Pamela Merritt

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Pamela Merritt

Pamela Merritt is an American writer and reproductive justice activist who advocates for women's rights and against white supremacy. Merritt is the executive director at Medical Students for Choice (MSFC), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with a network of over 10,000 medical students and residents around the world. [1]

Prior to joining MSFC, Merritt co-founded and served with Erin Matson as co-director at Reproaction, a reproductive justice organization that works to increase access to abortion, [2] [3] expose deceptive practices at pregnancy crisis centers, [4] [5] and improve infant and maternal death rates. [6] [7] [8] [9] Merritt advocates for recruiting and training more doulas and midwives to improve birth mortality rates. [10] She has published thousands of articles on racism and gender, and been featured on several national websites for her activism and expertise, including on the Washington Post, [7] NPR, [11] Rolling Stone, [12] Vox, [13] and the Huffington Post. [4]

Merritt regularly receives violent sexual threats in response to her work, and is harassed extensively online on social media. [14] She says she routinely reports the most threatening incidents to the police, [15] and was once warned by the FBI about a white supremacist actively trying to find her home address, forcing her to change her online habits. [10]

Merritt is a member of the Guttmacher Institute board of directors, [16] the Leadership Council of Our Bodies Ourselves Today, [17] and is the Honorary Chair of the Reproaction Advisory Council. She has spoken out strongly against Donald Trump. [18] She grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and before becoming an activist worked for a St. Louis newspaper. [10] [19]

Merritt attended Bard College at Simon's Rock and Brandeis University, where she studied anthropology and women's studies.

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Abortion in Arkansas is illegal except when it is necessary to save the life of the mother. Doctors determined to have performed an abortion face up to 10 years in prison and fines up to $100,000.

Abortion in Maine is legal. 64% of adults said in a poll by the Pew Research Center that abortion should be legal with 33% stating that it should be illegal in all or most cases.

Abortion in Michigan is legal until fetal viability. A state constitutional amendment to explicitly guarantee abortion rights was placed on the ballot in 2022 as Michigan Proposal 22–3; it passed by 57 percent, adding the right to abortion and contraceptive use to the Michigan Constitution. The amendment largely prevents the regulation of abortion before fetal viability, unless said regulations are to protect the individual seeking abortion care, and it also makes it unconstitutional to make laws restricting abortions which would protect the life and health, physical and/or mental, of the pregnant individual seeking abortion.

Abortion in Minnesota is legal. In a 2014 Pew Research Center survey, 52% of Minnesota adults said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, 45% said that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and 4% said they weren't sure.

Abortion in Montana is legal. The number of abortion clinics in Montana has fluctuated over the years, with twenty in 1982, twelve in 1992, eight providers of which seven were clinics in 2011, and five clinics in 2014. There were four clinics from 2015 to February 2018 when All Families Healthcare clinic in Whitefish reopened. There were 1,690 legal abortions in 2014, and 1,611 in 2015.

Abortion in North Dakota remains legal following the United States Supreme Court's ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. The state has a trigger law, banning all abortions, which has been blocked by a court since July. Under the trigger law, performance of an abortion is a Class C felony subject to a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment, a $10,000 fine, or both. The person performing the abortion who is charged under the law can only be excused from criminal liability by proving one of the following affirmative defenses: the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the mother, the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or the individual performing the abortion was acting in the scope of his or her regulated profession and under the direction of a physician. A state district court issued a preliminary injunction preventing enforcement of the law while the court is deciding the merits of the case.

Abortion in Oregon is legal at all stages of pregnancy.

Abortion in South Carolina is currently legally performed up to 22 weeks gestation due to an injunction by the South Carolina Supreme Court of a 2021 law.

Abortion in Tennessee is illegal from fertilization. The ban took effect on August 25, 2022, thirty days after the Tennessee Attorney General notified the Tennessee Code Commission that Roe v. Wade was overturned on June 24, 2022. There are no exceptions in cases of rape, incest, or maternal health. It is the only state with no direct exception in case of risk to the mother's life; rather, there is an affirmative defense included in the ban, meaning that someone who performs an abortion can be charged with a felony, but they have an opportunity to prove that the procedure was necessary — either to prevent the patient from dying or to prevent serious risk of what the law calls “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” The number of abortion clinics in Tennessee decreased over the years, with 128 in 1982, 33 in 1992, and 7 in 2014. There were 12,373 legal abortions in 2014, and 11,411 in 2015.

Abortion in West Virginia is illegal, with few exceptions.

Abortion in Maryland is legal up to the point of fetal viability. 64% of adults said in a poll by the Pew Research Center that abortion should be legal and 33% said that it should be illegal in all or most cases.

References

  1. ↑ "Meet Our New Executive Director: Pamela Merritt!". Medical Students for Choice. Retrieved 2021-01-02.
  2. ↑ "White GOP Lawmakers Behind Almost Every Anti-Choice Bill in 2017 - Rewire". Rewire. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  3. ↑ Bernhard, Blythe. "Supreme Court's ruling on abortion could have impact in Missouri". stltoday.com. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  4. 1 2 Matson, Erin; Merritt, Pamela; Simpson, Monica Raye (2017-08-11). "The Creepy 'Big Data' Crisis Pregnancy Center Group that Must Be Stopped". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  5. ↑ "Pro-choice advocates protest 'fake clinics', state funds for needy families are going to anti-abortion facilities". St. Louis American. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  6. ↑ "Did Racism Kill Erica Garner?". Vice. 2018-01-02. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  7. 1 2 Chandler, Michael Alison (2018-01-19). "'Badass. Prolife. Feminist.' How the 'pro-life feminist' movement is straddling the March for Life and Women's March". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  8. ↑ Crowley, Brendan. "Panelists say white people need to do more to fight white supremacy". Columbia Missourian. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  9. ↑ Turnbull, Lornet. "Reproductive Freedom Depends on Where You Live. How Does Your City Rank?". YES! Magazine. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  10. 1 2 3 "Amnesty reveals alarming impact of online abuse against women". www.amnesty.org. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  11. ↑ "Blogger Takes Issue with Recent Steinem Op-ed". NPR.org. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  12. ↑ "Why We're Losing the Planned Parenthood Debate". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  13. ↑ "Why younger women love Bernie Sanders, and why it drives older women crazy". Vox. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  14. ↑ "It's Too Early To Praise Twitter For Enforcing New Anti-Abuse Rules" . Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  15. ↑ "Social media and the silencing effect: why misogyny online is a human rights issue". www.newstatesman.com. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  16. ↑ "Board of Directors". Guttmacher Institute. 2015-11-20. Retrieved 2021-01-02.
  17. ↑ "Who We Are". Our Bodies Ourselves Today. Retrieved 2021-01-02.
  18. ↑ "Red-State Progressives Hold the Blueprint for the Trump Resistance". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  19. ↑ Kamp, David (2008-03-23). "Sarah Boxer - Sunday Book Review". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2018-01-23.
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