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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Federal news
In Congress
Last week, eight Senate Democrats caved and voted with Republicans to start the process of reopening the federal government. They did this in exchange for a dubious promise—that Republicans would hold a separate vote on whether to extend Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies later on. Senate Republicans say they are willing to vote in favor of extending the advance premium tax credits—but only if Democrats agree to a ban on abortion coverage in plans offered on the health exchanges. Because of a version of the Hyde Amendment included in the ACA, no federal subsidy funds go toward abortion coverage. Instead, insurers are required to hold aside a portion of the premium paid by the policy holder to fund that care. For weeks, anti-abortion juggernaut Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America has pressed lawmakers to further restrict abortion coverage, falsely claiming that the health insurance tax credits amount to an “indirect” subsidy of abortion. (House Speaker Mike Johnson has not agreed to hold a vote in the lower chamber, but Democrats say they will try to force a vote with a discharge petition.)
SBA also announced that the group and its linked PAC, Women Speak Out, will spend $80 million ahead of the 2026 midterms to try to retain anti-abortion majorities in the House and Senate. They said they will work in states including Iowa, Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina, all of which have competitive Senate races.
“Defund” fallout continues
Planned Parenthood Federation of America released a report on the effects of the federal law “defunding” large abortion providers, meaning kicking them out of Medicaid for one year. (This impacts non-abortion services like birth control and STI testing, since Medicaid only pays for abortions in limited circumstances). The organization said that, in September alone, Planned Parenthood affiliates spent an estimated $45 million to cover the cost of care for 100,000 patients with Medicaid insurance, an amount they said is unsustainable. The report also notes that nearly 50 Planned Parenthood clinics have closed in 2025 to date, with the organization citing pauses in Title X federal family planning funds as well as the Medicaid “defund.” Twenty of those closures have happened since Trump signed the budget bill into law. Before the “defund,” Planned Parenthood affiliates provided about $700 million annually in care reimbursed by Medicaid, so while seven states have stepped in to replace about $200 million of this, there is still an insurmountable gap that will lead to more clinic closures.
PPFA released the report the same day that the First Circuit Court of Appeals held a hearing in the organization’s lawsuit against the Trump administration. In September, the court let the law take effect by overturning two injunctions issued by a district court judge. On Wednesday, a three-judge panel heard arguments about whether the law unconstitutionally targets PPFA and if it should be blocked. The government argued that the law is meant to reduce the number of abortions, but PPFA’s attorney said reducing funding for contraception would increase the number of abortions, meaning the law fails what’s known as “rational basis” review. The judges could issue a ruling at any time.
Trump administration
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit in Maryland seeking to force the Food and Drug Administration to be transparent about its current “review” of the safety of the abortion drug mifepristone. In speaking publicly about the review, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary have both referenced a report from the far-right think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center, a cosponsor of Project 2025. The lawsuit seeks to enforce a Freedom of Information Act request the ACLU filed back in August, asking for “information about the scope of the review along with any communications between the FDA and anti-abortion organizations, state and federal officials, and politicians requesting greater restrictions on medication abortion.” The FDA has not responded to the request.
President Trump’s weak and months-late announcement of policies theoretically designed to improve access to in vitro fertilization have sparked a wave of misinformation, getting patients’ hopes up that their care may soon become free. Doctors say some patients are considering delaying care as a result, which could reduce their chances of ever having successful pregnancies. Though Trump made the wild promise to require health insurance coverage of IVF on the campaign trail, all he announced in the end was a deal to reduce the cost of a hormone injection drug from one manufacturer, and a small rule change that makes it easier for employers to offer IVF coverage separate from their general health insurance plans.
Much of the $9.7 million in contraception that has been stranded in warehouses in Belgium since the Trump administration largely dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development may be unusable, according to local authorities. Twenty truckloads of supplies—out of a total of 24—have been stored improperly. Medical devices in these truckloads could still be used, but none of the medications will be salvageable.
Trump’s Department of Justice will argue in support of a crisis pregnancy center in an upcoming Supreme Court case. New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin tried to subpoena CPC chain First Choice Women’s Resource Centers for information to assess whether the organization was making misleading claims about its medical services and staff qualifications. In response, First Choice sued Platkin and compared the subpoena to Southern states’ attempts to force the NAACP to produce member lists in the 1950s and ’60s. Solicitor General John Sauer submitted a request to file an amicus brief and participate in oral argument and the Supreme Court granted his request last week. Arguments are at 10am on Tuesday, December 2. We previously broke down the significance of this case, which is technically confined to a procedural issue, but could pave the way for the anti-abortion movement’s next big win at the Supreme Court.
Garnet Henderson
Extremism watch
Randall Terry, founder of the extremist anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, is launching an “activist academy” at a “newly acquired campus in historic Memphis,” Tennessee. Operation Rescue led mass abortion clinic blockades in the 1990s, including 1991’s infamous “Summer of Mercy” in Wichita, Kansas. The event shut down Wichita’s three abortion clinics for a week and resulted in over 2,600 arrests. Operation Rescue also created Wild West-style “wanted” posters targeting specific abortion providers, several of whom were ultimately assassinated. This included the group’s main target in Wichita, Dr. George Tiller, who survived an assassination attempt in 1993 and was shot to death by a man linked to Operation Rescue while serving as an usher at his church in 2009.
A press release announcing Terry’s new academy explicitly states that he is attempting to relaunch his “rescue” movement because the Department of Justice has announced it will largely stop enforcing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which was enacted to combat blockades and violence at abortion clinics. Terry’s new “academy” will launch with an event from December 3 to 5, culminating in what the press release describes as “peaceful civil disobedience at Planned Parenthood on December 5th.” Tennessee has a total abortion ban, but Terry’s website accuses Planned Parenthood of helping people cross state lines for abortion care.
State news
A South Carolina anti-abortion activist allegedly shot another person during a confrontation in a parking lot adjacent to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia. Mark Baumgartner was reportedly arrested Friday, according to witnesses who spoke to FITS News, after he allegedly shot another man. The victim was taken to a hospital and is in stable condition. Baumgartner leads a sidewalk “counseling” group, or an organization dedicated to harassing people seeking abortions. Another news outlet obtained a video showing a man believed to be Baumgartner first pepper-spraying the other man; the clip also shows that a second abortion opponent was also carrying a gun. Both anti-abortion demonstrators are wearing brightly colored vests, a tactic commonly used by clinic harassers to confuse patients, since abortion clinic escorts also typically wear bright vests.
Speaking of South Carolina, lawmakers will hold a second hearing on a dangerous abortion ban tomorrow. The law in question, Senate Bill 323, is a personhood bill that would define life as beginning at fertilization and criminalize people who have abortions, with penalties of up to 30 years in prison. SB 323 could also be used to prohibit certain methods of birth control like IUDs and morning-after pills based on false claims about how they work. South Carolina currently bans abortions after the detection of embryonic cardiac activity, or about six weeks, but this bill would outlaw all abortions unless they’re done to save the life of the pregnant person. It would also make it a crime to “aid or abet” anyone who has an abortion, and even seeks to outlaw websites that inform pregnant South Carolinians how to get an abortion. In a normal world, that last part would be a blatant First Amendment violation, but lawyers might argue to the 6-3 Supreme Court conservative supermajority that it’s a permissible restriction on conduct inducing criminal activity.
The first committee hearing on the bill in October drew hundreds of people in opposition. South Carolina Citizens for Life also came out against the bill that day because it would allow prosecutions of people who have abortions. The legislature is not officially in session until January and it’s not clear whether the bill has enough support to pass the Senate.
The Ohio medical board suspended a physician’s license after he allegedly forced his girlfriend to ingest abortion pills. Hassan-James Abbas, a surgery resident at the University of Toledo Medical Center, reportedly ordered mifepristone and misoprostol using his estranged wife's name and date of birth the day after his girlfriend said she didn’t want to have an abortion. The woman claims that, in December, Abbas held her down and forced a crushed powder inside her mouth. She escaped and called 911, but said Abbas hung up the call. She went to the emergency department, which then contacted police. UTMC has placed him on administrative leave and the Lucas County Prosecutor’s office says the matter is under investigation. This is a horrifying instance of reproductive coercion, where partners or family members try to force someone to become or remain pregnant against their will. Conservative groups have been beating the drum that coerced abortion is widespread and a reason to end telemedicine prescriptions of abortion pills, but this is not true. Unsurprisingly, SBA has already weaponized the sad story to call on the Food and Drug Administration to immediately end “the Biden rule,” referring to rule changes that allowed telemedicine abortion. State lawmakers have already proposed legislation to end the practice in Ohio, in House Bill 324.
Separately in Ohio, reproductive health advocates are calling out lawmakers seeking to pass a bill mandating public schools show an anti-abortion video when the state doesn’t even have comprehensive sex education. The bill is model legislation from Live Action promoting its three-minute “Meet Baby Olivia” video, which inaccurately describes the development of embryos and fetuses.
In July, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt issued an executive order requiring all providers in the Oklahoma Medicaid network to submit a written attestation saying whether they, or any affiliated organization, provide abortion care. But a proposed rule that would have implemented the order failed in a vote of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority over concerns that Stitt exceeded his authority in issuing the order. The Board voted to seek an opinion from the Attorney General.
A Texas woman’s federal wrongful death lawsuit against a man she claims slipped her abortion pills has been scheduled for trial in March 2027. The man, Christopher Cooprider, alleges that the woman, Liana Davis, made the whole thing up. As we previously reported, he’s countersuing her for more than $100 million. Davis is represented by anti-abortion legal activist Jonathan Mitchell, who also named abortion pill service Aid Access as a defendant. Mitchell said at a hearing last week that he’s been unable to contact the organization, which operates virtually, in order to serve them with a subpoena.
Assaults on queer people
Ahead of Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20, a report from Advocates for Trans Equality documents 27 violent death of trans and gender nonconforming people over the last year, and 21 deaths by suicide. More than 60 percent of these people were between the ages of 15 and 24.
President Trump signed an executive order purportedly intended to improve the nation’s foster care system, creating a new initiative called Fostering the Future to be led by First Lady Melania Trump. However, the order directs federal agencies to address policies that "inappropriately prohibit” qualified people or groups from participating in federally funded programs “based upon their sincerely-held religious beliefs or moral convictions.” Elsewhere, the order references not only “sincerely-held religious beliefs” but “adherence to basic biological truths.” This language echoes the administration’s past anti-trans executive orders, as well as recent lawsuits spearheaded by Alliance Defending Freedom which have argued policies in some states requiring support for children’s gender identities and sexual orientations violate some prospective foster parents’ religious views. The federal Administration for Children and Families had previously notified Massachusetts that it would investigate such a policy there.
Catholic hospitals already restrict access to abortion, contraception, and fertility care due to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, a document written by bishops—not medical experts—which governs how care at Catholic hospitals can be delivered. Now, a newly approved version of the document also includes a ban on gender-affirming care. Bishops even elected Archbishop Paul Coakley of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City to serve as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the body that approves the Ethical and Religious Directives. In 2023, Coakley called the “transgender movement” an “evil infecting our world.”
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said students in an Ohio school district have a right to misgender their classmates. The Olentangy Local School District enacted a policy requiring students to refer to their peers with their preferred pronouns. A conservative parents group sued, and Alliance Defending Freedom filed an amicus brief. These plaintiffs lost in a lower court, and a three-judge panel from the Sixth Circuit affirmed that ruling. But now, the full panel of the appeals court has sided with the conservative parents. ADF—which is very upset about elements of “social transition” like preferred pronoun use—has filed a similar case in Michigan.
Quick hits
- “When I Tried to Have an Abortion, My Friends Had Me Arrested.” A former member of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, the supposedly feminist, leftist anti-abortion group, said her friends tried to have her committed when they found out she was going to have an abortion.
- Represented by the ACLU, several people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement are suing over the inhumane conditions at the largest detention facility in California, including but not limited to woefully inadequate medical care and neglect of disabled people.
- A new study finds that the Texas near-total abortion ban SB 8, which went into effect nearly a year before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, disproportionately affected access to in-clinic abortion care for young people.
Actual good news
Chicago Abortion Fund is celebrating 40 years, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker recently created a new state reproductive health and justice chief role. He named Ameri Klafeta, former director of the Women’s and Reproductive Rights Project for the ACLU of Illinois, to the post.
A bill in the South Australian Parliament that would have limited access to abortion after 22 weeks and six days was defeated by a vote of 11-8.
Palate cleanser
Oh, to be this chill.
@calpal91 Unbothered by the rave happening next to him. #crazychristmaslights #catbehavior #cats #unbothered @Jeffrey Jones ♬ Sandstorm - Darude
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