Hard to Believe It's Only Tuesday: Texas 'Bounty Hunter' Abortion Lawsuit Thrown Out

Plus: Clinic closures doubled following the fall of Roe v. Wade.

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: The first (and only) lawsuit attempting to take advantage of Texas’ SB 8, the “bounty hunter/any motherfucker anywhere” law, was thrown out by a state judge in San Antonio this week. It’s good news for provider Dr. Alan Baird, who was sued by a Chicago man for providing abortion care in Texas, but it doesn’t overturn the law itself.

The Top Headlines

The Tweets

  • Lots of appreciation this week for the AP Stylebook’s guidance against using “late-term abortion.”

The Takes

  • The Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund’s Laurie Bertram Roberts is in Rewire, reflecting on their childhood growing up in a fundamentalist Christian church and their “second-pew seat” to the rise of Christian nationalism: “As I‘ve watched Christian nationalists’ views move to mainstream primetime TV—flowing from the mouths of lawmakers—I can’t help but reflect on hearing similar things years ago. I never thought I would hear them go back to saying the quiet part out loud, but here we are. The arguments for keeping to ourselves. The messaging of xenophobia. The racist undertones and overtones. The appeals to fear and morality. I’ve seen this before, and none of it’s good.”

  • Repro legal experts Michele Goodwin and Mary Ziegler are in the New York Times with a warning about the next front in attacks on abortion — censorship of abortion-related information: “What’s different today is that, post-Roe, the stakes have changed. More Americans lack access to abortion than before, and abortion access has everything to do with access to information. That is where anti-abortion groups are seeking an edge.”

  • Reuters columnist Hassan Kanu looks at the awful case of Stacey Freeman, the Alabama woman jailed for allegedly using amphetamines while pregnant when she was not, in fact, pregnant: “Those cases demonstrate the senselessness and very real dangers of the ‘fetal personhood’ argument – which holds that the law should grant full personhood rights to fetuses and even fertilized eggs. The idea has been used to support efforts to punish women for behavior considered risky to pregnancies or for seeking abortions — a position that even the Republican establishment and anti-abortion movement leaders have previously rejected as radical.”

  • Jezebel’s Kylie Cheung tries (valiantly) and fails (inevitably, through no fault of her own) to make sense of the anti-abortion Republican who doesn’t want bathroom breaks for pregnant workers because something something abortion: “I almost have to give Tillis points for creativity, because… where did he get that from? In Murray’s floor remarks, the Washington senator explained that the bill is about ensuring no one is forced ‘to choose between their job and a healthy pregnancy.’ Per the bill’s language, it requires companies to offer ‘reasonable accommodations to the known limitations’ extending from ‘pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.' PWFA doesn’t even mention abortion. And, considering anti-abortion Republicans like Tillis are the reason exponentially more people will be forced to remain pregnant, and by extension, become pregnant workers, his opposition to the bill is especially cruel.”

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.