Nebraska top court upholds law combining abortion and gender-affirming care restrictions

A Nebraska law that combined abortion restrictions with another measure to limit gender-affirming healthcare for minors does not violate a state constitutional amendment requiring bills to stick to a single subject, the state supreme court ruled on Friday. Read more at The Guardian  

The Republican party remains the party of denying women human rights | opinion

In other words, the revision would protect women’s right to privacy around pregnancy and birth control-related healthcare, and Vance was having none of it. As Talking Points Memo put it: “The news has been filled with proposed or actual laws which would attempt to restrict travel to receive abortions in other states, charge those who … Read more

Iowa’s ban on abortions after 6 weeks will go into effect next week

A district court judge for Polk County said the law can be fully enforced starting July 29 at 8 a.m. CT, to allow time for medical providers to receive notice of the change. The ACLU of Iowa tried earlier this month to petition the Iowa Supreme Court to rehear the case, but the court denied that … Read more

Why do abortion “exceptions” rarely include mental health?

“It’s one stigma on top of another: abortion is stigmatized, mental health is stigmatized — and [if] you need an abortion for a mental health issue, you’re just adding stigma on stigma,” Sobel told Salon. “So it’s most challenging for people in that situation to access care, and as we’ve already said, most of the … Read more

Texas city to vote on ban on people helping patients traveling for abortion

Come November, residents of Amarillo, Texas, will vote on an ordinance that would declare Amarillo a “sanctuary city for the unborn” and ban people from helping patients travel through Amarillo to access abortions – what the ordinance calls “abortion trafficking”. It would also ban people from possessing or distributing abortion pills within Amarillo city limits. … Read more

Arkansas official rejected valid abortion ballot signatures, lawsuit claims

“Our compliance with the law is clear and well-documented,” Lauren Cowles, executive director of Arkansans for Limited Government, said in a statement. “The secretary of state’s refusal to count valid signatures is an affront to democracy and an attempt to undermine the will of the people.” Read more at The Guardian  

National abortion ban “hidden in plain sight” in revised RNC agenda, legal experts say

“The key to their true agenda here is the suggestion that the 14th Amendment of the federal constitution somehow empowers states to ban abortion,” Kolbi-Molinas said. “They are signaling that embryos and fetuses are persons under the 14th Amendment, which is simply not true. And if that were the case, if embryos and fetuses had … Read more

Abortion bans are also terrible for babies

A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University has spent the two-and-a-half years since SB8 took effect crunching data on infant deaths in Texas and other states, then re-crunching it to confirm their results. They found that as women whose access to abortion was drastically curtailed by SB8 began to give birth in 2022, those … Read more

Republican National Committee (RNC) and abortion platform

RNC poised in draft text to drop national limits on abortion from party platform “After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People,” the draft language states. “We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access … Read more

How Biden’s campaign is linking abortion and Trump’s felony convictions

The Biden campaign also released a new ad featuring Kaitlyn Joshua, a Louisiana woman who says she was turned away from two emergency rooms while having a miscarriage at 11 weeks of pregnancy in the state, which has a strict abortion ban. “That was a direct result of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade,” Joshua … Read more