Does a Fetus Have Constitutional Rights?

“Personhood,” by Mary Ziegler, is a field guide to the seemingly boundless tactical resourcefulness of the anti-abortion movement.

By Margaret Talbot
April 14, 2025

In the first two years after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, the number of abortions performed annually in the United States went up. On the face of it, this might seem perplexing. After all, many states seized the opportunity presented by the Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to enact daunting new restrictions on abortion: twelve adopted near-total bans, and four more imposed gestational limits of six weeks, a point at which many people may not yet realize they are pregnant. Yet, suddenly, the U.S. was seeing an increase in abortions—from about nine hundred and thirty thousand in 2020 to more than a million in 2023. The best explanation for this apparent paradox was that providers and activists in states where abortion was still accessible devoted considerable energy and resources into making it more so. This was especially true for medication abortions provided via telehealth. In December, 2021, the F.D.A. had lifted its requirement that mifepristone be prescribed in person; the number of virtual clinics, which assess a patient’s eligibility online or by phone, and mail out the medications, proliferated.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/personhood-mary-ziegler-book-review


Why abortion rates are rising abroad—but not in Canada

Dr. Laura Schummers' latest research shows Canada's abortion rate remaining relatively stable, in contrast to other countries where it has risen dramatically.

Erik Rolfsen
Apr 14, 2025

As a U.S. president tries to blur the border between Canada and the U.S., the distinction between the two countries could not be more stark when it comes to reproductive health and rights.

Abortion access in Canada has expanded dramatically in recent years. A new UBC study finds huge gains in availability of abortion services in Ontario, where 91 per cent of residents now live near abortion services, since mifepristone—the abortion medication—became available in 2017.

Continued: https://news.ubc.ca/2025/04/abortion-rates-canada-vs-global-trends/


When it comes to women’s reproductive health, Canada is not the 51st state

April 11, 2025
By Laura Schummers and Wendy V. Norman

Voters who care about reproductive rights should be demanding clear positions from their candidates on protecting Canada’s legacy in reproductive health policy and access. As erosion of reproductive rights and freedoms unfolds rapidly across the U.S., this is not the time for complacency in Canada.

We shouldn’t assume that Canada will continue as a global leader in upholding reproductive rights and access.

Most Canadians have lived with evidence-based reproductive health policy for so long that they take it to be the global norm, but it is not. Since 1988, abortion has been legally recognized as a standard medical procedure in Canada, free from criminal laws that either protect or restrict it.

Continued: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/when-it-comes-to-womens-reproductive-health-canada-is-not-the-51st-state/article_fc30cbbf-ec69-4d6d-9641-748c206bd942.html


Access to abortion services in Ontario rose in five- year period after mifepristone arrival: study

The Globe and Mail (BC Edition)
7 Apr 2025
KRISTY KIRKUP, HEALTH REPORTER OTTAWA

Access to abortion services at the local level in Ontario substantially increased within a five-year period after a drug known as mifepristone became available for use in Canada in 2017, according to newly released findings.

A study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal sheds light on how mifepristone dispensed by local pharmacies in the country’s most populous province changed access to services.

The drug, approved for use by Health Canada, blocks the hormone progesterone, which is needed for a pregnancy to continue. Cramping and bleeding then begins that empties the uterus. It is commonly dubbed the “abortion pill.”

Continued: https://globe2go.pressreader.com/article/281625311126579


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/


USA – Where the Conservative War on Abortion Pills Is Headed

By Andrea González-Ramírez, the Cut
March 12, 2025

In his nearly two months in office, President Donald Trump has only made small moves to advance his anti-abortion agenda. But his Justice Department’s decisions to enforce a law that protects abortion clinics from violence only in “extraordinary” cases and to stop defending a Biden-era lawsuit against Idaho that sought to protect access to emergency abortion care in hospitals send a clear signal: The federal government will not defend what curtailed abortion rights remain post-Dobbs. Now, Republican lawmakers emboldened by that message are going after their most urgent target: abortion pills.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/republicans-unleash-new-attacks-on-abortion-pills.html


Abortion access under threat in Milei’s Argentina

Buenos Aires (AFP) – Four years after Argentina became the first big Latin American country to legalize abortion, women are finding it hard to access terminations due to President Javier Milei's "chainsaw" economics and anti-feminist diatribes, critics say.

March 6, 2025

At a women's sexual health NGO in the town of Chivilcoy, 160 kilometers (about 100 miles) west of Buenos Aires, abortion pills are handed out sparingly because of reduced state-sponsored supplies.

Each week, about 15 women in Chivilcoy request misoprostol and mifepristone -- two medications used to end pregnancy -- but some now leave empty-handed, Cecilia Robledo, a local councilor who runs the organization, told AFP by telephone.

Continued: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250306-abortion-access-under-threat-in-milei-s-argentina


Guttmacher Releases First-Ever State-Level Data on Medication Abortion Provision

Data show medication abortion remains critical as federal attacks on access intensify

Feb 27, 2025

The Guttmacher Institute released the latest round of data from its Monthly Abortion Provision Study, an initiative launched in 2023 to produce monthly estimates of clinician-provided abortions in US states without total abortion bans. In addition to state and national abortion estimates from January 2023 through November 2024, for the first time the data also include state-level estimates of the proportion of abortions provided via medication in 2023 in states without total abortion bans and the proportion of all abortions that were provided by online-only clinics in 2023 in states without total bans or bans on telemedicine provision. In an accompanying policy analysis, Guttmacher experts put these findings in the larger political context, outlining the current and future threats to medication abortion in the United States. 

The new data confirm that medication abortion accounts for the majority of abortions provided in nearly all US states without total abortion bans, ranging from 95% in Wyoming and 84% in Montana to 44% in Washington, DC and 46% in Ohio. These estimates expand on Guttmacher’s previous finding that 63% of all clinician-provided abortions in 2023 in the United States (excluding states with total abortion bans) were medication abortions.

Continued: https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2025/guttmacher-releases-first-ever-state-level-data-medication-abortion-provision


The Forgotten—and Incredibly Important—History of the Abortion Pill

Mifepristone took longer to get approved than most drugs—but not because it was unsafe.

Nina Martin,  Mother Jones
Feb 7, 2025

At his Senate confirmation hearings to head the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. surprised no one by admitting that he planned to order a new review of the safety of abortion pills. While Kennedy claimed that President Donald Trump has not taken a position—yet—on medication abortion, “he’s made it clear to me that he wants me to look at the safety issues,” Kennedy said. “And I’ll ask [agencies] to do that.”

This, of course, is exactly what anti-abortion groups have been pushing for. Since 2022, when the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, abortion opponents have been ramping up unfounded claims that mifepristone and misoprostol are dangerous. Their efforts have included a flurry of letters to the new administration, explicit directives in the far right’s Project 2025 blueprint for the second Trump term, and a barrage of ever-more-extreme lawsuits and state bills.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/abortion-pill-forgotten-history-attacks-mifepristone-ru486-anti-abortion-extremists-new-book/


Planning for the Worst in Trump’s Next Term: Prepare, Don’t Panic, and Don’t Comply in Advance

Amy Hagstrom Miller championed abortion rights in Texas, and she’s ready for the next fight.

Mary Tuma
January 30, 2025

In the frenetic days following the November election, longtime abortion provider Amy Hagstrom Miller spent a lot of time in meetings—some in person, some on Zoom—rallying her troops. As one of the most prominent and tenacious independent abortion providers in the country, with six Whole Woman’s Health clinics in four states, it was a safe bet that she and her staff of 125 would find themselves in the crosshairs of a Donald Trump presidency and the anti-abortion extremists his second term will empower.

Hagstrom Miller could feel the alarm and dread that washed over some of her employees as they contemplated an America in which the 1873 Comstock Act might be enforced to institute a national abortion ban, the abortion pill would come under myriad other relentless attacks, federal appointees would use their bureaucratic powers to target providers in states where abortion remains legal, and patients would face new risks to their physical safety and constitutional rights.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/trump-amy-hagstrom-miller-championed-abortion-rights-in-texas-and-amy-hagstrom-miller-is-ready-for-the-next-fight/