“I Was So Naive”: The Painful Stories Behind Abortion Restrictions

As Anya Cook sat at the hairdresser, she thought she might die. The night before, her water had broken. But being only about 16 weeks along in her pregnancy—six weeks before a fetus can potentially survive on its own outside the uterus—she’d known something was wrong; her husband, Derick Cook, had rushed her to the … Read more

Texas abortion case heard before state’s highest court, as more women join lawsuit

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office has not responded to multiple requests from NPR for comment on the new plaintiffs, but in filings, lawyers for the state argue that these women were not harmed by the state’s abortion laws. They say the law is clear, the exception is sufficient as is, and suggest that doctors … Read more

Idaho Asks Supreme Court To Let It Fully Impose Punitive Abortion Ban During Appeal

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra published a memo shortly after the Dobbs decision reminding hospitals that EMTALA requires them to perform abortions as part of emergency stabilizing care. Idaho’s ban prohibits abortions except when necessary to prevent the pregnant woman’s death. Read more at Talking Points Memo  

We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe. We’re Going Somewhere Worse

We have entered an era not of unsafe abortion but of widespread state surveillance and criminalization—of pregnant women, certainly, but also of doctors and pharmacists and clinic staffers and volunteers and friends and family members, of anyone who comes into meaningful contact with a pregnancy that does not end in a healthy birth. Those who … Read more

How abortion bans are undercutting efforts to prevent domestic violence

Research shows that OB-GYNs are often the first or only doctors to learn if a patient is facing intimate partner violence. While women of all ages experience intimate partner violence, it is most prevalent among women of reproductive age, the people most likely to see an OB-GYN. Meanwhile, abortion bans have contributed to reproductive health … Read more