United States

When will women get real reproductive health care in America? Opinion

Last month, Kellyanne Conway made waves within the Republican Party when she announced she was visiting Capitol Hill to promote access to contraception. Her rationale? A pro-contraception message could turn the tide for “young voters” in a post-Roe world. But instead of garnering support, especially from young women, Conway faced intense backlash from within her own party.  
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U.S. publisher retracts studies cited by Texas judge in suspending abortion pill’s approval

"A U.S. scientific publisher has retracted two studies, largely due to their methodology, that a Texas judge cited last year in his ruling suspending federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone in response to a lawsuit by anti-abortion doctors and medical associations. The retraction Monday by Sage Publications came less than two months before the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear an appeal by President Joe Biden's administration in that case. Mifepristone, the first in a two-pill regimen for medication abortion, remains available while the appeal is pending...."
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South Carolina woman seeks clarity on abortion ban in lawsuit backed by Planned Parenthood

"A South Carolina woman who traveled elsewhere for an abortion just days after reaching six weeks of pregnancy wants a court to affirm that the state’s ban on the procedure — when a “fetal heartbeat” can be detected — should not take effect until later in a pregnancy. In a lawsuit filed in state circuit court Monday, Taylor Shelton and Planned Parenthood South Atlantic's chief medical officer Dr. Katherine Farris argued that the Republican-led state Legislature provided two different definitions of “fetal heartbeat" in its law restricting abortions. They said the correct interpretation is that the ban begins around nine…
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Dozens of ‘friend of the court’ briefs backing abortion pill access arrive at Supreme Court

 The U.S. Supreme Court has been inundated with dozens of organizations seeking to weigh in on the future of the abortion pill by filing “friend of the court” briefs. The groups include governors, attorneys general, state lawmakers and members of Congress as well as medical organizations, civil rights groups and pharmaceutical companies — all of whom argue the justices’ ruling will have significant effects on American society and health care.
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State legislators aim to restrict abortion pills, ‘trafficking’ next in states with bans

More than half of state legislatures across the country started their 2024 legislative sessions in January, and plenty of abortion-related bills have already been introduced, especially in states where the procedure is already banned. It can be hard to monitor them all, so States Newsroom’s Reproductive Rights Today team will track certain bills that could become law in their respective states in a bi-weekly legislative roundup. Depending on the partisan makeup of a state’s legislature and other state government officials, some bills have a higher chance of passing and becoming law than others.
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Congressional Democrats tell Biden to do more on abortion after Ohio woman’s arrest

"Democratic members of Congress are urging the Biden administration to do more to protect pregnant patients seeking medical treatment from criminal prosecution - a threat they say has intensified in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's 2022 decision overturning decades of abortion-rights precedent. The new letter, spearheaded by the Democratic Women's Caucus, references the case of Brittany Watts, an Ohio woman who faced felony charges after suffering a miscarriage last year...."
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Tennessee’s strict abortion ban is under pressure, but change is unlikely under GOP control

"After begrudgingly agreeing to tweak Tennessee's strict abortion ban last year, the Republican-dominant Legislature is once again facing pressure to reconsider when doctors can legally offer the procedure to pregnant patients. The push comes as confusion and fear continues among residents in many GOP-controlled states over how abortion ban exemptions should be applied. While a handful of lawsuits have been filed with the hopes of getting clarity in state courts, others are pursuing legislative changes...."
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Activists renew push to repeal Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban

"Abortion rights supporters mounted another push Wednesday to restore abortion access in Kentucky, but the Democratic lawmaker sponsoring the legislation acknowledged the odds are overwhelmingly against them in the Republican-dominated legislature. A near-total abortion ban has been in place in Kentucky since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The so-called trigger law banned abortions except when carried out to save the mother’s life. It does not include exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest...."
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ACLU warns Supreme Court that lower court abortion pill decisions relied on “patently unreliable witnesses”

"The American Civil Liberties Union is warning the Supreme Court that lower court decisions in a closely watched battle over a widely used abortion pill relied on "patently unreliable witnesses" and "ideologically tainted junk science." In a friend-of-the-court brief the ACLU filed with the Center for Reproductive Rights and The Lawyering Project, the groups argued the lower courts that have ruled in the case involving the drug mifepristone supplanted the Food and Drug Administration's scientific judgment with unproven assertions from anti-abortion rights medical associations and doctors about the alleged harms of medication abortion...."
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New York City Leads Coalition of Cities Urging Supreme Court to Safeguard Access to Medication Abortion

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Corporation Counsel Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix today announced that the City of New York is co-leading a coalition of six localities from across the country in filing another amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to protect access to mifepristone — a medication that millions of Americans use each year for medication abortions and miscarriage management. In December 2023, the Supreme Court granted the Biden administration’s request to review an opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in the case Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration…
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Pennsylvania high court revives a case challenging Medicaid limits for abortions

"Pennsylvania's Supreme Court said Monday that a lower court must hear a challenge to the constitutionality of a decades-old state law that limits the use of Medicaid dollars to cover the cost of abortions, a major victory for Planned Parenthood and the abortion clinic operators who sued. The decision also elicited hope that the state Supreme Court may one day find a right to abortion in Pennsylvania's constitution after the U.S. Supreme Court ended nearly a half-century of federal abortion protections by overturning Roe v. Wade...."
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Republican legislatures in some states are trying to keep abortion off the ballot

 Legislative efforts in Missouri and Mississippi are attempting to prevent voters from having a say over abortion rights, building on anti-abortion strategies seen in other states, including last year in Ohio. Democrats and abortion rights advocates say the efforts are evidence that Republican lawmakers and abortion opponents are trying to undercut democratic processes meant to give voters a direct role in forming state laws.
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Lina Hidalgo criticizes Texas’ abortion ban after study estimates thousands of rape-related pregnancies

"One of the Houston area's top elected officials criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other state leaders after a recent study published in a peer-reviewed medical journal estimated that more than 26,000 Texas women became pregnant by rape after abortion was banned in the state, which offers no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. The study, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, examined rape-related pregnancies in the 14 U.S. states that have implemented total abortion bans since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision from 1973. Texas was estimated to…
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