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An adjunct professor at Michigan State University, Amy Wisner, is being sued by two of her students after requiring her business communications class to purchase a $99 subscription to an activist website she founded that funds Planned Parenthood.
The website, The Rebellion Community, was described in the class syllabus as “a global social learning community.”
Several students looked into the website and found posts from their professor on social media which detailed the leftwing causes that their membership fees were going to, most notably, Planned Parenthood.
Though Wisner initially told students that she would reap no benefit from the subscriptions, the lawsuit said, students found out that Wisner operated the site and had said in different contexts that its proceeds would be donated to Planned Parenthood or used to fund “an RV roadtrip around the United States to co-create communities of rebels.”
The university says that Wisner is no longer employed and the school has offered to refund the students the cost of their subscriptions.
In the wake of last year’s U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning constitutional protections for reproductive rights, moves by conservative states to restrict abortion are running up against the limits of just how much change even many pro-life Americans want. Last week, both Nebraska and South Carolina legislators rejected bills that would have largely banned abortions. And polls find some degree of buyers’ remorse in states that restricted abortion after Dobbs, suggesting that lawmakers misread the room.
Anti-Abortion Bill Meet Unexpected Defeat
“A bill that would ban abortions in Nebraska after six weeks of pregnancy fell one vote short in the Legislature on Thursday,” Nebraska Public Media reported. The bill failed even after the introduction of a compromise amendment “which would change the legislation to ban abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, instead of the six weeks the legislation called for.”
Almost simultaneously, “the latest push to outlaw nearly all abortions in South Carolina is over for the year, as senators who oppose a ban from conception stood their ground and scuttled the bill,” according to The Post and Courier of Charleston. “And Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey made clear there’s no appetite in the Senate to make another doomed attempt in 2024 for a bill with limited exceptions to an all-out ban.”
Both Nebraska and South Carolina are solidly red states. Republicans hold clear majorities in both South Carolina’s House and Senate and Nebraska’s unicameral legislature. According to a simplistic take on post-Dobbs politics, that’s supposed to indicate a clear path for near-absolute bans targeting abortion. But the bills failed at a time when residents of some states that implemented restrictions after the Supreme Court decision show signs that they think lawmakers went too far. As it turns out, even many Americans who were unhappy with the strong protections for reproductive rights embodied in the Roe v. Wade decision overturned by Dobbs weren’t necessarily looking for total prohibition.
Two doctors and a Planned Parenthood affiliate are suing Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador after the Gem State’s top cop stated that it’s illegal for doctors to refer residents to out-of-state abortion providers. This would represent a clear violation of numerous constitutional rights, they argue.
Labrador’s assertion is part of a larger attempt by Idaho Republicans to enforce the state’s strict abortion ban even outside of state lines. Abortion is totally banned in Idaho except in cases involving rape, incest, or a threat to the mother’s life, and minors in these circumstances can only obtain an abortion with a parent or guardian’s permission.
On Wednesday, Republican Gov. Brad Little signed a law creating the new crime of “abortion trafficking.” The law makes it illegal to help someone under age 18 obtain an abortion “by recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state” without a parent or guardian’s permission, with violations punishable by two to five years in prison.
The new law “is somewhat strangely worded,” Reason‘s Emma Camp noted recently, “as it technically does not criminalize the act of crossing state lines to help a minor obtain an abortion without parental consent, which is what would practically be required in a state where abortion is almost entirely illegal.” But the abortion trafficking law tacitly takes aim at helping minors travel out of state for abortions, stating that the fact that “the abortion provider or the abortion-inducing drug provider is located in another state” cannot be used as an affirmative defense. So it seems an Idaho resident who helped an Idaho teenager arrange an out-of-state abortion, arrange to purchase abortion pills in another state, or travel at all within the state on the way out of state could still be charged with abortion trafficking even if the abortion itself doesn’t take place in Idaho. The law also “allows the filing of lawsuits against doctors who perform such abortions, even if the doctors live outside the state,” notesThe New York Times.
That the abortion trafficking statute is meant to prevent out-of-state travel is made clear in a Wednesday letter from Little. The measure seeks “to prevent unemancipated minor girls from being taken across state lines for an abortion without the knowledge or consent of her parent or guardian,” he wrote.
And the state isn’t stopping at trying to prevent girls from going out of state for abortions.
In a March 27 letter to Idaho Rep. Brent Crane (R–Nampa), Labrador wrote that Idaho’s criminal prohibitions on abortion “preclude 1) the provision of abortion bills, 2) the promotion of abortion bills, and 3) referring women across state lines to obtain abortion services or prescribing abortion pills that will be picked up across state lines.”
On March 17, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R) signed a bill into law that will make it illegal to prescribe, sell or use “any drug for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion.” The abortion pills, misoprostol and mifepristone, have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
While more than a dozen states have effectively banned abortion pills with their prohibitions on all forms of abortion and 15 states currently restrict access to abortion pills, Wyoming is now the first in the country to specifically ban abortion pills. People who violate the law, which goes into effect on July 1, will be charged with a misdemeanor and punished with up to six months of incarceration and a fine of $9,000.
“These abortion bans should alarm everybody in every corner of our country,” NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju said in a statement in response to the abortion pill ban. “There’s no stone that anti-choice extremists will leave unturned as they seek to do everything they can to ensure that abortion is banned across the nation. This first-of-its-kind ban on medication abortion, as well as the total ban, are just the latest proof.”
Gov. Mark Gordon also allowed HB0152, dubbed the “Life is a Human Right Act,” to go into effect without his signature, immediately banning all abortions in the state with exceptions for rape, incest or dire risks to the pregnant patient’s life. People who violate this law will be charged with a felony, fined up to $20,000 dollars, and face a prison sentence of five years.
MEMBERS OF THE South Carolina State House are considering a bill that would make a woman who has an abortion in the state eligible for the death penalty.
The “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023” would amend the state’s code of laws, redefining “person” to include a fertilized egg at the point of conception, affording that zygote “equal protection under the homicide laws of the state” — up to and including the ultimate punishment: death.
The bill was authored by Rep. Rob Harris, a registered nurse and member of the Freedom Caucus; it has attracted 21 co-sponsors to date. (Two former co-sponsors — Rep. Matt Leber and Rep. Kathy Landing — asked to have their names removed as sponsors of the bill. Leber and Landing could not be reached for comment.)
Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican who represents South Carolina in the U.S. House, took to the floor on Friday to call attention to the bill, which she sees as part of a “deeply disturbing” trend. (Multiple Texas lawmakers have floated the idea of executing women who have abortions in the past. Those bills, proposed before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, failed.)
“To see this debate go to the dark places, the dark edges, where it has gone on both sides of the aisle, has been deeply disturbing to me as a woman, as a female legislator, as a mom, and as a victim of rape. I was raped as a teenager at the age of 16,” Mace said. “This debate ought to be a bipartisan debate where we balance the rights of women and we balance the right to life. But we aren’t having that conversation here in D.C. We aren’t having that conversation at home. We aren’t having that conversation with fellow state lawmakers.”
Asked about exceptions for victims of rape, which Mace raised in her remarks on the floor, Harris told Rolling Stone, “There are other bills with exceptions, but will do little or nothing to save the lives of pre-born children.” He went on list exceptions the bill does contain, including: “a ‘duress’ defense for women who are pressured/threatened to have an abortion” and “medical care to save the mother’s life… The functional language in that scenario is whether the baby’s life is forfeited ‘unintentionally’ or ‘intentionally’.” (Asked if he saw any irony between being a member of the so-called “Freedom Caucus” while proposing such harsh restrictions on reproductive freedoms, Harris responded simply: “Murder of the pre-born is harsh.”)
At least 20,000packets of abortion pills were shipped to people in the United States in the six months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, two sources with knowledge of the situation told VICE News.
The suppliers of these estimated 20,000 packets are neither abortion clinics nor abortion telehealth organizations, but instead operate outside of the U.S. legal health care system. The demand for their pills, as well as their success at shipping them out undetected, are evidence of the thriving underground abortion network that has sprung up since Roe’s demise devastated access to abortion clinics.
Meant to be used by people who want to induce their own abortions, these pills—and the people who supply them—are in a legal grey area. Self-managing an abortion is only banned in a few states, but experts have long warned that if a prosecutor is determined to press charges for it, they’ll find a way.
“People have always self-managed abortions and will always self-manage abortion. We’ll have to continue to fight back against all of the bans and restrictions that are being implemented on people,” said Christie Pitney, a licensed nurse practitioner, a midwife with Forward Midfwery, and co-founder of Abortion Freedom Fund, a fund for telehealth abortions. Referring to self-managed abortion, she added, “it’s just going to grow more and more.”
Pitney works with both Aid Access, an organization that mails abortion pills to states where abortion is legal, through providers like Pitney, and to states where it is not, through a doctor who is based overseas. When she started working at Aid Access, where she legally provides abortion pills to people in two states, Pitney estimated that she used to help roughly 60 people get access to abortion pills each month. Now, she said she helps “hundreds” per month.
“Those are specifically for myself, not even the whole organization,” said Pitney, who confirmed to VICE News that at least an estimated 20,000 abortion pills were shipped between the June 2022 Roe decision and December 2022.
Aid Access is not one of the suppliers included in the 20,000estimate, suggesting that the true number of abortion pills that have been mailed out through covert channels since the end of Roe is even higher. A recent study of Aid Access also found that the organization received almost three times as many requests for help after Roe was overturned, compared to before a draft of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe leaked in May 2022. The biggest increases in requests came from people in states that have banned abortion.
Since Roe’s demise, at least 13 states have enacted near-total abortion bans. Data from the Society of Family Planning found last year that, in the two months following Roe’s demise, there were 10,000 fewer in-clinic abortions in the U.S.
The Department of Justice has indicted two Florida residents on charges of a civil rights conspiracy for spray-painting threats on reproductive health services and for violating the FACE Act. If convicted, the two could face up to 12 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and up to $350,000 in fines.
The Grand Jury indictment from the Middle District of Florida “alleges that Caleb Freestone, 27, and Amber Smith-Stewart, 23, engaged in a conspiracy to prevent employees of reproductive health services facilities from providing those services.”
“2 Members of #Miami#Antifa indicted by the feds for a string of Jane’s Revenge related vandalism targeting pro life pregnancy centers in 2022 Caleb Freestone and Amber Smith-Stewart are both charged with Civil Rights Conspiracy and violating the FACE act,” Antifa watch reported.
Levy has already been responsible for at least one death following an abortion he performed, according to the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners (NSBME). His insurance settled for $20,000 after a woman died in 2007 due to a perforation of her uterus. In another instance, Levy’s insurance settled for $7,500 after a woman “suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns to her labia and perineum from a hot weighted speculum used in surgery,” according to NSBME records.
Levy was also charged in 1998 with sexually assaulting a minor under the age of 16 and performing lewd and lascivious acts with a child under the age of 14, according to documents obtained by The Nevada Globe. He submitted an Alford Plea in 1999 to child abuse and neglect, and was ordered to avoid contact with his victims, refrain from possessing pornography and child pornography and complete a sex offender treatment program. He also was sentenced to two years of probation.
A man who worked as a political director for Texas Right to Life, the premier anti-abortion group in the state, has been arrested for the online solicitation of a minor.
Lucas “Luke” Bowen, 33, was charged with the second-degree felony on August 3. A minor, under that statute, refers to anyone who’s younger than 17 or who the arrested person believes to be younger than 17.
Bowen allegedly “knowingly” solicited a minor online “with the intent” of engaging “in sexual contact or sexual intercourse or deviate sexual intercourse,” according to a complaint filed by Montgomery County prosecutors obtained by The Courier of Montgomery County.
The news of Bowen’s charge was previously reported by Jessica Valenti, an independent feminist journalist.
Texas Right to Life is one of the most powerful anti-abortion groups in a state known for setting the anti-abortion agenda for the rest of the nation. As part of his work for the organization, Bowen had appeared on stage representing Texas Right to Life at a 2020 Texas Youth Summit panel, spoke to Politico in 2018, and served as its campaign treasurer, according to a Texas campaign finance report filed last month.
Now, it appears that Bowen’s name has been removed from some pages on Texas Right to Life’s website and other pages mentioning him have been removed entirely (Valenti also reported on this). In one press release from February 2020, a quote attributed to Bowen as of September last year now appears without his name but still has the quote, a cached version of the page obtained from the Internet Archive showed. The quote originally read:
Texas Right to Life has never endorsed Kay Granger, including for this cycle,” Luke Bowen, Political Director of Texas Right to Life, said. “Republican Chris Putnam is the only Pro-Life candidate in the race. We proudly endorsed Putnam after our interview in December, and are excited for the people of Congressional District 12 to finally have Pro-Life representation in Washington.
Another press release, claiming a Texas Right to Life employee named Kim Schwartz “saved” a woman from getting an abortion, mentioned that Bowen stayed behind with Schwartz to ensure she “wasn’t left alone in the office.” That release is now erased from the website.
Hellbound and Down 
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