Hard to Believe It's Only Tuesday: Maternal Mortality Worse in Anti-Abortion States

Plus: Mizzou's racist anti-abortion campus leader

December 16, 2022

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.

The big takeaway: States which ban or heavily restrict abortion are more dangerous for the health of pregnant people, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund — and the harm increases significantly for women of color. From the findings: “Compared to states where abortion is accessible, states that have banned, are planning to ban, or have otherwise restricted abortion have fewer maternity care providers; more maternity care ‘deserts’; higher rates of maternal mortality and infant death, especially among women of color; higher overall death rates for women of reproductive age; and greater racial inequities across their health care systems.” 

The Top Headlines

The Tweets

  • Dr. Diane Horvath at Partners in Abortion Care tweets about a disturbing experience at their clinic this week: “Today a group of anti-abortion extremists well known for their clinic invasion tactics paid us a visit. One of them pretended to be a pregnant patient in crisis and stood in our doorway, begging for help. The other appeared to be their support person.” Read the rest of the thread.

  • Reproaction has the right of it when they describe this Mizzou anti-abortion campus leader’s racist fuckery as “horrifying yet deeply unsurprising.” Content warning: the Kansas City Defender article linked in the tweet, and the preview, contains uncensored screenshots of the n-word.

  • ANSIRH’s Steph Herold and Gretchen Sisson released their 2022 Abortion Onscreen report — if you’re into the intersections of pop culture, abortion justice, and sociological nerdery, it’s a must-read. The 19th News interviewed Herold about the findings, but start with her thread:

The Takes

  • The Guttmacher Institute’s Elizabeth Nash is in Ms., unpacking the many and various ways in which focusing on abortion ban “exceptions” obfuscates the essential, awful purpose of bans themselves: “But this overwhelming focus on whether bans have exceptions and whether people can get abortions in extreme situations distorts our perception of what is actually happening in states that ban abortion—which is that abortion bans are extreme and harmful because they ban abortion, period. Losing sight of that simple truth means ignoring and even inadvertently stigmatizing most people who want and need abortions.”

  • Physicians for Reproductive Health’s Kelsey Rhodes published a sweet and compassionate essay on her Substack about the intersections of overworked, underpaid, under-appreciated abortion workers and workers’ rights: “Unionizing is hard. It takes time. It takes teachers and templates and energy and labor outside of everyone’s existing energy and labor schedule. While there are organizations like ReproJobs who offer invaluable resources to abortion workers interested in unionizing, it all takes time to do. It’s work that is done off the clock to not attract attention and give administrators any reason to suspect they should get their lawyers involved. Turn over is high because the work has never been harder and more grueling, the protestors never louder, the hate mail never ending, more patients with less places to go. So we’re left with tired, under appreciated, underpaid workers caring for tired, under appreciated under paid workers. A cycle.”

  • Scholar Audrey Clare Farley is in The New Republic connecting the dots (more like a straight line? with a big arrow?) between the anti-abortion movement and antisemitism: “Because Rose and her ilk—mostly white women—seem so very unserious about eradicating the grooming and sexual abuse of children and young women, it may be tempting to consign them to the “QAnon” corner of the right-wing fever swamp. But that would be a mistake, as these figures are actually legitimating the antisemitic conspiracies that animate the deranged devotees of Q. In their crusade against abortion, they are synonymizing Judaism and “baby murder.” As hate crimes against Jews climb, and as Jewish groups continue to challenge abortion restrictions on religious grounds, it’s crucial to understand this hideous project.”

The Fuck Are We Supposed To Do About It?

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.