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      ‘We did it in cattle’: Alabama Republicans’ bungled response to IVF patients

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      On Wednesday morning, some 200 Alabama in vitro fertilization (IVF) patients, doctors and advocates descended on the Alabama state house. Wearing orange and pink shirts for infertility awareness, they carried a variety of handmade signs: “You can’t cuddle an embryo”. “I just want to be a mom”.For these people and thousands of others in the state, the last two weeks have been tumultuous.Following the Alabama supreme court’s recent ruling that frozen embryos are considered “children”, IVF clinics in the state have paused their services, leaving people who were in the process of treatment in limbo. Embryo shipping companies have also stopped servicing the state, which means that patients who want to transfer their frozen embryos out of Alabama are unable to do so.The rally concluded with some direct conversations between advocates and lawmakers. In one such interaction, the Republican state representative Ben Harrison told families that a “solution” would be to freeze the sperm and egg separately, instead of freezing embryos, likening the former procedure to a process used on cows.“My personal opinion is that we keep them apart and only bring them together for what you need and what you’re willing to implant,” Harrison said. “We did it in cattle all the time.”The interaction pointed to the disconnect between families who are undergoing the IVF process, doctors who provide IVF services and lawmakers who may not understand the intricacies of and science behind IVF, but who ultimately can decide whether or not it remains legal.Dr Mamie McLean of Alabama Fertility in Birmingham has become one of the most vocal opponents of the supreme court decision. Flanked by other doctors and IVF patients, she spoke to those attending the rally before they headed into the state house.“As an infertility physician, I am used to difficult conversations, but these last two weeks have been absolutely heartbreaking,” she said. “Due to the uncertainty posed by the supreme court ruling, we have had to cancel embryo transfers for patients who are longing and praying for a child. We call on the state of Alabama to provide immediate, complete and permanent access to IVF care for the women and families of Alabama.”Resolve, the national infertility group that helped organize the rally, provided pamphlets and advised attendees on how to speak to legislators. “What happens here today in these offices will be looked at by the rest of the country,” said Barbara Collura, the group’s president and CEO. “This potentially could be a roadmap for other states to restrict access to IVF or a roadmap for how to protect access to IVF and family building. Please use your voice.”Collura said that some desperate families were leaving the state for treatment.“You’re on these medications for weeks and they cost a lot of money. It’s not covered by insurance for most of these people,” she said of the drugs used during IVF treatment. “You can’t just stop and start up next week, plus we don’t know when this will get fixed.”‘It could end my journey’Elizabeth Goldman, who stood with McLean and other advocates during the rally, was diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome when she was 14. The rare disorder means that she was born without a uterus; doctors told her she would never be able to carry her own child. When the University of Alabama launched a uterus transplant program in 2020, Goldman applied, moving with her husband from Mobile to Birmingham (near the school’s campus) in the hope of being able to have a child. After receiving the uterus transplant and undergoing several rounds of IVF treatment and transfers, Goldman was able to conceive. Her daughter, who was with her at the rally, was born in October 2023.Transplant patients are able to keep the uterus for just one or two deliveries, because of the volatility of a foreign organ, Goldman said. She estimates that she has taken about 20,000 pills since her transplant 22 months ago to keep her body from rejecting the uterus.Her medical team cleared her to carry a second child, and had planned to proceed with her transfer this March. But the supreme court decision has put that at a standstill. Goldman was on her way to a transfer appointment when she found out through a notification that her clinic had closed.“With all of the transplant meds I take, it can start to cause kidney damage and other health problems,” she said. “It’s not a life-saving transplant, but a life-giving transplant. So basically, right now I’m healthy. My kidneys are good. But if it continues to drag on, it could end my journey.”Jamie Heard and Deidra Smith drove to the rally from Birmingham hoping to speak to legislators face to face. Heard used IVF to give birth to her now two-year-old son. She had already started her cycle for a second child when the news of the supreme court’s decision broke. Her clinic cancelled her appointments in the middle of treatment.“It was heartbreaking,” Heard said. “The emotions for the past few days – I feel like I’ve been grieving a loved one, that’s how heavy my emotions have been.”Brittany Pettaway and her husband Byron, of Montgomery, currently have eight frozen embryos. She said that this was their only chance of becoming parents. They attended the rally hoping that legislators would make things go “back to literally how it was two weeks ago”.“We’re just trying to protect that right, and what should be a natural, God-given ability to do,” she said. “It’s surreal, I feel like I’m waiting for someone to say it was a joke, a really horrible emotional nightmare.”‘I don’t know what the answer is’After the rally ended, advocates queued outside to make their way into the state house to speak to legislators directly. The floors with offices for senators and representatives were full of people dressed in orange and pink.Outside one office, a group of families engaged the Alabama state auditor, Andrew Sorrell, in a conversation about their struggles. As auditor, Sorrell reports the state’s receipts, claims and payments, taxes and revenues to the governor.“I don’t know exactly what the answer is, but we’ve got to find some way to protect the IVF industry while also maintaining our pro-life stance,” he said.Sorrell suggested women only make as many embryos as they want to use. The advocates explained “the numbers game”, in which a family may produce dozens of eggs, but ultimately only have one or two viable, healthy embryos. Sorrell also suggested the state pay to make it easier for people to adopt frozen embryos.Following the near immediate backlash to the court’s decision, Republicans across the country initially were mum on the issue. But as clinics across Alabama began to close, they turned heel, speaking out in support of IVF. Alabama’s attorney general promised not to prosecute IVF clinics or patients, while the former president Trump also spoke in support of the procedure. On Wednesday, several bills that would preserve IVF moved forward in the Alabama legislature. One bill, which will progress to the Alabama senate after it received a vote of 94-6 on Thursday, would protect clinics from lawsuits.But there is no comprehensive solution to preserving IVF in the state and, in the meantime, patients and families, even those mid-treatment, are left waiting. More

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      Senate Democrats to force vote on protecting IVF access across the US

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      Senate Democrats are moving to push through a bill that would protect Americans’ access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, after an Alabama supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are children led to the closure of a number of infertility clinics in the state.The Democratic Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth said she would try to force a vote on the legislation on Wednesday which would establish a federal right to IVF and other fertility treatments that are at risk in the post-Roe era. Duckworth’s two children were conceived through IVF.“I’m headed to the Senate floor to call on my colleagues to pass via unanimous consent my Access to Family Building Act, which would ensure that every American’s right to become a parent via treatments like IVF is fully protected, regardless of what state they live in – guaranteeing that no hopeful parent or doctor is punished,” Duckworth said at a news conference on Tuesday.Duckworth’s move comes as Democrats vow to make IVF a campaign issue as they look to squeeze Republicans and highlight the continuing fallout of the overturning of Roe v Wade.“I warned that red states would come for IVF. Now they have. But they aren’t going to stop in Alabama. Mark my words: if we don’t act now, it will only get worse,” Duckworth added.The bill would require unanimous consent in order for it to pass, meaning that any one senator can block its passage. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said it was unlikely to receive unanimous consent from the chamber to rush the bill through.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile many Republican lawmakers registered disappointment over the Alabama ruling, at least one conservative senator was expected to object.Blumenthal said Democrats would not be deterred. He would not say what the next legislative steps would be, but he said Democrats, who control the Senate, would look for other ways to protect IVF and reproductive healthcare.“The IVF dilemma for Republicans is they are down a path that is not only unpopular, it’s untenable as a matter of constitutional law and basic moral imperative, and we’re going to pursue it vigorously,” Blumenthal said.“Today’s vote, the effort to seek a unanimous consent, we know is unlikely to be successful. Failing today is only the prelude to a fight ahead on women’s reproductive care centered on IVF and other steps that have to be taken to protect basic rights.” More

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      Florida delays ‘fetal personhood’ bill after fallout from Alabama IVF ruling

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      Florida lawmakers have postponed a bill that would give fetuses civil rights after a similar ruling in Alabama has halted in vitro fertilization treatment at several clinics in the state.The “fetal personhood” bill had been gaining support amid Florida’s mostly Republican lawmakers. The legislation attempts to define a fetus as an “unborn child”, allowing parents to collect financial damages in the case of wrongful death, the Tampa Bay Times reported.But the bill has largely stalled after Democrats argued that the legislation could affect in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, as seen in Alabama after the state’s supreme court ruled earlier this month that embryos created through IVF are considered “extrauterine children”. Since the ruling, several Alabama IVF clinics have paused services.The Florida state representative Dotie Joseph, a Democrat, told the Washington Post that the bill’s language did not protect IVF treatment from being affected.“We are exposing the healthcare provider to liability if something goes wrong,” Joseph said. “You have a situation where you are creating a chilling effect for people who are proactively trying to have a baby.”Florida Democrats have also warned that the new law could further affect abortion access, as fetuses gain additional civil rights rights under law.The Republican state senator Erin Grall, who sponsored the bill, said in a statement that she requested the legislation be postponed amid concerns.“Although I have worked diligently to respond to questions and concerns, I understand there is still work that needs to be done,” Grall said, the Bay Times reported. “It is important we get the policy right with an issue of this significance.”Other co-sponsors of the bill, such as the Republican state representative Jenna Persons-Mulicka, have reiterated that the bill is about the “value of the life of an unborn child”, the Post reported.It is unlikely that the bill will be passed in the current legislative session, which ends on 8 March, the Post reported.Following the Alabama ruling, other states have weighed similar bills that would grant fetuses rights, NBC News reported.At least 14 states legislatures have introduced similar “fetal personhood” bills, NBC reported, citing data from the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Guttmacher Institute. The surge is the largest increase of such bills since the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022. More

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      The Republican party wants to turn America into a theocracy | Robert Reich

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      In a case centering on wrongful-death claims for frozen embryos that were accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic, the Alabama supreme court ruled last Friday that frozen embryos are “children” under state law.As a result, several Alabama in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics are ceasing services, afraid to store or destroy any embryos.The underlying issue is whether government can interfere in the most intimate aspects of people’s lives – not only barring people from obtaining IVF services but also forbidding them from entering into gay marriage, utilizing contraception, having out-of-wedlock births, ending their pregnancies, changing their genders, checking out whatever books they want from the library, and worshipping God in whatever way they wish (or not worshipping at all).All these private freedoms are under increasing assault from Republican legislators and judges who want to impose their own morality on everyone else. Republicans are increasingly at war with America’s basic separation of church and state.According to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation – either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21%) or sympathizing with those views (33%).Christian nationalism is also closely linked with authoritarianism. According to the same survey, half of Christian nationalism adherents and nearly four in 10 sympathizers said they support the idea of an authoritarian leader powerful enough to keep these Christian values in society.During an interview at a Turning Point USA event last August, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (a Republican from Georgia) said party leaders need to be more responsive to the base of the party, which she claimed is made up of Christian nationalists.“We need to be the party of nationalism,” she said. “I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”A growing number of evangelical voters view Trump as the second coming of Jesus Christ and see the 2024 election as a battle not only for America’s soul but for the salvation of all mankind. Many of the Trump followers who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021 carried Christian symbols and signs invoking God and Jesus.An influential thinktank close to Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas into his administration if he returns to power, according to documents obtained by Politico.Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his presidential term and remains close to him.Vought, frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.Those policies include banning immigration of non-Christians into the United States, overturning same-sex marriage and barring access to contraception.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a concurring opinion in last week’s Alabama supreme court decision, Alabama’s chief justice, Tom Parker, invoked the prophet Jeremiah, Genesis and the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians.“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote. “Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”Before joining the court, Parker was a close aide and ally of Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama supreme court who was twice removed from the job – first for dismissing a federal court order to remove an enormous granite monument of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the state judicial building, and then for ordering state judges to defy the US supreme court’s decision affirming gay marriage.So far, the US supreme court has not explicitly based its decisions on scripture, but several of its recent rulings – the Dobbs decision that overruled Roe v Wade, its decision in Kennedy v Bremerton School District on behalf of a public school football coach who led students in Christian prayer, and its decision in Carson v Makin, requiring states to fund private religious schools if they fund any other private schools, even if those religious schools would use public funds for religious instruction and worship – are consistent with Christian nationalism.But Christian nationalism is inconsistent with personal freedom, including the first amendment’s guarantee that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.We can be truly free only if we’re confident we can go about our private lives without being monitored or intruded upon by the government and can practice whatever faith (or lack of faith) we wish regardless of the religious beliefs of others.A society where one set of religious views is imposed on those who disagree with them is not a democracy. It’s a theocracy.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      ‘That’s a hard one’: Alabama senator flounders over state’s IVF embryo ruling

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      Republican US senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama seemingly struggled to grasp the contradictory situation women have been placed in after his state’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos are children.Asked at a conservative conference on Thursday what he would say to women currently denied the fertility treatment, the former college football coach replied: “Yeah, I was all for it. We need to have more kids, we need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do.”But then when he was pressed on whether the ruling would negatively affect people who are trying to have conceive, Tuberville said: “Well, that’s, that’s for another conversation. I think the big thing is right now, you protect – you go back to the situation and try to work it out to where it’s best for everybody. I mean, that’s what – that’s what the whole abortion issue is about.”As a result of the ruling in question in Alabama, at least three IVF providers in the state have suspended services.“That’s a hard one,” Tuberville said when asked about IVF availability in Alabama. “It really is.”Tuberville said: “I’d have to look at what they’re agreeing to and not agreeing to. I haven’t seen that.”But he said that it was “unfortunate” if the women would not be denied the procedure.Tuberville’s spokesperson Hannah Eddins later sought to clarify the senator’s remarks, saying he had been “emphasizing his support for life at all stages”.“In addition to being pro-life and believing life begins at conception, Senator Tuberville is also pro-family,” Eddins said. “He believes strong families are instrumental to our country’s success.”Eddins added that Tuberville was “in no way” supporting the decision by clinics to halt IVF procedures.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Alabama court’s decision, released earlier this week, came in response to a lawsuit by a group of IVF patients whose frozen embryos were destroyed in December 2020 when a patient removed the embryos from a cryogenic storage unit and dropped them on the ground.With the ruling, Republican anti-abortion politicians are now in a bind between opposing abortion and supporting treatments that promote conception.Tuberville’s spokesperson said that the senator supported the US supreme court’s ruling that overturned the federal abortion right previously established by Roe v Wade. The court’s decision returned the issue of abortion rights back to individual states, many of which have outlawed the procedure in most cases.Tuberville’s remarks on Thursday came after his decision in December to end a months-long blockade of US military promotions over his opposition to a Pentagon policy that facilitates abortions for service members and dependents. More

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

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      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

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      Abortion rights are Biden’s most powerful re-election issue. He should act like it | Moira Donegan

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      For years, the beltway set had a standard line of advice for Democratic candidates: stick to the economy. The idea was that white, male, blue-collar voters – those magical creatures, somewhere out there in the windswept lands of the upper midwest, who always qualify in the pundit imagination as “real Americans” – would be turned off by so-called culture-war issues.These guys, we were told, didn’t want to hear about civil rights or social equality: they wanted to hear about economic growth. According to this advice, Democrats could be pro-choice, pro-racial justice, or pro-LGBTQ+ rights, but not openly, avowedly so. They had to play their progressive social positions in a minor key.It’s not clear that this advice ever really paid off for Democratic candidates. At any rate, you don’t hear it much any more. That’s because, for the past two years, Democratic electoral victories up and down the ballot have been driven disproportionately by one of those culture-war issues that candidates were typically told to avoid: abortion.American women’s anger over the US supreme court’s Dobbs ruling is the single most potent political force in America right now, and if Joe Biden wins re-election – a distinct if imperiled possibility – it will be because his campaign succeeded in making the election a referendum on Republicans’ abortion bans. There is no one issue with greater importance; there are few issues that have ever motivated voters so dramatically.You would think that this would be a gift to the Biden campaign. On paper, Republicans are almost solely responsible for the overturning of Roe and the draconian, morbid and dangerous abortion bans that have followed.Donald Trump continually brags about appointing three of the six justices who ruled to eliminate the abortion right; Republican politicians nationwide, not content with being able to ban abortion, have sought to eliminate life and health exemptions, to further restrict gestational age limits, and to impose criminal and civil penalties for things like advocating for abortion rights or transporting a patient across state lines. These are hateful, bigoted, invasive and lawless moves, ones that degrade women’s citizenship and are hated by the public. And they’re Republican moves.But the new prominence of abortion in electoral politics presents something of a conundrum for the Biden campaign: because while Republicans are vehemently anti-choice, Biden himself is not a particularly convincing abortion rights advocate.He is, at best, unenthused about the issue. Biden speaks of abortion in stilted, euphemistic terms, talking about “restoring the protections of Roe” or “a woman’s right to choose” more than “abortion”. (He did not use the word in public remarks until he was forced to after facing pressure from activists.) On the stump, he frequently ad libs, straying from prepared remarks to make his dislike of abortion clear. In one set of remarks last year, he unhelpfully offered that he was “not big on abortion”.In remarks this past week, he characterized his own position using anti-choice buzzwords, saying he was opposed to “abortion on demand”. Most of the campaigning on the issue has been passed off to Kamala Harris, admittedly a more comfortable messenger for a women’s rights platform. But outsourcing such a prominent issue to the vice-president is itself fraught with symbolic dangers: the campaign risks signaling that they consider abortion to be a second-tier issue by assigning it to their second-tier principal. And Harris is limited in what she can say by the somewhat narrow extent of the president’s comfort.And so Biden has taken on the task of marketing himself as a champion of abortion rights with all the relish of a third-grader told to eat his broccoli: he has been informed that doing so is good for him, but he really, really doesn’t want to. This week, as the Biden administration launched a series of policy and public relations efforts meant to frame the stakes of the elections for voters invested in reproductive freedom, things got off to something of a rocky start.Last Monday, on what would have been Roe’s 51st anniversary, Biden held a task force meeting in which he said that his administration would defend laws legalizing things like the FDA approval of mifepristone, which is being challenged by anti-choice lawyers in court. He said he would create a team to educate the public about when emergency abortions are legal in hospitals – a growing need in an era when more and more pregnant women are facing disastrous health risks because of abortion bans that prohibit the procedure from being used to spare them from catastrophic harm. He said he would encourage access to birth control.It was a tepid announcement, one where Biden seemed self-satisfied for doing the bare minimum. It was a policy agenda, too, that leaves all the agenda-setting power in the anti-choice movement’s hands: what the Biden campaign is offering American women – the ones who are angry and distraught, the ones that have suffered a blow to their dignity and an endangering of their safety – is that his administration might be willing to make minimal efforts to stop the people who are working maximally hard to make it worse.At a rally in Wisconsin the next day, Harris seemed more interested in describing the post-Dobbs landscape as one of a “healthcare crisis” – emphasizing, as Biden has, the stories of women denied life – and health-preserving abortions in moments of medical emergency. And it is true that the post-Dobbs world is one where it has become dramatically more dangerous to be pregnant, one where a capricious law, or a doctor’s fear of one, could cost you your life, your health or your fertility in the event that something goes wrong. And it is true, too, as Harris told the crowd, that a Republican victory would almost certainly result in a national ban on abortion – something a Republican president could effect in practice even without a filibuster-proof majority in Congress.But the campaign’s focus on these aspects of the Dobbs catastrophe – the women suffering complications from wanted pregnancies, the potential that things could get worse – does too little to grapple with the harm that’s happening right now, to women who simply do not want to be pregnant, and who deserve to be treated with the respect and dignity of citizens, not talked down to like children who cannot be trusted to act as custodians of their own bodily functions.Biden was not wrong when he said that women who were forced to become sicker and sicker during miscarriages before they were allowed to obtain abortions were subjected to an indignity. But so, too, are those who the law treats as de facto incompetent or suspicious: those who want and deserve their abortions, in Biden’s contemptuous phrasing, “on demand”.If anything, Biden is talking like he believes that abortion remains a delicate issue, as if it is something he thinks he will lose by being too strong on. But that advice, which maybe never quite worked, was from another time. It is not advice for this moment. Biden needs to change his strategy on abortion, to bring it more in line with both the sentiments of voters and the demands of our era. It is time for him to grow up, and eat his vegetables.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Kamala Harris kicks off abortion rights tour on 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade

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      Kamala Harris kicked off her much-vaunted abortion rights nationwide tour in Wisconsin on Monday as Joe Biden convened a meeting of his taskforce on reproductive healthcare access, in a tag-team effort to double down on what is likely to be a key campaign issue this year.The vice-president chose the 51st anniversary of the Roe v Wade ruling to begin the Reproductive Freedoms Tour, announced in December, in the battleground state of Wisconsin, which the president won in the 2020 presidential election by just over 20,000 votes.Roe v Wade, the supreme court decision that enshrined the federal right to abortion, was overturned in June 2022 after then president Donald Trump nominated three conservative justices to the nation’s highest court.The decision was a major blow to supporters of reproductive rights, but since the ruling seven states – including the conservative strongholds of Kentucky, Kansas and Montana – have held ballot referendums where voters chose to protect abortion rights. The issue also appeared to hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.Wisconsin is a notable starting point for Harris’s reproductive freedoms tour. Last year, abortion rights propelled a Democratic victory in a critical election for the state supreme court.In the first of many similar scheduled events, Harris is expected to announce support for increased access to abortion and contraceptives through the new emergency care law, Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala).She will also denounce Trump, the runaway frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, for his hand in overturning the federally protected right to abortion.“Proud that women across our nation are suffering?” Harris will say, according to excerpts from her speech obtained by the Associated Press. “Proud that women have been robbed of a fundamental freedom? That doctors could be thrown in prison for caring for patients? That young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers?”The following day, Harris will be joined by Biden for another abortion-focused event, along with their spouses, Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff.Biden’s re-election campaign also rolled out a new campaign ad Sunday, titled Forced, which aims to tie Donald Trump directly to the abortion issue.In Dobbs v Jackson, the 2022 supreme court case that overturned Roe, a Mississippi law that banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with certain medical exceptions was upheld, negating the constitutional right to abortion and overruling the precedent set by Roe more than half a century ago.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a statement on the 51st anniversary of Roe V Wade, Biden said: “Fifty-one years ago today, the Supreme Court recognized a woman’s constitutional right to make deeply personal decisions with her doctor – free from the interference of politicians. Then, a year and a half ago, the Court made the extreme decision to overturn Roe and take away a constitutional right.“As a result, tens of millions of women now live in states with extreme and dangerous abortion bans. Because of Republican elected officials, women’s health and lives are at risk.”When announcing her tour in December, Harris said: “Extremists across our country continue to wage a full-on attack against hard-won, hard-fought freedoms as they push their radical policies – from banning abortion in all 50 states and criminalizing doctors, to forcing women to travel out of state in order to get the care they need.“I will continue to fight for our fundamental freedoms while bringing together those throughout America who agree that every woman should have the right to make decisions about her own body – not the government.” More