Trump Judge Could Try to End Telemedicine Abortion: February 23 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.

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Recently, we reported that Texas Tech University canceled a speech by third-trimester abortion provider Dr. Shelley Sella following a pressure campaign from Turning Point USA. Leaders of Medical Students for Choice chapters across Texas argue in an op-ed that this is part of a pattern of censorship that threatens their education, and their patients’ safety. (Share this story on Bluesky.)

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Federal news

A federal judge will hear arguments Tuesday about whether to end telemedicine prescriptions of the abortion pill mifepristone nationwide. Telehealth abortions using mifepristone and misoprostol made up 27% of all reported abortions in 2025, so any changes in Food and Drug Administration regulation of mifepristone could be a huge blow to access—though providers could prescribe a regimen using misoprostol alone. There is sadly no audio access to the hearing, and Trump-appointed judge David Joseph could rule any time after it concludes. Louisiana sued the FDA over mifepristone in October, but in December took the extraordinary step of asking the court to reimpose unnecessary in-person appointments while the case continues. The FDA recently asked Judge Joseph to pause the litigation until it completes a politically motivated safety review. That review, and reports that the FDA is seeking to delay it until after the midterms, prompted the aggressive move from Louisiana’s attorneys at the Christian nationalist law firm Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF first sued the agency over mifepristone in Texas in 2022, but the Supreme Court ultimately determined the physician plaintiffs didn’t have legal standing to challenge FDA actions. Briefs opposing Louisiana’s request include: 19 states and Washington D.C., more than 100 reproductive rights and justice organizations, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and telehealth providers Abortion on Demand and Hey Jane, which serve 25 states.

The FDA’s underqualified top drug regulator, Tracy Beth Høeg, said in her first speech to staff that she would scrutinize pregnant people’s use of SSRI antidepressants and vaccines used to protect babies from RSV. RSV can kill infants and young children, and vaccines aren’t within Høeg’s purview, anyway. Antidepressants help keep some people alive during and after pregnancy. Høeg and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary led a July panel packed with misinformation about SSRI use during pregnancy.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehended a Minneapolis teenager seeking asylum in the U.S. with his father. They declared him an “unaccompanied minor,” sent him to a Christian youth shelter in Michigan, and lost him for a week. The teen was driving alone when agents detained him and flew him to a shelter owned by Bethany Christian Services, one of the country’s largest adoption agencies known for its anti-abortion stance and history of coercive adoptions. It’s far from the only example of immigrant children being detained while their parents try to retrieve them but don’t have the correct forms of identification. Multiple families are suing the Trump administration over the paperwork rules. An Associated Press investigation from Trump’s first term uncovered that migrant children are sometimes placed in the custody of U.S. families without their parents even being notified. If the parents are deported, they may lose their children to adoption.

A new report from the Guttmacher Institute finds that the number of brick-and-mortar abortion clinics in the U.S. declined by about two percent from March 2024 to the end of 2025. However, according to researchers, this seemingly small decline “can mask churn” as significant numbers of clinics close in some areas, while new facilities open up in others. Some of the declines were noted in states thought to be abortion havens, including California, which lost two clinics; Illinois, which also lost two; and New York, which lost a whopping eight clinics. Trump administration moves like the Medicaid “defund” of large abortion providers are further straining clinics even in states with the fewest abortion restrictions. (Remember, federal Medicaid dollars can only be used to pay for abortion in extremely limited circumstances due to the Hyde Amendment, so when abortion providers bill Medicaid it’s usually for services like birth control, cancer screening, and STI testing.)

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Last week, Americans United for Life (AUL) sent a press release about a coalition letter urging Congress to extend the one-year “defund” provision in the federal budget, making Planned Parenthood and some other large abortion providers ineligible to participate in Medicaid. The current “defund” provision expires in July. The letter asks Congressional Republicans to extend it for 10 years, which is what they originally proposed. Signatories on the letter are a who’s-who of anti-abortion groups, including Live Action, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Heritage Action, and Family Research Council. AUL later said the “leading organization decided after the fact that the letter was to be delayed to early March.” Oops!

State news

A Texas appeals court heard arguments in the case of Maria Rojas, the midwife arrested last year and accused of violating the state’s abortion ban and practicing medicine without a license. Rojas is represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which says the state has yet to present any evidence to back these allegations up. However, even though Rojas hasn’t been convicted of any crime, she was stripped of her midwife’s license, and a lower court issued an injunction that shut down multiple clinics where she provided care to a largely uninsured, Spanish-speaking population. Rojas’ legal team is asking the appellate court to reverse this injunction while legal proceedings continue. It’s not known when the court will issue its ruling. Rojas is the first person to be charged with violating Texas’ criminal abortion ban, which is no coincidence: The first abortion bans in the U.S., enacted in the 19th century, were designed by physicians looking to put their biggest competitors—midwives—out of business.

Two Tennessee Republicans want to classify abortion as homicide and make it punishable by the death penalty—including for people who have abortions. They’re trying to do this by adding an amendment to House Bill 570/Senate Bill 738, a bill related to the maintenance and upkeep of a planned “monument to unborn children” on state capitol grounds. Neither that bill nor this amendment, have been voted on, but the Southern Baptist Convention says it endorses removing the exception for pregnant people that currently exists in the state’s abortion ban.

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Florida Republicans are advancing a bill that would ban health providers from prescribing or even giving teenagers information about contraceptives without written parental permission. HB 173 would also allow doctors to examine and diagnose teenagers with STIs without parental consent, but requires a parent’s permission for treatment. In fact, medical providers would be unable to prescribe any drug to a minor without a parent’s signoff. Republicans say this is about “parental rights,” while Democrats have pointed out that it will put kids in danger—for example, by requiring a teenager who’s being sexually abused to get permission for medical treatment from the person who might be abusing them.

An Idaho case illustrates the danger of expansive parental rights laws: The state requires consent for practically every medical intervention for minors, and when teens in distress call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline, operators have to end the call because of where they live. One teen who tried to seek help is urging lawmakers to add carveouts to the law, which is also affecting young people’s access to rape kits. Idaho also quietly turned down all $1.5 million of its annual Title X federal family planning funding to comply with the parental rights law. The federal program doesn’t require consent for contraception or other reproductive health services.

The Wyoming House passed HB 117, a bill that would introduce new, biased “informed consent” requirements for abortion. The bill will now be taken up by the Senate. House committees also advanced a six-week abortion ban known as HB 126—despite the fact that this ban would obviously conflict with the Wyoming Supreme Court’s interpretation of the state constitution—and HB 143, an Alliance Defending Freedom-backed bill to “protect” healthcare providers who feel they need to “self-censor” about their opposition to things like gender-affirming care.

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The Mississippi House passed an anti-drug trafficking bill that was amended to include “abortion-inducing drugs.” If convicted, prescribers of these drugs could face one to 10 years in prison. The bill, H.B. 1613, passed, by a 77-39 vote.

In Iowa, House Republicans canceled a planned hearing on House File 2332, a total abortion ban, because they didn’t have the votes. The state currently bans abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy.

Personhood watch

A Nevada woman imprisoned for a stillbirth under a 1911 law received a $100,000 settlement from the state after a court vacated her conviction due ineffective assistance of counsel. Nevada is the only state that explicitly criminalizes pregnant people for ending their pregnancies, and only after 24 weeks of pregnancy. Patience Rousseau was the only person ever convicted under the law following her 2018 stillbirth, and $100K is nowhere near enough to make up for that. A bill to repeal that law stalled in the legislature last year in part due to opposition from reproductive rights groups who claimed it would interfere with messaging around a proposed ballot measure codifying a right to abortion until fetal viability. That amendment, Question 6, needs to pass a second time this fall to become law.

First Amendment watch

A federal judge dismissed an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center’s lawsuit against the state of Massachusetts over its public education campaign about CPCs and their deceptive tactics. In June 2024, the state launched a campaign that, among other things, warned the public that CPC staff or volunteers may interpret pregnancy dating ultrasounds without the required medical training. A CPC called Your Options Medical sued the state and the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation, which worked on the campaign, claiming that they discriminated against the CPC based on its religious views and stifled its right to free speech. A judge disagreed. Your Options says it will appeal the decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Assaults on queer people

The Bureau of Prisons has proposed a new policy that would ban gender-affirming surgeries for trans people incarcerated in federal prisons, require them to “taper” off hormone therapy, and end social transition accommodations, such as gender-appropriate clothing. An earlier version of the policy, which would have banned gender-affirming care and accommodations wholesale, has been blocked by a federal court for nearly a year.

NYU Langone Health says it will end youth gender-affirming care, citing the “current regulatory environment.” Parents say Mount Sinai Health has done the same, though the health system has refused to answer questions about the change. The Trump administration has proposed, but not finalized, a rule to block Medicare and Medicaid funding to hospitals that offer this care.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing New York-based retailer Lola Olivia for selling chest binders online.

The Kansas legislature overrode Governor Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill requiring people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their sex assigned at birth in all state government buildings. State officials say the law’s vague language will make it difficult to implement.

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Tennessee Republicans voted unanimously to advance five anti-LGBTQ+ bills, including one that would allow private individuals and organizations to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages; one that would ban Pride flags or other observances by state employees; another that would allow small businesses to ignore anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people in the workplace; an expansion of existing state law that bans public school employees from being required to respect students’ correct pronouns; and another that would bar health professionals from asking children about gender identity without a parent present.

Oklahoma Republicans are pushing dozens of anti-LGBTQ+ bills, including some that would limit gender-affirming care for adults—the state already bans the care for minors. The ACLU warned in late 2024 that the Supreme Court upholding bans on young people’s care could lead to bans for adults.

Alliance Defending Freedom is suing the state of Colorado on behalf of a Christian bookstore and an anti-trans athletic apparel company who argue that the state’s anti-discrimination law—which merely requires businesses to address people the way they want to be addressed—infringes on “their ability to speak truthfully about the biological differences between men and women.” However, after a hearing last week, a federal magistrate judge recommended that ADF’s motion for a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law be denied.

Extremism

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that anti-abortion legal activist Jonathan Mitchell found yet another male abuser to challenge access to abortion pills. His client Jerry Rodriguez is a Texas man who filed a July 2025 lawsuit against a California physician for prescribing medication abortion to his girlfriend. The lawsuit is an attempt to take down the state’s “shield law,” which protects clinicians who prescribe abortion pills across state lines. The Chronicle reports that Rodriguez was convicted of assaulting a woman in 2006 and threatening to kill another in 2009. The woman Rodriguez claims used the abortion pills told police in October 2024 that he punched and choked her and had “strangled her 8 times” over the previous five months. In 2023, Mitchell represented another Texas man named Marcus Silva who sued three of his estranged wife’s friends for allegedly helping her access abortion pills. Silva was verbally and emotionally abusive and threatened to release sex tapes of his wife unless she did his laundry and said he’d drop the case if she had sex with him. The parties settled the case days before it was set to go to trial.

Quick hits

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is pursuing a rule to ban families with any member who is undocumented from living in subsidized housing—which could result in thousands of families being pushed out of their homes.
The Cobalt Abortion Fund in Colorado spent $2.5 million helping abortion seekers last year. $1.7 million of this went to abortion care itself, a number the fund said has increased by 84% since 2024.
An Illinois Republican who introduced a bill to ban abortion in the state was pushed out of his leadership positions.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Erin Hawley got a new job at another conservative firm, but she will continue anti-abortion work with ADF.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta reminded law enforcement that state law prohibits them from cooperating with other states’ investigations into abortions.