Anti-Abortion Lobbyists Accidentally Leak Entire Game Plan

Plus: I'm giving away two copies of abortion doula Hannah Matthews' new book!

June 09, 2023

Here’s another edition of Hard to Believe It’s Only Tuesday, a weekly roundup of the top headlines, tweets (for now!), toks, takes, and more in abortion news. You can always email me ([email protected]) or DM me on instagram with action items, takes, and news clips. This post is probably too long for email, so click on the links up there ^ above the headline to open in your browser or the Substack app. You don’t want to miss this week’s Good Night and Good Dunk!

The big takeaway: There’s been a lot of movement on the state-level front regarding legal challenges and ballot measures around abortion bans, and I thought about trying to sum it all up, but actually I think it’s worthwhile to step back and take a broader look at the thinking + machinations behind the anti-abortion big picture by directing your attention to Rewire’s fascinating report on an anti-abortion fuck-up.

In the piece, Garnet Henderson unpacks the goings-on from a March 2022 Zoom meeting of SPLC-designated hate group the American College of Pediatricians. The meeting, which was pulled from an unsecured, publicly available Google Drive, is a real Now That’s What I Call Anti-Abortion Fuckery! hit parade of saying the quiet part out loud, from legal and political mis- and disinformation strategies to demonizing the whole of the mainstream medical profession.

The Top Headlines

The Takes

  • New York-based abortion provider Dr. Elizabeth Schmidt is in The Hill with a reality check on so-called “exceptions” to abortion bans: “That’s the medical truth about the concept of ‘sick enough.’ It doesn’t exist. Doctors waiting for ‘sick enough’ are pushing high-risk patients to the brink of death, and it’s possible — in some cases, likely — that we won’t be able to pull them back from that edge.”

The Tweets/Toks/Grams

  • Hey, Virginians!! Telehealth abortion provider Hey Jane is coming your way, via UCSF’s Ushma Upadhyay:

  • Extremely niche Twitter + repro nerd interest alert: here are the top “social media influencers in obstetrics and gynecology,” including Texas ob-gyn Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi, a frequent denizen of this very newsletter section.

  • No, abortion pills are not laced with fentanyl. Via @RVAWonk:

Regular readers will recognize Hannah Matthews’ name because her tweets and takes are all over this newsletter all the time. I’m delighted to be giving away not one but two copies of her lovely book, You or Someone You Love. To learn more about Hannah and her book, check out this interview at The Rumpus.

On Thursday 6/15, I’ll choose two lucky winners from my subscriber list at random, so keep your eyes on your inboxes!

The Fuck Are We Supposed to Do About It?

Goodnight and good dunk — An anti-abortion football man wore a tie to the White House that had a poorly translated Latin phrase about something something protect the vulnerable stitched into it in letters so small you literally cannot read it even when you zoom in really, really, really tight and a very sad right-wing college kid just lost his entire shit over it (“B-A-S-E-D ✝️”). Honestly it is just a pristine and perfect self-dunk but there are some pretty quality quote tweets if you’re looking for a chuckle.

That’s all for this week. I’m sure I’ve missed something you’d like to see featured in this roundup, for I am but one woman with a computer and an abortion-news-induced drinking problem. Holler at me — [email protected], or DM me on Instagram, and I’ll try to add follow-ups as I’m able.