Abortion

Pregnancy centers in the U.S. that discourage women from getting abortions have been adding more medical services — and could be poised to expand further.

The expansion — including testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and even providing primary medical care — has been unfolding for years. It gained steam after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade three years ago, clearing the way for states to ban abortion.

The push could get more momentum with Planned Parenthood closing some clinics and considering shutting others after changes to Medicaid. Planned Parenthood is not just the nation’s largest abortion provider, but also offers cancer screenings, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, and other reproductive health services.

“We ultimately want to replace Planned Parenthood with the services we offer,” said Heather Lawless, founder and director of Reliance Center in Lewiston, Idaho. She said about 40% of patients at the antiabortion center are there for reasons unrelated to pregnancy, including some who use the nurse practitioner as a primary caregiver.

The changes have frustrated abortion rights groups, who, in addition to opposing the centers’ antiabortion messaging, say they lack accountability; refuse to provide birth control; and offer only limited ultrasounds that cannot be used for diagnosing fetal anomalies because the people conducting them don’t have that training. A growing number also offer unproven abortion-pill reversal treatments.

Because most of the centers don’t accept insurance, the federal law restricting release of medical information doesn’t apply to them, though some say they follow it anyway. They also don’t have to follow standards required by Medicaid or private insurers, though those offering certain services generally must have medical directors who comply with state licensing requirements.

“There are really bedrock questions about whether this industry has the clinical infrastructure to provide the medical services it’s currently advertising,” said Jennifer McKenna, a senior advisor for Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch, a project funded by liberal policy organizations that researches the pregnancy centers.

Post-Roe world opened new opportunities

Perhaps best known as “crisis pregnancy centers,” these mostly privately funded and religiously affiliated centers were expanding services such as diaper banks ahead of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which overturned Roe.

As abortion bans kicked in, the centers expanded medical, educational and other programs, said Moira Gaul, a scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of SBA Pro-Life America. “They are prepared to serve their communities for the long term,” she said in a statement.

In Sacramento, for instance, Alternatives Pregnancy Center in the last two years has added family practice doctors, a radiologist and a specialist in high-risk pregnancies, along with nurses and medical assistants. Alternatives — an affiliate of Heartbeat International, one of the largest associations of pregnancy centers in the U.S. — is some patients’ only health provider.

When the Associated Press asked to interview a patient who had received only non-pregnancy services, the clinic provided Jessica Rose, a 31-year-old woman who took the rare step of detransitioning after spending seven years living as a man, during which she received hormone therapy and a double mastectomy.

For the last two years, she’s received all her medical care at Alternatives, which has an OB-GYN who specializes in hormone therapy. Few, if any, pregnancy centers advertise that they provide help with detransitioning. Alternatives has treated four similar patients over the last year, though that’s not its main mission, director Heidi Matzke said.

“APC provided me a space that aligned with my beliefs as well as seeing me as a woman,” Rose said. She said other clinics “were trying to make me think that detransitioning wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

Pregnancy centers expand as health clinics decline

As of 2024, more than 2,600 antiabortion pregnancy centers operated in the U.S., up 87 from 2023, according to the Crisis Pregnancy Center Map, a project led by University of Georgia public health researchers who are concerned about aspects of the centers. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 765 clinics offered abortions last year, down more than 40 from 2023.

Over the years, pregnancy centers have received a boost in taxpayer funds. Nearly 20 states, largely Republican-led, now funnel millions of public dollars to these organizations. Texas alone sent $70 million to pregnancy centers this fiscal year, while Florida dedicated more than $29 million for its “Pregnancy Support Services Program.”

This boost in resources is unfolding as Republicans have barred Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds under the tax and spending law President Trump signed in July. While federal law already blocked the use of taxpayer funds for most abortions, Medicaid reimbursements for other health services were a big part of Planned Parenthood’s revenue.

Planned Parenthood said its affiliates could be forced to close up to 200 clinics.

Some already had closed or reorganized. They have cut abortion in Wisconsin and eliminated Medicaid services in Arizona. An independent group of clinics in Maine stopped primary care for the same reason. The uncertainty is compounded by pending Medicaid changes expected to result in more uninsured Americans.

Some abortion rights advocates worry that will mean more healthcare “deserts” where the pregnancy centers are the only option for more women.

Kaitlyn Joshua, a founder of abortion rights group Abortion in America, lives in Louisiana, where Planned Parenthood closed its clinics in September.

She’s concerned that women seeking health services at pregnancy centers as a result of those closures won’t get what they need. “Those centers should be regulated,” she said. “They should be providing information which is accurate, rather than just getting a sermon that they didn’t ask for.”

Thomas Glessner, founder and president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, a network of 1,800 centers, said the centers do have government oversight through their medical directors. “Their criticism,” he said, “comes from a political agenda.”

In recent years, five Democratic state attorneys general have issued warnings that the centers, which advertise to people seeking abortions, don’t provide them and don’t refer patients to clinics that do. And the Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether a state investigation of an organization that runs centers in New Jersey stifles its free speech.

Different services than Planned Parenthood

Choices Medical Services in Joplin, Mo., where the Planned Parenthood clinic closed last year, moved from focusing solely on discouraging abortion to a broader sexual health mission about 20 years ago when it began offering STI treatment, said its executive director, Karolyn Schrage.

The center, funded by donors, works with law enforcement in places where authorities may find pregnant adults, according to Schrage and Arkansas State Police.

Schrage estimates that more than two-thirds of its work isn’t related to pregnancy.

Hayley Kelly first encountered Choices volunteers in 2019 at a regular weekly dinner they brought to dancers at the strip club where she worked. Over the years, she went to the center for STI testing. Then in 2023, when she was uninsured and struggling with drugs, she wanted to confirm a pregnancy.

She anticipated the staff wouldn’t like that she was leaning toward an abortion, but she says they just answered questions. She ended up having that baby and, later, another.

“It’s amazing place,” Kelly said. “I tell everybody I know, ‘You can go there.’”

The center, like others, does not provide contraceptives — standard offerings at sexual health clinics that experts say are best practices for public health.

“Our focus is on sexual risk elimination,” Schrage said, “not just reduction.”

Mulvihill and Kruesi write for the Associated Press.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — It figures that a billionaire would win big in Las Vegas.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker reported a gambling windfall of $1.4 million on his federal tax return this week.

The two-term Democrat, often mentioned as a 2028 presidential candidate, told reporters in Chicago on Thursday that he drew charmed hands in blackjack during a vacation with first lady MK Pritzker and friends in Sin City.

“I was incredibly lucky,” he said. “You have to be to end up ahead, frankly, going to a casino anywhere.”

Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel chain, has a net worth of $3.9 billion, tied for No. 382 on the Forbes 400 list of the nation’s richest people. A campaign spokesperson said via email that Pritzker planned to donate the money to charity but did not respond when asked why he hadn’t already done so.

Pritzker, who intends to seek a third term in 2026, was under consideration as a vice presidential running mate to Kamala Harris last year. He has deflected questions about any ambition beyond the Illinois governor’s mansion. But he has used his personal wealth to fund other Democrats and related efforts, including a campaign to protect access to abortion.

His profile has gotten an additional bump this fall as he condemns President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement in Chicago and the president’s attempt to deploy National Guard troops there.

The Pritzkers reported income of $10.66 million in 2024, mostly from dividends and capital gains. They paid $1.6 million in taxes on taxable income of $5.87 million.

Pritzker is an avid card player whose charitable Chicago Poker Challenge has raised millions of dollars for the Holocaust Museum and Education Center. The Vegas windfall was a “net number” given wins and losses on one trip, he said. He declined to say what his winning hand was.

“Anybody who’s played cards in a casino, you often play for too long and lose whatever it is you won,” Pritzker said. “I was fortunate enough to have to leave before that happened.”

O’Connor writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Sophia Tareen contributed to this report from Chicago.

ROME — Pope Leo XIV has intervened for the first time in an abortion dispute roiling the U.S. Catholic Church by raising the seeming contradiction over what it really means to be “pro-life.”

Leo, a Chicago native, was asked late Tuesday about plans by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich to give a lifetime achievement award to Illinois Senator Dick Durbin for his work helping immigrants. The plans drew objection from some conservative U.S. bishops given the powerful Democratic senator’s support for abortion rights.

Leo called first of all for respect for both sides, but he also pointed out the seeming contradiction in such debates.

“Someone who says ‘I’m against abortion but says I am in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life,” Leo said. “Someone who says that ‘I’m against abortion, but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”

Leo spoke hours before Cupich announced that Durbin had declined the award.

Church teaching forbids abortion but it also opposes capital punishment as “inadmissible” under all circumstances. U.S. bishops and the Vatican have strongly called for humane treatment of migrants, citing the Biblical command to “welcome the stranger.”

Pope Leo says mutual respect is needed

Leo said he wasn’t familiar with the details of the dispute over the Durbin award, but said it was nevertheless important to look at the senator’s overall record and noted Durbin’s four-decade tenure. Responding to a question in English from the U.S. Catholic broadcaster EWTN News, he said there were many ethical issues that constitute the teaching of the Catholic Church.

“I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them but I would ask first and foremost that there be greater respect for one another and that we search together both as human beings, in that case as American citizens or citizens of the state of Illinois, as well as Catholics to say we need to you know really look closely at all of these ethical issues and to find the way forward in this church. Church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear,” he said.

Cupich was a close adviser to Pope Francis, who strongly upheld church teaching opposing abortion but also criticized the politicizing of the abortion debate by U.S. bishops. Some bishops had called for denying Communion to Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights, including former President Joe Biden.

Biden met on several occasions with Francis and told reporters in 2021 that Francis had told him to continue receiving Communion. During a visit to Rome that year he received the sacrament during Mass at a church in Francis’ diocese.

Durbin was barred from receiving Communion in his home diocese of Springfield in 2004. Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki has continued the prohibition and was one of the U.S. bishops who strongly objected to Cupich’s decision to honor the senator. Cupich claims Durbin as a member of the Chicago Archdiocese, where Durbin also has a home.

Senator Durbin declines his award

In his statement announcing that Durbin would decline the award, Cupich lamented that the polarization in the U.S. has created a situation where U.S. Catholics “find themselves politically homeless” since neither the Republican nor the Democratic party fully encapsulates the breadth of Catholic teaching.

He defended honoring Durbin for his pro-immigration stance, and said the planned Nov. 3 award ceremony could have been an occasion to engage him and other political leaders with the hope of pressing the church’s view on other issues, including abortion.

“It could be an invitation to Catholics who tirelessly promote the dignity of the unborn, the elderly, and the sick to extend the circle of protection to immigrants facing in this present moment an existential threat to their lives and the lives of their families,” Cupich wrote.

Paprocki, for his part, thanked Durbin for declining the award. “I ask that all Catholics continue to pray for our church, our country, and for the human dignity of all people to be respected in all stages of life including the unborn and immigrants,” Paprocki said in a Facebook post.

The dispute came as President Donald Trump’s administration maintains a surge of immigration enforcement in the Chicago area.

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

A California woman is suing Dignity Health, alleging two hospitals denied her emergency abortion services due to their Catholic directives, violating state law and putting her life in danger.

During two separate pregnancies, Rachel Harrison’s water broke at just 17 weeks — a condition that can cause deadly complications. An abortion is typically the course of action recommended by doctors, but on both occasions staff members at Dignity Health hospitals refused to act because they detected a fetal heartbeat, the lawsuit alleges.

The second time it happened, Harrison experienced life-threatening sepsis and had to travel to a hospital outside her insurance network to receive a blood transfusion, the complaint states.

Harrison, 30, and her partner Marcell Johnson filed a lawsuit against Dignity Health in San Francisco Superior Court on Friday. The claim, first reported by Courthouse News Service, alleges that subsidiaries Mercy San Juan Medical Center and Mercy General Hospital refused to provide her emergency abortion care for religious reasons.

The 24 Catholic hospitals within the Dignity Health network follow a set of “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Services,” which caused Harrison to be turned away from an emergency room during the loss of a high-risk pregnancy, the complaint alleges.

“While publicly touting their hospitals’ qualifications as reliable emergency services centers, Dignity Health prioritized its own religious directives over the best interests of Rachel’s health and well-being,” the lawsuit alleges.

Last September the state filed a similar lawsuit against a Catholic hospital in Eureka after a woman whose water broke at 15 weeks was denied an emergency abortion. That hospital then agreed to provide emergency abortions in cases where a woman’s health is at risk.

A spokesperson for Dignity Health did not comment on the specific allegations contained in Harrison’s lawsuit.

“When a pregnant woman’s health is at risk, appropriate emergency care is provided,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The well-being of our patients is the central mission for our dedicated caregivers.”

On Sept. 13, 2024, according to Harrison‘s lawsuit, she experienced a condition called previable preterm premature rupture of the membranes, or previable PPROM, when her water broke at just 17 weeks of pregnancy.

This condition is fatal for the fetus and dangerous for the mother.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the standard of care is to inform the patient that the pregnancy is not viable and recommend termination as the safest option to reduce maternal risk. Miscarrying the fetus naturally comes with higher risk of infection and blood loss, both of which can lead to permanent loss of reproductive function or even death.

Last September, Harrison traveled to Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael for emergency care, but doctors did not recommend an abortion, the complaint alleges.

“Instead, Rachel was told that because of the hospital’s Catholic affiliation, there was nothing more the hospital could do for her,” the complaint states. “Confused and distressed, Rachel was discharged and left to complete a high-risk miscarriage of a fetus ‘the size of an avocado’ — as she was told by the physician’s assistant — at home, on her own, and without medical supervision.”

She went to a Kaiser hospital the following morning and received emergency care, the lawsuit says.

Last December, Harrison was thrilled to learn that she was pregnant again, but then “her worst nightmare” repeated itself. At 17 weeks pregnant, she once again experienced previable PPROM, the complaint states.

Her insurance only covers OB/GYN care within the Dignity Health network, so she went to Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento.

In a repeat of her past experience, her lawsuit alleges, staff members told her they could not provide the care she sought due to the fetal heartbeat. She was able to access care at another hospital, her complaint says, but experienced sepsis and heavy blood loss in the process.

The lawsuit alleges that the denials violated California’s Emergency Services Law, which requires hospitals operating a licensed emergency room to treat patients suffering from emergency medical conditions, including previable PPROM.

Harrison also alleges that Dignity Health violated the Unruh Civil Rights Act, California Unlawful Competition Law and her right to privacy under the California Constitution.

Harrison and her partner are seeking an order requiring Dignity Health hospitals to provide emergency abortions in a manner compliant with state law, as well as compensatory and punitive damages.

CHICAGO — During Donald Trump’s campaign for president last year, he sought to ease the concerns of voters alarmed that the Supreme Court he helped shape during his first term had overturned the constitutional right to abortion, saying that he did not oppose abortion but thought the issue should be decided by individual states.

More than six months into Trump’s second term in the White House, a review by the Associated Press shows that several of his nominees to the federal courts have revealed antiabortion views, been associated with antiabortion groups or defended abortion restrictions.

Several have helped defend their state’s abortion restrictions in court, and some have been involved in cases with national impact, including on access to medication abortion.

The nominees, with lifetime appointments, would be in position to roll back abortion rights long after Trump leaves the White House.

Trump’s shifting positions

Trump has repeatedly shifted his messaging on abortion, often giving contradictory or vague answers.

In the years before the 2024 campaign, Trump had voiced support for a federal ban on abortion on or after 20 weeks in pregnancy and said he might support a national ban around 15 weeks. He later settled on messaging that decisions about abortion access should be left to the states.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has alternated between taking credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe vs. Wade and striking a more neutral tone. That’s been an effort to navigate the political divide between his base of antiabortion supporters and the broader public, which largely supports access to abortion.

Nominees’ views

One Trump nominee called abortion a “barbaric practice,” while another referred to himself as a “zealot” for the antiabortion movement. A nominee from Tennessee said abortion deserves special scrutiny because “this is the only medical procedure that terminates a life.”

One from Missouri spread misinformation about medication abortion, including that it “starves the baby to death in the womb” in a lawsuit aiming to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.

Legal experts and abortion rights advocates warn of a methodical remaking of the federal courts in a way that could pose enduring threats to abortion access nationwide.

Bernadette Meyler, a professor of constitutional law at Stanford University, said judicial appointments “are a way of federally shaping the abortion question without going through Congress or making a big, explicit statement.”

“It’s a way to cover up a little bit what is happening in the abortion sphere compared to legislation or executive orders that may be more visible, dramatic and spark more backlash,” she said.

White House’s position

Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson, said that “every nominee of the President represents his promises to the American people and aligns with the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling.”

“The Democrats’ extreme position on abortion was rejected in November in favor of President Trump’s commonsense approach, which allows states to decide, supports the sanctity of human life, and prevents taxpayer funding of abortion,” Fields said in a statement to the AP.

Trump focused primarily on the economy and immigration during his 2024 campaign, the issues that surveys showed were the most important topics for voters.

Views across the abortion divide

Antiabortion advocates say it’s premature to determine whether the nominees will support their objectives, but they’re hopeful based on the names put forth so far.

“We look forward to four more years of nominees cut from that mold,” said Katie Glenn Daniel, director of legal affairs for the national antiabortion organization SBA Pro-Life America.

Abortion-rights advocates said Trump is embedding abortion opponents into the judiciary one judge at a time.

“This just feeds into this larger strategy where Trump has gotten away with distancing himself from abortion, saying he’s going to leave it to the states, while simultaneously appointing antiabortion extremists at all levels of government,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of the national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly known as NARAL Pro-Choice America,

Fernando writes for the Associated Press.

California and a coalition of other liberal-led states sued the Trump administration Tuesday over a provision in the “Big Beautiful Bill” that bars Planned Parenthood and other large nonprofit abortion providers from receiving Medicaid funding for a host of unrelated healthcare services.

The measure has threatened clinics across the country that rely on federal funding to operate. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who is helping to lead the litigation, called it a “cruel, backdoor abortion ban” that violates the law in multiple ways.

The states’ challenge comes one day after Planned Parenthood won a major victory in its own lawsuit over the measure in Boston, where a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the ban from taking effect against Planned Parenthood affiliates nationwide.

Federal law already prohibits the use of federal Medicaid funding to pay for abortions, but the new “defund provision” in the bill passed by congressional Republicans earlier this month goes further. It also bars nonprofit abortion providers that generated $800,000 or more in annual Medicaid revenue in 2023 from receiving any such funding for the next year — including for services unrelated to abortion, such as annual checkups, cancer screenings, birth control and testing for sexually transmitted infections.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice have argued that the measure “stops federal subsidies for Big Abortion,” that Congress under the constitution is “free to decline to provide taxpayer funds to entities that provide abortions,” and that Planned Parenthood’s position should not hold sway over that of Congress.

In announcing the states’ lawsuit Monday, Bonta’s office echoed Planned Parenthood officials in asserting that the provision specifically and illegally targets Planned Parenthood and its affiliate clinics — calling it “a direct attack on the healthcare access of millions of low-income Americans, disproportionally affecting women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and communities of color.”

Bonta’s office said the measure threatened $300 million in federal funding for clinics in California, where Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider, and “jeopardized the stability” of Planned Parenthood’s 114 clinics across the state, which serve about 700,000 patients annually — many of whom use Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid.

During a virtual news conference Monday, Bonta noted that federal funds already don’t cover abortions. He said the new provision was “punishment for Planned Parenthood’s constitutionally protected advocacy for abortion” and “a direct attack on access to essential healthcare for millions who rely on Medicaid.”

“The Trump administration and Congress are actually gutting essential lifesaving care, like cancer screenings and STI testing, simply because Planned Parenthood has spoken out in support of reproductive rights,” Bonta said. “The hypocrisy is really hard to ignore. A party that claims to be defenders of free speech only seem to care about it when it aligns with their own agenda.”

Bonta added: “Rest assured, California will continue to lead as a reproductive freedom state, and will continue to defend healthcare as a human right.”

In their lawsuit, the states argue that the measure is unlawfully ambiguous and violates the spending powers of Congress by singling out Planned Parenthood for negative treatment, and that it will harm people’s health and increase the cost of Medicaid programs for states by more than $50 million over the next decade.

In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood also argued that the measure intentionally singled it and its affiliates out for punishment, in violation of their constitutional rights, including free speech.

In granting Planned Parenthood’s request for a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote Monday that she was “not enjoining the federal government from regulating abortion and is not directing the federal government to fund elective abortions or any healthcare service not otherwise eligible for Medicaid coverage.”

Talwani, an Obama appointee, wrote that she also was not requiring the federal government “to spend money not already appropriated for Medicaid or any other funds.”

Instead, Talwani wrote, her order blocks the Trump administration from “targeting a specific group of entities — Planned Parenthood Federation members — for exclusion from reimbursements under the Medicaid program,” as they were likely to prove that “such targeted exclusion violates the United States Constitution.”

In a statement to The Times on Tuesday, White House spokesman Harrison Fields said the “Big, Beautiful Bill” was “legally passed by both chambers of the Legislative Branch and signed into law by the Chief Executive,” and Talwani’s order granting the injunction was “not only absurd but illogical and incorrect.”

“It is orders like these that underscore the audacity of the lower courts as well as the chaos within the judicial branch. We look forward to ultimate victory on the issue,” Fields said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment on the states’ lawsuit.

Jodi Hicks, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, joined Bonta during his news conference. She welcomed the states’ lawsuit, saying “an attack this severe requires a multi-pronged response with both short and long term strategies.”

Hicks said it’s particularly important that California is helping to fight back, given the huge stakes for the state.

“California is the most impacted state across the country because of the volume of patients that we have, but also because of the amount of Medicaid that our state takes,” she said. “It speaks to our values. And this defund provision is certainly [an] attack on values — most heavily on California.”

Bonta is leading the lawsuit along with the attorneys general of Connecticut and New York. Joining them are Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and the attorneys general of Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.

Bonta noted the lawsuit is the 36th his office has filed against the Trump administration in the last 27 weeks.

MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority struck down the state’s 176-year-old abortion ban on Wednesday, ruling 4-3 that it was superseded by newer state laws regulating the procedure, including statutes that criminalize abortions only after a fetus can survive outside the womb.

The ruling came as no surprise given that liberal justices control the court. One of them went so far as promising to uphold abortion rights during her campaign two years ago, and they blasted the ban during oral arguments in November.

The statute Wisconsin legislators adopted in 1849, widely interpreted as a near-total ban on abortions, made it a felony for anyone other than the mother or a doctor in a medical emergency to destroy “an unborn child.”

The ban was in effect until 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide nullified it. Legislators never officially repealed it, however, and conservatives argued that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe reactivated it.

Wisconsin Atty. Gen. Josh Kaul, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit that year arguing that abortion restrictions Republican legislators enacted during the nearly half-century that Roe was in effect trumped the ban. Kaul specifically cited a 1985 law that essentially permits abortions until viability. Some babies can survive with medical help after 21 weeks of gestation.

Lawmakers also enacted abortion restrictions under Roe requiring women undergo ultrasounds, wait 24 hours before having the procedure and provide written consent, and receive abortion-inducing drugs only from doctors during an in-person visit.

“That comprehensive legislation so thoroughly covers the entire subject of abortion that it was clearly meant as a substitute for the 19th century near-total ban on abortion,” Justice Rebeca Dallet wrote for the majority.

Sheboygan County Dist. Atty. Joel Urmanski, a Republican, defended the ban in court, arguing that it can coexist with the newer abortion restrictions.

Dane County Circuit Judge Diane Schlipper ruled in 2023 that the 1849 ban outlaws feticide — which she defined as the killing of a fetus without the mother’s consent — but not consensual abortions. Abortions have been available in the state since that ruling, but the state Supreme Court decision gives providers and patients more certainty that abortions will remain legal in Wisconsin.

Urmanski had asked the state Supreme Court to overturn Schlipper’s ruling without waiting for a decision from a lower appellate court.

The liberal justices all but telegraphed how they would rule. Justice Janet Protasiewicz stated on the campaign trail that she supports abortion rights. During oral arguments, Dallet declared that the ban was authored by white men who held all the power in the 19th century. Justice Jill Karofsky likened the ban to a “death warrant” for women and children who need medical care.

A solid majority of Wisconsin voters in the 2024 election, 62%, said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to AP VoteCast. About one-third said abortion should be illegal in most cases, and only 5% said it should be illegal in all cases.

In a dissent, Justice Annette Ziegler called the ruling “a jaw-dropping exercise of judicial will.” She said the liberal justices caved in to their Democratic constituencies.

“Put bluntly, our court has no business usurping the role of the legislature, inventing legal theories on the fly in order to make four justices’ personal preference the law,” Ziegler said.

Urmanski’s attorney, Andrew Phillips, didn’t respond to an email. Kaul told reporters during a news conference that the ruling is a “major victory” for reproductive rights.

Heather Weininger, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life, called the ruling “deeply disappointing.” She said that the liberals failed to point to any statute that explicitly repealed the 1849 ban.

“To assert that a repeal is implied is to legislate from the bench,” she said.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin asked the Supreme Court in February 2024 to decide whether the ban was constitutional. The court dismissed that case with no explanation Wednesday.

Michelle Velasquez, chief strategy officer for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said Wednesday’s ruling creates stability for abortion providers and patients, but she was disappointed that the justices dismissed the constitutional challenge. She hinted that the organization might look next to challenge the state’s remaining abortion restrictions.

Kaul said he has no plans to challenge the remaining restrictions, saying the Legislature should instead revisit abortion policy.

Democratic-backed Susan Crawford defeated conservative Brad Schimel for an open seat on the court in April, ensuring liberals will maintain their 4-3 edge until at least 2028. Crawford has not been sworn in yet and was not part of Wednesday’s ruling.

Richmond writes for the Associated Press.

July 2 (UPI) — Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a ruling that invalidated an 1849 state law banning nearly all abortions and said Wisconsin women will continue to have access to critical abortion-related health services.

The 4-3 ruling by the Democratic-controlled state supreme court upheld a December 2023 decision by Dane County Judge Diane Schlipper in Kaul v. Urmanski that says Wisconsin’s strict abortion law did not apply to voluntary abortions, but did to feticide.

Justice Rebecca Dallet argued in the court’s majority opinion that the state effectively repealed its own 176-year-old law when lawmakers passed additional laws that regulated abortion access in Wisconsin, which was backed up in the lawsuit by state Attorney General Josh Kaul.

Dallet said the case was about “giving effect to 50 years’ worth of laws passed by the legislature about virtually every aspect of abortion, including where, when, and how healthcare providers may lawfully perform abortions.”

But she added that the state’s legislature, “as the people’s representatives, remains free to change the laws with respect to abortion in the future.

Then-Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, later appointed as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2001-2005 under former President George W. Bush, told UPI in 1990 that he would sign a bill that mandates minors seek parental consent for an abortion.

But Wednesday’s ruling by the state’s high court now ends statewide uncertainty over the issue after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling struck down the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a woman’s constitutional right to abortion.

However, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of its conservative minority, was critical of the court’s majority opinion.

On Wednesday, Bradley wrote that her colleagues erased “a law it does not like, making four lawyers sitting on the state’s highest court more powerful than the People’s representatives in the legislature.”

Notably, this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race saw national attention when then-White House DOGE adviser Elon Musk drew the ire of Kaul, the state’s chief law enforcement officer, after Musk directly got involved in a push to elect conservative Brad Schimel in the court race Musk said had the “destiny of humanity” at stake.

“Any remaining doubt over whether the majority’s decisions are motivated by the policy predilections of its members has been extinguished by its feeble attempt to justify a raw exercise of political power,” stated Bradley.

“The majority not only does violence to a single statute; it defies the People’s sovereignty,” she wrote.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court term that ended Friday will not be remembered for blockbuster rulings like those recent years that struck down the right to abortion and college affirmative action.

The justices scaled back their docket this year and spent much of their energy focused on deciding fast-track appeals from President Trump. His administration’s lawyers complained too many judges were standing in the way of Trump’s agenda.

On Friday, the court’s conservatives agreed to rein in district judges, a procedural victory for Trump.

What’s been missing so far, however, is a clear ruling on whether the president has abided by the law or overstepped his authority under the U.S. Constitution.

On the final two days of the term, the court’s conservative majority provided big wins for Republican-leaning states, religious parents and Trump.

The justices gave states more authority to prohibit medical treatments for transgender teens, to deny Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood clinics and to enforce age-verification laws for online porn sites.

Each came with the familiar 6-3 split, with the Republican appointees siding with the GOP-led states, while the Democratic appointees dissented.

These rulings, while significant, were something short of nationwide landmark decisions — celebrated victories for the Republican half of the nation but having no direct or immediate effect on Democratic-led states.

California lawmakers are not likely to pass measures to restrict gender-affirming care or to prohibit women on Medicaid from obtaining birth control, pregnancy testing or medical screenings at a Planned Parenthood clinic.

The new decisions echoed the Dobbs ruling three years ago that struck down Roe vs. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion.

As the conservative justices noted, the decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health did not outlaw abortion nationwide. However, it did allow conservative states to do so. Since then, 17 Republican-led states in the South and Midwest have adopted new laws to prohibit most or all abortions.

On this front, the court’s decisions reflect a “federalism,” or states-rights style of conservatism, that was dominant in decades past under President Reagan and two of the court’s conservative leaders, Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Both were Arizona Republicans (and in O’Connor’s case, a former state legislator) who came to the court with that view that Washington holds too much power and wields too much control over states and local governments.

With the nation sharply divided along partisan lines, today’s conservative court could be praised or defended for freeing states to make different choices on the “culture wars.”

The other big winner so far this year has been Trump and his broad claims of executive power.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has asserted he has total authority to run federal agencies, cut their spending and fire most of their employees, all without the approval of Congress, which created and funded the agencies.

He has also claimed the authority to impose tariffs of any amount on any country and also change his mind a few days later.

He has dispatched National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles against the wishes of the governor and the mayor.

He has asserted he can punish universities and law firms.

He has claimed he can revise by executive order the 14th Amendment and its birthright citizenship clause.

So far, the Supreme Court has not ruled squarely on Trump’s broad assertions of power. But the justices have granted a series of emergency appeals from Trump’s lawyers and set aside lower court orders that blocked his initiatives from taking effect.

The theme has been that judges are out of line, not the president.

Friday’s ruling limiting nationwide injunctions set out that view in a 26-page opinion. The conservatives agreed that some judges have overstepped their authority by ruling broadly based on a single lawsuit.

The justices have yet to rule on whether the president has overstepped his power.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett summed up the dispute in a revealing comment responding to a dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,” she wrote.

Missing from all this is the earlier strain of conservatism that opposed concentrated power in Washington — and in this instance, in one person.

Last year offered a hint of what was to come. A year ago, the court ended its term by declaring the president is immune from being prosecuted for his official acts while in the White House.

That decision, in Trump vs. United States, shielded the former and soon-to-be president from the criminal law.

The Constitution does not mention any such immunity for ex-presidents charged with crimes, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said a shield of immunity was necessary to “enable the the President to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution.”

Since returning to the White House, Trump has not been accused of exercising “undue caution.”

Instead, he appears to have viewed the court’s opinion as confirming his unchecked power as the nation’s chief executive. Trump advisors say that because the president was elected, he has a mandate and the authority to put his priorities and policies into effect.

But the Supreme Court’s conservatives did not take that view when President Biden took office promising to take action on climate change and to reduce the burden of student loan debt.

In both areas, the Roberts court ruled that the Biden administration had exceeded its authority under the laws passed by Congress.

Away from Washington, the most significant decision from this term may be Friday’s ruling empowering parents.

The six justices on the right ruled parents have a right to remove their children from certain public school classes that offend their religious beliefs. They objected to new storybooks and lessons for young children with LGBTQ+ themes.

In recent years, the court, led by Roberts, has championed the “free exercise” of religion that is protected by the 1st Amendment. In a series of decisions, the court has exempted Catholic schools and charities from laws or regulations on, for example, providing contraceptives to employees.

Friday’s ruling in a Maryland case extended that religious liberty right into the schools and ruled for Muslim and Catholic parents who objected to new LGBTQ+-themed storybooks.

At first, the school board said parents could have their young children “opt out” of those classes. But when too many parents took the offer, the school board rescinded it.

The clash between progressive educators and conservative parents reached the court when the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty appealed on behalf of the parents.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the parents believed the books and stories offended their religious beliefs, and he ordered school authorities to “to notify them in advance whenever one of the books in question is to be used … and allow them to have their children excused from that instruction.”

This decision may have a broader impact than any from this term because it empowers parents nationwide. But it too has limits. It does not require the schools to change their curriculum and their lessons or remove any books from the shelves.

The conservatives fell one vote short in a case that could have brought about a far-reaching change in American schools. Split 4 to 4, the justices could not rule to uphold the nation’s first publicly funded, church-run charter school.

In the past, Roberts had voted to allow students to use state tuition grants in religious schools, but he appeared uncertain about using tax money to operate a church-run school.

But that question is almost certain to return to the court. Barrett stepped aside from the Oklahoma case heard in April because friends and former colleagues at the Notre Dame Law School had filed the appeal. But in a future case, she could participate and cast a deciding vote.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that states may exclude Planned Parenthood clinics from providing medical screenings and other healthcare for women on Medicaid.

The court’s conservative majority reversed the longstanding rule that said Medicaid patients may obtain medical care from any qualified provider.

In a 6-3 vote, the justices ruled the Medicaid Act does not give patients an “individual right” to the provider of their choice.

The dispute has turned on abortion. Medicaid is funded by the federal government and the states. For decades, conservative states have argued their funds should not be used in Planned Parenthood clinics because some of those clinics perform abortions.

But until now, the federal government and the courts had said that Medicaid patients can go to any qualified provider for healthcare.

In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the decision “will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them. And, more concretely, it will strip those South Carolinians — and countless other Medicaid recipients around the country — of a deeply personal freedom: the ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable.” Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan agreed.

Planned Parenthood clinics provide cancer screenings, birth control medical screenings, pregnancy testing, contraception and other healthcare services.

Congress pays most of the state’s costs for Medicaid, and it says “any individual eligible for medical assistance” may receive care from any provider who is “qualified to perform the service.”

Lupe Rodríguez, executive director of National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, called the decision “an attack on our healthcare and our freedom to make our own decisions about our bodies and lives. By allowing states to block Medicaid patients from getting care at Planned Parenthood health centers, the Court has chosen politics over people and cruelty over compassion.”

Three years ago, the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade and ruled states may prohibit nearly all abortions.

Nonetheless, South Carolina continued its legal fight to prevent Medicaid patients from receiving care at Planned Parenthood’s clinics in Charleston and Columbia.

Former Gov. Henry McMaster, who issued the ban on Planned Parenthood in 2018, said he did so to protect “his state’s sovereign interests.”

Critics of the move said the state has a severe shortage of doctors and medical personnel who treat low-income patients on Medicaid.

The series: “Ginny & Georgia.”

The setting: A women’s healthcare clinic.

The scene: Ginny, 16, is carrying an unwanted pregnancy. She’s seeking an abortion. During a preconsultation, a clinic provider asks if she needs more time to decide. No, says the teen, she’s sure.

There’s no proverbial wringing of hands around the character’s decision. No apologizing for her choice. Why? Because it’s not for us to judge. It’s a personal matter, despite all the politicization around reproductive rights that might have us believe otherwise.

Opinions, debates and legislative fights around abortion have raged since Roe vs. Wade was adjudicated by the Supreme Court in 1973, then overturned in 2022. It’s no secret why such a lightning-rod issue is rarely touched by series television. Alienating half the country is bad for ratings. Exceptions include breakthrough moments on shows such as “Maude,” “The Facts of Life” and “Jane the Virgin,” but even those episodes were careful to weigh the sensitivity of the political climate over a transparent depiction of their character’s motivations and experience.

Another pitfall is that subplots featuring abortion storylines are hard to pull off without feeling like a break from scheduled programming for an antiabortion or pro-abortion-rights PSA, or worse, a pointless exercise in bothsidesism.

Season 3 of Netflix dramedy “Ginny & Georgia” dares to go there, unapologetically making the political personal inside a fun, wily and addictive family saga. The series, the streamer’s No. 1 show since it returned two weeks ago, skillfully delivers an intimate narrative that defies judgment and the fear of being judged.

The hourlong series, which launched in 2021, follows single mom Georgia Miller (Brianne Howey), her angsty teenage daughter Ginny (Antonia Gentry) and her young son Austin (Diesel La Torraca). This formerly nomadic trio struggles to forge a “normal” life in the fictional Boston suburb of Wellsbury.

Flamboyant, fast-talking Southerner Georgia stands out among the fussy, provincial New England set. Born in Alabama to drug-addicted parents, she fled her abusive upbringing as a teenager. Homeless, she met Zion (played as an adult by Nathan Mitchell), a college-bound student from a good family. Soon into their relationship, she fell pregnant, giving birth to their daughter Ginny, kicking off a life on the run and in service of protecting her children.

Georgia (Brianne Howey), left, had Ginny as a teenager, and history appears to repeat itself in Season 3 of the show.

(Amanda Matlovich / Netflix)

Now in her 30s, the blond bombshell has relied on her beauty, innate smarts and countless grifts to endure poverty and keep her family intact. The hardscrabble lifestyle has made Ginny wise beyond her years, though she’s not immune to mercurial teen mood swings and the sophomoric drama of high school.

But history appears to repeat itself when Ginny becomes pregnant after having sex just once with a fellow student from her extracurricular poetry class. Overwhelmed, he’s the first person she tells about their dilemma. “That’s wild,” he responds idiotically, before abruptly taking off, leaving her to deal with the pregnancy on her own.

Episode 7 largely revolves around Ginny’s decision to have an abortion, a thoughtfully paced subplot that breaks from the perpetual chaos and deadly secrets permeating the Millers’ universe.

Ginny is painfully aware that she is the product of an unwanted pregnancy and her mother’s choice not to have an abortion. Georgia has repeatedly said her kids are the best thing that ever happened to her. But when counseling her distraught daughter, Georgia says the choice is Ginny’s to make, and no one else’s.

Here’s where “Ginny & Georgia” might have launched into a didactic, pro-abortion-rights lecture cloaked in a TV drama, or played it safe by pulling back and highlighting both women’s stories in equal measure.

Instead it chose to bring viewers in close, following Ginny’s singular experience from her initial shame and panic, to moving conversations with her mom, to that frank counseling session at the women’s health center where she made it quite clear she was not ready to be a mother. We watched her take the medication, then experience what followed: painful cramping, pangs of guilt, waves of relief and the realization she now bore a new, lifelong emotional scar that wasn’t caused by her mother.

By sticking to Ginny’s intimate story, through her perspective, the series delivers a story that is hers and hers alone, partisan opinions be damned.

“Ginny & Georgia” has offered up many surprises over its three seasons. Georgia has emerged one of the more entertaining, cunning and inventive antiheroes of the 2020s. As such, she attracts men in droves, schemes a la Walter White and doesn’t believe in therapy: “We don’t do that in the South. We shoot things and eat butter.”

But therapy might be a good idea given Season 3’s cliffhanger ending: another accidental pregnancy.

The amendment comes after police investigated more than 100 women, including some who had natural miscarriages.

British parliamentarians have voted to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales after concerns sparked by the prosecution of women who end a pregnancy.

The House of Commons approved an amendment to a broader bill on Tuesday that would prevent women from being criminally punished under an antiquated law.

Currently, a woman can face criminal charges for choosing to end a pregnancy after 24 weeks or without the approval of two doctors, under laws that technically still carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The amendment passed 379-137. The House of Commons will now need to pass the crime bill, which is expected, before it goes to the House of Lords, where it can be delayed but not blocked.

Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, the Labour member of Parliament who introduced one of the amendments, said the change was needed because police have investigated more than 100 women for suspected illegal abortions over the past five years, including some who suffered natural miscarriages and stillbirths.

“This piece of legislation will only take women out of the criminal justice system because they are vulnerable and they need our help,” she said. “Just what public interest is this serving? This is not justice, it is cruelty and it has got to end.”

Changes in the law implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic allow women to receive abortion pills through the mail and terminate their own pregnancies at home within the first 10 weeks.

That has led to a handful of widely publicised cases in which women were prosecuted for illegally obtaining abortion pills and using them to end their own pregnancies after 24 weeks.

In May, Nicola Packer was acquitted after taking abortion medicine when she was around 26 weeks pregnant, beyond the legal limit of 10 weeks for taking such medication at home.

The 45-year-old told jurors during her trial, which came after a four-year police investigation, that she did not realise she had been pregnant for so long.

Carla Foster was jailed in 2023 for illegally obtaining abortion tablets to end her pregnancy when she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant. The Court of Appeal eventually suspended her sentence.

WASHINGTON — President Bush, reaffirming his support for the anti-abortion movement, told an estimated 200,000 abortion foes gathered under a hot, cloudless sky in the nation’s capital Saturday that their mission “must be to help more and more Americans make the right choice–the choice for life.”

In a brief telephone address broadcast to the crowd over loudspeakers, Bush predicted that “one day, your life-saving message will have reached and influenced every American.” The President urged abortion opponents to “continue to work for the day when respect for human life is sacrosanct and beyond question.”

He added: “I know from your devotion and selflessness that this day cannot be far away.”

With the temperature hovering near 90 degrees, demonstrators spread blankets on the grass, sunbathed and ate picnic lunches in the shadow of the Washington Monument while waiting to hear Bush and to catch a glimpse of Vice President Dan Quayle, who spoke to them in person.

Many wore anti-abortion T-shirts and carried placards reading: “Stop Abortion Now,” “Let My People Grow,” and “Killing Should Never Be a Personal Choice.”

Their numbers far exceeded the estimated 75,000 to 100,000 people who came for the 17th annual March for Life last January, and for a time threatened to rival the 300,000 who attended an abortion rights rally here last year.

Officials from the National Right to Life Committee, which sponsored the rally, said the event was intended to show the strength of their cause, despite a series of recent setbacks suffered at the state level.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could impose restrictions on abortion. The decision, Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services, galvanized the abortion rights movement to work on behalf of candidates who share their views and to defeat attempts by state legislatures to curtail abortion.

The latest blow to the anti-abortion movement came Friday, when the Connecticut state Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill to ensure a woman’s right to an abortion even if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision guaranteeing that right. The Connecticut House already has passed the measure, and Gov. William A. O’Neill has promised to sign it.

Bush spoke to the demonstrators from the White House after returning from a five-hour fishing expedition on the Potomac River, where he caught several largemouth bass.

The President made no mention of proposals favored by many abortion foes to add a “human life” amendment to the Constitution. Nor did he refer to the possibility of the Supreme Court overturning its Roe vs. Wade ruling.

The Administration, confronted with a growing division within the Republican Party over its position on abortion, has emphasized its willingness in recent months to accommodate all points of view on the issue.

“In January of this year, I addressed the March for Life on this very issue,” Bush said. “And I said then, and reaffirm now, that your presence on the Mall today reminds all of us in government that Americans from all walks of life are committed to preserving the sanctity and dignity of human life.”

He called the widespread availability of abortion “a tragedy, not only in terms of lives destroyed, but because it so fundamentally contradicts the values that we as a nation hold dear. And when I look at adopted children, I give thanks that their parents chose life.”

Quayle, too, called the prevalence of abortion a “national tragedy.” But he seemed to take a less hard-line approach than he has in the past.

Quayle said that a majority of Americans oppose abortion on demand. “They may disagree about how best to turn the situation around, but almost all stand together against the terrible reality of unlimited abortion on demand,” he said.

Quayle said that “none of us, woman or man, can presume to judge those faced with a problem pregnancy.” But, he added, “the loss of some 25 million children in total to abortion since 1973 has been unspeakable.”

“It is as if we were shooting out the stars, one by one, preparing for ourselves an unending night of the most fearful darkness,” he continued. “You have been voices against the night . . . “

Referring to the growing dispute within GOP ranks–in which some Republican officials have said the GOP “tent” is large enough to include all views on abortion–Quayle said that abortion opponents make up “the largest coalition–I might add, the biggest tent–in American politics.”

Quayle said that Saturday’s demonstration could “begin a healing of the terrible wound which, for almost two decades, has torn at our country’s heart.”

Saying the anti-abortion movement was “more important than partisanship, and surely more important than personal advancement,” Quayle described it as “ the humanitarian movement of our time.”

He added: “Will the American people continue to accept the notion that unborn children are disposable?”

To shouts of “No” from the crowd, he responded: “Our answer is: Not in this country. Not now. Not ever.”

Olivia Gans, the rally director, told the demonstrators that the anti-abortion movement was not faltering, but gaining momentum.

“We are not losing,” she said. “We are winning. We are winning throughout the United States, despite what we hear and what we read. We are winning despite what (National Organization for Women president) Molly Yard has to say. And who listens to Molly Yard anyway?”

Meanwhile, in Portland, Ore., Yard spoke to a rally of about 2,000 people who had gathered to express their opposition to two proposed state laws that would restrict abortion rights. She reiterated that the anti-abortion movement was losing force across the country.

“(They) have lost in virtually every state legislature and they are losing in the elections across the country, and we expect them to lose heavily” in the November, 1990, elections, she said.

Many of the demonstrators in Washington said they traveled by bus, car and airplane from all over the country to show their support for an end to abortion.

“There’s really more people here than I could have imagined,” said James Davis, a paint factory production planner who drove 10 hours nonstop from Lancaster, Ky., with his wife and two children.

“Our prayers are being answered,” added his wife, Dora Sue.

Roger Bus, a lawyer from Kalamazoo, Mich., called the anti-abortion movement “more powerful than it’s ever been.”

And Carol Kraft, a bakery clerk from Emporia, Kan., said this was the first time she had attended an anti-abortion rally in Washington.

“I came because I want to take a stand for life,” she said. “I love life.”

In Southern California, a crowd of abortion opponents estimated by police at 8,300 made a human chain in the form of a cross along the streets of Van Nuys to coincide with the Washington demonstration. Police characterized the two-hour demonstration as peaceful.

“We wanted to send a clear message to politicians that there are many, many people out there who are opposed to abortion,” said Laura Gillen, an organizer of the event.

Organizers included Operation Rescue, the Right to Life League and more than 200 churches from San Diego to Bakersfield.

Participants, who formed the cross along Sherman Way and Van Nuys Boulevard, waved blue-and-white signs in English and Spanish reading “Abortion Kills Children.”

A small group of abortion rights activists carrying their own signs briefly disrupted the demonstration. Barri Falk, coordinator of the San Fernando Valley Chapter of the National Organization for Women, waved a sign that said “Honk for Choice.”

“We’re out here to show our support for life, too,” Falk said. “They want to oppress both men and women.”

Staff writer Mayerene Barker in Van Nuys contributed to this story.

California and three other states petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Thursday to ease its new restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone, citing the drug’s proven safety record and arguing the new limits are unnecessary.

“The medication is a lifeline for millions of women who need access to time-sensitive, critical healthcare — especially low-income women and those who live in rural and underserved areas,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who filed the petition alongside the attorneys general of Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey.

The petition cites Senate testimony by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month, in which Kennedy said he had ordered FDA administrator Martin Makary to conduct a “complete review” of mifepristone and its labeling requirements.

The drug, which can be received by mail, has been on the U.S. market for 25 years and taken safely by millions of Americans, according to experts. It is the most common method of terminating a pregnancy in the U.S., with its use surging after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022.

The Supreme Court upheld access to the drug for early pregnancies under previous FDA regulations last year, but it has remained a target of anti-abortion conservatives. The Trump administration has given Kennedy broad rein to shake up American medicine under his “Make America Healthy Again” banner, and Kennedy has swiftly rankled medical experts by using dubious science — and even fake citations — to question vaccine regimens and research and other longstanding public health measures.

At the Senate hearing, Kennedy cited “new data” from a flawed report pushed by anti-abortion groups — and not published in any peer-reviewed journal — to question the safety of mifepristone, calling the report “alarming.”

“Clearly, it indicates that, at very least, the label should be changed,” Kennedy said.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Monday posted a letter from Makary to X, in which Makary wrote that he was “committed to conducting a review of mifepristone” alongside “the professional career scientists” at the FDA.

Makary said he could not provide additional information given ongoing litigation around the drug.

The states, in their 54-page petition, wrote that “no new scientific data has emerged since the FDA’s last regulatory actions that would alter the conclusion that mifepristone remains exceptionally safe and effective,” and that studies “that have frequently been cited to undermine mifepristone’s extensive safety record have been widely criticized, retracted, or both.”

Democrats have derided Kennedy’s efforts to reclassify mifepristone as politically motivated and baseless.

“This is yet another attack on women’s reproductive freedom and scientifically-reviewed health care,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said the day after Kennedy’s Senate testimony. “California will continue to protect every person’s right to make their own medical decisions and help ensure that Mifepristone is available to those who need it.”

Bonta said Thursday that mifepristone’s placement under the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy program for drugs with known, serious side effects — or REMS — was “medically unjustified,” unduly burdened patient access and placed “undue strain on the nation’s entire health system.”

He said mifepristone “allows people to get reproductive care as early as possible when it is safest, least expensive, and least invasive,” is “so safe that it presents lower risks of serious complications than taking Tylenol,” and that its long safety record “is backed by science and cannot be erased at the whim of the Trump Administration.”

The FDA has previously said that fewer than 0.5% of women who take the drug experience “serious adverse reactions,” and deaths are exceedingly rare.

The REMS program requires prescribers to add their names to national and local abortion provider lists, which can be a deterrent for doctors given safety threats, and pharmacies to comply with complex tracking, shipping and reporting requirements, which can be a deterrent to carrying the drug, Bonta said.

It also requires patients to sign forms in which they attest to wanting to “end [their] pregnancy,” which Bonta said can be a deterrent for women using the drug after a miscarriage — one of its common uses — or for those in states pursuing criminal penalties for women seeking certain abortion care.

Under federal law, REMS requirements must address a specific risk posed by a drug and cannot be “unduly burdensome” on patients, and the new application to mifepristone “fails to meet that standard,” Bonta said.

The states’ petition is not a lawsuit, but a regulatory request for the FDA to reverse course, the states said.

If the FDA will not do so nationwide, the four petitioning states asked that it “exercise its discretion to not enforce the requirements” in their states, which Bonta’s office said already have “robust state laws that ensure safe prescribing, rigorous informed consent, and professional accountability.”

June 4 (UPI) — Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary said he plans to review the safety of abortion drug mifepristone after a recent study raised concerns about medical side effects.

In a letter to Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Makary revealed the FDA’s plan on Monday to review the abortion pill after Hawley alerted the commissioner to the study.

“As the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, I am committed to conducting a review of mifepristone and working with the professional career scientists at the agency who review this data,” Makary wrote.

“As with all drugs, FDA continues to closely monitor the postmarketing safety data on mifepristone for the medical termination of early pregnancy,” Makary added.

Hawley referred the FDA commissioner to the recent study, from the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which found 11% of women experienced sepsis, infection or hemorrhaging within 45 days of taking the pill.

While Hawley said that information is listed as a side effect for mifepristone, the numbers are 22 times greater than the label warns. The study was based on insurance claims for 865,727 mifepristone abortions between 2017 and 2023.

“I’m calling on the FDA to reinstate safety regulations on the chemical abortion drug immediately. New data out today show a massive number of severe medical side effects,” Hawley said in April. “The time to act is now.”

Makary told senators during his confirmation hearing in March that he would oversee a review of mifepristone, but did not order it until Hawley alerted him to the EPPC study. The FDA commissioner did express concerns earlier this year about the Biden administration’s policy, which allowed women to access abortion drugs without making in-person appointments.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, saying the pro-life doctors who brought the case lacked standing. The court said the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine failed to prove they suffered any harm from the FDA’s policies.

President Donald Trump, who supported the Supreme Court’s decision, was also urged by Hawley to order a mifepristone review over the EPPC’s findings.

Reporting from Washington — Judge Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday defended his broad view of gun rights and skepticism of federal regulatory agencies, but left uncertain his position on abortion and refused to detail his views on executive power, including whether a president can be ordered to answer questions in a criminal investigation.

Facing senators during a second day of his confirmation hearing that began in the morning and stretched well into the night, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee proved adept at giving lengthy answers without fully revealing his views on matters of controversy.

“You’re learning to filibuster,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told him when he steered around her question on whether the president is shielded from being investigated or questioned while in office.

As the evening wore on, none of the exchanges seemed to have changed the vote count in favor of Kavanaugh’s narrow confirmation. At only one point during the hearing — faced with questions about his knowledge of emails allegedly stolen from Democratic senators during the George W. Bush administration — did the otherwise well-prepared nominee appear flustered.

On presidential power, in particular, Kavanaugh seemed to come armed with a well-honed set of responses to questions about his previous writings.

In law review articles in 1998 and 2009, Kavanaugh said the president “should be excused from some of the burdens of ordinary citizenship while serving in office” and should not be subject to investigations or questioning. The “Constitution seems to dictate” that Congress, not a special prosecutor, should investigate a president for lawbreaking, he wrote.

But when pressed repeatedly by Democrats on Wednesday, Kavanaugh contended that he has never taken a position on whether the Constitution allows for indicting or investigating a sitting president for criminal wrongdoing. He did say a president could be tried and convicted after leaving office, whether at the end of a term or because of impeachment.

“I don’t think anyone thinks of immunity” for a president, he said.

The issue has taken on new significance because Trump is caught up in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and could be called to answer questions from a grand jury.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), joining other Republicans in trying to help the nominee articulate his views, asked Kavanaugh “whether you have any trouble ruling against a president who appointed you.”

“You’re correct. No one is above the law in our constitutional system,” Kavanaugh said. “The executive branch is subject to the law, subject to the court system.”

Kavanaugh passed up a chance to show his independence from Trump when Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) asked him whether he thought it was appropriate for the president to attack Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions for his prosecutors’ indictments of two GOP congressmen — Reps. Chris Collins of New York and Duncan Hunter of Alpine — ahead of the November election. Trump said it might endanger their reelection, ignoring the serious criminal charges against the men. Kavanaugh declined to offer his opinion. He also rebuffed a request from one Democratic senator that he recuse himself from any future cases involving the Mueller investigation of Trump and his campaign.

When Feinstein asked, “Can a sitting a president be required to respond to a subpoena?” Kavanaugh would not answer. “That’s a hypothetical question,” he said. “I can’t give you an answer to a hypothetical question.”

Kavanaugh did endorse as correct the Supreme Court’s 1974 ruling in United States vs. Nixon, which required President Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes. It was “one of the greatest moments in American judicial history,” he said.

But he refused to give a similar endorsement for the 1973 ruling in Roe vs. Wade, which established a woman’s right to abortion. Feinstein tried to get him to say whether the ruling was correct; Kavanaugh said only that it was entitled to respect as a precedent.

Most legal experts predict that Kavanaugh, if confirmed, will provide the fifth conservative vote on the court to at least restrict abortion rights, if not overturn Roe. During his campaign, Trump promised to appoint only judges who would vote to overturn the abortion ruling.

But Kavanaugh seemed eager to raise some doubts about those predictions.

“I understand the significance on the issue,” he said Wednesday. “I don’t live in a bubble. I live in the real world.”

Kavanaugh noted several times that the 1973 abortion decision had been repeatedly affirmed, and that a 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, which affirmed much of Roe, in effect created a “precedent on precedent.”

And he made an analogy to the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s decision not to overturn the so-called Miranda rights disclosure requirement for criminal suspects. Rehnquist had long opposed the Miranda ruling, but then decided it was too late to overturn it, he noted. It’s also true, however, that Rehnquist found ways to narrow the ruling’s impact.

Kavanaugh’s remarks about Roe may have been largely directed at two female Republican senators, who support abortion rights and whose votes will be key to his confirmation. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have not announced how they will vote.

But Kavanaugh gave no assurances about how he might vote, and nothing he said committed him to any particular outcome. In the past, some Supreme Court nominees have spoken about the importance of respecting precedents, and then once on the court voted to overturn them.

Feinstein, for one, seem unsatisfied. “We can’t accept vague promises from Brett Kavanaugh when women’s reproductive freedom is at stake,” she said on Twitter.

Live chat: Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in the Senate »

Last fall, Kavanaugh was involved in a dispute over whether a migrant teenager in Texas could be released from immigration custody to obtain an abortion. A federal judge cleared the way, but Kavanaugh wrote a 2-1 decision siding with Trump administration lawyers and blocking the abortion for up to 10 more days. The full appeals court intervened and overturned his ruling.

In dissent, Kavanaugh faulted his more liberal colleagues for wrongly creating a “new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain abortion on demand.”

He defended that ruling Wednesday, stressing that the girl was 17 and not yet an adult. “If she had been an adult, she would have had a right to obtain an abortion immediately,” he told Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).

Durbin rejected the distinction, noting that the teenager had appeared before a state judge in Texas who decided she was sufficiently mature to make the decision on her own.

On guns, Kavanaugh stuck fast to his support of a broad 2nd Amendment right to possess many types of weapons, including a semiautomatic rifle with a large magazine of ammunition.

He dissented alone in 2011 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a D.C. ordinance that prohibited semiautomatic “assault weapons.”

Three years before, the Supreme Court in District of Columbia vs. Heller struck down a law prohibiting possession of a handgun at home and established a 2nd Amendment individual right for gun ownership.

Feinstein asked why Kavanaugh believed semiautomatic weapons could not be banned, when appellate judges across the country had upheld such restrictions.

“I had to follow precedent,” Kavanaugh replied. He said the late Justice Antonin Scalia said the 2nd Amendment did not protect weapons that are “dangerous and unusual,” and semiautomatic rifles are not unusual, he said. They are “widely possessed” by millions of gun owners, he said.

Kavanaugh did not back off, even when Feinstein spoke about the wave of mass shootings at schools using assault weapons. He stuck to the same position later when pressed by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

On the question of presidential power, Kavanaugh said that “no one is above the law,” a standard response by nominees.

But he declined to answer questions about whether Trump could pardon himself or pardon someone in exchange for an agreement not to testify against him, saying those were “hypothetical” questions that he couldn’t answer without potentially prejudging issues that might come before the courts.

The one issue that seemed to throw the nominee came from Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who confronted him with what the senator said was evidence that a Republican staff member during George W. Bush’s administration had supplied Kavanaugh — who was then helping to confirm judges — with information that had been stolen from Democratic files. Leahy said the information detailed what the senator planned to ask nominees during confirmation hearings.

Leahy, whose emails were stolen, quizzed Kavanaugh on whether he knowingly used the stolen documents, noting that Kavanaugh was included in an email chain discussing the information. Kavanaugh said he did not recall. “I don’t really have a specific recollection of any of this,” he told lawmakers.

Leahy said later Wednesday that Grassley agreed to release documents related to the materials he said were stolen, which are now confined only to lawmakers on the committee.

Grassley’s office didn’t make the same pledge. Spokesman Taylor Foy said Grassley would “do his best to accommodate this last-minute request,” adding that waiving the classification would require input from the White House and former President Bush.

Some of the most robust exchanges came near the end from Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who has developed a reputation for her tough questioning of Trump nominees during confirmation hearings.

Harris referred back to Kavanaugh’s remark about a “precedent on precedent” concerning Roe vs. Wade, and asked if it were not true that any five justices could overturn a precedent if they wanted.

“There’s a reason why the Supreme Court doesn’t do that,” Kavanaugh responded. “There are times” when the justices do, he said, but it’s “rare.”

She also pressed Kavanaugh on whether he had any conversations about the Mueller investigation with anyone at a law firm founded by one of the president’s lawyers. Kavanaugh avoided answering the question several times, finally saying he remembered no such conversation. A Democratic aide said that Harris’ staff was continuing to investigate the matter.

Kavanaugh was pressed repeatedly to explain his relationship with Judge Alex Kozinski, the former chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals who retired last December after he was accused of sexually harassing female law clerks.

In 1991, Kavanaugh moved to Pasadena to work for one year as a law clerk for Kozinski. And he continued to consult with Kozinski over the years.

Kavanaugh said he had never heard of Kozinski harassing laws clerks or engaging in improper behavior until it was revealed last year in news stories. “It was a gut punch for me,” he said.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said she was skeptical of his response. “It was an open secret, and it went on for 30 years,” she said.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) had a combative exchange with Kavanaugh while trying to pin the nominee down about his views on affirmative action. Booker asked if Kavanaugh believed that having a diverse student body is a compelling government interest that would justify considering race in admissions. Kavanaugh would not comment on his views, instead focusing on the Supreme Court’s precedent on affirmative action.

“I know what the law is now,” Booker said. “I’m worried about what the law is going to be when you get on the court.”

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UPDATES:

7:05 p.m.: This article was updated after Harris spoke.

5:30 p.m.: This article was updated with Booker’s comments and other new details.

4:55 p.m.: This article was updated with more details from the hearing.

3:30 p.m.: This article was updated with more comments from Feinstein, Kavanaugh and others.

9:50 a.m.: This article was updated with details about Miranda, presidential power and Leahy’s questions.

8:15 a.m.: This article was updated with Kavanaugh’s comments about gun rights.

This article was originally published at 8 a.m.

Four of the six Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa and four in Minnesota will shut down in a year, the Midwestern affiliate operating them has announced, blaming a freeze in federal funds, budget cuts proposed in Congress and state restrictions on abortion.

The clinics closing in Iowa include the only Planned Parenthood facility in the state that provides abortion procedures, in Ames, home to Iowa State University. Services will be shifted, and the organization will still offer medication abortions in Des Moines and medication and medical abortion services in Iowa City.

Two of the clinics being shut down by Planned Parenthood North Central States are in the Minneapolis area, in Apple Valley and Richfield. The others are in central Minnesota, in Alexandria and Bemidji. Of the four, the Richfield clinic provides abortion procedures.

The Planned Parenthood affiliate said it would lay off 66 employees and ask 37 additional employees to move to different clinics. The organization also said it plans to keep investing in telemedicine services; it sees 20,000 patients virtually each year. The affiliate serves Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

“We have been fighting to hold together an unsustainable infrastructure as the landscape shifts around us and an onslaught of attacks continues,” Ruth Richardson, the affiliate’s president and chief executive, said in a statement Friday.

Of the remaining 15 clinics operated by Planned Parenthood North Central States, six will provide abortion procedures — five of them in Minnesota, including three in the Minneapolis area. The other clinic is in Omaha.

The affiliate said that in April the Trump administration froze $2.8 million in federal funds for Minnesota to provide birth control and other services, such as cervical cancer screenings and testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

While federal funds can’t be used for most abortions, abortion opponents have long argued that Planned Parenthood affiliates should not receive any taxpayer dollars, saying the money still indirectly underwrites abortion services.

Planned Parenthood North Central States also cited proposed cuts in Medicaid, which provides health coverage for low-income Americans, as well as a Trump administration proposal to eliminate funding for teenage pregnancy prevention programs.

In addition, Republican-led Iowa last year banned most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant, causing the number of abortions performed there to drop 60% in the first six months the law was in effect and dramatically increasing the number of patients traveling to Minnesota and Nebraska.

After the closings, Planned Parenthood North Central States will operate 10 brick-and-mortar clinics in Minnesota, two in Iowa, two in Nebraska and one in South Dakota. It operates none in North Dakota, though its Moorhead, Minn., clinic is across the Red River from Fargo, N.D.

Hanna writes for the Associated Press.

BATON ROUGE, La. — A legal challenge against a first-of-its-kind measure that recategorized two widely used abortion-inducing drugs as “controlled dangerous substances” in Louisiana can move forward, a judge ruled Thursday.

Baton Rouge-based Judge Jewel Welch denied the Louisiana attorney general’s request to dismiss a lawsuit filed last year by opponents of the law, who argue that the reclassification of the pills is unconstitutional and could cause needless and potentially life-threatening delays in treatment during medical emergencies.

Attorneys for defendants in the suit, including Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill, argued that the lawsuit was premature. But attorneys for the plaintiffs, who include a doctor and pharmacist, said that since the law took effect in October, the measure has impacted how the plaintiffs handle and obtain the drugs on a “regular basis.”

A hearing date for the challenge has not yet been set.

Louisiana became the first state to heighten the classification of misoprostol and mifepristone, which have critical reproductive healthcare uses in addition to being used as a two-drug regimen to end pregnancies.

Passage of the measure by the GOP-dominated Legislature marked a new approach in conservative efforts to restrict access to abortion pills. In 2023, nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the country were medication abortions.

Now labeled as “Schedule IV drugs,” the pills are in the same category as the opioid tramadol and other substances that can be addictive. Under the new classification, there are more stringent storage requirements and extra steps to obtain the drugs. Testifying against the legislation, doctors stressed the drugs would be stored in locked containers or elsewhere that may result in slower access during emergency situations where every second is vital.

In the legal challenge, which was filed in October, plaintiffs say the law may slow access to “lifesaving treatment for people experiencing obstetrical emergencies” and make it “significantly harder” for people to “obtain proven, effective remedies necessary for their treatment and care.” Plaintiffs are asking the judge for a permanent injunction, ultimately to halt the law.

The legislation spawned from antiabortion groups and a Republican state senator’s effort to prevent coerced abortion and make it more difficult for bad actors to obtain the drugs. The lawmaker pointed to the case of his sister in Texas who in 2022 was slipped seven misoprostol pills by her husband without her knowledge; she and the baby survived. Over the past 15 years, news outlets have reported on similar cases — none in Louisiana — but the issue does not appear widespread.

“The Louisiana Legislature spoke loud and clear last year that they stand for life and are against this controlled substance being prescribed without a prescription from a doctor,” Murrill said ahead of the hearing.

Prior to the reclassification, a prescription was still needed to obtain mifepristone and misoprostol in Louisiana. Before the change, medical personnel told the Associated Press that in hospitals the drugs — which are also used to treat miscarriages, induce labor and stop bleeding — were often stored in an OB-GYN unit in a “hemorrhage box” in the room, on the delivery table or in a nurse’s pocket, to ensure almost-immediate access in common emergency situations.

With the heightened classification also comes increased charges. If someone knowingly possesses mifepristone or misoprostol without a valid prescription for any purpose, they could be fined up to $5,000 and sent to jail for one to five years. The law carves out protections for pregnant women who obtain the drug without a prescription to take on their own.

Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the Birthmark Doula Collective, an organization of people trained to provide pregnancy care before, during and after birth; Nancy Davis, a woman who was denied an abortion in Louisiana and traveled out of state for one after learning her fetus would not survive; and a woman who said she was turned away from two emergency rooms instead of being treated for a miscarriage.

Louisiana currently has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, which includes abortions via medication.

Cline writes for the Associated Press.