Reproductive Rights Today

The Alabama Supreme Court’s decision in February 2024 deeming frozen embryos “unborn children” jeopardized fertility care in the state until the legislature passed a law that gave providers criminal and civil immunity, Alabama Reflector reported. 

Despite calls from reproductive rights advocates in Kentucky and Texas to allow rape and incest victims to get abortions, Republican lawmakers have instead proposed clarifying when doctors can provide life-saving abortion care. 

Abortion-related bills continue to be introduced and debated in statehouses across the country, especially in states where the procedure is already banned. 

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith reintroduced legislation Wednesday in Congress that would weaken an 1873 anti-obscenity law that some abortion-rights supporters and opponents argue could be used by the Justice Department to ban the mailing of abortion pills. 

This article was produced in partnership with ProPublica.

With a steady but urgent cadence, Dr. Jim Souza told reporters what would become one of the most cited talking points in a protracted legal fight over Idaho’s abortion ban: Without a court order protecting emergency room doctors from prosecution, his hospital system was sending patients to nearby states when certain pregnancy complications meant termination might be necessary.

For more than 30 years, a federal law has helped protect reproductive health care clinics from disruption and violence. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, better known as the FACE Act, makes it a federal crime to use force, threaten force, or otherwise physically obstruct people from providing or obtaining reproductive health care, including abortion.

The World Health Organization released grim findings just in time for International Women’s Day: In 2020, an estimated 287,000 women around the world died because of pregnancy or childbirth, equivalent to one death every two minutes. 

Republican lawmakers in states that already ban most abortions have introduced bills that would punish women for getting them. 

Amid questioning about the abortion drug mifepristone from senators Thursday, Dr. Martin Makary, Republican President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, answered only that he would review scientific evidence and new data if confirmed as the agency’s commissioner.

On the same day the U.S. Department of Justice moved to dismiss the federal case that will determine whether emergency abortion care in Idaho is subject to prosecution under the state abortion ban, a federal court held the first hearing for a new version of the case filed by the state’s largest health system. 

A state’s policies on reproductive issues, including abortion, are likely to affect where people decide to take a job or start a family, according to a poll released Monday, and no states with restrictive abortion policies had majority support from those polled.

The last full-service abortion clinic in Wyoming might not survive new regulations enacted last week and is suing to block their implementation, WyoFile reports.