WOMEN ON FIRE: REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE IN THE UNITED STATES
by Salli Swartz and Diane Haven
Since the start of 2025, 370 bills have been filed in State legislatures: 243 by Republicans which intend to restrict, outlaw, and criminalize abortion, and 127 by Democrats which seek to minimize or eliminate abortion restrictions and prohibitions to protect women’s choices and their health.
The Bad News: The Assault On Reproductive Rights Continues
The biggest fight by Republicans is currently over abortion medication.
Many of the introduced bills aim to further limit access to reproductive healthcare, including imposing new restrictions on medication abortion, increasing waiting periods, and enacting more stringent parental consent laws. States are also introducing measures that target providers, such as increasing licensing requirements and imposing severe penalties for non-compliance. There are bills that attempt to prevent the mailing of abortion mediation which has been prescribed by out-of-state doctors. Other bills attempt to categorize abortion medication as a ‘controlled substance’ under FDA regulations, making it more difficult to obtain this medication when women need it.
In addition, several bills consider fetuses unborn children, thereby granting personhood, and the rights which accompany personhood, to fetuses. This legal situation raises significant concerns about the broader implications for reproductive autonomy as it could result in criminal prosecution against women who could otherwise legally use abortion to protect their lives.
The most damaging law nationwide has been enacted in Texas: HB7 or “The Woman and Child Protection Act”. This law prohibits the manufacture, distribution, mailing, transportation, delivery, prescription, and provision of medication abortion in Texas. The legislation creates a unique enforcement mechanism by granting private citizens standing to sue individuals who violate the abortion medication prohibitions, with potential damages of at least $100,000 per violation – including out-of-state sources and opens the door for more women to be prosecuted simply for seeking reproductive healthcare.
This law takes effect in December 2025.
The Good News: Hope of Resistance and Innovation
Telemedicine has been very successful in mailing abortion medication in and out of states where prohibitions and restrictions exist. This solution is particularly effective for women who cannot travel to more favorable jurisdictions due to poverty, inability to leave children, work time constraints – which are all factors that affect women living in rural areas and poor urban areas. In order to protect doctors against anti-prescription laws, California doctors are permitted to issue anonymous abortion medication prescriptions, thereby protecting them against doxing, violence, prosecution, and other heinous acts.
Many of the bills filed by Democrats are intended to grant reproductive freedom for women and in Texas, the Democrats are filing abortion bills in an attempt to assist women who may be in danger because of medically dangerous pregnancies or miscarriages.
For more information about this horrendous situation, please join our webinar featuring Dr Carrie Baker, who, on November 19th at 19h CET, will give us an overview of freedom of speech and reproductive freedom.
You can sign up here: https://www.democratsabroad.org/wc_freedom_under_fire_reproductive_rights
The webinar will be recorded for those of you who cannot participate directly.
Also for further information on the status of reproductive freedom in the United States, we recommend the Guttmacher Institute: https://www.guttmacher.org/