Anti-abortion activists who describe themselves as “abolitionists” protest outdoors a fertility clinic in North Carolina in April 2024.
Sarah McCammon/NPR
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Sarah McCammon/NPR
Anti-abortion activists who describe themselves as “abolitionists” protest outdoors a fertility clinic in North Carolina in April 2024.
Sarah McCammon/NPR
Two years in the past subsequent month, the Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark determination guaranteeing a federal proper to an abortion.
It was an final result a long time within the making – however to abortion opponents, the struggle is unfinished. Now they’re setting their sights on banning mifepristone, a drug generally utilized in medical abortions. Abortion rights opponents have filed a number of lawsuits, together with one awaiting a choice from the Supreme Courtroom.
Abortion treatment has made the process extra accessible. Since June 2022, the variety of abortions carried out within the U.S. has truly gone up: On common, there have been about 4,000 extra abortions per thirty days in 2023 in comparison with 2022, in response to the Society of Household Planning’s WeCount venture.
One issue driving that improve has been the rise in telehealth abortion – the place sufferers obtain abortion treatment within the mail after consulting with a clinician. Telehealth abortions now make up 19% of all abortions within the U.S., in response to Wecount.
“It is inexpensive. It is handy, and it feels extra personal,” says Jillian Barovic, a midwife and one of many cofounders of Juniper Midwifery, which provides treatment abortion through telehealth in six states the place abortion is authorized.
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Efforts to additional limit abortion rights
As abortions proceed regardless of state bans, activists are pushing for additional restrictions, together with the criminalization of sufferers who pursue abortions, and banning procedures like IVF.
T. Russell Hunter leads a bunch opposing all abortions, with no exceptions – they name themselves “abortion abolitionists.” He accuses mainstream anti-abortion teams of being too prepared to simply accept incremental restrictions inconsistent with their messaging.
“You possibly can’t say, ‘Life begins at conception … however we will permit abortion within the first 5 weeks,'” Hunter says. “If life begins at conception, and also you consider that human life should be protected, nicely, you are caught logically.”
Hunter, who relies in Oklahoma, opposes IVF and believes that embryos ought to have authorized rights. He argues that sufferers who search abortions and anybody who helps them ought to be charged with homicide.
Kristine Harhoef lives in Texas and has been concerned in anti-abortion activism for over a decade. She’s pissed off that even the place abortion is banned, sufferers are nonetheless accessing abortion treatment. She’s been speaking with lawmakers in Texas and neighboring states, attempting to advertise laws that will deal with abortion equivalent to murder.
“And the penalty may very well be something from nothing in any respect, if she was really harmless, really pressured into that abortion,” she says, “to a effective or neighborhood service, to, sure, some jail time and presumably even the demise penalty.”
What all of it may imply for Republicans in November
The difficulty of abortion rights may very well be a tough needle to string for Republicans.
A number of current polls by Pew and the Public Faith Analysis Institute verify that a transparent majority of voters say abortion ought to be authorized in lots of or all circumstances.
And whereas abortion abolitionists take purpose at IVF, Republicans, together with former President Donald Trump, are voicing assist for the process. After an Alabama Supreme Courtroom determination dominated that embryos ought to be legally thought-about youngsters, Republicans there rushed to cross a legislation designed to guard IVF suppliers.
Activists like Harhoef, who assist the demise penalty for abortion sufferers, are nonetheless within the minority of abortion opponents. However they’ve made strides in state legislatures, together with a invoice that made it to the Louisiana Home flooring in 2022.
Rachel Bitecofer, a Democratic political strategist, says the road between the mainstream anti-abortion rights motion and the abortion abolitionists is kind of skinny.
“[Republicans] have been focusing on these of us for 25, 30 years now with ever-increasing hyperbolic rhetoric about abortion and defining any sort of abortion as an act of homicide,” Bitecofer stated.
“So in case you settle for that abortion is homicide, then it is sensible that you’ve fairly inflexible necessities to cease it in any respect prices,” she added.
In immediately’s episode of Contemplate This, NPR nationwide political correspondent Sarah McCammon dives into the abortion abolitionist motion. Click on the play button on the prime of the web page to listen to the complete story.
This episode was produced by Karen Zamora and Brianna Scott. It was edited by Megan Pratz and Courtney Dorning. Elissa Nadworny contributed reporting. Our government producer is Sami Yenigun.