Kentucky Woman Arrested After Alleged Abortion and More: January 5 News Roundup

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

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Federal news

As of January 1, enhanced tax credits for health insurance plans purchased on the Affordable Care Act exchanges have officially expired. According to an analysis from KFF, the average enrollee will see their premium cost increase by 114 percent—meaning that for many people, the increase will be even larger.

A three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Trump administration in a lawsuit brought by 22 states and Washington, D.C., allowing the federal budget law provision “defunding” Planned Parenthood to remain in place. A lower court had previously issued an injunction that would have stopped enforcement of the policy, but the First Circuit blocked this injunction while litigation continues. This was a widely expected outcome given the First Circuit’s previous rulings against Planned Parenthood and Maine Family Planning in their own challenges to the law. Unfortunately, this means that Planned Parenthood and other large abortion providers will remain ineligible to receive federal Medicaid payments for services like birth control and STI testing. This coalition of states could appeal to the Supreme Court, as could Planned Parenthood. But given the court’s current makeup, and its recent ruling in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic—which allowed South Carolina to kick the local Planned Parenthood affiliate out of Medicaid—such an appeal could make matters even worse.

Maine Family Planning, for one, will not be appealing to the Supreme Court: The organization, which had to end its primary care program due to the Medicaid “defund,” voluntarily dismissed its own suit challenging the law. MFP dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning it could theoretically refile in the future. 

Far-right podcast bro Dan Bongino has officially departed his role as co-deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That leaves former Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as the FBI’s sole deputy director. As we noted back in August, Bailey’s appointment is among President Trump’s most alarming—and under-recognized—anti-abortion actions. He has advocated for the Comstock Act, an anti-vice law from 1873, to be enforced as an abortion ban. As Missouri AG, he defended the state’s abortion ban even after voters invalidated it with a constitutional amendment, attempted to subpoena the medical records of trans kids (sound familiar?), and sued Planned Parenthood, alleging the organization’s scientifically accurate claims about the safety of abortion pills were misleading. Bailey’s presence in the agency that’s empowered to investigate interstate crime is a red flag for the potential criminalization of sending abortion pills by mail—particularly with fetal personhood proponent Josh Craddock making policy in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.

State news

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont wants to give $10.4 million in state reserve funds to Planned Parenthood of Southern New England to help offset losses from both the Medicaid “defund” and Title X federal family planning grant freezes. He has also proposed a gift of $24.6 million to food pantries over the next 18 months, and about $70 million to help people who could lose health insurance due to the aforementioned expiration of expanded Affordable Care Act tax credits.

Following their resounding victory in the November elections, Virginia Democrats plan to vote on four constitutional amendments on January 14, the first day of their legislative session. These amendments would protect voting rights, abortion rights, and same-sex marriage, and allow Democrats to redraw district lines in the state. If these amendments pass in both chambers, they’ll appear on the 2026 ballot for final approval by voters.

Personhood watch

First, some “good” news: an Alabama judge ordered a new trial for a woman criminalized for a stillbirth. The judge’s order came after the woman’s attorneys argued an infection and genetic anomaly, not drug use, caused her pregnancy loss. Brooke Shoemaker was convicted in 2020 for chemical endangerment of a child resulting in death and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. This Alabama statute was passed to target meth labs, but has since been weaponized against pregnant people. Shoemaker is one of several dozen U.S. women who’ve been prosecuted following pregnancy loss, according to the non-profit advocacy group Pregnancy Justice, which is helping with her appeal. The state filed an appeal and demanded that Schoemaker remain incarcerated during the retrial. 

Now, the very bad news. Kentucky state police arrested a woman after she allegedly bought abortion pills online and buried fetal remains in her yard. The woman reportedly told a primary care clinic about the abortion on December 31 and they called the police. (Healthcare workers calling law enforcement on their patients is sadly not new, and the healthcare privacy law HIPAA has a gaping exception if providers believe patients have committed a crime.) Only one state, Nevada, explicitly criminalizes self-managed abortion, but this case illustrates how police can and do charge people with other crimes after abortions. Kentucky police charged the woman with fetal homicide in the first degree, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with physical evidence. However, the fetal homicide statute explicitly forbids charging a pregnant person, stating “nothing in this chapter shall apply to any acts of a pregnant woman that caused the death of her unborn child.” Even the anti-abortion group Live Action pointed out that the text of the law precludes charging a pregnant person with fetal homicide. News coverage of this story has been absolutely atrocious, and we’ll have more on that front in the coming days.  

Assaults on queer people

A group of federal workers filed a class-action complaint against the Trump administration for an Office of Personnel Management policy banning coverage of gender-affirming care in health plans for federal employees in 2026. The policy affects insurance plans for federal workers and their spouses, children, and dependents. The complaint, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), argues that denying coverage of gender-affirming care is sex-based discrimination and asks OPM to rescind the policy. The workers are represented by Human Rights Campaign, which is first pursuing the matter as an administrative claim, but may later pursue a federal class action lawsuit. 

Quick hits

• A federal judge in California has ruled that basic Medicaid data, including biographical, contact, and location information can be shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
• Oklahoma lawmakers are again considering a bill that failed to move forward last year, which would allow doctors to deny healthcare based on moral objections. 
• A transgender former editor at the New York Times alleges that the paper’s coverage of trans people had a “sustained, single-minded focus on promoting disinformation and legitimizing bias,” and that this coverage was directed by publisher A.G. Sulzberger and members of the paper’s masthead, including executive editor Joe Kahn.

Actual good news

Public health insurance in Colorado now pays for abortion care. Since 1984, public servants like teachers, firefighters, and government employees, as well as people with Medicaid, had been forced to pay out of pocket for abortions. But voters overturned this public funding ban by passing Amendment 79 in 2024, and the new policy took effect on January 1.

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