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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.
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Let’s dive in.
On Autonomy News
Staff at an abortion clinic in Boulder, Colorado, called the police last week about threatening language in a far-right activist’s social media post. Two officers came to the clinic to talk with clinic workers and the protestors, and were then photographed praying with the man who had written it was “kill day.” It’s just the latest instance of cops praying or sympathizing with anti-abortion protestors. (Share this story on Instagram, Bluesky, or TikTok.)
Susan Rinkunas
Federal news
The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote Thursday on whether to advance the nomination of Todd Blanche to be Attorney General. Blanche can’t lose a single committee vote and Republicans are continuing their abortion-related extortion campaign. Utah Senator Mike Lee, who serves on the committee, led a letter to Blanche urging him to investigate a far-right fever dream of a conspiracy theory dating back to 2022, which involves five sets of stolen fetal remains that a convicted clinic invader claims she obtained from a truck driver for a medical waste delivery company. Top anti-abortion groups also supported the letter.
Anti-abortion group Students for Life is taking credit for Senator Ted Cruz pressuring Blanche to review the Justice Department’s stance on the 19th-century Comstock Act during his confirmation hearing. The group said that Cruz “asked one of the questions Students for Life submitted regarding the Comstock Act.” As we’ve covered, SFL has been pushing the DOJ to enforce the anti-obscenity law as a ban on shipping abortion pills. This argument would apply not just to mifepristone, but also to misoprostol, the second drug in a typical medication abortion regimen, which also works on its own. Meanwhile, former Justice Department officials argued in a brief to the Fifth Circuit in the ongoing Louisiana lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration that the agency’s decision to allow telehealth prescriptions of mifepristone doesn’t implicate Comstock and that Comstock only ever applied to “unlawful” abortions.
In another lawsuit over mifepristone, a Virginia judge ruled that the FDA didn’t sufficiently justify maintaining some restrictions on the drug when updating its label in 2023. Independent abortion providers challenged a new rule requiring pharmacies to be certified to dispense mifepristone, plus existing rules that required clinician certification and forced patients to sign a counseling form. They argued that the regulations didn’t enhance patient safety and that mifepristone is regulated more harshly than other drugs. The judge agreed—joining a Hawaii judge who came to the same conclusion in a separate lawsuit. The plaintiffs in the aforementioned Louisiana case are arguing the other side of the coin: That the FDA was wrong to allow mifepristone prescriptions by mail. The Fifth Circuit will hear arguments in that case in early September.
The final abortion pill update involves the latest in a disinformation campaign suggesting that mifepristone is in our drinking water. That gem comes from Students for Life, which is lobbying the Environmental Protection Agency to add the drug to the list of publicly tracked water contaminants. The group is touting a new “peer reviewed” study purporting to show mifepristone in the water of three US cities. But the sketchy journal that published the study is run by an anti-abortion organization known as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—yes, the same group of physicians that tried to force the FDA take mifepristone off the market in a 2022 lawsuit. One of the co-authors is an anti-abortion activist and a scholar at the “research” arm of a group that opposes abortion. Students for Life is trying to turn public opinion against medication abortion by appealing to MAHA and those who care about the environment. The group’s head of policy claimed in December that “people need to understand that they are likely drinking other people’s abortions.”
Reproductive health advocates worry that Trump administration’s changes to the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, like promoting fertility tracking and abstinence, could lead anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to be eligible for funding for the very first time.
State news
The Texas Court of Appeals ruled that the state didn’t present sufficient evidence for an injunction that shut down three Houston-area clinics operated by midwife Maria Rojas, who was arrested on charges of violating the state’s abortion ban last year. However, the clinics will not reopen. Rojas was forced to give up the leases, and her midwifery license remains suspended pending the outcome of the criminal case. She also still has to wear an ankle monitor, and the conditions of her bond prohibit her from working in healthcare. Garnet has a story on this case coming soon.
The Massachusetts House passed H 2370, a bill that would end the state’s prohibition on most abortions after 24 weeks. Current law allows abortions at this point only when a pregnant person’s health is in danger, or when there is a “lethal” or “grave” fetal diagnosis—descriptors that are subjective and often difficult to pin down. This results in patients being forced to leave what could otherwise be considered an abortion safe haven state for care. The Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts testified at a hearing last July that it had to provide financial assistance to 16 patients leaving the state between January and June of 2025, and state abortion funds said they supported five patients traveling out of state in January 2026 alone. To become law, the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act will need to pass the state Senate—where it has been stalled in committee—before the legislative session ends on July 31.
Arkansas is now the only state in the country that doesn’t offer extended Medicaid coverage for people after they give birth. Pregnant people in the state qualify for Medicaid if they make up to 214 percent of the federal poverty level—that’s about $58,000 for a family of three—but after 60 days, they can only keep their coverage if they make 138 percent of the federal poverty level or less, under $38,000 for a family of the same size. All other states and D.C. now offer extended eligibility for a year.
The latest Guttmacher Institute data shows that more people in ban states are now receiving abortion care via telehealth than by traveling out of state—last year, 142,000 people in abortion ban states got telehealth care, compared to 98,000 who traveled. In Texas, a whopping 42,000 people accessed telemedicine abortion thanks to “shield” laws, compared to just 12,400 in 2023. Florida also saw a large increase, from 3,400 to 19,700 abortions provided under shield laws. However, the people from these states who do travel are often covering very long distances. For example, many Floridians are getting care in New York, North Carolina, and Virginia, and while most Texans sought care in nearby New Mexico and Kansas, some traveled as far as New York, California, and Washington.
New Mexico’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee found that the single largest contributing factor in the state’s pregnancy-related deaths between 2018 and 2023 was mental health conditions, especially substance use. Some Democratic lawmakers argue that Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s 2025 order requiring state agencies to immediately remove drug-exposed newborns from their families will only make this problem worse.
In 2021, Harmony Ball-Stribling died on the side of the road in rural Mississippi after suffering a seizure brought on by preeclampsia while her husband drove her 25 miles to the nearest hospital. She might have lived if a closer hospital hadn’t closed in 2013, leaving her community with no hospital, urgent care clinic, or even a county health department. One lawmaker is pushing for the hospital to reopen by 2028—but when rural communities lose their hospitals, they almost never reopen.
Anti-abortion legal activist Jonathan Mitchell is asking to add a claim to an ongoing case that the abortion telemedicine service Aid Access violated HB 7, the supercharged “bounty hunter” ban that allows $100,000 suits against providers of medication abortion. It’s in the lawsuit where his client Liana Davis has accused a former partner of slipping misoprostol into her hot chocolate—and during which she apparently hid a second phone and deleted text messages after her allegations were revealed to be dubious at best. Davis’ ex allegedly obtained pills from Aid Access.
Elections
The midterm elections are, somehow, less than 100 days away. There are still about 20 primaries remaining—including several contests next week, which is, somehow, August.
On August 4, Kansas and Missouri will vote on ballot measures that could impact abortion access. Kansas voters will decide whether to make the state Supreme Court an elected body, a change that abortion opponents support as a way to overturn a landmark 2019 ruling finding a right to abortion in the state constitution. Voters in Missouri will determine whether to make it harder to pass citizen-initiated constitutional amendments, a decision that has added weight due to a November ballot measure that could reinstate an abortion ban. If both pass, it could be nearly impossible to restore abortion access in the state.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, one Republican candidate for governor is a self-described abortion “abolitionist,” meaning he supports criminal prosecutions of people who have abortions. State Rep. Monty Fritts said in February that “murder is murder. I know that's hard for people to hear.” A different abortion foe, Senator Marsha Blackburn, is expected to win the GOP primary on Thursday, August 6.
The November ballot in Idaho includes an initiative that would end the state’s strict abortion ban, which lacks an exception for the health of the pregnant person. The ballot measure would not amend the state constitution, but rather enact a new law protecting abortion rights until fetal viability, and some Republicans have already said they’ll try to repeal the law if it passes. Now, two candidates for governor—Democrat Terri Pickens and independent John Stegner—say they support the ballot measure and would oppose attempts to repeal it.
Assaults on queer people
We thought Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s embrace of testosterone replacement therapy for cisgender male soldiers was awfully ironic given his claim that transgender members of the military are “reliant on chemicals.” A federal judge agreed, ordering the Trump administration to explain its justification for treating cis soldiers differently from trans soldiers.
The Center for American Progress, a major liberal thinktank, is urging Democratic elected officials to defend the civil rights of transgender people while conceding that excluding trans people from participating in sports “may be appropriate under some circumstances.” That’s interesting—last time we checked, access to equal participation in sports was a human right, and, at least in U.S. schools, a civil right. “We hope that this lowers the temperature and lets us come out of this really scary moment for folks,” said Caleb Smith, CAP’s director of LGBTQI+ health policy, who is trans. Ceding ground worked very well for Democrats on abortion rights, as we all know.
In related and depressing news, the Women’s Tennis Association announced it would require one-time, mandatory gene testing for all female players. This will be a requirement to compete in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. The WTA is one of the only women’s sports leagues that has ever had an openly trans player: Renee Richards sued to compete as a woman in the 1970s after the WTA implemented a previous sex testing policy. Confusingly, Richards—who achieved a career-best ranking of world number 19—now supports banning trans girls and women from women’s sports.
In related but far more inspiring news, some rugby teams are simply refusing to comply with a ban on trans athletes.
Actual good news
For the first time since opening its doors in 1971, a Planned Parenthood in Springfield, Missouri, will provide abortions—specifically, medication abortions. It’s now the fifth Planned Parenthood clinic in the state to begin prescribing the pills following a June court ruling striking down multiple abortion restrictions. The judge in that case cited the constitutional amendment voters passed in 2024 protecting abortion until fetal viability. The Springfield clinic is also offering a new pain management option, nitrous oxide, for procedures including IUD insertion and removal, cervical cancer screening, vasectomy, colposcopy, and uterine biopsy.
Two examples of celebrities funding good things: Ariana Grande’s foundation made a gift to the Miscarriage + Abortion Hotline, which offers confidential support from trained clinicians. (Grande has previously given to Elevated Access, the Transgender Law Center, and Lambda Legal.) Net proceeds from Olivia Rodrigo’s forthcoming music festival, Daisy Chain Fields, will support groups including the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, National Institute for Reproductive Health, Center for Reproductive Rights, National Women’s Law Center, and Planned Parenthood.
Quick hits
- People are experiencing abject suffering as they lose access to food assistance programs like SNAP due to federal cuts and rule changes. New penalties for payment errors are so great, say administrators, that states hit with fines could be forced to eliminate SNAP entirely.
- House Speaker Mike Johnson called Christian nationalist law firm Alliance Defending Freedom “home,” and said the group, where he previously worked, is “like family” to him. Great!
- Utah has “occasionally experienced some of the worst short-term air quality in the country,” and a new study suggests this could be associated with a higher rate of preterm births.
- The United Nations Human Rights Council recently adopted a resolution recognizing “reproductive violence,” including forced birth and attacks on reproductive healthcare facilities, as a distinct form of gender-based violence.
- Speaking of the United Nations, a large coalition of U.S. reproductive rights and justice organizations will submit a report to the U.N. as it reviews our country’s human rights record, a process it repeats for every member state every few years.
Palate cleanser
Presenting: Gossiping ducks.
@dawgsandducks crying #dinky #duck #ducksoftiktok #ducklings #babyducks ♬ original sound - WormSodaCan
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