Contemplate This from NPR : NPR

Two years in the past subsequent month, the Supreme Court docket overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark resolution guaranteeing a federal proper to an abortion.

It was an end result many years within the making – however to abortion opponents, the battle is unfinished. Now they’re setting their sights on banning mifepristone, a drug generally utilized in medical abortions. Abortion rights opponents have filed a number of lawsuits, together with one awaiting a choice from the Supreme Court docket.

Abortion treatment has made the process extra accessible. Since June 2022, the variety of abortions carried out within the U.S. has really gone up: On common, there have been about 4,000 extra abortions monthly in 2023 in comparison with 2022, in line with the Society of Household Planning’s WeCount mission.

One issue driving that enhance has been the rise in telehealth abortion – the place sufferers obtain abortion treatment within the mail after consulting with a clinician. Telehealth abortions now make up 19% of all abortions within the U.S., in line with Wecount.

“It is inexpensive. It is handy, and it feels extra personal,” says Jillian Barovic, a midwife and one of many cofounders of Juniper Midwifery, which gives treatment abortion through telehealth in six states the place abortion is authorized.

You are studying the Contemplate This text, which unpacks one main information story every day. Subscribe right here to get it delivered to your inbox, and hearken to extra from the Contemplate This podcast.

Efforts to additional prohibit abortion rights

As abortions proceed regardless of state bans, activists are pushing for additional restrictions, together with the criminalization of sufferers who pursue abortions, and banning procedures like IVF.

T. Russell Hunter leads a bunch opposing all abortions, with no exceptions – they name themselves “abortion abolitionists.” He accuses mainstream anti-abortion teams of being too keen to simply accept incremental restrictions inconsistent with their messaging.

“You’ll be able to’t say, ‘Life begins at conception … however we will permit abortion within the first 5 weeks,'” Hunter says. “If life begins at conception, and also you consider that human life have to be protected, nicely, you are caught logically.”

Hunter, who is predicated in Oklahoma, opposes IVF and believes that embryos ought to have authorized rights. He argues that sufferers who search abortions and anybody who helps them must be charged with homicide.

Kristine Harhoef lives in Texas and has been concerned in anti-abortion activism for over a decade. She’s annoyed that even the place abortion is banned, sufferers are nonetheless accessing abortion treatment. She’s been speaking with lawmakers in Texas and neighboring states, making an attempt to advertise laws that will deal with abortion equivalent to murder.

“And the penalty might be something from nothing in any respect, if she was actually harmless, actually pressured into that abortion,” she says, “to a tremendous or group service, to, sure, some jail time and presumably even the loss of life penalty.”

What all of it may imply for Republicans in November

The difficulty of abortion rights might be a troublesome needle to string for Republicans.

A number of latest polls by Pew and the Public Faith Analysis Institute affirm that a transparent majority of voters say abortion must be authorized in lots of or all instances.

And whereas abortion abolitionists take purpose at IVF, Republicans, together with former President Donald Trump, are voicing help for the process. After an Alabama Supreme Court docket resolution dominated that embryos must be legally thought of kids, Republicans there rushed to go a regulation designed to guard IVF suppliers.

Activists like Harhoef, who help the loss of life penalty for abortion sufferers, are nonetheless within the minority of abortion opponents. However they’ve made strides in state legislatures, together with a invoice that made it to the Louisiana Home ground in 2022.

Rachel Bitecofer, a Democratic political strategist, says the road between the mainstream anti-abortion rights motion and the abortion abolitionists is kind of skinny.

“[Republicans] have been concentrating on these of us for 25, 30 years now with ever-increasing hyperbolic rhetoric about abortion and defining any type of abortion as an act of homicide,” Bitecofer stated.

“So when you settle for that abortion is homicide, then it is smart that you’ve fairly inflexible necessities to cease it in any respect prices,” she added.

In right now’s episode of Contemplate This, NPR nationwide political correspondent Sarah McCammon dives into the abortion abolitionist motion. Click on the play button on the prime of the web page to listen to the complete story.

This episode was produced by Karen Zamora and Brianna Scott. It was edited by Megan Pratz and Courtney Dorning. Elissa Nadworny contributed reporting. Our govt producer is Sami Yenigun.