Abortion

Subterms

    Latest story

    163 Shares46 Views

    Why the US is burning $10m worth of birth control | Moira Donegan

    by

    There are few better metaphors for the receding status of American women than one offered up by the Trump administration at a medical waste disposal facility outside Paris this week: rather than distribute nearly $10m worth of birth control, which had been purchased by USAID and was destined to be given to women in low-income countries, primarily in Africa, the Americans decided to burn it.The incinerated contraceptives included 900,000 birth control implants, 2m doses of injectable long-acting birth control, 2m packs of contraceptive pills and 50,000 IUDs. The medicine is just the latest in the far-reaching fallout from cuts made by the so-called “department of government efficiency,” or Doge, a project in which Elon Musk and a group of his very young, overwhelmingly male acolytes unilaterally slashed congressionally appropriated funding to government programs they did not like. The cuts have been devastating for non-profits that work to improve women’s health and safety worldwide. Sarah Shaw, an associate director at the global family planning group MSI Reproductive Choices, says that the cuts will put women at risk as they strain their health with unplanned pregnancies and seek out illegal abortions; other women who are denied access to birth control will lose out on the opportunities for education, professional development or remunerative work that can help them escape abuse, rise out of poverty, pursue their talents and ambitions and better provide for the children they already have.When MSI attempted to buy the contraceptives, the administration would only accept full price, which the organization couldn’t afford, she said. Several non-profits, including MSI, had offered to pay to ship and repackage the supplies, according to another representative. But the Trump administration refused, partially due to federal rules the prohibit the US from providing such goods to groups that perform, provide referrals for or offer education about abortions. In addition to the cost of purchasing the contraceptives, American taxpayers will now be on the hook for about $167,000 for the cost of burning them.It’s just the latest in a series of signs that the Trump administration is turning against the provision of birth control, particularly the safe, effective and woman-controlled hormonal methods that have been a cornerstone of healthcare policy for decades and which were a precondition of women’s advancement in work and education over the past 60 years.In April, the Trump administration abruptly announced that it was suspending a large swath of the domestic service grants distributed under Title X, the program meant to help low-income Americans access birth control, STD treatment and other sexual and reproductive healthcare. Of the 86 Title X grants awarded for fiscal year 2024, nearly 25% were “temporarily withheld”, mostly based on highly suspect allegations that the grant-receiving institutions – including 13 Planned Parenthood affiliates – had failed to comply with Trump executive orders banning things like DEI programs. Eight states now receive zero Title X dollars: California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and Utah. Alaska, Minnesota and Pennsylvania have also lost most of their contraception funding.The domestic cuts – along with the exclusion of Planned Parenthood clinics from Medicaid reimbursements – mean that American women, too, are now facing dramatically greater obstacles to accessing birth control. Clinics that relied on Title X funding are now set to close: 11 Planned Parenthood clinics already have, including in Democratically controlled states like California. Planned Parenthood says that cumulatively, the cuts could lead the organization to close about 200 of its 600 clinics nationwide – a devastating cut to abortion providers in particular that will make a wide range of reproductive services inaccessible to women regardless of where they live.But the Trump administration is not merely forcing these programs for women’s health and dignity go up in flames. They are redirecting them to better suit their preferred cultural outcome: one in which women’s lives, ambitions and talents are all subordinated to the task of childbearing. The New York Times reported last month that the White House is redirecting Title X funds that once went to birth control to instead fund an “infertility training center” and programs in something called “restorative reproductive medicine”. If Title X’s original aim was to help American women control their fertility so as to build healthier families and to enable them to pursue other aims – like learning or work – in the new administration’s version, the program exists mainly to encourage women to have more children. But the switch should not be seen as a genuine investment in infertility, an often devastating condition with which many Americans struggle. Because the new Title X priorities do not, by and large, direct more money to IVF. Trump promised, on the campaign trail, to make IVF free. But the procedure, which has opponents on the Christian right, is not included in the administration’s new priority of “restorative” reproductive medicine, a practice that avoids controversial fertility treatments; instead, doctors seek the “root cause” of a woman’s infertility, which may involve telling them they can conceive with proper diet and exercise.In government, money allocation is a statement of values. With its dramatic cuts to contraceptive funding at home and abroad, the Trump administration is making its values clear. It does not value women’s health; it does not value their dignity, their control over their own lives, their aspirations, their earning potential, their desire to be freed from ignorance, or poverty, or the abuse they suffer under the hands of husbands and fathers. It does not value their ability to control their own bodies, and by extension, it does not value their ability to enter the public sphere. It does not value their dreams, their gifts, their hard work or invention or aspiration to anything other than making babies. American women, like women everywhere, depend on birth control to live lives of freedom and to pursue their dreams. But because of the Trump administration, those dreams are going up in smoke.

    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares85 Views

      in US Politics

      Judge orders Trump administration to continue Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood

      by

      The Trump administration must continue reimbursing Planned Parenthood clinics for Medicaid-funded services, a federal judge ruled on Monday, in an escalating legal war between the reproductive health giant and the White House over Republican efforts to “defund” Planned Parenthood.Days after Donald Trump signed his sweeping tax bill, Planned Parenthood sued over a provision in the bill that ended Medicaid payments for one year to abortion providers that received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023, such as Planned Parenthood. The new court order, from US district judge Indira Talwani in Boston, will protect Medicaid funding for all Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide while litigation in the case continues.The order also replaces and expands a previous edict handed down by Talwani, which initially granted a preliminary injunction specifically blocking the government from cutting Medicaid payments only to Planned Parenthood affiliates that did not provide abortions or did not receive at least $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in a given year.“Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Talwani wrote in her Monday order.“In particular, restricting members’ ability to provide healthcare services threatens an increase in unintended pregnancies and attendant complications because of reduced access to effective contraceptives, and an increase in undiagnosed and untreated STIs.”More than 80 million people rely on Medicaid, the US government’s insurance program for low-income people.It is already illegal to use Medicaid to pay for most abortions, but Planned Parenthood clinics – which treat a disproportionate number of people who use Medicaid – rely on the program to reimburse it for services such as birth control, STI tests and cancer screenings.In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood had argued that it would be at risk of closing nearly 200 clinics in 24 states if it is cut off from Medicaid funds. These closures would probably be felt most strongly in blue states, since they are home to larger numbers of people who use Medicaid. A Planned Parenthood affiliate in California has already been forced to close five clinics as a result of the “defunding” provision.Planned Parenthood estimated that, in all, more than 1 million patients could lose care.“We will keep fighting this cruel law so that everyone can get birth control, STI testing and treatment, cancer screenings and other critical healthcare, no matter their insurance,” the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, said in a statement after the Monday ruling.Planned Parenthood is battling overwhelming political and economic headwinds. Even if it prevails against the Trump administration, its affiliates could still be removed from Medicaid in red states, thanks to a June decision by the US supreme court in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program.  On Monday, the state of Missouri also sued the Planned Parenthood Federation of America – the mothership organization that knits together Planned Parenthood’s network of regional affiliates – over accusations that the organization downplayed the medical risks of a common abortion pill, mifepristone, “to cut costs and boost revenue”. The lawsuit, which asks for more than $1m in damages, is part of an ongoing campaign by anti-abortion activists to cut off access to mifepristone.More than 100 studies, conducted across dozens of countries and over more than three decades, have concluded that mifepristone is a safe way to end a pregnancy.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

    • 188 Shares113 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans wanted fewer abortions and more births. They are getting the opposite | Judith Levine

      by

      Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the US supreme court case that rescinded the constitutional right to abortion, is failing on its own terms. Since the ruling, in June 2022, the number of abortions in the US has risen. Support for reproductive rights is on the upswing. And the rate of voluntary sterilization among young women – a repudiation of Trumpian pronatalism, if a desperate one – jumped abruptly after Dobbs, and there’s no reason to believe it will drop off.Also rising at an alarming clip are preventable maternal deaths and criminal prosecutions of pregnant people.Yet the 21 state legislatures that have imposed total or near-total bans are doing little or nothing to give doctors legal leeway to save the health and lives of pregnant women in medical distress, even if that means inducing abortion. In fact, rather than trying to save lives, they are prosecuting pregnant people who handle those emergencies on their own.The first three – more abortions, more pro-abortion sentiment, more contraception –have frustrated the anti-abortion crowd no end. They know they need stronger disincentives to abortion.Which brings us to the latter two: more punishment and more death. Was punishment the aim all along? And has the anti-abortion movement accepted pregnant people’s deaths as an unfortunate consequence of saving the pre-born?According to the Guttmacher Institute, abortions rose 1.5% in 2024 from 2023, on top of a 11.1% leap in the first year after Dobbs, compared with 2020, before the near-bans enacted in several states that presaged the ruling.It’s also probably an undercount. The statistics include only “clinician-provided abortions”, either surgical or medical (using abortion pills), performed in healthcare facilities or via telemedicine. Guttmacher does not estimate how many abortions are happening outside the formal healthcare system, with drugs obtained directly from suppliers or through feminist underground networks.Indeed, Plan C, the country’s biggest clearinghouse for pill access, reports 2m visits to its website and 500,000 click-throughs to resources and care in 2024, a 25% increase from the year before. How many of those people ended their pregnancies at home, with only a friend or lover in attendance? Anecdotal evidence gleaned from activists suggests they number in the tens of thousands.At the same time, rather than making abortion “unthinkable”, as the anti-abortion activists pledge, the bans may be having the opposite effect. An analysis of two restrictive states, Arizona and Wisconsin, and one with broad access, New Jersey, found that negative attitudes toward abortion are down and positive ones up, in both red and blue states.And if the goal of banning abortion is to produce more children, that’s not working either. Public health researchers saw “an abrupt increase in permanent contraception procedures” – sterilization – following Dobbs among adults in their prime reproductive years, ages 18 to 30. Unsurprisingly, the increase in procedures for women (tubal ligations) was twice that for men (vasectomies).The Trump administration is cheerleading for procreation. “I want more babies in the United States of America,” declared JD Vance in his first public appearance as vice-president, at the March for Life in Washington. He blamed the declining birth rate on “a culture of abortion on demand” and the failure “to help young parents achieve the ingredients they need to lead a happy and meaningful life”. The federal budget extends some of that help. It raises the annual child tax credit (CTC) from $2,000 to $2,200. It also creates “Trump accounts”, $1,000 per child, which parents or employers can add to.But only those with social security numbers are eligible for either program; the tax credit is available only to people who earn enough to pay taxes; and as with any investment, those able to sow more in the savings accounts reap more. It’s clear what sort of baby the administration wishes to be born: white babies with “American” parents, and not the poorest.The carrots are not appetizing enough. The stick is not effective enough. So red-state legislators and prosecutors are ramping up the punitive approach.This year, Republican lawmakers in at least 10 states introduced bills defining abortion as homicide, and, for the first time, criminalizing both the provider and the patient.No such bill has passed – yet – and anti-abortion organizations are usually quick to renounce them publicly, nervous about widespread opposition. But their passage might not be far off. The bills are based on fetal personhood – the concept of conferring full legal rights to a fetus from conception forward. The idea was introduced in 1884 and finally written into one state’s law in 1986. By 2024, 39 states had fetal homicide laws. Last year, there were three bills criminalizing the person who has an abortion; now there are 10. And though the federal courts rejected fetal personhood for a century, it is the bedrock of anti-abortion politics, and this US supreme court is looking much more friendly toward it.While they work toward straightforward criminalization of ending one’s own pregnancy, anti-abortion lawmakers and prosecutors are making creative use of existing law to punish miscarriage, an event indistinguishable from elective abortion, just in case the pregnant person induced the miscarriage. The most ghoulish is the prohibition on abusing corpses.For instance: last week a 31-year-old South Carolina woman who miscarried and disposed of the tissue in the trash was arrested for “desecration of human remains”, a crime carrying a 10-year sentence. In March, a woman found bleeding outside her Georgia apartment after a miscarriage was jailed for “concealing the death of another person” and “abandonment of a dead body” for placing the remains in the bin. A week before that, a Pennsylvania teenager was under investigation for corpse abuse after a self-managed pill abortion and burial of the fetus in her yard.In a grim sense, these are the lucky ones: they survived. Because Dobbs has indisputably been deadly.“Mothers living in states that banned abortion were nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after giving birth” as mothers living in states where abortion was legal and accessible, reports the Gender Equity Policy Institute. Maternal mortality rose 56% in Texas after it enacted a six-week ban; a Texan’s risk was one and a half times that of a Californian’s.The future isn’t sunny. A study of 14 total-ban states predicts that in the four years beginning a year after Dobbs, up to 42 mothers will die and as many as 2,700 will be afflicted with “severe maternal morbidity”, defined by the CDC as “unexpected outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short-term or long-term [health] consequences”. In one analysis Black women represented 63% of the deaths.The anti-abortion movement is indefatigable. “We abolishioners will not rest until we have effected the abolishment of human abortion,” one leader told Oklahoma Voice. But this is an unattainable grail. Where abortion is illegal, people still have abortions. They just take more risks. Globally, more than 39,000 women die yearly from unsafe abortions.As they run out of options, red-state lawmakers will harden criminal penalties against people who refuse to give up their reproductive self-determination. It may grow less outré to endorse Trump’s opinion, expressed in an unguarded moment, that women who get illegal abortions “deserve some form of punishment”. Whether intentional or not, the sentence for some of those women will be death.

      Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Planned Parenthood sues Trump administration over funding cuts in big bill

      by

      Planned Parenthood sued the Trump administration on Monday over a provision in Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill that would strip funding from health centers operated by the reproductive healthcare and abortion provider.In a complaint filed in Boston federal court, Planned Parenthood said the provision was unconstitutional, and its clear purpose is to prevent its nearly 600 health centers from receiving Medicaid reimbursements.Planned Parenthood said that would have “catastrophic consequences”, given that the health centers serve more than 1 million patients annually through Medicaid, the US government’s insurance program for low-income people. More than 80 million people use Medicaid.“The true design of the Defund Provision is simply to express disapproval of, attack, and punish Planned Parenthood, which plays a particularly prominent role in the public debate over abortion,” Planned Parenthood said in its lawsuit.The lawsuit continued: “Stripping away this patient volume and reimbursements for care provided will result in the elimination of services, laying off staff and health center closures. The public health consequences for Medicaid patients and non-Medicaid patients alike will be dire and compounding.”The organization has estimated that the defunding could force roughly 200 Planned Parenthood clinics to shutter. Blue states, which are home to more people on Medicaid, would probably see a disproportionate number of closures.Since it is illegal to use Medicaid to pay for most abortions, Planned Parenthood clinics rely on the insurance program to reimburse them for providing services like birth control, STI tests and cancer screenings. But if blue-state clinics are forced to close, people will no longer be able to seek abortions at those clinics – a possibility that has led some abortion rights supporters, including Planned Parenthood, to call the Trump bill’s provision a “backdoor abortion ban”. Planned Parenthood provides an estimated 38% of US abortions.“We’re facing a reality of the impact on shutting down almost half of abortion-providing health centers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of Americas’s CEO, told the Guardian last week. “It does feel existential. Not just for Planned Parenthood, but for communities that are relying on access to this care.”Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit asks the courts to declare the Trump bill’s provision unconstitutional on numerous grounds, or to at least preserve Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood clinics that do not provide abortions. The reproductive health giant suggests in the lawsuit that Congress did not understand its structure when it passed the provision. The Planned Parenthood technically consists of a mothership group, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and nearly 50 regional affiliate groups that operate as independent entities.Medicaid is overseen by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, part of the US Department of Health and Human Services. That agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Planned Parenthood is being buffeted by intense financial headwinds. This spring, the Trump administration froze tens of millions of dollars earmarked for family planning providers who participate in Title X, the nation’s largest family planning program. Although several of those providers have since had their funding restored, a Planned Parenthood spokesperson said last week their affiliates had not received funding.The US supreme court also ruled in late June in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its state Medicaid reimbursement program. Red states may see that ruling as a blessing to their own efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.Even if Planned Parenthood’s Monday lawsuit succeeds, the organization will probably have to grapple with the consequences of that supreme court ruling for years to come. More

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Planned Parenthood CEO warns Trump bill will lead to $700m loss and ‘backdoor abortion ban’

      by

      Planned Parenthood stands to lose roughly $700m in federal funding if the US House passes Republicans’ massive spending-and-tax bill, the organization’s CEO said on Wednesday, amounting to what abortion rights supporters and opponents alike have called a “backdoor abortion ban”.“We are facing down the reality that nearly 200 health centers are at risk of closure. We’re facing a reality of the impact on shutting down almost half of abortion-providing health centers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of Americas’s CEO, said in an interview Wednesday morning. “It does feel existential. Not just for Planned Parenthood, but for communities that are relying on access to this care.”Anti-abortion activists have longed to “defund” Planned Parenthood for decades. They are closer than ever to achieving their goal.That $700m figure represents the loss that Planned Parenthood would face from a provision in the spending bill that would impose a one-year Medicaid ban on healthcare non-profits that offer abortions and that received more than $800,000 in federal funding in 2023, as well as the funding that Planned Parenthood could lose from Title X, the nation’s largest family-planning program. In late March, the Trump administration froze tens of millions of dollars of Title X funding that had been set aside for some Planned Parenthood and other family-planning clinics.“Essentially what you are seeing is a gutting of a safety net,” said McGill Johnson, who characterized the bill as a “backdoor abortion ban” in a statement.Medicaid is the US government’s insurance program for low-income people, and about 80 million people use it. If the latest version of the spending-and-tax bill passes, nearly 12 million people are expected to lose their Medicaid coverage.Donald Trump has said that he would like the bill to be on his desk, ready for a signature, by 4 July.The provision attacking Planned Parenthood would primarily target clinics in blue states that have protected abortion rights since the overturning of Roe v Wade three years ago, because those blue states have larger numbers of people on Medicaid. Although not all Planned Parenthood clinics perform abortions, the reproductive healthcare giant provides 38% of US abortions, according to the latest data from Abortion Care Network, a membership group for independent abortion clinics.Among the clinics at risk of closure, Planned Parenthood estimated, more than 90% are in states that permit abortion. Sixty percent are located in areas that have been deemed “medically underserved”.In total, more than 1.1 million Planned Parenthood patients could lose access to care.“There’s nowhere else for folks” to go, McGill Johnson said. “The community health centers have said they cannot absorb the patients that Planned Parenthood sees. So I think that we do need to just call it a targeted attack because that’s exactly how it is.”Nationally, 11% of female Medicaid beneficiaries between the ages of 15 and 49 and who receive family-planning services go to Planned Parenthood for a range of services, according to an analysis by the non-profit KFF, which tracks healthcare policy. Those numbers rise in blue states like Washington, Oregon and Connecticut.In California, that number soars to 29%. The impact on the state would be so devastating that Nichole Ramirez, senior vice-president of communication and donor relations at Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties, called the tax-and-spending package’s provision “a direct attack on us, really”.“They haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion nationwide and they haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion in California specifically,” said Ramirez, who estimated that Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties stands to lose between $40m and $60m. Ramirez continued: “This is their way to go about banning abortion. That is the entire goal here.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a post on X, the prominent anti-abortion group Live Action reposted an image of a Planned Parenthood graphic calling the provision “backdoor abortion ban”. “They might be onto us,” Live Action wrote.The Planned Parenthood network is overseen by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, but it also consists of dozens of independent regional affiliates that operate nearly 600 clinics across the country. In June, as the spending-and-tax bill moved through Congress, Autonomy News, an outlet that focuses on threats to bodily autonomy, reported that Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s accreditation board had sent waivers out to affiliates to apply for approval to cease providing abortions in order to preserve access to Medicaid funding. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that a memo sent to the leadership of one California affiliate suggests that leaders there had considered ending abortion services.McGill Johnson said that there have been discussions within Planned Parenthood’s network about what it would mean to stop offering abortions. But no affiliates, to her knowledge, are moving forward with plans to stop performing the procedure.“Educating our volunteers and teams around hard decisions to stand and understand the impact of that is different than weighing and considering a stoppage of abortion,” McGill Johnson said.The budget bill and Title X funding freeze aren’t the only sources of pressure on the group. The US supreme court last week ruled in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its state Medicaid reimbursement program – a ruling that will likely give a green light to other states that also want to defund Planned Parenthood.At least one other organization that provides abortion and family-planning services, Maine Family Planning, will be affected by the provision, according to the organization’s CEO, George Hill. Maine Family Planning directly operates 18 clinics, including several that provide primary care or are in rural, medically underserved areas. If the provision takes effect, Hill estimates, the organization would lose 20% of its operating budget.“It’s dressed up as a budget provision, but it’s not,” Hill said. “They’re basically taking the rug out from under our feet.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US supreme court to hear case involving anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center

      by

      The US supreme court agreed on Monday to consider reviving a New Jersey anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center operator’s bid to block the Democratic-led state’s attorney general from investigating whether it deceived women into believing it offered abortions.The justices took up an appeal by First Choice Women’s Resource Centers of a lower court’s ruling that the Christian faith-based organization must first contest Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s subpoena in state court before bringing a federal lawsuit challenging it.The justices are expected to hear the case in their next term, which begins in October.Crisis pregnancy centers provide services to pregnant women with the goal of preventing them from having abortions. Such centers do not advertise their anti-abortion stance, and abortion rights advocates have called them deceptive. The case provides a test of the ability of state authorities to regulate these businesses.First Choice, which has five locations in New Jersey, has argued that it has a right to bring its case in federal court because it was alleging a violation of its federal rights to free speech and free association under the first amendment of the US constitution. First Choice is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that has brought other cases on behalf of anti-abortion plaintiffs including an effort to restrict distribution of the abortion pill that has since been taken over by Republican states.New Jersey is targeting First Choice because of its views, Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Erin Hawley said.“We are looking forward to presenting our case to the supreme court and urging it to hold that First Choice has the same right to federal court as any other civil rights plaintiff,” Hawley said in a statement.Platkin said that his office may investigate to ensure nonprofits are not deceiving residents and that First Choice has for years refused to answer questions about “potential misrepresentations they have been making, including about reproductive healthcare”.“First Choice is looking for a special exception from the usual procedural rules as it tries to avoid complying with an entirely lawful state subpoena, something the US Constitution does not permit it to do. No industry is entitled to that type of special treatment – period,” Platkin added.First Choice sued Platkin in New Jersey federal court in 2023 after the attorney general issued a subpoena seeking internal records including the names of its doctors and donors as part of an investigation into potentially unlawful practices. First Choice argued that there was no good cause for the subpoena, which it said chilled its first amendment rights.Platkin moved to enforce the subpoena in state court. Essex county superior court Judge Lisa Adubato granted that motion, finding that First Choice had not shown that the subpoena should be quashed at the outset of the investigation, but ordered the parties to negotiate a narrower subpoena and said that the constitutional issues could be litigated further going forward.The US district judge Michael Shipp then dismissed the federal case, finding that First Choice’s federal claim was not ripe because it could continue to make its constitutional claims in the state court and did not face any immediate threat of contempt.The Philadelphia-based third circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 ruling in December 2024 upheld Shipp’s ruling, prompting First Choice to appeal to the justices.In asking the supreme court to hear the case, First Choice argued that federal civil rights law is intended to guarantee parties a federal forum to assert their constitutional rights. It said that forcing it to litigate in state court would effectively deny it that forum, since the constitutional claims would be decided before a federal court could ever hear them.Crisis pregnancy centers have also drawn the attention of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who in 2024 sued 11 centers for advertising abortion pill reversal, a treatment whose safety and effectiveness is unproven. That case remains pending. Several New York crisis pregnancy centers sued James and in August won an order allowing them to continue touting abortion pill reversal. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Four States Ask F.D.A. to Lift Special Restrictions on Abortion Pill

      by

      The states consider it a move to force the F.D.A. to review and acknowledge extensive research showing the pill’s safety.In a strategy aimed at countering efforts to further restrict the abortion pill mifepristone, attorneys general of four states that support abortion rights on Thursday asked the Food and Drug Administration to do the opposite and lift the most stringent remaining restrictions on the pill.The petition filed by Massachusetts, New York, California and New Jersey might seem surprising given the opposition to abortion expressed by Trump administration officials. But the attorneys general consider it a move that would require the F.D.A. to acknowledge extensive scientific research that has consistently found mifepristone safe and effective, said an official with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office who worked on the filing and asked not to be named in order to share background information. It would also prevent the F.D.A. from changing mifepristone regulations while the petition is pending.The petition notes that at a May senate hearing, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, responded to questions by Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, who opposes abortion, by saying he had ordered the F.D.A. to do a “complete review” of mifepristone.“We want to make sure that when F.D.A. is making these decisions that they have all the data in front of them, all of the really powerful data that show that mifepristone is safe” the Massachusetts official said.The F.D.A. is required to respond within 180 days by granting or denying the request, or saying it needs more time. In its responses, the agency must document its position, which could be useful in lawsuits, including one that the four states could file if their petition is denied.Mifepristone, which blocks a hormone necessary for pregnancy development, was approved for abortion in America in 2000. The F.D.A. imposed an additional regulatory framework called Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS, on mifepristone. That framework has been used for only about 300 drugs, currently covering only about 60 medications.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Rescinds Biden Policy Requiring Hospitals to Provide Emergency Abortions

      by

      At issue is how to interpret a federal law barring hospitals from turning away poor or uninsured patients.The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it had revoked a Biden administration requirement that hospitals provide emergency abortions to women whose health is in peril, including in states where abortion is restricted or banned.The move by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the department led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was not a surprise. But it added to growing confusion around emergency care and abortions since June 2022, when the Supreme Court rescinded the national right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade.“It basically gives a bright green light to hospitals in red states to turn away pregnant women who are in peril,” Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law expert at Georgetown University, said of the Trump administration’s move.The administration did not explicitly tell hospitals that they were free to turn away women seeking abortions in medical emergencies. Its policy statement said hospitals would still be subject to a federal law requiring them to provide reproductive health care in emergency situations. But it did not explain exactly what that meant.Mr. Gostin and other experts said the murky policy could have dire consequences for pregnant women by discouraging doctors from performing emergency abortions in states where abortions are banned or restricted.“We’ve already seen since the overturn of Roe that uncertainty and confusion tends to mean physicians are unwilling to intervene, and the more unwilling physicians are to intervene, the more risk there is in pregnancy,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California-Davis and a historian of the American abortion debate.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump rescinds Emtala guidance protecting women in need of emergency abortions

      by

      The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded Biden-era guidance clarifying that hospitals in states with abortion bans cannot turn away pregnant patients who are in the midst of medical emergencies – a move that comes amid multiple red-state court battles over the guidance.The guidance deals with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala), which requires hospitals to stabilize patients facing medical emergencies. States such as Idaho and Texas have argued that the Biden administration’s guidance, which it issued in the wake of the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, interpreted Emtala incorrectly.In its letter rescinding the guidance, the Trump administration said that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) “will continue to enforce Emtala, which protects all individuals who present to a hospital emergency department seeking examination or treatment, including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy. CMS will work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions.”Abortion rights supporters said on Tuesday that rescinding the Biden administration’s guidance will muddy hospitals’ ability to interpret Emtala and endanger pregnant patients’ lives. Since Roe’s collapse, dozens of women have come forward to say that they were denied medical treatment due to abortion bans. A reported five pregnant women have died after having their care denied or delayed, or being unable to access legal abortions.“This action sends a clear message: the lives and health of pregnant people are not worth protecting,” Dr Jamila Perritt, an OB-GYN and the president of Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in a statement. “Complying with this law can mean the difference between life and death for pregnant people, forcing providers like me to choose between caring for someone in their time of need and turning my back on them to comply with cruel and dangerous laws.”Last year, the US supreme court heard arguments in a case involving Idaho’s abortion ban, which at the time only allowed abortions in cases where a woman’s life was at risk. In contrast, most state abortion bans permit abortions when a patient’s “health” is in danger – a lower standard that could make it easier for doctors to intervene. Idaho’s standard, the Biden administration said, blocked doctors from providing abortions in some emergencies and thus violated Emtala’s requirement that hospitals must stabilize patients.Ultimately, the supreme court punted on the issue by ruling 6-3 on procedural grounds that the case had been “improvidently granted”, indicating they should have never taken it up in the first place.“This court had a chance to bring clarity and certainty to this tragic situation and we have squandered it,” wrote Ketanji Brown Jackson, the supreme court justice, at the time. “And for as long as we refuse to declare what the law requires, pregnant patients in Idaho, Texas and elsewhere will be paying the price.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration’s Tuesday move is not unexpected. In March, the administration moved to drop out of the case over the Idaho abortion ban. A local Idaho hospital later filed its own lawsuit over the ban. More