Table of Contents
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
As we’ve often noted in these news roundups, far-right activists and politicians are conducting a disinformation campaign about abortion pills and reproductive coercion. Specifically, they claim that better access to medication abortion (especially via telehealth) has led to widespread forced abortions. However, according to recent patient stories shared with Autonomy News by the National Abortion Federation, telehealth abortion is more often helping people escape their abusers. But the workers who power NAF’s hotline—the largest abortion support service in the country—told Garnet they fear they could lose their jobs to artificial intelligence, the use of which they also view as an inherent security risk. (Share this story on Instagram, Bluesky, or TikTok.)
Garnet Henderson
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Federal news
The Department of Health and Human Services released a proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 that would effectively eliminate Title X, the family planning program for low-income people. (Title X was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970, and enjoyed bipartisan support for decades.) HHS also released new guidance that will steer the program away from birth control and toward conception. These changes have been anticipated for some time; frankly, it’s surprising they didn’t happen sooner. This likely has little to do with restraint on the Trump administration’s part, and more to do with the fact that they laid off nearly the entire HHS Office of Population Affairs, which administers Title X, in October.
In 2019, Trump issued a new rule that made it next to impossible for abortion providers to participate in Title X, and resulted in funding to at least one anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy center” group. (Federal funds can’t pay for abortion care due to the Hyde Amendment, but abortion providers had previously been able to receive funds for services like birth control, STI testing, and cancer screening.) This rule was expected to be re-implemented once Trump resumed office in 2025, but instead, his administration “paused” hundreds of millions in Title X grants while HHS conducted an “investigation” into whether the recipients were violating the administration’s anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Funds were quietly restored in December. This drew the ire of anti-abortion lawmakers and organizations, who are even angrier now, because the Trump administration said last week that it will continue to give Title X funds to Planned Parenthood affiliates for one more year. However, White House spokesperson Kush Desai—who cited “significant legal challenges” as the reason funds aren’t being cut off immediately—said this will be the last year the organization receives Title X money. Recipients are still facing a potential shortfall due to delays in the application process for this year’s funding.
Planned Parenthood is also struggling due to the federal budget law that made large abortion providers ineligible for Medicaid reimbursements for one year. As a result of the budget gap for Medicaid services like birth control, plus illegally frozen Title X funds, Planned Parenthood closed more than 50 clinics in 2025. Now, top anti-abortion groups are calling on Republicans to extend the Medicaid “defund” in an upcoming budget reconciliation bill, which would only need 50 Senate votes to pass. Americans United for Life sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson urging them to include a provision to “continue the prohibition of funding facilities that perform elective abortions.” They don’t say for how long, though the House Republican Study Committee said in January they wanted to make the provision permanent. It’s far from clear that any continued “defunding” could pass the House when many GOP lawmakers are worried about losing their seats in the midterms. (A different group, Students for Life of America, is urging the Justice Department to classify Planned Parenthood “as an unqualified government vendor,” a designation that would prohibit them from receiving federal funds for three years.)
Meanwhile, Senator Marsha Blackburn is trying to kick Planned Parenthood while it's down. One California Planned Parenthood affiliate trying to stay afloat recently added cash-pay services like Botox, as well as perimenopause care and light sedation for IUD insertions and removals. In response, Blackburn is urging the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate the tax-exempt status of Planned Parenthood affiliates, which are all 501(c)(3) organizations. “Planned Parenthood Mar Monte in Northern California—the organization’s largest affiliate—now operates a dedicated aesthetics program, marking a significant shift from the organization’s claim to be a charitable health care organization providing public health services," Blackburn wrote.
A coalition of 17 GOP-led states filed a “friend of the court” brief in a Missouri lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration over the abortion drug mifepristone. Missouri is asking the judge to reinstate a slew of outdated requirements, including in-person appointments, use through only 7 weeks of pregnancy, physician-only prescriptions, and a ban on prescriptions for minors. It’s also asking to rescind the 2019 approval of generic mifepristone. The 17 states that agree are: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. We must note that voters in Ohio and Montana passed constitutional protections for abortion rights. The FDA has already said it wants the judge to pause the litigation pending a politicized safety “review,” or dismiss it outright. Its next response in the case is due this Friday, April 10.
States are paying contractors like Deloitte and Accenture millions to help them comply with the new, complicated eligibility requirements for programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program laid out in Trump’s big, ugly budget bill. According to the Congressional Budget Office, these changes will cause 7.5 million people to lose health insurance by 20234, while 2.4 million will lose access to food assistance. According to a KFF analysis, implementing these supposedly money-saving changes will cost states more than $45 million. Meanwhile, Trump recently said the U.S. can’t afford to pay for childcare or healthcare like Medicaid because “we’re fighting wars.”
State news
A Wyoming judge refused abortion providers’ request to roll the state’s new six-week ban into their ongoing challenge to several other abortion restrictions, all of which are currently blocked. They have now filed a separate lawsuit to challenge the six-week ban specifically, but it remains in effect unless or until the judge agrees to block it while legal proceedings continue.
Florida’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee hadn’t released a report analyzing pregnancy-related deaths in the state for any year since 2020—until a reporter contacted the health department, which then quietly uploaded reports for 2021, 2022, and 2023. However, these reports are much more limited than in previous years, and the state refused to disclose who currently sits on the committee.
The update to a drug trafficking law in Mississippi that makes it a felony to distribute, or intend to distribute, abortion-inducing medication has passed the legislature and heads to Governor Tate Reeves for a signature.
In South Carolina—where abortion is currently banned at around six weeks of pregnancy—lawmakers have introduced a whopper of a bill that would ban nearly all abortions, explicitly outlaw self-managed abortion, make it a felony to provide abortion-inducing drugs to a pregnant person, designate mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled substances, and prohibit clinics that provide abortion care from receiving any government funds for family planning services. The bill would also create new penalties for doctors who fail to report any abortions they perform within seven days, and includes a “bounty hunter” provision allowing people to sue over abortions they believe were performed illegally. Senate Bill 1095 is similar to legislation that didn’t advance out of committee last year, and is being considered in committee once again.
Missouri Republicans are feeling optimistic about their chances to pass a constitutional amendment banning abortion this fall after voters narrowly approved abortion protections in 2024. They are on offense this time with a cynical ballot measure that would ban both abortion and gender-affirming care for minors. Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe is a vocal supporter, and his wife Claudia Kehoe is the treasurer for the PAC supporting the amendment. However, the campaign to block the amendment, called Stop the Ban, has far outraised the anti-abortion side. The coalition includes Planned Parenthood, the ACLU of Missouri, and Abortion Action Missouri.
Washington Governor Bob Ferguson signed a first-of-its-kind bill that creates a new revenue stream for abortion care by putting a tax on health insurers.
The Maine legislature’s budget committee approved adding $5 million in annual funds for family planning care, and called to create the first-ever emergency safety net in case of further cuts to Title X and Medicaid. The proposal draws from a separate bill, LD 335, and would help not only the local Planned Parenthood affiliate, but also Maine Family Planning, which was affected by the federal “defund” and had to shutter its primary care practice.
The Planned Parenthood affiliate in Virginia is urging lawmakers to move a birth control program back to the state budget rather than using federal funds. Former Governor Glenn Youngkin shifted the Virginia Contraceptive Access Initiative to be paid for by a federal funding stream known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). But as the Trump administration works to cut Planned Parenthood out of various federal programs, relying on TANF could be a risk. Plus, a second birth control-related bill is now awaiting Governor Abigail Spanberger’s signature. It would require health insurance to cover both over-the-counter and prescription contraceptives without cost-sharing. That’s in addition to a bill establishing the right to use birth control, which we told you about last week.
Maryland lawmakers passed a bill to enshrine protections for emergency abortion care. Senate Bill 169 essentially codifies the longstanding interpretation of the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which said that hospitals must provide abortions to pregnant patients experiencing medical emergencies in order to save their life or their health—a much more expansive protection. The Trump administration rescinded that guidance. Governor Wes Moore is expected to sign the bill into law.
The Montana Supreme Court upheld a block on a 2023 law and health department rules that would have treated abortion clinics akin to hospitals, with special licensing requirements and state approval of clinics’ layout. The court found the regulations likely violated the state constitutional right to privacy and the right to equal protection because they don’t apply to facilities that offer miscarriage treatment, which “provide identical medication and procedures as ‘abortion clinics.’”
A group of midwives in Georgia are suing the state over laws they say make it difficult for them to practice. Georgia requires midwives to have formal partnership contracts with physicians who in turn charge them several hundred dollars per month. Midwives typically attend low-risk births and there’s no guarantee that the partner physician will be available should anything go awry. The lawsuit was filed after a bill to remove the restrictions failed to advance before the legislature adjourned. Midwives in Alabama recently filed a similar suit.
Elections
Wisconsin voters will elect a new Supreme Court justice on Tuesday, and on the abortion front, Maria Lazar has said overturning Roe v. Wade so states can set policy was a good thing, while Chris Taylor called that thinking “tragic” for the people it harms.
Personhood watch
A federal judge in Texas dismissed Lizelle Gonzalez’s claims against Starr County’s district attorney, assistant district attorney, and sheriff in a civil lawsuit she filed after being wrongfully arrested for murder after attempting to self-manage an abortion in 2022. The judge ruled that qualified immunity—a legal doctrine that protects police and government officials from liability in most civil lawsuits—applies in this case. But the lawsuit isn’t over: Gonzalez’s claims against the county itself will still go forward.
In the case of Brittany Watts—the Ohio woman who was arrested after suffering a stillbirth when she was sent home from the hospital—attorneys on both sides agreed that mediation or discussions of a settlement wouldn’t be productive, meaning Watts’ lawsuit against the city of Warren and an individual detective will continue.
The major Catholic anti-abortion organization Heartbeat International—which has said it does not support criminalizing people who have abortions—gave space at its annual conference to the “abolitionist” group Foundation to Abolish Abortion, which believes that people who have abortions should be prosecuted for homicide, which could mean facing the death penalty.
ALERT: One of the largest anti-abortion pregnancy center chains, Heartbeat International, which claims to provide “loving support” to the “abortion vulnerable” gave tabling space to Foundation to Abolish Abortion, an organization that calls for the prosecution of women who have abortions. (1/4)
— Reproaction (@reproaction.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T13:01:23.263Z
Tech censorship
Bellesa Boutique, a sex toy company that had over 700,000 followers, said its account was permanently banned from Instagram for using the word “clitoris.” The company is “calling on Instagram to reinstate our account and explain why women’s sexual health is treated as explicit while erectile dysfunction ads run freely across the platform.” In a follow-up post, Bellesa said it would pursue legal action against the platform’s parent company, Meta.
Assaults on queer people
The Supreme Court sided with a Christian counselor—and Alliance Defending Freedom client—who argued that Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” violated her First Amendment rights. The Court’s ruling in Chiles v. Salazar does not directly overturn Colorado’s conversion therapy ban, or any other. However, it does direct courts to apply “strict scrutiny” when considering legal challenges to these bans—a high legal bar that few laws can clear. In other words: Laws that protect kids from conversion therapy still stand for now, but they’re very vulnerable.
In another reminder that our rights are connected, the decision may make it even easier for crisis pregnancy centers to evade accountability.
Quick hits
- Experts have long argued that medication abortion is so safe and easy to use that it should be available over the counter, and a small new study backs this idea up, finding that patients at abortion clinics were able to correctly understand whether they were good candidates to use abortion pills based on written instructions.
- In its shift to cracking down on immigration, Trump’s Department of Justice dropped 23,000 criminal investigations in just six months. This includes numerous investigations into violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. “The department dropped as many cases under the act in its first six months as the past three new administrations combined, over the same time frame,” ProPublica reports.
Actual good news
A group of Jewish plaintiffs got a judge to block Indiana’s abortion ban for plaintiffs with sincere religious objections to the law, providing another example of how religious freedom laws can be useful for people who aren’t on the far right.
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that free, onsite childcare will be available for 40 city workers in a pilot program starting in the fall.
Palate cleanser
Bird paparazzi.
@canditheduck freaking love nyc, 40 degrees and the American Woodcock stans are still out here#meep #bryantpark #nyc ♬ POP DAT THANG - DaBaby
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