SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
jessica valenti
Alarm as Texas Files State's First Criminal Abortion Charges Against Midwife
"Republicans are strategically targeting people they think the public won't rally behind," said rights advocate Jessica Valenti. "Let's make sure to prove them wrong."
Mar 18, 2025
A midwife in the Houston area on Monday became the first person to be criminally charged under Texas' abortion ban, with Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton accusing Maria Margarita Rojas of providing illegal abortion care and practicing medicine without a license.
If convicted, Rojas faces up to 20 years in prison under the state's near-total ban on abortion.
Writer and abortion rights advocate Jessica Valenti said Rojas is likely being "targeted" by Paxton, noting that the midwife provides "healthcare to a primarily Spanish-speaking, low-income community."
"Paxton, a political operator who picks cases strategically, likely chose Rojas because he believes Americans won't find her sympathetic—whether due to racism, classism, or the stories his office plans to spin," wrote Valenti. "In other words: Republicans are strategically targeting people they think the public won't rally behind. Let's make sure to prove them wrong."
Rojas owns and operates Clínicas Latinoamericanas, which includes four health clinics in the Houston suburbs of Spring, Waller, and Cypress. She has reportedly been a certified midwife in Texas since 2018 and was an obstetrician in Peru before immigrating to the United States.
According to The Washington Post, Rojas was first arrested on March 6 on charges of practicing medicine without a license, and was held on $10,000 bond. The new charges were added Monday, and Rojas and another employee of the clinic, Jose Ley, were being held in a jail in Waller County, with their bond set at a combined $1.4 million.
The New York Times noted that Waller County, where the charges were brought, is more conservative than Harris County, the largest county in Texas and the one where a majority of Rojas' clinics are located.
Court documents show that Paxton's office has accused Rojas of having "attempted an abortion on" a woman identified as E.G. in March.
"Paxton and Texas Republicans will be working overtime to paint Rojas as a villain, regardless of the truth. They know that abortion bans are incredibly unpopular, as is arresting healthcare providers."
Rojas was "known by law enforcement to have performed an abortion" on another occasion earlier this year, according to the attorney general, who has filed for a temporary restraining order against Clínicas Latinoamericanas "to prevent further illegal activity."
When she was first arrested, Rojas was "pulled over by the police at gunpoint and handcuffed" while she was on her way to the clinic and was taken to Austin and held overnight before being released, her friend and fellow midwife Holly Shearman told the Post.
Shearman said she did not believe Rojas is guilty of the charges against her.
Valenti emphasized that most details of Rojas' case at this point are being shared by Paxton's office, and warned that the vehemently anti-abortion attorney general will likely attempt to portray the midwife in a negative light to garner support—considering that a majority of Americans don't support criminal charges for health professionals who provide abortion care.
A survey last March by the KFF found that 8 in 10 Democrats, two-thirds of Independents, and about 50% of Republicans did not believe doctors who provide abortion care should face fines or prison time.
"You cannot trust any information coming from Paxton's office or Texas law enforcement," said Valenti. "Paxton and Texas Republicans will be working overtime to paint Rojas as a villain, regardless of the truth. They know that abortion bans are incredibly unpopular, as is arresting healthcare providers. They're not just fighting a legal battle here, but a PR one."
Valenti noted that when Paxton filed a civil lawsuit against Dr. Maggie Carpenter, a physician in New York who he accused of prescribing and sending pills for a medication abortion to a patient in Texas, he claimed the Texas resident "suffered 'serious complications' despite providing no evidence." Carpenter was fined more than $100,000 last month.
"There's every reason to believe Paxton's team will pull similar tactics here, coming out with all sorts of claims about this midwife and her practice," wrote Valenti.
Marc Hearron, interim associate director of ligation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the Post that "Texas officials have been trying every which way to terrify healthcare practitioners from providing care and to trap Texans."
Hearron told The Cut that "doctors all across the state are saying that they are afraid that their judgment is going to be second-guessed, and all of these actions show that Paxton is chomping at the bit to go after anybody who provides an abortion."
"It's just a litany of situations where it shows the state of Texas does not care about women's lives," said Hearron. "What it cares about is stopping women from getting the care that they need, no matter what."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Chaos and Fear' at CDC Amid Order to Retract Journal Articles to Purge 'Forbidden Terms'
"How can the government decide what words a journal can use to describe a scientific reality? That reality needs to be named," one journal editor said.
Feb 02, 2025
Employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been ordered to pull any articles under consideration for publication in medical or scientific journals so that they can be checked for certain "forbidden terms" including gender, transgender, and LGBT.
The order was sent in an email to CDC division heads on Friday by the agency's chief science officer, a federal official told Reuters on Sunday. Inside Medicine broke the news on Saturday and provided a screenshot of the full list of terms that needed to be scrubbed.
"It sounds incredible that this is compatible with the First Amendment. A constitutional right has been canceled," Dr. Alfredo Morabia, editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Public Health, told Reuters. "How can the government decide what words a journal can use to describe a scientific reality? That reality needs to be named."
"We can't just erase or ignore certain populations when it comes to preventing, treating, or researching infectious diseases such as HIV."
The order is an attempt to ensure that CDC is in compliance with U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order mandating that the U.S. government only recognize two sexes: male and female. The papers will be withdrawn so that a Trump appointee can review them.
The "forbidden terms" CDC employees are supposed to avoid are, in full: Gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, and biologically female, according to Inside Medicine.
The order covers both papers under consideration and those accepted but not published. According to Reuters, if a CDC employee worked on a paper with nongovernmental scientists but did not initiate it, they have been asked to remove their names.
The new order is separate from a demand two days into the administration that government health agencies including CDC freeze all communications with the public. It follows reports on Friday that CDC webpages and datasets involving HIV, the LGBTQ community, youth health, and other topics were no longer accessible as the agency attempts to comply with the Trump executive order on transgender identity and another on banning government Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.
"It is Orwellian, it really is," Steven Woolf, director emeritus and senior adviser at Virginia Commonwealth University's Center on Society and Health,
In response to the purges, scientists, science journalists, and public health advocates have worked to preserve the datasets, with everything on the CDC website as of January 27, 2024 preserved at ACASignups.net and downloaded data sets also available on Jessica Valenti's Substack Abortion, Every Day.
"Censoring data on ideological grounds is wrong. It is unscientific, and it is designed to eliminate opposition and erase dissidents," virologist Angela Rasmussen, who was involved with the data preservation efforts, wrote on social media.
The journal article retraction order has created uncertainty and confusion at the agency, Inside Medicine reported:
How many manuscripts are affected is unclear, but it could be many. Most manuscripts include simple demographic information about the populations or patients studied, which typically includes gender (and which is frequently used interchangeably with sex). That means just about any major study would fall under the censorship regime of the new policy, including studies on Covid-19, cancer, heart disease, or anything else, let alone anything that the administration considers to be "woke ideology."
Meanwhile, chaos and fear are already guiding decisions. While the policy is only meant to apply to work that might be seen as conflicting with President Trump's executive orders, CDC experts don’t know how to interpret that. Do papers that describe disparities in health outcomes fall into "woke ideology" or not? Nobody knows, and everyone is scared that they'll be fired. This is leading to what Germans call "vorauseilender Gehorsam," or "preemptive obedience," as one non-CDC scientist commented.
There are also concerns that censoring such a broad list of terms would have unintended consequences for public health.
"We can't just erase or ignore certain populations when it comes to preventing, treating, or researching infectious diseases such as HIV. I certainly hope this is not the intent of these orders," Carl Schmid, the executive director of the HIV+ Hepatitis Policy Institute, told Reuters.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump's Anti-Trans Order Could Pave Way for National Abortion Ban
"They are going to try to sneak in that fetal personhood language anywhere they can, anywhere and everywhere," said advocate and author Jessica Valenti.
Jan 23, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have insisted that the White House would not sign a nationwide abortion ban—despite the latter's expression of support for one as recently as 2022—but an unrelated executive order Trump signed this week may put the country on the path to outlawing abortion care without the president needing to sign any legislation into law.
Reproductive rights advocates including author Jessica Valenti noticed shortly after Trump signed an executive order stating the government will not recognize transgender people that the document included language that was unmistakably linked to the right-wing push for "fetal personhood" laws.
"'Female' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell," reads the executive order signed on Monday. "'Male' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell."
Aside from the fact that the order suggests the Trump administration will recognize everyone born in the United States as a female—because in the first weeks after conception, explained one 2001 scientific paper, "fetal genitalia are the same and are phenotypically female"—the document claims that a fetus is a "person" from the moment of conception.
"And so it begins," said Valenti after the executive order was issued. "They are going to try to sneak in that fetal personhood language anywhere they can, anywhere and everywhere."
The order's language is in line with the Republican Party's 2024 platform, which did not call for a nationwide abortion ban but expressed support for states that would establish fetal personhood by extending the protections of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees that "no person can be denied life or liberty without due process," to fetuses.
The Texas Republican Party last year asserted in its platform that "abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide," and said the party would push to extend "equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization."
Rights advocates have warned that adoption of the fetal personhood doctrine at the national level could ultimately lead to the prosecution of pregnant people who obtain abortion care—something anti-abortion groups have long claimed they wouldn't support.
When the national GOP platform was released last August, Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern said its language suggested that "the GOP has recognized that this task is too unpopular to enact democratically, so they're outsourcing it to the federal courts."
"Fetal personhood means a nationwide abortion ban imposed by judicial fiat," said Stern.
Anti-abortion advocates aim to ultimately bring fetal personhood to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping the right-wing majority would rule that the 14th Amendment applies to fetuses from the moment of conception.
Including a reference to fetal personhood in an unrelated executive order is "an intentional way to continue to normalize the idea that embryos are people," Dana Sussman, senior vice president of Pregnancy Justice, told The Guardian.
"This is yet another attempt to codify it in one form or another," said Sussman.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Judge Strikes Down Georgia's Six-Week Abortion Ban in 'Absolutely Epic Ruling'
"Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy," Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney wrote in his decision.
Sep 30, 2024
Reproductive rights defenders cheered Monday's ruling by a Georgia judge striking down the state's six-week abortion ban as a violation of "a woman's right to control what happens to and within her body," a decision that means the medical procedure will be legal up to approximately 22 weeks of pregnancy.
Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney excoriated the LIFE Act, which was signed into law in 2019 by Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and prohibits abortion care after fetal cardiac activity can be detected. The so-called "fetal heartbeat" law—a medically misleading term—is applicable before many people even know they're pregnant.
Other states including Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio passed similar "heartbeat" laws in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade, which occurred in 2022 when the tribunal's right-wing supermajority issued its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.
"Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote," McBurney wrote in his ruling. "Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have."
"It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid's Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could—or should—force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another," the judge said.
"It is generally men who promote and defend laws like the LIFE Act, the effect of which is to require only women—and, given the socio-economic and demographic evidence presented at trial, primarily poor women, which means in Georgia primarily Black and brown women—to engage in compulsory labor, i.e., the carrying of a pregnancy to term at the government's behest," McBurney added.
As Jessica Valenti noted on her Abortion, Every Day Substack, "the ruling comes just weeks after ProPublica's investigation into the deaths of two women killed by Georgia's abortion ban, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller.
As NBC News reported Monday:
The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and other plaintiffs in 2019 soon after Kemp signed it into law. As it faced the legal challenge, in 2022, McBurney ruled that year that the law violated the U.S. Constitution in 2022 and struck it down. The Georgia Supreme Court, however, soon took up the case and allowed it to remain in effect. The case was sent back to McBurney, who found the law in violation of the state's constitution.
SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective executive director Monica Simpson said in a statement that Monday's ruling is "a significant step in the right direction towards achieving reproductive justice in Georgia."
"We are encouraged that a Georgia court has ruled for bodily autonomy," Simpson continued. "At the same time, we can't forget that every day the ban has been in place has been a day too long—and we have felt the dire consequences with the devastating and preventable deaths of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller."
"For years, Black women have sounded the alarm that abortion bans are deadly," she noted. "While true justice would mean Amber and Candi were still with us today, we will continue to demand accountability to ensure that their lives—and the lives of others who we have yet to learn of—were not lost in vain."
"We know that the fight continues as anti-abortion white supremacists will stop at nothing to control our bodies and attack our liberation," Simpson added. "We are ready for them and will never back down until we achieve reproductive justice: the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, the human right to have children, or not, and raise them in safe and sustainable communities."
Alice Wang, staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said that McBurney "has rightfully struck down Georgia's six-week abortion ban as a flagrant violation of Georgia's longstanding and robust right to privacy, restoring access to abortion at a time when too many have been prevented from accessing this critical health care and from deciding what is best for their bodies, health, and family lives."
"For too long, the ban has caused a public health crisis, as evidenced by the testimony plaintiffs presented at trial and devastating stories recently reported about the preventable deaths of Candi Miller and Amber Nicole Thurman," she continued. "Today's ruling is a step toward ensuring that people can access and clinicians can provide critical healthcare without fear of criminalization or stigma."
"This victory demonstrates that when courts faithfully apply constitutional protections for bodily autonomy, laws that restrict access to abortion and force people to continue pregnancies against their will cannot stand," Wang added.
Since the Dobbs ruling, 13 states have passed abortion bans with limited exceptions and 28 states have prohibited the procedure based on gestational duration, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
However, there has been tremendous nationwide pushback against abortion bans, with voters opting to uphold reproductive rights every time the issue appears on state ballots—including in conservative Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Ohio.
As many as 10 states could have abortion rights measures on the ballot in this November's election, which at the top of the ticket pits reproductive freedom champion and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris against former Republican President Donald Trump, who has boasted about appointing three right-wing Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe and who critics fear would sign a national abortion ban if one were passed by Congress.
Trump also said he would allow states to monitor people's pregnancies and prosecute anyone who violates an abortion ban.
Kemp's office slammed McBurney's ruling.
"Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives have been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge," Garrison Douglas, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement. "Protecting the lives of the most vulnerable among us is one of our most sacred responsibilities, and Georgia will continue to be a place where we fight for the lives of the unborn."
Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is expected to appeal to the state Supreme Court to block Monday's ruling.
"We are prepared to continue fighting this case regardless," the Center for Reproductive Rights vowed on social media, "and we will NOT back down from this fight."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Texas Approves Abortion Only After Woman Sues to Prove Medical Emergency
"Texans deserve to exercise reproductive freedom without fighting legal battles and without legislative interference in their lives," said the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Action.
Dec 07, 2023
Reproductive rights groups expressed relief Thursday that one woman in Texas was permitted to get abortion care after a Travis County judge granted a temporary restraining order to circumvent the state's pro-forced pregnancy laws, but said it was "unforgivable that she was forced to go to court" to request urgent medical care.
The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) filed a lawsuit against the state last week on behalf of Kate Cox, a Dallas resident, who had just learned at 20 weeks pregnant that her fetus had the fatal diagnosis of trisomy 18, as well as a spinal abnormality and other health issues.
Cox's case is the first in which a pregnant plaintiff has asked a court for an emergency abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
In court this week, Cox's lawyer, CRR senior staff attorney Molly Duane, told Judge Maya Guerra Gamble that Cox had had to go to the emergency room with cramping and fluid loss in the two days since she filed the lawsuit.
Since learning of the fetal diagnosis last week, Cox has sought emergency medical care four times due to her symptoms but doctors have been unable to provide her with legal abortion care due to the ban that took effect two months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Before Thursday, Cox's only options under Texas law were to have a Caesarean section after carrying the pregnancy to term—even as her health grew worse—or to have labor induced in the case of the fetal heartbeat stopping.
"Due to Kate's medical history," said CRR, "her OB-GYNs warned her that continuing to carry the pregnancy could jeopardize her health and future fertility."
Advocates including Duane and author Jessica Valenti expressed outrage at the arguments presented by the state—which, noted Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern, "will likely appeal to try to block Cox's abortion."
Jonathan Stone, the lawyer representing Texas, told Gamble that "the only party that's going to suffer an immediate and irreparable harm in this case if the court enters a TRO [temporary restraining order] is the state," because the government would not be able to make its case in a regular hearing.
"The abortion once performed is permanent and cannot be undone," Stone said. "The plaintiffs are going to obtain permanent relief in this case through this TRO application without any evidence being considered by this court and in full-blown evidentiary hearing."
The state also claimed that Cox was not at a particular risk for life-threatening complications, despite her doctors' advice.
"These arguments are frankly stunning," said Duane. "The state goes as far to characterize her claims as 'a frivolous assertion of harm.'"
Cox's lawyers added that "the harm to Ms. Cox's life, health, and fertility are very much also permanent and cannot be undone."
Cox "should never have had to fight in court for her life, her health, and her future," said U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.). "This is the result of the GOP war on reproductive freedom. And it must be stopped."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said after Gamble's ruling was announced that while the TRO "purports" to allow an abortion to proceed, it "will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas' abortion laws."
"Most women are not able to do what Kate has done—many Texans have been forced to continue pregnancies that put their lives at risk," said Duane. "That is happening every day across Texas. As long as abortion is banned, pregnant people will suffer."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Kidnapping Charges for Idaho Teen and Mother Seen as Test Case for 'Abortion Trafficking' Law
"Prosecutors seeking to test out laws like this are likely to go after people who won't garner much sympathy from the public," wrote one author and abortion rights activist.
Oct 31, 2023
An Idaho teenager and his mother who allegedly took a 15-year-old girl to neighboring Oregon for an abortion without parental knowledge or consent are facing felony kidnapping and other charges in a prosecution viewed as a test case for the state's "abortion trafficking" statute.
In April, Idaho became the first state in the nation to pass a so-called "abortion trafficking" law, criminalizing the transportation of pregnant minors within the state for the purpose of obtaining an abortion or abortion medication. While 18-year-old Kadyn Swainston and his 42-year-old mother Rachael Swainston of Pocatello were not charged under the law—perhaps because it is being challenged in court—author and activist Jessica Valenti noted that "prosecutors used the exact language of the trafficking law in the kidnapping charge."
"It's actually a pretty slick move, allowing prosecutors to charge the two with abortion trafficking without citing the statute specifically in case it gets blocked," Valenti wrote on her Substack.
The Idaho State Journal reported Monday that Kadyn Swainston has been charged with rape, second-degree kidnapping, and three counts of producing child sexually exploitative material—all felonies.
Rachael Swainston is charged with second-degree kidnapping, trafficking in methamphetamine, two counts of possession of a controlled substance, and one count of harboring a wanted felon—also all felonies.
If convicted of the most serious charges against them, the Swainstons could receive life prison sentences. According to Pocatello police, a woman contacted them in June claiming that her 15-year-old daughter—identified in court records as K.B.—had been raped by Kadyn Swaintston, who had been in a consensual relationship with the girl since he was 17 years old but as an adult allegedly ran afoul of the state's statutory rape law. The woman told investigators that the Swainstons took K.B. to Bend, Oregon for an abortion, without her knowledge or consent.
Idaho
law bans most abortions—with conditional exceptions for rape, incest, and when the pregnant person's life is endangered—and allows private citizens to sue anyone who "aids or abets" the procurement of an abortion and awards them $10,000 if they win their case. Fifty years of federal abortion rights were erased in June 2022 with the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling.
Valenti noted that police obtained permission from K.B. to track her phone's geolocational data to the area of the Planned Parenthood clinic where she had her abortion.
While executing a search warrant at the Swainstons' home, police also found more than 40 grams of methamphetamine there, as well as fentanyl and psychedelic mushrooms, and photos showing Kadyn Swainston and K.B. engaging in sex acts. They also found and arrested a man wanted on an outstanding warrant on meth trafficking charges who was staying in the home's storage shed.
"It's not surprising that the people at the center of this case seem to be having a really difficult time—we know that the most marginalized among us are much more likely to be charged or targeted by law enforcement in abortion-related cases (and all others)," wrote Valenti. "We also know that prosecutors seeking to test out laws like this are likely to go after people who won't garner much sympathy from the public."
"The hope," she added, "is that people will be a little less outraged over an objectively outrageous law."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Say Texas GOP's New Exception to Abortion Ban Is Meant to 'Deceive Voters'
"The exceptions in the bill are so narrow, and the penalties for violating the Texas ban are so high, that invariably," said one legal expert, "a lot of doctors are going to continue not to offer abortion in those situations because they don't want to get in trouble."
Aug 28, 2023
Rights advocates said Monday that a new law set to go into effect this week in Texas may appear on its face to be aimed at ensuring that pregnant people experiencing medical emergencies can access abortion care—but warned that it could not only do little to protect abortion access in Texas but also give residents a false sense of their reproductive rights and the Republican Party's intentions when it comes to preserving bodily autonomy.
House Bill 3058 was proposed by state Rep. Ann Johnson (D-134) and, as written, allows doctors to provide "certain medical treatment to a pregnant woman" in cases of premature rupture of membranes when it is too early in pregnancy for a fetus to survive, or an ectopic pregnancy.
Under the new so-called "exceptions," healthcare providers in Texas could ostensibly avoid up to $100,000 in fines or a life sentence in prison if they provided abortion care in these instances, despite the state law that bans abortion in all cases, including pregnancies that result from rape or incest, at six weeks gestation.
But legal experts and abortion rights advocates say that like exceptions that already exist in many of the abortion bans and restrictions that have been passed in at least 22 states since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, many patients are still likely to face dangerous delays in care.
H.B. 3058 appears to have been overwhelmingly approved by state Republicans and GOP Gov. Greg Abbott not because of genuine concern for the well-being of people who seek abortion care, said University of California, Davis law professor Mary Ziegler, but to improve voters' views of the abortion ban that the Texas Republican Party pushed through in 2021.
"Republicans can now point to these new exceptions and say, 'Look, that kind of thing doesn't happen anymore,'" Ziegler told The Guardian on Monday.
But even with the new legislation, she added, "the exceptions in the bill are so narrow, and the penalties for violating the Texas ban are so high, that invariably, a lot of doctors are going to continue not to offer abortion in those situations because they don't want to get in trouble."
Researcher Grace Haley noted at the Substack publication Abortion, Every Day last week that H.B. 3058 was passed after 14 women in Texas joined a lawsuit saying the state's ban imperiled their health and lives—denying them care when they and their fetuses faced medical emergencies and causing them to develop life-threatening infections, travel to other states for care while pregnant with fetuses that had severe complications, and face other emotional and physical distress.
Since news reports of such cases have become increasingly common following the overturning of Roe, polling has shown that a growing share of Americans believe abortion care should be legal at all stages of pregnancy.
Haley wrote that in order to distance itself from images of pregnant patients facing life-threatening medical emergencies and being denied necessary care, the GOP is seeking to "redefine what an abortion is."
"The definition of abortion isn't flexible—it's a medical intervention to end a pregnancy. But GOP lawmakers want to make abortion an intention instead," wrote Haley.
In a video posted to TikTok, Abortion, Every Day author and advocate Jessica Valenti warned that "it is so dangerous for Democrats to go along with this" as Johnson and other Democratic lawmakers in Texas are.
The move "opens the door for much broader criminalization and enforcement: If someone has a stillborn baby, for example, but at some point did a Google search for abortion clinics—that's something that could be used by a prosecutor to target them," Haley wrote.
"Some doctors point out that this language is a small scope surrounding the plethora of pregnancy complications," she added, "and advocates wonder if the compromise is worth accepting anti-abortion framing."
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy