Here's the Best Post-Dobbs Anniversary Coverage

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: It’s the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization SCOTUS decision that ended nationwide federal protections for abortion rights. Practically every news organization that has ever covered abortion (and some that have mostly side-stepped the issue!) released reporting packages this week.

Here’s some of the coverage I found most useful, impactful, and thoughtful:

• “Abortions are harder to get and costlier than ever” is the gist of most every post-Dobbs report, but this big-picture piece from Sofia Resnick at News from the States is particularly thorough, while Kelcie Moseley-Morris looks specifically at travel challenges through a really interesting pre-Roe historical lens. Andrea González-Ramírez at The Cut has a good look at today’s landscape, too, and there’s more on the theme from Shefali Luthra and Jasmine Mithani at The 19th: even where abortion is technically legal, access is limited.

• Of course, there are lots of people who have been, and will be, forced to give birth when they would have chosen abortion if they’d been able to do so. And the role of adoption post-Roe is more complicated than you might think — here’s adoption-expert sociologist Gretchen Sisson with more.

• For folks interested in how abortion access has changed in specific states, a selection: New Mexico, Indiana, Illinois, Texas, and the South more broadly.

• The Guardian’s visualization of the 1,572 U.S. lawmakers behind post-Dobbs abortion ban will strike you but surely not surprise you.

• But the fight goes on. Prism’s Tina Vásquez reports a deeply moving as-told-to series of pieces from abortion storytellers, providers, clinicians, funders, and organizers looking at “hope and heartbreak in the post-Roe hellscape.” And HuffPo’s Alanna Vagianos reports on the rise of an “unapologetic abortion rights movement” post-Dobbs.

• The ACCESS Podcast’s Dobbs anniversary show features messages of “grief, survivor’s guilt, and hope in practice” from listeners and folks fighting for abortion rights around the country. Box of tissues warning.

The Top Headlines

• “Abortion Any Time Isn’t Just a Rallying Cry—It’s True Reproductive Freedom” [The Nation] — Honestly? If you read one thing about abortion this week of all weeks, make it T.S. Mendola’s thoughtfully reported, empathetic look at later abortion.

• “The sleeper legal strategy that could topple abortion bans” [Politico] — I don’t know that I would call this a “sleeper” strategy so much as a strategy that surprises people who think people of faith don’t support abortion. (They do! Overwhelmingly!) But it’s certainly an exciting legal avenue.

• “Ayanna Pressley Introduces the Abortion Justice Act, One Year After Dobbs” [Teen Vogue] and “Democrats in Congress run full-court press on reproductive rights ahead of Dobbs anniversary” [The 19th]

• “Senate confirms lawyer who represented Mississippi abortion clinic at Supreme Court in Dobbs case for federal judgeship” [CNN]

• What’s happening with clinical abortion provision and medication abortion:

  • “People are using abortion medication later in their pregnancies. Here’s what that means” [Vox]

  • “‘We’re not going to win that fight’: Bans on abortion and gender-affirming care are driving doctors from Texas” [The 19th]

  • “How many miles do you have to travel to get abortion care? One professor maps it” [NPR]

  • “After Roe v. Wade fell, this father-daughter duo left Texas to go on providing abortions” [Reuters]

  • “The one year (scientific) story of the fall of Roe V. Wade” (Your Local Epidemiologist)

  • “States With Abortion Bans Are Losing a Generation of Ob-Gyns” [Wired]

  • “Abortion bans are causing ‘chilling effect’ for OBGYNs, study says” [The 19th]

• 🇺🇸 What politicians and politicos on the national stage are doing and saying about abortion in advance of the ‘24 election:

  • Brittany Packnett Cunningham talks to VP Kamala Harris on this week’s UNDISTRACTED.

• ⚖️ What’s going on with abortion bans, legal challenges, and bills at the state and local levels:

  • 🟢 “Abortion, transgender care bill that nearly torpedoed Oregon legislative session heads to governor” [Oregon Capital Chronicle]

  • 🟢 “[Connecticut] attorney general appoints special counsel to protect abortion access” [CT Mirror]

  • 🟢 “New York Passes Bill to Shield Abortion Providers Sending Pills Into States With Bans” [NYT]

  • 🟡 “Enforcement of Kansas ‘abortion reversal’ law delayed after agreement with Kobach” [Kansas Reflector]

  • 🟡 “Abortion providers in North Carolina file federal lawsuit challenging state’s new restrictions” [AP]

  • 🔴 “Abortion-ban initiative proposed for Colorado ballot” [Colorado Newsline]

  • 🔴 “Kentucky abortion providers want to dismiss challenge against near-total abortion ban” [Kentucky Lantern]

The Takes

• We Testify’s Renee Bracey Sherman is part of a post-Roe “reflections” package in The Nation with an important call-to-action for the present and future: “Protecting abortion access means calling for the abolishment of the police and all laws that criminalize us for the outcomes of our pregnancies. Until we have police-free communities, we will never have reproductive freedom for all, and abortion will never truly be safe and legal. If anyone tells you differently, they’re lying.”

• The Guardian’s Poppy Noor penned a powerful essay on covering the fall of Roe while pregnant: “It’s our job as journalists to see what is happening, not what we want to see. But covering this beat, especially while pregnant, has changed my depth of vision. To see this assault up close and personal is to see it for what it is: not a journey to protect life; but to stifle, suppress and suffocate freedom.”

• Abortion providers Nisha Verman and Daniel Grossman are in JAMA with a piece on, as Dr. Grossman put it on Twitter, “the critically important role of medical and nursing organizations standing in strong opposition to legislative interference in evidence-based care.” To wit: “Now, as the US enters its second year after the overturning of Roe, it is vital that clinicians and their professional organizations continue to convey the deleterious effects of abortion restrictions on patients, communities, the medical profession, and health systems. By highlighting the impact of legislative interference, clinicians and their professional organizations play a critical role in defending evidence-based comprehensive reproductive health care.”

• Hey Jane’s Alyssa Wagner is in HuffPo reminding us that parents have and provide abortions, too: “My story is not unique ― I am one of many abortion provider moms and one of many parents who have had an abortion and understand the importance of access to safe and legal abortion care for parents. We need to trust and support parents to make the decisions that are best for them and their families, including the decision to have an abortion.”

The Tweets/Toks/Grams

• A word on criminalization from ReproAction’s Kieran Mailman:

• The memes were good this week! Via ReproMemes, this one gave me a good chuckle:

Birthing Liberation: How Reproductive Justice Can Set Us Free by Sabia Wade

Atlanta-based full-spectrum doula Sabia Wade’s Birthing Liberation looks at the relationships and intersections between individual and collective liberation, healing, and institutionalized/medicalized racism. Publisher’s Weekly describes Birthing Liberation as a “deeply empathetic overview of medical racism [that] will outrage and has the power to inspire change.” Watch and listen to them in conversation with Jalessah Jackson at Charis Books & More earlier this year, or subscribe to their newsletter, the Birth Neoterist.

On Thursday 6/29, I’ll choose a lucky winner from my subscriber list at random, so keep your eyes on your inboxes!

The Fuck Are We Supposed to Do About It?

• 👕 SWAG OF THE WEEK! 👕

  • Get you a copy of The Abortion Times newspaper from We Testify and INeedAnA!

• 🎁 Alabama, but nationwide: The West Alabama Women’s Center is organizing a silent auction, and they’re looking for contributors.

• 🚌 Alabama: The Yellowhammer Fund’s "F*** Your Abortion Ban” bus tour is hitting the road Saturday, June 24. Check out the stop schedule here.

• 🪧 Chicago: A coalition of repro, queer, and social justice groups are taking to the streets to say “no platform for antis” on Saturday, June 24th.

• 🪧 New York City: The Queers for Abortion march is Sunday, June 25.

• 🥳 St. Louis: Pro-Choice Missouri’s Repro Freedom Block Party is Sunday, June 25.

• 🛍️ San Antonio: The Best Lil’ Repro Market in Texas is popping up around town until June 26, click through for dates and locations.

• 🖥️ Online: Register for the Movement For Black Lives’ “Visioning Reparations for Reproductive Justice” virtual panel on Tuesday, June 27th.

• 🚌 The South: SisterSong’s Reproductive Justice Bus Tour is stopping in locations across the south until Monday, July 3rd. Here’s the schedule!

• ✊🏽 Colorado: Applications for COLOR Latina’s fellowship program — a “ten-month-long program designed to support Latinx, transgender, and gender non-conforming young people gain skills in political advocacy, public speaking, and programmatic organization” — are due Wednesday, July 5th.

• 💫 Denver: ABORTION RAVE! REPEAT, ABORTION RAVE! AT A “SALSA WAREHOUSE”! I love all these words. It’s Friday, July 7th, benefitting Buckle Bunnies Fund.

• 🪩 Chicago: DISCO FOR ABORTION! REPEAT, DISCO FOR ABORTION! Get down at the Chicago Athletic Association on Saturday, July 8th, benefitting the Big Bend Reproductive Coalition.

• 🧑🏽‍🤝‍🧑🏽 Anywhere: The Take Root: Red State Reproductive Justice 2023 conference in Louisville, KY is now open for proposals! This is an incredible organizing, collaborating, and community space for folks who are passionate about reproductive justice.

• 📱 North Texas: The Texas Equal Access Fund is looking for bilingual Spanish-speaking volunteers for their text line. Here’s where to sign up.

• 📞 Anywhere: Apply to be an All-Options talkline volunteer!

• 📥 Anywhere: Looking for a job in repro? ReproJobs can help you spruce up your resume!

• 🧑🏾‍⚕️ Anywhere, for medical residents training in abortion care: Obstetricians for Reproductive Justice and others will fund residents who need to travel out of state for abortion care training through December 2023 (or retroactively since July 1, 2022). Here’s how to apply.

• 🤠 Texas: Local teen-friendly businesses in in Bryan, College Station, Lubbock, or San Angelo can become pickup spots for repro kits assembled by Jane’s Due Process. Here’s the application form.

• 💸 From your wallet:

  • Donate to ensure Desert Star Family Planning in Phoenix can keep providing essential abortion care to folks in the Southwest!

  • Contribute to the Repro Worker Aid Fund (or apply to be a recipient!)

  • Donate $$ and pads to Just the Pill’s mobile clinic.

  • Donate to the Online Abortion Resource Squad, which supports the R/Abortion subreddit 24/7/365.

  • Donate to Elevated Access, which transports folks for abortion and gender-affirming care.

  • Find your local abortion fund and donate!

  • The Valley Abortion Group is a new all-trimester abortion facility fundraising to open in New Mexico — donate to the GoFundMe.

  • Buy something off the wishlist of an independent clinic, abortion fund, or clinic defense group, or donate to support abortion funds. This link distributes your donation to 90+ funds around the country. Or donate to support independent abortion providers!

• ✍️ Sign and share:

  • Anywhere: Use All Above All*’s form to tell your congressperson to support the Abortion Justice Act.

  • Texas: Join the Frontera Fund in telling your Texas lawmakers that you’re not having it with the “border fence” and “migrant” surveillance.

  • Anywhere, but especially for Alabamans: Sign the Yellowhammer Fund’s petition against a bill that would allow the prosecution abortion and even some forms of pregnancy loss as homicide.

  • Anywhere: Sign this multi-org-backed petition demanding Google stop “collecting and retaining location data and aiding abortion prosecutors.”

  • Anywhere: sign the Fight for the Future petition to demand better digital safety and security on Slack!

  • Anywhere: Sign the RJ Response to Stop Cop City.

  • Anywhere: All Above All*’s petition to lift outdated restrictions on medication abortion.

  • Anywhere: UltraViolet’s petition calling on pharmacies to provide medication abortion access where it’s legal to do so.

• 📖 Anywhere, resources edition:

  • Who Not When’s guide to reporting on later abortion is just great.

  • Subscribe to the No Body Criminalized podcast from the Repro Legal Defense Fund’s Rafa Kidvai.

  • Read this solidarity + organizing brief from Interrupting Criminalization and a coalition of repro and anti-criminalization orgs.

  • I Need An A’s new “stories” section provides resources, support, and information for folks seeking abortion care.

  • Plan C Pills has published a self-managed abortion field guide in super fun, accessible zine form.

  • Physicians for Reproductive Health has a wide-ranging messaging guide to talking about a variety of issues, from later abortion to self-managed care to insurance coverage for abortion.

  • The Repro Legal Defense Fund and the Community Justice Exchange have an extensive, attractive, and fact-filled guide to abortion criminalization in both English and Spanish.

  • Check out the “Pro Choice, But” campaign to better understand how to talk with folks who are, well, pro-choice … but.

  • Read the National Immigration Law Center’s know-your-rights-guide to abortion access for immigrants and share widely.

  • Familiarize yourself with this Digital Defense Fund guide to keeping your abortion private and secure, or check out the If/When/How Repro Legal Helpline guide to internet safety.

  • Read this guide on using trans-inclusive language from ARC-Southeast and the Transgender Law Center.

  • REPRO Rising Virginia has a thorough guide to updating your protest signs to make sure you’re using the most forward-thinking, respectful, and impactful language around abortion.

  • Here’s a big list of action items and info created by @RHAVote, and another big list of action items and info created by Alison Turkos.

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.