New York is taking a stand against conservative states’ attempts to criminalize out-of-state abortion providers. By refusing to extradite Dr. Margaret Carpenter to Louisiana, Gov. Kathy Hochul is reinforcing the state’s telehealth shield law, setting up a major legal showdown over abortion access across state lines.
Author: Shoshanna Ehrlich
HIPAA’s Reproductive Privacy Rule Under Siege: Legal Attacks and a Trump Administration Loom
The Reproductive Privacy Rule was enacted by HSS under the Biden administration to protect patients’ privacy in cases that involved law enforcement.
How will confidentiality of medical records, increasingly consequential post-Roe, be impacted or even invalidated by the Trump administration’s brazen antiabortion stance?
Stopping the Flow of Abortion Pills by Any Means Possible: Texas Takes on Telehealth Abortion Shield Laws
Last month Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a civil lawsuit on behalf of the state against New York doctor Maggie Carpenter, co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telehealth, for prescribing abortion pills through telehealth to a Texas woman.
Paxton’s lawsuit is a direct attack on telehealth abortion shield laws— a move that has been anticipated since Massachusetts enacted the country’s first such law in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs.
‘Gagging’ Abortion Access: The Global Threat of Trump’s Second Term to Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday reinstating the global gag rule, known as the “Mexico City policy,” which prohibits overseas groups from collecting U.S. aid if they provide abortion, counsel on abortion or advocate for abortion rights.
During his first presidential term, one of Trump’s earliest actions was the reinstatement of the global gag rule—a wholly expected move from a Republican president. But he also inaugurated an unprecedented expansion of the rule’s reach … red-flagging what likely lies ahead.
Fueling the sense of urgency, Project 2025 calls for the further expansion of the gag rule beyond foreign health aid to include “all foreign assistance, including humanitarian aid.” This expansion would increase the affected funding from about $7.3 billion to about $51 billion. Project 2025’s vision of an expanded global gag rule would also, for the first time, include foreign governments in addition to NGOs within its prohibitive sweep.
Only the permanent rescission of the global gag rule will jettison this impending threat to the sexual and reproductive rights and well-being of women around the globe.
Grassroots Power: How Amarillo Became the First City to Reject a Abortion Travel Ban
On Nov. 5, 2024, voters in the Texas Panhandle city of Amarillo resoundingly defeated (59 to 41 percent) a proposition that would have declared their town a “sanctuary city for the unborn.” Amarillo now enjoys the distinction of being the first city in the U.S. where voters rejected a post-Roe abortion travel ban.
The defeat marks a powerful repudiation of Mark Lee Dickson, founder of the antiabortion group Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn—due in large measure to the activism of the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance. The alliance was launched when six local women met at a coffee shop to debrief after Dickson’s initial presentation, which several of them had attended. The women immediately recognized that the ordinance posed a threat they needed to take seriously.
Reading the Warning Signs: How Trump’s Administration Could Crack Down on Abortion
During the presidential campaign, Trump forcefully avowed he did not support a national abortion ban—a position consistent with two-thirds of the electorate—gloating instead that he was responsible for sending the issue back to the states where it belongs. He also distanced himself from the “virally unpopular” Project 2025—the far-right playbook for the next conservative administration.
However, warning signs suggest that Trump may have been pandering to the electorate on both scores. Notably, when his remarks on the campaign trail about a national ban are considered alongside his existing ties to Project 2025, his boast about returning control over abortion to the states may well prove to have been stopgap measure en route to a blanket ban, although perhaps by way of a back-channel strategy.
A former Trump official chillingly predicted that Trump’s track record of having “adopted the most pro-life policies of any administration in history … is the best evidence … you could have of what a second term might look like.’”
‘Significant Victory’: Ninth Circuit Court Mixed Ruling ‘Frees Idahoans to Talk With Pregnant Minors About Abortion’
In April of 2023, Idaho passed the nation’s first abortion “trafficking” law (travel ban) making it a crime to procure an abortion for a minor. The law was challenged by reproductive rights advocates, who argued that the legislature had created a statute that makes unclear when lawful mentoring support stops, and unlawful conduct begins. Agreeing with the plaintiffs, in November of 2023, a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction preventing the law from going into effect.
On Dec. 2, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a mixed decision in the case. Although not a complete win, as Wendy Heipt of Legal Voice, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs put it: The “decision is a significant victory … as it frees Idahoans to talk with pregnant minors about abortion healthcare.”
“Encouragement, counseling, and emotional support are plainly protected speech under Supreme Court precedent,” wrote the Ninth Circuit Court last week, “including when offered in the difficult context of deciding whether to have an abortion.”
Trump’s Chilling Promise to ‘Protect Women’ Puts ‘Women Not on a Pedestal, but in a Cage’
On the campaign trail, Trump boasted that under his presidency, “women will be happy, healthy, confident and free” and that we will also magically be freed from the stress of “thinking about abortion.”
Trump’s back-and forth with women at his rallies may, at first glance, be viewed as an act of paternalistic beneficence for our collective best interest. After all, who would not prefer to be “happy, healthy, confident and free” over being “abandoned, lonely, and scared?” But, as history makes clear, paternalistic protectionism reinforces male supremacy. It is premised on the deeply subordinating and essentialist view that women are “weak and incapable of taking care of themselves.” Accordingly, we require protection for own good, with the resulting loss of self-agency and decisional autonomy.
Renewed Attack on Mifepristone by Republican-Led States: Junk Science, Pro-Natalism and Control of Pregnant Teens
When it comes to abortion pill availability, the Supreme Court left open a dangerous door that the Republican-controlled states of Missouri, Kansas and Idaho are now seeking to walk through.
Republican AGs Want Access to Health Records of Out-of-State Abortion Seekers. Texas’ Ken Paxton Is Leading the Charge.
Since the fall of Roe, cross-border abortion travel has doubled. To guard against the threat of having—as President Biden put it—the medical records of abortion patients “used against them, their doctor, or their loved one just because they sought or received lawful reproductive healthcare,” a new HIPAA rule issued last year enhances the privacy protections for reproductive healthcare.
Attorneys general from 19 abortion-hostile states submitted a formal letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in opposition to the proposed enhanced privacy rule, based on its disregard for fetal personhood. The AGs failed in their mission to prevent the proposed 2024 rule from becoming final—so Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton took matters into his own hands. The Texas challenge will be heard by Republican appointee Judge James Wesley Hendrix in Lubbock, Texas. It is anticipated that he will be sympathetic to the state’s position.