Abortion rights roundup: August 3, 2023

This series is a weekly roundup of abortion news, covering various statewide laws and bans, those who stand up to them, and the ongoing push by anti-abortion conservatives to restrict abortion care and erase bodily autonomy.

Alabama attorney general is hit with two lawsuits challenging comments he made about criminalizing those who assist abortion-seekers.

On Monday, pro-abortion rights groups filed lawsuits against Alabama Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall after he threatened to prosecute those who assist residents who travel out of state for abortion care.

On July 21, the Lawyering Project and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a complaint on behalf of the Alabama-based practical support organization Yellowhammer Fund.

“Abortion funds do more than simply provide aid. They send a message of solidarity to those who the State of Alabama persecutes for seeking to control their reproductive health. … The attorney general objects to that message and has targeted us and those who wish to help pregnant people leave the state for lawful abortion care,” Jenice Fountain, executive director of the Yellowhammer Fund, said in a press release.

On July 31, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Marshall and district attorneys throughout the state on behalf of the West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa, Dr. Yashica Robinson, and the Alabama Women’s Center in Huntsville.

“Attorney General Marshall has explicitly threatened that health care providers could face felony charges for assisting Alabamians seeking to travel out of state to obtain abortion where it is legal,” the ACLU said in a press release.

According to the Alabama-based news network CNHI, on Aug. 11, 2022, during a radio interview on the right-wing “Jeff Poor Show,” Marshall was asked about criminal liability provided in the state’s extremely restrictive abortion law, which bans the procedure “except in cases of life endangerment and health of the patient.”

According to CNHI, Marshall said:

Provisions related to accessory liability, provisions related to conspiracy would have applicability involving this particular act passed by the legislature. … If someone was promoting themselves out as a funder of abortions out of state, that is potentially criminally actionable for us. If there are groups promoting this as part of their services, we will be taking a look at that.

A recent court decision makes it more difficult to seek an abortion in Guam.

Pregnant people in Guam now have to see a doctor in person in order to obtain abortion care.

According to reporting by Reuters, Judge Kenneth Lee of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, issued a ruling that reinstated a law requiring patients in Guam to seek counseling from a physician before terminating a pregnancy.

The law was initially blocked due to a lack of physicians in Guam, which made it easier for patients to receive prescriptions for abortion medication via telemedicine from two doctors licensed in Guam but located in Hawaii.

In 2021, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Guam officials on behalf of the two physicians over the country’s abortion restrictions regarding telehealth. The suit focused on two statutes, one requiring abortions be performed in a clinic or hospital and another preventing “patients from using telemedicine to obtain certain government-mandated information prior to an abortion.”

Both challenges were settled in 2021 after the U.S. District Court for the District of Guam issued a preliminary injunction, and the government began allowing abortion medicine to be distributed via telemedicine.

Abortion in Guam is legal within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy or within the first 26 weeks of pregnancy in cases in which a fetus has a “grave physical or mental defect,” in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the pregnant person is in danger.

Good-ish news out of Indiana.

Thanks to a last-minute late-night petition filed by the ACLU of Indiana, abortion care remains legal in the state — for now.

The ACLU was able to obtain a temporary block of a sweeping ban that was set to go into effect on Aug. 1 after it filed for a rehearing on July 31, asking that the ban be put on hold while the court considers a challenge to the law.

The petition requests that the court rehear the case on the grounds that “numerous circumstances exist where an abortion may be necessary to prevent an objectively ‘serious health risk’ to a patient even though the patient may not risk ‘substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.’”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.