wichita.Yet on Tuesday voters in Kansas chose to make a stand. In an unexpectedly high turnout contest, they voted to uphold the state’s abortion rights by a 59% to 41% margin. They did this in the face of the widely held view that the US supreme court’s decision to overturn the Roe v Wade judgment has reset America’s political landscape more conservatively. They also defied the expectation that Republicans, not Democrats, would be more energised by the campaign.It is possible that there were special local factors at play in Kansas. The voting paper was confusingly written; abortion rights supporters had to vote “No” not “Yes” to keep the state’s protections. Tuesday was also a day in which hardline conservatives, supporting and supported by Mr Trump, scored well in other states, such as Arizona. Caution is therefore in order in extrapolating too recklessly from the Kansas vote. Nevertheless, the vote was a rallying call. If 59% of the people can vote for abortion rights in Kansas, the likelihood is that at least 59% will vote for them in many other states too, perhaps in at least 40 of the 50. It is also very much in line with national polling showing 57% national disapproval after the supreme court’s ruling. President Biden was right to emphasise in his reaction to the Kansas vote that the majority of Americans support women’s abortion rights.In Kansas at least, the justices have not, after all, had the last word. Most of all, this vote was important for the women of the state. But it has two wider implications. The first is that democracy has hit back, not just at the supreme court ruling, but also at the false idea that the court should have the final say in American politics. The second is that abortion rights may prove to be a potent mobilising issue in the November midterm elections more generally, which indeed they should be. It is high time that Democrats realised they do not have to campaign on economic issues alone and instead took the fight for abortion rights to the Republicans. The Kansas vote should embolden them to do so.TopicsAbortionOpinionHealthWomenUS politicseditorialsReuse this content More

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      Justice department sues Idaho over state’s near-total abortion ban

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      Justice department sues Idaho over state’s near-total abortion banLawsuit is DoJ’s first piece of litigation aimed at protecting abortion access since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade The Biden administration’s Department of Justice is suing Idaho over the state’s near-total abortion ban, set to take effect on 25 August.The lawsuit is the justice department’s first piece of litigation aimed at protecting abortion access since the US supreme court in June overturned the landmark Roe v Wade decision that established federal abortion rights nearly 50 years earlier.During a press conference on Tuesday, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced the lawsuit alongside representatives from the justice department’s reproductive rights taskforce.Garland said Idaho’s abortion ban violates federal law which mandates that medical providers offer emergency care in the face of serious health consequences – not just in life-saving circumstances. The law makes no exceptions for abortions, regardless of what any state law says.Under Idaho’s law, abortions are only legal for victims of rape or incest as well as to save the life of a pregnant person. Doctors who do not provide sufficient evidence that an abortion was provided under those circumstances could face two to five years in prison and the forfeiture of their medical licenses.“The justice department is going to use every tool we have to ensure reproductive freedom,” Garland told reporters on Tuesday.More than half of US states have either banned or are expected to ban abortion after the supreme court’s decision earlier this summer returned regulation of abortion to the state level.Bans like the one Idaho has imposed are forcing patients seeking abortions to travel hundreds of miles from home, among other consequences.TopicsIdahoAbortionUS politicsHealthWomennewsReuse this content More

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      If you have a miscarriage in Republican America, your health is now at risk | Moira Donegan

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      If you have a miscarriage in Republican America, your health is now at riskMoira DoneganThe supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe has created a vast new public health crisis, as abortion bans complicate once-standard care for pregnant women The worst-case scenarios arrived with alarming speed. In the weeks since the US supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, the case that overturned Roe v Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, American women have faced a radical reordering of their lives. A right essential to their dignity and self-determination has been stripped away after nearly 50 years – and with it, the gains women have made in professional, political and social life are newly and gravely endangered. But in addition to this moral and civic crisis, the supreme court’s decision has also created a vast and acute new public health crisis, as abortion bans complicate once-standard care for pregnant women – and place the health of even those who are not pregnant into new and arbitrary danger.From natural birth to caesarean: women must be given unbiased information | Kara ThompsonRead moreTopicsUS politicsOpinionAbortionWomen’s healthHealthHealth policyRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      FDA could approve over-the-counter purchase of first birth control pill

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      FDA could approve over-the-counter purchase of first birth control pillThe agency is considering the application by HRA Pharma to make Opill available without a prescription The Food and Drug Administration will consider an application for the first birth control pill to be sold without a prescription.US pharmacies reportedly set purchase limit on emergency contraception pillsRead moreThe application from HRA Pharma would seek to make Opill – an every day, prescription-only hormonal contraception first approved in 1973 – available over-the-counter. Such an approval from the FDA would allow people to purchase “the pill” without a prescription for the first time since oral contraceptives became widely available in the 1960s.The application will also cast oral contraceptives into a fraught political moment in the US. The US supreme court ended federal protection for abortion rights late last month, throwing into question the future of birth control.The drugmaker said the timing is unrelated. A decision on the application could come as soon as 2023.“This historic application marks a groundbreaking moment in contraceptive access and reproductive equity in the US,” said HRA Pharma’s chief strategic operations and innovation officer, Frédérique Welgryn. “More than 60 years ago, prescription birth control pills in the US empowered women to plan if and when they want to get pregnant.”Making birth control available without a prescription will “help even more women and people access contraception without facing unnecessary barriers”, said Welgryn, whose company has already submitted the application.Most oral contraceptives are exceedingly safe, using a combination of estrogen and progestin to prevent pregnancy. Opill uses only progestin, which may make it a better candidate for over-the-counter marketing, since it can be used even by people with a history of blood clotting or uncontrolled high blood pressure, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).However, the “mini-pill,” as some progestin-only contraceptives are called, also has side effects. The most common is breakthrough bleeding between periods, which can be unpredictable, according to ACOG.Presently, all hormonal daily birth control pills require a prescription in the US, and many are covered by health insurance. However, obtaining such a prescription has been difficult for many US women. Roughly one-in-four women who had ever attempted to get a hormonal birth control prescription reported difficulty doing so, often because of language barriers, lack of insurance or cost, according to a 2015 study.If approved, over-the-counter birth control would be a victory years in the making. The Free the Pill Coalition has worked to make birth control available without a prescription for nearly two decades in the US, saying it is now available without a prescription in more than 100 countries. The American Medical Association, which is the nation’s largest professional association of doctors, said in June it supports over-the-counter birth control.Over-the-counter birth control would also provide an alternative form of family planning in the chaotic aftermath of the supreme court’s decision to overturn its landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v Wade, which granted federal abortion protections.Several states have already begun to enforce near-total abortion bans, and that number is expected to grow to at least 26 in the coming weeks.The debate about abortion rights could spill over into the FDA’s work on contraception. Already, contraception is among the most politicized aspects of the agency’s work. Emergency contraception, sold under the brand name “Plan B” in the US, is already available over-the-counter. The FDA recently said medication to terminate a pregnancy, often called the “abortion pill” or “medication abortion,” can be prescribed via telemedicine.However, states hostile to abortion and anti-abortion groups have already signaled that medication abortion is the next battleground for clamping down on abortion rights. That could put the FDA and states into direct conflict as states seek to regulate a medication that was federally approved.That conflict is likely to be sorted out in court. Should it reach the supreme court, the battle between the FDA and states could come before a conservative supermajority, some members of which have already expressed a willingness to overturn federal rights to contraceptives and to re-evaluate the power of federal agencies to regulate states.TopicsUS newsContraception and family planningUS politicsHealthReuse this content More

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      Americans lose faith in the US supreme court

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      The US supreme court has struck down the constitutional right to an abortion, one of several landmark decisions that will affect the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come.
      Jonathan Freedland and Jill Filipovic discuss whether it’s still possible for a deeply divided court of nine judges, a group that now has a 6-3 conservative majority, to keep the promise to the American people of ‘equal protection’, and what happens if it can’t

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