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Anti-Abortion Politicians and Judges Do Actually Want to Make Pregnant People Suffer, That Is In Fact The Entire Point

Plus: Iowa abortion ban is temporarily on hold

July 21, 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: Two awful stories this week should in theory have had anti-abortion politicians, lobbyists, activists, judges, and Republicans in general falling all over themselves to address, if not apologize for, two things they have told us time and time again would never happen:

  1. That pregnant people will not be criminalized for pregnancy loss or abortion

  2. That abortion bans will never be used to deny essential medical care to pregnant people

Of course, both of those claims are lies and always have been. The criminalization of pregnancy loss and (usually self-managed) abortion has been ramping up for decades. Abortion bans have long been used to deny essential medical care (including end-of-life care) to pregnant people — especially bans on abortion later in pregnancy. Anti-abortion politicians (mostly, but not all, Republicans) would have us believe that pregnancy criminalization and increasing maternal mortality rates are supported by only a “fringe” contingent of their party. They are not the fringe. They are the core, and they are driving policy and messaging.

That’s why something you’re not seeing anywhere in the news this week are any members of the ~ save teh baybeez ~ crowd taking even the most fleeting moment to denounce the imprisonment of a young woman in Nebraska for allegedly self-managing an abortion, or the appalling ways that Texas state attorneys treated women who testified in court this week about being denied medical care under the state’s abortion ban.

Suffering and criminalization are not unfortunate side effects of abortion bans; they are the desired outcome, and we will experience the heat death of the universe as we know it before anti-abortion folks start feeling guilty or ashamed about causing harm and trauma to people who need abortions. Anti-abortion politics are about misogyny, racism, classism, and right-wing, American-grown, Christian theocratic patriarchy. That’s it! That’s the whole point and the whole plan, and anti-abortion folks show us that and tell us that over and over again, and it is time to believe them.

The Top Headlines

The Takes

  • Listen to doula Sabia Wade (whose excellent book, Birthing Liberation, is out now!) interview Mike Bonanza, the founder of Elevated Access, which transports folks by air for abortion and gender-affirming care. He says: “A lot of the same states have been attacking abortion access, started doing the same things around gender affirming care. And so even before we started, we merely decided, like, you know, what, you know, it's all about bodily autonomy, it's about people's own health care decisions. And really, you know, this is between people and their doctor, and nobody else. And so we very quickly added that to our mission to go beyond just abortion, but also include gender affirming care.”

  • The Los Angeles Times weighs in on Republican attempts to nix reimbursement for travel expenses for military service members who must travel to access abortion: “But the GOP is just using this bill to attack policies it derides as “woke.” It also passed amendments to the bill blocking diversity initiatives and ending coverage of transition surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender troops. Attacking the travel allowance is nothing more than grandstanding by opponents of abortion rights in the House. It’s disrespectful to the women in the military who serve their country and often risk their lives. How dare a member of Congress stand in the way of the military trying to help a service person travel to get healthcare they need.”

  • Hannah Matthews writes a moving essay on borders and birth and pregnancy loss: “I think about fetal demise, and the people who have traveled hundreds or thousands of miles and are now—at my clinic or elsewhere—laboring to deliver a fetus or a baby who will never take a breath. I think about what the babies who are breathing need and want, and how to help them get it. I think about mothers, and parents, and pregnant people in this airport and this city and swimming through razor wire.”

  • Becca Andrews talks to Sikowis Nobiss of the Great Plains Action Society in this week’s Reckon repro justice newsletter. Nobiss, who is an Indigenous Iowan, issued a word at a rally against Iowa’s special session to ban abortion last week: “This is a problem of the colonizer, this is a problem of white patriarchy, and this is essentially, absolutely, 100 percent a problem of Christian fundamentalism.”

This week I’m excited for a lucky reader to win a copy of Bodies on the Line, Lauren Rankin’s look at the history and practice of abortion clinic escorting, and its essential role in protecting abortion accessibility on the “front lines.” Read more in this New York Times piece, and here’s more from Lauren herself in Elle mag.

The winner will receive a signed copy (with a new preface and updated info), and I’ll draw a name from my subscriber list at random on Thursday, 7/27. Stay tuned!

The Tweets/Toks/Grams

The Fuck Are We Supposed to Do About It?

Goodnight and good dunk — This retort from Dr. Austin Dennard, one of the Texas women who took the stand this week in their lawsuit against the state’s abortion ban, when questioned by state attorneys, really gets to the heart of it. Via The 19th’s Shefali Luthra:

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.