Anti-choice legislation has been sweeping the nation this past month as states try to one-up each other’s restrictive policies on abortion. Shortly after Arkansas approved the most restrictive anti-abortion bill in the country, which bans abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, North Dakota made abortion illegal from the moment doctors can detect a heartbeat (around six [...]
As of Friday morning, a federal judge has ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to lift longstanding restrictions on women’s access to emergency contraception (EC). Citing the FDA’s refusal to broaden access as “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable,“ U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman has decided to make EC–known by its brand name, Plan B–available [...]
In a turn of events that shocked pro-choice and anti-abortion activists all over the nation, Gov. Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota announced he does not approve of a fetal personhood amendment, which would ban almost all abortions in the state. In his own words: When I signed the measure into law I was pretty confused. [...]
This morning, North Dakota’s Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed into law three bills that will push the state past Arkansas in terms of having the country’s strictest abortion bans. The first measure he signed would ban abortion at the point that a “fetal heartbeat” can be detected (about six weeks). A second measure makes North [...]
Arkansas has swiftly become a new battlefront of reproductive rights, with the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation. State lawmakers voted last week to override Governor Mike Beebe’s veto of a 12-week abortion ban, meaning it will go into effect this spring. This new law directly contradicts Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court [...]
The past two weeks have not been very good for Team Pro-Choice. If you had any doubt about the War on Women continuing into 2013, look no further. Women’s reproductive rights continue to be eroded in Republican state legislatures across the nation. A list of the anti-abortion legislation passed recently: South Dakota: The South Dakota [...]
So-called heartbeat bills, banning abortion from the point at which an embryonic heartbeat can be detected–usually by six weeks development–already have the reputation of being among the most unconstitutional restrictions to be proposed. They are also quickly becoming the most consistently proposed and failed pieces of abortion legislation. We are seeing a number of the [...]
The arrival of the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade has come today with the expected media commemorating (or in the case of the antis, vilifying) the occasion. From the “where are they nows” to the current state of reproductive politics, what remains glaring to me again, particularly since 2012, is the continued lack of [...]
Last week, the Michigan Senate passed a slew of measures intended to make it even more difficult for women in the state to access and pay for abortions. Bills 612, 613 and 614 [pdf] if enacted by the state’s House, will ban abortion coverage by any private or state-based health insurance plans unless the woman’s [...]
When Ms. last spoke with Diane Derzis, director of Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi, she was “forging ahead” in her battle to keep the state’s last abortion clinic open. That battle continues today, as the clinic’s physicians have been denied admitting privileges at seven hospitals in the area—and having those privileges is a [...]
