The Quickie: "Pro-Life"? Yeah, Right.
For Immediate Release: June 9, 2023
Welcome to “The Quickie” — Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s daily tipsheet on the top health care & reproductive rights stories of the day. You can read “The Quickie'' online here.
In today’s Quickie: anti-abortion politicians don’t back up their own promises on support for pregnant people, our 2023 state legislative session recap, a new study details reduction in care quality due to abortion bans, and MD becomes trans sanctuary state.
As a note to our readers, The Quickie will be taking a brief break next week, returning on Wednesday, June 14. Don’t miss us too much!
“PRO-LIFE”? YEAH, RIGHT: When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade nearly a year ago, many anti-abortion politicians celebrated and claimed that this would usher in more policies to support new parents and their children, as well as expand health care access. These claims have always been disingenuous but now the proof is in the pudding. The states that have banned and restricted abortion are also the states with the highest rates of maternal mortality and have among the worst safety nets for new parents and their infants.
As Kelly Baden of Guttmacher Institute points out in an op-ed for The Hill: only 12 states and D.C. have paid family and medical leave laws and all of them have abortion rights broadly protected. Of the 10 states that have declined to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, a majority of them have moved in the last year to ban and restrict abortion.
Instead of funneling money into family planning clinics and other programs to support parents and their children, states have increasingly diverted money from legitimate health care facilities toward anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, which peddle medical disinformation and are not staffed with medical professionals. As noted by the LA Times, at least 10 states diverted money from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a federal welfare program, in favor of grants to these fake clinics.
“In May 2022, when the news leaked that the Supreme Court would strike down Roe vs. Wade, and Republicans were promising they’d finally apply “pro-life” activism to what happens after birth, I made a mental note to check their progress in a year — right about now,” Jackie Calmes writes for the LA Times. “I suspected they’d renege. Sometimes you hate to be right.”
Read more at The Hill and the LA Times.
ICYMI: 2023 STATE LEGISLATIVE SESSION RECAP: As we approach the one-year anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, many states’ first legislative sessions since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to ban abortion are also wrapping up. In 2023, every state in the country has taken action on abortion in some way. Many states have severely restricted abortion access and some have moved to codify reproductive rights, shield abortion providers from out-of-state attacks, and repeal harmful abortion restrictions. Right now, one in three women — plus trans and nonbinary people — has lost access to abortion in their home states.
Not satisfied with banning abortion, lawmakers hostile to sexual and reproductive health care and autonomy also aggressively targeted transgender people this session, introducing a record 400+ bills. Now, 20 states have laws restricting gender-affirming care.
Check out (and bookmark!) our comprehensive memo on all of the state legislative activity this session regarding sexual and reproductive health.
ABORTION BANS DEVASTATE EVIDENCE-BASED CARE: Last month, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) and TxPEP at the University of Texas at Austin released a new study detailing the impact of restrictive abortion bans on the care that doctors can provide to their pregnant patients. The study found that abortion bans, even those with so-called health-related exceptions, worsened health outcomes because they prevent providers’ from using evidence-based judgment. Providers often cannot administer or recommend the best care option because of legal ambiguities. On the other hand, patients increasingly chose to carry pregnancies to term despite fetal anomalies where they otherwise would have chosen to get an abortion.
“Texans need access to medication and surgical abortion and yet abortions are banned in Texas,” Sarah Wheat, Chief External Affairs Officer at Planned Parenthood Greater Texas, said. “This creates enormous challenges for Texans who can’t travel to another state to access an abortion… Texas’ statewide abortion ban puts pregnant women’s health at risk. We’d like to see expanded access to healthcare for Texans instead of the barriers to care that many Texans face.”
Read more at Daily Texan. Read the full study here.
MARYLAND BECOMES TRANS SANCTUARY STATE:
