Episode Details

Hey fam, welcome back to the Gilead Gazette, where apparently every woman in America now needs a permission slip, and I think mine got lost in 2022.

This week: a mom who needed the state’s permission to leave for an abortion and didn’t get it, ICE losing count of the miscarriages in its own custody, a Michigan gym class that wants a note about your daughter’s period, a cop who used a license plate camera to help a domestic violence suspect find his accuser, and Florida’s attorney general arguing that surrogacy is slavery. Let’s get into it.

On Parole? Good Luck Getting Permission to Get an Abortion

About 800,000 women in this country are on probation or parole, and four out of five live in states that restrict abortion and make them ask permission to leave. Abortion, Every Day found out what happens when the answer is no. A young mom they call Sue got six years of probation as a teenager because she was wearing her boyfriend’s hoodie and there was a weed vape in the pocket. The judge gave her the maximum, for outerwear. Years later, raising a toddler on her own, she got pregnant, knew she couldn’t continue it, and had abortion funds lined up to cover the procedure and the trip. All she needed was a permission slip. Two, actually, because she was on probation in two counties. One probation officer said yes and the other said no, so her uterus got a split decision, like a boxing match nobody paid to watch.

By then she was 18 weeks along. Her lawyers went to court, in front of the same judge who sentenced her as a teenager, who signaled yes, slept on it, and switched to no the next day. That’s a fine way to handle a lunch order and a terrible way to handle a pregnancy. The official line from anti-abortion politicians is that nobody’s stopping a woman from leaving the state. For about 650,000 women, somebody is, and he has a clipboard. Sue had the baby. Then, right as her six years were ending, the county tacked on six more because she’d missed some breathalyzer tests while raising a newborn and a toddler alone, and they put her in jail over Christmas. Season’s greetings from the party of family values.

ICE Stops Counting Miscarriages for Pregnant Women in Detention

Meanwhile, ICE locked up more pregnant women last fall and winter than at any point in the year before, and then, in an incredible coincidence, stopped counting their miscarriages. The Guardian had to sue to get the records. ICE logged 18 miscarriages in the first nine months of this administration, and then the numbers just stop on October 3rd, 2025, because ICE ended its contract with the office that handled its medical billing. So the official reason nobody knows how many women lost pregnancies in federal custody is that they switched billing vendors. DHS first told the Guardian it was tracking miscarriages in monthly reports, then admitted it has no data from October 2025 through June 2026. That’s nine months, the exact length of a pregnancy, and I can’t decide if that’s poetry or a cry for help.

One woman the Guardian calls Anabell showed up for a routine ICE check-in, got detained, and found out she was pregnant in a Kentucky jail. Two positive tests, then no ultrasound and no bloodwork. When she started bleeding, in her words, “I told them I need to see a doctor.” They got her to an emergency room the next day and shackled her to the bed, presumably in case a woman losing a pregnancy made a run for it, and an interpreter told her she was no longer pregnant. Medical experts say you usually can’t pin one miscarriage on detention. What we do know is that months later she’s still in custody, still bleeding, losing her hair, and still waiting on the follow-up care the hospital told them she needed.

Mich High School Asks for Period Permission Slips

And one high school in Michigan has a permission slip for periods. At Lakeview High School in St. Clair Shores, the ninth grade gym syllabus says girls who miss swim