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/

Republican-led states are trying to crack down on abortion medication

A recent law in Louisiana highlights the effort to block access to mifepristone even as the Supreme Court considers a case that could restrict its use.

By Amanda Becker, Shefali Luthra
May 31, 2024

The Supreme Court is set to rule soon on how the abortion drug mifepristone can be used and prescribed, but conservative states — most recently Arkansas and Louisiana — haven’t waited to take their own steps to attempt to undercut access to the medication.

States have been able to ban or restrict abortion, including via medication, since the Supreme Court ended the federal right to abortion in June 2022. Yet the number of abortions has risen since Roe v. Wade was overturned — a development health researchers attribute in part to a growing share of pregnant patients seeking medication abortions through telemedicine, including those in states with bans.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/05/abortion-medication-republican-led-states-crack-down/

Louisiana’s move to criminalize abortion pills is cruel and medically senseless

Louisiana, with one of the US’s worst maternal mortality rates, wants to make abortion medication a ‘controlled substance’

Moira Donegan
Wed 29 May 2024

This week, Louisiana moved to expand the criminalization of abortion further than any state has since before Roe v Wade was decided. On Thursday, the state legislature passed a bill that would reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol – the two drugs used in a majority of American abortions – as dangerous controlled substances.

Under both state and federal classifications, the category of controlled substances includes those medications known to cause mind-altering effects and create the potential for addictions, such as sedatives and opioids; abortion medications carry none of this potential for physical dependence, habit-forming or abuse. The move from Louisiana lawmakers runs counter to both established medical opinion and federal law.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/29/louisiana-abortion-pill-law