Planned Parenthood ‘Defund’ Blocked, But 11 Clinics Close: July 28 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

We took the week off but are hard at work on a story that will be co-published with a big national outlet. Keep an eye out!

Federal news

On Monday morning, a federal judge blocked the provision of the Republican budget reconciliation bill that seeks to “defund” Planned Parenthood. The ruling means Medicaid patients should be able to get care at clinics while the litigation continues, and clinics can continue to receive Medicaid reimbursements. The Trump administration will likely appeal the order, as it filed notice to appeal a different order the judge issued last week. Today’s preliminary injunction comes after Judge Indira Talwani initially granted only partial relief to the affiliates carved out in the text of the bil—that is, ones that won’t provide abortions as of October 1, or that don’t clear $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements. Planned Parenthood then filed an “emergency motion for clarification” asking Talwani to either grant relief to all 47 affiliates, or to extend the earlier temporary restraining order. She did the former, writing that Planned Parenthood has “substantial likelihood of success” in its argument that this portion of the bill is unconstitutional.

Still, since the bill passed, at least 11 Planned Parenthood clinics across four states have announced that they will close. Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, the country’s largest affiliate which serves California and Nevada, said it could lose $100 million of its annual revenue—$7 million in July alone. On Thursday, it announced that it had closed five health centers. By our count, at least 32 Planned Parenthood locations have said they’ll close in 2025. As Autonomy News explained previously, shuttering clinics is a way to ban abortion without explicitly banning it.

Maine Family Planning is also affected by the “defund” provision and has filed its own lawsuit against the administration. A judge will hold a hearing on MFP’s requests for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction on Thursday, August 14.

As expected, Secretary Bear Carcass (RFK Jr.) is reportedly planning to oust all 16 members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force because he thinks they’re too “woke.” (The USPSTF recommends which health services should be covered without copays or deductibles.) This comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s June decision in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, which saved the task force from possible destruction but reinforced the Health Secretary’s power to appoint and remove members. Earlier this month, RFK abruptly canceled a task force meeting.

The Food and Drug Administration also quietly hosted a panel on antidepressant use in pregnancy. Many of the panel’s supposed “experts” were people with long histories of speaking out against the use of the medications. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called the panel “alarmingly unbalanced” and noted it failed to “adequately acknowledge the harms of untreated perinatal mood disorders in pregnancy.” These harms include increased risk of “substance use, preterm birth, preeclampsia, limited engagement in medical care and self-care, low birth weight, impaired attachment with their infant, and even suicide.”

Speaking of ACOG, the professional society for OBGYNs will no longer accept federal funding, per a memo sent to its members. “Recent changes in federal funding laws and regulations significantly impact ACOG’s program goals, policy positions, and ability to provide timely and evidence-based guidance and recommendations for care,” the organization said in a statement to Talking Points Memo. ACOG has two government grants: one to recommend which reproductive health services, like contraception and health screenings, insurance should cover without cost-sharing, and a second to create protocols to improve maternity care and make childbirth safer. In April, the far-right legal group Alliance Defending Freedom urged the Department of Health and Human Services to cut ties with the group.

State news

Nevada has had a law on the books since 1985 requiring that people under 18 notify their parents before having an abortion. But thanks to a permanent injunction won in federal court, the law had never gone into effect—until last week. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe, several district attorneys in Nevada filed suit, arguing the parental involvement law should now be enforceable. Technically, that legal battle is still ongoing, but earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit lifted a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of the law while litigation continues, allowing it to go into effect for the first time. Planned Parenthood Mar Monte has filed a new lawsuit seeking to block the law, noting that the state has no established judicial bypass process in place for teens who can’t notify their parents. (While Nevadans did vote overwhelmingly to enshrine abortion rights into their state constitution last November, such ballot measures must pass twice. Voters will weigh in on the issue again in the 2026 general election. It’s also unclear whether this measure, if enacted, would even protect minors’ access to abortion.) 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sued Planned Parenthood Federation of America, arguing that the organization has made misleading claims about the safety of medication abortion. Specifically, he took issue with statements that medication abortion is safer than Tylenol and other common drugs. These claims are entirely true. Bailey’s suit references a recent study published by the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute’s “director of life studies.”

Personhood watch

Anti-abortion lawyer Jonathan Mitchell is helping yet another aggrieved Texas man sue over his partner’s alleged abortions, and this time he’s making his fetal personhood and Comstock Act claims in federal court. Mitchell’s client, Jerry Rodriguez, claims that his girlfriend previously obtained abortion pills through a California physician named Remy Coeytaux and that she’s pregnant again. The lawsuit argues that Coeytaux is responsible for “wrongful death” of Rodriguez’s “unborn child” and seeks to block him from sending more abortion pills in the mail to anyone else, not just Rodriguez’s girlfriend. The suit claims Coeytaux violated the dormant Comstock Act by prescribing the pills across state lines. 

Mitchell is seeking to certify the case as a class action on behalf of “all current and future fathers of unborn children in the United States,” which could be about the Supreme Court pushing litigants toward class actions over nationwide injunctions—or it could be because he wants to confer rights on embryos. Rachel Rebouché, dean at Temple University’s law school told Mother Jones that Mitchell appears to be “embedding fetal personhood in arguments around abortion pills as a national matter, and not just in states with personhood laws.” (Mother Jones notes that Coeytaux is also the brother of Francine Coeytaux, the cofounder of Plan C.)

Assaults on queer people

Still more hospitals have announced they will shut down their youth gender-affirming care programs in response to threats from the Trump administration. On Wednesday, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center announced it would end gender-affirming services for patients younger than 19. And in Washington, D.C., Children’s National Hospital said it will stop prescribing gender-affirming medications on August 30, but will continue providing mental health services for LGBTQ patients. 

After Republicans stripped out a ban on federal funds for gender-affirming care in the budget reconciliation bill, the White House is pressuring them to pass it via the regular appropriations process. Such a provision would be like the abortion-access restricting Hyde Amendment, though it would theoretically need 60 votes to pass.

Remember Kim Davis, the former county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples after the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality decision? Well, she keeps appealing the hefty fines levied on her for doing that and now, after losing her most recent appeal at the Sixth Circuit, her lawyers have asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling altogether. Her attorneys from Liberty Counsel wrote, "This court should revisit and reverse Obergefell for the same reasons articulated in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center,” and cite Thomas' chilling Dobbs concurrence on substantive due process cases. It’s a hail-mary attempt because the case is so old and since, as a government employee, her actions were clearly unconstitutional. But the last time the court rejected her appeal in 2020, it was before Amy Coney Barrett cemented a 6-3 supermajority. This appeal should get laughed out of court, but we can’t trust these people.

Extremism

Emil Bove, Trump’s nominee for a seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, revealed in written answers to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee that he consulted with Alliance Defending Freedom after his nomination. On top of its general Christian nationalist legal advocacy, ADF is currently involved in a case before the Third Circuit related to school gender identity policies. Bove was Trump’s personal attorney and is currently a senior official at the Department of Justice, where a whistleblower alleges he told staff to defy federal court orders and where he fired prosecutors who worked on criminal cases stemming from the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. More than 900 former DOJ attorneys signed a letter opposing his nomination. 

A new “report” from the anti-abortion group Students for Life claims that “more than 50 tons of human remains and tissue” enter U.S. waterways every year as a result of medication abortion. This is all part of Students for Life’s ongoing and baseless argument that abortion pills are polluting our water system. Their estimate is based on the weight of a fetus and size of the placenta at 12 weeks of pregnancy. Students for Life claims this is a “conservative” estimate since abortion pills are increasingly being taken beyond 12 weeks. While that is likely true—thanks to abortion bans!—the vast majority of medication abortions happen well before 12 weeks.

Quick hits

• The State Department has confirmed that it will incinerate the nearly $10 million in birth control that has been sitting in USAID warehouses. The destruction will cost $167,000. Remember, the organization MSI Reproductive Choices offered to pay for these supplies to be shipped and distributed. The U.S. government said no.
• Michigan voters passed a reproductive freedom ballot measure in 2022, and advocates and lawmakers in the state have been chipping away at abortion restrictions ever since. In one lawsuit, the YWCA of Kalamazoo and the ACLU challenged the state’s ban on public funding for abortion. The lawsuit was rejected by a state judge earlier this month, but an appeal is now on the way. 
• The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer recently classified hepatitis D as a human carcinogen, just like hepatitis B and C. Hepatitis D only spreads in people already infected with hepatitis B, which is a vaccine-preventable disease. Make sure you’re up to date.
• From The Conversation: “Fears that falling birth rates in US could lead to population collapse are based on faulty assumptions.”

Actual good news

Another study has shown that the HPV vaccine dramatically reduces the rate of cervical cancer recurrence—even when it’s given to previously unvaccinated people after their treatment for cancer or precancer. The study even found that this effect can be seen within six months, before people have even received all their vaccine doses.  

In April, a federal judge ruled that Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s threat to prosecute anyone who helps Alabamians seek out-of-state abortion care was unconstitutional, violating both the First Amendment and  the right to travel. The Yellowhammer Fund, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, resumed helping people travel out of state within an hour of the ruling. Yellowhammer says it’s been able to help 215 people access abortion since April 1, offering approximately $78,000 in financial support.

Palate cleanser

He better have gotten a treat after this.

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