legislation

After nearly 30 years, Pennsylvania will end state funding for anti-abortion counseling centers

For nearly 30 years, Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania have approved millions of taxpayer dollars for an anti-abortion program. Now the state’s new governor plans to end the contract as the organization that distributes those funds and other groups like it gain attention since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
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Gov. Lujan Grisham signs executive order expanding access to reproductive health care in New Mexico

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Wednesday signed an executive order further expanding access to reproductive health care in the state of New Mexico, continuing to build on her efforts as governor to increase access to affordable health care, safeguard abortion access, and protect New Mexico health care providers.
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Whitmer to call for passage of the ‘Reproductive Health Act’ in Wednesday speech

"Dems want repeal of ‘dangerous and unnecessary’ laws restricting abortion care After Michigan voters resoundingly passed Proposition 3 in the November 2022 election, enshrining the right to abortion and other reproductive health care in the state constitution, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is slated on Wednesday to champion soon-to-be-introduced legislation that would repeal laws restricting Michiganders’ access to abortion. A longtime advocate of abortion rights whose reelection in November was attributed in part to voters’ support for..."
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Missouri, other abortion-ban states pour millions into pregnancy centers with little medical care

"After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Louisiana Republican state Sen. Beth Mizell looked for a way to address her state’s abysmal record on infant and maternal mortality, preterm births and low birth weight. Louisiana has one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Mizell and her colleagues borrowed an idea from neighboring Mississippi: a state tax credit program that sends millions each year to nonprofit pregnancy resource centers, also called crisis pregnancy centers. They’re private anti-abortion organizations, often religiously affiliated, that typically offer free pregnancy tests, parenting classes and…
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South Carolina’s new all-male highest court reverses course on abortion, upholding strict 6-week ban

"COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s newly all-male Supreme Court reversed course on abortion Wednesday, upholding a law banning most such procedures except in the earliest weeks of pregnancy. The continued erosion of legal abortion access across the U.S. South comes after Republican state lawmakers replaced the lone woman on the court, Justice Kaye Hearn, who reached the state’s mandatory retirement age. The 4-1 ruling departs from the court’s own decision months earlier striking down a similar ban that the Republican-led Legislature passed in 2021. The latest ban takes effect immediately..."
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NC pharmacists emerge as new prescribers of hormonal contraceptives

"Work is underway to bolster access to contraception at pharmacies in an effort to combat ‘contraceptive deserts’ amid the post-Roe reproductive health care environment. Reimbursement poses barrier to implementation. A 31-year-old Asian American woman hopped into an Uber on a mission — to head to a pharmacy in New Bern to get birth control. Because of her family’s cultural and religious beliefs, she was not allowed to go to doctors’ appointments alone nor to ask for contraception. But pharmacists’ new ability to prescribe hormonal contraception in North Carolina gave her the opportunity to get connected to the pregnancy prevention method…
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To expand abortion access in Texas, a lawmaker gets creative

"Texas's Republican Governor Greg Abbott addressed a rally earlier this year, celebrating the abortion bans that took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. "As long as I am governor of the great state of Texas, Texas will always protect the unborn," he told a cheering crowd. So it may be surprising that just a few weeks ago, Abbott signed a law giving doctors leeway to provide abortions in Texas when a patient's water breaks too early and for ectopic pregnancies. There was considerably less fanfare for that signing..."
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Abortion pill ruling sets up Supreme Court showdown

"The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday ruled that access to the abortion pill, mifepristone, should be sharply curtailed, ramping up the legal threat to the most popular method of ending a pregnancy. The decision — if allowed by the Supreme Court to take effect — would roll back actions the federal government has taken since 2016 to make the pills more accessible, including rules allowing online ordering, mail delivery, and pharmacy dispensing of the drugs. It also would roll back access from the current 10 weeks of pregnancy to seven and would reimpose a requirement that only physicians can…
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Montana voters rejected an anti-abortion measure. State GOP lawmakers passed a similar bill anyway.

"In the months following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that gave states the power to ban abortion, voters in a half-dozen states spoke on the issue — and, in every case, chose to uphold abortion rights or reject an attempt to restrict them. Most recently, Ohio voters on Tuesday rejected a Republican-led effort to make it more difficult to change that state’s constitution, which would have set a higher bar for an abortion rights ballot initiative this fall. But the will of the electorate didn’t stop Republican lawmakers in one state, Montana, from passing a version of the anti-abortion proposal that voters…
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How Wisconsin’s pre-Civil War abortion ban remained untouched during decades of political battle

"Last summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, the legality of abortion was sent back to states — immediately reviving Wisconsin's pre-Civil War abortion ban.  Few if any states reverted to laws as old as Wisconsin’s. Over the nearly 50 years the ban was unenforceable, why had lawmakers never revoked it? In some ways, the answer is simple: There was never the political will. And in the years immediately following the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the political lines when it came to abortion were blurred. It would take nearly a decade for the major parties in Wisconsin,…
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Office of the Attorney General Files Appeal to Texas Supreme Court, Blocking District Judge’s Ruling and Leaving Abortion Law in Place

"In response to a Texas judge ruling Friday that said the state’s abortion ban must allow exceptions without doctors fearing the threat of criminal charges, the Office of the Attorney General filed what is called a Notice of Accelerated Interlocutory Appeal directly to the Texas Supreme Court...."
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