The GOP Plot to Bankrupt Planned Parenthood

By Susan Rinkunas
Jan 15, 2025

Despite the crucial fact that federal money cannot be used for abortions, Republicans have been trying to cut off all sources of federal funding to Planned Parenthood since 2007. The money the health care organization receives through various government programs covers birth control, sexually transmitted infection testing, and cancer screenings, but archconservatives want to shut down the country’s largest abortion provider by excluding it from these programs. Donald Trump pledged to anti-abortion groups during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns that he would “defund” the organization. It’s possible that Republicans for the first time in years have a plausible path to this longtime goal and Trump might not even need to act.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/01/gop-plot-bankrupt-planned-parenthood-abortion-trump.html

USA – Project 2025 and Vance agree: “The Dobbs decision is just the beginning.”

Shawn Musgrave
July 17 2024

DONALD TRUMP HAS tried to distance himself from Project 2025, the conservative playbook for a new Trump administration penned by dozens of right-wing organizations — and especially its hard-line anti-abortion proposals.

In the lead-up to the Republican convention, many credulously lauded Trump for “softening” or “moderating” the GOP platform on the issue, despite the fact that the platform proposes fetuses and embryos already have full constitutional rights.

Continued: https://theintercept.com/2024/07/17/jd-vance-trump-project-2025/

Supreme Court decision allows pregnant people in Idaho to access emergency abortion care — for now

By Jen Christensen, CNN
Thu June 27, 2024

Pregnant people in Idaho should be able to access abortion in a medical emergency in Idaho, at least for now.

The Supreme Court formally dismissed an appeal over Idaho’s strict abortion ban on Thursday, blocking enforcement of the state’s law where it conflicts with federal law. With Thursday’s decision, the state would not be allowed to deny an emergency abortion to a pregnant person whose health is in danger, at least while the case makes its way through the courts.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/26/health/emtala-emergency-care-scotus/index.html

USA – Why Hospitals in Many States With Legal Abortion May Refuse To Perform Them

By Rachana Pradhan
MARCH 5, 2024

Many states that tout themselves as protectors of reproductive health care, including California, Michigan and Pennsylvania, have little-noticed laws on the books protecting hospitals that refuse to provide it.

The laws shield at least some hospitals from liability for not providing care they object to on religious grounds, leaving little recourse for patients. The providers — many of them Catholic hospitals — generally refuse to perform abortions and sterilizations because the services run contrary to their religious beliefs, but their objections can extend to other kinds of care.

Continued: https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/health-202-catholic-hospitals-legal-abortion-refusal/

How a trial in Texas changed the story of abortion rights in America

August 9, 2023
By Sarah Varney

During the five decades that followed Roe v. Wade, lawsuit after lawsuit in states across the country chipped away at abortion rights. And again and again, the people who went to court to defend those rights were physicians who often spoke in clinical and abstract terms.

"The entirety of abortion rights history is a history of doctors appearing in court to represent their own interests and the interests of pregnant people," said Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin. But in July, in a Texas courtroom, the case for abortion was made by women themselves who had been denied abortions and sued the state to clarify the exceptions to its ban, which makes it illegal to perform an abortion unless a patient is facing death or "substantial impairment of a major bodily function."

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/08/09/1187378801/texas-abortion-law-trial-reproductive-rights

3 abortion bans in Texas leave doctors ‘talking in code’ to pregnant patients

March 1, 2023
Selena Simmons-Duffin
6-Minute Listen with Transcript

This past fall, when Lauren Miller of Dallas was 13-weeks pregnant with twins, she got horrible news. One of the twins had trisomy 18, a genetic abnormality that causes about 90% of fetuses to die before birth. The other twin was healthy.

She learned from a genetic counselor that continuing to carry both fetuses could put the healthy one at risk. She saw a doctor who specializes in high risk pregnancies who told her: "You can't do anything in Texas and I can't tell you anything further in Texas, but you need to get out of state."

Continued; https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/01/1158364163/3-abortion-bans-in-texas-leave-doctors-talking-in-code-to-pregnant-patients

A Trump-appointed Texas judge could force a major abortion pill off the market

February 1, 2023
Sarah McCammon

A case before a federal judge in Texas could dramatically alter abortion access in the United States – at least as much, some experts say, as the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision last year, which overturned decades of abortion-rights precedent.

A decision is expected soon in the case challenging the Food and Drug Administration's approval more than 20 years ago of the abortion drug mifepristone, which a growing number of patients use to terminate pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/01/1153593174/mifepristone-abortion-pill-federal-texas-lawsuit-restrict-access-nationwide

Bleeding and in pain, she couldn’t get 2 Louisiana ERs to answer: Is it a miscarriage?

December 29, 2022
ROSEMARY WESTWOOD
7-Minute Listen with transcript

BATON ROUGE, La. – When Kaitlyn Joshua found out she was pregnant in mid-August, she and her husband, Landon Joshua, were excited to have a second baby on the way. They have a 4-year-old daughter, and thought that was just the right age to help out with a younger sibling.

At about six weeks pregnant, Joshua, 30, called a physicians' group in Baton Rouge. She wanted to make her first prenatal appointment there for around the eight-week mark, as she had in her first pregnancy. But Joshua says the woman on the line told her she was going to have to wait over a month.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/12/29/1143823727/bleeding-and-in-pain-she-couldnt-get-2-louisiana-ers-to-answer-is-it-a-miscarria

State lawsuits defend abortion access with religious freedom

Critics of religious freedom laws often argue they are used to discriminate against LGBTQ people and only protect a conservative Christian worldview

By ARLEIGH RODGERS Associated Press/Report for America
December 27, 2022

INDIANAPOLIS -- Cara Berg Raunick watched with bafflement as Indiana's Republican legislators took less than two weeks to debate and pass an abortion ban that the governor signed quickly into law.

The women’s health nurse practitioner from Indianapolis was struck by just how frequently faith was cited in the arguments as reason to ban the medical practice. But Berg Raunick, who is Jewish, said those views go against her beliefs.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/state-lawsuits-defend-abortion-access-religious-freedom-95854873

New Texas trigger law makes abortion a felony

August 27, 2022
5-minute listen with transcript

Scott Simon talks with Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin about the legal landscape of abortion access in the state.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Laws restricting access to abortion went into effect in a number of states this week, including Texas, which already has some of the toughest restrictions in the country. Its new law goes even further. It makes it a felony to provide an abortion, and that is punishable by up to life in prison. We're joined now by Elizabeth Sepper, who is a professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/27/1119795665/new-texas-trigger-law-makes-abortion-a-felony