Dear Friends and Allies,
I am guessing that the disastrous developments happening in Texas and the Supreme Court have already caught your attention. But just in case: a few weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court did not stop a plainly unconstitutional six-week abortion ban, Texas’s SB8, from going into effect.
On September 20, 2021, National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), with co-counsel David Goldberg, partner at Donahue, Goldberg, and Littleton, filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in support of Respondents’ challenge to Mississippi’s law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
On March 10 and 11, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights heard oral arguments in the case of Manuela et al. v. El Salvador. El Salvador has an absolute abortion ban. Under that law, women who have abortions go to jail along with women like Manuela who, in 2008, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after suffering a miscarriage.
NAPW provides a unique and base-broadening perspective on anti-abortion legislation, including laws that seek to establish separate status for fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses. As a result, allies often ask (typically at the very last minute) for our analysis of proposed legislation that on the surface appears to impact only access to abortion or to have no impact on pregnant people at all.
NAPW recently sent a thank you letter to New York State Attorney General Letitia James to thank her for her efforts to ensure women across New York and the nation are able to access safe, legal abortions during the coronavirus (COVID-19) public health crisis as part of the multistate coalition of 21 attorneys general.
National Advocates for Pregnant Women
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The coronavirus pandemic, and our country’s lack of preparedness for it, give us an opportunity to make important observations and learn (or relearn) key lessons.
Some reports following New York’s passage of the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) asserted that the RHA somehow increases the risk of gender violence. NAPW and Professor Julie Goldscheid (CUNY Law School) authored a statement challenging those claims, and other false claims linking laws criminalizing abortion and related feticide laws with protection of women from violence.
National Advocates for Pregnant Women and If/When/How wrote and organized a letter sent to the FDA, signed by organizations and experts in reproductive health and rights, public health, harm reduction, and HIV/AIDS. The letter opposes the recent warning letters targeting mifepristone and misoprostol as dangerous, and urges the FDA to remove the REMS for mife.
February 21, 2019
Broadening the Conversation About and Celebration of New York’s Reproductive Health Act (RHA)• The RHA protects and values all women – including those who support abortion rights, those who profoundly oppose them, and everyone in between.
Indiana v. Purvi Patel
Despite extensive public outcry, including petitions to the prosecutor, Purvi Patel was charged with feticide and ͞negligent treatment of a child͟ in Indiana in 2013-14 for allegedly seeking to terminate her pregnancy at home with medication.
