Ms. Must-Reads: Mar. 18

In the Spring issue of Ms., we’re highlighting the deadly toll that abortion bans are taking. Our cover—which depicts a toe-tag for someone who died of pregnancy-related complications after being denied an abortion in an emergency room—is imagined, but the lives that inspired it are all too real.

This term, the Supreme Court will decide two consequential abortion cases—including one that will determine whether Idaho’s ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. In our article titled “Let Women Die?”, we explain how the state is arguing that emergency rooms don’t have to provide abortions—even in emergency situations when an abortion is necessary to stabilize a pregnant woman in crisis.

"How ill does someone need to be before we can consider that life-threatening?" asks a doctor.

We also delve into another case brought by anti-abortion doctors and dentists (yes, you read that right, dentists) that challenges the FDA’s approval of the abortion medication mifepristone—which is now used in over half of abortions performed in the U.S.

As we stare down the barrel of what could amount to the next Dobbs v. Jackson, voters are more mobilized than ever, when it comes to abortion. According to new polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation, around one out of eight voters now say that “abortion is the most important issue for their vote”—with Democratic women, Black women, women in states with abortion bans and young voters being the most likely to say that abortion rights is their top issue.

And fewer than half of those surveyed said they considered the right to contraception “secure”—indicating that voters are looking to the broader implications of Dobbs and the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling barring IVF. It's no surprise that voters are concerned that contraception is threatened. In Congress, Senate and House Republicans’ have introduced legislation to define life as beginning at conception, potentially knocking out many forms of contraception. In Arizona this week, Republican legislators blocked a bill meant to protect access to contraception. The bill would have secured the right to “any drug, device or biological product intended for use in the prevention of pregnancy.”

And a ruling from the Fifth Circuit upholding a Texas law that requires parental notification and consent for minors accessing birth control at family planning clinics, in violation of federal regulations governing the Title X family planning program, sets further precedent for the denial and restriction of crucial contraceptive services.

Abortion rights advocates have been warning that the anti-abortion movement wouldn’t stop at abortion—and they were right. Anti-abortion lawmakers and courts are fundamentally at odds with the general public—and it appears voters are set to make that clear come November.

The good news: the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has set a strong precedent for the power of the federal Equal Rights Amendment to protect abortion rights. In a recent ruling, the court found that abortion providers can challenge the state’s ban on Medicaid funding for abortions on the basis of sex discrimination, and is therefore presumptively unconstitutional under Pennsylvania's state ERA. You can learn more about the lawsuits pending before the Supreme Court and the Pennsylvania case in our Spring issue—sign up here to get it delivered to your mailbox!

Onward,

Kathy Spillar

Executive Editor

This week's Ms. Must-Reads:

• "Alabama’s IVF Ruling Proves Abortion Cannot Be Separated From the Rest of Reproductive Healthcare" —?Sameera Mokkarala
• "Spring 2024 Sneak Peek: Let Women Die?" —?Camille Hahn
• "Charting the Future of Equal Pay" —?Martha Burk
• "How the Far Right-Wing Plans to Obliterate More of Our Constitutional Rights" — CJ Spencer