Reproductive Rights News Roundup

Florida

Dozens of stories ran about the launch of Floridians Protecting Freedom, our movement’s abortion rights ballot initiative. View a compendium of news stories here. Here are a couple:

Florida group launches initiative to get abortion constitutional amendment on 2024 ballot
By Mary Kekatos
ABC News
A coalition in Florida launched an effort Monday to get a question on the ballot in the 2024 general election that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

Florida doesn’t care that voters back abortion. Citizens have to take back their power
By The Miami Herald Editorial Board
Miami Herald
With abortion all but outlawed in Florida, a coalition of pro-choice groups is trying to do what lawmakers refused to do: Listen to voters

National

The sole US supplier of a major abortion pill said it would not distribute the drug in 31 states
By Rachel M. Cohen
Vox
Earlier this month, Politico broke news that Walgreens, the nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain, assured 21 Republican attorneys general that it would not dispense abortion pills in their states should the company be approved to dispense them.

“It Was Really Empowering”—5 Women Reflect on Their Medication Abortion Experience
By Christen A. Johnson
Cosmopolitan
Let’s talk about mifepristone, aka the hard-to-pronounce drug that when used in combination with other hard-to-pronounce drug misoprostol is actually extremely safe and effective at ending unwanted pregnancies in the privacy of your own home.

Abortion Access Keeps Winning Elections
By David Leonhardt Lyna Bentahar
New York Times
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion access has fared very well when it has appeared on the ballot.

FDA advisers endorse over-the-counter birth control pill
By Nathaniel Weixel
KFOR
A panel of outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unanimously voted Wednesday that the benefits of making a birth control pill available over the counter outweigh the potential risks.

Flowers and Cards Are Nice. I’d Rather Have Bodily Autonomy
By Aubrey Hirsch
Time
This Sunday will be the first Mother’s Day since the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and struck down the constitutional right to abortion. According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than half of women of reproductive age now live in states that are hostile to abortion rights.

Texas Case Shows How Abortion Bans Facilitate Domestic Abuse
By Carrie N. Baker Lisa Aronson Fontes
Ms Magazine
Court records and police reports indicate that the Texas man who recently sued his wife’s friends for helping her obtain an abortion has a long history of coercively controlling her.

Abortion clinics in 3 states sue to protect pill access
By Matthew Perrone Denise Lavoie
AP News
Abortion providers in three states filed a lawsuit Monday aimed at preserving access to the abortion pill mifepristone, even as the drug is threatened by a separate Texas lawsuit winding its way through U.S. court system.

FDA experts weigh OTC birth control amid agency staff skepticism
By Oriana Gonzalez
Axios
FDA advisers today will weigh whether to make daily birth control pills available over-the-counter for the first time amid concerns from agency staff that patient misuse could cause more unintended pregnancies.

Google promised to delete sensitive data. It logged my abortion clinic visit.
By Geoffrey A.Fowler
The Washington Post
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, privacy advocates, including me, raised an alarm that data from smartphones could be used to help prosecute abortions. Google offered a partial solution: It would proactively delete its trove of location data when people visited “particularly personal” places, including abortion clinics, hospitals and shelters.

Patients favor telehealth for medication abortion consults
UW Medicine Newsroom
By Barbra Clements
Patients seeking medication abortion care through telehealth services are just as satisfied, if not more so, with the service they received as patients who visited a clinical facility to receive care, according to a study published this month in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

More say politics, not the law, drive Supreme Court decisions: POLL
By Gary Langer
ABC News
Ten months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, two-thirds of Americans continue to oppose its decision — and 51% now think its justices base their rulings mainly on their personal political opinions, not on the law.

An Abortion Doula Reminds Us That ‘You Or Someone You Love’ Will Have An Abortion
By Alanna Vagianos
Huffington Post
Hannah Matthews isn’t a physician that provides abortions. She’s not an activist rallying protesters, nor a politician working to enact policy change.

Abortion pill legal challenge threatens miscarriage care
By Laura Ungar
AP News
Less than a year after losing her daughter Emilia at five days old, Jillian Phillips suffered a miscarriage.

How feminist groups in Mexico are aiding abortion seekers in the U.S.
By  Lorena Rios Daniela Dib
Rest of World
Over the past 11 months, some members of Tijuana-based feminist organization Colectiva Bloodys y Projects have reported an increase in demand for their services.

The Data Broker That Targeted Abortion Clinics Landed a US Military Contract
By Bennett Cyphers
Wired
THE DATA BROKER made famous for selling location data related to abortion clinic visits has signed a contract with the US Air Force and plans to provide information about “sensitive places” and “adversary state-owned enterprises” around the world, according to records.

Abortion Wins Elections
By Rebecca Traister
The Cut
The first Black woman elected to the United States Congress, Chisholm had recently been named the first honorary co-president of NARAL. She was both frank and morally assured in the remarks she delivered to the Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population, asking pointedly, “What is more immoral, granting an abortion or forcing a young girl … to assume the responsibilities of an adult while she is still a child?”

Independents back abortion rights. They’re less sure Democrats do.
By Rachel M. Cohen
Vox
Democrats know that Republican attacks on abortion rights will be central to their efforts to reelect Joe Biden and regain full control of Congress in 2024.

The Right’s Assault on Divorce Will Put More Women at Risk
By Molly Jong-Fast
Vanity Fair
What if Roe was just an opening salvo in the war against women’s autonomy? We often think of Roe’s fall as the culmination of decades of conservative lobbying, but what if it was just the first step?