This is the opposite of a Cletus safari and it’s really well done:
“We see patients from Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah” and “from Montana, from Nebraska,” says Katie Knutter, the executive director of Wellspring. “We regularly have patients who are traveling up to eight hours,” she adds. Some patients have even come from Georgia and Louisiana. Wellspring is also the closest clinic to multiple Native American reservations—one of which, the Oglala Sioux Reservation, is in South Dakota, which virtually bans abortion altogether.
“There is no one-size-fits-all” patient, says Brown. “I have seen 15 year olds, I have seen 50 year olds. I see married women, I see single women. I see women who have a whole bunch of kids already. I see women who’ve never been pregnant before.”
“Hero” might be an overused term, but not in this case: the nurses, staff, volunteers and physicians serving this clinic are heroes. They face the possibility of death every day at the hands of the terrorists who stalk clinic employees.
You may remember this clinic because it was the target of arson a couple of years ago. Wyoming has a constitutional amendment passed during the “death panels” freakout that guarantees the right to make healthcare decisions. A judge in Teton County recently struck down two laws limiting abortions on the basis of them violating the state constitution. The cases now go to the Wyoming Supreme Court. If this clinic closes, the next nearest place for an medical abortion in the vast open spaces of the Mountain West is probably somewhere in Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon or Washington state. Patients at this clinic are already driving long distances, and sometimes having to come back more than once.
In other abortion news, Missouri, like every other Republican state faced with the people voting for an initiated measure or constitutional amendment they don’t like, is trotting out all the fuckery they can muster to try to make sure that the will of the voters is thwarted. Meanwhile, in Texas, women are still dying for lack of a D&C.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The totally batshit, insane Misery state legislature has lots of experience working to get around voter-led initiatives (puppy mills, so-called right-to-work, etc) they don’t like.
And yet, they still get reelected…until term-limited out when somebody worse takes their place.
Everybody should watch this 2013 documentary, “After Tiller”:
https://www.amazon.com/After-Tiller-Martha-Shane/dp/B00IMY9MC8
The picture it painted 12 years ago was stark…and here we are.
dlwchico
Crazy medical story out of Montana.
https://www.propublica.org/article/thomas-weiner-montana-st-peters-hospital-oncology?
Parfigliano
Misery voters should wise up and vote out the legislators and judges while voting for the initiative. That would take common sense and voting for a DEM so not gonna happen.
Snarki, child of Loki
My proposal, which is mine, is that for every pregnant woman the dies because of officials preventing their medical treatment: the woman’s children, siblings, spouse, and parents EACH get to shoot to death one of the obstructing anti-abortion officials, free of charge.
Just like the case of the NYC CEO shooter, when there is no path to legal accountability for the (completely forseeable!) deaths of innocents, then other paths to accountability are the ones that remain.
If red-state anti-abortion officials had a smidgen of sense (ha!) they should reconsider their life choices.
Percysowner
I have wondered if Native American lands could have abortion clinics. I remember when there were huge gambling companies on the Reservations, because state law against gambling didn’t apply and Reservations were their own legislative system. That was years ago, so has that changed? Are Reservations now under state jurisdiction? Are they under it only for certain laws? If they aren’t under state law, it seems like a place an abortion clinic could set up and at least give areas another place to go? I’m truly ignorant here.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@dlwchico:
This is, sadly, a relatively common story in small town medical centers. Somebody comes in, has a cult following, but also injures patients. I know of multiple other instances of this, including one in the town where I grew up. They are just so desperate for physicians (especially specialists) that they overlook a lot of obvious issues.
Steve LaBonne
@Parfigliano: My mind has been boggled for a long time now by the complete unwillingness of many voters to connect politicians / parties with policies. So much voting behavior is purely tribal and emotive. It’s hard to understand sometimes how democracy ever works at all.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Percysowner:
Medical care on reservations is handled by the BIA, specifically the IHS (Indian Health Service). Placing stand-alone clinics on that land would raise a host of practical issues, such as staffing. Put simply: it’s really, really hard to recruit medical personnel on the rez, because most people don’t want to live there. Security would be a big issue. And I would be shocked if the tribes would want to support this clinic on their land — they would see it as mainly a benefit to white folks at a big cost and risk to tribe members.
Parfigliano
@Percysowner: Indian Casinos on Indian/Pueblo land across NM with table games, slots and sports books.
Betty Cracker
Wow, the courage of those folks. Thanks for flagging this story, MM.
As most here probably know, Florida’s ballot initiative for reproductive freedom got 57% of the vote last month, but that’s wasn’t enough because the threshold is 60%. So the 6-week ban stays in effect.
Our deeply corrupt state government is now running ads on streaming channels that tout a grifty-ass program that delivers “assistance” to women with unplanned pregnancies. Basically, it’s run by the same religious kooks who lure scared high school girls to fake pregnancy crisis clinics with empty promises of help.
The ad never fails to piss me off because it starts off with this bald-faced lie: “Just because you can get an abortion in Florida doesn’t mean it’s your only or even best option.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I just can not even comprehend voting against a policy while at the same time voting for the politicians who enacted that policy.
West of the Rockies
@Parfigliano:
Bit of a guess here that in Missouri, a reproductive rights proposition gets passed with maybe 75% blue votes, 25% red. So when Republicon legislators overturn it, the bulk of conservative idiots are totes cool with it.
hitchhiker
In 1977 I was going to the University of Utah, studying civil engineering and living with one of my loser boyfriends. I got pregnant while on the pill. A friend from one of my classes looked me in the eye, and said, very firmly: “Planned Parenthood.”
Ending that pregnancy at seven weeks was simple, safe, and straightforward. The clinic was a short walk from campus, and from our apartment on the Aves.
Several years later I met mr h, who was the opposite of my loser boyfriend collection. We had a couple of daughters, who have now become mothers themselves. My daughters and my grandchildren would not exist if all that had happened today, which I think allows me to tell the assholes that it was all God’s will.
They can rend their garments and go fuck themselves.
RaflW
I wonder what it is going to take for voters in Missouri to understand that the only way past this absurd and terrible situation is to defeat the GOP. I’d imagine the state is also probably quite gerrymandered, so that liberal city voters are clustered in 80+% districts while farmers are in 55-70% districts the other way. But at the very least, the MO Democratic party has to figure out what Kansas has — a Dem governor candidate that can speak to these issues and win, so that there is at least a veto threat.
Kay
Was on a call today with NW OH Democratic chairs. I have time on my term as a committee person.
Labor stuck with Democrats here, so thats a bright spot. Labor voters absolutely saved Marcy Kaptur. They’re launching A Year of Labor in 2025 for (northern) OH state races.
No Nym
@Parfigliano: I know plenty of Missourians who voted for a straight Democratic ticket. Unfortunately, our votes are outweighed by our toothless brethren in rural counties
Or what RalfW said at #14 above.
rikyrah
She is not wrong.
They thought protecting Whiteness was more important than anything else.👏🏾👏🏾
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Nrb1xq/
rikyrah
@Kay:
That sounds good.
Do they think that Brown is going to run for Vance’s open Senate seat?
Kay
@rikyrah:
We didn’t talk about that. The focus was on state races.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I love Sherrod but he’s 72. I don’t think he should run again.
Starfish (she/her)
@dlwchico: There is no local journalism, and there is no following of Freedom of Information Act rules or anything. People just commit crimes in the hospitals and no one knows anything about it, including stealing money in the transitions as ownership changes.
Kay
@rikyrah:
He has grandchildren he’s really devoted to – I hope he chooses to hang with them and take it easy. Job well done!
Soprano2
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: They want legal abortion but don’t want to vote for the party that supports black people. It’s that simple, really.
John S.
@Kay:
Time for some new blood, wherever possible. We desperately need to start electing folks from Gen X and Gen Y so we can actually build a political future.
We can’t do that on the backs of septuagenarians.
Chat Noir
Tracy McCreary quoted in that ProPublica piece was my MO state rep before she ran for state Senate. She is a great legislator and is fighting the good fight in Jefferson City. My husband and I helped collect signatures to get Amendment 3 on the ballot this past year; the shenanigans ensuing at the behest of these troglodyte Republicans to block the will of those of us that voted YES pisses me off to no end.
That said, we are out of Missouri in another year and a half. We haven’t figured out where we’re going but it will NOT be to a red state.
Cheryl from Maryland
People forget that Planned Parenthood is devoted to all people’s health re reproductive organs. In the early 1980s, I had “health” care through my graduate school, but it did not cover annual exams, STDs, contraception, etc. And I was married, so none of those “icky” moral concerns. If it weren’t for Planned Parenthood, I would have had NO gynecological care. My brother when he had no health insurance did get STD testing through Planned Parenthood. Bottom line — most US health care sucks regarding the reproduction systems of women and men, and without Planned Parenthood, young people would suffer.
A Ghost to Most
Restricting our travel to Colorado and New Mexico has never made more sense. No sense funding christian fascist states.
Glidwrith
@Percysowner: When the first real crisis began with access to abortion, the Reservations were floated as a solution. The Native American response was NOT happy, in part because it would just be more reason for them to be targeted.
eclare
@dlwchico:
Wow, scary. Great reporting, thanks.
Starfish (she/her)
@Starfish (she/her): THIS in the article is what blocks local journalism.
” St. Peter’s would not tell me if it searched for patients in the community who overdosed or died, nor would it say whether it reported what it found to the state medical board.”
There was enough of the story without this piece, but people hit dead end after dead end with these things.
Ruckus
@hitchhiker:
They can rend their garments and go fuck themselves.
Nice.
I have a different slant to some of this issue.
The concept that it takes two is nice but the concept that the male will support and help raise the child/children has some serious faults rather frequently. The male has a rather simple side to this entire issue, the female exactly the opposite. The start of the process may be rather easy but from there it is work, danger and not a small level of pain during the process, from a bit after conception to that final day. I cannot see a male having a realistic concept of that pain. All of this is within a concept of both wanting children. Take that out of the equation and 99.99% falls to the woman, rather than say 94%. Now I’m sure that a lot of males have at least a minimal concept of all of this but way too many are way too selfish to even contemplate who has more to lose here.
My point is that I believe that we as humans should have a hard look at the entire concept and see that constant reproduction has created a world where much is over populated. China tried instating a law restricting the number of children and that didn’t last long. Of course in history we have stories of families of large numbers of children, which then worked to help support the family. But that really isn’t necessary any longer so most have reduced the family size.
I have no answers to any of this but given the population size of the world it seems to me that a concept of at least allowing women to make the decisions about pregnancy/birth is needed – it is their bodies and often is their time/effort/work to support, raise, feed children THEY’VE grown and given birth to, and not all that unusually have to raise on their own, shouldn’t they have a rather strong level of control over the entire process? (And shouldn’t some men actually grow the hell up and recognize that they are responsible for helping to create/feed/raise those children? Because a not insignificant percentage seem to think it has nothing to do with them)
RevRick
@rikyrah: Well, she tells the ugly truth.
RevRick
In the early 80s I was part of the loose organization RCAR. — The Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. We sought to counter the argument that being forced birth was the “Christian” position, pointing out that nothing in the Bible prohibits abortion and all anti abortion statements assumed that a fetus was a person. And the only two passages that remotely touch on the matter, Exodus 21:22-25 and Numbers 5:11-28, suggest the opposite.
Our voice was drowned out by Evangelicals who were amplified by the media.