Vice President Kamala Harris has lost no time blaming former President Donald Trump for the death of a single mother in Georgia after hospital doctors, working under the constraints of an abortion ban, delayed treating her catastrophic infection.

The story of Amber Nicole Thurman’s death in August 2022—and its connection to the six-week abortion ban enacted in Georgia the month before she died—was first reported by ProPublica’s Kavitha Surana. While doctors, patients, and reproductive justice advocates have long warned that abortion bans were causing profound disruptions and delays in healthcare for pregnant women, Thurman’s is the first death to come to public attention.

“This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” Harris said in a statement reported by the Associated Press. “Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying.”

“These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions,” Harris added.

Later on Tuesday, during a interview moderated by the National Association of Black Journalists and WHYY public radio station in Philadelphia, Harris once again drew a link between Thurman’s death and Trump. “Over 20 states have passed what I call ‘Trump abortion bans,’ because I understand how we got here,” Harris told an audience of journalism students from historically Black colleges and universities. “The former president handpicked three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade. They did as he intended, and in state after state, laws have been passed criminalizing health care providers.”

The doctors who delayed Thurman’s care were operating under these laws, Harris pointed out. “It appears the people who should have given her health care were afraid they’d be criminalized after the Dobbs decision came down,” she said.

According to ProPublica, Georgia’s ban on abortions after six weeks affected Thurman in multiple ways. When Thurman discovered she was pregnant with twins in July 2022, she was just over the gestational limit. Because the 28-year-old medical assistant could not get an abortion near where she lived, she had to drive four hours with a friend to North Carolina. Then, stuck in traffic, she missed her appointment for a surgical abortion using a technique called dilation and curettage (D&C), so the clinic instead gave her medication to end her pregnancy and sent her home. The distance meant that days later, when Thurman began experiencing a rare complication from the medication abortion—her body hadn’t expelled all the fetal tissue, putting her at risk of a dangerous infection—she couldn’t go back to the provider for a free D&C. Only when her condition deteriorated did she end up going to a hospital outside Atlanta.

There, her blood pressure falling and organs failing, Thurman was diagnosed with “acute severe sepsis.” But physicians waited 20 hours to operate. The hospital and doctors did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment. But the delays mirror many other stories about abortion bans leading to dangerous disruptions in pregnancy care since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Physicians afraid of being prosecuted have raised alarms about the laws’ hard-to-interpret exceptions: How close to death does a pregnant patient have to be in order for them to perform emergency abortion?

Thurman ultimately died in the operating room. A Georgia state committee tasked with reviewing maternal deaths found that the delay in providing the D&C had a “large” impact on her death, and they deemed it “preventable,” according to ProPublica.

Harris’ attention to Thurman’s story is no surprise given her reputation as a forceful defender of abortion rights on the campaign trail and in her debate against Trump. But her attention to pregnancy-related deaths—which are far more common in the United States than in other high-income countries—dates back years. In the Senate, Harris focused on reducing maternal mortality for Black women like Thurman, who are 2.6 times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to 2022 CDC data. In 2018, she sponsored a resolution recognizing “Black Maternal Health Week” and introduced the Maternal CARE Act to create a grant program to address racial bias in obstetrics and gynecology. As vice president, she pushed efforts to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months.

“For years, I have worked to make sure our country treats maternal mortality as the national crisis it is,” Harris wrote in 2022, prefacing a 50-point plan to use government agencies to lower maternal deaths. “I am proud to lead our Administration’s efforts to address this issue.”

Reproductive justice advocates have been warning for more than two years that the end of Roe v. Wade would lead to surge in maternal mortality among patients denied abortion care—and that the increase was likely to be greatest among low-income women of color. Now, a new report by ProPublica has uncovered the first such verified death. A 28-year-old medical assistant and Black single mother in Georgia died from a severe infection after a hospital delayed a routine medical procedure that had been outlawed under that state’s six-week abortion ban.

Amber Nicole Thurman’s death, in August 2022, was officially deemed “preventable” by a state committee tasked with reviewing pregnancy-related deaths. Thurman’s case is the first time a preventable abortion-related death has come to public attention since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, ProPublica‘s Kavitha Surana reported.

Now, “we actually have the substantiated proof of something we already knew—that abortion bans kill people,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of the abortion-rights group Reproductive Freedom for All, during a call with media. “It cannot go on.”

Thurman is almost certainly not the only person to have died as a consequence of an abortion ban, even if her case is the first to be officially confirmed. As ProPublica noted, that’s because investigations of maternal deaths often don’t happen until years later:

Committees like the one in Georgia, set up in each state, often operate with a two-year lag behind the cases they examine, meaning that experts are only now beginning to delve into deaths that took place after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion.

Earlier this year, the New Yorker reported on the story of Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, a 29-year-old woman in Texas who died in July 2022 from complications of a high-risk pregnancy. In that case, medical records did “not suggest any discussion of the fact that an abortion could have alleviated the additional strain that the pregnancy placed on her heart,” the New Yorker reported.

According to ProPublica, Thurman had decided to get an abortion after learning she was pregnant with twins. But the very day she passed the six-week mark of her pregnancy, Georgia implemented a ban forbidding abortion after six weeks’ gestation—as the Supreme Court allowed states to do when it overturned Roe earlier that summer. So Thurman traveled four hours to an abortion clinic in North Carolina, where abortions were then allowed past 20 weeks. There she was given mifepristone and misoprostol, a two-drug regimen used to end pregnancies.

A few days after she took the pills, Thurman’s pain became excruciating, and she was bleeding through a pad every hour. Complications from abortion pills are rare, but sometimes patients require a procedure called dilation and curettage, or D&C, to remove remaining fetal tissue from the uterus that could lead to life-threatening sepsis. The North Carolina clinic would have performed the D&C for free if Thurman lived closer, ProPublica said. Instead, after vomiting blood and passing out at home, Thurman was brought to the hospital in the Atlanta suburbs, where doctors noted signs of an infection. According to ProPublica,

The standard treatment of sepsis is to start antibiotics and immediately seek and remove the source of the infection. For a septic abortion, that would include removing any remaining tissue from the uterus. One of the hospital network’s own practices describes a D&C as a “fairly common, minor surgical procedure” to be used after a miscarriage to remove fetal tissue.

But because D&Cs can be used to perform abortions, physicians operating under an abortion ban can be slow to provide them even for miscarriages and other emergency situations, as illustrated in a recent report on post-Roe disruptions to pregnancy care in Louisiana. Not until 2 p.m. the day after Thruman entered the hospital was she brought for surgery. She died in the operating room. The Georgia maternal mortality review committee found that if a D&C had been performed earlier, there was a “good chance” her death could have been prevented, ProPublica reports.

“These devastating bans did not only block Amber, and many others, from accessing abortion care in her state, they also delayed the routine life-saving care she later needed, leaving her to suffer and die,” Timmaraju said during the press call on Monday.

While every state abortion ban contains exceptions to save the life of the pregnant person, uncertainty among medical providers over exactly when doctors can step in without fear of being prosecuted has led to delays in medical care for pregnant woman across the country, with devastating consequences.

On the call with reporters, leaders of reproductive justice organizations pointed to the way bans and delays in emergency medical care for pregnant people disproportionately impact Black women. Black women are about 2.6 times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Reproductive justice is not just about abortion access, but also about the broader right to quality, comprehensive, full-range, culturally humble care, life saving health care for all of us,” said KR Redman, executive director of SPARK, a reproductive justice group in Georgia. “Amber’s case is just an example of the ongoing systemic negligence that continues to claim the lives of Black folks.”

In her latest video, Mother Jones video creator Kat Abughazaleh traces the history of former President Donald Trump’s dangerous lie that some states allow parents to “execute” babies in so-called “post-birth abortions.”

“You can look at the governor of West Virginia,” Trump said during last week’s debate, prompting an incredulous head shake from Vice President Kamala Harris. “He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute it.”

Northam, of course, did not say that. Trump wasn’t even correct about his own right-wing smear. His reference was to a wildly out-of-context quote from former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (not West Virginia). Northam’s 2019 radio appearance, in which he explained the tragic medical emergencies that can result in late-term abortions, has since been selectively edited by Republicans and used to claim their opponents are permitting infanticide—a lie that has been repeated with relish across Fox News, again and again.

As Kat explains, “There’s no such thing as a ‘post-birth’ abortion. These procedures are extremely rare and reserved for cases where the mother’s life is in danger or when a fatally ill or deformed baby needs palliative care.” In this video, Kat shows how this wasn’t Trump’s first time exploiting these tragedies, which are “designed to demonize grieving mothers and doctors,” while clarifying the facts about late-term abortion care that are too often lost to political noise. She notes that less than one percent of abortions occur after 21 weeks of pregnancy.

“By limiting abortion access in the first place, whether it’s totally or at the six-week mark, or by making parents jump through hoops just to get the medical care they need,” Kat explains, “Republicans are ensuring that there will be more cases that require traumatic medical intervention than if people were allowed to have control over their bodies in the first place.”

In 2015, as Sen. Ted Cruz mounted a competitive presidential campaign and courted the religious right ahead of the Iowa caucuses, the Texas Republican touted the support of a controversial anti-abortion crusader.

“I am grateful to receive the endorsement of Troy Newman,” Cruz said. “He has served as a voice for the unborn for over 25 years, and works tirelessly every day for the pro-life cause. We need leaders like Troy Newman in this country who will stand up for those who do not have a voice.”

Newman wasn’t just any anti-abortion activist: He was, and is, the leader of Operation Rescue—a group that in 1991 held weeks-long protests at the abortion clinic of George Tiller, who was later assassinated by an anti-abortion extremist. Moreover, Newman has claimed that extreme weather was God’s punishment for America’s tolerance for abortion and gay rights; he also co-wrote a book that endorsed the execution of abortion providers.

Nearly a decade after the failed presidential bid, Cruz is locked in a tough reelection fight with Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL player. The rollback of abortion rights has become a major issue in the Texas contest, as it has nationally, and the two-term senator has been notably quiet on the subject of late. It is a marked contrast from the 2016 presidential election, when Cruz sought to distinguish himself in the presidential contest as an uncompromising defender of the “pro-life” movement.

While other GOP candidates shared similar beliefs in 2016, Cruz argued he was better at proving his devotion to the cause. Ahead of the Iowa caucuses that year, he announced a “Pro-Lifers for Cruz” coalition of 17,000-plus members. “The question we ought to ask is, don’t tell me that you’re pro-life. Show me. When have you stood up and fought to defend the right to life?” Cruz said before the critical first-in-the-nation nominating contest.

It was at that point, in January 2016, that Cruz named Newman as one of 10 co-chairs leading the anti-abortion coalition. The Cruz campaign press release announcing Newman’s appointment mentioned Newman’s book, Their Blood Cries Out, in his bio. Now out of print, the anti-abortion manifesto, first published in 2000, contains eye-popping passages, including one section arguing that the US government should execute “abortionists”:

In addition to our personal guilt in abortion, the United States government has abrogated its responsibility to properly deal with the blood-guilty. This responsibility rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge bloodguilt from the land and people. Instead, the act of abortion has been elevated to a ‘God-given right’ and the abortionists canonized as saints. Consequently, the entire nation has the blood-red stain of the lives of the innocent upon its head.

Newman co-authored the book with Cheryl Sullenger, who was earlier convicted and imprisoned for her involvement in an attempt to bomb an abortion clinic in California in 1987.

In addition to suggesting the US government kill abortion providers, Newman and Sullenger wrote that the tendency to blame abortion providers and liberal lawmakers for abortions—rather than the women who obtain them—is a mistake:

Those responsible for innocent bloodshed should not be excused or comforted in their sin, yet, as a society, women who have abortions are treated as victims and those who support them in the decision to kill are considered heroes who were willing to stand by their friends or family members during a time of crisis. In reality, the woman is the same as a contract killer, hiring out the murder of her defenseless child, and the supporter is a co-conspirator, aiding and abetting the crime.

The full extent of Newman’s relationship to Cruz is unclear; neither Newman nor Cruz’s congressional office responded to inquiries from Mother Jones. But in addition to Cruz’s presidential campaign materials that mention Newman, there are pictures of Newman posing with Cruz, and with Cruz’s then-chief-of-staff, Paul Teller, on Newman’s Facebook profile alongside a caption: “Ted Cruz may have come in number two in the [presidential] primary, but he is number one to me!”

While the inflammatory contents of Their Blood Cries Out have previously been cited, including by Mother Jones eight years ago, the passages and Cruz’s connection to their author take on new relevance as abortion has become a defining issue of the national election and Cruz’s Texas reelection.

A Democrat hasn’t won a statewide election in Texas in three decades, but Cruz’s apparent lead against Allred is now squarely within the margin of error. Texas voters have reported abortion as one of their top issues this cycle. In recent weeks, Cruz has hesitated to address his views on the topic, as they may prove to alienate critical swing voters in November.

More than two years since the overturn of Roe v Wade, legal battles over abortion laws are as chaotic as ever. But occasionally, the challenges playing out state by state result in a string of good news for abortion rights. That was the case this week, with a cluster of court decisions that will expand abortion access in Nevada and North Dakota, and allow Missouri and Nebraska voters to weigh in on the issue in November.

On Thursday, District Court Judge Bruce Romanick in Bismarck, North Dakota, issued a powerful opinion siding with abortion providers who challenged a state law that had deemed their practice a felony.

In his order, which takes effect in two weeks, Rominick ruled that the North Dakota constitution’s protections for life, liberty, and the right to pursue happiness include the right to choose abortion. “A woman’s choice of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term shapes the very nature and future course of her life, on nearly every possible level,” he wrote. “The Court finds that such a choice, at least pre-viability, must belong to the individual woman and not to the government.” He also struck down the ban for its vagueness, concluding that, at present, North Dakota doctors could be prosecuted if other physicians second-guessed their decision to provide an emergency abortion.

Virtually all abortions have been illegal in North Dakota since April 2023, when Republican Gov. Doug Burgum signed a ban with exceptions only to save the life of the pregnant person, or for rape and incest survivors within the first six weeks of pregnancy. North Dakota’s only abortion clinic moved across the state line to Minnesota in 2022, soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, meaning most people seeking to end a pregnancy will have to leave the state.

But Romnick’s decision should make it easier for doctors to provide emergency abortions to patients with severe pregnancy complications—care that that is often withheld in abortion-ban states, with dire consequences. “It is now much safer to be pregnant in North Dakota,” Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer Meetra Mehdizadeh said in a statement on Friday.

Also on Thursday, a Nevada court order requiring the state Medicaid program to cover abortion became final after the state government declined to appeal an earlier ruling. Nevada will become the 18th state to allow Medicaid funds to cover abortion, the Associated Press reported.

That ruling is the result of a challenge brought under Nevada’s Equal Rights Amendment, which added language banning sex discrimination, along with many other types of discrimination, to the state constitution. Voters there supported the ERA by a nearly 18-point margin in 2022.

In their lawsuit, a Nevada abortion fund and the ACLU argued that the ban on Medicaid coverage amounted to sex discrimination because it denied low-income Nevadans who can become pregnant the ability to make decisions about their future. Back in March, a Clark County District Judge Erika Ballou had agreed—though her decision didn’t become final until this week.

“The court made clear that the state cannot withhold coverage for essential, sex-linked health care from low-income Nevadans,” ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project staff attorney Rebecca Chan explained in a statement. “As a result of this decision, Nevadans who have Medicaid as their health insurance will no longer need to fear that they will be forced to carry a pregnancy against their will.”

In November, voters in New York will decide whether to enshrine an ERA of their own—one of 10 states with abortion-related initiatives slated for the 2024 ballot. Yet initiatives in two of those states were in jeopardy until courts came to their rescue this week. On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court threw out a last-minute claim arguing that the text of an abortion-rights initiative petition had omitted details required by state law; it ordered the anti-abortion secretary of state to certify the initiative for the ballot.

On Friday, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that dueling initiatives can appear on the ballot in that state, where current law bans abortion after 12 weeks. One of the initiatives, titled “Protect the Right to Abortion,” would create a state constitutional right for Nebraskans to get an abortion prior to “viability” (the hard-to-pinpoint moment in pregnancy when a fetus is able to survive outside the uterus). The other, titled “Protect Women and Children” would enshrine the current 12-week abortion ban in the state constitution.

If both pass, the one with the most votes prevails. But anti-abortion advocates had tried to kill the pro-abortion rights measure altogether by arguing that by regulating abortion before and after viability differently, it dealt with more than one subject, according to the Nebraska Examiner. Friday’s state Supreme Court ruling tossed that challenge, and ensures the vote on both questions will proceed.

Now, with 52 days left before voters will decide whether to add abortion protections to their state constitutions, the opinion from North Dakota’s Judge Rominick could offer some guidance.

“If we can learn anything from examining the history and prior traditions surrounding women’s rights, women’s health, and abortion in North Dakota, the Court hopes that we would learn this: that there was a time when we got it wrong and when women did not have a voice,” Rominick wrote. “This does not need to continue for all time, and the sentiments of the past, alone, need not rule the present for all time.”

When Project 2025 staffer and former Trump White House personnel chief John McEntee tried to score points on social media on Thursday by denying that women were “bleeding out” due to abortion bans, he probably didn’t expect them to reply to him directly.

“Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris said are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned?” McEntee asked in a TikTok video filmed at a restaurant as he dipped fried food into sauce.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he added, smirking.

“I’m right here,” replied Carmen Broesder, a mother living in Idaho, which enacted a trigger law after the fall of Roe, a making it a felony for doctors to provide an abortion unless it was necessary “to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”

In a TikTok video of her own, Broesder recalled how hospital staff turned her away from the ER three times during an excruciating 19-day miscarriage. She said she was repeatedly denied a procedure to remove tissue from the uterus—a procedure known as dilation and curettage (D&C) that is also used in abortions—and that they gave her just one dose of pain medication in 19 days. “I blacked out in my hallway due to blood loss,” she recounted.

In June, the Supreme Court gave Idaho hospitals the green light to perform emergency abortions to protect pregnant people’s health, as well as their life—but the ruling is temporary while the lower courts reconsider the issue. But the problem isn’t confined to Idaho. In Oklahoma, Jaci Statton developed heavy bleeding, dizziness, and weakness from a molar pregnancy, a condition in which a fertilized egg does not develop into a fetus. For more than a week, she told NPR, doctors denied her treatment, and she was transferred to three different hospitals. Ultimately, she had to drive three hours to an abortion clinic in Kansas to get an D&C.

“The record shows that, as a matter of medical reality, such cases exist,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a concurring opinion in the Idaho case. “Hospitals in Idaho have had to airlift medically fragile women to other States to receive abortions needed to prevent serious harms to their health. Those transfers measure the difference between the life-threatening conditions Idaho will allow hospitals to treat and the health-threatening conditions it will not.” 

According to Rolling Stone, Broesder’s severe blood loss during her miscarriage caused erratic blood pressure and a stress response that led her to be diagnosed with a heart condition she said could lead to a heart attack if she gets too excited or upset. “I have to deal with these side effects for the rest of my life because of abortion laws,” Broesder said in her video.

Broesder’s experience is a clear illustration of what Vice President Kamala Harris was talking about when she responded to former president Donald Trump’s bizarre claim during the debate that “every legal scholar” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. “Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she is bleeding out in a car in the parking lot—she didn’t want that,” Harris said. “Her husband didn’t want that.”

McEntee, the founder of a conservative-only dating app, has a large following on TikTok, where he posts snarky and often offensive quips about race and gender designed to tickle his MAGA audience. But his video garnered thousands of first-person responses, many telling stories about severe medical complications after pregnant people were denied care.

“I was told when I had a possible ectopic pregnancy that I would have to ‘wait until it made me septic’ to get the surgery to save my life,” one commenter said.

“My daughter. Nearly lost her life after she miscarried triplets that didn’t expel her body & 3 hospitals wouldn’t remove them,” another replied.

“I’ve been anemic on and off since my weeks-long miscarriage,” wrote yet another commenter. “Three hospitals refused to give me a DNC or pill protocol. Unimaginable pain and distress.”

And so it goes, on and on, for more than 19,000 comments as of Saturday.

More than two years since the overturn of Roe v Wade, legal battles over abortion laws are as chaotic as ever. But occasionally, the challenges playing out state by state result in a string of good news for abortion rights. That was the case this week, with a cluster of court decisions that will expand abortion access in Nevada and North Dakota, and allow Missouri and Nebraska voters to weigh in on the issue in November.

On Thursday, District Court Judge Bruce Romanick in Bismarck, North Dakota, issued a powerful opinion siding with abortion providers who challenged a state law that had deemed their practice a felony.

In his order, which takes effect in two weeks, Rominick ruled that the North Dakota constitution’s protections for life, liberty, and the right to pursue happiness include the right to choose abortion. “A woman’s choice of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term shapes the very nature and future course of her life, on nearly every possible level,” he wrote. “The Court finds that such a choice, at least pre-viability, must belong to the individual woman and not to the government.” He also struck down the ban for its vagueness, concluding that, at present, North Dakota doctors could be prosecuted if other physicians second-guessed their decision to provide an emergency abortion.

Virtually all abortions have been illegal in North Dakota since April 2023, when Republican Gov. Doug Burgum signed a ban with exceptions only to save the life of the pregnant person, or for rape and incest survivors within the first six weeks of pregnancy. North Dakota’s only abortion clinic moved across the state line to Minnesota in 2022, soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, meaning most people seeking to end a pregnancy will have to leave the state.

But Romnick’s decision should make it easier for doctors to provide emergency abortions to patients with severe pregnancy complications—care that that is often withheld in abortion-ban states, with dire consequences. “It is now much safer to be pregnant in North Dakota,” Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer Meetra Mehdizadeh said in a statement on Friday.

Also on Thursday, a Nevada court order requiring the state Medicaid program to cover abortion became final after the state government declined to appeal an earlier ruling. Nevada will become the 18th state to allow Medicaid funds to cover abortion, the Associated Press reported.

That ruling is the result of a challenge brought under Nevada’s Equal Rights Amendment, which added language banning sex discrimination, along with many other types of discrimination, to the state constitution. Voters there supported the ERA by a nearly 18-point margin in 2022.

In their lawsuit, a Nevada abortion fund and the ACLU argued that the ban on Medicaid coverage amounted to sex discrimination because it denied low-income Nevadans who can become pregnant the ability to make decisions about their future. Back in March, a Clark County District Judge Erika Ballou had agreed—though her decision didn’t become final until this week.

“The court made clear that the state cannot withhold coverage for essential, sex-linked health care from low-income Nevadans,” ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project staff attorney Rebecca Chan explained in a statement. “As a result of this decision, Nevadans who have Medicaid as their health insurance will no longer need to fear that they will be forced to carry a pregnancy against their will.”

In November, voters in New York will decide whether to enshrine an ERA of their own—one of 10 states with abortion-related initiatives slated for the 2024 ballot. Yet initiatives in two of those states were in jeopardy until courts came to their rescue this week. On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court threw out a last-minute claim arguing that the text of an abortion-rights initiative petition had omitted details required by state law; it ordered the anti-abortion secretary of state to certify the initiative for the ballot.

On Friday, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that dueling initiatives can appear on the ballot in that state, where current law bans abortion after 12 weeks. One of the initiatives, titled “Protect the Right to Abortion,” would create a state constitutional right for Nebraskans to get an abortion prior to “viability” (the hard-to-pinpoint moment in pregnancy when a fetus is able to survive outside the uterus). The other, titled “Protect Women and Children” would enshrine the current 12-week abortion ban in the state constitution.

If both pass, the one with the most votes prevails. But anti-abortion advocates had tried to kill the pro-abortion rights measure altogether by arguing that by regulating abortion before and after viability differently, it dealt with more than one subject, according to the Nebraska Examiner. Friday’s state Supreme Court ruling tossed that challenge, and ensures the vote on both questions will proceed.

Now, with 52 days left before voters will decide whether to add abortion protections to their state constitutions, the opinion from North Dakota’s Judge Rominick could offer some guidance.

“If we can learn anything from examining the history and prior traditions surrounding women’s rights, women’s health, and abortion in North Dakota, the Court hopes that we would learn this: that there was a time when we got it wrong and when women did not have a voice,” Rominick wrote. “This does not need to continue for all time, and the sentiments of the past, alone, need not rule the present for all time.”

When Project 2025 staffer and former Trump White House personnel chief John McEntee tried to score points on social media on Thursday by denying that women were “bleeding out” due to abortion bans, he probably didn’t expect them to reply to him directly.

“Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris said are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned?” McEntee asked in a TikTok video filmed at a restaurant as he dipped fried food into sauce.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he added, smirking.

“I’m right here,” replied Carmen Broesder, a mother living in Idaho, which enacted a trigger law after the fall of Roe, a making it a felony for doctors to provide an abortion unless it was necessary “to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”

In a TikTok video of her own, Broesder recalled how hospital staff turned her away from the ER three times during an excruciating 19-day miscarriage. She said she was repeatedly denied a procedure to remove tissue from the uterus—a procedure known as dilation and curettage (D&C) that is also used in abortions—and that they gave her just one dose of pain medication in 19 days. “I blacked out in my hallway due to blood loss,” she recounted.

In June, the Supreme Court gave Idaho hospitals the green light to perform emergency abortions to protect pregnant people’s health, as well as their life—but the ruling is temporary while the lower courts reconsider the issue. But the problem isn’t confined to Idaho. In Oklahoma, Jaci Statton developed heavy bleeding, dizziness, and weakness from a molar pregnancy, a condition in which a fertilized egg does not develop into a fetus. For more than a week, she told NPR, doctors denied her treatment, and she was transferred to three different hospitals. Ultimately, she had to drive three hours to an abortion clinic in Kansas to get an D&C.

“The record shows that, as a matter of medical reality, such cases exist,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a concurring opinion in the Idaho case. “Hospitals in Idaho have had to airlift medically fragile women to other States to receive abortions needed to prevent serious harms to their health. Those transfers measure the difference between the life-threatening conditions Idaho will allow hospitals to treat and the health-threatening conditions it will not.” 

According to Rolling Stone, Broesder’s severe blood loss during her miscarriage caused erratic blood pressure and a stress response that led her to be diagnosed with a heart condition she said could lead to a heart attack if she gets too excited or upset. “I have to deal with these side effects for the rest of my life because of abortion laws,” Broesder said in her video.

Broesder’s experience is a clear illustration of what Vice President Kamala Harris was talking about when she responded to former president Donald Trump’s bizarre claim during the debate that “every legal scholar” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. “Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she is bleeding out in a car in the parking lot—she didn’t want that,” Harris said. “Her husband didn’t want that.”

McEntee, the founder of a conservative-only dating app, has a large following on TikTok, where he posts snarky and often offensive quips about race and gender designed to tickle his MAGA audience. But his video garnered thousands of first-person responses, many telling stories about severe medical complications after pregnant people were denied care.

“I was told when I had a possible ectopic pregnancy that I would have to ‘wait until it made me septic’ to get the surgery to save my life,” one commenter said.

“My daughter. Nearly lost her life after she miscarried triplets that didn’t expel her body & 3 hospitals wouldn’t remove them,” another replied.

“I’ve been anemic on and off since my weeks-long miscarriage,” wrote yet another commenter. “Three hospitals refused to give me a DNC or pill protocol. Unimaginable pain and distress.”

And so it goes, on and on, for more than 19,000 comments as of Saturday.

Before Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, abortions in Florida were available until 24 weeks of pregnancy; soon afterward, a 15-week ban became law. Still, Florida remained an essential abortion haven for the Southeast. Then, on May 1, a six-week ban took effect, and the impact was immediate and drastic—and not just in the state, new data from the Guttmacher Institute shows. Clinician-provided abortions plunged in Florida by more than 30 percent in May and June, to an average of about 5,400 abortions per month. In contrast, during the first three months of the year, the state averaged about 8,000 abortions every month. 

“Our data paint a vivid picture of the chaos and confusion caused by Florida’s six-week abortion ban,” Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a Guttmacher data scientist, said in a statement.

Nationally, the average number of abortions in May and June fell by more than 7 percent from the first three months of the year, according to Guttmacher’s Monthly Abortion Provision Study. More than a third of that drop is the direct consequence of the Florida ban, highlighting how important a role the state has played in abortion access throughout the South. In 2023, an estimated 9,000 out-of-state patients traveled to Florida to obtain an abortion, with the largest number of them coming from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia—all states where draconian abortion laws have been put in place since the Dobbs decision. Before Florida imposed its own six-week ban, more than 1 in 10 abortions in the US happened there.  

The drop off in Florida abortions in May and June likely reflects reductions in access to abortion for patients from neighboring states with total or near-total bans of their own, as well as for state residents, Guttmacher says.

The new report comes as reproductive rights advocates are pushing hard to pass an abortion rights ballot measure that would override Florida’s six-week ban. If approved in November, Amendment 4 would guarantee the right to abortion up to fetal viability—around 24 weeks gestation—or when necessary to protect the patient’s health. Supporters collected almost 1 million signatures to get the amendment on the ballot, making Florida one of 10 states with abortion measures in the fall. But to pass in the Sunshine State, the amendment must receive at least 60 percent of the vote, unlike in states such as Ohio, where a similar ballot initiative in 2023 only required a simple majority.  

As my colleague Julianne McShane has reported, the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to be doing everything it can to undermine the amendment, including launching a new website that attacks the initiative with “a litany of false claims.” These include that the measure “threatens women’s safety,” would “eliminate parental consent” for minors seeking abortions, and could “lead to unregulated and unsafe abortions” by allowing people without healthcare expertise to perform the procedure. Abortion rights groups have sued to block the misinformation campaign.

DeSantis officials have also been scrutinizing tens of thousands of petition signatures for evidence of fraud, even sending election police to the homes of some voters to verify their signatures. State officials certified the signatures in February, and the deadline for challenging them has passed. The ACLU of Florida has threatened to sue on behalf of the group leading the Yes on Amendment 4 effort, Floridians Protecting Freedom. Meanwhile, seven Florida congressional Democrats have written a letter asking US Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the DeSantis administration’s “brazen attempts at voter intimidation and election interference on Amendment 4,” the Florida Phoenix reported.

DeSantis signed the six-week ban in the spring of 2023, giving reproductive rights advocates in the state more than a year to prepare for the worst. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the ban this past April 1—the same day it also approved Amendment 4 to be on the November ballot. In April, abortions surged by 21 percent in the state. “Providers and patients went to great lengths to provide and access care, respectively, before the law went into effect,” on May 1, Guttmacher says. 

The Florida ban’s impact likely was also mitigated by the availability of medication abortion via telehealth from providers in states with abortion shield laws, Guttmacher notes. Telehealth abortions now account for nearly 1 in 5 abortions in the US.

But travel distances are adding additional burdens for abortion patients. If a Florida resident needs to have an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, the closest clinic would be in North Carolina—which would require traveling an average distance of about 590 miles, Guttmacher says. Add to that, patients have to jump through numerous unnecessary hurdles to access care there—including in-person counseling 72 hours before obtaining an abortion. Since abortion is now banned in North Carolina after 12 weeks, many Florida residents are being forced to travel farther distances to states with fewer restrictions, including Virginia and Illinois, or to Puerto Rico. “Raising money for the cost of
the abortion, travel and lodging, missed wages, child-care costs, and more means that the difficulties of receiving needed abortion care are substantially increased and for some, insurmountable,” the Guttmacher report says.

According to new polling by The Hill and Emerson College, 55 percent of likely Florida voters support Amendment 4—a solid majority of the electorate but shy of the threshold needed to pass the measure. Another 20 percent of voters said they were “unsure.” Among the wafflers has been former President Donald Trump, who appeared to support the amendment in an interview with NBC News last month, triggering a ferocious backlash among the conservatives whose support he needs if he has any chance of beating Vice President Kamala Harris in November. The next day, Trump said he would vote against it, even as he told Fox News that he still thinks the six-week ban is too strict. 

Enlarge / A woman holds a placard saying "No Forced Births" as abortion rights activists gather at the Monroe County Courthouse for a protest vigil a few hours before Indianas near total abortion ban goes into effect on September 15, 2022. (credit: Getty | Jeremy Hogan)

The more abortion access is jeopardized, the more women turn to sterilization, according to a new report in JAMA that drew on health insurance claims of nearly 4.8 million women in the US.

In states that enacted total or near-total abortion bans following the US Supreme Court's Dobbs decision in June 2022, the rate of sterilizations among reproductive-age women that July spiked 19 percent. A similar initial spike was seen across the nation, with states that either limited or protected access to abortions seeing a 17 percent increase.

But, after that, states with bans saw a divergent trend. The states that limited or protected abortion access saw sterilization procedures largely level off after July 2022. In contrast, states with bans continued to see increases. From July 2022 to December 2022, use of sterilization procedures increased by 3 percent each month.

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Vice President Kamala Harris just showed why she is a better candidate on abortion than President Biden ever was.

In a blistering response to former President Donald Trump’s rambling about his ever-shifting stance on abortion—which included appointing three of the five Supreme Court justices who overruled Roe v. Wade—Harris put the ex-president on blast for what she has been calling the “Trump abortion bans” now present in over a dozen states.

“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” Harris said.

Kamala Harris’ full response on abortion pic.twitter.com/QEVkM5WjkR

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 11, 2024

And when Trump repeated his false claim that “every legal scholar” wanted Roe overruled, Harris promptly laid out the devastating consequences of the Dobbs decision.

“Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she is bleeding out in a car in the parking lot—she didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that,” Harris said.

“A 12 or 13 year old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term—they don’t want that,” she continued. Harris pledged to sign legislation restoring Roe into law if Congress passed it during her presidency—and noted that Trump could very well sign a national abortion ban if reelected, as Project 2025 recommends.

“Understand, in his Project 2025, there would be a national abortion monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages,” she said. “I think the American people believe that certain freedoms—in particular, the freedom to make decisions about one’s own body—should not be made by the government.”

Tonight, Harris showed exactly why abortion rights advocates see her as their ideal messenger: In clear and forceful language, she described the health care apocalypse Trump helped create, and the first-hand experiences of pregnant people bearing the brunt of it. When Biden talked about abortion during the first debate, on the other hand, it was a garbled, confusing mess that ended with him talking about immigration.

But in fairness, Trump was also clear about his stance on abortion: When asked two different times, he refused to answer whether he would veto a federal abortion ban if Congress passed one.

Reproductive rights advocates in Missouri have beaten back a last-ditch effort by Republican officials to stop voters from having their say on abortion in November. On Tuesday afternoon, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered that a proposed amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution will remain on this year’s ballot.

The ruling ensures that Missourians will have the opportunity to vote on Amendment 3, which would establish a right to “reproductive freedom”—defined as the ability to make and carry out one’s own decisions about contraception, abortion, and healthcare during pregnancy. If approved, the amendment will set a high legal bar for how the state can regulate abortion prior to “viability”—the difficult-to-pinpoint moment when a fetus becomes likely to survive outside the uterus. After viability, the measure would let the state ban abortion, with exceptions to protect the life and health of the pregnant patient.

The decision caps a roller-coaster of a year for Missouri reproductive-rights advocates, who faced hurdle after hurdle to get the measure on the November ballot. Supporters gathered more than 380,000 signatures this spring, circumventing a legislature dominated by hard-line abortion foes who passed the state’s current, near-total abortion ban. A St. Louis University/YouGov poll of 900 likely voters in mid-August found that 52 percent supported Amendment 3 and 34 percent opposed it.

“Today’s decision is a victory for both direct democracy and reproductive freedom in Missouri,” Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the group behind the amendment, said in a statement. “This fight was not just about this amendment—it was about defending the integrity of the initiative petition process and ensuring that Missourians can shape their future directly.”

Ballot initiatives have become a central part of the strategy to restore and expand abortion rights in the post-Roe v. Wade era. They’re also key to Democrats’ efforts to turn out voters in battleground states in this year’s tight presidential election. Abortion rights are popular, even in solidly red states; the pro-choice side has won all seven abortion-related measures on state ballots since 2022.

That’s led Republican officials in GOP-dominated states including Arkansas, Florida, and Nebraska to pull out all the stops this year to prevent abortion-rights measures from getting to the ballot in the first place—filing lawsuits, delaying or invalidating petitions, and spreading misinformation.

In Missouri, Tuesday’s ruling comes in response to a last-minute lawsuit by two Republican state lawmakers, Rep. Hannah Kelly and Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, working with anti-abortion activists and lawyers from the Thomas More Society, a law firm aligned with conservative Catholics. They argued that Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft should never have certified Amendment 3 because it did not specify which state laws it would repeal. (Missouri law requires initiative petitions to “include all sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.”) In a court filing, they claimed that the Amendment 3 campaign “defrauded potential signers” and that the measure “would have far-reaching effects,” including on Missouri’s rules on human cloning and single-sex bathrooms.

Amendment supporters responded that no state laws would be automatically repealed. Instead, advocates would have to file lawsuits challenging anti-abortion laws, with judges making the final decisions about which ones violate the new constitutional amendment. “This is another example of someone flailing, trying to gum the works of a campaign that has serious momentum,” said Mallory Schwartz, executive director of Abortion Action Missouri, part of the pro-Amendment 3 coalition. “What they’re really doing is trying to deny people access to direct democracy.” 

The Missouri Supreme Court’s decision overturns a surprise ruling by Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh last Friday evening declaring that the vote on the amendment should be canceled—though he left time for an appeal. Judge Limbaugh, a cousin of the late conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, was appointed to the bench by his former boss, Republican Gov. Mike Parson, barely five weeks ago.

Ashcroft defended his certification in a hearing before Limbaugh. But following the Friday ruling, Ashcroft sent the abortion-rights campaign a letter announcing that he was decertifying Amendment 3 himself. “On further review in light of the circuit court’s judgment, I have determined the amendment is deficient,” he wrote.

In its Tuesday ruling, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered Ashcroft to recertify Amendment 3 for the ballot, ruling that the deadline for him to issue a certification decision had passed.

For Ashcroft and other Missouri Republicans, the decision is yet another rebuke in a long and exhausting campaign to keep the amendment off the ballot. In at least four previous lawsuits, Missouri courts have slapped down state officials’ attempts to interfere with the amendment.

First, state Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who is running for reelection, held up the initiative for months by pushing a baseless theory that the initiative could cost the state billions in federal Medicaid funding and declining to rubber-stamp a cost estimate prepared by the state’s auditor. After a legal battle, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered Bailey to stop stonewalling.

Then last fall, Kelly and Coleman—the same legislators behind the latest lawsuit—seized on Bailey’s phony theory about Medicaid funding and sued the state auditor over his cost estimate. They too were slapped down by the courts, which found the cost estimate “fair and sufficient.”

Meanwhile, Ashcroft—an outspoken abortion opponent whose job requires him to craft neutral summaries of ballot initiatives—issued summaries claiming the measure would permit “dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortion.” Last October, an appeals court ruled those summaries were “replete with politically partisan language.” A circuit court judge completely rewrote them.

But Ashcroft didn’t learn his lesson. Last month, on the same day he certified the amendment for the ballot, he issued “fair ballot language” to be posted at polling places that made a slew of false claims, including that the measure would prohibit legal recourse against “anyone who performs an abortion and hurts or kills the pregnant women.” Last Thursday, Cole County Circuit Judge Cotton Walker threw out Ashcroft’s description, calling it “unfair, insufficient, inaccurate and misleading.”

Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling is a crucial win for the fight to expand abortion rights in Missouri, which has some of the most restrictive laws in the country. Even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, only one clinic remained open in the state, providing fewer than 100 abortions annually. Hours after the fall of Roe, state officials invoked a dormant law making it a felony to provide abortion in virtually all cases.

Missouri isn’t the only place where state officials have been making last-ditch efforts to block or blunt voter referendums on abortion. On Monday, the Nebraska Supreme Court heard arguments in a trio of lawsuits over dueling amendments—one to protect abortion until viability and another to ban abortion after the first trimester. Arguments focused on whether the protective amendment violates a state rule requiring ballot measures to only cover a single subject, according to the Nebraska Examiner.

Last month in Arkansas, the state Supreme Court threw out thousands of signatures in favor of an abortion-rights measure, ruling that organizers had failed to file training certifications for their paid canvassers in the proper format, the Associated Press reported. The decision affirmed state officials’ move to disqualify the measure from the ballot.

In Florida, the state Attorney General lost a lawsuit arguing that an amendment to protect abortion rights until viability was “too complicated” for voters to understand. But last month, the state Supreme Court approved a fiscal impact statement for Amendment 4 written with the help of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative group behind Project 2025. Meanwhile, the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration unveiled a website on Thursday full of false claims about the initiative, as my colleague Julianne McShane reported. And the Florida Department of State is reportedly investigating 36,000 voter signatures submitted by amendment organizers.

As it stands on Tuesday, ten states will vote on abortion-related measures on the ballot come November. Missouri is one of two where voters could overturn a near-total abortion ban.

Sophie Hurwitz contributed reporting.

The Florida government seems to be doing everything it can—including potentially breaking the law—to prevent voters from approving an abortion rights ballot measure in November.

On Thursday, the state’s health department debuted a webpage spreading misinformation about Amendment 4, a ballot measure appearing in November seeking to override the state’s six-week abortion ban that the Florida Supreme Court approved in April. If it receives the required 60 percent of votes to pass, the amendment would guarantee the right to abortion before the point of so-called fetal viability, which is generally understood to be around 24 weeks gestation. But the state’s new webpage—which DeSantis has since defended as a “public service announcement”—attacks the initiative with a litany of false claims, including that it “threatens women’s safety,” would “eliminate parental consent” for minors seeking abortions, and could “lead to unregulated and unsafe abortions” by allowing people without healthcare expertise to perform the procedure.

Those claims, though, are easily debunked by taking a look at the actual text of the amendment, which explicitly states that a patient’s healthcare provider is responsible for determining when an abortion after viability is necessary to protect a patient’s health. It also says that passage of the amendment would not override the authority of the legislature to require that a minor’s parent or guardian is notified before they obtain an abortion.

But the state’s campaign against the amendment doesn’t stop there. On the same day of the site’s launch, the Tampa Bay Times reported that the Florida Department of State was looking for evidence of fraud in the more than 30,000 citizen signatures used to get the amendment on the November ballot. Two election supervisors told the paper that the move was “highly unusual” given that the signatures had already been approved by local supervisors. The Tampa Bay Times also reported Friday that police had visited the homes of at least two voters who had signed the petition supporting Amendment 4 seeking to verify their signatures.

The anti-abortion efforts are the latest in Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ ongoing fight to defeat Amendment 4 after launching a political spending committee aimed at doing just that in May. (It has raised $3.7 million to date.) Now abortion rights advocates say DeSantis’ government is hoping to scare voters into voting against the amendment. “To our knowledge, it is unprecedented for the State to expressly advocate against a citizen-led initiative,” Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said Thursday. “This kind of propaganda issued by the state, using taxpayer money and operating outside of the political process sets a dangerous precedent.”

On Friday, the Florida Democratic Party said in a statement that it had submitted a public records request seeking information on when the agency started working on the webpage and who was involved. “Ron [DeSantis] and his buddies know they’re losing, and they’re willing to do anything—including breaking the law—to rig the results in their favor,” Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said in a statement, adding that the party is also pursuing legal action to try to have the page taken down. State Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book also said her office was investigating legal action in response to the webpage.

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration did not respond to questions from Mother Jones about how much the web page cost to establish and maintain, who demanded its creation, why it includes false and misleading information, and how officials respond to criticism about the site. Instead, the agency provided the following statement: “Part of the Agency’s mission is to provide information and transparency to Floridians on the quality of care they receive. Our new transparency page serves to educate Floridians on the state’s current abortion laws and provide information on a proposed policy change that would impact care across the state.”

Now some have warned that the DeSantis administration’s use of government resources for political purposes could be illegal. Meanwhile, polling suggests the majority of Florida voters support the amendment.

The Florida government seems to be doing everything it can—including potentially breaking the law—to prevent voters from approving an abortion rights ballot measure in November.

On Thursday, the state’s health department debuted a webpage spreading misinformation about Amendment 4, a ballot measure appearing in November seeking to override the state’s six-week abortion ban that the Florida Supreme Court approved in April. If it receives the required 60 percent of votes to pass, the amendment would guarantee the right to abortion before the point of so-called fetal viability, which is generally understood to be around 24 weeks gestation. But the state’s new webpage—which DeSantis has since defended as a “public service announcement”—attacks the initiative with a litany of false claims, including that it “threatens women’s safety,” would “eliminate parental consent” for minors seeking abortions, and could “lead to unregulated and unsafe abortions” by allowing people without healthcare expertise to perform the procedure.

Those claims, though, are easily debunked by taking a look at the actual text of the amendment, which explicitly states that a patient’s healthcare provider is responsible for determining when an abortion after viability is necessary to protect a patient’s health. It also says that passage of the amendment would not override the authority of the legislature to require that a minor’s parent or guardian is notified before they obtain an abortion.

But the state’s campaign against the amendment doesn’t stop there. On the same day of the site’s launch, the Tampa Bay Times reported that the Florida Department of State was looking for evidence of fraud in the more than 30,000 citizen signatures used to get the amendment on the November ballot. Two election supervisors told the paper that the move was “highly unusual” given that the signatures had already been approved by local supervisors. The Tampa Bay Times also reported Friday that police had visited the homes of at least two voters who had signed the petition supporting Amendment 4 seeking to verify their signatures.

The anti-abortion efforts are the latest in Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ ongoing fight to defeat Amendment 4 after launching a political spending committee aimed at doing just that in May. (It has raised $3.7 million to date.) Now abortion rights advocates say DeSantis’ government is hoping to scare voters into voting against the amendment. “To our knowledge, it is unprecedented for the State to expressly advocate against a citizen-led initiative,” Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said Thursday. “This kind of propaganda issued by the state, using taxpayer money and operating outside of the political process sets a dangerous precedent.”

On Friday, the Florida Democratic Party said in a statement that it had submitted a public records request seeking information on when the agency started working on the webpage and who was involved. “Ron [DeSantis] and his buddies know they’re losing, and they’re willing to do anything—including breaking the law—to rig the results in their favor,” Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said in a statement, adding that the party is also pursuing legal action to try to have the page taken down. State Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book also said her office was investigating legal action in response to the webpage.

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration did not respond to questions from Mother Jones about how much the web page cost to establish and maintain, who demanded its creation, why it includes false and misleading information, and how officials respond to criticism about the site. Instead, the agency provided the following statement: “Part of the Agency’s mission is to provide information and transparency to Floridians on the quality of care they receive. Our new transparency page serves to educate Floridians on the state’s current abortion laws and provide information on a proposed policy change that would impact care across the state.”

Now some have warned that the DeSantis administration’s use of government resources for political purposes could be illegal. Meanwhile, polling suggests the majority of Florida voters support the amendment.

On Friday night, a Missouri judge handed down a ruling that could threaten voters’ abilities to enshrine reproductive rights in the state’s constitution this November. It is a massive setback for one of most consequential abortion ballot measures this year.

After the Supreme Court overruled Roe in its June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Missouri began enforcing its near-total abortion ban that had been dormant until Dobbs. Soon after, activists began pushing for a ballot measure, Amendment 3, to bring back abortion to the state. In May, organizers in Missouri turned in more than 380,000 signatures in their bid to get the proposed amendment on the ballot, compared to the 172,000 required.

The proposed amendment stipulates that the government cannot “deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom” and that abortion cannot be restricted in the state before fetal viability. It also says that life and health exceptions must be respected and that people cannot be prosecuted for helping someone obtain an abortion or for their own pregnancy outcomes.

On Friday, Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh ruled that the proposed Amendment 3 should be removed from the November ballot because it does not specify which specific anti-abortion laws it would repeal. (Advocates say that exact laws for repeal would be determined by future lawsuits.)

In his ruling, Limbaugh wrote that he “recognizes the gravity of the unique issues involved in this case” and would stay his ruling until Tuesday, “so that further guidance or rulings can be provided by a reviewing court.”

In a statement, Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the group behind the ballot measure initiative, called the judge’s decision a “profound injustice,” adding that the group plans to appeal. “Our fight to ensure that voters—not politicians—have the final say is far from over,” Sweet said.

Limbaugh’s ruling represents just the latest roadblock that Missouri reproductive rights advocates have encountered. As my colleague Madison Pauly reported, anti-abortion officials in the state stymied advocates’ attempts to bring a ballot measure to voters in 2019. As Madison chronicled, advocates also fought amongst themselves about whether the proposed ballot measure should seek to restore Roe or go beyond it:

In the months following the 2022 election, the group—a mix of advocates including the state ACLU and Planned Parenthood affiliates and the local activist group Abortion Action Missouri—splintered. Some members, including [Executive Director of Medical Students for Choice Pamela] Merritt, wanted to go with language that would enshrine a broad right to abortion. Others wanted to consider an amendment with baked-in compromises in the hopes of winning over more voters. They proposed letting the state impose or preserve restrictions that the larger abortion-rights movement often condemns, including a ban on procedures after so-called fetal viability—the hard-to-pin-down point in pregnancy at which a fetus has a decent chance of surviving outside the uterus. (Viability limits often include an exception for abortions needed to protect a pregnant patient’s life or health.)

Now, based on Limbaugh’s order, it seems they may not get anything they were hoping for.

On Friday night, a Missouri judge handed down a ruling that could threaten voters’ abilities to enshrine reproductive rights in the state’s constitution this November. It is a massive setback for one of most consequential abortion ballot measures this year.

After the Supreme Court overruled Roe in its June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Missouri began enforcing its near-total abortion ban that had been dormant until Dobbs. Soon after, activists began pushing for a ballot measure, Amendment 3, to bring back abortion to the state. In May, organizers in Missouri turned in more than 380,000 signatures in their bid to get the proposed amendment on the ballot, compared to the 172,000 required.

The proposed amendment stipulates that the government cannot “deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom” and that abortion cannot be restricted in the state before fetal viability. It also says that life and health exceptions must be respected and that people cannot be prosecuted for helping someone obtain an abortion or for their own pregnancy outcomes.

On Friday, Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh ruled that the proposed Amendment 3 should be removed from the November ballot because it does not specify which specific anti-abortion laws it would repeal. (Advocates say that exact laws for repeal would be determined by future lawsuits.)

In his ruling, Limbaugh wrote that he “recognizes the gravity of the unique issues involved in this case” and would stay his ruling until Tuesday, “so that further guidance or rulings can be provided by a reviewing court.”

In a statement, Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the group behind the ballot measure initiative, called the judge’s decision a “profound injustice,” adding that the group plans to appeal. “Our fight to ensure that voters—not politicians—have the final say is far from over,” Sweet said.

Limbaugh’s ruling represents just the latest roadblock that Missouri reproductive rights advocates have encountered. As my colleague Madison Pauly reported, anti-abortion officials in the state stymied advocates’ attempts to bring a ballot measure to voters in 2019. As Madison chronicled, advocates also fought amongst themselves about whether the proposed ballot measure should seek to restore Roe or go beyond it:

In the months following the 2022 election, the group—a mix of advocates including the state ACLU and Planned Parenthood affiliates and the local activist group Abortion Action Missouri—splintered. Some members, including [Executive Director of Medical Students for Choice Pamela] Merritt, wanted to go with language that would enshrine a broad right to abortion. Others wanted to consider an amendment with baked-in compromises in the hopes of winning over more voters. They proposed letting the state impose or preserve restrictions that the larger abortion-rights movement often condemns, including a ban on procedures after so-called fetal viability—the hard-to-pin-down point in pregnancy at which a fetus has a decent chance of surviving outside the uterus. (Viability limits often include an exception for abortions needed to protect a pregnant patient’s life or health.)

Now, based on Limbaugh’s order, it seems they may not get anything they were hoping for.

In June, Sam Brown, the GOP candidate for US Senate in Nevada and longtime abortion opponent, published an op-ed that said that if he were elected and a national abortion ban came up for the vote in the Senate, he would oppose the measure. This was obviously a move to defuse incumbent Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen’s effort to wield the abortion issue against him. Brown’s campaign released an accompanying press release that complained, “Jacky Rosen and Nevada Democrats have spent nearly a year lying about Sam Brown’s personal position on abortion.” With this editorial—in which Brown said, “It’s our duty, as a society, to let women know they have options”—Brown was trying to fuzzy up the picture and become less of a target on this front. That was nothing new. A review of his campaign website reveals that over the past year Brown, an Afghanistan war veteran, has steadily shifted how he presents his position.

In July 2023, Brown’s site offered a brief and clear message on abortion: “Every life is precious, and it is in our American interest that we protect the lives of unborn babies just as we would protect the life of any other American. As a Senator, I will oppose any federal funding of abortion and only support U.S. Supreme Court Justices who understand the importance of protecting Life.” This was routine, if somewhat vague, rhetoric for a politician who calls himself “pro-life.” No mention of exceptions. No talk of respecting those who support women’s freedom on this matter.

The following month, Brown’s website expanded its statement on abortion, adding that he opposed late-term abortions and abortions without parental notification. Brown noted, “Every life is precious, I learned that firsthand when I nearly lost my own life in Afghanistan.”

By the end of February, the “Life” section on Brown’s website had changed again. He still stated his opposition. But Brown added a twist: “Nevada voters have made it clear where they stand on this issue, by enshrining protections for abortion in our state law. As a U.S. Senator, I will not vote to overturn the decision of Nevadans—I will not support a national abortion ban.” He added, “We must come together, as a nation, to engage in honest dialogue to personalize—not politicize — this important issue and make sure all voices are heard.”

Brown had moved from stating his outright opposition to abortion to now saying that he would not challenge Nevada state law that protects reproductive freedom and that he would oppose an nationwide ban. (In Nevada, thanks to a 1990 referendum, abortion is legal through the the first 24 weeks of pregnancy and afterward to protect the health of the mother.) He also was calling for a productive national conversation about abortion—not merely advocating curtailing or outlawing it.

This was quite a step for Brown. The previous September, he had declined to say whether he backed a national abortion ban. He had also then refused to comment on his previous support for a 20-week abortion ban during his failed 2014 bid for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives. Touting that measure, Brown had declared at the time, “On issues of life, that is a nonnegotiable for me.” Texas law at that point included an exception for preserving the life of the mother but not for rape or incest. And during that losing campaign, Brown had even called for greater restrictions on abortion: “I think that it’s a shame that here in Texas, which is being lauded as such a conservative state with regard to the issue of life, half of Europe has stricter laws than we do here.”

Brown’s declaration of opposition to a national ban in February coincided with his wife Amy Brown revealing that she had an abortion in 2008 when she was 24 and single. She said it had caused years of anguish but had made her sympathetic to women who encounter unwanted pregnancies. Both Browns said during an emotional joint interview that they would follow the will of the people of Nevada with respect to abortion—again, a major departure from his days in Texas as a fiery anti-abortion advocate.

The current version of Brown’s website contains yet another alteration to the “Life” section. It now states, “I am pro life, with exceptions for the tragic cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother.” Brown had added the standard exceptions (though he said for the “life” not the “health” of the mother) that he had once seemed to oppose.

Brown has been no model of consistency on abortion. In fact, he has been on something of an awkward journey regarding abortion that can be seen as driven by political calculation. In Texas, he was a full-throated anti-abortion crusader. Four years after his failed campaign there, he managed the campaign for a Texas congressional candidate who called for an abortion ban with no exceptions. Brown also served as the executive board chairman of the Nevada Freedom and Faith Coalition whose national chapter has been a champion for severely restrictive anti-abortion measures.

Now, with a referendum on the Nevada ballot this November to enshrine reproductive rights within the state constitution and Brown being barraged on the issue by Rosen, he has jettisoned his past, non-negotiable support for a highly restrictive ban, embraced exceptions, and claimed he would not vote for a national prohibition.

Still, Brown is having trouble navigating this bob-and-weave course. Ever since the Nevada initiative qualified for the ballot in late June, he has declined to say publicly how he would vote for it—a dodge that looks like another step designed to keep him from being pegged as a die-hard abortion foe in a state where abortion rights are popular during an election season in which the Republican war on reproductive rights is a top issue.

Yet this week, the Nevada Independent published audio from an August 28 campaign meet and greet in which Brown, not surprisingly, privately suggested he would not vote for the measure: “I’m not for changing our existing law. Our existing law has been in place for over 34 years. The ballot measure would change the law and essentially [create] no limit on access to abortion.”

There have long been politicians who have changed their minds on abortion. But Brown has not said he has altered his view. In this case, he seems not to be evolving but evading.

In June, Sam Brown, the GOP candidate for US Senate in Nevada and longtime abortion opponent, published an op-ed that said that if he were elected and a national abortion ban came up for the vote in the Senate, he would oppose the measure. This was obviously a move to defuse incumbent Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen’s effort to wield the abortion issue against him. Brown’s campaign released an accompanying press release that complained, “Jacky Rosen and Nevada Democrats have spent nearly a year lying about Sam Brown’s personal position on abortion.” With this editorial—in which Brown said, “It’s our duty, as a society, to let women know they have options”—Brown was trying to fuzzy up the picture and become less of a target on this front. That was nothing new. A review of his campaign website reveals that over the past year Brown, an Afghanistan war veteran, has steadily shifted how he presents his position.

In July 2023, Brown’s site offered a brief and clear message on abortion: “Every life is precious, and it is in our American interest that we protect the lives of unborn babies just as we would protect the life of any other American. As a Senator, I will oppose any federal funding of abortion and only support U.S. Supreme Court Justices who understand the importance of protecting Life.” This was routine, if somewhat vague, rhetoric for a politician who calls himself “pro-life.” No mention of exceptions. No talk of respecting those who support women’s freedom on this matter.

The following month, Brown’s website expanded its statement on abortion, adding that he opposed late-term abortions and abortions without parental notification. Brown noted, “Every life is precious, I learned that firsthand when I nearly lost my own life in Afghanistan.”

By the end of February, the “Life” section on Brown’s website had changed again. He still stated his opposition. But Brown added a twist: “Nevada voters have made it clear where they stand on this issue, by enshrining protections for abortion in our state law. As a U.S. Senator, I will not vote to overturn the decision of Nevadans—I will not support a national abortion ban.” He added, “We must come together, as a nation, to engage in honest dialogue to personalize—not politicize — this important issue and make sure all voices are heard.”

Brown had moved from stating his outright opposition to abortion to now saying that he would not challenge Nevada state law that protects reproductive freedom and that he would oppose an nationwide ban. (In Nevada, thanks to a 1990 referendum, abortion is legal through the the first 24 weeks of pregnancy and afterward to protect the health of the mother.) He also was calling for a productive national conversation about abortion—not merely advocating curtailing or outlawing it.

This was quite a step for Brown. The previous September, he had declined to say whether he backed a national abortion ban. He had also then refused to comment on his previous support for a 20-week abortion ban during his failed 2014 bid for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives. Touting that measure, Brown had declared at the time, “On issues of life, that is a nonnegotiable for me.” Texas law at that point included an exception for preserving the life of the mother but not for rape or incest. And during that losing campaign, Brown had even called for greater restrictions on abortion: “I think that it’s a shame that here in Texas, which is being lauded as such a conservative state with regard to the issue of life, half of Europe has stricter laws than we do here.”

Brown’s declaration of opposition to a national ban in February coincided with his wife Amy Brown revealing that she had an abortion in 2008 when she was 24 and single. She said it had caused years of anguish but had made her sympathetic to women who encounter unwanted pregnancies. Both Browns said during an emotional joint interview that they would follow the will of the people of Nevada with respect to abortion—again, a major departure from his days in Texas as a fiery anti-abortion advocate.

The current version of Brown’s website contains yet another alteration to the “Life” section. It now states, “I am pro life, with exceptions for the tragic cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother.” Brown had added the standard exceptions (though he said for the “life” not the “health” of the mother) that he had once seemed to oppose.

Brown has been no model of consistency on abortion. In fact, he has been on something of an awkward journey regarding abortion that can be seen as driven by political calculation. In Texas, he was a full-throated anti-abortion crusader. Four years after his failed campaign there, he managed the campaign for a Texas congressional candidate who called for an abortion ban with no exceptions. Brown also served as the executive board chairman of the Nevada Freedom and Faith Coalition whose national chapter has been a champion for severely restrictive anti-abortion measures.

Now, with a referendum on the Nevada ballot this November to enshrine reproductive rights within the state constitution and Brown being barraged on the issue by Rosen, he has jettisoned his past, non-negotiable support for a highly restrictive ban, embraced exceptions, and claimed he would not vote for a national prohibition.

Still, Brown is having trouble navigating this bob-and-weave course. Ever since the Nevada initiative qualified for the ballot in late June, he has declined to say publicly how he would vote for it—a dodge that looks like another step designed to keep him from being pegged as a die-hard abortion foe in a state where abortion rights are popular during an election season in which the Republican war on reproductive rights is a top issue.

Yet this week, the Nevada Independent published audio from an August 28 campaign meet and greet in which Brown, not surprisingly, privately suggested he would not vote for the measure: “I’m not for changing our existing law. Our existing law has been in place for over 34 years. The ballot measure would change the law and essentially [create] no limit on access to abortion.”

There have long been politicians who have changed their minds on abortion. But Brown has not said he has altered his view. In this case, he seems not to be evolving but evading.

In a coveted primetime speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Monday night, three women shared the stage to speak about their harrowing personal experiences with pregnancy and abortion.

Amanda Zurawski told the story of how she was denied an abortion after going into pre-term labor well before her desired pregnancy was considered viable; the Texas woman developed a life-threatening case of sepsis and spent three days in an intensive care unit. Kentucky’s Hadley Duvall recounted how her stepfather raped her when she was 12, resulting in an (obviously) unwanted pregnancy that she (thankfully) did not carry to term due to a miscarriage. Kaitlyn Joshua discussed being turned away from two hospital emergency rooms that refused to treat her active miscarriage due to Louisiana’s strict abortion laws.

“I was in pain, bleeding so much my husband feared for my life,” Joshua said Monday. “No woman should experience what I endured, but too many have.”

The stories were jarring and emotional, and they contrasted sharply with how many Democrats have addressed abortion in the past. As recently as 2023, President Joe Biden—a devout Catholic—said he was not “big on abortion.”

But now, on the main stage of a national political convention with tens of thousands of attendees and millions more watching from home, the subject finally got stage-time proportional to its strength as a galvanizing political issue. “It’s a shift in the Democratic Party,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) tells Mother Jones. “For many years, people wouldn’t even say the word abortion out loud. I would be in a room saying, ‘We’re going to say the a-word here. We’re going to be to the point, because the harms that are being done are very blunt, they’re life and death.'”

The evolution is indicative of the changing of the guards—for starters, a person with ovaries now leads the presidential ticket—but also of abortion’s success at the polls and ballot measures since the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Reproductive rights groups have seen positive outcomes in every election in which abortion rights were tested in state referendums, including in the conservative strongholds of Ohio, Kentucky, and Kansas. Nationally, 63 percent of US adults support abortion in all or most cases, according to Pew Research Center.

On the party’s former messaging regarding abortion, Nebraska Democrat Jane Erdenberger, a convention attendee and former delegate, says: “We weren’t brave enough.”

“The best thing that happened to us as a party was to have Roe v. Wade overturned. People got so complacent. After 50 years, they just assumed it was a given, and now it’s like people are really shocked out of their lethargy,” adds Erdenberger’s husband, Mark Hoeger.

There remains some division among the left on how to discuss reproductive rights. A common rallying cry, including from Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris, is that Democrats are working to reestablish Roe and thwart Republicans from advancing a national abortion ban.

According to some convention-goers and abortion-rights groups, that’s not nearly enough. The National Institute for Reproductive Health Action Fund (NIRHAF), for example, pushed out an email this week calling for Democrats to “scrap ‘Restore Roe'” from their lexicon.

Instead, NIRH Action Fund vice president Randi Gregory says the party needs to “clearly articulate what it looks like to liberate abortion rights from the chains of government interference.”

Pressley agrees that restoring the constitutional right to obtain an abortion isn’t a sufficient end goal. “Roe was always the floor. It was never the ceiling. Even when we had Roe, there were still gaps in access,” she says, touting her efforts to repeal restrictions on federal funding for the procedure.

But she points out that Democrats are certainly less likely to pass expansive abortion-rights legislation if they aren’t elected in the first place.

“One thing at a time here,” Pressley says. “So we need to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. We need to [get a majority] in the House. We need to get the gavel back, and we need to grow our number in the Senate, because [Harris] can’t do anything without partners.”

More critically, the party can’t do anything about abortion unless they are willing to prominently talk about abortion. Them doing so wasn’t always a guarantee.

“I’ve been in reproductive rights for close to 20 years, and I have never seen abortion this up-front in a presidential race,” says Nourbese Flint, president of All Above All, an abortion rights group. “I’m extremely excited that folks are talking about it—that people are saying the word abortion.”