Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 192
November Surprises
A pregnant teenager in Texas died after trying to get care in three visits to emergency rooms, ProPublica reports.
“Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. It includes exceptions for life-threatening conditions, but still, doctors told ProPublica that confusion and fear about the potential legal repercussions are changing the way their colleagues treat pregnant patients with complications.”
A Texas woman died after the hospital said it would be a “crime” to intervene in her miscarriage, ProPublica reports.
“Though proponents insist that the laws protect both the life of the fetus and the person carrying it, in practice, doctors have hesitated to provide care under threat of prosecution, prison time and professional ruin.”
At a campaign rally in Michigan, Michelle Obama made one of the most effective cases for why men should care about reproductive freedom as much as women.
Here’s her full speech, in case you missed it.
“A new Republican super PAC is invoking the name of the deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in an audacious attempt to defuse the volatile issue of abortion as a liability for Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports.
“The group, which is called RBG PAC and came into existence only days ago, began to spend $20 million on Friday in support of Mr. Trump.”
New York Times: “Ten states have abortion rights measures on the ballot this year, and Democratic activists express confidence that most will pass, just as every similar state measure has won approval since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. But they remain less certain about how many of these newly engaged abortion rights voters will then support Democratic candidates.”
Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) said in a newly unearthed interview from 2022 that women who have abortions “hate the country” and “hate that baby” because they know if they carried their pregnancies to term, it would mean responsibility, the HuffPost reports.
Said Schweikert: “Llife means nothing, self means everything. It’s about self. It’s about self. It’s about self. And you wonder why they hate the country because they only care about themselves.”
He continued: “They hate their neighbors because they only care about themselves. They hate that baby because it symbolizes a responsibility.”
“On a day this past June, researchers were able to track a cell phone as it went from a residential address in Alabama to Tallahassee, Florida, where it remained for about two hours before going to another house in Mississippi,” NOTUS reports.
“The address in Tallahassee was an abortion clinic that explicitly advertises its services to out-of-state visitors.”
“Earlier this year, start-up company Atlas Privacy got access to a mobile phone-tracking tool used by law enforcement and U.S. government agencies across the country. The tracking tool, sold by Virginia-based company Babel Street, pulls commercially available data that phones beam out through apps. Atlas researchers were looking for privacy and security vulnerabilities in the data for sale.”
“Data brokers claim the information is fully anonymized. But in reality, it can easily expose someone’s identity, and it can potentially reveal some of the most private moments of a person’s life — like crossing state lines to go to an abortion clinic.”
404 Media: Inside the U.S. government-bought tool that can track phones at abortion clinics.
The 19th: “Across multiple Republican-controlled states, state officials have waged legal battles and other efforts to thwart abortion rights measures from getting on the ballot or to influence the language.”
“But Florida stands out for how DeSantis is deploying multiple levers of power within his administration to discredit the amendment and even block political speech about it. While courts have pushed back on some of those efforts, they amount to the most sweeping and brazen government-funded campaigns opposing an abortion ballot measure this election cycle.”
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) during an event with Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday criticized GOP-led states’ moves to curtail women’s rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections, Axios reports,
Said Cheney: “There are many of us around the country who have been pro-life, but who have watched what’s going on in our states since the Dobbs decision and have watched state legislatures put in place laws that are resulting in women not getting the care they need.”
She added: “This is not an issue that we’re seeing break down across party lines, but I think we’re seeing people come together to say: what has happened to women… that’s not sustainable for us as a country and it has to change.”
“In the year and a half following the Supreme Court Dobbs decision that revoked the federal right to an abortion, hundreds more infants died than expected in the United States, new research shows,” CNN reports.
“The vast majority of those infants had congenital anomalies, or birth defects.”
“Gov. Ron DeSantis’ top deputies directed a Florida Health Department lawyer to threaten Florida television stations with criminal prosecution for running political advertisements that support enshrining abortion rights in the state’s Constitution,” the Miami Herald reports.
“Kamala Harris said Saturday that Republican former President Donald Trump was ‘cruel’ for how he talked about the grieving family of a Georgia mother who died after waiting 20 hours for a hospital to treat her complications from an abortion pill, as she put combating restrictions on reproductive care at the center of her pitch to voters,” NPR reports.
A federal judge ordered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) administration to stop threatening television stations with criminal prosecution for airing a political ad in favor of enshrining abortion rights in the state’s Constitution, the New York Times reports.
Donald Trump declared himself the “father of IVF” in a town-hall event focused on women’s issues, “an eyebrow-raising nickname that was his latest attempt to claim an advantage on a matter that has become a political liability,” the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “We really are the party for IVF… We want fertilization, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them.”
Kamala Harris responded on social media: “What is he talking about?”
Donald Trump said that a national abortion ban is “off the table,” but left the door open on the conversation by saying “we’ll see what happens,” The Hill reports.
Trump insisted overturning Roe v. Wade was something “every Democrat and Republican wanted.”
“Montana Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, who is locked in a highly consequential race with Democratic incumbent Jon Tester, said in newly unearthed audio that the Republican Party needs to do a better job at winning over young women, who he said have been ‘indoctrinated’ for years on the issue of abortion,” NBC News reports.
Said Sheehy: “Young people, listen up, they’ve been indoctrinated for too long. We don’t even try to talk to them anymore.”
He added: “I sat with a group of younger folks a couple of months ago talking about, just, various issues. And one of them was life, because of course young women between the age of 19 and 30, abortion is their Number One concern. That’s all they want to talk about. They are single-issue voters.”
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is threatening TV stations that air ads in support of an abortion rights ballot initiative with criminal penalties, including jail time,” Slate reports.
“DeSantis and his allies are already spending large sums of taxpayer dollars to fight Amendment 4, which would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution if voted into law in November. His ‘election police’ have interrogated and intimidated residents who signed petitions to put it on the ballot. His administration created a publicly funded, state-run website condemning the amendment, and has run ads promoting the current law, which bans abortions after six weeks.”
“Now, however, DeSantis is escalating the battle: On Oct. 3, his Department of Health sent a letter to at least one local NBC affiliate suggesting that prosecutors could bring criminal charges against the TV station for airing ads that encourage residents to vote for the amendment.”
“The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans,” the AP reports.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
More about Taegan Goddard →