by Megan Burbank
Last week, President Joe Biden got himself into a kerfuffle with reproductive rights activists when he expressed his true feelings on abortion. “I’m a practicing Catholic,” he said at a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic governors. “I don’t want abortion on demand, but I thought Roe v. Wade was right.”
Continue reading OPINION | You Keep Saying ‘Abortion on Demand.’ I Don’t Think You Know What It Meansby Megan Burbank
When Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization struck down nearly 50 years of precedent for abortion rights, it opened the door to a strange new reality we’re still just beginning to understand. Without national protections for abortion, state legislatures are freshly empowered to restrict abortion access however they please, often through model legislation intended to be replicated elsewhere. That means it’s especially important to keep tabs on potential health care restrictions on their way to statehouses across the country. This session, at least one has already been introduced in Olympia, alongside efforts to throttle access to gender-affirming care and limit free speech for transgender and nonbinary kids.
Continue reading OPINION | Conservative WA Lawmakers Start 2024 With Reactionary Attacks on Gender-Affirming Careby Megan Burbank
Five days before what would’ve been the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark national protection for abortion access, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray convened a Senate briefing on the state of abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health obliterated Roe, gutting abortion access in abortion-hostile states and placing a growing burden of care on states like Washington.
Continue reading Ahead of Roe Anniversary, Sen. Patty Murray Briefs Senate Dems on the Harm Caused by Abortion BansUpdated for 2024 by Megan Burbank
Previous reporting from Megan Burbank, Jessie McKenna, and Marti McKenna
Between the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and anti-abortion restrictions that preceded it and came after, it’s a challenging time to be a person seeking abortion care. But Washington was already diverging from national trends toward anti-abortion legislation before Roe was overturned, and since Dobbs, that contrast has only deepened.
Continue reading The Emerald Guide to Abortion Access In and Around Seattleby Megan Burbank
In the days after the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back national protections for abortion access in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health last year, I heard panicky speculation about what would come next: criminalizing people for their pregnancy outcomes. I have bad news, I thought grimly. That was already happening. It’s not going to be new. It’s going to be worse.
Continue reading Emerging Data Shows Pregnant People Face a Greater Risk of Prosecution Without Roe — And Not Just For Abortionby Megan Burbank
The morning the news broke that Britney Spears had a medication abortion in secret at the height of her fame, a strange thing happened: People were kind about it. As a memoir excerpt detailing the experience overwhelmed social media, I saw messages of support and appreciation for Spears, and if there was any ire, it seemed mostly directed at Justin Timberlake, Spears’ boyfriend at the time, less for his desire not to become a parent at 20, but because even knowing all she’d been through, he would go on to slut-shame Spears in what is arguably one of the grossest clout-chasing campaigns of all time.
I hope Spears saw the messages of support. After all, she’s survived, she deserves them.
Continue reading OPINION | On Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and the Idea of an ‘Acceptable’ Abortion Storyby Vee Hua 華婷婷
by Megan Burbank
As conservative legislators continue attacks on gender-affirming care nationwide, the same small group of political actors is showing up again and again to sow fear about this life-saving medical care. While the spate of attacks on gender-affirming care might seem recent, the rhetorical strategies propelling it are straight out of the Moral Majority’s anti-abortion playbook from the 1980s. The reemergence of these strategies exemplifies the obvious nexus between anti-abortion and anti-trans policy, and should prompt a look back at the true origins of the anti-abortion movement, which also relied on selective storytelling.
Continue reading Bad Faith: Anti-LGBTQIA+ Activists Are Repurposing a Decades-Old Anti-Abortion Strategyby Megan Burbank
On Wednesday, Aug. 16, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Food and Drug Administration should revoke its approval for mifepristone, one of two drugs commonly used in medication abortions. The case has drawn widespread attention, given the impact it could have on access to mifepristone and spurred confusion about whether medication abortion is still available.
It is. Before we get into the nitty-gritty, it’s important to be clear on this point: Mifepristone remains legal and accessible in states where abortion is, and will remain that way until the case makes its way to the Supreme Court. If you take away just one piece of information from this column, that should be it. But if you want to know more, let’s dig in.
Continue reading OPINION | What The Latest Mifepristone Ruling Really Meansby Megan Burbank
As a reproductive health policy reporter, my inbox is a rich text. Every day, I field a deeply chaotic assortment of messages from abortion-rights activists, reproductive health care providers, and anti-abortion organizations peddling misinformation about abortion. (I also get weird invitations to take part in “collabs” that have nothing to do with my beat; if you do this to me, I delete without reading, sorry!) Among these messages, the latter usually presents the biggest minefield for myths about abortion: The anti-abortion movement has propagated many since the rise of the Moral Majority after Roe v. Wade was decided, and the narrative they lean heavily on — that abortion harms women and ruins lives — is easily dispatched if you look at existing data on how most people feel about abortion.
Continue reading Thinking of Counter-Protesting Abortion Protesters? There Are Better Ways to Help
