Abortion and the importance of free speech
Republicans are trying to ban speech they don't like, but expect the corporate media to continue obsessing over the latest "campus speech" kerfuffle, instead.
Renee Bracey Sherman is the executive director of abortion storytelling group We Testify, and on Tuesday, she made a bit of congressional testimony history. Speaking during House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing, “Roe Reversal: The Impacts of Taking Away the Constitutional Right to an Abortion,” Bracey Sherman took a detour from her submitted written testimony to provide instructions for self-managing abortion care.
Here’s the updated testimony, as delivered:
Shortly before my appointment, I didn’t know if I could hold on. I didn’t think I could be pregnant for another moment. I hoped it would all go away. When it didn’t, every day I considered throwing myself down the stairs as I had seen in movies and in history books. One night, I drank an unsafe amount of alcohol, believing it would cause a miscarriage. It didn’t.
Thankfully, I went to my appointment and received my abortion—that was when it was legal in every state. Now it is not, and I know some will try the methods I did. I want them to know that there are safe ways to self-manage their abortions according to the World Health Organization. It’s one mifepristone pill followed by four misoprostol pills dissolved under the tongue 24-48 hours later, or a series of 12 misoprostol pills, four at a time dissolved under the tongue every three hours. There’s no way to test it in the bloodstream and a person doesn’t need to tell police what they took. I share that to exercise my right to free speech because there are organizations and legislators who want to make what I just said a crime.
There are two important issues here that are worth talking about: the how-to guide to self-managed abortion and the attack on free speech.
I want to start with the abortion aspect of this, but also, before anyone takes medical advice from me, please do not take medical advice from me. This is not medical advice.
Alright, back to what I was saying. Self-managed abortion! Do what you will with this information. Again, this is not medical advice.
As Bracey Sherman mentioned, here’s some of what the World Health Organization has to say on the topic:
Individuals clinically eligible for medical abortion may be offered the choice to self-administer can self-administer a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol.
The appropriate combination regimen consists of 200mg mifepristone, administered orally. This is followed 1-2 days later by 800μg misoprostol, administered vaginally, sublingually (under the tongue) or buccally (in the cheek). The minimum recommended interval between use of mifepristone and misoprostol is 24 hours.
Mifepristone and misoprostol are available separately, or packaged together in the appropriate dosage. It can be taken anywhere, including at home. Direct supervision of a health-care provider is not required.
Later, individuals can self-assess the completeness of the abortion process using pregnancy tests and checklists. Individuals should also have the option to immediately initiate contraception, should they desire it.
But yes, the speech aspect of this is just as concerning.
Yes! What Bracey Sherman said is true: there are people currently trying to make information about self-managed abortions illegal. This is a five-alarm free speech fire! (Now if only the people who spend their days claiming “free speech is under attack” when talking about overzealous college student demonstrators would focus on actual efforts to criminalize speech…)
On June 22, Prism reported that the National Right to Life Committee (a prominent anti-abortion activist group) had released model text for bills aimed at silencing abortion supporters and making it more difficult for abortion-seekers to get information that would help them successfully obtain an abortion. (For an example of how groups pushing model legislation have found success, look at how quickly groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have successfully gotten so-called “stand your ground” and anti-“critical race theory” laws enacted in states across the country).
Specifically, the model law calls for criminalizing the act of “knowingly or intentionally giving information to a pregnant woman, or someone seeking the information on her behalf, by telephone, the internet, or any other medium of communication, regarding self-administered abortion or the means to obtain an illegal abortion, knowing that the information will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used, for a self-administered abortion or an illegal abortion.” The text would also make it illegal to “knowingly or intentionally hosting or maintaining an internet website, providing access to an internet website, or providing an internet service, purposely directed to a pregnant woman who is a resident of this state, that provides information on how to obtain an illegal abortion, knowing that the information will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used, for an illegal abortion.”
Those are both extremely broad and extremely vague categories. This is likely by design.
The Texas anti-abortion law passed last year contains similar anti-speech provisions, and urges individuals to sue anyone who “knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion.”
This is terrible for free speech, and some elected officials on both sides of the aisle at the federal level may make it worse.
In a June opinion piece at Wired magazine, Evan Greer and Lia Holland wrote about the misguided attacks on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which effectively states that websites aren’t legally responsible for the content posted by its users. This user-generated content could be anything ranging from social media posts to comment sections on reported stories. Essentially, Section 230 protects the free exchange of ideas online. To repeal it or alter it in some fundamental way, as some Democrats and Republicans have been discussing, would result in websites eliminating comment sections and creating a more censorship-heavy social media experience.
Greer and Holland predict that the NRLC’s model state law “is likely to pass in several states,” and urge lawmakers to understand that Section 230 is all that stands in the way of mass censorship.
As Greer and Holland wrote (emphasis mine):
Section 230 is the last line of defense keeping reproductive health care support, information, and fundraising online. Under Section 230, internet platforms that host and moderate user-generated content cannot generally be sued for that content. Section 230 is not absolute. It does not provide immunity if the platform develops or creates the content, and it does not provide immunity from the enforcement of federal criminal laws. But, crucially, it does protect against criminal liability from state laws.
This means that as Section 230 exists today, a lawsuit from an anti-abortion group concerning speech about reproductive health care or a criminal proceeding launched by a forced-birth state attorney general would be quickly dismissed. If Section 230 is weakened, online platforms like GoFundMe and Twitter, web hosting services, and payment processors like PayPal and Venmo will face a debilitating and expensive onslaught of state law enforcement actions and civil lawsuits claiming they are violating state laws. Even if these lawsuits ultimately fail, without Section 230 as a defense to get them dismissed quickly they will become enormously expensive, even for the largest platforms.
Forced-birth extremists are litigious, well resourced, and ideologically motivated. Tech companies care about making money. Rather than spending tens of millions fighting in court, many online platforms will instead “race to the bottom” and comply with the most restrictive state laws. They’ll change their own rules on what they allow, massively restricting access to information about abortion. As a result, countless groups, pages, online communities, nonprofits, and health care access funds could be shuttered and removed from the internet—from r/AuntieNetwork to the donation options and educational content on Planned Parenthood’s website. We’ll live in a country where lawmakers in Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas get to set the rules for online speech nationwide.
This wouldn’t stop with abortion, either. As the Wired piece noted, “Another bill proposed by top Democrats would remove Section 230 protections for ‘health misinformation’ as defined by the federal secretary of Health and Human Services.” During Donald Trump’s administration, HHS was weaponized against abortion services and transition-related care for trans people. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to see a world in which a future Republican HHS would decide that information about self-managed abortion or transition-related care for trans people would be banned under the guise of “health misinformation.”
Changing Section 230 is unnecessary and would result in less free speech.
The press needs to start giving the type of attention to these actual attacks on free speech as they currently do with phony, “I sometimes feel uncomfortable saying something that I’m thinking because other people will judge me” “attacks” on speech.
I’ve written a lot about this topic. A lot, a lot, a lot. I’ve been watching as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) gets praised by the right and talked about as some sort of champion of “freedom” even as he has imposed severe restrictions on speech and actions he doesn’t like. He’s gone after protesters, he’s gone after teachers and LGBTQ students, he’s gone after social media companies, he’s gone after businesses that want to protect their employees from COVID-19, he’s gone after a Major League Baseball team for a tweet he didn’t like. And yet, a significant chunk of the national press will praise him for “freedom.” It’s insane.
They do this because they see him as a sort of Trump without the baggage of Trump, and oh did they love Trump. The mainstream corporate press is trying its best to manifest a DeSantis 2024 presidential run, and instead of putting a laser focus on the many ways DeSantis and Republicans are restricting the rights of Florida residents using the power of the state to punish them, the New York Times will churn out another couple of “cancel culture” articles about how unfair it was that a student somewhere got asked to stop harassing an LGBTQ classmate or something of the sort.
The press can play a role in fixing the problems facing the world, but it1 often chooses to exacerbate them, instead.
When I refer to “the press,” I’m not talking about individual reporters or suggesting that all outlets are playing this same game. No, by “the press,” I’m referring to the billionaires (and the upper management employees) who have a vested interest in electing Republicans in hopes of saving a bit of money on their next tax bill.
Are these Democrats proposing to alter Section 230 aware of the ramifications? If so, what benefit do they (or any behind-the-scenes benefactors) get from working across the aisle in this instance? Any bipartisan agreement in this political climate instantly makes me nervous, as it seems it should here.
I think one of the trends that terrifies me the most is the slow-but-steady shift to the right by many formerly reliable media outlets. It seems like NYT, The Hill, and Newsweek have all become substantially more right-sympathetic (at best!) than they were just a few years ago? And they're just a few of the media sources I felt it was okay to rely on in the past. I read content from a _lot_ of sources to try to keep a broad, balanced view of the world and I'm finding it harder and harder to navigate the media world these days :(