America Flashcards
The everyday struggle to get abortion in America.
Empirical reality vs legal rights.
The book tracks the journey to access an abortion, pointing out the multiple barriers that are often faced, such as inaccurate information, a lack of clinics, facing protests, affordability, needing to travel
Cohen & Joffe (2020)
When Abortion Was A Crime: book tracks 4 distinct periods of abortion criminalisation/legislation in the US.
The criminalisation of abortion was tightly linked with the AMA and race/class concerns
Repressive conditions led to a health crisis
Culminating in Roe V Wade which has now led to a contradictory situation where states still erect barriers
Reagan (1997)
Links to Moore (2018) on the Victorian Present and Cohen & Joffe (2020)
Abortion shield laws protect physicans from state attempts to enforce bans beyond borders.
Clashing sovereignties - using the law to respond to law
The web of protection depends on the state where the abortion occurred + the state where the patient travelled from.
Cohen et al (2023)
Reproductive justice movement.
Need to think about how LG can be more inclusionary and intersectional looking forward.
Ross & Solinger (2017)
The overturning of Roe v Wade will create a patchwork of abortion laws.
13 states predicted to severely restrict abortions.
Toll born by the poorest women, women of colour (e.g. 33% increase in mortality for Black women compared to 21% overall)
Repercussions felt globally in a cultural sense since U.S. politics impacts discussions in other areas
Sun (2022)
TRAP laws summary (note this is pre-Dobbs). TRAP stands for ‘Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers’ that are supposedly imposed in the name of reproductive safety, even though abortion has a 99% safety record.
Represent a policing of the micro-geographies of the clininc by mandating features such as the width of hallways, the dimensions of operating rooms, location requirements and requiring doctors to gain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital (difficult in a range of contexts).
The costs and burdens of this are prohibitive, leading to fewer providers.
* Law using space as a tool to restrict rights and chip away at a larger-scale national law
* Importance of medical professionals either in complying or in needing to provide ‘invisible labour’ (Mercier et al, 2015)
Planned Parenthood (no date)
TRAP laws have resulted in pronounced geographic barriers to abortion access in certain regions of the country.
Provider-level restrictions lead to increased patient costs.
The barrier is compounded for women of colour and women of lower socioeconomic status.
Extra work is undertaken by abortion providers to minimise the burden on women and preserve abortion access.
Mercier et al (2015)
Details on TRAP laws.
* 23 states have regulations going beyond safety necessity
* 8 states specify corridor width
* 12 states place requirements on physicians
* 17 states have standards comparable to standards for ambulatory surgical centres
Guttmacher Institute (2023)
The JANE collective, Chicago. A group of women in Chicago who performed thousands of abortions, initially referring women to practitioners before performing the procedure themselves.
An example of women’s resilience and the power of collective action sidestepping the legal system and the orthodox medical profession.
Mobilities of knowledge and secret networks of resistance across space and time.
O’Donnell (2017)
Also Brown (2013)
The Global Gag Rule
Case study of how the GGR has an international impact in Bangladesh.
After the country won its independence from Pakistan, it developed a heavy reliance on international aid and specifically US-funded intensive family planning programs which intially focused on sterilisation.
In the 1980s, the GGR was instituted by Reagan, prohibiting foreign NGOs in receipt of US aid from using non-US funding to provide information, counselling, referrals or carrying out abortion services.
Many clinics were forced to cut back on critical health services, including family planning, increasing the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions.
Even when GGR is no longer in effect, it has a lasting impact because of the temporal nature of funding cuts.
Chesney-Lind & Hadi (2017)
Case study of GGR in Kenya, Madagascar & Nepal.
Evidence of a ‘chilling effect’ where NGOs apply unnecessary restrictions to ensure compliance and no longer referring to non-certifying NGOs
A question of scale (politics in the USA has global ramifications) - an extension of legal jurisdiction?
Link between policy, law and ideology
Maistrellis et al (2022)
Case study: Guam, an unincorporated US territory where residents have the legal right to abortion but there are no known abortion providers.
Residents have to take an 8-hour flight to Hawaii, which is prohibitively expensive and was made even more difficult during the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are no known pill providers in Guam and the law currently limits the use of telehealth for medication abortion care.
Geography + law combining to make abortion uniquely inaccessible
Raidoo et al (2021)
