Abortion

Challenge to Kentucky’s abortion ban dismissed as advocates seek a patient to press case

BY: - June 27, 2023

LOUISVILLE — A judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of two Kentucky laws that together ban nearly all abortions, a week after the state’s two licensed abortion providers signaled they planned to drop the case — for now. Jefferson Circuit Judge Mitch Perry on Tuesday signed an order the parties submitted agreeing to […]

Echoing history, reliance upon travel rises for abortion care post-Dobbs

BY: - June 22, 2023

Editor’s note: This report is part of a special States Newsroom series on abortion access one year after the U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down the federal right to abortion. When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision one year ago, people of childbearing age in states across the country suddenly faced what seemed […]

After Dobbs, abortion access is harder, comes later and with a higher risk

BY: - June 21, 2023

Editors’ note: This report is part of a special States Newsroom series on abortion access one year after the U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down the federal right to abortion. In April, a Reddit user in Alabama posted a breathless message to the abortion subreddit the morning after learning she was pregnant. She guessed she […]

Kentucky abortion providers want to dismiss challenge against near-total abortion ban

BY: - June 20, 2023

In a surprise move, Kentucky’s two licensed abortion providers have asked a judge to dismiss their case seeking to overturn the state’s near-total ban on abortion. The joint motion on behalf of Planned Parenthood and EMW Women’s Surgical Center comes on the eve of the first anniversary of the June 24, 2022, U.S. Supreme Court […]

Abortion provider selling its downtown Louisville building

BY: - June 1, 2023

After more than four decades of providing abortion and contraceptive services, EMW Women’s Surgical Center is selling its downtown Louisville building. The move by EMW comes nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down abortion as a federal constitutional right and it became virtually illegal in Kentucky under existing state laws. At the […]

Appeals court judges embrace anti-abortion speculation

BY: and - May 18, 2023

America’s major medical institutions and drug policy scholars have roundly denounced as “pseudoscience” many of the claims brought by anti-abortion groups in a high-profile federal lawsuit asking the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, one half of a two-drug regimen that has become the most common form of pregnancy termination […]

Three-judge panel in U.S. appeals court hears arguments in abortion pill case

BY: and - May 17, 2023

NEW ORLEANS — A federal appeals court panel quizzed lawyers during oral arguments Wednesday over a Texas judge’s decision that could end access to the abortion pill nationwide. Observers see the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals as a legal way station for the case, in which anti-abortion groups sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, […]

Arguments on landmark abortion pill case to be heard Wednesday in appeals court

BY: - May 16, 2023

WASHINGTON — The lawsuit over access to the abortion pill goes before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Wednesday, the next step on a path that will likely end at the U.S. Supreme Court.? The three-judge panel will decide whether to keep, overturn, or alter a ruling from U.S. District Court […]

Jewish women cite Kentucky’s Religious Freedom law in contesting state abortion ban

BY: - May 12, 2023

LOUISVILLE — Enacted in 2013, Kentucky’s “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” has been used to champion conservative causes ranging from tax incentives for a Noah’s Ark theme park in Grant County to the right of churches to stay open during the pandemic shutdown. Now, three Jewish women from Louisville argue that same law protects their reproductive […]

From credit card restrictions to wastewater: What abortion foes have been up to since Dobbs leaked

BY: - May 2, 2023

Anti-abortion leaders could not stop paraphrasing Winston Churchill last June after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a victory that took 50 years to realize.? “While we celebrate the momentous ruling in Dobbs, we must remember that overturning Roe was not the beginning of the end, but it was the end of the […]

Congressional Democrats urge reversal of district court ruling on mifepristone

BY: - May 2, 2023

WASHINGTON — More than 250 congressional Democrats have filed a brief urging an appeals court to reverse a Texas federal judge’s decision to suspend the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of the abortion pill. In an emergency order, the U.S. Supreme Court in April issued a stay, meaning the abortion pill known as […]

Anti-abortion legal strategy revives Comstock moral purity laws of late 1800s

BY: - April 28, 2023

When officials in a small New Mexico city sued the governor and attorney general over their ordinance placing restrictions on abortion clinics earlier this month, they argued that a late 19th century federal anti-obscenity law superseded state law. In March, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law a measure prohibiting public entities from interfering with […]