The Quickie: Maine Expands Abortion Access Later in Pregnancy
For Immediate Release: July 19, 2023
Welcome to “The Quickie” — Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s daily tipsheet on the top health care & reproductive rights stories of the day. You can read “The Quickie'' online here.
In today’s Quickie: ME expands abortion access later in pregnancy, states strengthen shield laws, how abortion bans harm free speech, and decriminalizing abortion in the UK.
MAINE EXPANDS ABORTION ACCESS LATER IN PREGNANCY: Today, Gov. Janet Mills signed into law LD 1619, which removes Maine’s current ban on abortion later in pregnancy, removes criminal penalties for abortion care, and updates the state’s data collection laws for abortion. The law was inspired by the hardships endured by pregnant people in Maine who had to end pregnancies after 24 weeks of pregnancy due to dangerous maternal or fetal diagnoses. LD 1619 ensures Mainers will no longer have to leave the state to access critical health care.
“Maine has taken a crucial step today to secure reproductive freedom for all,” Planned Parenthood Action Fund President Alexis McGill Johnson said. “Instead of traveling far from home for care, Mainers who need abortion later in pregnancy will be able to seek care in their own communities. Planned Parenthood Action Fund congratulates the tireless efforts of the patients, providers and advocates who fought for this critical change. This groundbreaking legislation shows that when politicians listen to people — whether they have abortions or provide this essential care — change is possible.”
This law makes Maine the first state since Dobbs to address restrictions on abortions later in pregnancy via its state legislature.
Read more at WGME.
STATES STRENGTHEN LAWS TO PROTECT OUT-OF-STATE ABORTION SEEKERS: This week, Teen Vogue featured analysis from legal experts about how states protective of abortion and trans rights can strengthen their laws to protect out-of-state patients. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion bans have eliminated all or some abortion in 20 states. Many of these states have also included criminal and civil penalties for those who seek an abortion, perform an abortion, or aid someone else in getting an abortion.
“We know that Black and brown families are over-surveilled and over-criminalized for a range of parenting decisions, and we know that pregnant Black and brown women in particular also experience high levels of criminalization,” Madeline Gomez, Senior Policy Counsel at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said.
These attacks on abortion rights have also spun off into an explosion of anti-trans legislation on the state level. In particular, anti-trans lawmakers are attacking life-saving gender-affirming care for minors and now, increasingly, adults. As Gomez explains: “The attacks that we're seeing on access to care for trans folks come straight out of the playbook we've seen used against abortion access. It's just moving much faster than what we had previously seen — and I think they're able to do that because they have this playbook to work from."
In response, some states have passed shield laws to protect out-of state patients and their health care providers from being prosecuted under their home state’s bans. Some legal scholars note though that, “States must meet a delicate balance, however, in enacting protections that resist extradition without misleading their residents and people seeking safe-harbor within their borders about the extent to which they may seek health care safely.”
Read more at Teen Vogue.
HOW ABORTION BANS TARGET FREE SPEECH: Yesterday, WIRED highlighted how a provision in North Carolina’s new 12-week abortion ban could limit free speech for people not even in North Carolina. The state’s abortion ban prohibits the purchasing of an ad, hosting a website, or providing an internet service if the purpose is “solely to promote the sale” of an abortion pill.
As the writers explain, “An expansive interpretation could prevent platforms from hosting a wide range of abortion-related content and could limit speech rights for people within and beyond the state, since they could face legal liability if their posts are read in North Carolina. That might mean, for example, that a Twitter account with information about how to safely use an abortion drug like mifepristone would violate the law unless it were to block access for all pregnant women in North Carolina. If it doesn’t, Twitter and the account’s administrators could be fined for every piece of offending content.”
While this provision is the first time an online free speech restriction has become law through an abortion ban, free speech attacks within abortion laws aren’t new. In Texas and Iowa, lawmakers have already introduced bills that allow citizens to sue tech platforms for housing information that “assists or facilitates efforts to obtain elective abortions or abortion-inducing drugs.” Lawmakers in South Carolina have proposed similar legislation with criminal penalties. Without clear court precedent protecting this sort of information, these bills have the potential to further erode our basic First Amendment freedoms — and they’re likely to proliferate in the coming years.
Read more at WIRED.
DECRIMINALIZING ABORTION IN THE UK: This week, a UK court of appeal reduced the sentence of Carla Foster, a mother of three, who illegally procured an abortion after the legal limit of 24 weeks of pregnancy. Foster was initially sentenced to 28 months in prison, unable to see her children due to the criminalization of abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy in the UK.
As one of the judges noted when reducing Foster’s sentence: “This is a very sad case … It is a case that calls for compassion, not punishment.”
Foster’s case has reinvigorated calls for the UK to decriminalize abortion:
“Women seeking healthcare must not be criminalized,” Jemima Olchawski, Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society, said. “We need to see changes to our laws but of course this takes time, and so to protect women from an outdated system sentencing guidance must be issued to stop this ever happening again.”
“The court of appeal has today recognised that this cruel, antiquated law does not reflect the values of society today,” Clare Murphy, the chief executive of British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said. “Now is the time to reform abortion law so that no more women are unjustly criminalized for taking desperate actions at a desperate time in their lives.”
Read more at The Guardian.