Tag Archives: procedure

A New International Advice Line Will Help American Women End Their Pregnancies

by RosalynPTLY Posted on April 27, 2017

Mother Jones

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Concerned about President Trump’s promise to drastically roll back legal access to abortion, an international feminist group launched a project on Thursday that aims to help women in the US safely end their own pregnancies.

Since 2014, Women Help Women has responded to over 100,000 emails from women around the world seeking abortions in countries where the procedure is highly restricted or outright banned. Among other services, the group sometimes arranges to have the abortion-inducing drugs misoprostol and mifepristone sent internationally and then counsels the recipient on their safe usage.

“We know there are different barriers that prevent people from being able to access the abortion care that they need,” says Jessica Shaw, a professor at the University of Calgary in Canada and a Women Help Women board member. “This is already going on, and we’re stepping up in anticipation that things likely will get worse with new laws coming in over the next few years.”

Women Help Women—whose new American project is called Self-Managed Abortion, Safe and Supported (SASS)—won’t be sending misoprostol or mifepristone to women in the United States for fear, says Shaw, of litigation. Instead counselors will advise the small but significant number of women in the US who manage to obtain the drugs without the assistance of a health care provider on how to successfully administer them. For added protection, WHW counselors responding to queries from American women will be working abroad, including from Canada.

Misoprostol and mifepristone are both prescription-only in the United States and are only used early-on in pregnancy. But as state legislatures continue to make it harder to access abortions—over 300 state-level anti-abortion laws have been enacted since 2010—advocates and medical experts expect that more women will look underground for ways to self-induce. Several surveys studying the approximately 900,000 women in the US who get clinical abortions in a given year indicate that many are already using misoprostol, as well as other methods, to end their pregnancies without medical supervision. In one, 2.6 percent of patients surveyed said they’d taken drugs, herbs, or vitamins in an attempt to end their pregnancy before seeking an in-clinic abortion. In another, researchers at the University of Texas estimated that as many as 240,000 women in the state had tried to self-induce at some point in their life.

Since the Supreme Court legalized abortion in the United States, more than a dozen women have faced prosecution or jail time after self-inducing an abortion, sometimes after taking misoprostol. Shaw says that most women who call WHW from know what the legal risks are where they live. “That’s how the end up on our website in the first place,” she says. “But for many people, the legal risk is far less than the risk of having a pregnancy and carrying it to term.”

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A New International Advice Line Will Help American Women End Their Pregnancies

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Trump’s latest move could throw environmental rulemaking into chaos.

by AnastasRicketso Posted on January 30, 2017

On Monday, the president signed “a big one”: an executive order mandating that for every new regulation created, two regulations must be eliminated.

The order also says that the total cost of regulatory changes should be zero. Rules related to the military, national security, and foreign affairs are exempted, of course.

Experts are scratching their heads over what this will mean. “The whole rule-writing area is now in complete chaos and environmental rules are going to be caught up in that,” said Georgetown environmental law professor Hope Babcock.

“An agency can’t just say here’s a regulation and goodbye two,” said Georgetown law professor William Buzbee. “Every change in regulation requires a new rulemaking. What this will really do — this is requiring so much work — is most agencies will have incentives to avoid doing any rulemaking.”

And getting rid of regulations isn’t easy. The president has to “faithfully execute” all laws and cannot undo agency regulations that enforce laws like the Clean Air Act. Any rollback, such as eliminating a species from the endangered list, would have to be completed in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act, which takes time, according to Babcock. “You can’t just by executive fiat rescind a rule,” she said.

Excerpt from – 

Trump’s latest move could throw environmental rulemaking into chaos.

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Virginia Republicans Are Going to Introduce a 20-Week Abortion Ban for the Third Time

by EstebanHarpster Posted on December 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the fight over reproductive rights, 20-week abortion bans stand out as one of the most successful legislative measures pursued by anti-abortion advocates. In all, 18 states have enacted a version of the legislation since 2011; three of them have seen their 20-week bans overturned in court because they banned abortions before a fetus could survive outside the womb and were in violation of the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade. Earlier this month, Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed a 20-week abortion ban into law shortly after vetoing a “heartbeat bill” that would have banned abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy.

Now, as the year comes to a close, emboldened Virginia legislators have begun their push to pass their version of the controversial—and likely unconstitutional—measure.

Last week, Virginia delegate David LaRock, a two-term Republican, pre-filed HB1473, known as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Act. The bill will officially be introduced when the state Legislature begins its new session in January. LaRock introduced similar legislation during two previous sessions but has been unsuccessful in his attempts to ban late-term abortions.

As with previous versions of the bill, HB1473 would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, a cutoff earlier than the “fetal viability” standard established by Roe v. Wade. Anti-abortion advocates argue that the ban is necessary because a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks, a claim that has not been confirmed by research. The bill would not make allowances for a woman’s mental health or fetal abnormalities, or in instances of rape or incest, and offers exceptions only in cases that threaten the life of the mother or pose a “serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” When a late-term abortion is performed, the bill stipulates that a physician “terminate the pregnancy in a manner that would provide the unborn child the best opportunity to survive.”

If passed, the bill would punish physicians providing unauthorized late-term abortions with Class 4 felonies, making them subject to prison time and a fine of up to $100,000. The bill also allows for “civil remedies,” giving a woman who receives an abortion or the biological father of the terminated fetus the ability to seek punitive damages against physicians who perform abortions in violation of the act.

The 20-week abortion ban is the latest restriction proposed in a state that already has some of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the nation. Virginia currently requires that women seeking abortions receive information encouraging them to carry pregnancies to term, mandates an ultrasound before the procedure, requires minors to receive consent from their parents prior to getting an abortion, and limits health plans covering abortion under the state’s Affordable Care Act exchange.

The Virginia GOP’s intensified effort to end late-term abortions is likely an opening salvo in the fight over the future of abortion access in the state. With the current Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, unable to run for a second term due to state law, anti-abortion advocates see next year’s gubernatorial election as a key opportunity to put an ally in office.

Virginia’s state Legislature won’t begin its new session until January 11, but reproductive rights advocates are already preparing for a long fight. “Bans on abortion at different points in pregnancy affect every woman’s ability to make decisions that are best for her, her health and wellbeing, and her family,” noted Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, in a letter sent to the candidates vying to replace McAuliffe. In a press release accompanying the letter, the reproductive rights group called the proposed ban a “dangerous and unconstitutional measure,” adding that it “would put politicians in the middle of Virginia women and families’ personal decisions about pregnancy and cut off access to safe medical care.”

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Virginia Republicans Are Going to Introduce a 20-Week Abortion Ban for the Third Time

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Four Ways Research Has Reframed the Abortion Debate

by TrinidadMcCourt Posted on July 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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There has been little or no publicly funded research on abortion in the United States, so for years basic information about abortion was lacking—from how often patients have complications to what happens to women who want the procedure but can’t obtain it. Many of the new abortion restrictions were justified by assertions that often had no scientific basis—for example that clinics were teeming with incompetent and unscrupulous doctors, that abandoned patients were flooding emergency rooms, or that the psychological damage caused by grief and regret after abortions often persist for years and ruin women’s lives. The research initiative became more urgent after the high court held in 2007 that in cases of “medical and scientific uncertainty,” legislatures could have “wide discretion” to pass laws restricting abortion. Since then, a primary objective of abortion rights supporters has been to establish a high level of medical certainty—both about the safety of the procedure and about what happens when a woman’s reproductive options are drastically curtailed or eliminated. Over the last 15 years, a number of academic institutions and private organizations have received funding for abortion research, and here are four areas where their work has changed the conversation:

Mental health

Since the 1990s, abortion opponents have worked to advance the idea that abortion causes long-lasting psychological damage based on a combination of personal stories and (widely disputed) statistical analyses showing a correlation between abortion and mental health problems. “Emotional harm” has been cited by legislators in passing parental consent, mandatory ultrasound viewing, and waiting-period laws.

In 2008, Diana Greene Foster, a demographer and associate professor at the University of California-San Francisco, launched the Turnaway Study to examine what happens, emotionally and economically, to women who have had abortions and also to those who wanted abortions but couldn’t have them. Nearly 1,000 women seeking abortions in their first and second trimesters were recruited from 30 facilities in 21 states. About a quarter had been turned away because they just missed their clinic’s gestational limit (10 to 24 weeks). Researchers followed up every six months for five years. The key findings: Most women had abortions because they didn’t think they could afford another child, and they often turned out to be right. Of those who did have the procedure, 95 percent said it was the right decision, and their feelings—positive or negative—faded over time. Having an abortion did not lead to depression, PTSD, or other mental health problems, the project found. But being denied an abortion did seem to keep women tethered to abusive partners.

Complications

In justifying Targeted Regulation of Abortion Provider laws, or TRAP laws, abortion opponents have often argued that complication rates are high—up to 10 percent—and that clinics and doctors need to be held to especially rigorous standards. Two large-scale studies from California, though, appear to counter those claims.

One study looked at whether abortions could be performed safely by health care professionals without medical degrees. Nurse practitioners, certified midwives, and physician assistants received training, then were allowed to do first-trimester vacuum-aspiration abortions at 22 sites. After monitoring more than 11,000 procedures over four years, the researchers found little difference in the rate of complications between doctors and non-doctors, which was low for both groups—0.9 percent for physicians and 1.8 percent for non-physicians. In 2013, California legislators voted to let non-doctors perform the procedure.

In a more recent study, UCSF researchers analyzed billing data for 55,000 abortions and follow-up care covered by California’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal. (California is one of 17 states that covers abortion and aftercare for Medicaid recipients.) The data showed that 6.4 percent of women who had abortions visited an emergency room within the following six weeks, but fewer than 1 percent of those visits were related to the abortion. Major complications, defined as hospitalizations, surgeries, and transfusions, occurred in fewer than one-quarter of 1 percent of all abortions.

Medication abortion

Abortion foes have watched with alarm as medication abortions have risen to nearly a quarter of all pregnancy terminations in the United States. Lawmakers have advanced measures that clamp down on how clinics prescribe the drugs and counsel patients.

One type of law has required doctors to follow outdated FDA guidelines from the 1990s for the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. Much research—some produced by the nonprofit Gynuity Health Projects, which is funded by the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation—has shown that the drugs should be taken in lower doses and could be used later in the first trimester than those guidelines indicated. Over conservatives’ vociferous objections, the FDA revised the label in March.

Meanwhile, after Planned Parenthood in Iowa began using videoconferencing to counsel rural patients on how to use abortion drugs, the state tried to prohibit the practice. In June 2015, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected that ban. A key piece of evidence was a study of 450 Iowa women by the Buffett-funded Ibis Reproductive Health that found no statistical difference in complication rates for telemed patients versus women who met with doctors in person.

Other abortion restrictions

Beyond TRAP laws, researchers are studying the effect on women that other types of state laws that restrict abortion are having.

Many of these efforts are ongoing, but a new study of Utah’s 72-hour waiting-period law, which legislators said would give abortion seekers a chance to change their minds, found that it increased costs and logistical hassles but did not persuade most women. Of 300 patients surveyed, only 8 percent decided not to terminate their pregnancies, and most had been leaning in that direction anyway. Meanwhile, the average amount of time the surveyed women had to wait to have abortions wasn’t 72 hours, but eight days.

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Four Ways Research Has Reframed the Abortion Debate

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Louisiana Is Getting Worse and Worse for Women

by AmeliaPierce Posted on June 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Louisiana legislature continues to pass anti-abortion bills. The most recent one was signed by Gov. John Bel Edwards Tuesday night, and it bans the dilation and evacuation procedure, the safest and most common abortion method for women in their second trimester.

The law, known as the Unborn Child Protection From Dismemberment Abortion Act, was sponsored by Rep. Mike Johnson (R), who said in a statement that the legislation reflects “who we are as a people.”

“In Louisiana, we believe every human life is valuable and worthy of protection, and no civil society should allow its unborn children to be ripped apart,” Johnson said after Edwards signed the bill. “Incredible as it seems, we needed a law to say that.”

During the procedure, a physician dilates the cervix and removes fetal tissue. The law leaves abortion providers with two options: either use a less effective method at that stage of pregnancy, such as medication abortion, or stop performing abortions after 14 weeks entirely. About nine percent of women who seek abortions do so after 12 weeks, when it would be necessary to have a dilation and evacuation (or D&E) procedure. If a physician were to violate the law, they be fined up to $1,000 and face up to two years in jail. The law does include a caveat that the procedure may be performed if the woman’s life is at risk.

“In a state with extremely limited options for women seeking reproductive health care, it’s unconscionable that Louisiana politicians are working overtime to pile on additional restrictions,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Louisiana women already face countless obstacles when they have made the decision to end a pregnancy, and these measures will only drive safe, legal, high-quality care out of reach for many women.”

The Guttmacher Institute, a leading think tank that provides research on reproductive rights, reported that legislators in 13 states have proposed D&E bans, despite judges in Kansas and Oklahoma blocking the laws. In the Kansas case, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists submitted an amicus brief arguing that bans on the D&E procedure seek “to substitute the legislature’s political judgment for the medical judgment of physicians to the detriment of patient safety.”

The legislative trend comes from model legislation penned by National Right to Life, an anti-abortion group that bills itself as “the nation’s oldest and largest pro-life organization.”

For example, medication abortion is appropriate for women who are up to 10 weeks along in pregnancy, but after that it’s not considered a safe and effective method, and it could lead to complications for women in their second trimester.

Other laws that have been passed and upheld this year include those involving waiting periods and admitting privileges for physicians.

Last month, Gov. Edwards signed legislation tripling the wait time between a woman’s initial consultation with a physician and her procedure. With this increase from 24 to 72 hours, Louisiana joined Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah as states with the longest waiting periods in the country.

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Louisiana Is Getting Worse and Worse for Women

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House Republicans do their part to commemorate National Women’s Health Week

by KaiWfbuikghxkh Posted on May 14, 2015

House Republicans do their part to commemorate National Women’s Health Week

By on 14 May 2015commentsShare

For National Women’s Health Week, we’re highlighting women’s health issues in the United States.

Yesterday, after years of Republicans threatening to do so, the House of Representatives voted to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The important thing to remember about abortions is that they are not pleasant things. One does not get an abortion, especially a late-term abortion, for the hell of it — one gets an abortion because she has decided that undergoing an emotionally trying and painful procedure has greater benefits to both her and the fetus than carrying the baby to term.

This particular bill targets women who are most in need, as women who are likely to seek later-term abortions are usually young and low-income. Data from the Guttmacher Institute indicates that nearly 60 percent of women were forced to delay their abortions due to financial and logistical constraints, and 58 percent of women wished they had undergone the procedure earlier in their pregnancy.

From The New York Times:

Representatives Diana DeGette of Colorado and Louise M. Slaughter of New York, Democrats who are the chairwomen of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, said the bill was another attempt by Republicans to erect barriers to medical care for women.

Prohibiting most abortions 20 weeks after fertilization would run counter to the Supreme Court’s standard of fetal viability, which is generally put at 22 to 24 weeks after fertilization.

“Every woman has a constitutional right to make health care choices in the manner she sees fit, and everyone in America should see this cynical attempt to seize control from women for what it is,” Ms. DeGette and Ms. Slaughter said in a statement on Tuesday.

Let’s get this straight: Republicans want to restrict abortions, but they also want to make it harder for women to access birth control. There are few things more dystopian than a state where women are left powerless to make their own reproductive decisions, but at least there’s a glimmer of hope: In January, the White House stated that President Obama would veto a bill like this one. Uteruses around the country salute you, Obama! (No, not like that.)

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House Republicans do their part to commemorate National Women’s Health Week

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Tennessee Voters Just Made It Easier to Restrict Abortion—And the GOP Isn’t Wasting Any Time.

by LeticiaManna Posted on November 11, 2014

Mother Jones

For years, as lawmakers in other conservative states passed onerous restrictions designed to limit abortion access, deep-red Tennessee stood out as an exception—because the state’s constitution forbade many of the harshest anti-abortion measures.

But that changed on Election Day. Last week, 53 percent of Tennessee voters approved Amendment 1—a change to the state’s constitution that will allow lawmakers to pass a slew of new abortion restrictions. And Republicans, led by Beth Harwell, the speaker of the state house of representatives, are already working on three abortion restrictions to debate in 2015: One measure would set up a mandatory waiting period between a woman’s first visit to an abortion clinic and the time of the procedure. A second would force women to undergo mandatory counseling, known as informed consent, before an abortion. And a third would add new, unspecified inspection requirements for abortion facilities.

As I reported in September, Amendment 1 was aimed at overturning a 2000 court decision that struck down a 48-hour waiting period, an “informed consent” law, and a requirement that all second-trimester abortions be performed in a hospital. Amendment 1 reads: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion,” including for pregnancies “resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”

Supporters of Amendment 1 argued that the new language was necessary because Tennessee was barred from inspecting abortion clinics. (In fact, the Tennessee Department of Health inspected several of the state’s clinics within the past year before renewing their licenses.)

Amendment 1 detractors, on the other hand, warned that the measure was actually aimed at using strict new regulations to close some of Tennessee’s seven abortion clinics. This tactic is popular with Tennessee’s neighbors. It’s part of why nearly 1 in 4 women who receive an abortion in Tennessee live in another state, such as Alabama and Mississippi, where highly restrictive abortion laws have closed all but a handful of abortion providers.

Abortion rights advocates also worried that the amendment would allow abortion opponents to spread misinformation about abortion through an informed consent law; South Dakota, for example, compels doctors to tell women that abortion can lead to an increased risk of suicide—an assertion that mainstream medical organizations say is false. All told, both camps poured $5.5 million into the fight over Amendment 1.

It’s not as though Tennessee was abortion-friendly to begin with. Before Amendment 1 came along, Tennessee passed anti-abortion laws that limited insurance coverage for abortion, outlawed the abortion pill, and caused two abortion clinics to close because they could not gain admitting privileges with local hospitals.

The real danger of Amendment 1 is that the measure “will basically just open the floodgates for the General Assembly to pass any kind of restriction if the amendment passes,” Jeff Teague, the president of Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee, said in the run-up to the election. “We think they probably have a long list of things they’re going to pass.”

Turns out he was spot-on.

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Tennessee Voters Just Made It Easier to Restrict Abortion—And the GOP Isn’t Wasting Any Time.

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