Louisiana woman pleads not guilty to a felony in historic abortion case

The woman’s arraignment is part of a cross-state legal battle that involves what may be the first instance of criminal charges against a doctor accused of sending abortion pills to another state, putting Louisiana’s near-total abortion ban in tension with New York’s shield laws. Read more at NBC News  

In red states, GOP lawmakers revive an “incredibly regressive” push to treat abortion as murder

Republican state lawmakers in more than 10 states, including South Carolina, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, Georgia, Indiana, North Dakota and Oklahoma, have all introduced bills that would redefine abortion as homicide by defining a “person” or “human being” as inclusive of an “unborn” or “preborn” child. All seek to criminalize abortion in a way that has been rejected by even the … Read more

Texas banned abortion. Then sepsis rates soared

The rate of sepsis shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost their pregnancies in the second trimester, ProPublica found. The surge in this life-threatening condition, caused by infection, was most pronounced for patients whose fetus may still have had a heartbeat when they arrived at the hospital. Read more at ProPublica … Read more

Infant deaths continue to rise as more abortion bans are put in place, studies find

The overturn of Roe v. Wade with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision has paved the way for legislation across the country to restrict reproductive health care. A pair of new studies shows the fallout of restrictive reproductive healthcare policies: More babies were born in states that enacted abortion bans between 2021 and 2023, and infant mortality … Read more

As Trump returns, state lawmakers pursue bills that would treat abortion as homicide

Bills that redefine abortion as “homicide” strengthen a legal doctrine known as “fetal personhood”, which seeks to grant embryos and fetuses legal rights and protections – sometimes at the expense of the women carrying them. If fully enacted, fetal personhood would not only ban abortion but would rewrite entire arenas of US law, from traffic … Read more