As experts prepare to convene this week at a conference to be held at the National Institutes of Health to examine data on the too-high rate of cesarean sections in the United States, a small hospital in Tuba City, Arizona is contributing to growing evidence that VBACs or vaginal birth-after-cesarean are safe and effective.

A New York Times article this weekend profiles the Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation hospital, run by the Navajo Nation and financed partly by the Indian Health Service.  The hospital, according to the Times, “prides itself on having a higher than average rate of vaginal births among women with a prior Caesarean, and a lower Caesarean rate over all.”

As Washington debates health care, this small hospital in a dusty desert town on an Indian reservation, showing its age and struggling to make ends meet, somehow manages to outperform richer, more prestigious institutions when it comes to keeping Caesarean rates down, which saves money and is better for many mothers and infants.

Because of a prior c-section, notes the Times, many hospitals would not have let a woman in labor even try to give birth vaginally, but would have required another Caesarean.  The Times notes the dismal rates of vaginal birth after Caesarean in the U.S., which have plummeted since 1996.

Even the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has acknowledged that the operation is overused, says the Times. “Though there is no consensus on what the rate should be, government health agencies and the World Health Organization have suggested 15 percent as a goal in low-risk women.”

While Tuba City will not be on the agenda at the NIH conference, notes Denise Grady, the author of the Times article, “its hospital, with about 500 births a year, could probably teach the rest of the country a few things about obstetrical care. But matching its success would require sweeping, fundamental changes in medical practice, like allowing midwives to handle more deliveries and removing the profit motive for performing surgery.”

In Tuba City last year, 32 percent of women with prior Caesareans had vaginal births. Its overall Caesarean rate has been low — 13.5 percent, less than half the national rate of 31.8 percent in 2007 (the latest year with figures available). This is despite the fact that more women here have diabetes and high blood pressure, which usually result in higher Caesarean rates.

The hospital serves mostly Native Americans — Navajos, Hopis and San Juan Southern Paiutes. The hospital employees nurse-midwives who deliver most of the babies born vaginally, backed up by obstetricians should anything go wrong. 

Midwives staff the labor ward around the clock, a model of care thought to minimize Caesareans because midwives specialize in coaching women through labor and will often wait longer than obstetricians before recommending a Caesarean. They are also less likely to try to induce labor before a woman’s due date, something that increases the odds of a Caesarean.

“There is a significant lesson here about the ability of most women to deliver vaginally,” said Dr. Jean E. Howe, the chief clinical consultant for obstetrics and gynecology at Northern Navajo Medical Center in Shiprock, N.M.

“In the rest of the country,” writes Grady, “nurse-midwives attend about only 10 percent of vaginal births, though their professional society, the American College of Nurse Midwives, hopes that will grow to 20 percent by 2020.”

Reducing the over-reliance on c-sections, say experts, will require a number of changes in our current approach to labor and delivery, including changes in doctor-patient attitudes about birthing practices, and changes in malpractice insurance to reduce the perceived pressure on obstetricians to perform Caesareans. In Tuba City, the hospital and doctors are insured by the federal government, and therefore insurance companies cannot threaten to increase their premiums or withdraw coverage if they allow vaginal births after Caesarean, which dramatically reduces such pressure.

The numbers surrounding maternal and child health are bleak: Black women are three times as likely to die giving birth as their white counterparts; infant mortality rates for Black children are three times higher than those of white kids; and despite a widely held belief that vaginal deliveries are the safest route for both mother and child, women of color represent the highest cesarean rates of any other demographic in the United States.

Behind these statistics, however, are powerful stories of grassroots childbirth activists and traditional birth workers of color, including midwives and doulas, coalescing for “birth justice.” Building on a long history in which Black women and women of color have resisted birth oppression through the centuries, the term birth justice was coined in an effort to foreground activism and justice for birthing parents in movements around reproductive justice and Black lives.

A newly released anthology titled Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth explores some of the key issues within the nascent movement, including efforts to end the criminalization of pregnant women of color and trans or gender-nonconforming people, advocacy that aims to expand access to traditional and indigenous birth workers, and struggles to resist medical violence. The anthology is a project of Black Women Birthing Justice, a collective dedicated to transforming birthing experiences for Black women.

Foregrounding the stories in this collection are historical analyses of medical violence and “medical apartheid,” which shaped the fields of obstetrics and gynecology in the United States, as well as a close look at the ways in which “a patriarchal medical establishment seeks to control women’s bodies.”

In an interview with the book’s co-editors, Julia Chinyere Oparah, co-chair of ethnic studies and director of the Research Justice at the Intersections Scholars Program at Mills College, and Alicia Bonaparte, associate professor of sociology at Pitzer College, Rewire delved into some of the intersections between the emerging birth justice movement and the broader reproductive justice movement, and explored some of the historic and contemporary examples of how birthing parents have fought to preserve pregnancy and childbirth as a safe and sacred experience.

Rewire: Walk us through the current landscape of the birth justice movement.

Alicia Bonaparte: I consider this a movement that is designed to respect the rights of all individuals who aspire to become birthing parents and have a child in a supportive environment: one in which the birthing parent has autonomy over their body and the ability to choose the ways in which their birthing process flows, from the prenatal to the postpartum process.

Julia Chinyere Oparah: This is a movement led by Black women and women of color, so the focus is on dismantling inequalities around race, class, citizenship, sexual orientation, and all of the intersecting oppressions that lead to negative birth outcomes, particularly for women of color, trans folks, low-income communities, and immigrant women. We are working toward reclaiming a midwifery tradition that originates within communities of Black women and women of color, and making sure these communities have access to these alternative birthing practices, including doula services. We are trying to raise awareness and build grassroots power, so we focus on ways in which communities can come together, talk about the violence, coercion, and neglect that’s happening in medical contexts, and work together to improve birth inequalities. We look at disproportionate maternal and infant mortality as the very visible tip of the iceberg, but we also go further to examine issues that might not necessarily cause mortality but that lead to pain and lasting trauma.

Rewire: What are some of the synergies between the reproductive justice (RJ) movement and the birth justice (BJ) movement? Are there distinctions between the two?

JCO: The BJ movement is part of the broader movement to dismantle reproductive oppression. Both the RJ and BJ movements aim to decolonize our bodies, and both advocate for the right of every person to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. Many of us in the BJ movement are birth activists who come from the RJ movement, so there isn’t a huge difference in terms of our frameworks, which are really intersectional. The only real difference is that we try to center issues that sometimes get sidelined in the larger RJ movement, such as fighting the stereotyping of women who choose home births as selfish and irresponsible, or highlighting the disproportionate impact of VBAC (vaginal birth after c-section) bans on women of color. We foreground the right to choose when, where, how, and with whom to birth, and try to lift up experiences that have been somewhat invisible in reproductive justice organizing, such as the right to access traditional and indigenous birth workers.

AB: Another synergy is that both the RJ and the BJ movements aim to lift the voices of women of color and resist a narrative that is dominated by white middle- and upper-class women. Both movements also aim to push beyond the narrow boundaries of “choice” and instead use a lens of economic and racial justice. But the movements diverge slightly when it comes to policy. Birth activists are trying to raise legal and policy issues that would, for instance, force insurance companies to pay for midwife-assisted births. Nationally, midwifery services covering everything from prenatal to postpartum care run between $6,000 and $8,000. In comparison, hospital births can cost upwards of $15,000, depending on what interventions are deemed “necessary” for the birthing parent. So midwifery-assisted birth is actually cheaper than a hospital birth assisted by an OB-GYN, and yet policy fails to address this—so this is something the birth justice movement is fighting for.

Rewire: The book talks a lot about medical violence and medical apartheid. Can you explain these terms, in both historical and contemporary contexts?

JCO: Both terms refer to the ways in which the bodies of Black people, both alive and dead, have been made into sites of medical examination, to achieve medical advances that improve the health of white communities. It’s important to foreground Black women’s stories here: such as the story of Anarcha, an enslaved Black woman who was forced to endure a series of horrendously painful medical experiments at the hands of J. Marion Sims, a white physician who is often held up as the so-called father of modern gynecology for “pioneering” a technique to repair vaginal fistulas (a condition caused by traumatic or obstructed labor resulting in an opening between the birth canal and the bladder or rectum) by experimenting on Black women with fistulas. Scholars like Harriet Washington have documented the legacy of American obstetrics, in which the bodies of enslaved Black women have been used to further birth options for white women. She documents the work of Louisiana surgeon Francois Marie Prevost, who “introduced” the cesarean section in the 1820s. At the time, opening up a woman’s abdomen was considered a death sentence, yet this was exactly what was done to Black women in the name of advancing medical techniques.

AB: An example of contemporary medical apartheid might include the ways in which, for example, Black and Hispanic women receive disproportionately fewer screenings for potential birth complications like preeclampsia. The medical establishment is grounded in racism, classism, and inherent sexism, and so unfortunately these axes of oppression come to the fore in doctor-patient relationships. Involuntary c-sections are another example of medical violence in the way we see women of color experience far higher rates of c-sections than white women. In particular, women of color are coerced by OB-GYNs and nurses [who convince them] that they are acting in the best interest of the child, despite the fact that many of these c-sections are unnecessary and unwarranted. We see hospital workers like nurses resort to fear-mongering to create the narrative that you are not a good mother if you don’t subject yourself to the unnecessary interventions and processes that the medical establishment has chosen for you, and this also hits Black women and women of color hardest.

Rewire: Who are “birth revolutionaries,” and how are they reclaiming natural birthing traditions?

JCO: Two sections in the book, “Changing Lives, One Birth at a Time” and “Taking Back Our Power: Organizing for Birth Justice” really lift up the stories of birth workers and birth activists working to change the systems, policies, and spaces surrounding pregnancy and childbirth. The word “revolutionary” suggests that the movement is not only about reform and tinkering around the edges, so to speak. We are not looking to simply reduce disproportionate mortality rates; we are seeking a fundamental transformation of the conditions under which we become pregnant and give birth so these inequalities no longer exist. One example I can point to is Tina Reynolds and the Women on the Rise Telling HerStory initiative, an advocacy organization comprised of current and formerly incarcerated women resisting the brutality of the prison system, such as the shackling of women during labor.

AB: I co-authored a chapter in the book with a Black birth revolutionary named Jennie Joseph who works to change deleterious birth outcomes for women. She has worked specifically in the three counties in Florida that have the worst maternal and infant health outcomes for women of color and has created a program called the JJ Way, which unites volunteer community health workers with birthing parents in underrepresented and underserved neighborhoods to improve overall health outcomes. Such efforts amplify birth advocacy and activism for the benefit of the entire community, and I would argue that this is revolutionary.

Rewire: The book discusses the “commercialization” and “co-optation” of traditional birthing practices. Can you tell us what this means?

AB: If you have a global perspective on childbirth, you will notice that midwife-assisted births are the most common form of delivery worldwide. Here in the United States, however, midwifery has long been denigrated by the white medical establishment, and associated with superstition and other “non-scientific” practices. Birth workers have fought against this quality versus quantity approach, which frames hospital births and all their attendant interventions as being the better option. This is largely the result of living in a highly consumer-driven society.

JCO: The other side of the coin is that natural birth and midwifery activists have achieved greater acceptance of these practices, but this has not opened the door to women of color because the system is premised on the ability to pay. A typical response within a highly commercialized and consumerized society is that the establishment will recognize certain demands, but only for those who are able or willing to pay. Coming at this from an economic justice lens, we see this as exclusionary, since many Black women and women of color do not have the means to “purchase” their preferred birthing process. This is where we return to what civil rights activist Ella Baker called “legalism”—the idea that laws alone will not build participatory democracy. She believed that change would not come only from individuals speaking to power in the language that power understands, and advocated for the mass mobilization of collective power. In the same way we see arguments for the legalization of midwifery, which stops short of calling for it to be accessible.

Rewire: What would you say are some of the most important messages in the book?

JCO: One of the messages I’d like to lift up is that this is an urgent movement about saving our lives. I consider birth justice part of the broader Black Lives Matter movement, especially the SayHerName campaign, which has really worked to center women’s voices and stories. In the same way, this book highlights how Black women are reclaiming birth as a powerful and beautiful experience, despite all the forces of birth oppression. Many stories in the anthology uphold moments of what I would call “autonomy,” where Black women and women of color have created completely separate spaces and moments of full empowerment. This is a message of hope in the now—we are not only struggling for a future birth experience but celebrating the birth revolutionaries who are decolonizing the birth experience in the present moment too.

AB: One thing I think the book highlights that is missing in conversations about reproductive justice is the shame associated with miscarriage. I think there has been a lot of internalization of the idea that women are machines who exist solely for the purpose of producing children—and when we are unable to do so it means we are defective in some way. It’s extremely important to interrupt this narrative with one that centers the autonomy of women and birthing parents, and fights the notion of miscarriage as something shameful. We have a chapter in the book by Viviane Saleh-Hanna, a professor at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, “On Natural Birth and Miscarriage,” which really speaks to this important message.

And finally, one of the things that I find incredibly powerful about the anthology is that we historicize the cultural traditions of Granny Midwives, older Black women who have functioned within Black communities not only as birth caretakers but also health workers for the entire community. So we start there, and end the book by looking at ways in which activists are reclaiming these traditions, and reclaiming the birth space as something sacred, which I see as a really hopeful message.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

The next year promises to be an eventful one on the legal front—though we feel like we say that every December. After all, 2015 brought challenges to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act; a case on whether not hiring an employee because she wears a hijab is employment discrimination; the historic and successful challenge to same-sex marriage bans; the failed challenge to federal subsidies in the Affordable Care Act; and a failed attempt to gut the Fair Housing Act. Meanwhile, 2014 was the year the Roberts Court gave the green light to governments embracing prayer at civic functions; it also struck most abortion clinic buffer zones as unconstitutional in McCullen v. Coakley. And who could forget Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, the case in which the Roberts Court created a constitutional corporate right to object to contraception coverage?

Even so, 2016 is still shaping up to be an important year for reproductive rights and justice. Some cases on the list to watch—like yet another challenge to the birth control benefit in the Affordable Care Act—we anticipated. Other cases, like the trial in Colorado of Robert Lewis Dear Jr., who is accused of launching a siege at a Planned Parenthood health-care center in Colorado Springs that killed three, injured nine, and terrorized many others, we wish were not here at all. But given the violent rhetoric targeting abortion doctors, providers, and patients that increased over the course of 2015, we can’t say we were surprised to put it there.

The Roberts Court

Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole

Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole is the Roberts Court’s first substantive dive back into abortion-rights law since Gonzales v. Carhart, which banned so-called partial-birth abortions in 2006. But unlike Gonzales, which focused on the constitutionality of a procedure-specific abortion ban, Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole takes on the porous “undue burden” standard of 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision by tackling just how rigorously courts should apply that standard when reviewing abortion restrictions that purport to advance patient health and safety. That makes Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole the Court case with the most potential to affect abortion rights in nearly 25 years.

Little Sisters and the Rest of the Nonprofit Contraception Cases

Another Roberts Court term brings another challenge to some portion of the Affordable Care Act. This time, the Court returns to the ACA’s birth control benefit and the question of whether the government’s process for allowing religiously affiliated nonprofits to opt out from providing health insurance plans that offer contraception is too burdensome under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The Court consolidated seven cases filed by hospitals, nursing homes, and other kinds of businesses that are religiously run and affiliated; all object to filling out the opt-out form. The cases represent not just a test to the administration’s opt-out provision for the birth control benefit, but the strength of the majority decision in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, which relied on the accommodation process now before the Court to rule that for-profit businesses should have a similar opt-out option available. A ruling that would allow these nonprofits to be exempted from the coverage would have enormous implications, as 10 percent of larger nonprofits have asked the Obama administration for an accommodation to the rule already.

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association 

The Roberts Court has not been kind to workers’ rights generally, making it harder for employees harassed by supervisors to sue and drastically reducing employees’ abilities to raise class-action lawsuits. This term is no exception with Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case that takes on the way public employee unions are funded. Currently, if a union represents a group of workers, that company’s entire workforce, or at least a defined portion of it, pays a fee designed to compensate the union for its bargaining activities. The argument supporting these fees is that the union’s actions benefit the entire workforce—not just union members—and the fee is nominal in the face of the influence of management and corporate owners. But anti-union interests argue those fees violate the First Amendment. Should the Roberts Court agree, the result would severely limit unions’ abilities to raise money for their operations and to effectively bargain on behalf of their members. Women and people of color, who make up the majority of public employee union membership, would feel the most severe effects in this scenario.

Evenwel v. Abbott

Evenwel is the latest in a series of “representation” cases dreamed up by Edward Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation—which was behind Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 case that gutted the Voting Rights Act. Blum is also responsible for Fisher v. University of Texas, the case challenging the admissions policy at the University of Texas on the grounds that it discriminates against white students. Evenwel challenges “one person, one vote”; though it concerns the drawing of state senate districts in Texas, the case has potential national implications. Under the 14th Amendment, states are allocated seats in the House of Representatives by “counting the whole number of persons in each state.” States follow this process when determining their own statewide districts, carving up districts based on U.S. Census Bureau population data and irrespective of the total number of registered voters in each. The plaintiffs in Evenwel argue that by counting children, documented and undocumented immigrants, many prisoners, and other non-voters, Texas denies “eligible voters their fundamental right to an equal vote.” If they win, legislative districts would become older, whiter, more rural, and more conservative. Political power would shift from urban areas to rural areas. Our elected officials would be even older and whiter than they already are. In other words, the gains made by the civil rights era in diversifying our elected bodies would be rolled back, the same way Shelby County v. Holder rolled back the voting participation gains made by the the Voting Rights Act.

Fisher v. University of Texas 

Race-based affirmative actions are again before the Roberts Court in Fisher v. University of Texas. Abigail Fisher applied to UT for admission into the undergraduate class of 2012. When UT rejected her application, she sued the university, alleging that it discriminated against her because she is white, even though of the 47 equally or “less” qualified students who were admitted over Fisher, 42 were white—only five were Black or Latino. Her case has made it up to the Roberts Court once before. The justices punted on the ultimate question of whether or not the University of Texas’ plan violated the Constitution, instead sending the case back to the conservative Fifth Circuit. After the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of the University’s admission plan, again, conservatives ran the case back up to the Roberts Court.

During oral arguments, it became apparent that the conservative wing of the court is prepared to decimate affirmative action. Justice Scalia wondered whether admitting Black students into schools that might be too hard for them was doing them a disservice. Justice Roberts appeared frustrated that affirmative action still exists at all, and wondered what unique perspective a student of color brings to a physics class and whether diversity serves any purpose in that context. Given the Roberts Court’s palpable hostility toward any acknowledgement that race continues to be a decisive factor in the oppression of people of color in the United States, proponents of affirmative action are right to be concerned about the fate of race-conscious admissions policies at colleges and universities.

Courts of Appeals

Purvi Patel Conviction for Feticide 

Purvi Patel is an Indian-American woman who in July 2013 entered an emergency room in South Bend, Indiana, while suffering heavy vaginal bleeding. She initially denied to doctors that she had been pregnant, but eventually acknowledged she had miscarried. Patel told hospital staff the fetus was stillborn and that she had placed it in a bag in a dumpster. Doctors then alerted the police, who questioned her and searched her cell phone—all while she was in the hospital and under the influence of pain medication. During the search of her cell phone, police saw a series of text messages, which prosecutors later claimed made the case Patel had attempted an illegal abortion by ordering abortion-inducting medications and taking them. Police charged Patel with felony feticide and neglect of a dependent. The feticide charge presumed the fetus was stillborn, while the neglect of a dependent charge presumed a live birth. Despite this apparent conflict, a jury convicted Patel on both counts. Patel, who has no criminal record, was ordered to serve 20 years in prison. Attorneys have appealed her case, arguing there was no evidence she took any abortion-inducing medication. Attorneys for the State of Indiana have doubled down on Patel’s prosecution and defended their case, arguing as if it is good public health policy to radically restrict contraception and abortion access in the state and then criminally prosecute women whose pregnancies end in anything other than a successful live birth. 

Second-Trimester Abortions in Kansas

In 2015, Kansas became the first state to pass a ban on the most commonly used method of ending pregnancy in the second trimester, setting the stage for the next big legal showdown over specific abortion procedures. SB 95 bans dilation and evacuation (D and E) abortions—what anti-choicers like to call “dismemberment abortions”—and is based on legislation drafted by the radically anti-choice National Right to Life Committee. Oklahoma passed a similar version just one day after Kansas did, and copycat legislation has been introduced in both Missouri and South Carolina. Shortly before it was set to take effect in Kansas, reproductive rights advocates sued to block it. But instead of challenging the measure in federal court like most abortion-related challenges, advocates sued in state court, arguing the law violates Sections 1 and 2 of the Kansas Bill of Rights, which they say provide due process guaranteeing the government cannot infringe on personal liberties.

Because due process rights have been used at the federal level to protect the right to an abortion, pro-choice advocates argue the same should be the case under the Kansas Constitution. In December, the entire panel of judges on the Kansas Court of Appeals heard arguments as to whether a temporary order currently blocking the ban should be affirmed as the legal challenge proceeds. Regardless of how the court ultimately rules on the temporary order, the Kansas case is an important one to watch because it is in state court. Almost all of our abortion rights law comes from federal court challenges, but those have become increasingly hostile thanks to decades of conservative judicial appointments. State courts could, therefore, prove to be those rights’ final protectors.

Catholic Hospitals’ Refusal of Services

In 2010, a then-18 weeks pregnant Tamesha Means showed up at Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon, Michigan, in the middle of having a miscarriage. Mercy Health, a Catholic-sponsored facility, sent Means home twice, saying there was nothing it could do for her. It wasn’t until Means, a mother of three, returned to Mercy Health a third time—this time suffering from a significant infection as her miscarriage persisted untreated—that the hospital decided to treat her by offering her some aspirin for her fever. As Mercy Hospital was preparing to discharge Means once more, she started to deliver. The hospital decided at that point to admit Means and to treat her condition. Means eventually delivered a baby, who died within hours of birth.

Means sued Mercy Health, arguing that its adherence to the “Ethical and Religious Directives“—which, among other regulations, prohibit a pre-viability pregnancy termination—resulted in medical malpractice in her case. The lower court dismissed Means’ claims, ruling it did not have the power to interpret Catholic doctrine directly. Means appealed, and her case is currently before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, hospitals in California and Michigan face allegations similar to those in the Means case: that adherence to the directives has resulted in malpractice when treating reproductive health-care conditions. So far, courts have not taken this question of whether or not Catholic doctrine can override the medical community’s standard of care. But it is a fight they won’t be able to stay out of long, since one in nine hospital beds in this country are at a Catholic or Catholic-sponsored facility, and they appear to be turning away women in need at a pretty rapid pace.

Trial Courts

The Legal Battle Over the Planned Parenthood Tapes

Perhaps the biggest controversy to emerge from 2015 is the video smear campaign waged against Planned Parenthood by David Daleiden and his anti-choice front group, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). Daleiden’s months-long sting operation, which saw him infiltrate under false pretenses private meetings held by the National Abortion Federation (NAF), resulted in the release of video footage purporting to show that Planned Parenthood is in the grisly business of harvesting fetal “body parts” and profiting from their sale. This, despite the fact that there’s nothing illegal about fetal tissue donation programs and Planned Parenthood has been repeatedly cleared of wrongdoing by several state and federal investigations. Within weeks of the release of the first video, the NAF sued Daleiden and CMP in federal court. The court granted NAF’s request for an order blocking the further release of any video footage recorded at NAF’s private events. It also ordered CMP and Daleiden to turn over to NAF the names of Daleiden’s associates, accomplices, and funders. The information they gave is under protective order, but should the court decide to make that list public, we’ll find out which Republican operatives and politicians, if any, Daleiden worked with to perpetrate this deception.

Anti-Abortion Terrorism in Colorado Springs 

Robert Lewis Dear Jr. is accused of opening fire at a Planned Parenthood reproductive health-care facility in late November, killing three people and injuring nine, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He has been charged in state court with 179 felony counts, including first-degree murder. If convicted, Dear could face the death penalty. Federal prosecutors are also investigating Dear for possible violations of federal law, including the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, the federal statute that makes it a felony to target for harassment abortion clinics, doctors, patients, and staff. Dear’s charges came after a summer of escalating violent anti-choice rhetoric following the CMP’s release of its deceptively edited footage. Conservatives insist their claims about “Planned Parenthood selling baby parts” had nothing to do with the Colorado Springs shooting, despite Dear reportedly telling officers “no more baby parts” when he was arrested and calling himself a “warrior for the babies” in court. Just how much influence did conservative anti-choice rhetoric and politicking influence Dear? We’ll find out during his trial in 2016.

Anna Yocca’s Trial for Attempted Self-Induced Abortion

Police arrested Anna Yocca, a 31-year-old woman from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in December after she allegedly tried to end her pregnancy using a coat hanger at home in her bathtub. During the attempt, Yocca began bleeding heavily and her boyfriend rushed her to the hospital, where doctors delivered a 1.5-pound baby boy. Yocca, who was approximately 24 weeks pregnant when she attempted to terminate her pregnancy, allegedly made “disturbing” statements to hospital staff, including admitting that she tried to self-abort. Her statements led a Rutherford County grand jury to indict her for attempted murder and imprison her in the Rutherford County Adult Detention Center. Should she be convicted, she faces life in prison.

The return of coat-hanger abortions is an alarming indicator of the repressive reproductive rights environment in Tennessee and around the country. Although prominent abortion opponents have claimed they are not interested in prosecuting women who try to self-induce an abortion, the increasing number of women—who include Jennie Lynn McCormack, Jennifer Ann Whalen, and the aforementioned Purvi Patel—who have been thrown in jail for allegedly doing so tells a different story. Prosecutors charged Yocca under the state’s general homicide statute, which opens the constitutional question of whether or not general homicide laws in Tennessee can be used to prosecute women who self-induce an abortion or who otherwise have a failed pregnancy outcome.

In other words, Anna Yocca is a test case for anti-choice prosecutors who want to find a legal hook to charge women who abort with murder.

Anything Else?

There’s always something else on the horizon when it comes to reproductive autonomy. We didn’t even include the many other legal challenges to the wave of anti-choice laws passed in 2015, or the explosion of “religious liberties” claims in response to marriage equality and the expanding protection of rights for transgender people. But don’t worry, folks. It may be shaping up to be one helluva year for reproductive rights and justice in the courts, but we’ve got you covered.