Reproductive Rights Today

The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to uphold an 1864 near-total abortion ban drew condemnation from Democratic and Republican officials. Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said she will not prosecute patients and providers, or enforce the ban that has only an exception to save a pregnant person’s life. “I think this was a seismic decision, and not in the way that Republicans thought it was going to be for Arizona politics and for the election in November,” Mayes said. 

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled in favor of reinstating a Civil War-era abortion ban that includes a lone exception to save a pregnant person’s life. The ban is set to take effect in less than two months, Arizona Mirror reported.

Kelly Shannon was grieving a pregnancy she would need to terminate because of multiple fetal anomalies when she got the call that Alabama doctors wouldn’t approve an abortion procedure despite exceptions in the law. That meant she would have to leave the state.

In an effort to reduce racial disparities in pregnancy care, at least five states passed laws requiring implicit bias training for maternal health care providers since 2019, Stateline reported. 

Two conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices’ mention of a 19th century anti-obscenity law has ignited conversations that the statute could be used to ban abortion pills, States Newsroom’s Jennifer Shutt reported. 

An Alabama health system that provides in vitro fertilization will stop offering the services at the end of the year. 

Campaigners behind the effort to widen abortion rights in Arizona, a state with a 15-week ban, say they’ve collected over half a million signatures for the petition. 

The Florida Supreme Court ruled Monday that a six-week ban on abortion statewide can go into effect in 30 days, but it also allowed a ballot initiative to include abortion access in the state constitution to move forward in the November election, Florida Phoenix reported.

Abortion-related bills continue to be introduced and debated in 40 legislatures across the country, especially in states where the procedure is already banned. It can be hard to monitor them all, so States Newsroom’s Reproductive Rights Today team tracks certain bills that could become law in their respective states in a biweekly legislative roundup. Depending on the partisan makeup of a state’s legislature and other state government officials, some bills have a higher chance of passing and becoming law than others. 

The legislative session in Kentucky is winding down soon, but it's unclear if a maternal health ‘momnibus’ bill will advance. 

The Florida Supreme Court has until Monday to decide whether an abortion rights measure can make the November ballot. 

Few states require insurers to cover fertility treatments for same-sex couples. But a new definition of infertility could change that, Stateline reported.