U.S. Appeals Court Upholds West Virginia Restriction on Abortion Pill Sales
Associated Press, July 15, 2025
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a lower court’s decision to restrict abortion pill sales in West Virginia. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, affirmed a ruling by a U.S. district judge in 2023 despite federal regulators’ approval of the abortion pill as a safe and effective medication. Most Republican-controlled states have enacted or adopted abortion bans of some kind, including restricting abortion pills by default, since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that provided nationwide access to abortion. All have been challenged in court. The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. U.S. District Court Judge Robert C. Chambers had ruled that the near-total abortion ban signed by then-Republican Gov. Jim Justice in September 2022 took precedence over approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. GenBioPro Inc., the country’s only manufacturer of a generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone, had argued that the state cannot block access to a FDA-approved drug. Chambers had dismissed the majority of GenBioPro’s challenges, finding there is “no disputing that health, medicine, and medical licensure are traditional areas of state authority.” Not at issue in the appeal was a challenge by GenBioPro concerning a separate West Virginia law that stopped providers from prescribing mifepristone by telehealth. Chambers had allowed that challenge to proceed.
Congress Targeted Planned Parenthood for Defunding, but Also Caught a Maine Health Care Provider
Associated Press, July 16, 2025
An item in Republicans’ sweeping policy and tax bill intended to block Medicaid dollars from flowing to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s biggest abortion provider, is also hitting a major medical provider in Maine. Maine Family Planning filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration Wednesday seeking to restore the reimbursements. Accessing health care in Maine — one of the Northeast’s poorest states and its most rural — is a challenge in areas far from population centers such as Portland and Bangor. Vanessa Shields-Haas, a nurse practitioner, said the organization’s clinics have been seeing all patients as usual and completing Medicaid paperwork for visits — but not submitting it because it appears the provision took effect as soon as the law was signed. While advocates focused on Planned Parenthood, the bill did not mention it by name. Instead, it cut off reimbursements for organizations that are primarily engaged in family planning services — which generally include things such as contraception, abortion and pregnancy tests — and received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023. The U.S. Senate’s parliamentarian rejected a 2017 effort to defund Planned Parenthood because it was written to exclude all other providers by barring payments only to groups that received more than $350 million a year in Medicaid funds. The not-for-profit Maine organization asserts in its legal challenge that the threshold was lowered to $800,000 this time around to make sure Planned Parenthood would not be the only affected entity. It is the only other organization that has come forward publicly to say that its funding is at risk, too.
Texas Overhauls Anti-Abortion Program That Spent Tens of Millions of Taxpayer Dollars With Little Oversight
ProPublica, July 10, 2025
Texas health officials are overhauling a program designed to steer people away from abortion following a ProPublica and CBS News investigation that found that the state had funneled tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into the effort while providing little oversight of the spending. The money has been flowing to a network of nonprofit organizations that are part of Thriving Texas Families, a state program that supports parenting and adoption as alternatives to abortion and provides counseling, material assistance and other services. Most of the groups operate as crisis pregnancy centers, or pregnancy resource centers, which often resemble medical clinics but are frequently criticized for offering little or no actual health care and misleading women about their options. In its 20 years of existence, the program’s funding has grown fortyfold — reaching $100 million a year starting Sept. 1 — making it the most heavily funded effort of its kind in the country. Under new rules set to take effect then, the organizations in the program must now document all of their expenses, and they will be reimbursed only for costs tied to services approved by the state. And they cannot seek reimbursement when they redistribute donated items, an effort to prevent taxpayer money from going to organizations for goods they got for free. Meanwhile, Texas is opening administration of the program to a competitive selection process instead of automatically renewing agreements with contractors, including one contractor that has overseen most of the program for nearly two decades. The changes address failures uncovered a year ago by the ProPublica/CBS News investigation.
New York Official Again Rebuffs Texas Judgment Against Doctor Over Abortion Pills
Reuters, July 14, 2025
A county official in New York on Monday rejected for a second time efforts by Texas to enforce a $100,000 judgment against a New York doctor accused of violating Texas’ ban on abortion by sending abortion pills to the state, further escalating an unprecedented interstate conflict. Acting Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck in a letter to the office of Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton doubled down on his March finding that New York’s so-called shield law precludes the enforcement of other states’ abortion bans against New Yorkers. Paxton’s office last week had asked Bruck to reconsider, arguing that he had a legal duty to enforce the judgment against New Paltz, New York-based doctor Margaret Carpenter. Bruck on Monday said Paxton’s office had not presented any new information. New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who championed the passage of the shield law earlier this year, praised Bruck for “defending the freedom generations of women fought to secure.
Google’s Exit From Flo Health Suit Puts Privacy Issues in Limbo
Bloomberg Law, July 16, 2025
Google LLC and other defendants’ move to settle claims against them in the privacy case over the Flo Health app’s data sharing practices threatens to leave unanswered key questions about corporate responsibility to protect consumers’ health information. Last week, Google filed a notice of settlement in the class action in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, evading a pending jury trial, but leaving issues such as what is considered “private” health data and whether and how California’s Invasion of Privacy Act applies to digital surveillance tools still in need of resolution. Answers could emerge as Flo Health Inc. — the company behind the menstrual cycle tracking app — and Meta Platforms Inc. go to trial later this month over whether users’ sensitive health data such as menstrual cycles, sexual activity, and fertility goals was illegally collected and shared to advertisers without their consent. That is, if they don’t also settle in the meantime. The privacy issues take on greater importance with little-known loopholes in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and increasing state restrictions on abortion and related reproductive care access. “There has been a lot of cultural commentary surrounding these issues after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and many more people are becoming more aware of how their personal data, their health data, and their reproductive data” now has less privacy, said Suzanne Bernstein, counsel at the Electronic Privacy information Center, a public interest group seeking to protect privacy and freedom of expression.
ICYMI: In Case You Missed It
July 10th, 2025, is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, commemorating how far into the year that Black women need to work to earn what white, non-Hispanic men made in the previous year. In 2023, Black women earners, including full-time, part-time and part-year workers, were paid just 64 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men. Even when just looking at those working full-time, year-round, Black women were paid only 66 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.
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Note: The information contained in this publication reflects media coverage of women’s health issues and does not necessarily reflect the views of the National Partnership for Women & Families.
