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A men’s movement takes reins in a nationwide quest to end abortion
Wendell Shrock doesn’t believe in condoms. “We should leave the uterus to God,” the street preacher from Tennessee tells States Newsroom, in front of an abortion clinic outside of Atlanta, mid-morning in late July. Sweat drips from his cowboy hat into his salt-and-pepper beard that stretches halfway down his red-plaid shirt. The retired police officer […]
Study cited by Texas judge in abortion-pill case under investigation
Pharmaceutical sciences professor Chris Adkins was perusing news on his computer in December when he came across an item that fascinated him: Anti-abortion groups had sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to force a recall on a commonly used abortion drug. Adkins teaches future pharmacists at South University School of Pharmacy* in Savannah, Georgia. […]
FDA approves first over-the-counter oral contraceptive
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday it has approved the country’s first daily birth control pill that can be used without a prescription, a move that reproductive health advocates celebrated after more than 20 years of advocating for an over-the-counter option. The contraceptive, called Opill, is a progestin-only oral pill that could soon […]
After Dobbs, abortion access is harder, comes later and with a higher risk
Editors’ note: This report is part of a special States Newsroom series on abortion access one year after the U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down the federal right to abortion. In April, a Reddit user in Alabama posted a breathless message to the abortion subreddit the morning after learning she was pregnant. She guessed she […]
Health experts urge FDA to approve over-the-counter birth control in unanimous vote
Dyvia Huitron started having sex when she was 16. Worried about getting pregnant, she talked to her parents about getting on hormonal birth control. Instead, they grounded her. The now-19-year-old had expected pushback — she was living in a religious community in conservative McAllen, Texas. But she underestimated how many years it would eventually take […]
From credit card restrictions to wastewater: What abortion foes have been up to since Dobbs leaked
Anti-abortion leaders could not stop paraphrasing Winston Churchill last June after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a victory that took 50 years to realize. “While we celebrate the momentous ruling in Dobbs, we must remember that overturning Roe was not the beginning of the end, but it was the end of the […]
Abortion-rights attorneys help patients and providers navigate legal chaos
These days Kylee Sunderlin is often the first person people will talk to about needing or wanting to terminate a pregnancy, even though she’s not a nurse or doctor or a loved one. She’s a lawyer. This is Sunderlin’s third year overseeing a national hotline dedicated to helping people navigate legal questions around abortion in […]
How to make a state abortion ban go national
A fast-food restaurant was the last place she expected to have an abortion. A month had gone by since the 26-year-old had found out she was about seven weeks pregnant. She’d gone to her closest Planned Parenthood, near Boise, Idaho, last August — the same week that abortion became a criminal act in her state. […]
Physicians react to ruling placing abortion pill use in jeopardy
A Texas federal judge with a history of anti-abortion beliefs has thrown into jeopardy the most common form of abortion since Roe v. Wade fell last summer. U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk released his decision on the cusp of Easter weekend to pause the Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of the abortion drug […]
What plaintiffs targeting abortion pill want might not even be possible
At the center of the federal anti-abortion lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the abortion drug mifepristone and the regimen that reportedly accounts for the majority of abortions in post-Roe America. That’s why the whole country is bracing itself for a ruling from a notoriously anti-abortion judge in Amarillo, Texas. The attention […]
This International Women’s Day, U.S. anti-abortion laws violate human rights, groups say
Ahead of International Women’s Day, hundreds of U.S. and global human rights groups, doctors, and attorneys asked the United Nations to intervene on behalf of the millions of women in the U.S. who have been left without access to legal abortion and vital forms of reproductive health care in the wake of last summer’s monumental […]
Doctors recount ‘heart-wrenching’ stories in new study on medical care post-Roe
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) are trying to piece together how the end of Roe v. Wade has so far transformed pregnancy-related medical care in America, and the yet-to-be-released preliminary data are alarming, the lead principal investigator told States Newsroom in an exclusive interview. The team has already received dozens of […]