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Supreme Court rejects challenge to abortion pill mifepristone | CNN Politics

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approach to regulating the abortion pill mifepristone with a ruling that will continue to allow the pills to be mailed to patients without an in-person doctor’s visit.

The ruling is a significant setback for the anti-abortion movement in what was the first major Supreme Court case on reproductive rights since the court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

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Publication of abortion amendment canvasser list is intimidation, ballot question committee says • Arkansas Advocate

Supporters of a proposed Arkansas constitutional amendment that would allow a limited right to abortion denounced a conservative advocacy group’s publication of a list of paid canvassers, calling the move an intimidation tactic.

The right-wing Family Council posted Thursday on its website a list of 79 people that the Arkansans for Limited Government ballot question committee is paying to collect signatures from across the state. The committee needs 90,704 signatures from registered voters by July 5 for the proposed amendment to appear on the November ballot.

The Family Council obtained the list of paid canvassers and their home cities via an Arkansas Freedom of Information Act request, according to the post. Ballot question committees do not have to submit lists of unpaid or volunteer canvassers to the state.

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Senate GOP blocks bill to guarantee access to contraception | CNN Politics

Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to block a bill put forward by Democrats that would guarantee access to contraception nationwide, as Democrats seek to highlight the issue in the run up to November’s elections.

The bill – the Right to Contraception Act – would enshrine into federal law a right for individuals to buy and use contraceptives, as well as for health care providers to provide them. It would apply to birth control pills, the plan B pill, condoms and other forms of contraception.

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Health Data Breach at America’s Largest Crisis Pregnancy Org

Heartbeat International, the country’s largest network of crisis pregnancy centers, claims that client confidentiality is a “core principle” of the organization. But videos obtained by Abortion, Every Day reveal that the anti-abortion powerhouse has been collecting and recklessly sharing women’s private health data with corporate employees, thousands of center trainees and, in one case, anyone with an internet connection.

The shocking privacy breach comes at a moment when Republican lawmakers are funneling hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), claiming that they’ll fill the reproductive and maternal healthcare gap caused by their abortion bans. But the largely unregulated groups aren’t medical organizations looking out for the best interest of the vulnerable women who visit their centers. They’re religious groups whose goal of ending abortion is put above all else, including women’s rights and privacy.

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'You' Star Victoria Pedretti Doesn't Owe Us Anyone's Name

Let’s not pretend like society loves to protect women naming and shaming the men who treat them poorly let alone who abuse them, here. Johnny Depp, anyone?

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In Louisiana, drugs for medication abortion could become controlled substances : Shots - Health News : NPR

State and federal regulations aim to control access to drugs, such as opioids, based on their medical benefit and their potential for abuse, according to Joe Fontenot, the executive director of the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy, the state agency that monitors drugs listed as controlled dangerous substances.

As in other states, Louisiana tracks those prescriptions in databases which include the name of the patient, the health provider who wrote the prescription, and the dispensing pharmacy.

Physicians need a special license to prescribe the drugs — in 2023, there were 18,587 physicians in Louisiana, 13,790 of whom had a controlled dangerous substance license, according to data from the Louisiana State Medical Society and the Board of Pharmacy.

"Every state has a prescription drug monitoring program. And they really are designed to identify prescription drug mills that are hocking fentanyl, and opioid painkillers," said Robert Mikos, a professor of law and drug policy expert at Vanderbilt University.

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(7) Texas is Fabricating Abortion Data - by Jessica Valenti

Texas doctors have been required to submit patients’ private medical information into a state-run website without their knowledge or consent—adhering to a mandate that forces them to report women as suffering from abortion complications even when they’re not.

This rarely reported on section of Texas law lists 28 medical issues as abortion complications—conditions that reproductive health experts point out often have nothing to do with abortion. Still, doctors are required to tell the state about any woman who develops one of these issues if she happens to have had an abortion at any point in her life.

Doctors who don’t make these reports can be fined for each ‘violation’; after three violations, they could lose their license.

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The overturning of Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction is an affront to women | Moira Donegan | The Guardian

Perhaps what is most telling about the post-#MeToo persistence of misogynist myths about rape is in the judges’ reasoning itself. Indeed, part of the reason why the New York court of appeals’ decision to overturn Weinstein’s conviction is so humiliatingly hurtful for American women is the rationale on which four of the court’s seven justices based their decision: they said that too many women who said they had been assaulted by Weinstein had been allowed to testify at his criminal trial.

The prosecution had used these women, whose assaults were not at issue in the case, to establish a pattern and a motive for Weinstein’s conduct. It was the same tactic that so many women used in #MeToo, both in the movement writ large and in attempts to expose the violence of individual men. For women taking on the terrifying risk of coming forward about rape, there was supposed to be safety – and credibility – in numbers. But the judges of the majority found the sheer number of Weinstein’s accusers unfair to him; they thought it was excessive, too much.

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Honduras referred to UN human rights committee over total abortion ban

The Center for Reproductive Rights and the Honduras-based Centro de Derechos de la Mujer (Center for Women’s Rights, CDM) filed a petition with the UN human rights committee this month on behalf of a woman known as Fausia, who underwent a forced pregnancy after being raped and denied an abortion under Honduras’ draconian laws.

Honduras is one of five Latin American countries – along with Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic – where abortion is prohibited in all circumstances, even in cases of rape, incest, or when the pregnant woman’s life is at risk. Until last year, it was also the only country to outlaw emergency contraceptives.

Women who have an abortion or medical professionals who perform one can face up to six years in prison. The ban was reinforced by a constitutional amendment in 2021, which raised the threshold of votes needed for congress to modify the abortion law.

This strict ban is now being challenged for the first time via an international body. The organisations backing Fausia’s complaint want the UN committee to rule that the total abortion ban is a violation of women and girls’ fundamental rights, and recommend that Honduras regulate access to abortion as an essential health service.

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Harvey Weinstein sex crime conviction overturned and new trial ordered | CNN

The New York Court of Appeals on Thursday overturned the sex crimes conviction against Harvey Weinstein, the powerful Hollywood producer whose downfall stood as a symbol of the #MeToo movement, and ordered a new trial.

The court, by a 4-3 vote, ruled the testimony of “prior bad acts” witnesses should not have been allowed because it “was unnecessary to establish defendant’s intent and served only to establish defendant’s propensity to commit the crimes charged.”

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Urged by Cortez Masto, CVS and Walgreens begin dispensing abortion pill in Nevada - The Nevada Independent

Almost a year after major pharmacy chains began waffling at the prospect of filling mifepristone prescriptions, Walgreens and CVS began dispensing the abortion pill in Nevada during the last few weeks.

The decision comes after a concentrated push by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), who called on the chains to follow through with Food & Drug Administration (FDA) guidance updates finalized in 2023 allowing mifepristone to be dispensed and sold at pharmacies.

Now the most common means of terminating a pregnancy, mifepristone is the first of a two-pill drug regimen that patients can take within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute estimates that medication is now used for more than half (54 percent) of all abortions.

Mifepristone is available in Nevada via mail or at clinics, but abortion rights advocates say the pharmacy option will make access as simple as patients visiting their regular doctor’s office (which often are not certified to stock the abortion pill), obtaining a prescription and then picking it up at their local pharmacy.

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What's at stake as the Supreme Court hears case about abortion in emergencies : Shots - Health News : NPR

Under Idaho's abortion law, the medical exception only applies when a doctor judges that "the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman." (There is also an exception to the Idaho abortion ban in cases of rape or incest, only in the first trimester of the pregnancy, if the person files a police report.)

In a filing with the court, a group of 678 physicians in Idaho described cases in which women facing serious pregnancy complications were either sent home from the hospital or had to be transferred out of state for care. "It's been just a few months now that Idaho's law has been in effect – six patients with medical emergencies have already been transferred out of state for [pregnancy] termination," Dr. Jim Souza, chief physician executive of St. Luke's Health System in Idaho, told reporters on a press call last week.

Those delays and transfers can have consequences. For example, Dr. Emily Corrigan described a patient in court filings whose water broke too early, which put her at risk of infection. After two weeks of being dismissed while trying to get care, the patient went to Corrigan's hospital – by that time, she showed signs of infection and had lost so much blood she needed a transfusion. Corrigan added that without receiving an abortion, the patient could have needed a limb amputation or a hysterectomy – in other words, even if she didn't die, she could have faced life-long consequences to her health.

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(7) Breaking: Arizona House Repeals 1864 Ban

This afternoon, the Arizona House voted to repeal the state’s 1864 abortion ban. While Republicans have a majority in the state Senate, there’s a good chance they move ahead with the repeal, too. (Remember, Democrats had enough GOP votes last week in favor of a repeal; it was the House holding them up.) Obviously, if it passes the state Senate, Gov. Katie Hobbs will sign the legislation.

The ban, which has been the center of a tremendous amount of controversy, is a reminder of what Republicans’ end goal really is: pushing women back to a time when we had zero choices. About anything.

In the end, though, it appears that conservative politicians couldn’t take the backlash. U.S. Senate candidate and failed gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake has been lobbying legislators to repeal the ban, as has Donald Trump—who didn’t want fury over the 160-year old law messing with his campaign.

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Live updates: Supreme Court arguments on emergency room abortions

In today's Supreme Court hearing on a Biden administration challenge to aspects of Idaho’s strict abortion ban, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar put forward arguments seeking to appeal to conservative justices who just two years ago ruled that states should have the ability to prohibit the procedure.

The dispute, stemming from the Justice Department’s marquee response to the high court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, turns on whether federal mandates for hospital emergency room care override abortion bans that do not exempt situations where a woman’s health is in danger but her life is not yet threatened.

Prelogar argued that there was a real conflict between Idaho’s law and the federal statute, known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, but she painted its as a narrow one. She stressed that, in this case, the administration is not trying to interfere with Idaho’s ability to criminalize abortions outside of the medical emergencies addressed by EMTALA.

Key votes: To prevail, the Biden administration will need the votes of two members of the court’s conservative bloc, and with Justice Brett Kavanaugh signaling sympathies towards Idaho, the case will likely come down to the votes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett.

The two justices had tough questions for both sides of the case. The court’s far-right wing, perhaps in attempt to bring those swing justices to their side, framed the case as a federal overreach into state power.

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Abortion bans and domestic violence: Homicide is a leading cause of death for pregnant people.

Are there any numbers that show how the Dobbs decision has impacted any of these things, either the homicide rate for pregnant women or reproductive coercion?

The National Domestic Violence Hotline said that there was a 98 percent increase in reports of reproductive coercion the year after Dobbs, compared to the year before—more than 2,400 callers, the year after, reporting experiencing some form of reproductive coercion, compared to about 1,200 callers the year before that decision.

Were people referencing the law?

Some of the callers were saying that their abusers were referencing the abortion ban in their state. And this is also, broadly, a tactic that experts expect to increase. Basically, when the state hands down these abortion restrictions, it can wind up enabling abusers because it suggests that the state has no interest in giving them access to abortion and supporting their reproductive autonomy. So, it’s something that an abuser can also restrict. And it does sound like, from the anecdotes that I heard, sometimes this is what people are reporting.