If Trump Restricts Mifepristone, Clinicians Are Ready to Pivot to Misoprostol-Only Abortions

7/7/2025
by Carrie N. Baker

For decades, clinicians relied on the gold standard of medication abortion care: a two-pill regimen. Mifepristone is taken first, followed by misoprostol 24 to 48 hours later. However, misoprostol can be used alone for abortion. Recent research on patients in the U.S. confirms that misoprostol-only abortion is not only safe and effective, but that patients respond positively to using it.

In light of the FDA’s recent decision to reopen its safety review of mifepristone—a move advocates warn may lead to new restrictions—abortion providers say they are ready to offer the misoprostol-only regimen to keep telehealth abortion available in all 50 states.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/07/07/trump-restricts-mifepristone-misoprostol-only-abortions/


USA – Confusing abortion bans hurt patients. But there’s a cost to making them clearer.

What the debate over “clarification” laws reveals about America three years out from Roe.

by Rachel Cohen Booth
Jul 1, 2025

By the time Republican Rep. Kat Cammack arrived at a Florida emergency room, she was facing an urgent medical crisis: Her pregnancy, then five weeks along, had become ectopic and now threatened her life. It was May 2024, and though Florida’s new and particularly restrictive six-week abortion ban did allow abortion in cases like hers, Cammack said she spent hours convincing hospital staff to administer the standard treatment for ending nonviable pregnancies. Doctors expressed fears about losing their licenses, prompting Cammack to pull up the legislation on her phone to show them that her case fell within legal parameters.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/abortion/418140/abortion-bans-clarification-texas-tennessee-kentucky-reproductive-rights-roe


A “Striking” Trend: After Texas Banned Abortion, More Women Nearly Bled to Death During Miscarriage

A new ProPublica data analysis adds to the mounting evidence that abortion bans have made the common experience of first-trimester miscarriage far more dangerous.

by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser and Andrea Suozzo
July 1, 2025

Before states banned abortion, one of the gravest outcomes of early miscarriage could easily be avoided: Doctors could offer a dilation and curettage procedure, which quickly empties the uterus and allows it to close, protecting against a life-threatening hemorrhage.

But because the procedures, known as D&Cs, are also used to end pregnancies, they have gotten tangled up in state legislation that restricts abortion. Reports now abound of doctors hesitating to provide them and women who are bleeding heavily being discharged from emergency rooms without care, only to return in such dire condition that they need blood transfusions to survive. As ProPublica reported last year, one woman died of hemorrhage after 10 hours in a Houston hospital that didn’t perform the procedure.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-abortion-ban-miscarriage-blood-transfusions


This abortion method doesn’t involve doctors — and many of them consider it safe

June 22, 2025
By Abby Wendle, Liana Simstrom
Podcast: 43-Minute Listen, with transcript

This story is an accompaniment to a three-part podcast series released by NPR's Embedded and Futuro Media.

For nearly four years, Dr. Maya Bass's commute included a monthly plane ride from Philadelphia to Oklahoma to provide abortions at a clinic there. Starting in 2018, she took these trips even though flying made her nauseous and she had to use vacation time from her regular job. Bass was motivated to fill a gap: Oklahoma — like all parts of the U.S. outside of a fraction of metropolitan areas — has long had a shortage of abortion providers.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2025/06/22/g-s1-73119/abortion-mifepristone-roe-v-wade


USA – What Would It Mean to Defend All Abortions?

Democrats love to avoid it, and Republicans love to lie about it. But later-abortion care has never been more important.

Amy Littlefield
May 13, 2025

Ayana, 28 years old and 28 weeks pregnant, eases herself onto the procedure table at Partners in Abortion Care in College Park, Maryland. She is a Black woman with the tiny bearing and erect posture of a bird. Above her head, a flock of pink and blue butterflies decorates the ceiling. In a few minutes, a doctor will perform an injection to the fetal heart to end her pregnancy.

Ayana had spent months in turmoil over this abortion. As she chased after her two older kids while lugging her 1-year-old on family outings to the arcade and the movies, she tried to imagine hauling two car seats instead of one. While she changed her baby’s diapers, she thought about what a newborn would subtract from him. The family was already stretched thin.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/defending-all-abortions/


Not just liberty, Roe v. Wade legitimised extinguishing the American woman’s right to life

In a country where 20 percent pregnant women face violence, and several are prone to life-altering injuries and health conditions, pregnancy must be examined as an inherently violent circumstance, posing fatal consequences to women, globally, everyday. In the post-Roe U.S., we must collectively acknowledge that this is not a simple contest between the foetus’s right to life and women’s right to liberty and privacy. It is the woman’s survival that is on the line.

Hannah Zobair
28 Feb 2025

WOMEN often describe giving birth as “a scene from a horror movie.” Accounts of mistreatment during childbirth in the United States recall harrowing stories of doctors shoving their hands up the uterus of the mother, leaving her bruised, bloodied, and with severe post-traumatic stress disorder that follows her long after the birth. The choice to have a baby can often be a fatal one, always necessitating exposure to a certain amount of danger.

In the United States, a conservative movement to recognise the fundamental right to life of foetuses, and their corresponding right to not be aborted, has evolved over decades. Conservative proponents have put forth an assertive, moral view - the State cannot perpetuate the killing of babies.

Continued: https://theleaflet.in/women-and-children/not-just-liberty-roe-v-wade-legitimised-extinguishing-the-american-womans-right-to-life


USA – What It Really Means to Get an Abortion After ‘Fetal Viability’

By Chantelle Lee
December 4, 2024

Kate Dineen was about 33 weeks pregnant with her second child when an ultrasound revealed that her baby had suffered a catastrophic stroke in utero and would likely either die before birth or have a short and painful life.

“This was a deeply wanted pregnancy. Everything had been progressing smoothly,” Dineen, now 41, says. “I was just shocked by the diagnosis first, and heartbroken by the diagnosis, and also certain that I wanted to try and obtain a termination so that I could protect my son from pain and suffering. I knew in that moment that I wanted to make the decision.”

Continued: https://time.com/7199856/abortion-fetal-viability-pregnancy/


Crisis pregnancy center’s forms give rare insight into anti-abortion practices

The free organizations offer counseling while trying to dissuade women from having abortions. They promise to protect health data but aren’t bound by federal privacy law.

Oct. 13, 2024
by Abigail Brooks

A free family planning center in Twin Falls, Idaho, asks its visitors for sensitive, private information, including nonmedical questions about religion and financial status, according to documents obtained by NBC News.

While the Sage Women’s Center promises to protect the information of its clients, it isn’t bound by medical privacy laws and may be misleading women who are coping with unplanned pregnancies, consumer advocates say.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/crisis-pregnancy-centers-forms-privacy-abortion-rcna172566


Puerto Rico – Anti-abortion centers without health regulations deceive those seeking abortion

Three anti-abortion centers advertise themselves as offering medical services, sonograms and information about abortions and abortion pills, even though they are not regulated by the Department of Health. People who come to their facilities, lured by confusing language, share their personal information, not knowing that they will then receive false information and multiple follow-up calls urging them to continue with a pregnancy they do not want.

Sept 26, 2024
Photos by Brandon Cruz González | Center for Investigative Journalism
by Cindy Burgos | ALL and Center for Investigative Journalism

They look like ordinary medical offices — with scrubs -clad employees offering free sonograms and pregnancy tests — but they are not. They are called “crisis pregnancy centers,” and while they promote themselves as places that provide scientific medical information about options for an unwanted pregnancy, in practice, they are anti-abortion centers that use techniques of deception, manipulation, incomplete or false information, and from a religious perspective, to convince pregnant people to continue with a pregnancy they do not want.

There are three such pseudoclinics in Puerto Rico: two Hope Women's Clinics in Río Piedras and Bayamón; and Centro Raquel in Carolina. All are located near or next to one of the four clinics in Puerto Rico that offer abortion services, an essential health procedure that can only be performed by a licensed physician.

Continued: https://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2024/09/centros-antiaborto-sin-regulacion-salud-puerto-rico/


After Dobbs decision, more women are managing their own abortions

The increase comes as the average number of abortions per month in the U.S. is also rising, according to new research.

Aug. 11, 2024
By Lauren Dunn

Kaniya was right in the middle of spring finals at college last year when she found out she was pregnant.

“I didn’t have the resources to support a child,” said Kaniya, who asked to use only her first name to protect her privacy. “I wasn’t making enough money financially. I was working multiple jobs. I didn’t have the capacity to care for a child.”

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/self-managed-abortion-journey-post-dobbs-restrictions-rcna165791