Table of Contents
Welcome to the latest edition of our weekly roundup. Every Monday, we’ll send you a summary of the biggest stories about bodily autonomy. We’ll also include links to pieces that Garnet or Susan have published.
If you’d prefer to receive a single email every week, you can do that—we love autonomy. You can manage your subscriptions by navigating to the site, clicking on “Account” in the upper right, then under “Emails,” select “Manage.” You can toggle off “Autonomy News” to receive only the roundup, or vice versa.
Let’s dive in.
On Autonomy News
We’re working on a juicy story that will come out soon, so in the meantime, check out our recent piece on what news outlets get wrong when covering criminal charges after abortion and miscarriage.
Garnet Henderson
Support independent journalism, get a free book! We’ve extended our subscription offer through January:
(If you'd like your book sent to an address other than your billing address, please email us at autonomynewsco@gmail.com.)
Help keep our journalism paywall-free in 2026! Upgrade to a paid subscription, drop a little something in our Tip Jar, or shop our merch. Interested in making a more substantial gift? Learn more here.
Federal news
The American Civil Liberties Union dropped a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its abrupt withholding of Title X family planning funds from Planned Parenthood and several other reproductive health providers, because it turns out the administration quietly released some of the funds in December. This funding freeze affected around 865 clinics in total, leaving them unable to provide services to an estimated 842,000 patients, according to the ACLU. However, the reversal comes too late to prevent clinic closures. Planned Parenthood of Utah, for example, said it would be able to restore some free and low-cost services, but would not be able to reopen two shuttered clinics. A reporter asked Trump about the decision to release funds during a Wednesday event in the Oval Office. “I don't know anything about it,” he said. “Bobby, do you?” he asked, turning to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “I have not heard that,” RFK replied. Unfortunately, the White House could still restrict future rounds of Title X funding through the federal rulemaking process, like it did in Trump’s first term.
The Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative Republican House members, released a framework for a second budget megabill that would, among other things, make permanent the “defunding” of Planned Parenthood. The proposal calls to “extend and make permanent the one-year freeze on federal funding for large abortion providers” that was included in the big, ugly bill that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4. The Hyde Amendment already bans federal money from paying for abortions in most circumstances, but the “defund” prohibits Medicaid insurance from reimbursing abortion providers for services like birth control, STI testing, and cancer screenings. In practice, the provision targeted Planned Parenthood, Maine Family Planning, and Massachusetts provider Health Imperatives. Nearly 50 Planned Parenthood clinics closed in 2025 thanks to this and other funding cuts, and Maine Family Planning was forced to suspend its primary care program. While House Speaker Mike Johson wants to pass another reconciliation bill—meaning one that can pass with just 51 Senate votes, rather than the typical 60—he hasn’t yet endorsed this proposed framework. Even his own members think it’s a long shot for a second bill to pass before the midterms.
Speaking of the midterms, anti-abortion groups are threatening to withhold pledged campaign spending and volunteer canvassers if the White House doesn’t get behind their goal of expanding the Hyde Amendment to apply to insurance plans purchased on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Trump recently pissed off those groups by saying lawmakers should be “a little flexible” when weighing activists’ Hyde demands because, he said, “if we don’t win the midterms…I’ll get impeached.” Instead of backing down, organizations like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America decided to use Trump’s impeachment fears as leverage to get what they want. SBA and Students for Life of America said they won’t campaign for any Republican who votes to extend ACA subsidies without new abortion restrictions—which 17 House GOP members did last week. But apparently the White House believes it’s an empty threat because anti-abortion voters will still vote Republican anyway.
The Senate held a hearing on the abortion drug mifepristone and, as we warned, it was full of disinformation from Republicans who want to restrict access to the pills nationwide. Health committee chair Sen. Bill Cassidy spun up lies about medication abortion’s safety and cited high-profile cases of reproductive coercion to argue that the Food and Drug Administration should end telemedicine prescriptions of the drug. (That would decimate access as 27% of all reported abortions are done with pills via telemedicine.) One anti-abortion witness, Dr. Monique Wubbenhorst, claimed that “elective abortion is intentional feticide" and urged the Trump administration to ban the mailing of pills by enforcing the Comstock Act, a 19th century anti-obscenity law. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray pointed out that this hearing wasn’t actually about safety, it was about control. “Republicans are furious that despite their extreme abortion bans some women are still finding ways to get the care that they need. And they want to put a stop to it—whatever it takes,” she said. Catch up with Susan’s thread, which includes gems likes this:
Ohio Sen. John Husted, who was adopted, wonders aloud if he would have been aborted had abortion pills been available -___-
— Susan Rinkunas (@susanrinkunas.com) 2026-01-14T16:15:52.889Z
Last week, Secretary Bear Carcass appointed two anti-vaccine OBGYNs, Kimberly Biss and Adam Urato, to serve on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel. Both were outspoken critics of Covid vaccines during pregnancy. In 2022, Biss said she was not previously an anti-vaxxer, but had “gone down the rabbit hole” and wanted to meet RFK. Congrats to her on manifesting that, we guess.
State news
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has secured a formal indictment against California abortion provider Rémy Coeytaux for allegedly mailing abortion pills to a patient in Louisiana in violation of state law. (Remember, abortion is not only illegal in Louisiana—the medications mifepristone and misoprostol are also classified as controlled substances.) Murrill is seeking to extradite Coeytaux to Louisiana, just as she earlier sought to extradite New York abortion provider Margaret Carpenter on similar charges. New York refused to extradite Carpenter because of its “shield” law, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would do the same. With each new case that gets filed, the likelihood that a shield law battle will reach the Supreme Court increases. Murrill even told CNN that she will appeal to the high court if necessary.
A South Carolina House subcommittee voted to advance one of two bills we told you about last week. As in Louisiana, H. 4760 would classify two medications used for abortion as controlled substances. However, the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol have many other uses in reproductive healthcare, including for miscarriage management, postpartum hemorrhage, and cervical dilation. The subcommittee approved the bill 3-2, and it will now go to the full Judiciary Committee for another vote. The hearing ended without a vote on a second bill, H. 3537, a fetal personhood proposal that would change the legal definition of “person” to include “unborn child” and classify abortion as homicide, meaning it would be punishable by death. That bill isn’t dead yet as it could advance in another committee hearing.
The North Dakota Attorney General’s office sent a cease-and-desist letter to an abortion fund, demanding that it remove a link to medication abortion information on its website. AG Drew Wrigley claims that Prairie Abortion Fund is violating a state consumer fraud law by linking on its resources page to Plan C, an organization that shares information about abortion pills and where people can order them. Importantly, Plan C doesn’t sell pills, but Wrigley’s office claims that Prairie Abortion Fund is somehow “promoting and facilitating” the sale of products without a required prescription in violation of the law. As we’ve covered, neighboring South Dakota is trying to censor an informational campaign from Mayday Health, which also does not sell abortion pills. And in August, Arkansas AG Tim Griffin tried to cow both Plan C and Mayday into self-censoring in the state, but the effort went nowhere.
Utah lawmakers introduced a bill to “defund” abortion providers by kicking them out of the Medicaid program entirely. The state already bans Medicaid insurance from covering abortions in most circumstances, following the Hyde standard, but House Bill 232 would go further by prohibiting Medicaid from covering any service at an abortion clinic. HB 232 essentially replicates the one-year “defund” at the federal level, but is open ended, meaning it would apply in perpetuity.
Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania is temporarily closing three of four of its family planning clinics due to a shortage of nurses and nurse practitioners—though abortion and telehealth services remain available. The affiliate has stressed that the closures are temporary and due to a statewide nursing shortage, which has made it difficult to fill positions when employees leave. However, the affiliate acknowledged that PPWP pays nurses less than other health systems in the area, and given the revenue shortfall caused by the federal Medicaid “defund,” reopening the clinics may not be that straightforward.
As planned, Virginia House Democrats used their new majority to approve ballot measures that would protect abortion rights, restore voting rights for people with felony convictions, repeal a currently unenforceable ban on same-sex marriage, and give the state legislature the opportunity to redraw district lines, on the very first day of their session. The Senate also approved the abortion and redistricting amendments, which now head on to newly inaugurated Governor Abigail Spanberger, who has said she’ll put them on the ballot. (The Senate has yet to vote on the other two proposals.) The reproductive freedom amendment would allow the state to ban abortion in the third trimester with some exceptions, so be advised that it does not fully remove the government from pregnancy decisions.
The Texas Supreme Court heard arguments in a case stemming from the state’s original “bounty hunter” abortion ban, SB 8. The case began in 2022, when a Texas citizen named Sadie Weldon, represented by legal activist and former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell, sought to depose Neesha Davé, deputy director of the abortion fund Lilith Fund. In an affidavit filed in a different lawsuit, Davé had acknowledged that Lilith Fund had helped at least one Texas resident pursue an abortion during a period when the law was blocked, so Mitchell filed a petition asking a court for permission to depose Davé to learn more about potential violations of SB 8. But Lilith Fund countersued, asking a Texas court to rule SB 8 unconstitutional and bar Mitchell from suing them under the law. Mitchell asked a court to dismiss the countersuit, and lost. If the Texas Supreme Court agrees with those rulings, it could send the case back down to a lower court to consider the constitutionality of SB 8.
Personhood watch
The Florida House of Representatives passed a bill that would expand the state’s Wrongful Death Act to allow people to sue over the death of an “unborn child” at any stage of development. That means HB 289 would apply even to fertilized eggs. While the bill exempts the “mother” of the embryo or fetus from wrongful death suits, one Democratic lawmaker said that, as written, the bill would allow intended parents to sue their gestational surrogate if she had a miscarriage. Republicans claim the bill is necessary so people can sue if they lose a pregnancy in a car crash, but Democrats said friends or loved ones who help someone get an abortion could be sued. (Similar statutes that don’t exempt the pregnant person have been used by aggrieved men to sue their partners over their abortions.)
A Louisiana man was charged with second-degree feticide because police claim he knowingly provided drugs to a pregnant woman who later lost her pregnancy after suffering an overdose. The woman herself was charged with third-degree feticide. This appears to be yet another wrongful charge, like the one we reported on in Kentucky, because Louisiana’s feticide law explicitly exempts the pregnant person.
Assaults on queer people
The Supreme Court heard arguments in Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ, cases that challenge those states’ bans on transgender girls and women participating in school sports. Susan recapped the arguments for Jezebel, and as expected, the justices appear ready to uphold the bans.
Extremism
The annual March for Life will take place in Washington D.C. on Friday, and Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry has some actions planned with his new group, which we’ve been tracking for a few months now. Like many anti-abortion organizations, Terry’s Rescue Resurrection is angry that the Trump administration hasn’t done more to restrict access to abortion. On Thursday, they plan to protest outside the Department of Health and Human Services to demand that it take action to ban mifepristone. According to the group’s website, some protesters will stand on the sidewalk with signs, while others will risk arrest by blocking the entrance and refusing to move. The day before, protesters will gather for “an evening of inspiration and training” at Church of the Holy Comforter St. Cyprian, a Catholic church led by Monsignor Charles Pope, a highly conservative priest who famously told his congregation not to fear Covid and was then hospitalized with Covid.
Quick hits
- A North Carolina woman with a heart condition died while waiting for an abortion in 2023, ProPublica reports. Abortion is legal in the state until 12 weeks of pregnancy, but there is an unnecessary 72-hour waiting period and clinics have been slammed with patients from states with near-total bans like Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. Due to her condition, care in a hospital would have been more appropriate, anyway, but no doctor referred her to one.
- The trial will continue this week over whether Missouri’s abortion restrictions are constitutional under the reproductive freedom amendment voters passed in 2024.
- Did you know that one form of injectable birth control can be safely self-administered, meaning it’s not necessary for patients to get their injections from a doctor unless they want to? Few people do, including medical professionals. A new study examined the barriers to self-injectable birth control access, and better education for clinicians is one of its main recommendations.
- Arkansas is seeking a new designer for its “monument to the unborn” at the state capitol after the original artist applied for a copyright for her design, which would prevent the state from… selling Christmas tree ornaments featuring it.
- A major systematic review published in The Lancet found that the use of Tylenol—known as acetaminophen in the U.S. and paracetamol in Europe—during pregnancy does not increase the likelihood that a child will develop autism, ADHD, or an intellectual disability.
Palate cleanser
This is so deeply Minnesotan.
@melodyinminneapolis The Art Sled Rally took place in Powderhorn Park today in Minneapolis as Minnesotan’s continue to get creative in their resistance. #minneapolis #minnesota #twincities ♬ original sound - Melody | MN Food & Fun
Follow Autonomy News on Instagram, Bluesky, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
