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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 […]
Anti-abortion Democrat runs for president to show graphic imagery in campaign ads
The morning of March 25, 2022, had started out like any other workday for Terrisa Bukovinac, as she and fellow anti-abortion activist Lauren Handy headed over to protest the Washington Surgi-Clinic in Washington, D.C. — until they asked the driver of a medical waste truck for a box that would change their lives. Inside that […]
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, Ga. […]
National abortion ban eyed as group marks ‘Siege of Atlanta’ protests 35 years ago
Members of a national anti-abortion religious organization called Operation Save America are in Atlanta this week to protest at a local abortion clinic and to discuss new strategies for achieving a national prohibition on abortion at any stage of pregnancy. Operation Save America began as Operation Rescue in 1986 and became more well known in […]
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 become available […]
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 was […]
Appeals court judges embrace anti-abortion speculation
America’s major medical institutions and drug policy scholars have roundly denounced as “pseudoscience” many of the claims brought by anti-abortion groups in a high-profile federal lawsuit asking the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, one half of a two-drug regimen that has become the most common form of pregnancy termination […]
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 […]
Here’s what abortion foes have been up to in the year after Dobbs draft leak
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 […]
After SCOTUS ruling, disappointed abortion foes vow to keep attacking abortion pill
Though the U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily blocked an effective ban on medication abortion, anti-abortion groups are not giving up on trying to fast-track a national abortion ban. And that means continuing to try to squash nationwide access to the most common form of abortion post-Roe, by whatever means necessary. “Obviously, the pro life community is disappointed […]
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. The woman, […]
Physicians react to ruling placing abortion pill use in jeopardy
Updated, 1:59 p.m. 4/10/23 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 […]