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
The Trump administration asked a federal judge last week to pause a lawsuit that seeks to restrict access to the abortion drug mifepristone nationwide. The Food and Drug Administration said the case shouldn’t continue until it completes a politicized “review” of the pill—a review that the FDA commissioner personally sought to delay until after the midterm elections. Anti-abortion groups are predictably upset. Susan wrote about how this is the latest example of Donald Trump using abortion access as a political football, this time because he is trying to avoid another impeachment. (Share this story on Instagram, Bluesky, or TikTok.)
Susan Rinkunas
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Federal news
Planned Parenthood has dismissed its legal challenge to the one-year Medicaid “defund” of large abortion providers—without prejudice, meaning it could choose to refile later. As we explained in December, a loss before the First Circuit Court of Appeals left Planned Parenthood with two options: drop the case, or risk a Supreme Court decision greenlighting the policy. “The goal of this lawsuit has always been to help Planned Parenthood patients get the care they deserve from their trusted provider. Based on the First Circuit’s decision, it is clear that this lawsuit is no longer the best way to accomplish that goal,” the organization said in a statement. Remember, Medicaid only covers abortion in extremely limited circumstances, so the “defund” affects patients who would normally use their Medicaid insurance to cover care like contraception, cancer screening, and STI testing at Planned Parenthood. Per the press release, 51 Planned Parenthood clinics closed in 2025—23 of them after the GOP budget law containing the “defund” provision was enacted. With far-right Republicans already pushing to make the “defund” permanent, it’s possible Planned Parenthood is shifting its resources into lobbying in an attempt to prevent that. (Maine Family Planning, another provider affected by the budget law provision, also dropped its challenge to the law following a similar loss at the First Circuit.) A lawsuit filed by 22 states and Washington DC over the Medicaid provision continues for now, but they also lost at the First Circuit last month.
Medical providers in Minnesota say that Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Minneapolis have led pregnant people to stop showing up for prenatal care visits because they are afraid of being arrested or encountering violence. Doctors say pregnant patients are experiencing more complications linked to stress, and problems that can be treated when detected early, but that can cause miscarriage when untreated. Some patients are even going without proper nutrition because they are afraid to leave their homes.
One of the pregnant women we mentioned in last week’s roundup, who said she was denied prenatal care in ICE detention in Nevada, has since been released. Her family lost their home while she was in detention, and is now raising funds to pay for housing, medical expenses, and basic needs.
The Trump administration formally withdrew a rule that required retail pharmacies receiving federal money—meaning those that accept Medicare, Medicaid, or other federally funded health insurance, so just about every pharmacy—to carry and dispense the medications misoprostol and methotrexate. Misoprostol is used for abortion, miscarriage management, and many other aspects of OBGYN care. Methotrexate is used to treat ectopic pregnancies, but also in the management of autoimmune diseases. The Biden administration enforced this rule following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. The rule originally included the abortion drug mifepristone as well, but the Biden administration dropped this medication from the list following a lawsuit involving the Christian nationalist firm Alliance Defending Freedom. Even the Biden rule allowed pharmacists to refuse to dispense these medications if they believed a pregnant person was past the point at which they could legally obtain medication abortion care in their state, essentially inviting pharmacists to engage in invasive speculation. Now, pharmacists will be free to do not only that, but also to refuse to dispense these medications altogether. So not only could patients struggle to access abortion and miscarriage care, they may also be denied treatment for autoimmune conditions based on the possibility that they might be pregnant.
In a hearing on Thursday, a federal judge will consider whether to throw out an Idaho doctor’s lawsuit challenging the state’s abortion ban. Dr. Stacy Seyb sued the state medical board in 2024, claiming that Idaho’s abortion ban violates the U.S. Constitution because it criminalizes providing abortions necessary for medical reasons. Seyb is seeking to block enforcement of the law for medically indicated abortions, not trying to overturn the law entirely. Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador intervened in the case and is seeking to have it dismissed before trial. There is also a separate challenge to the state’s ban, filed by St. Luke’s Health System, which alleges it conflicts with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA.
The Department of Justice arrested several journalists who entered a Minneapolis church, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon, and charged them with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The 1994 law was passed in response to domestic terrorism including the bombing of abortion clinics and fatal shootings of abortion providers, but it also protects houses of worship. One of Trump’s first acts after returning to the White House was to pardon nearly two dozen anti-abortion activists convicted under FACE and declare that his administration wouldn’t enforce the law in abortion-related cases unless there were "extraordinary circumstances," like death, extreme bodily harm, or significant property damage. Following the charges, some anti-abortion pardonees called on Congress to repeal the law. That’s not because they care about journalists, but because they want to do more clinic invasions and know that a future administration could reverse Trump’s non-enforcement policy.
Congressional Democrats have mounted a long-shot attempt to overturn an abortion ban at Veterans Affairs facilities. The ban took effect last month, ending a Biden-era policy that allowed the VA to provide abortion counseling and services to veterans and their dependents whose health was endangered by a pregnancy, or who became pregnant as a result of rape or incest.
State news
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued another abortion provider for allegedly prescribing abortion pills to Texans. Paxton is asking a state court to prohibit Debra Lynch, a nurse practitioner in Delaware, from prescribing abortion pills through a service called Her Safe Harbor. But Lynch lives in a state with a “shield” law that’s intended to protect abortion providers from out-of-state investigations. (Paxton’s lawsuit doesn’t mention any concrete evidence that Lynch sent pills to Texans other than media reports in which she said she does so.) Paxton previously sued a New York-based doctor, Margaret Carpenter, in a case that is hurtling toward the Supreme Court to test if shield laws are constitutional.
Four Arkansas women and an OBGYN are suing the state over its abortion ban, which they say violates the state constitution’s protection for individual rights to life, liberty, and equality. The ban’s sole exception is to save a pregnant person’s life, and it forced two of the women to flee the state for emergency abortion care, another to carry a doomed pregnancy until she had a stillbirth, and the fourth to be denied care after becoming pregnant through sexual assault. The plaintiffs are seeking to strike down the law in its entirety. The lawsuit faces an uphill battle, though similar “inalienable rights” clauses in the Utah and North Dakota constitutions led those states' Supreme Courts to uphold injunctions on abortion bans.
The Missouri trial concluded in a dispute over whether a host of abortion restrictions should be overturned wholesale on the basis of the state’s successful 2024 reproductive rights ballot measure—which guaranteed a right to abortion until fetal viability. A decision is not expected for several months.
The embattled Planned Parenthood Southeast affiliate—whose interim CEO resigned following allegations of mismanagement—will now be partly managed by an affiliate across the country. Planned Parenthood Los Angeles said in a Thursday press release that it will support PPSE in an “interim leadership capacity” to help ensure access to services in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. PPLA said the affiliates have a 20-year history of collaboration. PPSE interim CEO Mairo Akposé resigned in December after Autonomy News reported that she wanted to halt abortion care; the organization’s board said the month prior that it had cleared her of wrongdoing.
Maine Governor Janet Mills is proposing $2.25 million in state funding for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and Maine Family Planning to help cover their budget gaps due to the Medicaid “defund” and other Trump administration policies.
Wyoming Attorney General Jay Jerde has filed a formal petition asking the state Supreme Court to reconsider its recent decision to permanently strike down a total abortion ban and a medication abortion ban.
Personhood watch
A group of far-right Republicans in Congress has introduced the “Life at Conception Act,” a bill that would establish fetal personhood—or perhaps more accurately, zygote personhood—under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a longtime anti-abortion movement goal. The bill is supported by several major anti-abortion groups, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Students for Life, the National Pro-Life Alliance, and the Evangelical hate group Family Research Council. The House version of the bill has 94 sponsors, which is alarming, but far short of the number needed to pass.
A copycat version of the Texas law allowing people to sue manufacturers and providers of abortion pills for bounties of at least $100,000 has cleared the Indiana Senate. It now moves on to the House for consideration. The Indiana version of the law also has a fetal personhood element, allowing people to sue for wrongful death of an embryo or fetus.
Relatedly, a Florida Senate committee approved a bill that would expand the state’s Wrongful Death Act to cover fetuses. The bill needs to clear one more committee before it can get a floor vote in the Senate. It has already passed the House.
Assaults on queer people
A coalition of far-right groups, including the aforementioned Family Research Council, as well as Focus on the Family, CatholicVote, Live Action, and the Christian Medical and Dental Association, have launched a coordinated effort to end federal protections for marriage equality. They say they’re organizing to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry. They’re framing the effort as an attempt to protect children’s rights, which is interesting. We thought they cared most about parental rights!
Extremism
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center canceled a talk by abortion provider Dr. Shelly Sella, organized by Medical Students for Choice, following a pressure campaign led by the campus chapter of Turning Point USA in collaboration with other local activists including Mark Lee Dickson. In a statement, PEN America called the cancellation “yet another example of the dangerous pattern of censorship spreading across Texas universities.”
Quick hits
- Students for Life and Alliance Defending Freedom asked the Supreme Court to hear a First Amendment case involving an Indiana high school that told a student their anti-abortion flyers were too political to post.
- A Chicago health trust is seeking to raise $5 million to shore up abortion access in Illinois, which sees many abortion-seekers from out of state.
- The gender wage gap widened for two consecutive years in 2023 and 2024, the first back-to-back decrease since data collection began in 1960. This is the first statistically significant drop in two decades, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
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