South Carolina providers push back against faith-based assaults on abortion care

by Emma Akpan
August 14, 2025

… In January 2025, five doctors sued the state of South Carolina against the 2023 Heartbeat Law, which prohibits abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or after about nine weeks. Their lawsuit is particularly important, as the Heartbeat Law was instrumental in the state Supreme Court's decision to uphold the six-week abortion ban. For these doctors, not only is the decision devastating for patients, but exemplifies why anti-abortion advocates, lawmakers, and religious leaders should not be allowed to use their faith to implement a life-threatening law that doctors must unquestionably follow.

The plaintiffs have therefore inverted faith-based pro-life logic by counter-arguing the questions: Don't doctors who need to administer abortions get to use their faith to challenge such laws? And if the other side can claim conscientiousness to prohibit abortion, then why can't doctors claim conscientiousness to protect their right to perform abortions?

Continued: https://scalawagmagazine.org/2025/08/south-carolina-providers-push-back-against-faith-based-assaults-on-abortion-care/

Trump rescinds guidance protecting women in need of emergency abortions

Abortion rights supporters say scaling back Biden officials’ Emtala guidance will endanger pregnant patients’ lives

Carter Sherman
Tue 3 Jun 2025

The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded Biden-era guidance clarifying that hospitals in states with abortion bans cannot turn away pregnant patients who are in the midst of medical emergencies – a move that comes amid multiple red-state court battles over the guidance.

The guidance deals with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala), which requires hospitals to stabilize patients facing medical emergencies. States such as Idaho and Texas have argued that the Biden administration’s guidance, which it issued in the wake of the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, interpreted Emtala incorrectly.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/03/trump-admin-emergency-abortion-emtala

03.06.2025

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Donald Trump

Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act

EMTALA

Joe Biden

Ketanji Brown Jackson

United States

Anti-choice

Politics

Her miscarriage showed the limits of California’s abortion protections. Where you live matters

May 21, 2025
By Kristen Hwang, CalMatters

Anna Nusslock never wanted to be the face of a new kind of reproductive rights battle in California, but when a small Catholic hospital refused to provide an abortion that would end her miscarriage, Nusslock girded herself for a long and difficult conflict.

Nusslock felt her civil rights were being violated, she said, even as she lay in the hospital bed curled in on herself, bleeding and mourning the loss of her twin girls. The doctor had said that her pregnancy needed to be terminated immediately to protect her from infection and other serious complications but hospital policy prohibited it, according to two lawsuits filed by Nusslock and California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Continued: https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/05/21/her-miscarriage-showed-the-limits-of-californias-abortion-protections-where-you-live-matters/

Under Idaho’s abortion ban, a family confronts life-or-death reality — and a crisis of faith

As judges weigh the limits of medical exceptions, Idaho’s abortion ban is being tested — in courts, hospitals and patients’ lives

By Kelsey Turner
Apr 18, 2025

Desi Ballis didn’t understand why her doctor needed her to go to Utah.

She lay on an exam table in Boise, her pregnant belly wet with ultrasound gel. At 38, she’d done various genetic tests that confirmed her baby was developing normally. Its small features looked perfect on the screen.

But her baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Her 20-week ultrasound in February 2024 showed findings of hydrops fetalis, an often lethal condition where fluid builds up in the fetus’ body, according to Desi’s medical records. Her baby would almost certainly die before delivery. If she remained pregnant, Desi risked dying, too.

Continued: https://www.investigatewest.org/investigatewest-reports/under-idahos-abortion-ban-a-family-confronts-life-or-death-reality-and-a-crisis-of-faith-17865090

How abortion rights groups are preparing for the next Trump administration

Abortion rights groups are pivoting away from ballot initiatives and starting to go on defense.

Shefali Luthra
November 21, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump’s victory has energized anti-abortion groups, even as abortion rights organizers notched victories on Election Day. Now, reproductive rights groups are preparing for legal and legislative battles in a new, less friendly environment.

They are planning to embrace a multipronged approach: challenging anti-abortion policies in court, organizing political protests, and lobbying state and national lawmakers to oppose proposed bans.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/11/abortion-rights-second-trump-administration/

A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms

It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.

by Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana
Nov. 1, 2024

Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

Continued: https://www.propublica.org/article/nevaeh-crain-death-texas-abortion-ban-emtala

If Trump wins the election, this is what’s at stake

Women and doctors describe heart-wrenching decisions under what may be the US’s strictest abortion ban in Idaho

Carter Sherman in Boise, Idaho
Mon 21 Oct 2024

When Jennifer Adkins and her husband were considering having a second child in Idaho, they vaguely thought how the state’s near-total abortion ban could affect them. But Adkins’ first pregnancy had gone so smoothly, she didn’t even use an epidural when she gave birth. Her next pregnancy, she expected, would be similar.

But in April 2023, 12 weeks into her second pregnancy, an ultrasound scan shattered that hope.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/21/idaho-abortion-trump

Inside the Supreme Court’s negotiations and compromise on Idaho’s abortion ban

By Joan Biskupic, CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst
Mon July 29, 2024

The Supreme Court began the year poised to build on its 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and to deliver a new blow to abortion access.

In January, the court took the extraordinary step of letting Idaho enforce its ban on abortion with an exception only to prevent the death of a pregnant woman, despite an ongoing challenge from the Biden administration arguing that it intruded on federal protections for emergency room care.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/29/politics/supreme-court-idaho-abortion-emtala-biskupic/index.html

What GOP’s European abortion example looks like in France

French law bans elective abortions after the first trimester but includes sweeping exceptions

By Ariel Cohen
July 3, 2024

PARIS — Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, Republicans on Capitol Hill and conservative justices have regularly cited European laws barring abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy to argue for similar policy in the United States.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. both cited European abortion limits in their opinions in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. More recently, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has called for a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks of gestation, told reporters on Capitol Hill that a first-trimester abortion limit would put the U.S. in line with other peer nations.

“Forty-seven of 50 European nations have national limits on abortion between 12 and 15 weeks,” Graham said in April after former President Donald Trump said he would leave abortion policies to the states. “This is the civilized world’s position.”

Continued: https://rollcall.com/2024/07/03/what-gops-european-abortion-example-looks-like-in-france/

‘They have no options’: Texas court dims hope of timely abortion care for high-risk patients

Kristen Anaya was told she must be on the cusp of death before doctors would give a life-saving abortion

Mary Tuma
Sat 8 Jun 2024

After four rounds of in vitro fertilization, Kristen Anaya and her husband were elated to discover Anaya was finally pregnant - with a baby girl - last April. The 42-year-old Dallas-area woman called IVF a “long and emotional journey”. Despite the cost and struggle, the process was well worth it for Anaya, who wanted to grow her family.

However, the good news would give way to an unexpectedly grueling and traumatic pregnancy that forced her to suffer for days before receiving care, due to Texas’s severe abortion bans.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/08/texas-abortion-high-risk-patients