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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
A Texas appeals court recently ruled that the state didn’t present enough evidence to shut down three clinics run by midwife Maria Rojas, who Attorney General and Senate nominee Ken Paxton has accused of violating the state’s abortion ban. However, contrary to what some headlines suggested, the conditions of Rojas’ $1.4 million bond make it impossible for her to reopen her clinics, or return to working in healthcare in any capacity. Garnet wrote about this case—the first prosecution under Texas’ criminal abortion ban—and the racist history of anti-midwifery policies it recalls. (Share this story on Instagram, Bluesky, or TikTok.)
Garnet Henderson
Federal news
While it appeared last week that Todd Blanche’s bid to be Attorney General was in doubt, two key Republicans announced today that they would vote to advance his nomination, which could open the door to federal abortion restrictions. Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, who both leave office in January, said they could support Blanche after he formally rescinded the $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" that would have paid people who believed the Justice Department unfairly prosecuted them. A judge blocked the fund and the White House said they wouldn’t pursue it, but Cornyn and Tillis wanted that in writing from DOJ leadership. They finally got it after threatening to vote against advancing Blanche’s nomination. Multiple members of the Senate Judiciary Committee pressed Blanche to review Biden-era guidance on the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-obscenity law that the far-right wants the DOJ to use to stop the mailing of abortion pills. The committee will vote Tuesday on whether to move Blanche’s nomination to the full Senate. Democracy Forward, for one, doesn’t believe the administration is really letting the slush fund go: They’ve asked the DOJ for a sworn declaration in court that it’s dead.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America is suing the Department of Health and Human Services over its changes to the Title X family planning program, which require grantees to adhere to the Trump administration’s ideological priorities. That means focusing on conception instead of contraception, promoting fertility awareness-based methods of birth control over all others, dropping diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, and potentially discriminating against patients based on their marital status or gender identity. The suit also calls out the fact that a White House spokesperson said—on the record—that 2026 would be the last year Planned Parenthood affiliates receive Title X funds. According to Planned Parenthood, from October 2024 to September 2025, its affiliated clinics provided over 1.3 million Title X visits across 33 states. This is the second suit against the Trump administration over these changes: Two national networks of family planning providers previously sued in June.
Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles has introduced the “Preventing Forced Abortions Act of 2026,” which would prohibit federal courts from enforcing contract provisions that require a gestational surrogate to have an abortion at the request of another party, like an intended parent or a surrogacy agency. The U.S. doesn’t regulate surrogacy on the federal level. Laws vary by state, and legal disputes typically play out in state court, meaning that this is primarily a messaging bill. The title is no surprise, given how badly the anti-abortion movement wants to make it seem like abortion coercion is a widespread problem. (It’s not, and many of the stories their movement points to are questionable.) The bill is endorsed by major anti-abortion organizations including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, National Right to Life, and CatholicVote.
As we await unscientific changes from the Food and Drug Administration’s bogus “review” of the abortion drug mifepristone, a new poll shows most people don’t trust the agency to do the right thing. A KFF Health Tracking Poll found that 54 percent of the public has little to no confidence that the agency will make science-based decisions when it comes to mifepristone’s safety. That includes 24 percent who said they have no confidence “at all.” The poll also found that a staggering 41 percent of people are “not sure” if the drug is safe when taken as directed by a health care provider.
Since Congressional Republicans chose to end expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies last year, about 3 million people have dropped health insurance plans purchased through Obamacare marketplaces, with most saying they could no longer afford coverage. Now, hospital earnings reports show a significant increase in the number of uninsured patients showing up to emergency rooms. More people are also delaying surgeries like joint replacements. Hospitals must treat people facing medical emergencies even if they don’t have insurance, and they will respond by cutting services and raising prices. Insurers will respond by increasing premiums. It’s almost as if we need universal healthcare!
A federal judge declined to block the new Trump administration rule that will force chronically ill people with Medicaid health insurance to prove that they are physically unable to work in order to keep their coverage. However, the lawsuit challenging the rule, which takes effect January 1, will continue.
State news
Georgia Wellness Group, the Atlanta-area crisis pregnancy center we investigated earlier this year, will not receive federal funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2026. Last summer, local officials granted Georgia Wellness $450,000 from HUD’s Community Development Block Grant program despite strong objections raised at public meetings, including serious allegations of medical licensing issues and false advertising. Georgia Wellness has received more than $1 million from the program since 2020. However, it’s not on the list of organizations that will be considered for funding this year. Learn more in Garnet’s story:
Garnet Henderson
The Massachusetts Senate passed a bill to repeal the state’s harmful gestational limit, which forces people to leave the state for later abortion care. While Massachusetts does have some state protections for abortion rights, existing laws don’t protect patients who need care after 24 weeks. Forced travel for later care harms patients, uses precious abortion fund resources, and leads to longer wait times at the few all-trimester clinics across the country. The bill, the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act, now goes to Governor Maura Healey for her signature. In response to the bill’s advancement, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America called for Congress to pass a nationwide ban, with its president saying, “The GOP must abandon the failed ‘leave it to the states’ position and move the country toward a national protection for unborn children across this nation.” The organization previously supported federal legislation to ban abortion after 15 weeks.
Republicans may have failed to extend the one-year “defund” of Planned Parenthood, but the fallout continues: Planned Parenthood of Michigan is permanently closing three clinics in Lansing, Livonia, and Warren. It previously closed four clinics in April 2025. The affiliate asked Governor Gretchen Whitmer for a one-time allocation of $5 million to prevent further closures in May, but her office demurred and said it’s the legislature’s role to allocate state funds.
Birth centers in Alabama can continue operating with their current licenses for now, despite an appellate court ruling that said the state could regulate them as hospitals. The state health department ordered two birth centers to shut down, saying their licenses are “null and void” and that they need to apply for new ones. However, the Montgomery County judge who issued the licenses in 2024 said the health department must allow the centers to continue operating while litigation challenging some specific regulations continues.
When New Mexico extended postpartum Medicaid eligibility to one year after delivery, the number of postpartum medical visits across the state doubled. Most of these were primary care visits, or related to substance use disorder. Someone should tell Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham that giving people healthcare seems to work better than taking their kids away.
Planned Parenthood Association of Utah is asking that state Supreme Court justice John Nielsen be disqualified from hearing arguments in a case stemming from its challenge to the state’s total abortion ban. The total ban is blocked while litigation proceeds, and abortion is currently legal until 18 weeks. Prior to his appointment to the high court, Nielsen coauthored a Pro-Life Utah brief arguing that abortion is unconstitutional in the state. Early this year, the legislature passed a bill that allows the Attorney General to move certain cases to a special, three-judge “constitutional court” instead of the full Supreme Court. AG Derek Brown quickly attempted to do just that with the abortion ban lawsuit. PPAU and other plaintiffs sued to stop him, arguing that the three-judge panel itself is unconstitutional. Arguments are scheduled for September, and because this is essentially a proxy fight over the abortion ban, PPAU wants Nielsen excluded from the panel. League of Women Voters, which is also a plaintiff, points out that Nielsen has proactively recused himself from considering past cases related to his work as an attorney, and that he should have done the same in this one.
Elections
On Tuesday, voters in Kansas and Missouri will weigh in on ballot measures that don’t mention abortion, but are all about abortion. Conservatives seek to override the will of the voters in those states, who rejected restrictions and codified protections, respectively. 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. Kansas is now a crucial access point for people traveling from Texas, Oklahoma, and other states. Voters in Missouri will determine whether to make it harder to pass citizen-initiated constitutional amendments, a decision that raises the stakes of a November vote on abortion, when a deceptively written constitutional amendment could reinstate a ban that voters overturned in 2024. If both measures pass, it would make it almost impossible for Missourians to restore abortion access in the future.
Former Representative Cori Bush faces off against Rep. Wesley Bell, who ousted her in the 2024 primary thanks in large part due to $8.5 million in ads from the super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Bush is a champion for reproductive rights and justice who shared her own abortion story and co-sponsored a bill to partially repeal the 19th-century Comstock Act, the aforementioned dormant law that abortion opponents hope to use to ban the procedure nationwide.
Personhood watch
The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled unanimously that statements made by a 19-year-old woman when she was interrogated in her hospital bed after suffering a traumatic and unexpected stillbirth are inadmissible in court. She is charged with first-degree murder. Alexee Trevizo, who was still a high school student at the time, didn’t know she was pregnant and went to the hospital for severe back pain. She was given morphine and muscle relaxers, and then left alone for two hours, during which time she gave birth. Her doctor called the police.
“For years, Ms. Trevizo has been vilified in the media as a monster, shunned by her community, and had her rights trampled—all because she had the misfortune of suffering a deeply traumatic pregnancy loss as a scared teen. Leaking her hospital footage to the world, during her most traumatic and vulnerable moments when she should have been receiving critical care, deepened that harm,” Pregnancy Justice senior policy counsel Kulsoom Ijaz said in a statement. “Hospitals should be sanctuaries of care, not sites of surveillance, and we are grateful that the New Mexico Supreme Court sent exactly that message in its ruling.”
First Amendment watch
South Dakota appealed a ruling that blocked the state from enforcing a law targeting medication abortion. Abortion pill information nonprofit Mayday Health sued over HB 1274, which makes it a felony to dispense, distribute, and advertise the pills, arguing that the law violates the First Amendment.
Assaults on queer people
A federal judge in California rejected a request from the Department of Justice to block an injunction he issued preventing Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford from producing transgender kids’ medical records in response to a grand jury subpoena from the Northern District of Texas. In other words: The DOJ asked the judge to pause his own order while they appeal it, and he said no. The department had previously threatened to appeal to the Ninth Circuit if Judge Casey Pitts didn’t rule by July 31, or if he rejected its request. Pitts rejected the request on July 31, so expect a Ninth Circuit appeal.
Speaking of the Northern District of Texas, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health is asking its far-right Chief Judge Reed O’Connor to either dismiss a lawsuit filed by Trump’s Federal Trade Commission, or transfer it to a more appropriate district. Filed in June, the FTC’s lawsuit accuses WPATH of making misleading statements about gender-affirming care for its members’ financial gain. But WPATH is not located in the Northern District of Texas, nor did any of the wrongdoing that FTC alleges happen there.
The fallout continues from the Supreme Court ruling a Colorado ban on so-called conversion therapy is unconstitutional. First, Michigan agreed not to enforce its ban as part of a lawsuit filed by religious groups. The state defended its ban in court and says it’s only making this agreement to comply with the Supreme Court ruling in Chiles v. Salazar. Next, a federal judge in Washington said a therapist could partly revive his lawsuit over that state’s 2018 conversion therapy ban. Brian Tingley is represented by Christian nationalist law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, which won Chiles. The Supreme Court declined to review his legal challenge in late 2023 and the case was dismissed, but he is now asking to reopen it in light of the Chiles ruling. A judge gave him the go-ahead to pursue one issue from his original complaint. As a reminder, Colorado passed a new ban on conversion therapy that prohibits any form of “therapy” meant to “direct a patient toward a predetermined sexual orientation or gender identity outcome.”
We’ve already told you about this attack on transgender people that would also harm cis folks, but two new stories underscore that fact: An anti-trans ballot initiative in Washington state could result in genital exams for all girls who want to play school sports. IL26-638 would require prospective girl athletes from kindergarten to high school to have a health care provider certify at their yearly sports physical their sex assigned at birth via genetic screening, testosterone-levels test, or an examination of their reproductive anatomy. The measure doesn’t establish who would conduct the sex-verification tests, or who would pay for them. This leaves critics to worry that, if the measure passes, genital exams would be the most common test for cost reasons.
Extremism
Acting AG Todd Blanche says he’s officially killed the DOJ slush fund—which, as we noted, could have been used to pay anti-abortion extremists—but there are still other avenues for funnelling federal money to conservatives. An anti-abortion activist convicted of blockading a Tennessee clinic and later pardoned by Trump said he’d reached a seven-figure settlement with the Justice Department, meaning he got at least $1 million in taxpayer funds. Paul Vaughn was one of 11 people charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) Act for blockading a Carafem clinic in 2021. He was convicted in 2024 and received a pardon during Trump’s first week back in office. Last year, another activist, Mark Houck, received a settlement exceeding $1 million after he alleged wrongful prosecution under the FACE Act for a 2021 altercation outside of an abortion clinic. Both men are represented by the anti-abortion law firm the Thomas More Society.
Italy is now blocking access to the abortion information sites Women on Web and Women Help Women. This mirrors events in Spain, which has been blocking Women on Web since 2020 despite being ordered by its Supreme Court to stop. That dispute is currently the subject of an appeal before the European Court of Human Rights. Senator Josh Hawley, who wants the DOJ to investigate abortion pill information site Plan C, is probably drooling over this news.
Actual good news
Planned Parenthood Association of Utah now offers perimenopause and menopause care at five locations across the state. Clinicians can prescribe hormone therapy or recommend nonhormonal treatments, and the clinics accept insurance in addition to offering sliding scale fees for self-pay visits.
Quick hits
- In the wake of a cruel Kansas law that stripped many trans people of their drivers licenses, “transgender Kansas residents have had to shell out money for gas to drive to DMVs and secure new licenses, take days off of work to deal with it, and even contemplate the steep costs of moving out of a state in which they no longer feel safe.”
- Crisis pregnancy centers want to keep providing ultrasounds—without medical licensing or government oversight. As we’ve also reported, even some members of the anti-abortion movement are starting to get uncomfortable with that.
- Our friends at Mother Jones published a nice profile of the country’s second-largest telehealth abortion provider, The Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project (The MAP).
Palate cleanser
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