A few important things about the Texas lawsuit against a New York abortion provider:

1) Ken Paxton appears to be lying about the patient suffering "serious complications" that "required medical intervention."

2) We need to talk about how Paxton found out about this abortion On the abortion 'complication' claim: Paxton says in his press release that abortion pills "caused serious harm to this patient."

This appears to be a lie—one that is being repeated by mainstream outlets

I’m still thinking about this woman in Georgia—miscarrying and hemorrhaging ‘dinner plate-sized clots’—who, even after qualifying for an abortion, couldn’t skip the state’s 24-hour waiting period because she wasn’t close enough to dying.

This is torture

usatoday.com/story/news/hea… And this is the thing the anti-abortion movement wants to normalize: our suffering. To them, what happened to this woman is a 'success story' - proof their laws work because at least she's still alive. Who cares how much she had to unnecessarily suffer?

Another dead woman.

Josseli Barnica was killed by the abortion ban in Texas, denied miscarriage care because her fetus still had a heartbeat.

They are killing us.

propublica.org/article/jossel… Think about how many women have died who stories aren't being published. Think about how many deaths won't be counted as abortion ban deaths but 'standard' maternal deaths.

Republicans want to normalize this. They want us to believe that their laws aren't responsible.

BREAKING: Court docs show that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis directed the threats against television stations airing ads for a pro-choice ballot measure

His office wrote the letters telling stations they'd be criminally charged if they didn't stop running ads for Amendment 4 Story is up at the newsletter now, but the health department lawyer who signed and sent the letter revealed in an affidavit that a prewritten letter was sent from DeSantis' deputies, and that he was directed to send it to media outlets

At Abortion, Every Day right now:

In the last weeks before the election, Republicans have revived their case against mifepristone. They want to ban mailing the medication (essentially passing a back-door ban), revoke access for minors entirely & more.

This is a BIG DEAL. The amended complaint comes from the Attorneys General of Idaho, Missouri and Kansas.

It targets shield state providers, specifically, arguing that the FDA enabled “a 50-state abortion drug mailing economy, undermining state abortion laws.”

CBS' live fact check of the debate says that Project 2025 doesn't call for a registry of pregnancies. But it does: There is also no mention on @CBSNews' fact checking site that a "minimum national standard" is the same thing as a national abortion ban

MINIMUM NATIONAL STANDARD IS THE SAME THING AS A NATIONAL ABORTION BAN I have been banging the drum on this language trick FOREVER and it's so ridiculous. The moderators should not let him get away with this. Ask him how a "minimum national standard" is different from a ban!

Full story tonight in the newsletter, but I had to share this now:

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, arguably the most powerful anti-abortion group in the country, is launching a half million dollar ad campaign blaming pro-choicers for the deaths of two women in Georgia. That’s right, the group that passed the laws that killed Candi Miller and Amber Nicole Thurman are co-opting their deaths to try to stave off voter fury.

It's truly the most grotesque display I've seen in the over 20 years I've been doing this work
sbaprolife.org/newsroom/press…

Let's be really clear here: When conservatives say that states allow 'post birth abortion' what they're actually talking about is palliative care for fatally ill newborns. When a baby is born too early to survive or has a fatal condition, parents will sometimes choose to forgo invasive, painful *and futile* medical interventions so they can say goodbye peacefully, without wires or breathing machines.

That's who they're calling "executioners."

Ron DeSantis is *sending cops* to the homes of people who signed a petition to get abortion on the Florida ballot.

This comes the same week that the Florida department of state requested information on 36,000 voters who signed the Amendment 4 petition
h/t @AnnaForFlorida Republicans claim they're looking for fraud, using the same dept of “Election Crimes and Security" that DeSantis used to target Black voters in 2022.

They don't care that voters want abortion rights restored—and if they need to dismantle democracy to keep it banned, so be it

If you want to know what dystopia looks like, it's this YouTube video from the South Dakota Health Department telling doctors when they're allowed to save pregnant women's lives I wish I was exaggerating: This is a government video instructing doctors are what conditions are sufficiently life-threatening enough to end women's pregnancies

There have been a ton of headlines over the last few days about JD Vance promising that Trump won’t support national abortion ban.

But what reporters haven’t picked up on is that Vance used the word ‘ban’ in a very particular way to lie in plain sight. If you read my newsletter, you know I’ve been tracking conservatives’ efforts to redefine ‘ban’ for over a year. Interviews like this are *exactly* why I’m so obsessive about language. So let’s get into it…

A few things to know about Project 2025:

It doesn't just call for every abortion to be reported to the federal government, but also every miscarriage, stillbirth, and "incidental" pregnancy loss from medical treatments like chemo

https://x.com/JessicaValenti/status/1818331918162661865

Project 2025 also calls for a Trump presidency to redefine emergency contraception as an 'abortifacient' (they call it the “week after” pill), use the FDA to repeal approval of abortion medication, and use Comstock to ban the shipping of abortion pills & supplies

In the newsletter right now: Georgia cops are investigating a miscarriage, and it's following all of the traditional markers of pregnancy criminalization

Link in bio It's so important that people understand the way criminalization operates - and the way it humiliates and punishes pregnant people

Since I'm on a roll with bitching about mainstream coverage of abortion rights:

Remember how many headlines claimed Republicans removed a national ban from their platform? I pointed out that wasn't true because of language on the 14th amendment *and* so-called 'late' abortion Essentially, anti-abortion lawmakers have been redefining 'late' abortion as anything after the 1st trimester. (It's is not a real medical term, so they define however they want) It's rhetorical cover for their national ban -they say they're just limiting 'extreme late' abortion

The @nytimes is has *deceptively edited a JD Vance quote* to make it appear that he opposes a national ban. Here's the 2022 quote they use:

“Ohio is going to want to have a different abortion policy from California, from New York, and I think that’s reasonable." Here's the full quote, where Vance clearly calls for a national ban. This is journalistic malpractice.

In Montana, the Secretary of State’s office has been removing the names of registered voters from a pro-choice petition - the latest in a long line of anti-abortion attacks on democracy across the country

Link in bio In Missouri, voters got text messages warning them not to sign a pro-choice petition because the folks collecting signatures were trying to steal their identities

The fact that the @nytimes still has this 100% false headline up is malpractice. Just admit you were duped and issue a correction! Bc this is not a small fuck up - it's a big one! And it's an error that is handing the Trump campaign exactly what they wanted: a narrative about him pushing the GOP to be more 'moderate' on abortion rights, and an inroad to Republican women voters

Republicans claim they don't support the Right to Contraception Act because there's "no threat" to birth control and Democrats are "fear-mongering."

Why, then, did Sen. Jodi Ernst say she introduced her own birth control bill to stop any protection of emergency contraception? It's almost as if there's a VERY REAL THREAT to contraception!

I'll have more in the newsletter tonight, but that's a big deal. Republicans are admitting they think the morning after pill is an abortifacient

THIS IS WILD:

Ingrid Skop, a well-known anti-abortion activist who testifies in favor of bans and says women don't need abortions to save their lives, has been appointed to Texas' maternal mortality committee
houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t… There is no overstating how fucking wacko this lady is. She argues that women with life-threatening pregnancies should be forced into vaginal labor or C-SECTIONS instead of abortions

South Dakota anti-abortion groups are doing something WILD:

They're calling the voters that signed a petition to put abortion on the ballot, misrepresenting themselves as *employees of the Secretary of State*, and pressuring them to withdraw their name from the petition The group behind the effort was formed by a GOP lawmaker! State Rep. Jon Hansen also happens to be the vice president of South Dakota Right to Life.

Oh, and he passed a law that allows the pro-choice measure to be invalidated if they can get enough people to remove their names