USA – The Abortion Pill Is Safe. Scientists Fear an FDA Investigation Will Ignore Science

Some scientists are concerned that the Trump administration will use “junk science” when reviewing mifepristone’s safety record

October 30, 2025
By Liz Szabo

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., recently announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will launch a review of the safety of the abortion pill, mifepristone. Health researchers say they’re concerned that the review will be politicized and based on flawed reports. More than 100 studies published over the past few decades have shown that the drug, which was approved by the FDA in 2000, is safe and effective at ending a pregnancy.

Given Kennedy’s history of misrepresenting scientific evidence about vaccines, autism and Tylenol, some scientists say they worry that the health secretary will base the FDA report on unreliable sources.

Continued: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fda-is-investigating-the-abortion-pill-mifepristone-despite-decades-of/

USA – Abortions Are Rising—Even After Dobbs. A New Book Explains Why.

“It’s a story of resistance and resilience and hope.”

Julianne McShane, Mother Jones
April 17, 2025

New data released this week reaffirmed a seemingly paradoxical reality of the post-Roe v. Wade era: Abortion rates have continued to rise despite the increasing restrictions nationwide.

The latest data, compiled by the abortion rights research and policy organization the Guttmacher Institute, shows that throughout 2024, clinicians provided more than one million abortions in states without total abortion bans, a slight increase compared to 2023. A closer look at the data reflects how healthcare providers and patients have adapted to changing circumstances—which have made access both more difficult and, in some ways, easier—since the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization revoking the constitutional right to abortion.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/abortions-are-rising-even-after-dobbs-a-new-book-explains-why/

Why overturning Roe v. Wade only made America’s abortion rate rise

"They will never stop abortion": "After Dobbs" chronicles "the extraordinary efforts" to help women get healthcare

By Amanda Marcotte, Salon
March 25, 2025

Republican politicians owe the pro-choice community a thank you card for saving the right from the worst impacts of their policies. After the Supreme Court overturned nearly five decades of abortion rights in the infamous Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case, the fallout has been terrible: women nearly bleeding to death in hospital parking lots, women having to be airlifted to safer states for abortions, and, unfortunately, a few highly publicized deaths because abortion bans prevented timely care. Still, the impacts have fallen far short of what anti-choice activists hoped and what pro-choice activists feared. There haven't been hospitals filling up, as they did in the days before Roe v. Wade, with patients mutilated from botched abortions. It's not because women have, en masse, given up and submitted to forced childbirth. On the contrary, the birth rate continues to decline while the abortion rate went up after the Dobbs decision.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2025/03/25/why-overturning-roe-v-wade-only-made-americas-abortion-rate-rise/

The Biggest Thing Missing From Joe Biden’s State of the Union

BY DAVID S. COHEN, GREER DONLEY, AND RACHEL REBOUCHE
MARCH 08, 2024

On Thursday night, President Joe Biden gave an energetic and compelling State of the Union address that centered reproductive freedom. It was the second topic he addressed, behind only threats to democracy, abroad with Putin and at home with Trump. In turning to reproductive rights, Biden was able to showcase the powerful stories of his invited guests, like Kate Cox and Latorya Beasley, to underscore the real harms of anti-abortion policies.

There was a lot to appreciate in his speech, but there were missed opportunities. Reproductive rights and justice advocates immediately noticed that Biden did not say the word “abortion”—a recurring issue for the president. But we noticed the omission of another word, which we think is possibly even more significant given the coming election: Comstock.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/abortion-comstock-act-joe-biden-state-of-the-union.html

USA – “Impossible to enforce”: Attempts to ban abortion travel are scare tactics, legal expert says

It's not clear if abortion travel bans are constitutional or not. For now, they are mostly used as intimidation

By NICOLE KARLIS
JANUARY 30, 2024

Last week, a Tennessee Republican lawmaker proposed legislation that could imprison any adult who "recruits, harbors or transports" a pregnant minor to get out-of-state abortion care. Parents and legal guardians would be exempt, but any other adult helping a minor — say an aunt or friend or abortion care provider — despite receiving the minor’s permission, would be subject to the penalty of a Class C felony which is three to 15 years in jail.

In a press statement, Ashley Coffield in the release, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi said such a measure would have a “chilling effect” on trusted adults and helpers who assist minors in accessing abortion care. It could be especially harmful to minors living in abusive households.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2024/01/30/impossible-to-enforce-attempts-to-ban-abortion-travel-are-scare-tactics-legal-expert-says/

30.01.2024

Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi

Reproductive Rights Task Force

USA opinion: It’s too dangerous to allow this antiquated law to exist any longer

by David S. Cohen, Greer Donley and Rachel ReboucheComst
Mon January 22, 2024

The most significant national threat to reproductive rights is not a looming Supreme Court judgment or a bill being considered by Congress. It’s already here, in the form of an extant but long dormant law from 1873 that could ban abortion nationwide: the Comstock Act. The act is named after Anthony Comstock, an anti-vice crusader from the late 1800s who used his power as a special agent of the US Postal Service to enforce his beliefs about sex and propriety. He was able to persuade Congress to pass laws against “indecent or immoral” materials, including broad definitions of contraception, pornography and abortion.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/22/opinions/abortion-threat-comstock-act-must-be-repealed-cohen-donley-rebouche/index.html

22.01.2024

Ending Roe v. Wade May Have Had the Opposite Effect That Conservatives Had Hoped For

BY DAVID S. COHEN AND CAROLE JOFFE
NOV 07, 2023

On Tuesday, Ohio voters passed a ballot measure enshrining the right to an abortion in the state constitution, joining several states where voters have responded to the end of Roe v. Wade by protecting reproductive rights via popular referendum. We recently learned, however, that even without these votes, reproductive rights might be safer than many expected following the end of Roe in 2022.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the conventional wisdom was that there would be a steep drop in the number of abortions in the United States. As it turns out, though, conventional wisdom was wrong. To many observers’ surprise, two recent studies reveal that national abortion numbers have actually slightly increased since the Supreme Court ended Roe. Based on everything we know about abortion seekers and providers, however, that abortion numbers would go up in the face of Supreme Court retrenchment should have been exactly what was predicted.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/11/ohio-vote-abortion-access-is-growing.html

USA – Group using ‘shield laws’ to provide abortion care in states that ban it

Aid Access ships medication abortion to all 50 states under the protection provided to clinicians serving patients in banned states

Rebecca Grant
Sun 23 Jul 2023

Dr Linda Prine is providing abortion access to people in all 50 states, even those that have banned it. That might seem like an admission to be discreet about in post-Roe America, but Prine and her colleagues at Aid Access, a telemedicine abortion service, are doing it openly and in a way they believe is on firm legal ground.

On 14 July, Aid Access announced that over the past month, a team of seven doctors, midwives and nurse practitioners have mailed medication abortion to 3,500 people under the protection of “shield laws”, which protect clinicians who serve patients in states where providing abortion is illegal. As soon as she learned about shield laws, Prine knew it represented an opportunity to go on the offensive, for those bold enough to try it.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/23/shield-laws-provide-abortion-care-aid-access

USA – How a 150-Year-Old Law Against Lewdness Became a Key to the Abortion Fight

The Comstock Act, named for a public-morals crusader on a mission to “sanitize” the U.S. in the 1870s, makes a comeback in the abortion-pill battle.

By Emily Bazelon
May 16, 2023

Anthony Comstock, a 19th-century crusader against sexual liberty, was mocked as a prude in his own time, but wielded real power. He persuaded Congress in 1873 to pass the Comstock Act, written by and named for him, making it a federal crime to send or deliver “obscene, lewd or lascivious” material through the mail or by other carriers, specifically including items used for abortion or birth control.

By the 1960s, the Comstock Act had fallen out of use — narrowed by court rulings, partly gutted by congressional repeals — and it was made an unconstitutional relic by the Supreme Court’s decision in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, recognizing a national right to abortion. But it stayed on the books.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/abortion-comstock-act.html

Idaho criminalizes helping minors travel out of state to get an abortion

May 5, 2023
By Sarah Varney and Maea Lenei Buhre
(Video 8:15 minutes)

With abortion now effectively banned in 15 states, many Americans are crossing state lines to legally end pregnancies. Friday, the first state law aimed at ending that option for anyone under 18 went into effect in Idaho.

In a story co-produced with the PBS NewsHour, KFF Health News correspondent Sarah Varney takes a look at this new frontier in the movement to outlaw access to legal abortion.

Continued: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/idaho-criminalizes-helping-minors-travel-out-of-state-to-get-an-abortion