Planned Parenthood Wins a Temporary Injunction Over Medicaid Funding
The New York Times, July 7, 2025
Planned Parenthood won a temporary injunction on Monday that allows its clinics to continue to receive Medicaid funding for services that are unrelated to abortion. The organization sued the Trump administration earlier on Monday over a new law that essentially bars Planned Parenthood clinics from receiving federal Medicaid payments, claiming that the legislation is an unconstitutional attack on Planned Parenthood’s national organization and its locally run health care clinics. The lawsuit, which was filed in Federal District Court in Massachusetts, challenges part of the new domestic policy bill that President Trump signed on Friday. Judge Indira Talwani issued the temporary injunction, which expires in 14 days. Under the new law, some nonprofit health centers that provide abortions cannot be reimbursed by Medicaid for providing any other medical services, including birth control, annual checkups and tests for sexually transmitted infections. (The use of federal Medicaid dollars to cover the cost of abortions has long been illegal.) The new law applies only to nonprofit organizations that generated $800,000 or more in revenue from Medicaid payments in the 2023 fiscal year. Because few abortion providers are large enough to meet that threshold, the lawsuit argues that the law is intended to target Planned Parenthood for its advocacy of abortion rights, violating the group’s freedom of speech. The Department of Health and Human Services, which administers Medicaid, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. After the new law was enacted, some Planned Parenthood affiliates scrambled to let patients know on Friday that they could no longer use their federal health care coverage to pay their bills. Stripping Planned Parenthood clinics of those patients and their Medicaid reimbursements “will result in the elimination of services, laying off of staff, and health center closures,” according to the lawsuit.
How Abortion Bans Are Affecting Where Women Live and Work
The Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2025
Alana Tedmon and her husband moved to the outskirts of Dallas in June 2022, attracted by the lower cost of living and proximity to family. That same month, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Texas followed by banning abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. The 37-year-old freelance illustrator and her husband moved back to Philadelphia last summer, largely because of the ban. Then Tedmon got pregnant unexpectedly. She was initially excited, but anxiety about the couple’s financial security ultimately led her to get an abortion—something she was grateful was feasible in the state. Abortion is now banned or heavily restricted in about one-third of U.S. states, and some women of childbearing age say that has introduced a new calculus about where to live and work. Though migration patterns are complicated, early data show that the states with the most restrictive laws are seeing some residents leave. A recent paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that 13 states with abortion bans collectively saw about 146,000 residents leave due to abortion bans in the year after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to the procedure. The paper found that while those states – mostly in the South – had been gaining population at a significantly faster rate than other parts of the country, that advantage essentially vanished afterward. The authors looked at patterns in Postal Service change-of-address data after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Over a five-year period, those states’ populations could be about 1% smaller than if they hadn’t passed abortion restrictions, the paper estimated. The extent to which women are making decisions about where to live based on abortion bans has been more pronounced than many economists who study this issue anticipated.
Many Missouri Laws Restricting Abortion Blocked Again by State Judge
CBS News, July 4, 2025
A Missouri judge blocked many of the state’s abortion restrictions Thursday, reimposing a preliminary injunction against them just a little over a month after the state’s highest court had lifted a previous hold. The order by Jackson County Circuit Judge Jerri Zhang said the abortion restrictions likely violate a state constitutional right to abortion approved by voters last year. Planned Parenthood said the order clears the way for it to again provide procedural abortions in Missouri. But Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said his office “will expeditiously appeal this ruling.” The court order marks the latest twist in a multiyear battle that has seen Missouri swing back and forth between banning and allowing most abortions. When the U.S. Supreme Court ended a nationwide right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, it triggered a Missouri law banning abortions “except in cases of medical emergency.” But abortion-rights activists gathered initiative petition signatures to reverse that law. Last November, voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to abortion until fetal viability, generally considered sometime past 21 weeks of pregnancy. That made Missouri the only state where voters have used a ballot measure to overturn a ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy. The state Supreme Court ruled in May that Zhang had applied the wrong standard when issuing rulings in February and December that blocked Missouri’s abortion restrictions. Upon reconsideration, Zhang again issued preliminary injunctions against the abortion ban. The judge also reimposed a hold on various other laws, including a 72-hour waiting period for abortions, numerous abortion facility licensure requirements and a mandate that physicians performing abortions have admitting privileges at certain types of hospitals located within 30 miles or 15 minutes of where an abortion is provided.
Judge Revokes FDA Injunction Allowing Abortion Pill Access
Courthouse News Service, July 8, 2025
A group of blue states that sued for access to mifepristone and misoprostol may now find limited availability to the two drugs administered as medication abortion. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice reversed his own injunction that blocked the federal government from limiting access to mifepristone in Washington state, Oregon and 16 other states and Washington, D.C. According to the Administrative Procedure Act – which the plaintiff states sued under – a court can only set aside an agency action if the agency is found to have acted arbitrarily and capriciously. But Rice, a Barack Obama appointee, said that the Food and Drug Administration didn’t ignore federal laws and properly reviewed materials that established adverse risks to the drug were low to change the rules to remove an in-person dispensing requirement and add a pharmacy-certification requirement. Led by Washington and Oregon, the states had claimed in a February 2023 lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of Washington that the FDA’s pharmacy requirement places undue burdens on the states’ doctors, pharmacies and patients by making the drugs harder to access and more dangerous for those traveling from states that have made abortion illegal.
New Va. Law Protecting Reproductive Health Data Prompts Walmart’s Online Data Collection Pop-Ups
Virginia Mercury, July 8, 2025
Disclosure pop-ups about the “cookies,” or other aggregate bits of data websites collect and store aren’t an uncommon experience while shopping online. What’s less common: when a pop-up indicates that your potential purchase of condoms, birth control medication or menstrual hygiene products is being noted digitally, a message Virginians have started seeing when they shop virtually for such products. Since July 1, a new state law outlines that people’s personally identifiable reproductive or sexual health information cannot be obtained, disclosed, disseminated or sold without consumer consent. As new laws took effect in Virginia on July 1, Walmart has begun alerting customers about certain product or service searches and purchases. If consumers don’t want their data connected to their sexual or reproductive health to be stored, the disclaimer suggests they “avoid viewing, searching for, using or purchasing these products, services, or features.” But not all pop-ups are new or specifically focused on reproductive-related information. Other retailers like CVS have more broad disclaimers about data collection. As the national reproductive health legal landscape shifts, including contraception and abortion access, some state and federal lawmakers have pressed for strengthened consumer protection laws surrounding reproductive health data.
ICYMI: In Case You Missed It
New analysis from the National Partnership for Women & Families and A Better Balance reveals that nearly 73 million workers live in states that block local communities from making progress on paid sick days.
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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.
