USA – The anti-abortion playbook for restricting birth control

Contraception, like IVF, poses problems for those claiming personhood begins at conception.

By Rachel M. Cohen
Mar 3, 2024

The national debate over IVF, unfolding after an Alabama court decision prompted multiple clinics in the state to halt operations, prompts a question: What might be next? Could other fertility treatments and even birth control be under threat given that Roe v. Wade is no longer the law?

If the idea that birth control could be at risk in America strikes you as hard to believe, I understand.
There’s no proposed legislation on the table to ban it, and it does seem unbelievable that contraception — which an overwhelming majority of US women, including religious and Republican women, have used and support — could one day disappear.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/24087411/anti-abortion-roe-dobbs-birth-control-contraception-ivf

USA – The Weldon Amendment: A Poison Pill Rider for Abortion Access

National Women’s Law Center
May 30, 2023

A health care provider’s personal beliefs should never dictate health care. Yet a federal law known as the Weldon Amendment allows personal beliefs, not patient health and the standard of care, to determine the care a patient receives.

The Weldon Amendment is a rider that has been attached to the annual Labor-HHS appropriations bill in Congress since 2005. Although it is written to prohibit any entity subject to the rider from “discriminat[ing]” against certain health care entities – including hospitals, health insurance plans, doctors, and nurses – that refuse to provide, cover, pay for, or refer for abortion, it really allows health care providers to discriminate against patients by denying them the care they need. There are no provisions in the Weldon Amendment to protect patient access to abortion services.

Continued: https://nwlc.org/resource/the-weldon-amendment-a-poison-pill-rider-for-abortion-access/

30.05.2023

Commentary

abortion refusals

Affordable Care Act

belief-based care denial

care denials

conscientious objection

Title X family planning program

Post-Roe v. Wade Fears Realized As Trump Judge Approves Contraception Suit

BY EWAN PALMER
12/17/22

Abortion rights groups have raised concerns that a Donald Trump-nominated federal judge approving an anti-contraception lawsuit is proof the GOP will go further restricting the procedure post Roe v. Wade.

Matthew Kacsmaryk, a judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, recently issued an opinion on the case of Deanda v. Becerra, a lawsuit filed by a Christian father hoping to block the Title X federal program.

Continued: https://www.newsweek.com/roe-wade-abortion-contraception-trump-judge-1767714

US – The Supreme Court considers an important showdown over abortion this week

The Court has been surprisingly hesitant to weigh in on abortion. But a pending case is likely to force its hand.

By Ian Millhiser
May 11, 2021

The Supreme Court has been sitting on a potentially very significant abortion case for the last two months, one that the Court’s rules say it should dismiss. We’re likely to find out this week whether the Court will dismiss this case, however, and that decision could tell us a great deal about how fast the Court plans to move in rolling back abortion rights.

In February, about a month after President Joe Biden took office, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear three consolidated cases challenging a Trump administration policy targeting abortion clinics.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/22428611/supreme-court-abortion-gag-rule-title-x-american-medical-association-becerra-biden-trump

Will the Biden Administration Get Bolder on Improving Abortion Access?

The FDA’s announcement that it will permit abortion medication to be sent by mail is a start—but advocates are hoping for more.

By Amy Littlefield
Apr 27, 2021

The Biden administration’s announcement this month that it would allow mifepristone to be sent by mail revolutionized access to abortion—in about half the country. Elsewhere, state laws requiring patients to meet with a provider in person preempt the new policy, underscoring just how much a person’s options depend on where they live.

“I think it’s great for states that it will impact,” Laurie Bertram Roberts, who cofounded the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund and now leads the Yellowhammer Fund in Alabama, said with a wry laugh. “Neither of the states that I work in are one of those.”

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/fda-abortion-biden/

27.04.2021

Commentary

Featured

abortion on demand

abortion pills by mail

All Above All

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Choix

Department of Health and Human Services

Destiny Lopez

digital abortion clinics

Elisa Wells

Food and Drug Administration

Laurie Bertram Roberts

Mary Ziegler

mifepristone

misoprostol

Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund

Plan C

Renee Bracey Sherman

Roe v. Wade

self-managed abortion

Tara Shochet

TelAbortion Study

telemedicine abortion

Texas Equal Access Fund

Title X family planning program

Biden begins to undo Trump-era ban on abortion referrals

Apr 14, 2021
By: Canadian Press

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Wednesday began to undo a Trump-era ban on clinics referring women for abortions, a policy that drove Planned Parenthood from the federal family planning program and created new complications for women trying to get birth control.

The proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services follows through on President Joe Biden's campaign promise to reverse his predecessor's family planning policy, which was branded a “gag rule” by women's groups and decried by medical associations as violating the doctor-patient relationship.

Continued: https://www.bradfordtoday.ca/world-news/biden-begins-to-undo-trump-era-ban-on-abortion-referrals-3630894

Biden rolls back Trump’s anti-abortion curbs on family planning funds

The proposed overhaul erases restrictions on abortion providers that Democrats derided as a "gag rule."

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
04/14/2021

The Biden administration on Wednesday moved
to unwind former President Donald Trump’s anti-abortion restrictions on federal
family planning funds.

New rules proposed Wednesday would largely return the Title X program to its
pre-Trump formation, allowing more abortion clinics to participate in a program
that provides free or subsidized contraception and other health services to
about 4 million low-income Americans each year.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/biden-trump-anti-abortion-family-planning-481395

Biden administration asks Supreme Court to dismiss abortion counseling case

By Ariane de Vogue and Caroline Kelly, CNN
Fri March 12, 2021

Washington (CNN) The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court late Friday to dismiss a dispute over a Trump era rule barring federally funded health care providers in the Title X family planning program from referring patients for abortions.

In a petition to the court filed after hours
on Friday, Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the parties had
agreed to dismiss the case that the justices had agreed to hear last month.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/12/politics/biden-administration-supreme-court-dismiss-abortion-counseling-case/index.html

AMA and Planned Parenthood ask Supreme Court to block federal abortion referral rule

By Caroline Kelly
Thu October 1, 2020

(CNN)The American Medical Association, the main industry group for doctors, is asking the Supreme Court to block the Trump administration rule barring federally funded health care providers in the Title X family planning program from referring patients for abortions.

The petition filed Thursday comes as the high court faces a vacancy following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But a contentious confirmation fight looms over President Donald Trump's pick for the seat, federal appeals court judge Amy Coney Barrett, who has expressed views and joined opinions that suggest she is receptive to further restrictions on abortion rights and would likely help further cement a conservative majority on the court.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/01/politics/supreme-court-abortion-referral-rule/index.html

Women Have Paid the Price for Trump’s Regulatory Agenda

By Osub Ahmed, Shilpa Phadke, and Diana Boesch
September 10, 2020

From the first day of Donald Trump’s presidency, his administration has used every tool in its arsenal to chip away at women’s health, employment, economic security, and rights overall. One of the administration’s most effective, and at times less noticed, tools to crafting this harmful agenda against women has been to use the standard agency rule-making process as a political weapon.1 Frequently ignoring relevant data and research, the Trump administration has used the rule-making process to issue guidance, interpret public policy, and implement statutes in ways that are fundamentally harmful to women, often pushing beyond the limits of its legal authority while consistently underestimating the financial costs and dismissing the human impact of its rules.2

Continued: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2020/09/10/490241/women-paid-price-trumps-regulatory-agenda/