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
We’re honored to publish the first excerpt from reporter Amy Littlefield's new book, Killers of Roe: My Investigation Into the Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights. In it, Amy profiles Mark Lee Dickson, a Texas pastor who helped end abortion in the state before the fall of Roe. He's now trying to revive a 19th-century anti-vice law to ban abortion nationwide.
Our readers may recognize Dickson from his involvement in the recent case where a Texas woman alleged she was given abortion pills without her consent. The man she accused countersued for $100 million, claiming she made the story up—and that Dickson and others used it for political gain. (Share this story on Instagram, Bluesky, or TikTok.)
Amy Littlefield
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Federal news
The Food and Drug Administration filed responses in two lawsuits that seek to restrict access to the abortion drug mifepristone, namely by ending telehealth prescriptions. In the first, the FDA told a Louisiana judge Tuesday that it has multiple avenues to slap more restrictions on the drug if the judge grants its request to pause the case while the agency does a politicized “safety” review that won’t be complete until after the midterm elections. The FDA said its general authority includes having Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspend approval of a drug, or force changes to its label or the conditions of a special safety program it’s regulated under, known as a REMS.
On Friday, in a different lawsuit that seeks to require in-person appointments and reimpose tons of outdated restrictions on mifepristone, the FDA asked a Missouri judge to either pause or dismiss the case outright. The agency said it’s too late for a group of Republican Attorneys General to challenge anything but the recently adopted telehealth rules. (There’s a third case filed against the FDA in Texas; the deadline for the agency to respond in that case is this Friday, March 13.) While Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America claimed that the FDA was siding with “abortion drug dealers” in the Louisiana and Missouri cases, neither legal filing means that access to medication abortion is safe, as the FDA has now told everyone that it can restrict mifepristone on its own.
A new analysis from KFF finds that at least 18 states have taken cost-cutting measures in their AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs), with five more considering similar moves. ADAPs are part of the federal Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, funded by Congress but administered by states. They help pay for HIV medications—in some cases providing them for free—or pay for insurance premiums so those with HIV can access their medications. But program funding has been stagnant for over a decade, even as healthcare costs have risen. Enrollment has also increased as millions have been kicked off Medicaid or lost their private health insurance due to the expiration of pandemic-related subsidies. Nearly a quarter of the 1.2 million people living with HIV in the U.S. rely on ADAPs, but many are now facing changes such as new income restrictions, or fewer drugs covered. The biggest change has been in Florida, where at least 16,000 residents have lost their benefits and the state will no longer pay for Biktarvy, the most commonly prescribed HIV drug. These changes will not only lead people with HIV to suffer needlessly; they will almost certainly increase HIV transmission rates, because effective treatment eliminates the risk of spreading the virus.
You’re not experiencing déjà vu: We’re still fighting about a birth control rule from Trump’s first term. The Affordable Care Act—aka Obamacare—requires employer-sponsored health insurance to cover most forms of contraception. Religious nonprofits have always been allowed to opt out of this mandate, and the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby gave private companies with religious owners the right to do so, as well. In 2017, the Trump administration put forward a new rule allowing employers with religious or moral objections to birth control to opt out without even going through an official process that had been established by the Obama administration. Pennsylvania and New Jersey challenged the rule, arguing that it violated the ACA and other federal laws. In 2020, the Supreme Court rejected this challenge but didn’t fully resolve the case, sending it back down to lower courts to tease out some of the wonkier legal issues. The case is now before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and last week, a coalition of 65 civil rights and gender justice organizations, as well as another group of 11 medical organizations, filed amicus briefs arguing that the sweeping exemptions violate federal law.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Republicans will pursue a second reconciliation bill, or spending legislation that only needs 50 votes to pass the Senate. It’s unclear what proposals will be in it, but anti-abortion groups want the bill to include a longer-term “defund” of large abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. A one-year defund contributed to more than 50 Planned Parenthoods shuttering in 2025. The Republican Study Committee released a framework in January that makes the defund permanent. House Speaker Mike Johnson said last week: “We’ll finalize our Venn diagram and see what fits in the middle.” Meanwhile, in a creative attempt to stay afloat in an increasingly dire climate, one California Planned Parenthood affiliate is adding cash-pay services like Botox, as well as perimenopause care and light sedation for IUD insertions and removals.
State news
State legislation
Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon signed a six-week abortion ban that moved rapidly through the state legislature into law. However, in a letter to lawmakers, he pointed out that the policy will almost certainly trigger another successful legal challenge, referencing a recent state Supreme Court ruling that permanently overturned a total ban and a ban on medication abortion. The state’s lone brick-and-mortar abortion clinic, Wellspring Health Access, says it’s prepared to sue.
A bill to expand Oregon’s “shield” law has passed in both houses of the state legislature. HB 4088 protects doctors, nurses, and advanced practice providers like midwives who provide abortion and gender-affirming care, and it also adds new privacy protections, including making most court petitions for legal sex changes confidential. It now heads to Governor Tina Kotek, who is expected to sign it.
Mississippi Republicans succeeded in adding “abortion-inducing drugs” to the list of prohibited substances in a drug trafficking bill, which has passed the state legislature and now heads to Governor Tate Reeves for a signature. Once the bill becomes law, prescribing or providing abortion pills without an in-person medical visit will be considered felony drug trafficking, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
In South Dakota, the legislature passed a bill to clarify the narrow exceptions to the state’s total abortion ban, as well as a bill requiring schools to provide instruction in “prenatal human growth and development.” This is a version of the Baby Olivia Act created by the anti-abortion organization Live Action, though in this case the bill text doesn’t mention the “Baby Olivia” video. It does, however, clarify that educational materials can’t come from an organization that “promotes” or “performs” abortion.
An Alabama House committee is considering a bill that would allow citizens to sue manufacturers, providers, and distributors of abortion pills for bounties of up to $100,000, like the law enacted late last year in Texas. Similar measures are under consideration in several other states.
The Florida House passed a bill Tuesday that would codify Trump’s “defund” of abortion providers in perpetuity at the state level by making them ineligible to accept Medicaid. Remember, the federal provision only blocks Medicaid reimbursements for one year. House Bill 693 passed by a vote of 79 to 30; it now moves to the Senate.
Two bills died in the New Hampshire legislature, one of which would have helped expand abortion access. The state Senate voted down SB 551, a “shield” law that would have protected abortion providers from out-of-state investigations and litigation. New Hampshire is the only state in New England without a shield law. The House judiciary committee voted against advancing HB 1416, which would have exempted anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers from state regulations. A real mixed bag here.
Indiana lawmakers failed to advance multiple bad bills, including proposals that would have allowed fetal wrongful death lawsuits related to medication abortion and banned trans people from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender.
Brighter Adoptions, one of several Utah agencies accused by birth parents of creating a “human marketplace” in the state, closed abruptly after the legislature passed a bill—which still awaits the governor’s signature or veto—tightening regulations around how adoption agencies can market to, compensate, and treat pregnant people. Brighter Adoptions also seems to have been in trouble for failing to pay rent to the landlord of a property where it planned to house pregnant people.
State court news
An Indiana judge ruled that the state's abortion ban violates decade-old religious liberty protections signed into law by former Gov. Mike Pence. A group called Hoosier Jews for Choice and two anonymous women sued the state in 2022, arguing that its abortion ban violates Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act because their faiths permit or even require abortion in cases broader than the ban allows. The judge’s ruling in the class-action case means the state can’t enforce its abortion ban against patients whose sincerely held religious beliefs conflict with the law, but it remains in place otherwise. Attorney General and abortion foe Todd Rokita has already appealed the decision.
A local official in Virginia is challenging the reproductive rights amendment set to appear on the state’s November ballot, claiming the legislature didn’t follow the proper process. The Bedford County supervisor said in a lawsuit that the ballot initiative is invalid because the House of Delegates clerk didn’t distribute the amendment to all circuit court clerks and publicly post it three months in advance to the 2025 election for house seats. However, Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill last month that retroactively removed that part of state code; the law will be tested in this litigation. The plaintiff is represented by the far-right law firm Liberty Counsel. The amendment would protect abortion rights through the end of the second trimester.
Personhood watch
For the second year in a row, Missouri state Sen. Mike Moon is sponsoring a proposed constitutional amendment that would define embryos and fetuses as people. Such a change would outlaw abortion likely without exceptions. Abortion is currently legal, though not particularly accessible, until fetal viability in Missouri due to constitutional protections voters adopted in 2024. Enshrining fetal personhood would also allow people who have abortions to be charged with homicide. Notably, none of the state’s major anti-abortion groups testified in favor of the measure at a recent hearing, but abortion “abolitionists” did.
First Amendment watch
Reproductive health information nonprofit Mayday Health reached a settlement with South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley after he tried to halt its gas-station advertising campaign. Per a copy of the settlement agreement, he succeeded: Mayday said it would remove any current advertising and not purchase any physical ads within state borders going forward. As we’ve covered, Mayday ran gas station ads in South Dakota that read “Pregnant? Don’t want to be? Learn more at Mayday.Health,” which links to abortion pill providers. Jackley sent Mayday a December cease-and-desist letter claiming the campaign was “deceptive advertising,” then asked a judge to block the campaign. Mayday countersued in New York, where it’s based, but a federal judge declined to issue an emergency restraining order and said the case should be heard in state court. A South Dakota circuit court set a trial date for July 2026. Lawyers for Mayday said Friday that the settlement meant the parties were withdrawing their claims against one another, and that Mayday was seeking dismissal “without prejudice,” meaning they could refile the case if needed.
Assaults on queer people
Back in November, Garnet reported on QueerDoc, a small, telehealth gender-affirming care practice, which fought a subpoena for patient information from Trump’s Department of Justice, and won at the district court level. But the DOJ appealed that verdict up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and a three-judge panel heard arguments on Friday. We’ll have more on that for you tomorrow—stay tuned.
In a letter dated February 25, the New York State Attorney General’s office ordered NYU Langone Health to resume providing gender-affirming care to adolescents, threatening a state investigation if the health system failed to comply within 10 days. The letter notes that ”there has been no change in federal law to require the cessation of medically necessary transgender health care,” and that NYU’s decision to stop providing the care was “self-imposed.” The Trump administration has proposed—but not finalized—rules that would strip hospitals of federal funding from programs like Medicare and Medicaid if they provide gender-affirming care to children, and NYU is one of many health systems to have complied in advance.
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to block a California law that bans public schools from outing transgender students to their parents—and they did so on the “emergency docket,” meaning without a hearing or any briefing. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had allowed the law to stay in effect in December, but conservative parents, represented by the anti-abortion Thomas More Society, filed an emergency appeal to the high court. The plaintiffs argued that the law burdens their rights as parents under the 14th Amendment to direct the upbringing of their children, and the majority agreed. But as Justice Elena Kagan noted in her dissent, parental rights are not explicitly outlined in the 14th Amendment, and the court used the fact that a right to abortion was not spelled out in that section as a reason to overturn Roe v. Wade. Kagan also said that the court chose not to hear a parental rights claim in a case challenging a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming healthcare for trans minors, meaning parents seemingly only have rights to deny their child’s gender.
Under a new policy from the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), incarcerated transgender people will be forcibly detransitioned by being denied access to gender-affirming medications. The BOP says that treatment will now consist of talk therapy and “psychotropic medication” like antidepressants until a person’s gender dysphoria diagnosis can be marked as “resolved.” Essentially, the Trump administration is testing conversion therapy on trans people in prisons, which recalls the darkest moments in history.
Sources familiar with Kansas’ vital statistics system say the state has been making an internal list of transgender people for years. That may explain why one trans Kansas resident who had changed her name—but never her gender marker—said her license was invalidated when the state implemented a new law that revoked the driver’s licenses of trans people who’d changed their gender markers. Rather than trying their luck in the Trumpified federal courts, a group of trans people are taking to state court to challenge the law, which also banned trans people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identities on state property. Journalist Katelyn Burns points out that the mass ID invalidation amounts to a poll tax, requiring trans people to spend money to get their IDs replaced in a state with a strict voter ID law.
It's worth keeping in mind that Kansas has a strict voter ID law, so this law has essentially instituted a poll tax on all trans people in the state because they have to pay to get their ID replaced.
— Katelyn Burns (@katelynburns.com) 2026-03-03T13:36:45.560Z
Extremism
A North Carolina abortion clinic owner whose clinic is a hotspot for protests, threats, and harassment says the last few years are the scariest she’s seen, in large part due to Donald Trump’s pardons of people who violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and his administration’s dramatic scaling back of FACE prosecutions. Tuesday is Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, which takes place on the anniversary of the 1993 murder of Dr. David Gunn, an event that was a catalyst for the passage of the FACE Act in 1994.
Quick hits
- Billion-dollar baby bump: A new series from States Newsroom examines public funding for crisis pregnancy centers—and cites our investigation into Georgia Wellness Group, a CPC and soon-to-be maternity home that has received over $1 million in federal housing funds.
- A new study finds that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision led to a significant decline in applications to medical residency programs in states with total or near-total abortion bans.
- Another new study found an alarming decline in Tylenol use among pregnant people following misleading statements made about the drug’s safety during pregnancy by Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The study looked at the number of orders for Tylenol, or acetaminophen, placed for pregnant people in emergency departments, which means it’s not clear whether the decline was related to patients refusing the medication, doctors hesitating to prescribe it, or both.
- Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio will start offering telehealth medication abortion this year. A 2021 law that outlawed telemedicine abortion is blocked by court order thanks to the state’s successful 2023 reproductive rights ballot measure. This is great news for access, but we can’t help but notice it’s also probably a helpful cost-cutting, care-preserving measure for an organization that has laid off a lot of workers recently, something staff told Autonomy News would affect health services.
- The Associated Press estimates that enforcing the new Medicaid work requirements imposed by Trump’s big, ugly bill will cost states more than $1 billion.
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis just nominated a physician to the state Board of Medicine who is “ardently opposed to abortion, hormonal birth control and vaccine requirements.”
Actual good news
Oregon became the first state to pass a law explicitly requiring insurance companies to cover the costs of diagnostic testing for cervical cancer. Screening Pap tests are required to be covered by insurance, but if a Pap flags abnormal cervical cells, patients need a different test called a colposcopy, which can involve multiple biopsies. Insurance does not have to cover that procedure without cost sharing, and the cost can range from $200 to $1,200 out of pocket. Governor Tina Kotek signed the law, which will take effect on January 1, 2027.
More good news out of the Beaver State: Following a student-led campaign, the University of Oregon’s health center will offer medication abortion starting this fall. The school follows Portland State University in offering this care on campus.
Palate cleanser
The face says it all.
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It’s legally summer now.
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