When Roe goes, they'll be the lifeline
When Roe goes, they'll be the lifeline
With abortion bans spreading, mutual aid rises
Welcome to the big Sunday edition of Progressives Everywhere!
I’m still mourning the demise of voting rights legislation, and with it the likelihood that the next decade of elections will be free, fair, and reflective of the American public. The silver lining, I suppose, is that the Arizona Democratic Party formally censured Kyrsten Sinema for her lead role in sinking the voter protections, a remarkably rare rebuke from an official party entity for a lawmaker not (technically) guilty of ethics violations. (Not for nothing, but I scooped that this may happen a week before she cast that vote.)
It’s always nice to see a mean-spirited public scourge suffer consequences for their transgressions, which is why it was also so satisfying to see Aaron Rodgers face plant against the 49ers last night.
Indeed, tonight’s newsletter is all about finding a ray of light in dire circumstances, which we face on multiple fronts right now in this country.
But first, thank you to our latest crowd-funding donors: Kathryn and Justin!
This weekend marks the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. All indications are that the landmark Supreme Court ruling won’t make it to 50.
On Friday, the Supreme Court ignored standard legal procedure when it declined to block Texas’s six week abortion ban and refused to expedite the case through the legal system. In doing so, the court stripped millions of women in Texas of their constitutional rights — potentially forever. The case will take months to untangle, and in June, the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority is likely to toss out most if not all of the protections guaranteed by Roe when it issues a ruling on Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban.
That 70% of Americans are opposed to Roe being overturned hardly matters — after all, the Supreme Court has repeatedly displayed its disdain for democracy over the past decade.
Roe, which legalized abortion across the United States, has been under assault from the moment it was handed down in 1973. Overturning the case has been the organizing principle of the religious right, a focal point of the conservative movement’s decades-long takeover of the federal judiciary, and the ultimate GOP fundraising tool. The right-wing justices are all products of that vicious tradition, and with the endgame in sight, Republican legislators nationwide have been teeing up restrictions and prospective outright bans on abortion.
Last week, Florida Republicans held hearings on a proposed 15-week abortion ban, while GOP trifectas in Ohio, Alabama, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arizona are also considering further restrictions, many of them of the Texas bounty hunter variety.
The walls are also closing in on women in one state where you may not expect it to be happening.
In New Hampshire, a new state Republican trifecta passed a draconian ban on abortion last June, sneaking it through the budget process so that Gov. Chris Sununu had no choice but to sign it — not that he took all that much convincing. By barring abortions after 24 weeks, the bill was presented as a “moderate” compromise, but it was the hidden details that made it so pernicious.
The ban, which went into effect on January 1st, includes no exceptions for incest or rape and mandates that pregnant women undergo invasive ultrasounds before obtaining an abortion. It also creates criminal liability for doctors that perform abortions after 24 weeks or without having performed an ultrasound.
“The future of abortion access is telemedicine and getting abortion pills delivered right to your door,” Josie Pinto, the co-founder and executive director of the Reproductive Freedom Fund of New Hampshire, told Progressives Everywhere. “There's no real need to have an ultrasound early on in your pregnancy, so you can have a video chat with a doctor and they can send in a prescription for the medication.”
The new law, however, makes it impossible for women to access abortion medication with a simple Zoom conversation. Instead, they’re required to visit doctors’ offices, which can present serious complications for women in rural areas, women who work jobs with long and inconvenient hours, and women living with people who do not respect their right to choose. The transvaginal ultrasound can also be triggering for assault victims, and physically violating for anyone that does not want or need it.
A House committee voted on Tuesday to approve a bill that would narrow the ultrasound requirement, limiting its application to scenarios in which “the provider either knows or is conscious of a substantial risk that the fetus has a gestational age of at least 24 weeks.” Any relief provided by that law’s passage would likely be limited, however; Republicans rejected Sununu’s request that they eliminate criminal liability for doctors, meaning that many physicians would still be hesitant to prescribe the pill or perform the abortion without an ultrasound with up to seven years in prison still theoretically possible.
The governor also asked that the legislature create exceptions for rape and incest, requests that Rep. Beth Folsom, who wrote the ban, parried with two truly jaw-dropping explanations.
Rape victims, she said, do not require an exception because they closely track their menstrual cycles and therefore have more than enough time to terminate their pregnancies. As for victims of incest, Folsom assured that they’ll simply be cared for by their familial rapist.
“If they are still under the control of that aggressor, that aggressor is going to make sure that young girl or woman has an abortion before anyone finds out,” Folsom reasoned.
A day later, pro-choice advocates offered much more moving and reality-based testimony on behalf of two abortion-related bills filed by Senate Democrats. One bill would repeal the 24-week ban, while the other would codify Roe v. Wade in the New Hampshire state constitution. Women from across the state took turns relaying deeply personal experiences in three minute intervals, undaunted by either the teleconference setup or the long odds facing the legislation’s success.
Every bill filed in the New Hampshire legislature receives at least one hearing, and so at some point in the next few weeks, House committees will consider two anti-abortion proposals that would edge the state closer to Gilead.
The first, HB 1181, would establish “biological rights” for fathers, which would allow men to request a court injunction that blocks a woman from getting an abortion and forces her to give birth. A judge would have two weeks to decide whether or not to grant the injunction, and if the woman insisted the man trying to ruin her life is not the father, he would have two more weeks to provide a sperm sample — the bill does not include any initial DNA proof of paternity.
In short, this bill would allow a random man to use the power of the state to put a pregnant woman through hell for up to a month, and, if timed correctly, stop her from obtaining an abortion even if a judge ultimately decided against handing down an injunction.
The second bill, HB 1477, would establish a bounty hunter-enforced abortion ban like the one in Texas. Sununu has said that he opposes such a scheme, but he’s also called himself pro-choice throughout his career.
Abortion Funds Step Up
For many women, an invasive government regime not only makes abortion care harder to access, it can also make it more expensive.
An in-person consultation appointment is always going to cost more than one conducted over video chat. Doctors can incur more legal costs. Clinics close in more rural areas. And if they live in a state where restrictions on abortion are especially draconian and cruel, women are often forced to travel to other states to undergo the procedure or obtain the medicine.
Even without the government-imposed hurdles, abortion care can be a costly proposition. The median abortion winds up costing just over $500, making it prohibitively expensive for many women, be they working-class, teenagers, abuse victims, or dealing with other financial complications; 40% of Americans say they’d struggle to pay a $400 bill for an unexpected medical emergency. If travel is required, the price can skyrocket.
Abortion funds have proliferated in recent years as mutual aid organizations that try to fill in the gaps and assist women who don’t have the means required to terminate their pregnancies. The Reproductive Freedom Fund of New Hampshire, which Pinto co-founded last year, has already directed $65,000 to help 170 low-income or otherwise vulnerable women in the state receive abortion care.
It’s an around-the-clock operation that acts as a crucial lifeline for women in what is often their most difficult hours. There are four clinics providing abortions in New Hampshire, each of which work closely with RFFNH.
“Almost all of our referrals come directly from the clinics,” Pinto says. “They leave a voicemail with us, and whoever's on hotline shift calls them back as soon as they can. It’s always within 24 hours, but we've tried to get back to them as soon as possible.”
The paucity of clinics in the state sometimes results in weeks-long waiting lists, so the fund also sends women to Massachusetts, especially when time is of the essence. With anti-abortion laws proliferating and old bans ready to trigger when Roe is overturned, Pinto is preparing for an influx of applicants in states with even harsher restrictions than what’s been passed in New Hampshire.
“I’m ready to start looking at what will it look like to fund people who are traveling to New Hampshire from other states,” she says. “What’s so hard about abortion funds is that it’s just so unpredictable. A lot of other organizations can budget out a whole year and feel pretty confident, but we just have to do our best every single week to meet the need.”
Progressives Everywhere has raised over $150,000 for abortion funds in Texas and states across the south. Now, we’re adding the Reproductive Freedom Fund of New Hampshire to our list of supported funds. Every donation will help a woman in need.
Here are some news and notes to round out today’s edition of the newsletter —as always, much more to come in the newsletters that go out to premium members on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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Voting Rights
Last week was about as devastating as they come for national voting rights activists, but if there’s any silver lining, it can be found in several states in the Midwest.
Missouri: The future of representative democracy in Missouri was looking pretty bleak in November 2020, when Republicans used a misleading ballot amendment to trick voters into repealing the nonpartisan redistricting commission they had overwhelmingly approved just a few years earlier.
It is a relief, then, that this year’s redistricting process did not turn out as catastrophic as once projected.
The bipartisan redistricting commission voted unanimously to approve newState House legislative districts on Thursday, producing a map that will force eight Republican incumbents to square off in primaries this year. There will be 17 districts with a majority Black population and one majority Hispanic. The commission overseeing the State Senate lines, on the other hand, was unable to come to an agreement and punted to the state Supreme Court, which is dominated by Republicans.
The legislature also came to a compromise on a Congressional map, much to the chagrin of some Republicans. Vote totals and demographics suggest it will be a 6-2 breakdown in favor of the GOP, but some Republicans, who wanted a gerrymandered 7-1 map, say what was approved is more likely to lean 5-3. (Maybe not in 2022, mind you, but perhaps in better years for Democrats.)
Ohio: Speaking of compromises, the state’s redistricting commission submitted new legislative maps for review after the state Supreme Court rejected an initial set of laughably egregious gerrymanders.
These maps are better, but not by all that much — they would produce a 57-42 Republican House and a 20-13 GOP edge in the Senate. That could prove problematic after the court ordered the commission to create districts that reflect the 54-46 margin by which Republicans have won state elections over the past decade. Then again, the Chief Justice that provided the deciding vote in the initial case still is a Republican, so it’s possible that these changes will be enough to satisfy the order.
Florida: Foiled in their attempt to severely hamstring ballot initiatives financially, Republicans are now trying to limit the kinds of issues that Floridians can decide via direct democracy.
New legislation would keep ballot initiatives to “matters relating to procedural subjects or to the structure of the government or of this Constitution,” which would prevent further initiatives like the ones that raised the minimum wage, legalized medical marijuana, and made former felons eligible to vote.
If the bill passes the legislation — and it will — it will then be placed on the ballot in November.
Ballot Initiatives
Florida: Speaking of Florida ballot initiatives, Florida environmentalists are charging hard to qualify a new constitutional amendment that would enshrine the right to install solar panels on one’s home or business and sell back the electricity produced to their utility company. The amendment is being pursued in response to a bill that would make net metering illegal in the state. That bill is being pushed by the very corrupt Florida Power & Light.
Missouri: I don’t mean to fixate on these two states, I swear! There’s just a lot of relevant news to cover! An organization called Better Elections is collecting signatures to qualify a ballot amendment that would create ranked choice voting in Missouri. The process would create a nonpartisan primary election, and the top four vote-getters would then move on to a ranked choice general election. It would apply to statewide offices, the legislature, and Congressional elections.
I’m not entirely sure how this would play out in the increasingly red state, but it would possibly curb the power of the demented right-wing base that turns out for closed GOP primaries.
Education
Bullshit: The number of bans on “critical race theory” and “obscene” texts are proliferating across the country.
On Friday, each and every Black member of the Mississippi State Senate marched out of the chamber in protest of a GOP bill that purports to ban CRT but creates broad limitations on what educators can say about relations between race, sex, gender, religion, or any other demographic. As you might expect, it passed the State Senate and awaits debate in the House.
In Florida, both chambers of the GOP-held legislature passed a bill that prevents teachers from making white kids feel uncomfortable or feel guilty about America’s long history of racism or any other historic injustice.
The legislature is also close to passing what’s colloquially known as a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would make it illegal for teachers to discuss topics related to LGBTQ+ issues that are not “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students,” a nebulous designation that would be determined by the most homophobic parent at a given school.
New Jersey: The teacher shortage has gotten so dire in the Garden State that the legislature is on the verge of passing a bill to allow retired teachers to return to the classroom for one year while still collecting their pensions.
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