3 States Renew Their Effort To Reduce Access to the Abortion Drug Mifepristone
Associated Press, October 16, 2024
Three states are renewing a legal push to restrict access to the abortion medication mifepristone, including reinstating requirements it be dispensed in person instead of by mail. The request from Kansas, Idaho and Missouri filed Friday would bar the drug’s use after seven weeks of pregnancy instead of 10 and require three in-person doctor office visits instead of none in the latest attempt to make it harder to get a drug that’s used in most abortions nationally. The filing seeking to sue the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was made in a federal court in Texas where the case was returned after the U.S. Supreme Court in June unanimously agreed to keep federal changes that eased access to the medication. In that ruling, the high court did not tackle the merits of the approval but rather said that anti-abortion doctors and their organizations lacked the legal right to sue. The justices also previously refused the states’ push to intervene in the case. The states argue they have legal standing because access to the pills “undermine state abortion laws and frustrate state law enforcement,” they wrote in court documents. They are now making a more modest but still far-reaching request instead: that the courts return the restrictions around the drug to where they were before the FDA relaxed them in 2016 and 2021. The relaxed rules also allow care providers such as nurse practitioners to prescribe the drugs in addition to doctors.
Crisis Pregnancy Center’s Forms Give Rare Insight Into Anti-Abortion Practices
NBC News, October 13, 2024
A free family planning center in Twin Falls, Idaho, asks its visitors for sensitive, private information, including nonmedical questions about religion and financial status, according to documents obtained by NBC News. While the Sage Women’s Center promises to protect the information of its clients, it isn’t bound by medical privacy laws and may be misleading women who are coping with unplanned pregnancies, consumer advocates say. Crisis pregnancy centers like Sage offer counseling and other services to pregnant women while trying to persuade them not to have an abortion. The questionnaires, known as client intake forms, give rare insight into the practices of Sage and other crisis pregnancy centers and how they use ambiguous language to describe their services.
Florida Abortion Ban Has an Exception for Fatal Fetal Anomalies. So Why Was This Woman Forced To Go to Virginia?
The 19th, October 15, 2024
Serious fetal health complications have become a central talking point in the fight over abortion rights across the country. Several women who have filed lawsuits challenging their states’ abortion bans have specifically cited their inability to terminate pregnancies in such circumstances. A Texas woman named Kate Cox sued her state over access to an abortion after doctors discovered Trisomy 18 in her fetus. Cox was forced to leave Texas, which doesn’t have an exception for fetal anomalies, despite hers and her doctors’ arguments that continuing a likely nonviable pregnancy could also threaten her own life — the only time where that state’s law suggests abortion can be legal. A handful of states with abortion bans — Florida, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Indiana, Iowa and West Virginia — have included language that purportedly provides an exception in cases of fatal fetal anomalies. But in practice, securing those exceptions often proves impossible. The problem is, it’s not always clear what it means for an anomaly to be fatal. And if physicians in Florida err on the side of permissiveness, they risk being charged with a felony that carries up to five years prison time.
Uphill Battles That Put Abortion Rights on Ballots Are Unlikely To End Even if the Measures Pass
ABC News, October 17, 2024
Voters in nine states are deciding next month whether to add the right to abortion to their constitutions, but the measures are unlikely to dramatically change access — at least not immediately. Instead, voter approval would launch more lawsuits on a subject that’s been in the courts constantly — and more than ever since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door to state abortion laws. In some states where the issue is on the ballot, it’s already widely available. If Missouri’s amendment passes and takes effect in December, the measure would not repeal a state ban at all stages of pregnancy or the layers of other regulations — including a 72-hour waiting period and 44-inch (112-centimeter) doorway rule for clinics — that forced Planned Parenthood to stop abortions in two offices years before Roe was overturned. “A yes vote for this is not a vote to overturn anything. It is a vote to ensure that the courts will have to fight this out for a long time,” said state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman. Still, the measure would mean that “the wind will be at our back” in court fights to overturn restrictions, said Emily Wales, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which operates in four states and is the only group in recent years to provide abortions in Missouri. They stopped completely just before Roe was overturned. “It will feel tremendously different to us to say, ‘Missourians have a constitutional right.’ If you’re going to interfere with it, you’ve got to have a pretty good cause,” she said.
Hearings on Competing Nebraska Abortion Initiatives Mirror Campaign
Nebraska Examiner, October 14, 2024
Nebraska’s dueling ballot initiatives on abortion had separate hearings Tuesday at the Capitol, with the testimony largely echoing the campaign fight between the sponsors. Advocates for additional abortion restrictions spoke in support of Initiative 434, which would allow no abortions after the first trimester of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Critics of the restrictions amendment said it was designed to leave the Nebraska Legislature the option of limiting abortion more than the amendment calls for, up to and including a total ban. Abortion-rights advocates supported Initiative 439, which would put a right to abortion in the Nebraska Constitution until fetal viability, as defined by a treating health care practitioner. Critics of the abortion-rights measure argued it would leave too much room for midwives and doulas to decide viability, decisions they said were best left to doctors. They said this would allow abortions late into a pregnancy. Supporters of both amendments accused those behind the competing initiative of distorting the truth about the opposing initiative and extolled the virtues of their preferred amendment.
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