Reproductive Rights Today

The last several newsletters have focused on developments in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a lawsuit brought by anti-abortion groups seeking to undo the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, a pill used in a two-drug regimen to terminate pregnancies. While we wait on the U.S. Supreme Court to review submitted briefs – parties have until midnight today to file responses – and decide the merits of lower court rulings that could upend medication abortion access, let’s take a look at the latest news from the states.

Medication abortion remains available for now – or until Wednesday. The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked a ruling from a federal court in Texas that would have revoked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, a key abortion medication, by midnight Friday, reported States Newsroom Washington D.C. Bureau Senior Reporter Jennifer Shutt. 

An Idaho woman said she turned to an anti-abortion center in the hopes of reversing her medication abortion by taking progesterone, a hormone needed for pregnancy, according to States Newsroom National Reproductive Rights Reporter Sofia Resnick. The 26-year-old became a patient at Stanton Healthcare, an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center that touts a so-called abortion reversal program, which lacks scientific evidence and is promoted by a plaintiff in a major federal lawsuit over the abortion drug mifepristone. But Sofia also reported that Stanton, founded by Brandi Swindell, has a lobbying arm that “is at the forefront of an emerging legal anti-abortion strategy: to push states with abortion bans to criminalize abortion-related assistance and information as a way to prevent patients from accessing abortion in abortion-rights states.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals late Wednesday weighed in in the battle over revocation of the approval of the key abortion drug mifepristone, allowing for its continued use while the case winds its way through the courts.

The fallout from a federal judge’s decision to revoke the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 23-year-old approval of a key abortion medication continued Tuesday. Leaders and advocates in states with fewer abortion restrictions challenged U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling against mifepristone, set to go in effect this Friday. 

By now, I’ve thrown around the term medication abortion in every other newsletter. But a reminder of what the two-drug regimen – mifepristone and misoprostol – does is helpful as the abortion pills battle intensifies. 

Two federal judges issued opposite rulings Friday about the key abortion medication mifepristone. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas revoked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decades-long approval of mifepristone, but the federal government immediately appealed to the conservative-leaning 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, according to Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom’s Washington D.C. Bureau senior reporter. President Joe Biden pledged to fight the Texas judge’s decision.  

Let’s start in Idaho, where Republican Gov. Brad Little signed an interstate abortion ban bill into law. The law defines abortion trafficking as an offense when an adult takes a minor to another state for abortion care, or provides abortion pills to a minor, without parental consent. The law also grants Idaho’s Attorney General Raúl Labrador full discretion to prosecute violators if a county prosecutor declines to bring charges, according to Kelcie-Moseley Morris, a States Newsroom national reproductive rights reporter. 

A Texas federal judge issued a ruling Friday evening in favor of anti-abortion plaintiffs who sought to undo the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year approval of mifepristone, the first pill used in a medication abortion. 

Rep. Tricia Cotham, the North Carolina Democrat-turned-Republican, publicly shared several years ago that she terminated a non-viable pregnancy. Her abortion story was revisited as Cotham formally announced Wednesday she was switching parties, effectively granting the N.C. House GOP a supermajority to override vetoes from Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who supports reproductive rights, according to our colleagues at North Carolina Newsline. 

With issues from abortion to voting rights on the line, Wisconsin voters in a convincing fashion elected a liberal judge to the state Supreme Court Tuesday. The Wisconsin Examiner described the win by Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz as "a massive change in Wisconsin’s political landscape that is likely to upend the state’s heavily gerrymandered political maps as well as its recently reinstated 19th-century criminal ban on abortions." Meanwhile, elected officials in Oregon and Washington solidified their states as leaders in upholding reproductive rights in a post-Roe United States this week. 

Florida is one step closer to further restricting abortion access, a move that will impede reproductive rights for millions who live in the state and travel from neighboring states to receive abortion care. The Florida Senate passed a six-week abortion ban on Monday, according to the Florida Phoenix. The bill is likely to be approved in the lower chamber before it heads to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for his signature.