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Abortion clinic director says Ohio’s swift move toward a six-week ban was ‘an unnecessary cruelty’
Originally published by The 19th
When the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization came down on Friday morning, staff at Preterm, an abortion clinic in Cleveland, called patients with appointments scheduled for Saturday to let them know that despite the ruling, their appointments still stood. But events in Ohio quickly overtook them. Not even 12 hours after the Dobbs ruling came down, the Preterm staff was back on the phone canceling the same appointments they’d assured patients were safe.
Ohio had passed a law effectively banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy in 2019, but an injunction prevented it from taking effect. Hours after the Dobbs ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to decide their level of abortion, a judge granted Ohio’s request to lift the injunction. Sri Thakkilapati, the executive director of Preterm, said she and her staff stayed at the clinic until after 11 that night making calls. Ninety to 95 percent of the 5,000 patients Preterm serves each year are past six weeks of pregnancy when they seek abortions.
“When we called people this morning, they cried with gratitude. They were so scared,” Thakkilapati said on Friday. That night was entirely different. “Some people were crying in panic,” she said.
By Wednesday morning, ACLU, the ACLU of Ohio, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the law firm WilmerHale had filed a lawsuit in the Ohio Supreme Court seeking to block the state’s six-week ban on abortion. The plaintiffs say the ban will disproportionately impact people of color, low-income people, rural residents, immigrants, people with disabilities and the LGBTQ+ community. Black women already face higher rates of maternal mortality in Ohio — a situation that stands to only worsen as a result of the newly enacted ban.
Through the rapidly shifting legal landscape in Ohio, clinics are still trying to provide care as best they can to their patients.
Thakkilapati told The 19th that while she had expected the state to file to have the injunction on the six-week ban lifted when Roe fell, she — and many of her peers in Ohio abortion clinics — thought they would have at least two weeks to prepare. Instead, they had to scramble.
Of the 40 patients scheduled for an abortion at Preterm on June 25, only two were able to be seen. Because of Ohio’s 24-hour mandatory waiting period for abortions, the clinic already knew which patients would no longer be able to be seen under the six-week ban.
On Saturday morning, Thakkilapati said Preterm was operating as a “skeletal clinic, with just a couple of people.” Still, the phone kept ringing as staff continued to make calls for patients already on the books for the next week to make sure they knew about the new law and its impact.
“It was really sad when we were calling people,” she said. We had people just crying in fear and utter dejection, in panic. People were enraged, some were in disbelief still.”
The staff members themselves also struggled. “We’re still processing,” Thakkilapati said.
Thakkilapati said the six-week ban taking effect is just the latest blow her staff has faced after an incredibly hard past few years. Three-quarters of their current employees are people who stayed with the clinic throughout the pandemic, even after the state tried to close abortion clinics during the days of “shelter in place.” Ultimately, abortion providers won their fight to keep their doors open.
“In the early days when we were all wiping down our groceries and worried we may die if we left the house, the staff still came in,” Thakkilapati said. “These are people dedicated to abortion access.”
It felt like all that struggle culminated when the six-week ban was allowed to go into effect.
“We thought we could give people a little hope when we called them Friday morning,” Thakkilapati said. “That even though Roe had been overturned, we could give them a little breathing room. It felt very hard to have worked so hard through COVID, all of this time to make sure people could have uninterrupted service. And now…” her voice broke off, leaving the sentence unfinished.
Preterm currently has patients scheduled through July 1. The clinic is attempting to see anyone who is under six weeks as quickly as possible.
“It’s been a race against the clock,” Thakkilapati said. “Our staff has been working 24/7.”
That includes working with Women Have Options, an Ohio-based abortion fund. The staff at Preterm were able to direct patients they could no longer see to the organization, which would be able to help provide funds for them to travel out of state.
“It helped ease people’s anxiety somewhat, but for some it was just too logistically hard, if not impossible, to go out of state,” Thakkilapati said. Still, she is concerned about what the cost of out-of-state travel will now do to these same patients.
“It’s very hard to afford to travel out of state, take a day out of work, lose that income, pay for someone to watch your children,” she said. “Two-thirds of the people we see have kids. Now they will have to figure out what to do with their kids if they need to travel out of state. It used to be hard enough to figure out what you’re going to do with your kids half a day if you’re traveling an hour to come to our clinic.”
With Preterm being in Cleveland, the majority of their patients are now needing to seek care in either Pittsburgh or Detroit. Both cities are approximately a 2.5-hour drive away.
Further complicating things is that with the injunction being lifted so quickly, abortion clinics in Ohio haven’t had the time to try to develop relationships with clinics in other states to help faciliate these referrals. “Developing that infrastructure and setting up referral networks — that’s not established. These clinics are now taking in a huge influx of patients from Ohio and they were also not expecting this influx so quickly.”
Thakkilapati said Preterm and other clinics in the state would continue to provide as much care as they possibly can under the current state laws. But she cannot stop thinking about the immediacy of Ohio’s six-week ban taking effect.
“This feels like an unnecessary cruelty, to have this imposed so quickly without notice,” she said. “We thought we would be able to give our patients some notice.”
'It's the guns': Firearms safety advocate wrecks Marjorie Taylor Greene for blaming latest mass shooting on video games
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Tuesday tried to blame the horrific mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois on video games and drugs -- but not easy access to firearms.
Writing on Twitter, Greene demanded to know whether shooting suspect Robert Crimo III was either addicted to video games or if he took anti-depressants, as she believed those factors likely caused him to go on a shooting rampage on July 4 that left six people dead and dozens more injured.
"What drugs and/or psychiatric drugs was he on for his mind to be ruined in alternate reality games that caused him to commit a mass shooting?" Greene wrote on Twitter. "His parents know. The police know. School, arrest, hospital records? The public DESERVES to know."
Shannon Watts, the founder of firearms safety advocacy group Moms Demand, quickly debunked Greene's claims that anti-depressants or videos games were to blame for the Highland Park massacre.
IN OTHER NEWS: Abortion-banning red states have worst maternal mortality rates of any in the nation
"Iceland is the world’s biggest consumer of [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors]," she wrote. "They’ve had 5 gun homicides since 2020; in the US, there have been over 30,000 in that time. Japan is one of the largest video game markets in the world. They have only 10 shooting deaths a year; the US has 40,000."
In conclusion, wrote Watts, "It’s the guns."
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering revealed shortly after the shooting occurred that Crimo had "legally obtained" the weapon he is suspected to have used in the deadly assault on the city's July 4 parade.
\u201cIceland is the world\u2019s biggest consumer of SSRIs. They\u2019ve had 5 gun homicides since 2020; in the US, there have been over 30,000 in that time.\n\nJapan is one of the largest video game markets in the world. They have only 10 shooting deaths a year; the US has 40,000.\n\nIt\u2019s the guns\u201d— Shannon Watts (@Shannon Watts) 1657030438
Democrats are sleep-walking into a disaster by failing to keep pace with the number of judges who are retiring.
President Joe Biden's staff boasted at the end of last year that he had nominated and confirmed a historic number of judges to start off his term, but the president and Senate Democrats could leave more than 60 judicial vacancies at the end of this year -- and they may not have a chance to fill them once a new Congress is sworn in, argued legal expert Christopher Kang in a new column for Slate.
"With the possibility looming that Republicans may retake the Senate, we know that leaving any vacancy open in January could well mean letting a newly empowered Mitch McConnell blockade them, just as he did President Barack Obama’s picks, from Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination to dozens of lower court nominees," wrote Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of Demand Justice and former deputy counsel to president Barack Obama.
The White House and Democratic senators must challenge self-imposed norms and move as relentlessly as Republicans have done to restore balance to federal courts that conservatives have dominated for decades, Kang argued.
IN OTHER NEWS: New footage of Trump family emerges from Jan. 6 investigation
"That means filling every vacancy, even if it means breaking with the few remaining judicial confirmation process norms left in McConnell’s wake or standing up to Republican senators," he wrote. "Beginning to bring balance to our judiciary is more important than respecting Senate traditions."
That includes bypassing the Senate tradition of "blue slips," which allow any senator to essentially veto district court nominations from their home state and was weaponized by segregationists, frequently used against Obama nominees and ignored by Republicans during Donald Trump's presidency.
"Abolishing the blue slip custom once and for all will require cooperation from the Senate," Kang wrote, "but the White House should force the issue and expose the absurdity of the system by nominating qualified, professionally diverse nominees in these states and daring the Senate to block them."
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