USA – Reproductive rights and justice groups plan for Trump’s return

By: Sofia Resnick
January 18, 2025

In the days following President-elect Donald Trump’s win last November, a national abortion-assistance hotline was being inundated with calls. “They were confused about whether abortion was even still legal in the country, because they have heard the rhetoric around Trump’s position on abortion,” said Brittany Fonteno, the president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation.

The association of abortion providers runs what Fonteno says is the largest financial assistance program for people seeking abortions and is among the many groups preparing for another potentially destabilizing shift in U.S. reproductive health policy after Trump takes office Monday.

Continued: https://lailluminator.com/2025/01/18/abortion-trump-2/

USA – Some states on track to restore abortion access, while others push for fetal rights in 2025

By: Sofia Resnick and Kelcie Moseley-Morris
January 2, 2025

Heading into the third year since Roe v. Wade was overturned, states will continue to introduce and consider legislation to expand or restrict access to reproductive health care and abortion as legislative sessions begin. In anticipation of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January, states with broad reproductive rights protections have introduced bills to shield patients and doctors if the incoming Republican administration overturns protections implemented under President Joe Biden. States with strict bans, meanwhile, have started floating fetal personhood bans, abortion pill punishments and other restrictions.

Most legislatures will convene during the second week in January or later and adjourn midway through the year.

Continued: https://ncnewsline.com/2025/01/02/some-states-on-track-to-restore-abortion-access-while-others-push-for-fetal-rights-in-2025/

Abortion Prepping for the Trump Era

Preserving access to Plan B, misoprostol, and more isn’t just about stockpiling doses. It’s about building circles of trust.

Melissa Gira Grant
December 30, 2024

Trump’s return to the White House, accompanied by allies deeply hostile to anything related to reproductive and sexual health and rights, has sparked panic. As in late 2016 during the first Trump transition period, part of the problem is not knowing how far things could go. Checklists and tips are again circulating online, urging people to update the gender listed on government-issued identity documents, get an emergency supply of birth control pills or hormones, assemble an emergency folder of health documentation, buy a stash of Plan B, get an IUD before Inauguration Day. With access not only to abortion medication or hormones threatened but also a wide array of other drugs and vaccines, discourse over stockpiling medication—in case it becomes hard to access or is even taken off the market by a cowed Food and Drug Administration—has escalated, and in a way that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/189502/abortion-trump-era-plan-b-misoprostol

USA -Why abortions rose after Roe was overturned

Contrary to many predictions, abortions did not decline nationally after the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. Here's what's behind the trend.

Nov. 26, 2024
By Aria Bendix

It seemed only logical after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade that abortion rates would go down and births would go up. Instead, the opposite happened: Abortions went up last year and the country’s fertility rate hit a historic low.

More than 1 million abortions were recorded in the United States in 2023 — the highest in a decade, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion access. So far this year, abortion rates have remained about the same as in the last six months of 2023, preliminary data show.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/abortions-rose-roe-overturned-why-rcna181094

26.11.2024

Commentary

abortion by mail

Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine Access

abortion pills

Aid Access

Alliance Defending Freedom

American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs

Center for Reproductive Rights

Comstock Act

Diana Greene Foster

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Dr. Amy Whitaker

Dr. Christina Francis

Dr. Remy Coeytaux

Erik Baptist

Florida Access Network

Food and Drug Administration

Guttmacher Institute

Julie Kay

Karoline Leavitt

Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project

Matthew Kacsmaryk

medication abortion

mifepristone

National Right to Life

Stephanie Loraine Piñeiro

telemedicine abortion

The Brigid Alliance

traveling for abortion

USA – Why Smashing the Administrative State Is a Disaster for Reproductive Rights

The latest Supreme Court rulings are already being weaponized against gender identity. Abortion and birth control are next.

NINA MARTIN, Mother Jones
July 10, 2024

It turns out the most consequential reproductive rights case before the Supreme Court this past term—arguably, the most significant since the overturn of Roe v. Wade—wasn’t the religious right’s attack on the abortion drug mifepristone, or the battle over whether the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires hospitals to provide emergency abortions in states with strict bans. It was a fight over who should pay to monitor commercial fishing boats so they don’t deplete the herring population off the Atlantic coast.

Reproductive health and gender equality advocates are just beginning to digest the sweeping implications of the ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, in which the court’s conservative supermajority overturned a 40-year-old cornerstone of US administrative law known as “Chevron deference.” In doing so, the justices vastly limited the power of federal agencies to issue regulations on everything from financial markets to industrial pollution to drug pricing to workplace safety.

And abortion. And birth control. And trans equality. And pregnant workers’ rights.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/why-smashing-the-administrative-state-is-a-disaster-for-reproductive-rights/

10.07.2024

Commentary

Affordable Care Act

Alliance Defending Freedom

Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

Chevron deference

Chevron doctrine

Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council

Corner Post decision

Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Democracy Forward

emergency abortion care

EMTALA

Eric Rassbach

Food and Drug Administration

Heritage Foundation

Julie Marie Blake

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

Lisa Heinzerling

Loper Bright decision

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerrce

Mary Ziegler

mifepristone case

National Partnership for Women and Families

Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

USA / Global – Second Trimester Taboo

Abortion pills are more important than ever, and safe far later than most people know

By Cecilia Nowell
Illustrations by Zhenya Oliinyk
Lux Magazine, June(?) issue

In a small Texas courtroom last spring, Erik Baptist, senior counsel for the conservative group Alliance Defending Freedom, insisted that the Food and Drug Administration had been reckless when it approved the abortion pill mifepristone for use before seven weeks of pregnancy in 2000, and then, in 2016, for up to 10 weeks.

The judge agreed, suspending the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, one of two pills used in the typical protocol for medication abortions in the U.S. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule this summer on whether to uphold the suspension or otherwise restrict the use of mifepristone.

Continued: https://lux-magazine.com/article/second-trimester/

USA – One Thing the Failed Attempt to Ban the Abortion Pill Did

The more anti-abortion activists attacked mifepristone, the more women flocked to use it.

BY CARRIE N. BAKER
JUNE 18, 2024

On Thursday, the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, that tried to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone based on false allegations that the medication was dangerous. The justices ruled that the plaintiffs—anti-abortion doctors and dentists who had never prescribed mifepristone and hadn’t treated women who had used the medication—did not have legal standing to bring the case. In a moment when the high court is understood to be highly politicized, the 9–0 ruling stood out as definitive, confirming the legality of the medication nationwide.

Although some evidence indicates that the case spread disinformation about the safety of abortion pills, the suit had unintended consequences. The demonization efforts have wound up being one giant publicity campaign for a medication that, for so many years, most women didn’t even know was an option.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/06/abortion-pill-case-taught-women-about-mifepristone.html

U.S. Supreme Court unanimously strikes down legal challenge to abortion pill mifepristone

The ruling preserves access to the mail-order medication nationwide.

By Devin Dwyer
June 13, 2024

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled a group of doctors lacked legal standing to challenge the Food and Drug Administration's regulation of the abortion pill mifepristone, preserving access to the medication nationwide.

The unanimous opinion was authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The case put abortion access back in the spotlight for the court for the first time since its conservative majority voted to overrule Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-unanimously-strikes-legal-challenge-abortion-pill/story?id=110439079

13.06.2024

abortion pills

Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

Food and Drug Administration

Katie Daniel

mifepristone

Roe v. Wade

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America

U.S. Supreme Court

USA – The New Autonomy of Abortion

Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion freedom now hinges on access to pills.

BY ANDRÉA BECKER
MAY 23, 2024

When 18-year-old Rachel discovered she was unexpectedly pregnant, she made what she thought was a natural first step: call Planned Parenthood to schedule an abortion. “I wasn’t ready to be a parent or a mom,” she says. “And I didn’t want to go through giving birth just to give the kid away.” Even in an abortion-friendly state like Illinois, the nearest Planned Parenthood was one hour away, and there wasn’t an available appointment for another month.

When Rachel consulted ob-gyns, they either told her they wouldn’t provide an abortion or declined to provide recommendations. And since her insurance doesn’t cover abortion care, she’d have to pay the expensive fee out of pocket. “I just wanted it to be over with,” she says.

Continued: https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/access/2024/05/23/the-new-autonomy-of-abortion

In spite of abortion bans, self-managed abortions are safer than ever

In an increasingly restrictive landscape, self-managed medication abortions have become a critical option

By NICOLE KARLIS, Senior Writer
MAY 5, 2024

As the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the 2022 Dobbs decision, abortion rights protesters held signs adorned with wire coat hangers. The symbol evoked memories from a pre-Roe era, when the only option to terminate an unwanted pregnancy was unsafe and potentially deadly.

As detailed by one retired gynecologist in the New York Times in 2008, the symbol of a wire coat hanger was “in no way a myth.” He recalled a period between 1948 and 1953 when women would frequently arrive in his office with a coat hanger still trapped in the cervix — and it wasn’t just coat hangers. Crochet hooks, soda bottles, and darning needles were also used in attempts to end pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2024/05/05/in-spite-of-abortion-bans-self-managed-abortions-are-safer-than-ever/