STORY: "What happens if Trump gets Roe v. Wade overturned?' by Rebecca Grant, published by Vice News on December 8, 2916. (Rebecca Grant, is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, writes about reproductive rights.)
SUB-HEADING: "The maze of abortion restrictions in Mike Pence's Indiana offer a preview."
SUB-HEADING: "Mike Pence signed every one of the eight abortion bills that crossed his desk and slashed funding for Planned Parenthood."
SUB-HEADING: "Limiting abortion access does not mean women stop getting abortions — it means those who can are going elsewhere to get them"
GIST: "When Anna found out she was pregnant in October, she knew she
could not have another child. Her son was still a baby and she was
struggling to find employment as a 30-year-old single mother in East
Chicago, Indiana, where she lives. So Anna went to the Planned
Parenthood clinic in her town, looking to have an abortion. (Because of
concerns about privacy, she asked to be identified by a pseudonym.) But
she was 13 weeks pregnant, and Indiana requires abortions after the
first trimester to be performed in a hospital or licensed surgical
center. For women whose pregnancies do not pose serious health risks,
this can make a second-trimester procedure difficult to access, as well
as prohibitively expensive. A counselor at Planned Parenthood suggested
Anna travel to a clinic in Illinois for the procedure, where the regulations around second-trimester abortion are less stringent. Thousands of Indiana women have gone
to neighboring states seeking abortions in the past four years as
Republican Gov. Mike Pence and anti-abortion legislators pushed the
state to adopt abortion laws that are among the most restrictive in the
nation. For some of these women, taking the considerable time and
expense required to go out of state to end their pregnancies was a
better prospect than navigating Indiana’s web of restrictions. Anna took the Planned Parenthood
counselor’s advice, started to cobble together as much as she could,
$300, for the procedure, and made an appointment at one of the three
Family Planning Associates clinics in Chicago. “If I wanted the
situation taken care of, then going to Illinois was what I had to do, so
I called the clinic and said my pregnancy test was positive and I
needed help,” she said. Since 2011, Indiana has
systematically passed laws that erode access to abortion and other
reproductive health services. It was the first state to pass a law mandating the burial and cremation of fetal tissue
and to prohibit abortion due to fetal anomalies. The state also charged
two low-income women of color — Bei Bei Shuai and Purvi Patel — with “feticide”
and sent them to jail, creating a dangerous precedent of criminalizing
women who attempt to end their pregnancies. During his four years as
governor, Pence, a self-described Christian conservative, signed every
one of the eight abortion bills that crossed his desk and slashed
funding for Planned Parenthood. These measures have caused half of the
state’s clinics to close over the past five years and placed heavy
restrictions on the six clinics that remain open. Just four out of 92 counties in Indiana
have an abortion clinic, meaning a majority of women seeking abortions
must travel long distances, on multiple occasions, to make their
appointments. Now that Pence is joining Donald
Trump in the White House in January, the barriers to abortion access
women face in Indiana could become the future of reproductive rights
nationwide. At a summer campaign event in Michigan, Pence promised the crowd that the Trump-Pence administration would consign Roe v. Wade “to the ash heap of history, where it belongs.” Indiana’s are among 231 new abortion restrictions states
have adopted since the 2010 midterm elections, and state legislatures
are already pursuing laws that would effectively ban abortion in their
states. On Nov. 17, Indiana State Rep. Curt Nisly announced his plan to
introduce a total abortion ban, and earlier this week Ohio lawmakers passed a “heartbeat bill” that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is usually around six weeks. In a recent interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Trump himself said he supports abortion rights going back to the states.
When the interviewer suggested women in anti-abortion states then
wouldn’t be able to get the procedure, Trump responded: “Yeah, well,
they’ll perhaps have to go, they’ll have to go to another state.” He
also suggested in March that women who have abortions, if the procedure
is made illegal, should undergo “some form of punishment.” The Supreme Court has already
determined that crossing state lines to obtain an abortion constitutes
an “undue burden” on women, and so-called TRAP laws restricting abortion
access in states around the country, including some of the most extreme laws in Indiana,
are now tied up in litigation. However, with Trump poised to fill the
court’s vacant seat (with the potential to fill more) and with Pence
governing by his side, reproductive rights are at serious risk —
particularly for women who already face barriers to health care because
of their income, race, location, age, religion, or immigration status. “Since Pence has taken office as
governor in Indiana, we have seen him sign restriction after restriction
for access to reproductive health care,” said Amanda Allen, a lawyer
with the Center for Reproductive Rights. “He has chipped away and away
and away until the right to abortion becomes a reality on paper but not
in practice. Pence’s vision for women, for families, and for anyone who
doesn’t fit into his worldview is frightening. He poses a grave threat
to women’s health.”......... The burden of traveling out of state
is much heavier for low-income women, who often resort to desperate
measures to make the journey. Cowett said she once saw a patient who was
planning to sleep in her car overnight in the dead of the Chicago
winter. Procuring transportation, accommodations, and childcare (a
majority of women having abortions already have one child) can be impracticable without outside help. “I had to get childcare for my son
and I needed to make sure I was there on time in the morning,” Anna
said. “I also don’t have a car or someone, like a family friend, who
could pick me up. It would have been better if I could go closer to my
home in Indiana instead of spending hours traveling, but I had help from
the clinic and the MAC (Midwest Access Coalition), and so everything worked out.” Not everyone is able to access that
much help. They may not be aware that these types of programs exist, or
the available money is not enough to address all their needs. Or they
may face hurdles beyond finances. Women who live in communities that
shun abortion or who are in abusive relationships often need to keep
their procedures a secret for their own safety, and while they may be
able to slip away for a day, a multiday trip, not to mention a
significant outlay of money, may be impossible to coordinate without
anyone finding out. To date, MAC has helped 79 people,
most of whom come from out of state. Greenblum said every call she
answers requires creative problem-solving to assess the caller’s unique
needs and figure out how to meet them. “People are coming here with so
little money and they are afraid they won’t be able to come up with as
much as they said they could for the procedure,” Greenblum said. “When
they call us, I am racking my brain, thinking about how to get them from
middle-of-nowhere Indiana to Chicago, and they are taking a leap of
faith and talking to some stranger on the phone who is supposedly going
to help them. It’s desperation. They have no other choice.”
The entire story can be found at:
https://news.vice.com/story/what-happens-if-trump-gets-roe-v-wade-overturned-look-to-mike-pences-indiana
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/
