Wisconsin Examiner – Informed Comment

We don’t Need to let Fossil Fuels and Forest Fires Choke Us — Green Energy is Here and its Price is Plummeting

Wisconsin Examiner — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 04:06:24 +0000

Dr. Joel Charles

( Wisconsin Examiner ) – Every day last week I woke up dismayed to see the haze from the Canadian wildfire smoke.

I am dismayed because as a rural family doctor I know how damaging this smoke is to my community. I am dismayed not just at the harm this summer’s smoke is doing to my community. I am dismayed because I know how much worse climate change will make this problem if we don’t act. But I am also hopeful, because our society has the tools to address climate change, and because you, dear reader, have a role in making sure those tools get used.

You should protect yourself and your family from this summer’s climate smoke by taking informed precautions. You can protect yourself and your family from longer term climate threats by raising your voice and making sure the EPA sets the strongest possible safeguards against vehicle and power plant pollution.

My colleagues and I have watched our vulnerable patients get sick from this smoke. Super-fine particles in air pollution cross the lungs into the blood, causing inflammatory damage in nearly every part of the body, and can even cross the placenta to harm developing fetuses.

For healthy people, in the short term, smoke like this mostly causes irritation. But for people with lung or heart disease, even short exposure can be dangerous. Over the long term, particulates harm everyone.

Whether particulate air pollution comes from burning forests or burning fossil fuels, there is no safe level of exposure. Particulate air pollution contributes to preterm birth, stillbirths, delayed cognitive development in children, asthma, COPD, heart disease, cancer, and dementia. When you do the work I do, you know those are real impacts, on real people.

It is a tragic irony that while the U.S. has made dramatic progress in improving health over the last 50 years by limiting traditional pollutants from fossil fuels, our failure to adequately limit greenhouse gas pollution is now driving climate change, igniting wildfires, and erasing much of those gains.

Even without climate-driven wildfire smoke, burning fossil fuels damages our health daily. At least 1,900 Wisconsinites die every year from fossil air pollution. It costs us at least $21 billion dollars a year in health-care costs and decreased productivity.

We will save money and improve our health immediately by kicking the fossil fuel habit, it’s a win-win. When you consider the health threat of climate change on top of that, it gives us urgency in kicking that fossil fuel habit.

The good news is that we have better, cleaner, and cheaper ways to get the energy we need. Right now the EPA is considering stronger vehicle and power plant pollution limits, giving us a chance to both clean our air now and limit future worsening of climate change, including wildfires.

Via Pixabay

But just as Big Tobacco blocked progress on addressing the harms of smoking, fossil fuel executives and the politicians they own are standing in the way of this opportunity, keeping us stuck using dirty, expensive fossil fuels that make us sick and destabilize the world.

It’s worth looking at past lessons. Students of the Clean Air Act know that when better energy technology is available the benefits from implementing it typically far outweigh the costs. Fossil fuel executives who want weak environmental standards routinely overestimate the logistical challenges, negative impact, and cost of transitioning to cleaner technologies. Transitioning is almost always easier, quicker, cheaper and more beneficial than expected. Given that well-established precedent, the EPA should discount what is said by those who argue for weaker air pollution safeguards.

From where I sit, as a former kid with asthma in a poor neighborhood, as a doctor who takes care of vulnerable people and as a father concerned about the world I leave my children, I find the arguments for weak vehicle and power plant pollution limits not only lacking in evidence but, frankly, morally insufficient.

By coming together and demanding better, our society weakened Big Tobacco’s grip on us. Now we face a new challenge: kicking the fossil fuel habit and protecting ourselves from the climate threats we’re seeing outside our windows every day this summer.

It’s time to stand up to the fossil fuel industry the same way. If you want to quit fossil fuels and breathe easy, visit wiclimatehealth.org/EPA where citizens are weighing in, telling the EPA to finalize the strongest possible safeguards against vehicle and power plant pollution.

Dr. Joel Charles

Dr. Joel Charles is a family physician practicing in rural southwest Wisconsin where he serves as medical director for the Kickapoo Valley Medical Clinic. From the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health he received his MD and Master of Public Health degrees, the latter focusing on climate and health. He attended both those programs as a recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholarship. He completed residency at Sutter Santa Rosa Family Medicine. Upon returning to Wisconsin he helped found Healthy Climate Wisconsin, a fast growing group of health professionals committed to advocating for equitable solutions to the climate crisis in order to protect Wisconsinites. His young children Finn and Juniper help him remember why he does this work.

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Wisconsin Examiner

EPA Again Proposes Restrictions on Power Plant Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Wisconsin Examiner — Fri, 19 May 2023 04:04:38 +0000

By: Robert Zullo

( The Wisconsin Examiner ) – The Obama administration’s 2015 Clean Power Plan — intended to cut carbon emissions from power plants — was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Trump administration’s much-criticized replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy rule, derided as a “tortured series of misreadings” of the U.S. Clean Air Act, was also tossed by a federal court.

But the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is back at bat with a new proposed rule to regulate fossil fuel power plant carbon dioxide, which is responsible for about a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

EPA says its new rule, released Thursday, is based on “cost-effective and available control technologies,” and will avoid as much as 617 million metric tons of CO2 emissions through 2042, the equivalent of reducing the annual emissions of 137 million passenger vehicles. The agency claims it will also prevent hundreds of premature deaths and hospital visits, thousands of asthma attacks and relieve the burden of environmental justice communities disproportionately afflicted by power plant pollution. In 2022 alone, the electric power sector accounted for about 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions.

The rule strengthens standards for new fossil-fuel plants, (mostly natural gas) and establishes emissions guidelines for states to follow in limiting carbon pollution from existing fossil fuel plants, which can be coal, gas or oil-fired.

“EPA’s proposal relies on proven, readily available technologies to limit carbon pollution and seizes the momentum already underway in the power sector to move toward a cleaner future,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “Alongside historic investment taking place across America in clean energy manufacturing and deployment, these proposals will help deliver tremendous benefits to the American people — cutting climate pollution and other harmful pollutants, protecting people’s health and driving American innovation.”

However, some power plant operators warn it could imperil electric reliability by accelerating power plant closures before enough cleaner resources are ready. And some environmentalists say technologies the rule cites — carbon capture and storage and co-firing natural gas plants with clean burning hydrogen — are far from proven at the scale that will be required.

Others say the rule could be improved by setting lower thresholds for applicability (as proposed it only applies to the largest and most frequently used gas plants.

Reliability and sustainability

The Electric Power Supply Association, a trade group that represents competitive power generators, warned that the rule could intensify potential future electric reliability challenges. Indeed, some regulators fear that the increasing pace of power plant retirements, combined with increasing electrification in transportation and other sectors and the difficulty of getting new, primarily renewable resources sited and connected to the grid, could create shortfalls in electric supply in the near future.

Via Pixabay

“Once again, aspirational policy is getting ahead of operational reality,” EPSA President and CEO Todd Snitchler said in a statement. ”If finalized, these aggressive rules will undoubtedly drive up energy costs and lead to a substantial number of power plant retirements when experts have warned that we are already facing a reliability crisis due to accelerated retirements of dispatchable resources.”

The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned electric utilities that provide electric service to more than 235 million people in all 50 states, was more measured.

“Just as we do with any rulemaking, we will assess EPA’s proposed new regulations through the lens of whether they align with our priorities and support our ability to provide customers with the reliable clean energy they need at an affordable cost,” Edison CEO Tom Kuhn said. Kuhn said carbon emissions from the power sector are as low as they were in 1984 despite electric use climbing 73% over the past four decades.

Priorities for electric companies in the final rule, expected to go into effect sometime next year, are for compliance deadlines to align with “existing transition plans” and “recognition of the critical role existing and new natural gas generation plays,” Kuhn said. The utility industry also wants “a range of compliance flexibilities” that include hydrogen and carbon capture and storage “when they are commercially available at scale and cost.”

Several environmental and renewable energy industry groups celebrated the proposed rule.

“Power plants have been allowed to pump deadly carbon dioxide pollution into the air we breathe, threatening our communities and our future, with nearly no federal limits – until now. Today’s proposal marks a significant step forward, and we’re pleased to see the Biden administration continue to address climate pollution in a serious way,” said Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club.

The American Council on Renewable Energy called it “an important step forward” that comes as the threat posed by climate change becomes increasingly severe.

“It is clear that we need a regulatory framework for reducing carbon emissions to complement the helpful incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act if we are to achieve our climate targets,” ACORE said.

‘Putting forward their very best foot’

But can the rule survive another expected legal challenge?

Patrick Morrisey, the Republican attorney general of West Virginia who sued the EPA over the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, was quick to challenge the legitimacy of the new proposed rule.

“Based upon what we currently know about this proposal, it is not going to be upheld, and it just seems designed to scare more coal-fired power plants into retirement — the goal of the Biden administration,” Morrisey said in a statement Thursday. “That tactic is unacceptable, and this rule appears to utterly fly in the face of the rule of law. The U.S. Supreme Court has placed significant limits on what the EPA can do — we plan on ensuring that those limits are upheld, and we expect that we would once again prevail in court against this out-of-control agency.”

Julie McNamara, a deputy policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the legal issue has never been whether EPA has the authority to regulate carbon emissions but rather how that power is exercised. With the Clean Power Plan, the Supreme Court ruled the agency overreached, finding that it could not direct power plants to shift from fossil fuels to cleaner sources like wind and solar. Rather, it held the EPA could set emissions limits by determining the “best system of emission reduction” for existing sources at that facility, not force a change in generation source.

The new rule, she said, is more narrowly focused and tailored to the confines of the Supreme Court ruling.

“EPA has been incredibly thoughtful about this and are putting forward their very best foot to try to have a defensible rule,” McNamara said. “It’s a certainty these will go to the courts but it’s not a certainty that the courts will take it up.”

McNamara said that when the rule becomes finalized next year, it will be up to states to submit plans for compliance.

“It’s up to the states to say what is the most cost effective and forward looking approach to achieving these emissions reductions,” she said.

Brian Murray, director of Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, said the rule builds on the array of clean energy incentives in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

“Putting a regulation on top of that means that the regulation itself is more economically achievable because of the subsidies,” he said. “The IRA is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the reductions that are being sought by the administration.”

Joining with many states’, utilities’ and corporations’ own decarbonization goals, the rule adds a lot of momentum that might be tough to derail.

“You take all these together and everything is walking in the same direction,” Murray said.

Carbon capture questions

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit focused on environmental activism, called carbon capture “a fossil fuel industry propaganda scheme” that’s wasted billions of dollars and produced “a series of spectacular failures.”

An October report from the Congressional Research Service said the U.S. Department of Energy has funded carbon capture research and development since “at least 1997” and that Congress has provided $9.2 billion since 2010 in annual appropriations for the DOEs’ Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment program.

The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law included billions more for carbon capture facilities. Most existing carbon capture projects use the CO2 to enhance oil production in aging oil wells. The first and only U.S. power plant capturing carbon in large quantities was the Petra Nova project in Texas, though carbon capture was suspended in 2020, the report says.

“There is broad agreement that costs for constructing and operating (carbon capture and storage) would need to decrease before the technologies could be widely deployed. In the view of many proponents, greater CCS deployment is fundamental to reduce CO2 emissions,” the report says. “In contrast, some stakeholders do not support CCS as a mitigation option, citing concerns with continued fossil fuel combustion and the uncertainties of long-term underground CO2 storage.”

Andres Restrepo, a senior attorney with the Sierra Club, said the expansion of fossil fuel plants is “incompatible with a livable future” but noted that because of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the West Virginia v. EPA case, blending natural gas with hydrogen for power production and carbon capture “form the basis for the strongest possible standards that the EPA can legally propose.”

The EPA’s own projections show that many more power plants are likely to retire rather than install carbon capture, he added.

“We also believe the standards are likely to help deter some of the expected build-out of new gas plants in the first place,” Restrepo said. “Therefore, these standards are much more likely to reduce climate emissions and improve public health than simply maintaining the status quo.”

Robert Zullo

Robert Zullo is a national energy reporter based in southern Illinois focusing on renewable power and the electric grid. Robert joined States Newsroom in 2018 as the founding editor of the Virginia Mercury. Before that, he spent 13 years as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Louisiana. He has a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. He grew up in Miami, Fla., and central New Jersey

Published under Creative Commons License 4.0

The Wisconsin Examiner

The Dobbs Effect? In Seismic Shift for Wisconsin and the Nation, Progressives attain Majority on State Supreme Court

Wisconsin Examiner — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 04:04:33 +0000

By: Henry Redman –

( Wisconsin Examiner) – As Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz took the stage at her election victory party Tuesday night, the three current members of the liberal minority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court watched from off stage, arm-in-arm, as they took in the moment they became a majority.

Protasiewicz, a liberal, handily beat conservative former Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly on Tuesday for a vacant seat on the court. Her win marks a massive change in Wisconsin’s political landscape that is likely to upend the state’s heavily gerrymandered political maps as well as its recently reinstated 19th-century criminal ban on abortions.

The technically nonpartisan race for the seat set to be vacated by retiring Justice Patience Roggensack broke national fundraising and spending records as the two major political parties, out-of-state billionaires and thousands of individual donors gave money in an effort to determine the ideological swing of the court.

In a state known for its remarkably close elections, Protasiewicz pulled away from Kelly in the early going, racking up a massive lead in the largely Democratic Dane and Milwaukee Counties while keeping it close in the traditionally Republican suburban counties surrounding Milwaukee that have been turning bluer in recent elections.

Protasiewicz ran a campaign that explicitly told voters her “personal values” that women should have the right to an abortion and that the state’s political maps are “rigged” — saying those beliefs wouldn’t weigh on how she hears cases on those issues. She also painted Kelly as an extremist whose history of siding with his own campaign donors when they brought cases before him, his work with the Republican party and his endorsement from anti-abortion groups made him unfit for the court.

On Tuesday night, Protasiewicz said Wisconsinites had voted for “a better and brighter future where our rights and freedoms are protected.”

“These results mean two very important and special things,” she said in her victory speech. “First, it means Wisconsin voters have made their voices heard, they’ve chosen to reject partisan extremism in this state, and second it means our democracy will always prevail.”

The three current liberal members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court watch as Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz delivers her victory speech. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Kelly, who throughout the campaign complained about Protasiewicz’s directness about her values and said that he, unlike her, would be an impartial judge, delivered a bitter concession speech in which he declared that Protasiewicz wasn’t a “worthy opponent” and that her campaign was “beneath contempt.” Nearly three years after he lost to current liberal Justice Jill Karofsky by 10 points in his failed re-election campaign, he said, in closing, “I wish Wisconsin the best of luck, cuz I think it’s gonna need it.”

During the race, Kelly’s campaign ran an ad that was a shot-for-shot remake of the Willie Horton ad, which ran during the 1988 presidential race and is widely derided as the most racist in political history. Many of his ads and the ads of the outside groups supporting him targeted sentencing decisions that Protasiewicz had made as she served on the Milwaukee County bench. Outside political groups supporting his candidacy took the unusual step of pulling an ad off the air after the victim of the sexual assault they highlighted spoke out, saying the group had harassed her and the ad was inaccurate.

“Now I say this not because we did not prevail. I do not say this because of the rancid slanders that were launched against me, although that was bad enough, but that is not my concern,” Kelly said in his concession speech. “My concern is to damage done to the institution of the court. My opponent is a serial liar. She’s disregarded judicial ethics. She’s demeaned the judiciary with her behavior. This is the future that we have to look forward to in Wisconsin.”

In Milwaukee, Democrats gathered to look into that future and liked what they saw.

Outside the ballroom at the Saint Kate Arts Hotel, Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) ran up to Rep. Evan Goyke (D-Milwaukee) — who recently announced he will be leaving the Legislature to run for Milwaukee City Attorney.

“You sure you want to leave now?” she yelled at him.

Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), said the new liberal court’s coming decisions — and the return of competitive elections to Wisconsin, the result she anticipates from the court’s likely consideration of the state’s gerrymandered political maps, will be a huge benefit for the whole state.

“Obviously in the coming term we’re going to see huge cases on voting rights, abortion, consumer protection, the environment, democracy, and people are going to see those impacts right away,” she told the Wisconsin Examiner. “And when we have fair maps, that gives us a ticket to compete. Wisconsinites could have the kind of government we had for most of my childhood. That elections could go either way, if you run hard you can win but you’re going to have to persuade

the voters and not just capture them in a gerrymandered map.”

Ben Wikler, the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin who has overseen a liberal takeover of the state’s executive and now judicial branches, called the result a “tectonic shift,” pointing to the potential new legislative maps and the series of Supreme Court decisions he said will make most Wisconsinites happy rather than “feeling a pit of dread in their stomachs.”

“Democrats, all we’ve dreamed of and fought for is an even playing field, where if you win a majority of the votes you can win a majority of seats in Congress and the Legislature and potentially have the majority set the laws,” he told the Examiner. “Now there’s a path to that becoming a reality. It’s something most Americans take for granted and it’s been almost beyond imagining in the tipping point state of the nation.”

On stage, as Protasiewicz wrapped up her speech, she invited Justices Karofsky, Ann Walsh Bradley and Rebecca Dallet to the stage and the four of them raised their arms together, as the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s new majority.

Henry Redman

Henry Redman is a staff reporter for the Wisconsin Examiner who focuses on covering Wisconsin’s towns and rural areas. He previously covered crime and courts at the Daily Jefferson County Union. A lifelong Midwesterner, he was born in Cleveland, Ohio and graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a degree in journalism in May 2019.

Featured image: “The soon-to-be four member majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Jill Karofsky, Rebecca Dallet, newly elected Janet Protasiewicz and Ann Walsh Bradley. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner).”

Wisconsin Examinater

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Ending a pregnancy in 14 states leaves few Options. Some Americans are looking to Europe and India for help

Wisconsin Examiner — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 04:02:10 +0000

By: Kelcie Mosely Morris –

( Wisconsin Examiner) – The pills came in a dark salmon-colored envelope sealed with a plastic covering that traveled more than 7,000 miles, over a dozen time zones from Nagpur, India, in almost exactly one week.

States with abortion bans struggle to stop mailed abortion pills from overseas

They were placed partially under the doormat of a home in a state with one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the United States, where zero clinics or pharmacies dispense the medication and the closest option for an in-person procedure is at least an hour to four hours away.

It is, advocates say, one of the only options left for those seeking abortions in one of the 14 states with criminal penalties for health care providers who perform the procedure.

The process of ordering the medication from Aid Access, a nonprofit organization founded by Dr. Rebecca Gomperts in 2018, is cobbled together in segments. From the organization’s headquarters in Austria, Gomperts acts as the prescribing gynecologist for the person ordering the pills on the Aid Access website. It’s one of the only services that allows people to order the medication as a “just in case” option, as the pills don’t expire for two years with proper storage.

Payment of $105 (about 98 euros) is made separately via PayPal, and once payment is complete, Gomperts sends her prescription to the pharmacy. There is also an option for financial assistance.

Mifepristone and misoprostol are used in combination to end a pregnancy, typically before 12 weeks of gestation, and the drugs are used to help manage early miscarriages. Mifepristone is taken first to stop the production of the progesterone hormone, which is needed to continue a pregnancy. Misoprostol is then taken to induce contractions in the uterus to expel the pregnancy.

Mifepristone was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000, but it is under legal challenges in court and legislatures across the country are attempting to restrict access to the drug. On Friday night, Wyoming’s governor signed into law a ban on medication-induced abortions. A lawsuit challenging the FDA’s approval process for mifepristone is ongoing in Texas, where a federal judge could order the agency to revoke its approval after more than two decades. Other states are attempting to restrict access by threatening legal action against retail pharmacies and any other suppliers of the drug.

An email notification is sent when the package ships, with detailed instructions about how to take the medication, the potential risks involved, side effects and pain management and when to seek medical attention. The email also includes resources for hotlines with people available for emotional support or to provide answers to medical questions.

Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash

The package itself includes a box with one mifepristone pill and four misoprostol pills, and a separate package contains 12 misoprostol pills. The combination box is enough for pregnancies that are less than 12 weeks’ gestation, while the 12 pills are designed for pregnancies of more than 12 weeks.

By email, Gomperts told States Newsroom her organization is receiving more than 1,000 emails per day from individuals looking for help. Many of them also cannot afford the full price of the drugs. In February, Gomperts said 57% of those who paid for the drugs were able to pay less than 50 euros, or about $53.

“It is important to continue this work because the people we help cannot travel to other states to get a safe abortion,” Gomperts said.

Alabama has already threatened prosecution under different law for taking abortion pills

Gomperts grew up in the Netherlands and became passionate about providing abortion care during her work for Greenpeace, according to the New York Times. She has worked to provide abortions for women in countries around the world, including Spain, Morocco, Guatemala and Ireland, when the country still had a strict abortion ban.

Christine Ryan, legal director of the Global Justice Center, is from Ireland and told States Newsroom she still lived there when the abortion ban was in place. It was repealed in 2018 after the high-profile case of a woman who died from a septic infection after she was denied abortion care during a miscarriage.

Ryan said witnessing those events and following Gomperts’ work is what made her decide to get involved in reproductive rights.

“Rebecca Gomperts has been like a guardian angel to women worldwide for decades,” Ryan said.

Gomperts used the same “workaround” to send the drugs to Irish women when it was banned, Ryan said, since she is based in another country.

Thirteen states across U.S. have abortion bans in place, nine of which do not include exceptions for cases of rape or incest. The bans do not have criminal penalties in place for the pregnant person, and while Texas, Oklahoma and Idaho have civil enforcement laws that allow family members or the pregnant person to sue medical providers for their role in an abortion, the suits cannot be brought against the pregnant person.

That has not stopped some states from threatening to prosecute individuals for taking abortion pills under different existing statutes. In January, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said the state could prosecute people under a chemical endangerment law that has been used to prosecute women who use illegal substances during pregnancy. It’s unclear if that law would apply to mifepristone and misoprostol, which are legal drugs approved by the FDA. The U.S. Department of Justice also issued an opinion in December stating the mailing of the drugs to a particular jurisdiction is not sufficient basis for “concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.”

The Wyoming Legislature also passed a ban on medication abortion in March, which Gov. Mark Gordon signed Friday.

Although Politico and the New York Times reported this month that Walgreens confirmed it would not sell the medication in up to 20 states where attorneys general had threatened legal repercussions for doing so, a Walgreens spokesman told States Newsroom in a statement, “We want to be very clear about what our position has always been: Walgreens plans to dispense Mifepristone in any jurisdiction where it is legally permissible to do so. Once we are certified by the FDA, we will dispense this medication consistent with federal and state laws.‘’

While that will make it difficult for individuals to receive mifepristone from a pharmacy, Ryan said it won’t be as easy to enforce bans on mailed pills.

“The authorities in [states with abortion bans] — who are they going to try to prosecute in terms of the mailing of these pills?” Ryan said.

Idaho anti-abortion activist: We need penalties for sending ‘human pesticide’ to women

Brandi Swindell, founder and president of anti-abortion clinic Stanton Healthcare, told States Newsroom she thinks the mailing of abortion pills is a major problem that she called “creepy” and said reminds her of a drug cartel.

“We have these — not only out-of-state — but out of country groups that are pimping a human pesticide that could have very serious ramifications on a woman physically and emotionally, can impact her mental health, her physical well-being,” Swindell said. “And they are coming into states where we have clear abortion laws, where we have gone through the legal process, the legislative process. … And they’re going to try to sell and pimp these drugs preying on women that are in a potential crisis or unexpected pregnancy situation, a vulnerable situation.”

Idaho has a near-total ban on abortions at any stage of pregnancy, with affirmative court defenses to save the pregnant person’s life and for rape and incest if a police report is provided. Swindell said she is working with state lawmakers in Idaho, where Stanton Healthcare is based, to seek an opinion from Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s office about whether the state’s abortion ban includes medication abortion.

“There needs to be clarification and enforcement that any organization or individual that is involved in promoting, selling or profiting from attempting to skirt Idaho’s law to dispense and sell and profit from the abortion pill, that those entities need to be held accountable,” Swindell said.

If Labrador’s office concludes the method is not included in Idaho’s law, Swindell said there needs to be legislation introduced as soon as possible to strengthen the existing law before the Idaho Legislature adjourns for the year, which could happen in the next few weeks.

“We’re passionately working to make sure that chemical abortions are banned,” Swindell said. “We want to make this a major issue in the 2024 presidential race.”

Self-managed abortions at home make pregnant people feel safer, legal advocate says

The drug’s use has become much more common in abortions across the country in the past three years. According to the Guttmacher Institute, as of December, medication abortion made up about 54% of all abortions performed in the United States.

Part of that may be people taking advantage of those legal workarounds with the mail, but Ryan said some pregnant people find home management of an abortion to be empowering and it offers a stronger sense of safety.

“You’ve had clinics suffering so much violence in the clinic setting, and having to deal with protesters, and the difficulties in arranging transport and financing transport, whereas managing pregnancy in someone’s own home is a safe place,” Ryan said. “Also having access to a clinician over the phone and online is something that has shown to be quite powerful.”

While providers and patients across the United States wait on a ruling from a federal judge in Texas about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, advocates want to stress that options like Aid Access will still be available no matter the outcome of the court case.

Dr. Jennifer Lincoln, an obstetrician-gynecologist who practices in Portland and the executive director of an advocacy organization called Mayday Health, said if state laws become more stringent around policing abortion medication, Aid Access and other internationally based options will become more important.

“The best thing you can do is inform yourself and pass the message along that you’ll still be able to get these medications,” Lincoln told States Newsroom. “It requires a few more hoops, but you’ll still be able to get it.”

Ryan doesn’t worry about organizations like Aid Access being affected by whatever happens in U.S. courts, but she is worried about state- and county-level prosecutors trying to target people who use the pills at home.

“What I do really see as a particularly challenging (fact) that activists and patients have to deal with in the U.S. that wasn’t as pertinent somewhere like Ireland, or even in Mexico and Argentina, is the level of surveillance that exists and the power and zeal of the criminal legal system,” Ryan said. “It is a phenomenon that is very much overlapping with the human rights crisis to create this extremely challenging environment for people to exist in.”

States Newsroom National Reproductive Rights Reporter Sofia Resnick contributed to this report.

Kelcie Mosely Morris

Kelcie Moseley-Morris is an award-winning journalist who has covered many topics across Idaho since 2011. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Idaho and a master’s degree in public administration from Boise State University. Moseley-Morris started her journalism career at the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, followed by the Lewiston Tribune and the Idaho Press.

Via Wisconsin Examiner

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.