DYING, ILLNESS, AND AGING WITH GRACE

• State of Homelessness (map, National Alliance to End Homelessness) Click on your state to view detailed information on homeless statistics, bed inventory, and system capacity. Read the report, including Key Facts. 

 

• Key Findings from the Point-in-Time Counts (Fact Sheet: 2023 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report, U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, 12-1-23)

   "At a point in time at the end of January 2023, 653,104 people – or about 20 of every 10,000 people in the United States – experienced homelessness across the United States. This is the highest number of people counted and reported as experiencing homelessness on a single night since reporting began in 2007. Unlike in the past where a single population drove the change, this year’s increases were across all populations. While the upward trend in unsheltered homelessness began several years ago, these increases were exacerbated in recent years as the COVID-19 pandemic, an opioid epidemic, and a nationwide affordable housing crisis conspired to make attaining and maintaining housing increasingly difficult for many low-income households. Increases in sheltered homelessness, particularly increases among families, reflect recent contextual issues such as the expiration of pandemic-era eviction moratoria and income protections, expansion of shelter capacity based on new pandemic-related resources and the easing of pandemic-related restrictions on shelter capacity."

• Why it’s so hard to end homelessness in America (Alvin Powell, Harvard Gazette, 1-24-24) Experts cite complexity of problem, which is rooted in poverty, lack of affordable housing but includes medical, psychiatric, substance-use issues.

• Which States Have The Best Homelessness Assistance Programs (Nick VinZant, QuoteWizard, Insurance News)
"Key findings in 2021:
~Colorado ranked the top state in the nation for housing assistance from 2018 to 2019.
~Connecticut saw a 23.6% decline in homelessness from 2018 to 2019.
~In 2019, it was estimated that nearly 568,000 were experiencing homelessness.
~As of November 2020, 10.74 million Americans are unemployed.
~Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama all had the lowest counts of total homeless per 10K in 2019.
~New York, Hawaii and California have the most homeless per 10K."

• Housing crisis is the 'canary in the coal mine' (Eleanor Black, Newsroom, New Zealand, 4-21-21)New Zealand needs to change its approach to housing completely, and treat it as a public right, like health and education, says property developer Mark Todd. Sitting with a coffee at Mt Albert’s Taco Loco, he gestures towards Ockham’s Modal building across the road – 32 thoughtfully-designed rental apartments on just 680 square metres, with a shared residents’ lounge and balcony, indoor bike storage, easy access to public transport, efficient hot water system and a music room.

 

• Homelessness Statistics (National Alliance to End Homelessness)
• National Coalition for the Homeless
• Healthcare for the Homeless Suitcase Clinic (Facebook page)
---Suitcase Clinic, James Madison University (Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807)
---Homelessness is a Healthcare Issue: New Medical Group Will Treat Southern California Homeless Seniors

• NEXT: Next Generation Military and Veterans Healthcare Systems (America Conference Institute press release, 2023) 

    ‘This is street medicine wrapped in the framework of managed care’     "With the population of unhoused individuals in California soaring to more than 161,000, SCAN Group, whose holdings include SCAN Health Plan, one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit Medicare Advantage plans, is launching Healthcare in Action, a new medical group that will provide healthcare and other services to individuals experiencing homelessness."
• Homeless encampment cleanups do little to change numbers of people on the street, study finds (Doug Smith,LA Times, 7-24-24) Homeless encampment cleanups including Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program that moves people into motels and hotels have no long-term effect on the number of people living on the streets, a new study by RAND Center on Housing and Homelessness has found
• Supreme Court rules cities may enforce laws against homeless encampments (David G. Savage, LA Times, 6-28-24) The Supreme Court ruled Friday that cities in California and the West may enforce laws restricting homeless encampments on sidewalks and other public property. In a 6-3 decision, the justices disagreed with the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco and ruled that it is not “cruel and unusual” punishment for city officials to forbid homeless people from sleeping on the streets or in parks.
---Will the Grants Pass ruling on homelessness spur smaller cities to shoo people into L.A.? (David Zahniser and Doug Smith, LA Times, 7-7-24) When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling on anti-camping laws last month, Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo was one of the local political leaders who welcomed it. The high court concluded that laws penalizing homeless people for sleeping or pitching tents in public spaces do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. That means cities can clear homeless encampments from parks, sidewalks and other areas even when they lack sufficient shelter beds.
• “Hollywood 2.0” An innovative treatment team approach combining outpatient and intensive field services, in partnership with the community that center around an individual’s needs. "It starts with connection and ends with a neighbor living a safer, more meaningful life.

• A California Medical Group Treats Only Homeless Patients — And Makes Money Doing It (Angela Hart, KFF Health News and Orange County Register, 7-19-24) Doctors, nurses, and social workers are fanning out on the streets of Los Angeles to provide health care and social services to homeless people — foot soldiers of a new business model taking root in communities around California.
   Their strategy: Build trust with homeless people to deliver medicine wherever they are — and make money doing it.
   They distribute GPS devices so they can track their homeless patients. They stock their street kits with glass pipes used to smoke meth, crack, or fentanyl. They keep company credit cards on hand in case a patient needs emergency food or water, or an Uber ride to the doctor.
   Healthcare in Action and SCAN’s Medicare Advantage insurance plan generate revenue by serving homeless patients in multiple ways:
---Both are tapping into billions of dollars in Medicaid money that states and the federal government are spending to treat homeless people in the field and to provide new social services like housing and food assistance.
---For instance, Healthcare in Action has received $3.8 million from Newsom’s $12 billion Medicaid initiative called CalAIM, which allows it to hire social workers, doctors, and providers for street medicine teams, according to the state.
---It also contracts with health insurers, including L.A. Care and Molina Healthcare in Southern California, to identify housing for homeless patients, negotiate with landlords, and provide financial help such as covering security deposits.
---Healthcare in Action collects charitable donations from some hospitals and insurers, including CalOptima in Orange County and its own Medicare Advantage plan, SCAN Health Plan.
---Healthcare in Action partners with cities and hospitals to provide treatment and services. In 2022, it kicked off a contract with Cedars-Sinai to care for patients milling outside the hospital.
---It also enrolls eligible homeless patients into SCAN Health Plan because many low-income, older people qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare coverage. The plan had revenue of $4.9 billion in 2023, up from $3.5 billion in 2021. "#1 in Member Satisfaction among Medicare Advantage Plans in California"

• United States Interagency Council on Homelessness
• Geriatrics and Extended Care (Veterans Administration)
---Community Resources, Geriatrics and Extended Care (Veterans Administration's useful links).

 

More to come, I'm sure. -- Pat McNees

• Secrets, death and a police interrogation: Women recall illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade (Nina Shapiro, Seattle Times, 5-22-22)

• The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion by Diana Greene Foster debunks most anti-abortion arguments.
• We asked readers how Roe v. Wade has affected their lives; Here are their stories (Ryan Nguyen, Seattle Times, 5-22-22)

• Tracking the States Where Abortion Is Now Banned (NY Times Interactive)
• Interactive Map: US Abortion Policies and Access After Roe (Guttmacher Institute) "The abortion landscape is fragmented and increasingly polarized. Many states have abortion restrictions or bans in place that make it difficult, if not impossible, for people to get care. Other states have taken steps to protect abortion rights and access. Our interactive map groups states into one of seven categories based on abortion policies they currently have in effect." Note: You may need to clear your browser’s cache or open this page in an incognito window to ensure you are viewing the most recent version.
• Is Abortion Still Accessible in My State Now That Roe v. Wade Was Overturned? (Planned Parenthood)
• Key facts about the abortion debate in America (Carrie Blazina, Pew Research Center, 7-15-22) Quoting headlines only:

1. A majority of the U.S. public disapproves of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe.

2. About six-in-ten Americans (62%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the summer survey...

3. While Republicans’ and Democrats’ views on the legality of abortion have long differed, the 46 percentage point partisan gap today is considerably larger than it was in the recent past...

4. There are wide religious divides in views of whether abortion should be legal, the summer survey found. "An overwhelming share of religiously unaffiliated adults (83%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do six-in-ten Catholics. Protestants are divided in their views: 48% say it should be legal in all or most cases, while 50% say it should be illegal in all or most cases. Majorities of Black Protestants (71%) and White non-evangelical Protestants (61%) take the position that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while about three-quarters of White evangelicals (73%) say it should be illegal in all (20%) or most cases (53%)."

5. Women (66%) are more likely than men (57%) to say abortion should be legal in most or all cases...

6. Relatively few Americans view the morality of abortion in stark terms...

• How abortion rights advocates say midterm elections could impact access in Arizona (Kyla Guilfoil, ABC News, 11-7-22) Abortion providers in Arizona have been living in "legal limbo" since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. A near-total abortion ban in the state with language dating back to 1864 was never technically repealed after the 1973 ruling of Roe. Who's elected may determine what rights women have to abortions in Arizona.
• Post-‘Roe,’ Contraceptive Failures Carry Bigger Stakes (Sarah Varney, KHN, 11-7-22) With most abortions outlawed in at least 13 states and legal battles underway in others, contraceptive failures now carry bigger stakes for tens of millions of Americans.

• Supreme Court's decision on abortion could open the door to overturn same-sex marriage, contraception and other major rulings (Tierney Sneed, CNN, 6-26-22) Friday's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned nearly a half-century of precedent, will be a seminal case in the annals of law and learning. It will be paired with the 1973 Roe v. Wade landmark that had declared a constitutional right to end a pregnancy, just as the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, which ended the "separate but equal" doctrine and began desegregation of schools, has long been tethered to Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision that permitted separate but equal accommodations for Black and White people.
• Is Abortion Sacred? (Jia Tolentino, New Yorker, 7-16-22) Abortion is often talked about as a grave act. But bringing a new life into the world can feel like the decision that more clearly risks being a moral mistake. Important historical insights into attitudes about abortion. For example, "A third of parents in one of the richest countries in the world struggle to afford diapers; in the first few months of the pandemic, as Jeff Bezos’s net worth rose by forty-eight billion dollars, sixteen per cent of households with children did not have enough to eat."
• What the End of Roe v. Wade Will Mean for the Next Generation of Obstetricians (Emma Green, New Yorker, 5-31-22) An aspiring ob-gyn’s views on abortion might determine what training she seeks out, which specialities she pursues, and where she chooses to live. In a post-Roe world, that self-sorting process would grow even more intense.
• What’s Next if ‘Roe v. Wade’ Falls? More Than Half of States Expected to Ban or Restrict Abortion (Sarah Varney, KHN, 5-3-22)

• Letters from an American (Heather Cox Richardson. 9-26-22) "Republicans have managed to keep voters behind their economic program by downplaying it and emphasizing cultural issues, primarily abortion, which reliably turned out anti-abortion voters. Now that the Supreme Court has overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, Republicans have a demographic problem: a majority of voters support reproductive rights and are turning out to vote, and there is no longer a reason for anti-abortion voters to show up.
    "So Republican leaders are downplaying abortion....They are also inventing new cultural crises, most notably an attack on LGBTQIA folks but also a renewed attack on immigrants. Trump has gone further, jumping aboard the QAnon train..."
• “We Need to Defend This Law”: Inside an Anti-Abortion Meeting With Tennessee’s GOP Lawmakers (Kavitha Surana, ProPublica, 11-15-22) Anti-abortion groups helped write and pass laws that kicked in to ban abortion when Roe v. Wade was overturned. The groups see Tennessee’s ban as the country’s strongest — and they want to keep it that way, according to audio reviewed by ProPublica.

      "The way that many state laws work is they’ll say, ‘Abortion, elective abortion, is generally illegal except in these situations.’ … What y’all did is you said, ‘Elective abortion is illegal all the time.’”

      "There has to be medical judgment … [or] you’ve got the legislature practicing medicine, which they have no business at all doing." —Tennessee state Sen. Richard Briggs. His position seems to more closely reflect the attitudes of the majority of Tennesseeans: While 50% identify as "pro-life," 80% believe abortion should be either completely legal or legal under some conditions. To Briggs, the anti-abortion lobbyists were asking lawmakers to respond to legitimate questions from voters with answers that weren't based in science.

    The American Cancer Society says scientific evidence does not support the theory that abortions raise the risk of breast cancer. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviewed existing research and found the risk of death after a legal abortion is a small fraction of the risk of carrying a pregnancy to term.

    A large body of peer-reviewed work finds that having a wanted abortion is not associated with worse health or mental health outcomes. Instead, denying a woman a wanted abortion is linked to worse economic and health outcomes and can strengthen a woman's ties to a violent partner.
• Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade: What You Need to Know Planned Parenthood answers frequently asked questions.
• State legislation tracker (Guttmacher Institute) Major developments in sexual & reproductive health. which states require insurance coverage for abortion.

• Midwest Abortion Providers Scramble to Prepare for a Post-Roe World (Peter Slevin, New Yorker, 5-7-22) With federal protections imperilled, advocates expect a dramatic influx of interstate “refugees” seeking care.vc cccc
• God Help My Friendship With White Evangelicals After Dobbs (Brittney Cooper, The Cut, 6-24-22) When you grow up in a world where your body, because it is not white, is not treated as sacred, you learn to value every protection, personal and political, against your violation. When the first enslaved Black women arrived in this country, their womanhood became defined solely through their forced reproduction of enslaved, unfree offspring. Forced reproduction cannot mean anything other than slavery to Black women.

• Doctors Struggle With State Abortion Restrictions at Odds With Federal Law (Melanie Evans, Wall Street Journal, 7-10-22) "Law requiring doctors to provide emergency treatment to stabilize certain patients may necessitate performing an abortion in some cases. Doctors and hospitals are rushing to reconcile laws in their states barring abortion with a federal law that may require the procedure as part of emergency treatment. How physicians and hospitals are addressing the mandates of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) of 1986 in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization stripped away an almost 50-year-old right to an abortion."
• SCOTUS strikes down Roe as expected; half of states likely to ban abortion (Kerry Dooley Young and Joseph Burns, AHCJ, Covering Health, 6-24-22)
• Irish Eyes Aren’t Smiling (Maureen Dowd, Opinion, NY Times, 7-16-22) "Once, Ireland seemed obsessed with punishing women. Now it’s America. Una Mullally, a columnist for The Irish Times, on Ireland and America swapping roles: Ireland growing less benighted; America more so. Ireland less influenced by the dictates of the Catholic Church; America more influenced, reflecting the views of the five right-wing Catholics on the Supreme Court and Neil Gorsuch, an Episcopalian who was raised Catholic. Ireland once had too much church in the state. Now America does."    “People thought there was this American dream but it’s clearly becoming more of an American nightmare.”

[Back to Top]

• Seeing Norma: The Conflicted Life of the Woman at the Center of Roe v. Wade (Joshua Prager, NY Times, 7-2-22) Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in the case that made abortion legal, struggled with her role. Her personal papers offer insight into her life, her thinking — and her continued relevance. As McCorvey began to speak publicly about Roe and her life, she observed over and again, as in these notes from 1989, that access to abortion was often a matter of class.
• After Roe v. Wade: US researchers warn of what’s to come (Mariana Lenharo, Nature,4-24-22) Years of studies point to the negative economic and health effects of restricting access to abortions.
• America Before and After Roe (Fahima Haques NY Times, 6-27-22) Timeline, photos, and links to key stories about the effects of the Supreme Court decision, how far the Supreme Court will go, responses to key questions, abortion access, abortion travel, medication abortions, statehood battles where gerrymandering has given Republicans an advantage, what those who oppose and support abortion rights have to say.
• America Is About to See Just How Pro-life Republicans Actually Are (Elaine Godfrey, The Atlantic, 6-26-22) After the fall of Roe, some abortion opponents think it’s time to focus on expanding America’s social safety net. Will the rest of their movement join them?
• The Abortion Surge Engulfing Clinics in Pennsylvania (E. Tammy Kim, New Yorker, 7-22-22) Patients are travelling to the state from Ohio, Kentucky, and even Louisiana, but how long will that option last?

• The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate (Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic, December 2019) "No matter what the law says, women will continue to get abortions. How do I know? Because in the relatively recent past, women would allow strangers to brutalize them, to poke knitting needles and wire hangers into their wombs, to thread catheters through their cervices and fill them with Lysol, or scalding-hot water, or lye. Women have been willing to risk death to get an abortion. When we made abortion legal, we decided we weren’t going to let that happen anymore."
• The Extremes Are Not Unusual (Jill Filipovic, 7-14-22) A 10-year-old in need of an abortion is shocking, but it's not isolated. In Ohio alone, an average of one girl aged 15 and under has an abortion every week — and you can bet that many of these girls are rape survivors. One in nine girls in the US experiences rape or sexual assault at the hands of an adult before she turns 18.

•Why I Provide Abortions (Christine Henneberg, Boston Review, 11-29-21) Why I provide abortions has nothing to do with “viability”—the standard that theoretically protects legal abortion up to about twenty-four weeks. When it comes to the definition, and even the value of life, context matters. If viability means “potential for survival,” we are talking about vastly uncertain potential within different contexts.
• Infertility Patients and Doctors Fear Abortion Bans Could Restrict I.V.F. (Jan Hoffman, Roe v. Wade Overturned, NY Times, 7-5-22) The new state bans don’t explicitly cover embryos created outside the womb, but legal experts say overturning Roe could make it easier to place controls on genetic testing, storage and disposal of them.
• Roe Was Flawed. Dobbs Is Worse (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 6-22)Yes, Roe was the product of an activist court. But then so was Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Justice Samuel Alito and the other five conservatives on the Supreme Court were not handing back abortion to the states as if it were some open question for a debate; they knew exactly what was going to happen in states with “trigger” laws the minute they ruled. Despite their legal rationale, these justices were taking sides in a culture war on behalf of a minority of Americans with whom at least some of them happen to agree
      "Anti-abortion conservatives huff that the Court has regularly overturned hideous decisions, such as Dred Scott, Plessy, or Korematsu (which wasn’t really overruled but finally disavowed in a 2018 ruling). Roe, they argue, is just another bad case that was due for reversal....Roe, even if poorly decided, has been affirmed in that same court; again, a majority of Americans believe in a right to abortion in all or some cases, and have for a half century. Even now, if the goal was to remedy a Roe overreach, the majority could have found a way to do so while leaving abortion rights intact. This was apparently Roberts’s position, but he was brushed aside by the five other conservative justices.

     It's true that abortion is not in the Constitution. A lot of things aren't in the Constitution, including the "right to be left alone," but that hasn't stopped Americans from recognizing that such rights exist.

      Friday's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned nearly a half-century of precedent, will be a seminal case in the annals of law and learning. It will be paired with the 1973 Roe v. Wade landmark that had declared a constitutional right to end a pregnancy, just as the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, which ended the "separate but equal" doctrine and began desegregation of schools, has long been tethered to Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision that permitted separate but equal accommodations for Black and White people.
      "Yet where Brown ensured rights, of course, Dobbs eliminated them.
      "It was a sober, even humble Roberts who wrote -- alone -- as he separated himself both from the conservatives who dissolved a constitutional guarantee and from the liberal dissenters who expressed sorrow for American women and warned of further erosions on privacy. See also Chief Justice John Roberts lost the Supreme Court and the defining case of his generation (Joan Biskupic, CNN, 6-26-22)

[Back to Top] • Why the Defense of Abortion in Kansas Is So Powerful(Sarah Smarsh, NY Times, 8-3-22) "In a state where registered Republicans far outnumber Democrats, the results reveal that conservative politicians bent on controlling women and pregnant people with draconian abortion bans are out of step with their electorates, a majority of whom are capable of nuance often concealed by our two-party system.
      "This is not news to many red-state moderates and progressives, who live with excruciating awareness of the gulf between their decent communities and the far-right extremists gerrymandering, voter-suppressing and dark-moneying their way into state and local office.
      "Too often, election results say more about the conditions of the franchise — who manages to use it, and what information or misinformation they receive along the way — than they do about the character of a place."

• Abortion in the U.S. Dashboard (KFF) An ongoing research project (and visual mapping) tracking state abortion policies and litigation following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Among key facts:

---79% of abortions occur before 10 weeks.
---As of the end of June 2022, medication abortion via telehealth was available in 22 states and DC
---A majority of states have at least one restriction on health insurance coverage for abortion services
---Most of the general public (73%) opposes making it a crime for doctors to perform abortions
---In 2021 the median cost of abortion services exceeded $500. Another map tracks states with numerous abortion restrictions.
• Abortion Access (Stateline) Covering state policy on abortion access across the 50 states. See, for example, Abortion opponents push state lawmakers to promote unproven ‘abortion reversal’ GOP-backed laws in more than a dozen states require health providers to tell patients they can change their minds.
• Why SCOTUS’ Abortion Ruling Is a Disaster for Free Expression (Summer Lopez and Nadine Farid Johnson, Daily Beast, 7-17-22) Providing information about abortion access is literally illegal in some states, and the chilling effect could even spread to states where abortion is still legal.

• Voters support abortion rights in five states with ballot measures (Brad Dress, The Hill, 11-9-22) "Voters in California, Vermont and Michigan on Tuesday approved ballot measures enshrining abortion rights into their state constitutions, while those in the traditionally red states of Montana and Kentucky rejected measures that would have restricted access to reproductive care. The votes signal support for abortion rights after the Supreme Court in June overturned the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to the procedure.
     "In August, Kansas voters also rejected a ballot measure that would have given the state legislature the authority to restrict abortion access through a state constitutional amendment.

      [As one elder in Kansas observes, about votes on post-Dobbs issues: "Some of these were votes against constitutional or other changes that would have forbidden abortion; some were in favor of enshrining women’s bodily autonomy in state law or state constitutions. There will be more such votes."]
     "The ballot votes came amid high-profile Senate and House races, with some candidates running for office across the nation with hard-line views on abortion access. Already in post-Roe America, about half of all states have moved to restrict abortion access, even as polls show most Americans approve of the right to abortion."
• “The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine — a coalition of anti-abortion medical groups that formed in Texas last year — challenged both the FDA’s original 2000 approval of mifepristone, arguing the agency didn’t adequately consider the drug’s safety risks, as well as later agency actions that loosened restrictions on the pills. The groups claim their physician members are harmed by the pills’ availability because they may at some point need to provide follow-up care for a patient who took them and had a complication." ~ (Alice Miranda, Ollstein, Politico, 8-17-23)
• Because of Texas abortion law, her wanted pregnancy became a medical nightmare (Carrie Feibel, Shots, NPR, Morning Edition, 7-26-22) New, untested abortion bans have made doctors unsure about treating some pregnancy complications, which has led to life-threatening delays and trapped families in a limbo of grief and helplessness. Today, abortion is also illegal in Texas under an old 1925 law that the state's Attorney General Ken Paxton declared to be in effect after Roe was overturned.

     See New Texas Trigger Law Makes Abortion a Felony (NPR 8-27-22) Texas's new trigger law criminalizes providing abortions. It comes with five years to life imprisonment, as well as civil penalties of $100,000 for abortion and administrative penalties in the form of mandatory revocation of a license to practice medicine, do nursing, pharmacy, so on.criminalizes providing abortions. It comes with five years to life imprisonment, as well as civil penalties of $100,000 for abortion and administrative penalties in the form of mandatory revocation of a license to practice medicine, do nursing, pharmacy, so on.

• Leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v, Jackson Women’s Health that would overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey and eliminate the federal standard regarding abortion access (Feb. 2022)
---“This Was Not a Surprise”: How the Pro-Choice Movement Lost the Battle for Roe (Alexandra Zayas, ProPublica, 5-3-22) In the wake of a leaked draft opinion indicating the Supreme Court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade, Joshua Prager, author of The Family Roe, discusses the 50-year battle over abortion rights and the strategic decisions that led us here. 'NARAL’s executive director in 1973, when Roe was ruled upon, told her board after the ruling, “The court has spoken and the case is closed.” They saw this as, basically: It’s over. We’ve won. 'The very, very opposite is true of the pro-life, who said: OK, now we have to think about this strategically, how will we go about overturning Roe? As a result of that imbalance, the pro-choice were playing catch up really for 49 1/2 years, as the pro-life (movement has) over and over again come up with many different ways to chip away at Roe and has been remarkably successful.'
---Of Course the Constitution Has Nothing to Say About Abortion (Jill Lepore, New Yorker, 5-4-22) Depending on the official decision in Dobbs v, Jackson Women's Health, abortion is likely to become a crime in at least twenty states. That there is no mention of the procedure in a 4,000-word document crafted by 55 men in 1787 seems to be a surprise to Justice Alito, but there is nothing in that document about women at all. "At the time, women could neither hold office nor run for office, and, except in New Jersey, and then only fleetingly, women could not vote." That "women are missing from the Constitution" is "a problem to remedy, not a precedent to honor." Indeed, "hardly anything in the law books of the eighteen-sixties guaranteed women anything. Because, usually, they still weren’t persons. Nor, for that matter, were fetuses."
• Florida court blocks teen from getting abortion, must continue pregnancy (Oriana Gonzalez, Axios, 8-16-22) The teenager, who court documents say is "parentless," had sought court approval to bypass a Florida law that requires that a minor get parental consent in order to get an abortion. A lower Florida court had ruled that the teenager, who is unidentified, was not mature enough to decide to get an abortion. The teen then filed an appeal, and the appellate court upheld the previous decision.

• One Woman’s Abortion (Mrs. X, The Atlantic, 8-65) In 1965, eight years before Roe v. Wade, an anonymous woman described the steps she took to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
• Policies to Roll Back Abortion Rights Will Hit Incarcerated People Particularly Hard (Carly Graf. KFF Health News, 8-22-22) After the Supreme Court removed Roe v. Wade’s constitutional protections for abortions, many reproductive services stand to be prohibited altogether, putting the health of incarcerated women who are pregnant at risk.
      That threat is particularly urgent in states where lawmakers have made clear their intentions to roll back abortion rights.
      “Previously there was at least some sliver of legal recourse there for an incarcerated person, but that no longer exists for people who live in states where abortion is or will be severely restricted or illegal,” said Dr. Carolyn Sufrin, an OB-GYN, a professor, and the director of the Advocacy and Research on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated People program at Johns Hopkins University.
      The Prison Policy Project, a nonprofit research organization, estimates about 58,000 people a year are pregnant when they enter prisons or jails, or about 4% of the total number of women in state and federal prisons and 3% of those in local jails.
• Murky Legal Landscape for Docs Advising Patients on Self-Managed Abortions ( Amanda D'Ambrosio, MedPage Today, 7-26-22) "As new abortion restrictions take effect across the U.S. in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, obtaining an abortion has become nearly impossible in some states, leading many to attempt to terminate their pregnancies outside of the formal healthcare system. "Self-managed abortion methods have been around for decades, and have become increasingly safer due to the widespread availability of the medications mifepristone (Mifeprex) and misoprostol (Cytotec). 'No one can take away their right to dispense medical information'"

• To Protect a Mother’s Health: How Abortion Ban Exemptions Play Out in a Post-‘Roe’ World (Christopher O’Donnell, Tampa Bay Times and KFF Health News, 7-21-23) Every state that bans or restricts abortions has an exception to protect the health of the mother. But recent history in other states suggests that few women will be able to take advantage of such exceptions if Florida’s new law, on hold while tied up by legal challenges, is upheld by the state Supreme Court.

       "If Florida’s six-week ban moves forward, rape and incest victims would have to provide their doctor a copy of a restraining order, police report, medical record, court order, or other documentation to get an abortion after that window. However, two-thirds of sexual assault victims do not report the crime, studies show, meaning no police report would exist. An estimated 8 in 10 rapes are committed by someone known to the victim, often leaving victims afraid of reprisals if they report the crime.

       "Florida has a long-established law allowing abortions when a fetus has fatal abnormalities. But no exceptions exist for serious genetic defects, deformities, or abnormalities, which were cited as the reason for 578 abortions in the state last year....A June KFF poll found that 61% of OB-GYNs who practice in states with abortion restrictions are concerned about the legal risk when deciding whether to perform an abortion. “It doesn’t make any medical sense,” said Jennifer Griffin, a Tampa physician who provides abortions. “These politicians are not making policy based on science; they’re based on religion.”

• ‘Republicans Abandoned Me’: Meet the Dobbs Voters of Michigan (Alice Miranda Ollstein and Politico Magazine, 11-4-22) Nine Michiganders on why they’re energized (pro and against abortion) in this year’s midterms, and how this election cycle has changed their relationship to politics.

     Stay-at-home mother of three Jessica Leach, 37, thought of herself, for decades, as a textbook Republican. But when Roe fell, she thought back to her first pregnancy 17 years ago that she considered terminating out of concern she wouldn’t be a good mother. She ultimately decided to see it through. When she first discovered the unintended pregnancy, she recalled, she went to a church-run clinic with her boyfriend, where “they just started pushing scripture at us and telling me not to have an abortion.” Turned off by the pressure campaign, she then visited an abortion clinic, and said the staff there gave her “all the information I needed to make the best choice for me and my life.”

    “I love being a mom, but I wonder if I would love it so much if I hadn’t had a choice,” she said. (One of nine stories, both for and against choice.)

• How a Secretive Billionaire Handed His Fortune to the Architect of the Right-Wing Takeover of the Courts (Andrew Perez, The Lever, and Andy Kroll and Justin Elliott, ProPublica, 8-22-22) In the largest known political advocacy donation in U.S. history, industrialist Barre Seid funded a new group run by Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, who guided Trump’s Supreme Court picks and helped end federal abortion rights. The elderly, ultra-secretive Chicago businessman has given the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history — worth $1.6 billion — and the recipient is one of the prime architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system, including the Supreme Court.

      An ectopic pregnancy in the fallopian tube is never viable. But following the June reversal of Roe by the Supreme Court, reproductive health experts say treatment may be dangerously delayed as some states move to limit abortion services. Understanding hospital charges can be a head-scratcher since they often don't appear to align with the actual cost of providing care. That's true in this case. 
• These male politicians are pushing for women who receive abortions to be punished with prison time (Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken, CNN, 9-21-22) They were adamant that a woman who receives an abortion should receive the same criminal consequences as one who drowns her baby.

•The Future of Roe v. Wade: 3 Scenarios, Explained (4-minute video, by Adam Liptak, narrator, Robin Stein, Aaron Byrd, Natalie Reneau, Anjali Singhvi and Jonah M. Kessel, 9-6-18) Clear and interesting analysis for three broad approaches to getting rid of the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal.

(1a) Nuclear options would flip Roe on its head, saying Constitution prohibits abortion in interest of protecting fetal life (abortion=murder).

(1b) Do away with right to privacy, which is basis for Roe v. Wade, and would flip the issue back to states, allow states to regulate abortion. (Right to privacy is the foundation for many other rights.) If right to privacy doesn't include the right to abortion; states could limit or do away with right to abortion.

(2) Overrule Roe v. Wade. Right to privacy no longer includes right to abortion. States free to limit or forbid abortion.

3) Chip away at abortion rights(most likely scenario). The Supreme Court has already upheld some limits on abortion. More severe restrictons are a perfectly imaginable scenario. States can reinterpret "undue burdens" and poor women in red states would no doubt have a hard time getting abortions.