Coercion: Surviving and Resisting Abortion Bans

In this incendiary follow-up to Survivor Injustice, which drew parallels between abortion bans and domestic abuse, Jezebel staff writer Cheung surveys the “gruesome horrors” being inflicted upon women, children, pregnant people, and rape survivors in a post-Roe America. Cheung argues that, following the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, the state’s abuser-like “control” over women’s lives has tightened dramatically. As evidence, she points to the increased criminalization of miscarriages (treated as illicit abortions under the law), the widespread ignoring of “rape exceptions” to abortion bans in states that supposedly have them, the denying of free emergency contraception to rape victims because it allegedly counts as an abortifacient, and the apparent winding down of medical institutions’ efforts to track and prevent maternal mortality. She profiles shocking cases of women and girls who have been deeply impacted by a rapidly changing legal and medical landscape—among them a 14-year-old denied her much-need osteoporosis medicine because it could theoretically induce miscarriage and an Idaho resident who suffered a shocking 19-day-long miscarriage as, despite “excruciating pain and severe blood loss,” she was repeatedly turned away by medical providers who refused to remove the fetus. Clear-eyed and cutting, this disturbing litany of medical barbarisms calls into question the very notion that America is an advanced society, let alone a just one. (July)