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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
The Trump administration asked a federal appeals court on Tuesday to reinstate sweeping exceptions that would allow almost any employer and university to stop covering birth control in its insurance plan. This lawsuit over the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage requirement dates all the way back to 2017. Susan explained what’s at stake for people who need access to low- or no-cost birth control, and how the Trump administration keeps conflating contraception and abortion. She also shared some toplines from the argument on Bluesky. (Share this story on Instagram, Bluesky, or TikTok.)
Susan Rinkunas
Federal news
Related to Susan’s story, multiple Texans who object to insurance covering birth control recently filed a fresh class-action lawsuit seeking to permanently block the coverage requirement. The plaintiffs in the case, DeOtte v. Kennedy, include an employer, Braidwood Management, and four individuals who say they refuse to buy insurance that covers birth control. The lawsuit was filed in the northern district of Texas in June but got very little coverage; it was assigned to far-right judge Reed O’Connor. Their attorney is anti-abortion activist Jonathan Mitchell, who represented these same clients in a 2018 lawsuit against the coverage requirement and also helped Braidwood sue the Department of Health and Human Services over preventive care coverage more broadly. In that 2025 case, the Supreme Court upheld the preventive care requirement but affirmed the power of the Health Secretary to fire the experts who decide what services should be covered without cost sharing like copays.
Speaking of the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies offering marketplace health plans proposed double-digit rate increases for 2027. Healthcare research nonprofit KFF said several dozen insurers submitted a median proposed increase of 14% on monthly premiums. The Trump administration ended enhanced subsidies for the plans earlier this year, which has led to healthier people dropping coverage. This, in turn, raises the cost of caring for the pool of people who kept their insurance.
Are you tired of hearing about budget reconciliation bills? Too bad! GOP leaders are still under pressure to pass one, because they only require 50 votes to pass the Senate, in contrast to most spending measures which require 60. After Trump went on an angry Truth Social rant lambasting Congressional Republicans for failing to pass a third reconciliation package, House Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing his caucus to hammer out an agreement in the next few days. Trump is also angry that Congress hasn’t passed the SAVE America Act, the mammoth voter ID law that could leave transgender people and married women who’ve taken their husbands’ names unable to vote. Reconciliation bills can only include spending policies, so it’s not yet clear how Johnson may attempt to finagle parts of the SAVE Act into a budget law. The one-year “defund” of Planned Parenthood from last year’s reconciliation bill expired on July 4, but several powerful Republicans have said they’re not willing to try such an unpopular policy again in an election year.
Last year’s mega reconciliation bill also gutted food assistance, knocking more than 4 million people out of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. That includes over 800,000 children. This data only reflects 13 states, which means the true numbers are far higher. In Arizona, the number of people on SNAP has declined by nearly 500,000—that’s about a 50 percent decrease—including 200,000 children. In West Virginia, about 14,000 people have lost access to food assistance so far.
Todd Blanche—who became Acting Attorney General after Pam Bondi’s firing—is hoping to hold on to the top spot at the Department of Justice. Ahead of his first confirmation hearing this Wednesday, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America has continued pressing him to settle the multiple ongoing lawsuits against the Food and Drug Administration over its regulation of the abortion drug mifepristone. Ostensibly, a settlement would involve the FDA agreeing to do some of the things anti-abortion state attorneys general have demanded, like ending telehealth prescriptions.
State news
The initiative that would overturn Idaho’s total abortion ban and establish a right to abortion until fetal viability has officially qualified for the November ballot. (Meaning, the legislature could ban abortions after that point, except in “medical emergencies.”) The proposed law would also create an explicit right to contraception and in vitro fertilization, as well as privacy in medical decisions.
A Washington hospital abandoned a plan for its doctors to provide OBGYN services at a crisis pregnancy center in North Idaho “after it came to light that the hospital’s doctors would be required to sign a statement of faith that they are committed to ‘sexual purity,’ aren’t in a gay marriage, and that they ‘know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.’” The CPC is located in Sandpoint, which lost its only labor and delivery ward due to the exodus of doctors from Idaho after it banned abortion.
As expected, Missouri officials appealed a judge’s ruling invalidating multiple abortion restrictions to the state Supreme Court. Last month, Circuit Judge Jerri Zhang said a 2024 constitutional amendment protecting abortion until fetal viability meant several laws had to be overturned, including requirements that abortion providers have hospital admitting privileges and provide patients with biased counseling materials, as well as one that banned telemedicine abortion by requiring a doctor to be present when a patient takes abortion pills. Zhang’s ruling allowed clinics to provide medication abortion for the first time since 2018. Republican lawmakers are pulling out all the stops to once again ban abortion in the state: They placed a new amendment on the November ballot that would repeal the 2024 protections and allow a near-total ban to return.
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed a deceptive “born alive” bill that reinforces the myth that infants are often born alive following attempted abortions, and requires healthcare providers to use lifesaving measures in such a situation. In reality, the law could limit access to palliative care for infants with fatal health issues and restrict parents from making end-of-life decisions for very sick newborns. The bill also creates criminal penalties for anyone who “knowingly” kills a child born after an attempted abortion—in other words, commits murder, which is already illegal.
Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio is suing the state health department for delaying paperwork needed for an abortion clinic. PPSWO bought an independent clinic in Dayton in early 2025 and alleges the state hasn’t processed change-of-ownership documents. The clinic is open, though they’ve relied on the former owner to maintain his medical license for the last year and a half. He wants to retire and the state is making that impossible, so the affiliate is asking a court to compel the agency to issue the paperwork.
A federal judge in Michigan granted an injunction barring the state from enforcing a civil rights law against two anti-abortion organizations. The law expands the state’s definition of sex discrimination, prohibiting employers from discriminating against employees because they’ve had a past abortion. Right to Life of Michigan, along with a crisis pregnancy center in Grand Rapids, claim the law could force them to hire people whose views on abortion don’t align with theirs. The judge ordered the Michigan Supreme Court to determine how exactly the law applies to these two organizations before the federal case moves forward.
Also in Michigan, Beacon Health acquired four hospitals, 35 outpatient clinics, and a surgery center from Ascension, one of the largest Catholic hospital systems in the country. Beacon has started integrating some of the reproductive health services banned in Catholic health systems, such as contraception—including sterilization—and fertility treatments. However, the Beacon facilities still don’t provide abortion care.
Termination of pregnancy reports will remain private in Indiana following a successful lawsuit from two doctors. Like many states, Indiana requires abortion providers to submit detailed reports about every abortion they provide. These reports used to be available to the public, but Indiana stopped releasing them due to privacy concerns after the number of abortions plummeted following a 2023 abortion ban. Though the reports don’t include patients’ names, they do include enough information that they could be identifying—especially when so few abortions take place, and only in rare circumstances allowed by the ban’s exceptions. In 2025, Attorney General Todd Rokita attempted to start releasing the records again, to the anti-abortion group Voices for Life. Two OBGYNs—including Caitlin Bernard, who Rokita publicly attacked in 2023 after she spoke about providing an abortion to a 10-year-old rape survivor—successfully sued to stop him. After an appeals court ruled in their favor, and the state Supreme Court refused to take up the case, the reports will remain private. Rokita’s crusade against Bernard resulted in her being disciplined by the state medical board, though the Indiana Supreme Court also reprimanded Rokita over his behavior.
After its application for funding from Oklahoma’s “Choosing Childbirth” program was rejected because it doesn’t maintain a physical location within the state, the anti-abortion organization Human Coalition lobbied successfully to rewrite state law and remove this requirement.
Elections
Democratic nominee Graham Platner exited the Maine Senate race Friday following multiple accusations of sexual assault. Now that he’s out, Democrats are hoping to reset the contest as a referendum on Senator Susan Collins’ harmful record on abortion rights. Not only did she cast the deciding vote on Justice Brett Kavanaugh, she also confirmed dozens of anti-abortion judges to lifetime seats over her career, and helped advance the devastating bill that “defunded” large abortion providers for one year.
Planned Parenthood Votes will spend $47 million on the midterm elections, targeting the Senate races in Maine and Michigan and 10 battleground House races, plus state legislatures and ballot measures. It’s the group’s second-biggest electoral investment, behind only the 2022 midterms. They will support turnout for ballot measures in Kansas, Nevada, Missouri, and Virginia. Idaho’s amendment was not mentioned in a press release dated Thursday, before it was officially approved. By contrast, anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America will spend at least $80 million to elect Republicans.
Former Congresswoman Cori Bush was endorsed by Abortion Action Missouri in her bid to win back her seat representing Missouri’s 1st district. In March, Planned Parenthood Action Fund chose to endorse her opponent, first-term incumbent Wesley Bell, when it could have said nothing—or better yet, endorsed Bush, who is an outspoken champion for reproductive rights and justice. The primary is August 4.
Personhood watch
The Trump administration released its 2026 regulatory agenda, which lists rules that federal agencies plan to create or change in the coming year. One of the new proposed rules, called “Enhancing Child Support Enforcement to Improve Outcomes for Unborn Children and Women,” would allow the Administration for Children and Families to require child support for embryos and fetuses. These types of policies are sometimes seen as a “gotcha” for the anti-abortion movement—as in, if you want to force people to give birth, you better pay for it. But what these measures really do is advance the dangerous legal theory of fetal personhood.
The influential group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America is also ratcheting up its support for personhood. Last week, the organization published “The 14th Amendment Case for Protecting Unborn Children Nationwide,” arguing that the U.S. Constitution provides a basis for federal bans. The group cites the writings of a lawyer named Josh Craddock in support. Craddock, who now works in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, previously co-authored a proposal for how the president could enshrine fetal personhood via executive order. (Craddock also wrote a legal memo the administration used to further restrict abortion at the Department of Veterans Affairs.) Previously, SBA Pro-Life has made only passing mentions to the 14th Amendment functioning as a basis for nationwide abortion restrictions. Now it says that the amendment requires “a Congress that will advocate the most ambitious protections that can pass both its chambers, without limiting good laws in pro-life states.” SBA has publicly supported a federal 15-week ban in the past, but this legal argument would open the door to bans from the moment of fertilization. That stance would outlaw abortion, some forms of birth control, and end IVF as we know it.
Assaults on queer people
In an extremely disappointing move, a United Nations expert endorsed the Supreme Court’s recent ruling allowing states to exclude trans kids from school sports. Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said it “represents an important recognition of the rights of women and girls to equality, fairness and safety in sport.”
Relatedly, two trans teens have dropped their lawsuit attempting to gain access to school sports in New Hampshire following the Supreme Court ruling.
A WIRED investigation reveals that Madison Square Garden kept a detailed database categorizing hundreds of celebrities, including by labeling them “LGBTQIA.” This is extremely concerning, especially in combination with their previous reporting showing that the security team of billionaire owner James Dolan used facial recognition technology to obsessively track a trans woman for two years.
Extremism
Aborted embryos….singing…..to Lindsey Graham?
@susanrinkunas What do you mean a press release about Lindsey Graham mentioned aborted embryos singing for him? Come for the weirdness, stay for which 2028 hopefuls support a nationwide 15-week ban ##LindseyGraham##reproductiverights##pressrelease ♬ original sound - Susan Rinkunas
Quick hits
- The National Institutes of Health’s “All of Us” initiative is intended to help cure diseases like cancer and diabetes, using data compiled from the health records and blood test results of one million people. But the Trump-linked defense contractor Palantir has access to the data.
- Magnolia Mother’s Trust gives $1,000 per month to Black single moms in Jackson, Mississippi for a year. It’s the longest-running guaranteed income program in the country, founded in 2018.
- California has required state universities to provide medication abortion on campus since 2023. A new bill could expand access to community colleges by 2029 if passed this year.
- A proposed Trump administration rule that would upend the federal grantmaking process would harm reproductive healthcare, argue the governors of 23 states and Guam—which is a U.S. territory—in a joint comment to the Office of Management and Budget.
- In a recent study, the Grok chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s X replied to prompts asking it to explain pro-choice statements with anti-abortion talking points.
- Birth control is under attack. But for some, it does have negative side effects. How could we get better birth control?
- Two new, noninvasive screening tests for endometriosis will now be available via the U.K.’s National Health Service. One, called Endotest, uses a saliva sample to detect the presence of biological markers of endometriosis. The second, EndoSure, uses electrical signals in the gut to identify signs of endometriosis and adenomyosis. Neither test is yet available in the U.S., though EndoSure is currently conducting clinical trials in an effort to gain FDA approval.
Palate cleanser
He’s so at peace.
@sailinghollyblue @ronnietheboatcat in his sailing element…look at that smile! He loves the smells of the ocean! Not sponsored by @amstelgreece (yet 😉). #sailinglife #sailing #boatlife #cat #cats ♬ original sound - Ross, Laura, Josh & Noah
And so is she.
@evaelenavandoorn Girl therapy. 🩷🩷🩷 #girl #gopro #boatday ♬ oryginalny dźwięk – chlopakizlasu - chlopakizlasu
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