Walgreens Bows to Threats From Anti-Abortion Republicans

Plus: Public universities censor faculty and students in Idaho and Indiana for abortion speech

March 10, 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.

Regular readers will notice a new feature! If you make it all the way to the end of the newsletter, you’ll be treated to Goodnight and Good Dunk, a little sign-off nug featuring a pro-abortion burn. If you spot a good dunk on an anti-abortion chucklefuck out in the wild, tag me/shuffle it into my inbox.

The big takeaway: I’m thinking about abortion and censorship this week. In Idaho, a mobile abortion billboard rolling down public streets and an art exhibit about abortion at a public university were both targeted by public officials, while in Indiana, public university faculty were threatened with disciplinary action for emailing their campus communities in support of abortion provider Dr. Caitlin Bernard. The folks behind the mobile billboard were issued a citation; Boise city officials say mobile advertising isn’t allowed, but the ordinance appears to be selectively enforced. The art exhibit was censored, with university admins citing “a law passed in 2021 prohibiting public funds from being used to ‘procure, counsel in favor, refer to or perform an abortion,’” according to News from the States. And Indiana University’s chief compliance officer told the Indiana academics that they could be disciplined if they didn’t more clearly mark their abortion advocacy as “personal opinion.”

Meanwhile, Walgreens announced it would preemptively comply with the demands of anti-abortion politicians who threatened the pharmacy giant if it were to make medication abortion available to customers in states where it is — and I cannot stress this enough — entirely legal to do so.

You won’t believe this, but the Cancel Culture Crusaders who obsessively whine that ~ woke culture ~ has gone too far and ~ free speech is under attack ~ have been conspicuously silent on these actual instances of government intrusion, intimidation, and even self-censorship stemming from fear of right-wing attacks. Wonder why! < unsolved mysteries dot gif >

The Top Headlines

The Takes

  • Abortion providers Lisa Harris, Jamila Perritt, and Bhavik Kumar are in JAMA arguing against abortion-hostile state boycotts. I may get this entire thing tattooed on my body: “Responses to abortion bans must be informed by the experiences of people working in states where abortion is restricted. Boycotts risk further marginalizing and isolating people working for justice in those states. That is why Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia, has argued against boycotts, advocating a “#StayAndFight” approach instead. To be sure, clinicians in those settings are scrambling to meet patients’ needs and managing tremendous stress, exhaustion, and moral distress. However, failing to include clinicians providing abortion care and other stakeholders in problem-solving is a missed opportunity for thought partnership and for developing solutions that reflect real needs. It is also evidence of a larger problem: a kind of paternalism in which those with agenda-setting or decision-making authority do not think it is important to consider the viewpoints or experiences of those most affected by their decisions.”  

  • Jezebel’s Susan Rinkunas writes in her newsletter that there’s no room for “pro-choice, but” when it comes to the criminalization of self-managed abortion and pregnancy loss: “People have later abortions because of not only the usual barriers like state restrictions, lack of insurance coverage, lack of paid time off work, but also because they may have discovered their pregnancy late and then were confronted with an even more expensive procedure. Some people will self-manage those later abortions for similar reasons, and they were doing so even while Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. Self-managed abortion later in pregnancy only stands to become more common post-Roe, now that blue state clinics—including the very few that do later abortions—are backed up with traveling patients. When (not if) the next person is arrested for a self-managed abortion later in their pregnancy, our collective response should be that they deserved accessible healthcare, not criminalization.”

  • Abortion researcher Dana M. Johnson is in the New York Times explaining the science and history behind misoprostol-only medication abortion as we await a federal ruling in the Texas case that could take mifepristone off the market in the U.S.: “Misoprostol was originally created to treat stomach ulcers, but in the early 1980s Brazilian feminists  discovered that the medication could also induce abortion. Since this discovery, it has been used throughout Latin America, Asia and Africa. For decades feminist groups have supported people through safe self-managed abortion using misoprostol alone. We can look to this history for strategic guidance as we navigate the current abortion access crisis in the United States.”

The Tweets/Toks/Grams

  • The West Alabama Women’s Center’s Robin Marty tweets a reminder about the stakes when it comes to medication abortion access:

  • ReproAction’s Kara Mailman connects the dots between abortion care, trans health care, and narratives around legality and morality:

  • The Lilith Fund’s Erika Galindo shares a good TikTok explaining Rosie’s Law, the Texas proposal to restore public and private funding for abortion:

The Fuck Are We Supposed to Do About It?

Goodnight and good dunk: Buckle Bunnies Fund co-founder Makayla Montoya Frazier fact-checks her uncle, an anti-abortion state representative in North Texas.

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.