The Right’s Gory Plan to Gut State Abortion Protections

FROM THE ARTICLE

“I want clean water, but I’m not worried about embryos in the water. They’re already there from miscarriages.”
Board Chair Ghazaleh Moayedi

Abortion opponents have long used graphic photos of embryonic and fetal tissue to try to persuade people outside clinics not to have abortions. The same groups successfully used lurid descriptions of an abortion procedure known as intact dilation and extraction, or D&X, to ban it nationwide in 2003, a law the Supreme Court upheld in 2007, gutting Roe v. Wade in the process. Now that Roe is wholly gone, these activists are drawing on this familiar strategy to try to weaken state constitutional amendments protecting abortion rights—and in a new twist, they’re also using the same tactic to go after gender-affirming care. By weaponizing the often-bloody realities of health care, these elements hope to generate a reaction out of the public to build popular support against specific medical procedures.