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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
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
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
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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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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Colorado governor issues executive order to protect abortion accessJared Polis pledges that his state will not assist other states in criminal or civil investigations into abortions The Democratic governor of Colorado has mandated that his state will not cooperate with any investigations into abortions led by other states.Jared Polis signed an executive order on Wednesday pledging that the western US state will not assist other states in criminal or civil investigations used to prevent people from accessing abortions.The executive order adds protections for individuals and organizations that provide abortions, as well as for individuals obtaining an abortion, including people who have traveled from other states.“We are taking needed action to protect and defend individual freedom and protect the privacy of Coloradans,” said Polis in a statement obtained by the Colorado Sun.“This important step will ensure that Colorado’s thriving economy and workforce are not impacted based on personal health decisions that are wrongly being criminalized in other states.”Nearly two weeks after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, dissolving a nearly 50-year precedent of federal abortion protections, states have taken measures to protect reproductive rights for those living in the state or those traveling for reproductive healthcare services.In North Carolina, the Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, signed an executive order on Wednesday protecting abortion rights within the state. The order protects those who receive an abortion or medical providers who perform them from any penalties for providing, seeking or inquiring about reproductive healthcare, reported ABC News.Meanwhile, other states have taken steps to further criminalize and limit abortion access following the supreme court decision.In Mississippi, a state law taking effect on Thursday will ban most abortions throughout the state after a judge rejected an emergency request to block the anti-abortion trigger law.The state’s only abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, closed on Wednesday following the ruling.Similarly, a six-week abortion ban in Ohio will remain in place after the state’s supreme court refused to halt the ban while the court reviews lawsuit to overturn it, reported the Cincinnati Enquirer.“Ohioans are suffering in real time, and we have not yet seen the worst of this healthcare crisis,” said a group of Ohio’s abortion clinics in a statement. “All people deserve autonomy over their bodies and the power to make their own healthcare decisions.”TopicsColoradoAbortionRoe v WadeHealthUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
After the long wait, US parents seeking under-5s’ vaccine face yet more hurdlesSome local officials are unsure of how to order Covid vaccines or when they will arrive, while others are aiming to ignore federal guidelines completely Ashley Comegys, a parent of two young children in Florida, was ecstatic when the Covid vaccines were authorized for children above the age of six months in the US. “We’ve been waiting for this for so long,” she said. “We can finally start to spread our wings again.”But then she learned that Florida had missed two deadlines to preorder vaccines and would not make them available through state and local health departments, delaying the rollout by several weeks and significantly limiting access.“Rage does not adequately describe how I felt that they were basically inhibiting me from being able to make a choice to protect my children,” Comegys said.Families with young kids encountered months of delays after the pediatric trials were expanded and regulators pushed back meetings in order to evaluate the data closely. Vaccines for adults were rolled out a year and a half ago.Now new challenges to vaccinating some of America’s youngest are cropping up.“I called probably 20 pharmacies and pediatricians in our area” – including across the state line, said Sheryl Peters, a parent of an 18-month-old and a four-year-old in Tennessee.Even after the vaccines were authorized for this age group, her local health officials didn’t know when they would arrive, and they directed her to the state health department, who told her it would be a few weeks, she said. She was crying on the phone, begging for help, but “nobody knew anything,” she said. “It was so, so disorganized.”-While Tennessee did pre-order vaccines, the rollout has been slow and complicated. And the confusion could deepen.Four Republican lawmakers in Tennessee are petitioning the governor, Bill Lee, to ignore the federal recommendations on vaccinating children under five and to ban state health departments from “distributing, promoting or recommending” the vaccines, creating uncertainty in the state’s approach to vaccinating some of its youngest residents.Tennessee stopped all vaccination outreach to teens – not just around the Covid vaccines – in 2021.The actions by leaders in states like Florida and Tennessee may contribute to existing hesitancy some families feel toward the vaccines, as well as hampering efforts to vaccinate children across the states – particularly those who have been marginalized in the health system, who are also at higher risk of getting sick.“Departments of health, by and large, assist people who don’t have insurance or are on Medicaid or don’t have access to healthcare or live in rural areas where there are no providers,” said Michelle Fiscus, a pediatrician and Tennessee’s former top vaccines official who was fired in July 2021 after promoting vaccines. She was “absolutely furious” to read the lawmakers’ request for a ban.“For an elected body and a governor in a state who has continued to beat the drum of everybody can make their own choice, whether it’s about wearing a mask or gathering in a church or getting a vaccine, to decide for these parents that they are no longer going to have access to these vaccines is really antithetical to everything that they have been preaching,” Fiscus said.“Everything has always been, ‘It’s your choice. You don’t have to quarantine or isolate – it’s your choice. You don’t have to wear a mask – it’s your choice. You don’t have to stay away – it’s your choice.’ But when it comes to getting a vaccine that can actually save lives and prevent hospitalization, then they’re going to make the decision to take that choice away from you.”That’s been one of the hardest parts about this process for Comegys.“If you don’t want to get vaccinated, if you don’t want to mask, OK,” she said. “You can choose that. But why do you then get to make that choice for my family and the way that we want to protect our kids? It doesn’t feel fair.”Some officials continue to spread the narrative that kids aren’t affected by Covid, Fiscus said, even after more than 440 deaths and thousands of hospitalizations among children under five.In March, Florida’s department of health recommended against Covid vaccines for all healthy children. Florida is “affirmatively against the Covid vaccine for young kids”, DeSantis said at a press conference on 16 June, despite ample evidence of the vaccines’ safety and efficacy.The Biden administration soon announced that Florida “reversed course” and would allow doctors to order vaccines directly. State officials disputed the idea of a pivot, saying doctors were already allowed to order the vaccines on their own, but doctors pointed out that the portal to do so was not in place until after the initial shipments had already gone out to every other state.“The state of Florida intentionally missed multiple deadlines to order vaccines to protect its youngest kids,” said Dr Ashish K Jha, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator.With the delays and the confusion, many doctors and health systems haven’t received doses yet.Only federally qualified health centers and pharmacies participating in the national pharmacy program could order vaccines directly in Florida. But most pharmacies can only vaccinate kids three and older, leaving significant access gaps for younger children. (CVS can administer the vaccine to kids as young as 18 months through its Minute Clinic.) And some opted out entirely, with the grocery chain Publix announcing it will not offer the vaccine to children under five through its pharmacies.In Tennessee, Lee has not yet signaled whether he is considering limiting the vaccines. And even if vaccinations and information isn’t limited in Tennessee, the lawmakers’ request could add to hesitancy around the vaccines.“That seems to be their goal, to continue to spread vaccine misinformation and disinformation and to continue to erode confidence around these vaccines,” Fiscus said.In Florida, vaccinations will probably stall amid the message that Covid vaccines for kids aren’t recommended and the confusion around how to find them, especially because Florida isn’t offering the pediatric vaccines at state and local health departments and because pharmacies usually only vaccinate kids above the age of three.“I genuinely don’t know, if you have a child under three, where you will go for that here if your pediatrician’s not getting it,” Comegys said. “Unless you’re on top of it, it’s going to be really hard to find.”Many pediatricians in her area are short-staffed and aren’t able to reach out to families to let them know the vaccines have been authorized and how to get them.Her pediatrician was able to place an order for the under-five vaccines a week ago, but it’s going to take several weeks before they arrive. Her two children were placed on the waitlist.It’s been difficult to know the vaccines are rolling out in other states while her family still can’t access them, Comegys said. “The fact that it is available, and I can’t access it – that’s where I get really angry and really upset.”Families that want to vaccinate their kids are eager to get the shots as soon as possible, as the US faces another potential wave from the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, and with the return to school rapidly approaching.But many families feel like they put their lives on hold while much of the rest of the world moved on. Peters had a family cruise planned for May that they canceled because the shots weren’t available yet, while Comegys is canceling a vacation planned for July.“The finish line has been so close,” Comegys said. “And then to hear, ‘Oh no, it’s going to be another couple of weeks or a couple of months.’ I’m so angry. We’re so close, and now you’re not going to let me get there.”TopicsCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationFloridaParents and parentingUS politicsHealthFamilynewsReuse this content More
