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
Garnet dove into the court transcripts from a recent trial in Kansas. They reveal that, in states where GOP officials have tried and failed to ban abortion, they’re simply turning back to their old tactics to make care inaccessible—except this time, they’re getting help from Alliance Defending Freedom. (Share this story on Instagram or Bluesky.)
Garnet Henderson
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Federal news
With much fanfare, the Department of Health and Human Services announced today that the Food and Drug Administration will remove “black box” warning labels from drugs used in hormone replacement therapy for menopause. It also approved a new, non-hormonal treatment for some menopause symptoms. Black box warnings are the most serious type of safety-related warnings that the FDA requires on drug packaging. These were added to menopause HRT products in the early 2000s, after a long-term study called the Women’s Health Initiative raised concerns that hormone therapy may increase the risk of cancer and stroke. Experts have long argued that this study had significant flaws and that the medical field overreacted in response to it, largely abandoning HRT as a treatment.
Most in the field believe this change is a net good. For example, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in a release that it “commends the HHS leadership for improving the lives of perimenopausal women by making the estrogen products they need more accessible to them.” However, the move isn’t without controversy. ACOG itself had previously criticized the process the FDA went through to arrive at its decision, saying it lacked the appropriate scientific rigor. The organization said its recommendation—which is that physicians should counsel patients based on their own personal risk factors—has not changed. ACOG has also long supported label updates for lower-dose vaginal estrogen products, which show significant benefits and carry fewer risks than systemic hormone therapy.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said the black box warning on HRT is one of the “biggest mistakes in modern medicine.” It’s difficult to look past the irony there, considering how often conservatives point to the scientifically unsupported black box warning on the abortion medication mifepristone as evidence that the drug is dangerous. It’s also worth noting that this all fits nicely into the MAHA agenda, which is obsessed with hormone “optimization”—for cisgender people only.
Speaking of mifepristone, as we noted last week, the lawsuit attempting to drastically restrict access to the drug has been moved from a federal court in Texas to one in Missouri. And as Susan explained at Balls and Strikes, it’s now before fresh Trump appointee Cristian Stevens, who during his confirmation process refused to say whether the landmark birth control case Griswold v. Connecticut was correctly decided. Great!
Finally, on Saturday, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden said on the Senate floor that Republicans had suggested they would vote to extend subsidies for insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act—but only if Democrats agreed to a “backdoor national abortion ban.” This appears to be a reference to an effort we’ve been tracking from anti-abortion lawmakers and the major anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who claim that ACA premium tax credits “indirectly subsidize” abortion. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a bill that would ban abortion coverage in plans offered on the ACA exchanges. However, Wyden’s comments came before eight Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to move toward reopening the government. Though Republicans did apparently pledge a future vote on ACA subsidies, it’s not clear whether any deal was made about abortion coverage.
State news
The 2025 general elections brought big wins for Democrats, and many of these should help protect reproductive freedom. California voters approved Proposition 50, allowing the state to redistrict in a way that will favor Democrats—an effort to counter redistricting efforts in Republican-led states. Democrat Mikie Sherrill was elected governor of New Jersey, beating a Republican opponent who said he’d sign a 20-week abortion ban. In Pennsylvania, three judges who’ve shown support for abortion rights won their retention elections to keep serving on the state Supreme Court. And in Virginia, Democrats absolutely dominated, adding at least 10 seats in the House of Delegates and electing former Rep. Abigail Spanberger as the state’s first female governor. Democratic control in Virginia means that a reproductive freedom ballot measure will likely pass the second vote it needs in the state legislature to get onto the ballot in 2026.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has sued Planned Parenthood, accusing the national organization and its Florida affiliate of deceptive marketing over statements about medication abortion safety. Specifically, Uthmeier’s complaint references Planned Parenthood’s claims that the abortion pill mifepristone is “safer than Tylenol.” This is true. In fact, mifepristone is also safer than penicillin and Viagra. If this is all sounding very familiar, it’s because former Missouri AG Andrew Bailey filed a very similar suit against Planned Parenthood back in July—before he left his home state to take on his new role, co-deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both lawsuits reference a dubious, non-peer-reviewed report from the far-right Ethics and Public Policy Center, which claimed mifepristone is far more dangerous than previously reported. This same report has been referenced by Republican senators including Josh Hawley, as well as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, to justify the FDA’s current “review” of mifepristone’s safety.
States Newsroom reports that Idaho’s health department turned down all $1.5 million of its annual Title X federal family planning funding in April, leaving residents without access to the low- and no-cost contraception the program provides. The state quietly declined the money to remain compliant with SB 1329, a law that requires parental consent for healthcare and has limited young people's access to suicide hotlines. Title X counseling doesn’t require parental consent. In fact, a conservative Texas man sued over that fact in 2020 in an attempt to gut the program. Now, Idaho has found another way to attack it.
Arizona abortion providers are challenging laws that ban the mailing and prescription of abortion pills via telemedicine, prohibit the provision of abortion for certain reasons—including genetic conditions—and force patients to go through biased, state-mandated counseling, an ultrasound, and a 24-hour delay before their abortion. Two doctors and the Arizona Medical Association argue these restrictions violate the state constitutional right to abortion until fetal viability, which voters enshrined last year. Republican legislators intervened to defend the law when Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes declined to do so. In a recent hearing, in addition to arguing that the restrictions are constitutional, the legislators’ attorneys even tried to extend the concept of “viability”—which is already medically murky and controversial—to suggest that abortion should actually be banned even earlier.
Lawyers for one of the health workers arrested alongside a Texas midwife accused of violating the state’s abortion ban and practicing medicine without a license are demanding that the state turn over its evidence. “They politicize abortion, they politicized women’s rights, they politicize immigrants, but what we haven’t seen yet is evidence,” said one of his attorneys in a recent hearing.
Personhood watch
In Florida, Republican state Senator Erin Grall has introduced a bill that would allow people to sue for wrongful death on behalf of fetuses. Last week, the bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in a five-to-four vote. We’ve covered how these laws advance fetal personhood, and how they’ve become a favorite legal weapon of the anti-abortion movement—especially for legal activist Jonathan Mitchell, the former solicitor general of Texas and architect of its “bounty hunter” abortion ban, SB 8.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin Republicans have introduced a bill that would redefine “abortion” to ensure the definition does not include treatment for ectopic pregnancy. If you were thinking this was meant to help pregnant people, you’d be wrong. “It’s very simple,” said state Representative Joy Goeben. “It is taking out the molar pregnancy, ectopic pregnancy—all of these things that we wouldn’t think of that as an abortion, but when there is an election we get killed on that on an emotional stance of, “Oh, this woman was going to die because she couldn’t get her health care.” In other words, Wisconsin Republicans want to redefine abortion so they won’t look quite as bad when they try to ban it. While abortion is currently legal until 20 weeks of pregnancy in Wisconsin, Goeben said she hopes to “go back to conception, which is where life begins.”
Assaults on queer people
In a not-entirely-surprising move, the Supreme Court declined to hear a last-ditch appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples a decade ago. Davis wasn’t just asking the Court to reverse a judgment against her (one of the couples she refused sued her, and won). She was asking them to overturn the landmark marriage equality ruling Obergefell v. Hodges. We know that Clarence Thomas, in particular, is gunning to do exactly that—but Davis’ case was awfully weak, even for these justices.
However, Texas judges can now do exactly what Davis did, without consequence. In a recent addition to the state’s judicial code of conduct, the Texas Supreme Court said that judges who refuse to perform same-sex marriages on religious grounds are not violating the rules of judicial impartiality, and will not be disciplined.
And in bad U.S. Supreme Court news, the justices have allowed the Trump administration to enforce its transphobic passport policies. This ruling came from the “shadow docket,” a term used to describe the emergency appeal system in which cases make their way to the Court and are decided more quickly than usual. All three liberal justices dissented. The decision stems from a January executive order in which Trump declared that the federal government would only recognize two sexes, male and female, and that passports must reflect a person’s sex assigned at birth. A lower court had blocked implementation of these changes, but with the Supreme Court’s ruling they are likely to go ahead. What this means in the immediate future is that passports with a gender marker different from the person’s sex assigned at birth, and those with the neutral gender marker “X,” will remain valid until they expire. After that, if the policy remains in effect, gender markers will have to match sex assigned at birth. Lambda Legal keeps this page up to date with all the latest information.
Quick hits
- The death of athlete Lia Smith should “be an inflection point for how you think about trans rights and trans people more generally,” writes Katelyn Burns.
- A major review finds no link between autism and prenatal exposure to Tylenol, despite Secretary Bear Carcass’ claims to the contrary.
- Continuous fetal monitoring is the most common obstetric procedure in the country—despite the fact that evidence shows it has little benefit. It may even be driving the U.S.’s inordinately high cesarean section rate.
- New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has pledged to provide all new parents with baby baskets containing items like diapers, nursing pads, swaddles, books, and a guide to city resource programs, based on the success of similar programs all over the world. It’s an expansion of a pilot program created by Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, and will cost less than $20 million per year.
- Speaking of: “Want to know how Democrats should handle trans rights? Ask Zohran Mamdani.”
- Domestic workers like nannies and home health aides rely disproportionately on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and are being hit hard by President Trump’s illegal refusal to fund the program during the federal government shutdown.
Actual good news
A landmark study finds that ulipristal acetate, the progesterone-blocking active ingredient in the prescription-only emergency contraceptive Ella, may prevent the development of breast cancer. The study authors hope their work will be the basis for large-scale trials to test if ulipristal acetate and mifepristone, which works similarly, can be used for breast cancer prevention.
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