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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
On Thursday, the Supreme Court blocked a lower court ruling that would have ended telemedicine prescriptions of the abortion drug mifepristone nationwide. While the justices did the right thing, access to mifepristone isn’t safe in the long run. The case will now return to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for arguments and will almost certainly make it back to the Supreme Court in a future term. Plus, Trump’s Food and Drug Administration could even change the telehealth rule before then. And Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito wrote alarming dissents suggesting they’d invalidate abortion protections in Democratic-led states, with Thomas claiming the dormant Comstock Act of 1873 bans the mailing of mifepristone. (Share this story on Instagram, Bluesky, or TikTok.)
Garnet Henderson
Federal news
Following the resignation of FDA head Marty Makary, a lawyer named Kyle Diamantas has been elevated to the position of acting commissioner. You might think the main reason to be concerned about Diamantas leading the FDA is the fact that he has no background in science or medicine, or that he’s a hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr. But for anti-abortion groups, it was the fact that Diamantas represented a Planned Parenthood affiliate in Florida for at least three years, starting in 2014. Apparently, Diamantas personally called the leaders of several anti-abortion groups—including Live Action’s Lila Rose—and told them that he was “assigned against his will” to represent the Planned Parenthood affiliate, and asked to be removed from the case because he opposes abortion. According to Students for Life leader Kristan Hawkins, Diamantas promised to be “the most pro-life head of FDA we’ve ever had.” Anti-abortion groups’ hatred of Makary was not the only factor in his ouster—but this apology tour shows that it is a significant concern for the Trump administration.
Shortly after Diamantas was made acting commissioner, the FDA’s top drug regulator, Tracy Beth Hoeg, said she was fired, though she wasn’t sure why or by whom. Hoeg is an anti-vaxxer who, along with Makary, held a public panel discussion that used misinformation to demonize the use of antidepressants during pregnancy. She also pledged to scrutinize pregnant people’s use of RSV vaccines.
During a recent meeting with Trump’s Justice Department, anti-abortion groups including Students for Life pressed the agency to enforce the aforementioned Comstock Act as a ban on mailing mifepristone. Their arguments would apply equally to misoprostol, the second drug in a typical medication abortion regimen. Because it’s safe and effective on its own, abortion providers were prepared to prescribe misoprostol off-label if mifepristone were restricted. The DOJ has also signaled opposition to off-label prescriptions for medical care it opposes. The share of abortions done with pills via telehealth continues to grow, which explains conservatives’ increased opposition: Preliminary data from the Society of Family Planning shows that telemedicine abortion made up 28 percent of all abortions at the end of 2025. That portion was even higher—40 percent—in states without bans on abortion care or telehealth.
The chair of a conservative House caucus called the Republican Study Committee said the chamber should pass another budget bill before its August recess, the third of the Trump administration. The RSC previously called to make permanent the “defunding” of large abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, which expires on July 4, but leadership including House Speaker Mike Johnson pursued a narrower bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Johnson said the House could pass a third bill this summer, but it’s not yet clear what it would contain. An anti-abortion coalition led by Americans United for Life sent a letter to Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune urging them to act by July 4 to extend the provision that kicks Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid. That date seems impossibly soon, and it’s not clear if the House even has the votes to target Planned Parenthood ahead of the midterm elections, when the party in power typically loses seats.
An organization called Minority Veterans of America is suing the Trump administration over its reversal of a Biden policy that allowed veterans and their dependents to receive abortion care and counseling through the Department of Veterans Affairs if a pregnancy was endangering their health, or if they were victims of rape or incest. One anonymous member of the group is currently pregnant and in need of abortion care, saying she feels “terrified” due to chronic health issues and a history of pregnancy complications.
State news
Missouri’s “born alive” bill has passed both chambers of the legislature and now moves on to Governor Mike Kehoe for his signature. Bills like this reinforce the myth that infants are often born alive after abortions gone wrong, which isn’t true. What it’s most likely to do is limit the ability of pregnant people to make end-of-life decisions for infants with fatal health issues. After filibustering earlier in the legislative session, Democrats were able to defeat portions of the bill that would have allowed for civil lawsuits against people—including pregnant people—involved in “illegal abortions.”
We recently told you about a judge in Ohio who asked the state Supreme Court to halt enforcement of the state’s reproductive rights constitutional amendment because he argued it limits his ability to deny abortions to young people whose parents don’t approve. Judge David Engler claimed the state’s parental consent laws for abortion weren’t being enforced because he was getting fewer judicial bypass petitions. Even the anti-abortion Republican Attorney General, Dave Yost, says this is nonsense, writing in a filing that Engler’s challenge was “untimely” because he hadn’t “alleged an injury that is fairly traceable” to the state. The ACLU of Ohio wrote that Engler has no standing to challenge the amendment. The Supreme Court has yet to decide whether or not to hear the case. By the way, Yost is resigning from his role effective June 7 to join Christian nationalist law firm Alliance Defending Freedom.
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed a bill that will replace revenue Planned Parenthood clinics in the state have lost since they were kicked out of Medicaid by the federal budget bill Trump signed nearly a year ago. HB 4127 also creates a contingency plan to fund the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates should the “defund” be extended or become permanent. Oregon is the first state to take this step. Kotek also signed HB 4088, which extends the protections of the state’s “shield” law to patients seeking reproductive health and gender-affirming care—rather than just medical providers—and exempts information related to this care, including legal name changes, from the public record in most cases.
The Planned Parenthood affiliate in Michigan asked Governor Gretchen Whitmer for a one-time allocation of $5 million to prevent clinic closures in the wake of its “defunding.” The affiliate shuttered four health centers in 2025. Following the group’s open letter, which acknowledges that the Michigan House is Republican-controlled, a Whitmer spokesperson said curtly that “the legislature has the responsibility to allocate state funds. We would encourage any organization or individual to work with the legislature on their budget asks.”
A bill requiring college health centers to provide onsite medication abortion access is on its way to Colorado Governor Jared Polis’ desk.
Legislators in Vermont established a working group meant to review the Department for Children and Families’ existing practice using a pregnancy calendar to track certain pregnant people in the state. (A good idea, because, gross!). Last week, Senators approved an amendment that would have added a representative from an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center to this review panel. But in an unusual move, they reversed that vote and removed the CPC representative the very next day.
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger vetoed a bill that would have restored public employees’ right to unionize. Previously, Spanberger had attempted to dilute the bill, but the legislature rejected her changes. As we pointed out at the time, Spanberger’s opposition to this bill flies in the face of the image she’s cultivated as a champion for moms, considering how much union membership helps women attain economic security for themselves and their families.
Elections
Georgia’s state supreme court elections end tomorrow, with former Democratic state Senator Jen Jordan and attorney Miracle Rankin vying to unseat conservative Justices Sarah Warren and Charlie Bethel. Warren has refused to rule out using a loophole in state law that would allow her to resign if she loses and let Governor Briam Kemp appoint her replacement.
During a debate in the messy primary for governor of California, Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco both said they would extradite a California doctor facing criminal charges in Louisiana for mailing abortion pills. The June 2 “jungle” primary is a non-partisan, top-two contest which could result in an all-Republican ballot in November because there are six Democrats in the race. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has surged into the lead in polling (19 percent) after former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out due to sexual misconduct allegations. Billionaire Tom Steyer and former Rep. Katie Porter are the second- and third-place Democrats.
Voters in North Dakota will decide this November whether to approve a constitutional amendment to require public schools to provide free breakfast and lunch during the 2027-28 school year. The citizen petition came after the legislature failed to pass free school meals.
Birth justice
A woman gave birth while handcuffed in a Brooklyn, New York, courtroom on Friday night, according to a joint statement from several public defender groups in the city. The woman, who was facing arraignment on a drug charge, had apparently been discharged from the hospital just hours earlier. According to her attorney—who gave some very odd statements to the New York Times—doctors at the hospital didn’t realize how close she was to giving birth, which is difficult to believe. To NBC, police made the excuses that she was “wearing baggy clothes” and “did not inform officers she was pregnant.” A rally took place on Monday afternoon to protest her treatment and other inhumane conditions in Brooklyn criminal courts.
An Alabama woman forced to give birth on the floor of her jail cell in 2024 is suing the county for violating her and her baby’s civil rights. Tiffany McElroy says she labored for more than 24 hours without assistance and that her fellow inmates helped her deliver the baby, who wasn’t breathing and whom they resuscitated. The suit says jail staff retaliated against the women who helped McElroy, who had been arrested for “chemical endangerment,” a charge initially meant for people exposing children to chemicals in meth cook houses. The state Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that the law could be used to prosecute pregnant drug users. McElroy is being represented by Pregnancy Justice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP.
Also in Alabama, a unanimous appeals court ruled in January that birth centers should be classified as hospitals, forcing them to abide by regulations that midwives say would make it difficult—if not impossible—to operate. The state Supreme Court has now allowed this ruling to stand by declining to take up an appeal. More people die shortly after giving birth in Alabama than anywhere else in the U.S., and March of Dimes ranks the state 49th for preterm birth. Midwifery care at freestanding birth centers has been shown to improve health outcomes for pregnant people and reduce the risk of preterm birth. The American Civil Liberties Union says it will continue to challenge individual regulations to try and reduce the burden on birth centers that could be at risk of closure.
Personhood watch
Congressional Republicans introduced new model legislation from Students for Life, which would require hospitals to notify parents of their right to cremate or bury fetal remains from a miscarriage, and comply with their wishes. But the bill also allows for civil lawsuits against hospitals that allegedly fail to follow these rules.
Two North Carolina Republicans proposed a constitutional amendment that would define life as beginning at fertilization and allow murder charges against abortion providers, making them subject to the death penalty. The text of House Bill 1232 also states that it would be legal to use “deadly force” to prevent someone else from taking a life, which certainly sounds like it greenlights assassinations of abortion providers A previous fetal personhood bill from state Rep. Keith Kidwell did not advance last session.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman is asking a judge to reconsider his recent ruling which found that the definition of when life begins in the state’s abortion ban is too vague.
Assaults on queer people
In a move that sets a terrifying precedent, Texas Children’s Hospital has agreed to develop a “detransition clinic” and fire five doctors who provided gender-affirming care as part of a settlement with Attorney General Ken Paxton. The settlement requires that all “detransition” services be fully funded by Texas Children’s and provided free of charge for the clinic’s first five years. It’s rare that transgender people decide to stop or reverse their gender transition, and when they do, it’s often because of external factors rather than a change in their identity. The AG sued the hospital alleging it illegally billed Texas Medicaid for transition-related care, and the hospital will also pay the state $10 million to resolve that allegation. “Paxton is blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for,” said Equality Texas CEO Brad Pritchett in a statement. “It is embarrassing that a hospital once revered for its care has lost its integrity and put politics over patients.”
NYU Langone Health informed patients that it was “one of several institutions” that received grand jury subpoenas from the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, demanding medical records of gender-affirming care patients under the age of 18. The health system did not say whether it would comply. After repeated losses in federal court related to its earlier attempts to get trans people’s medical records, the Trump administration has clearly switched tactics, and continues to rely on the Northern District of Texas to do whatever questionably legal things it wants.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed HB 4756, a bathroom ban that requires K-12 and college students to use bathrooms and changing facilities that match their sex assigned at birth.
Maine advocates allege that some of the signatures collected to get an anti-trans amendment on the ballot were obtained when petitions were left unattended rather than directly supervised, which would violate state law. Officials are now determining whether the proposed initiative—which would ban trans kids from using bathrooms and participating on sports teams that align with their gender identity—can appear on the November ballot.
Parents represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom are challenging a Colorado school district policy that allows trans kids to room with classmates who share their gender identity on field trips. A three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in the case last week.
Extremism
The DOJ announced the creation of a $1.7 billion slush fund for Trump allies who believe they were mistreated by the Biden administration. The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was created as part of a settlement in a lawsuit brought by Trump against the Internal Revenue Service, in which he alleged the agency inappropriately released some of his tax documents. According to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, this is "a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress." Claimants will almost certainly include the 23 anti-abortion activists who Trump pardoned for their violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, as well as people who participated in the January 6 insurrection. In fact, there’s an awful lot of overlap between the two groups.
Quick hits
- The condition formerly known as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which affects one in eight people with ovaries, has been renamed. It’s now known as polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), which experts say better reflects the fact that it’s a complicated metabolic and hormonal disorder and many patients don’t develop cysts on the ovaries at all.
- More than one in five people who enrolled in marketplace health insurance lost their coverage after not paying their first month’s premium. The 21% cancellation rate came after Congress refused to extend enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans.
- Stigma around menopause is fading, leading lawmakers in several states to pass laws that will improve access to treatment.
- A Planned Parenthood clinic in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reopened last week after being shuttered for more than a year. The clinic closed in December 2024 due to what the affiliate said was a lack of staff. A little birdie told Autonomy News that might have had something to do with union busting.
- Demand for home birth midwives is increasing. But in many states, their work is against the law.
- “A new analysis suggests that more than 100,000 children have been separated from their parents during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.”
Palate cleanser
There’s a line for everything these days.
@_laurenkay New object investigation underway #cat #catsoftiktok ♬ original sound - RockTheBells
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