Gilead is Real - The War on Women and Abortion Part 3

[Ozlsn]

If they're not going to provide basic care they should stop imprisoning pregnant people for endangering foetuses. Well they should stop doing that anyway, it doesn't help anyone. 

Are they arresting coffee drinkers? How about people using unregulated supplements? How about people breathing in bushfire smoke?

Everything has an effect, and this is not "protecting foetuses", it is punishing low income women. If they actually gave a shit about lives they would put money into low income health care, including maternity services, and look at all the things that would help babies and parents be healthier (and happier). But they don't give a shit and it's never about lives.

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

If they're not going to provide basic care they should stop imprisoning pregnant people for endangering foetuses. Well they should stop doing that anyway, it doesn't help anyone. 

Are they arresting coffee drinkers? How about people using unregulated supplements? How about people breathing in bushfire smoke?

Everything has an effect, and this is not "protecting foetuses", it is punishing low income women. If they actually gave a shit about lives they would put money into low income health care, including maternity services, and look at all the things that would help babies and parents be healthier (and happier). But they don't give a shit and it's never about lives.

Agreed. The cruelty is the point. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Xan]

Sometimes they just go ahead and say what they're thinking:

That is, most Republicans most of the time are on board with the lying-through-our-teeth strategy. But not all! Meet New Jersey state Sen. Edward Durr, a truck driver-turned-politician who has a habit of saying the quiet parts out loud. 

"A woman does have a choice! Keep her legs closed," Durr wrote in a 2020 Facebook post, in which he also called a pro-choice woman an "idiot." He also "liked" a post that called for "spaying women like dogs."

This is from:  https://www.salon.com/2023/10/16/keep-her-legs-closed-angry-that-one-of-them-said-the-quiet-part-out-loud/

[Alisamer]

6 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

 If they actually gave a shit about lives they would put money into low income health care, including maternity services, and look at all the things that would help babies and parents be healthier (and happier). But they don't give a shit and it's never about lives.

It's almost like they were trying to kill this woman and her baby. 

If they were concerned about her "endangering the fetus" she'd have been in residential rehab, helped to access prenatal care, assisted in finding and obtaining a safe place for her and the baby to live, given parenting classes and nutritious food, and have follow-up visits and a caseworker to call for further assistance after she and the baby were healthy and established at home. 

Instead, it was "you're endangering the fetus! Now we're going to toss you onto a thin pad on the concrete floor of a lockup where you get no prenatal care (despite bing high risk), no support network, no way to prepare for the baby, and no access to medical care for the birth, either. To keep that fetus safe!"

[Ozlsn]

7 hours ago, Xan said:

Sometimes they just go ahead and say what they're thinking:

That is, most Republicans most of the time are on board with the lying-through-our-teeth strategy. But not all! Meet New Jersey state Sen. Edward Durr, a truck driver-turned-politician who has a habit of saying the quiet parts out loud. 

"A woman does have a choice! Keep her legs closed," Durr wrote in a 2020 Facebook post, in which he also called a pro-choice woman an "idiot." He also "liked" a post that called for "spaying women like dogs."

This is from:  https://www.salon.com/2023/10/16/keep-her-legs-closed-angry-that-one-of-them-said-the-quiet-part-out-loud/

Ah, another incel angry that no woman will sleep with him but they will happily sleep with other (much better choices) men. Get used to paying for it mate, no one's that desperate.

6 hours ago, Alisamer said:

It's almost like they were trying to kill this woman and her baby. 

Yes. Did anywhere say whether the baby survived? Because that wasn't a great start for any child.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Ozlsn

[GreyhoundFan]

I feel bad for women in Texas:

 

[Alisamer]

I'm still curious how that sort of thing is supposed to be enforced. Random roadblocks where all women of childbearing age are required to pee on a stick? 

I suspect the real answer is that it WON'T actually be enforced unless someone accuses someone of traveling through the county to get an abortion elsewhere, and then the police will be forced to do a full on forensic case going after cellphone pings and GPS data and having to find proof the woman was pregnant and proof she obtained an abortion, and proof it was after the particular drive through the county that the accusation indicates.

Because I'm sure the police have plenty of time to be doing all that, right? 

[Coconut Flan]

I don't know if this will succceed, but I hope so..  

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/story/2023-11-06/county-to-consider-suing-crisis-pregnancy-centers-for-alleged-deceptive-practices

It's past time to put the fake pregnancy centers out of business.

 

 

 

[47of74]

I just saw this article from a couple weeks ago where an Ohio restaurant fornicated around and found out prior to the abortion amendment passing.

Quote

Workers at an Ohio restaurant said they quit after the owner posted a sign outside the business encouraging people to vote against a ballot initiative that would protect abortion access in the state.

One longtime employee at Copper Blue in Milford said at least half a dozen workers quit, forcing the restaurant to temporarily close.

“I’m distraught, honestly,” said former employee Jessika Lambert. “I hate that this is how we have to end things because it’s a discussion that should’ve never been brought up to begin with.”

Oh and this part is rich - some of the customers were complaining because they felt the guy should have been able to put the sign up and the employees should have just kept working.  These customers found out reich to work is a real bitch when employees exercise it.

On 10/24/2023 at 2:47 PM, Alisamer said:

I'm still curious how that sort of thing is supposed to be enforced. Random roadblocks where all women of childbearing age are required to pee on a stick? 

I suspect the real answer is that it WON'T actually be enforced unless someone accuses someone of traveling through the county to get an abortion elsewhere, and then the police will be forced to do a full on forensic case going after cellphone pings and GPS data and having to find proof the woman was pregnant and proof she obtained an abortion, and proof it was after the particular drive through the county that the accusation indicates.

Because I'm sure the police have plenty of time to be doing all that, right? 

And it's where the right to travel sovereign citizens love to harp about.  Even if a person cannot drive unless they're on probation, parole, or out on bond US citizens have the right to travel anywhere they want.

[GreyhoundFan]

The butthurt GQP in Ohio are furious that the voters didn’t back down, so they’re going to ignore the voters and law. 

Fuck them all. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting analysis: "Abortion rights have long been ballot winners — but post-Roe, even more so"

Quote

Asking the American public to vote directly on abortion hasn’t gone terribly well for conservatives over the past half-century.

The abortion rights position has won on ballot measures more than 75 percent of the time across more than 50 votes in more than two dozen states. Red states have sometimes sided with abortion rights, and a blue state has yet to vote against them.

But even in that context, abortion rights are winning on the ballot as they rarely have — ever since the Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade.

You might be familiar with the basic numbers: In the seven states to vote on this issue since the fall of Roe, the abortion rights position has won all seven times. That includes four red states, after Ohio on Tuesday voted to enshrine the right to abortion in its state constitution. It joined fellow red states Montana, Kansas and Kentucky in voting in favor of abortion rights.

It’s fair to ask whether this actually marks a shift — or whether our new reality just underlined the opposition to abortion restrictions that already existed. By eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, the Supreme Court opened up the abortion issue for states to decide and, in an increasing number of cases, put it directly to voters, bypassing the legislatures.

It’s certainly some of the latter. But the numbers suggest that new ground is being broken in favor of abortion rights.

Abortion ballot measures have undergone multiple phases since 1970. Before Roe legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, voters were sometimes asked whether they wanted to legalize it in their states. Afterward came efforts from antiabortion forces to ban public funding for it, then to ban “partial-birth” abortion, then to enact parental notification laws, then to enact “personhood” laws, which would define the unborn as people. Mixed in were the occasional symbolic efforts to challenge the court by banning abortion.

The track records of such antiabortion efforts were spotty. But by last decade, those forces seemed to gain traction. They began getting measures on ballots in red, mostly Southern states to declare that those state constitutions included no right to an abortion. And four passed: in Tennessee in 2014, Alabama and West Virginia in 2018 and Louisiana in 2020.

This is where you begin to see a real post-Roe shift. The two states to vote on such a measure since Roe fell were both also clear red states, and they both rejected it.

One of the states, as mentioned, was Kentucky (the other was Kansas). Not only does Kentucky neighbor Tennessee, but it’s similar politically to the states that passed such measures. It has actually voted more Republican recently than Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee. Yet despite Tennessee’s passing by five points a decade ago a measure saying that its constitution included no right to an abortion, Kentucky voted against the same proposal by five points.

Some other key data points, based on Ballotpedia’s compilation of historical abortion ballot measures:

• Kentucky became the reddest state (judging by the most recent presidential vote) since 1994 to vote in favor of abortion rights. The only redder ones to do so were Wyoming, which rejected a full ban in 1994, and Alaska, which rejected a public funding ban in 1982.
• Ohio on Tuesday became the first red state since 1990 to have voters enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution.
• While Ohio joined three other states that have enshrined abortion rights post-Roe, it actually marked the biggest over-performance for such a measure (56.6 percent) relative to Democrats’ share of the last presidential vote (45.2 percent). The measure got nearly the same percentage as in neighboring Michigan (56.7 percent), which Democrats won in 2020.
• The abortion rights position has over-performed Democrats’ presidential vote share by an average of nine points since 1970. But in 5 of 7 cases post-Roe, it has over-performed by double digits.

There are some caveats here, including that states didn’t used to feel the same impetus to vote on things like enshrining abortion rights into the state constitution. The Supreme Court had already taken care of that, after all — on a nationwide basis. So we don’t have a ton of directly comparable ballot measures.

But these results have surely injected an increasing amount of urgency behind abortion rights supporters getting this issue on as many ballots as possible in 2024. The most likely candidates would appear to be states like Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota.

Precisely what will be on the ballot will matter, as some measures tend to get more or less support than others. But judging by recent history — and the fact that the reddest state on that list is in line with Kentucky — all would seem to have a fighting chance.

 

[Xan]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The butthurt GQP in Ohio are furious that the voters didn’t back down, so they’re going to ignore the voters and law. 

Fuck them all. 

The one consolation is that this was signed by 27 members and there are 99 representatives in the Ohio general assembly.  Someone needs to make a speech and say that the issue is now settled and the forced birthers lost.  It's over.  Thanks to TFG, now no one thinks they ever have to concede.

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope they continue to struggle. In fact, I'd love them to struggle themselves right out of politics. "Republicans still struggle to find a winning strategy on abortion"

Quote

After nearly 17 months of repeated defeats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Republicans still have no clear strategy on how to talk about abortion, how stringent limits on the procedure should be or how to cope with the ongoing political backlash that Democrats plan to capitalize on next year, according GOP lawmakers, activists and consultants.

The latest string of losses came Tuesday as abortion rights played a role in GOP defeats in elections as varied as an abortion rights initiative in Ohio, a governor’s race in Kentucky and state legislative contests in Virginia.

In interviews and public statements, Republicans were all over the map on how to address the abortion issue heading into 2024. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel told NBC News last week that Republicans should campaign more aggressively on the issue, calling for a “consensus as a country” that abortion should be banned with exceptions after “around 15 weeks.” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America released a memo suggesting that the GOP needs to “define where it stands on the issue nationally,” “put real advertising dollars behind it” and paint Democrats as extreme. Others have argued that Republicans need to emphasize support for exceptions, demonstrate more sensitivity when talking about abortion and use phrases such as “limitations” and “late-term” abortions as opposed to bans.

“The people aren’t with us,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), whose state has a near-total abortion ban. “We don’t win the debate very well publicly because we’ve sort of boiled it down to pro-life or pro-choice, as opposed to the nuance of it. … How you talk about it matters. We do have to learn how to talk about that.”

Many Republicans and antiabortion advocates say the problem is simply one of messaging that can be fixed with more moderate language, or the result of tactical errors that can be fixed with a better strategy. But Democrats — and some Republicans — say the GOP has simply backed abortion policies that are deeply unpopular with the public and tough to sell, no matter the messaging.

And some leading antiabortion advocates are already looking past 2024, suggesting that it will take more than a year to change people’s minds on the issue.

“This will take time to overcome because this is a culture change that needs to happen,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, one of the largest antiabortion groups. “I’m thinking two decades out. I’m not necessarily just focused on the next election.”

The June 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe, marked a sweeping victory for antiabortion advocates that was nearly 50 years in the making. Yet it also sent shock waves throughout the party — dividing the GOP on where the antiabortion movement should go next, with some arguing for a national six- or 15-week ban and others saying the decision should be left to the states. Nowhere are those divisions more evident than in the GOP presidential primary, where the positions range from South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s embrace of a national 15-week ban to former president Donald Trump calling a six-week abortion ban in Florida a “terrible mistake” and pushing for a negotiation.

In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, abortion rights advocates have won seven state ballot initiatives, including in the swing state of Michigan and four red states: Ohio, Montana, Kansas and Kentucky. In all five states, the abortion rights position won out in numerous counties that Trump carried in 2020.

In Ohio — where 57 percent of voters approved the Issue 1 ballot measure enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution — state Sen. Niraj Antani (R) said millions of dollars were wasted on an unsuccessful August campaign to raise the threshold for such initiatives.

“It was a fatal strategic failure on behalf of legislative leadership in pushing for that,” Antani told The Washington Post. “Second, the ‘no’ campaign messaging was poorly done. They wasted millions on a parental rights message that very few voters actually care about. They should’ve focused entirely on how extreme Issue 1 is.”

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Tuesday’s election results were a “gut punch” and that “We have to recognize how much voters mistrust us (meaning elected Republicans) on this issue.”

“Having an unplanned pregnancy is scary,” Vance added. “Best case, you’re looking at social scorn and thousands of dollars of unexpected medical bills. We need people to see us as the pro-life party, not just the antiabortion party.”

According to exit polls, the ballot initiative had support from 92 percent of Democrats who voted, 18 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of independents or something else.

Abortion rights advocates spent $24.9 million on media for Ohio’s ballot initiative, while antiabortion advocates spent $17.1 million, according to AdImpact. In Kentucky, Democrats spent $1.8 million on TV ads on abortion in the gubernatorial race while Republicans spent $1.1 million, according to AdImpact. In the Virginia state House races, Democrats spent $6.8 million on abortion-themed television ads, making it the top focus of TV ads, compared with $173,482 for Republicans. For the state Senate, Democrats also spent about $6.8 million on such television ads while Republicans spent $771,599.

Abortion rights advocates have focused their messaging on “personal freedom” and the “right to make your own personal medical decisions without the government getting involved,” while also highlighting personal stories, according to Rachel Sweet, an abortion rights ballot measure consultant who worked on the Ohio and Kansas initiatives.

“It has always been the case that progressive issues have typically over-performed candidates that support those policy positions,” Sweet said. “If this was a Democratic candidate, the results would look very different. But it’s not. It’s an issue and that allows us as people who work on these campaigns to really talk to voters across the political spectrum and find shared values that transcend partisanship.”

In Kentucky, for example, Gov. Andy Beshear (D) won reelection after running an ad — featuring a woman who was raped by her stepfather as a child — criticizing GOP candidate Daniel Cameron, who had supported Kentucky’s abortion ban, which didn’t include exceptions in cases involving rape or incest. “To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable,” Hadley Duvall said in the ad.

In Virginia, a group of GOP legislators is seeking to remove House Speaker Todd Gilbert, arguing he did not push back enough against Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his allies’ promotion of his 15-week abortion ban in television ads. “We literally ran on one of the third rails of politics,” one of the delegates told The Post, saying he raised questions about the strategy to Gilbert months ago.

For decades, polls found most Americans opposed overturning Roe and, since the Dobbs decision, polls have consistently found more than 6 in 10 Americans opposed to the decision, with around half of the country “strongly opposed.” A September Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 64 percent opposed the Supreme Court eliminating the constitutional right to have an abortion, while 30 percent supported it.

As some antiabortion advocates push for a 15-week ban, polls show the public ranges from narrowly supportive to narrowly opposed depending on question wording and including whether exceptions are described. A Fox News poll from April 2023 found that 54 percent favor and 42 percent oppose “a law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, except in the case of a medical emergency.” Recent polls by AP-NORC and Marquette Law School found between 51 percent and 53 percent opposing a 15-week abortion restriction.

In Virginia, an October Washington Post-Schar School poll found that Virginians were evenly divided on a 15-week ban with exceptions for rape, incest or when the woman’s life is in danger.

Wednesday’s GOP presidential debate further highlighted the lack of cohesion within the party for how to move forward on abortion. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed a six-week abortion ban in his state, acknowledged the setbacks Republicans have faced on ballot initiatives, saying, “You got to do a better job on these referenda, I think of all the stuff that’s happened to the pro-life cause they have been caught flat-footed on these referenda.” Meanwhile, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley reiterated her call to find “consensus,” noting that there are not enough votes in the Senate to ban abortion nationally.

“As much as I’m pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, and I don’t want them to judge me for being pro-life,” Haley said at the debate. Haley’s answer on abortion has drawn praise from some Republicans who see it as a model for talking about the issue.

“Nikki Haley I believe has the right view on this, at this point understanding how the political landscape has changed on this,” said Alice Stewart, who has worked on several GOP presidential campaigns. “Ever since Roe v. Wade was overturned, every time abortion was a single issue on a ballot, the pro-life community lost. We can continue to fight the same battle and continue to lose or we can reframe the battle and win, and the way we do that is by having responsible conversations about meaningful abortion limits.”

Before Tuesday’s election results, Senate Republicans received a presentation in September — obtained by The Post — from a GOP pollster on abortion. The presentation said that the Dobbs decision “recharged the abortion debate and shifted more people (including some Republicans) into the anti-Dobbs ‘pro-choice’ camp.” The presentation highlighted that voters “strongly support” exceptions to abortion bans. It also noted that voters view “pro-life” as a “flat ban on abortion without exceptions” and “pro-choice” as supporting “varied levels of restrictions.”

The presentation recommended that Republicans “clearly articulate support for exceptions”; “own the center with support for reasonable abortion restrictions”; “highlight liberals’ extremism including — voting for no abortion restrictions”; and “bridge to safety net policies like adoption and support for young families.”

Steven Law, CEO of the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), presented those findings at a September Susan B. Anthony List donor event, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is also encouraging Republicans to convey a similar message, emphasizing support for “reasonable limits on late-term abortions” and the backing of exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother, according to another person familiar with the strategy.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said the country is currently “in a settling period.”

“That’s what we always tell people: You can have your voices heard at the ballot box, and I think they are,” she said. “The drastic change that the decision precipitated has caused, for women, a feeling of loss of control, whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice. So I think that’s what you’re seeing. … I think right now the states are making the decisions and we ought to see how this all settles out.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Lindsey needs to shut the fuck up:

[fraurosena]

On 11/12/2023 at 11:46 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

I hope they continue to struggle. In fact, I'd love them to struggle themselves right out of politics. "Republicans still struggle to find a winning strategy on abortion"

They're stuck between a rock and a hard place-- a position they've manoeuvered into all by themselves. They crave power, and in order to achieve that, they need to appease rightwing extremist big-money donors on the one hand, and the American public to vote for them on the other. With those two very conflicting sides, there's no way for them to win, whatever they do.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is horrifying. CW: miscarriage 

Spoiler

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is fucking insane:

[GreyhoundFan]

"Pregnant with no OB-GYNs around: In Idaho, maternity care became a casualty of its abortion ban"

Quote

If you’re pregnant in Bonner County, Idaho, you’ll likely spend a lot of time on Route 95. 

Bonner General Health, a 25-bed hospital, discontinued obstetrics, labor and delivery services this year. So for residents, Route 95 is the way to the closest in-state hospital with obstetrics care, which is at least an hour’s drive south — or longer in the snowy winter.

The hospital, which staffed the county’s only OB-GYNs, cited the state’s “legal and political climate” as one of the reasons it shuttered the department. Abortion has been banned in Idaho, with few exceptions, since August 2022.

Laura Olin, 32, lives in the city of Sandpoint, where Bonner General is, and gave birth to her twin boys at the hospital in 2020. When she became pregnant again, she opted to deliver her daughter in Spokane, Washington — 90 minutes away — in August.

As the reality of doing the drive while in labor set in, she said, “it was very scary those last few weeks of pregnancy.”

It made her think differently about her previous birth experience, Olin added. “To go into labor at home and arrive at the hospital five minutes later was a blessing that I didn’t know was a blessing,” she said.

The four OB-GYNs who previously worked at Bonner General, meanwhile, have left Idaho to practice in states where abortion is legal. All four told NBC News that the state’s ban contributed to their decisions to move. 

As a whole, the situation has left mothers-to-be in Bonner County to contend with an unexpected consequence of their state’s abortion policy: reduced access to medical care for women whose pregnancies are very much wanted. 

Olin is one of a half-dozen pregnant or recently pregnant women who spoke to NBC News about how the closing of Bonner General’s maternity department upended their birth plans and disrupted their lives. They say further travel times have introduced logistical burdens, financial difficulties, stress and anxiety. 

“I really feel like it’s inevitable that there will be poor outcomes for women and babies who now have to travel longer to care in those emergency situations,” said Elizabeth Smith, 35, a lactation consultant in Bonner County who has opted to deliver her baby — due in December — at a nearby birth center with a midwife. Delivering with a midwife is the only local option left in Bonner County.

Smith said that as a former neonatal intensive care nurse, she would have preferred a hospital but that traveling for appointments and labor would require someone to watch her four children. 

“I don’t feel like that was an option for me given my large family and the need for child care,” she said.

Research has shown that women who lack access to hospitals with obstetrics care are more likely to face health consequences, including a higher risk of preterm birth, which is associated with asthma, hearing loss, intellectual disabilities and other lifelong impacts for children. An analysis published in 2019 found that rural residents had a 9% greater chance of maternal morbidity and mortality compared to urban residents, in part because of limited access and longer travel times to obstetrics care. (Women of color had at least 33% higher odds of those negative outcomes than white women regardless of where they lived, according to the research.)

Olin, a supporter of abortion rights, said the ripple effects of Idaho’s policies still caught her by surprise. She decided to cross state lines to deliver her daughter, she added, out of fear that abortion restrictions could affect her care if complications arose.

“When it actually affected my pregnancy, I couldn’t believe that that was happening,” Olin said. 

Her former OB-GYN at Bonner General, Dr. Morgan Morton, who now practices in Washington, said many of her former patients — including those with opposing political views to Olin’s — shared that reaction.

“I definitely have patients that I know would’ve been in support of these laws and now are very surprised at the downstream effects,” she said. 

‘In case of an emergency, what do I do?’

Bonner General announced the closing of its obstetrics department in March, citing a lower patient volume and the loss of pediatricians as factors in the decision, alongside what a spokesperson recently described as “some of the most restrictive reproductive laws in the country.”

Idaho law prohibits abortion at any stage, with exceptions only to save the life of the mother, ectopic or molar pregnancies and cases of rape or incest in which the incidents were reported to police and the pregnancies are terminated within the first trimester. In April, the state also became the first to criminalize some out-of-state travel for abortion, with a law that makes helping a minor cross state lines for that purpose punishable by two to five years in prison. 

In a statement to NBC News, the Bonner General spokesperson said that the services were eliminated with “a heavy heart” and that hospital providers worked with patients to coordinate alternative plans and make the transition “as easy as possible.”

“We hear the community and want desperately to meet their needs,” the spokesperson said.

Many former Bonner General patients now go to Kootenai Health in Coeur d’Alene, which is the closest in-state hospital with OB-GYNs on staff. It is more than 40 miles from Sandpoint. In June, Kootenai Health recorded its highest number of births ever, according to Kim Jorgensen, the hospital’s director of women’s and children’s services.

“When this closure was announced, we were getting a lot of calls from women asking, ‘What do I do?’” Jorgensen said.

Candice Funk, 34, is one of those patients. She moved from California to Sandpoint — and got pregnant — around the time Bonner General stopped providing obstetrics care. 

Funk developed HELLP syndrome — a rare and life-threatening form of pre-eclampsia — during her last pregnancy, so this one is high-risk. That means she most likely would have had to go to Kootenai for her delivery and some appointments anyway. Even so, she said, there’s a persistent worry: “In case of an emergency, what do I do?”

During her previous pregnancies in California, Funk was a 20- or 30-minute ride from the hospital, she said. This time, she’s prepared to stay at the Ronald McDonald House — or an affordable hotel — in Coeur d’Alene if she needs more frequent monitoring.

“I know how drastic my conditions can be,” she said. “Hopefully it won’t be a surprise if something happens overnight.” 

Sandpoint resident Lauren Sanders, 34, who’s due to deliver her second child in November, faced the type of situation Funk fears this summer: For a few days, she didn’t feel fetal movement. 

So Sanders got in the car for a “really intense” 45-minute ride to Kootenai. Throughout the drive, she said, she kept wondering: “Is my baby still alive?” 

The drive to Bonner General would have taken five minutes.

The Kootenai doctors determined that everything was fine and released Sanders after some monitoring. But if something goes wrong during her planned home birth with a midwife, she might wind up on another agonizing ride.

“I’ve had to get comfortable in the discomfort in having a ‘riskier’ birth at home,” Sanders said.

Chronic, elevated stress and anxiety during pregnancy are associated with a higher risk of high blood pressure and heart disease for the pregnant woman, preterm birth, and asthma and behavioral problems in young children, studies suggest. 

Financial burdens further impede access to care

Katie Bradish, 36, said she shells out hundreds of dollars to go to prenatal appointments in Spokane, 90 minutes from her home. Each trip requires her to take time off her job as a vice president at a grilling supplies company, she said, and pay $200 for a babysitter to watch her 2-year-old daughter, plus gas money.

In May, early in her pregnancy, Bradish began feeling sharp abdominal pain and decided to go to the Bonner General emergency room because of the distance she would have had to drive to reach an OB-GYN’s office. The visit, which included an ultrasound scan and exam, showed no major problems, and she later received a bill for more than $475 out of pocket. The copay for an ultrasound appointment with an OB-GYN would have cost her $23, she said.

“It’s absolutely a burden,” Bradish said. “This is thousands of dollars we would have in our family’s economy.” 

For low-income residents of Sandpoint, such travel brings particular challenges. Around 14% of the city’s population live in poverty, which is above the state and national averages.

Drs. Amelia Huntsberger, Kristin Algoe and Lindsay Conner — former Bonner OB-GYNs who now work in Oregon, New York and Colorado, respectively — each said some of their Sandpoint patients had to start strategizing about whose car they could borrow or how they would pay for gas to travel for maternity care after the department closed.

Huntsberger, who was on the Idaho Health and Welfare Department’s now-disbanded Maternal Mortality Review Committee, emphasized that poverty and maternal mortality are intertwined. In Idaho, she said, Medicaid recipients accounted for the majority of pregnancy-related deaths in recent years. Despite the committee’s recommendations to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage to last 12 months, Idaho was one of just three states where legislators finished this year’s session without doing so.

“A lot of those people for whom it’s going to get harder, they don’t have a lot of power,” Huntsberger said. “There’s no microphone readily accessible to them, so many of them are going to suffer in the shadows.” 

Losing ‘personal’ care 

Olin said her birth experience in Spokane made her miss the care she got at Bonner General, where Morton was present throughout her 16-hour labor. At one point, the doctor even made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Olin’s husband, who is vegan and didn’t have anything to eat.

“They took such great care of us,” she said. “The care was personal.” 

Krista Haller, a therapist in Sandpoint who works with pregnant and postpartum women, said she has heard similar sentiments from many local moms. Some lament the impact on their former doctors, Haller said, telling her: “These people are wonderful. They helped me so much in this very specific time of my life, and now they’re being hurt by these laws.” 

The Bonner General spokesperson wrote that hospital leaders “support our providers who made the hard decision to move.” 

Haller said she has also counseled local mothers who are thinking about getting pregnant again but worry about doing so without easily accessible obstetrics care.

“It’s a lot scarier, and they’re a lot more aware of the decision to have a child and whether or not it’s worth it to move forward to have a child and go through that journey knowing that the health care just isn’t there,” she said. 

Bradish said her biggest fear is about the timing of her due date in January — what she calls “blizzard time,” given that Sandpoint can get more than 30 inches of snow that month.

She plans to stock up on “shower curtains and some rubber gloves for the car,” Bradish said, in case she winds up delivering on the drive to Spokane.

“That may sound like a joke, but it’s not,” she said.

Because Sandpoint has a birth center and local midwives, the area isn’t technically among the more than 1,100 counties nationwide considered to be maternity care deserts by the nonprofit organization March of Dimes. Such places lack hospitals providing obstetrics care, birth centers, OB-GYNs and certified nurse midwives. In addition, an OB-GYN from the Kootenai Clinic began traveling to Sandpoint once a week in August to make it easier for residents to attend prenatal appointments and access gynecological care. That doctor sees nearly 30 patients a day in Sandpoint, a hospital spokesperson said.

But 13 of Idaho’s 44 counties are maternity care deserts. The number of those deserts has risen nationwide in the past few years, according to March of Dimes. They’re more likely in states that have banned or restricted abortion, according to an analysis from the Commonwealth Fund, a healthcare research foundation.

The month Bonner General made its announcement, another Idaho hospital, Valor Health, announced it was discontinuing labor and delivery services because of staff shortages, declining births and financial difficulties. A hospital in Oregon stopped providing obstetric services in August, as did one in Tennessee this month and four hospitals in California so far this year.

Is Idaho a ‘canary in the coal mine’?

The former Bonner General OB-GYNs are not the only doctors choosing to practice in states without strict abortion bans.

A survey of third- and fourth-year medical students conducted this spring found that nearly 58% reported being “unlikely or very unlikely to apply to a single residency program in a state with abortion restrictions.” Data collected by the Association of American Medical Colleges shows that states with abortion bans had a 10.5% drop in applications for OB-GYN residencies this year.

About 40% of OB-GYNs in states with abortion bans say they’ve felt constraints in providing necessary medical care since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which struck down constitutional protections for abortion, according to a survey published in June by the nonprofit research organization KFF. More than 60% said they’re concerned about legal risk when they make decisions about the necessity of abortions.

Carole Joffe, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco, said she sees Idaho as “the canary in the coal mine.”

“We will continue to see doctors fleeing these states that have banned abortion,” Joffe said.

Idaho state Sens. Todd Lakey and C. Scott Grow, the Republicans who co-sponsored Idaho’s abortion trigger ban in 2020, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

State Rep. John Vander Woude, who chairs the House Health and Welfare Committee and co-sponsored the trigger ban, said he and other Republican legislators did not foresee all the ripple effects of the law. “There needs to be clearer guidelines on what becomes criminalized,” he said, as well as broader exceptions to protect the health of the mother, not just her life. 

“It’s really hard, I think, right now, under the current language to recruit or try to keep them,” Vander Woude said of the state’s OB-GYNs. 

Idaho state Rep. Julianne Young, who also co-sponsored the ban, added that lawmakers this year already “took steps to clear up concerns over things such as ectopic pregnancies and provide more clarity for health care providers” and will continue to assess the medical community’s concerns.  

Bonner General’s former OB-GYNs said they didn’t take their decisions to leave Sandpoint lightly. 

“Thinking about what our community has lost — that is gutting,” Huntsberger said.

Olin and her husband plan to follow the doctors’ example: They hope to move out of the state within the year. Idaho isn’t a place where she’d want to be pregnant again, Olin said — or where she wants to raise a daughter.

“If you’re planning to have a family, why would you move here?” she said.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

So awful. CW: stillbirth 

Spoiler

Texas hates women. 

[fraurosena]

21 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

So awful. CW: stillbirth 

  Hide contents

Texas hates women. 

Oh my word... (leaving the appalling situation aside for a moment)... Texas may hate women, but they're also very dumb. If the court rules in favor of Texas here on the basis of the argument that a fetus does not have any rights, then the precedent that creates can be used to argue for abortion rights. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is disgusting:

 

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is disgusting:

 

This is nothing more or less than a total abortion ban. You don't even know you are pregnant before 15 days.

[Ozlsn]

9 hours ago, fraurosena said:

This is nothing more or less than a total abortion ban. You don't even know you are pregnant before 15 days.

They are of course going to mandate genetic testing at birth to identify the father and child support payments till adulthood or (in cases where the child cannot support themselves, for life) for fathers or (where the father is underage their parents or the state), yes? Also make all antenatal care free, bring in paid parental leave for the first two years and low cost childcare (mandatory on site along with pumping/breastfeeding rooms at large workplaces)?

I am so sick of these men wanting to control women - but also then often having extramarital sex themselves, or getting abortions for their daughters. Fuck them, and vote them out.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Paxton is despicable.

 

Letter under spoiler:

Spoiler