Pennsylvania court strikes down ban on use of Medicaid funds for abortions

Victory for abortion rights groups as court finds state’s constitution guarantees a right to abortion

A Pennsylvania court on Monday said that the state’s constitution guarantees a right to abortion while striking down a decades-long law banning the use of state Medicaid funds to cover abortion costs.

The ruling by a divided seven-judge panel of the appellate-level commonwealth court is a major victory for Planned Parenthood and abortion clinic operators who first sued Pennsylvania over its Medicaid funding restrictions in 2019.

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Peers vote to back clause pardoning women convicted over illegal abortions

House of Lords decision welcomed as ‘landmark moment’ after attempt to strike out amendment is defeated

Women who have been convicted, and in some cases jailed, over illegal abortions are set to be pardoned after a historic vote in the House of Lords.

Last June, the House of Commons voted to end the criminalisation of women who terminate their pregnancies outside of the legal framework, while keeping the existing framework in place. Doctors and others who act outside of the law could still face the threat of prosecution.

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Fears for women’s rights in Chile as anti-abortion president set to take office

José Antonio Kast, who voted against legalising divorce in 2004, has pushed for return to total abortion ban

Women’s rights activists in Chile are bracing as the most conservative president since the Pinochet dictatorship prepares to take office on Wednesday.

José Antonio Kast, a 60-year-old ultra Catholic whose father was a member of the Nazi party, has consistently blocked progressive bids for women’s rights and equality across his three-decade career in politics.

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EU opens up funding to guarantee abortion rights across bloc

Women from countries with near-total bans on terminations will be given help to access services elsewhere

EU states will be able to tap into a social fund to help citizens access safe abortions, in an announcement hailed as a “victory for women”.

The roots of Thursday’s announcement go back to a long campaign for the European Commission to create a funding mechanism that would allow women from countries with near-total bans on abortion, such as Malta and Poland, to go where it is legal.

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Anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe claims her employer gave her immunity from complaints by pro-choice campaigners

University of Adelaide, who employs Howe as a law professor, states that it ‘considers each matter on its merits’

A prominent anti-abortion campaigner who was banned from the South Australian parliament and accused of bullying, claims her employer has granted her immunity from complaints from anyone who is pro-choice.

Anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe, who has pledged to make abortion “unthinkable”, says the University of Adelaide, who employs her as a law professor, has agreed that those with ideologically opposed viewpoints to hers will be deemed “vexatious”, and any complaints they make about her will not be acted upon.

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Anti-abortion groups furious as FDA approves generic abortion pill

Abortion rights supporters hail win for evidence-backed medicine as Evita Solutions’ generic version of mifepristone given approval

In a move that has left anti-abortion advocates reeling, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quietly approved a request to manufacture a new abortion pill earlier this week.

Thanks to the approval, a company called Evita Solutions will be able to manufacture its generic version of mifepristone, one of two drugs typically used in most US medication abortions. A generic version of mifepristone, which was first approved as a brand-name drug in 2000, is already available on the market.

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Hundreds of US women charged with pregnancy-related crimes since fall of Roe

Study finds prosecutors targeting low-income women mainly in US south – and figure likely to be an undercount

In the first two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, prosecutors in 16 states charged more than 400 people with pregnancy-related crimes, new research released on Tuesday found.

Of the 412 cases tracked by Pregnancy Justice, the vast majority took place in the US south, targeted low-income women and involved allegations that women broke laws against child abuse, endangerment or neglect, according to the research, which was compiled by the reproductive justice group. About 300 prosecutions took place in Alabama and Oklahoma. In 16 cases, law enforcement charged women with homicide.

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Texas bill allowing residents to sue out-of-state abortion pill providers reaches governor

If Greg Abbott signs, state would become first to try to crack down on the most common abortion method

A measure that would allow Texas residents to sue out-of-state abortion pill providers advanced to the desk of the governor, Greg Abbott, on Wednesday, setting up the state to be the first to try to crack down on the most common abortion method.

Supporters say it’s a key tool to enforce the state’s abortion ban, protecting women and fetuses.

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Abortion drug could help reduce risk of breast cancer, group of medics says

Stigma around mifepristone is stopping studies, experts in reproductive health claim in Lancet opinion piece

A drug used in medical abortions could help prevent women at high risk of breast cancer from developing the disease, according to an international group of doctors and scientists.

However, “stigma” around mifepristone is stopping pharmaceutical companies from investigating its potential as a new treatment doctors could offer to reduce the risk of breast cancer, they say.

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US destruction of contraceptives denies 1.4m African women and girls lifesaving care, NGO says

Incineration of $9.7m of contraceptives to lead to 174,000 unintended pregnancies and 56,000 unsafe abortions, IPPF says

A decision by the US government to incinerate more than $9.7m (£7.3m) of contraceptives is projected to result in 174,000 unintended pregnancies and 56,000 unsafe abortions in five African countries.

More than three-quarters of the contraceptives (77%) were destined for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Mali, according to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), an NGO global healthcare provider and advocate of sexual and reproductive rights.

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Texas sues New York official for refusing to take action against abortion provider

Action tees up a state v state battle involving mailing of abortion pills that’s expected to go to US supreme court

Texas has sued a New York official for refusing to take action against an abortion provider, teeing up a state-versus-state battle that is widely expected to end up before the US supreme court.

Ken Paxton, Texas’s attorney general, has petitioned the New York state supreme court to order a county clerk to enforce a fine against Dr Margaret Carpenter, a New York doctor accused of mailing abortion pills across state lines.

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Number of abortions in England and Wales hit record high in 2022

Almost three in 10 conceptions ended in legal terminations, ONS figures show, as provider says women struggling to access contraception

The number of abortions in England and Wales reached a record high in 2022, with a leading provider stating that women are facing “significant barriers” in access to contraception.

Almost three in 10 conceptions ended in legal abortions in the two nations in 2022, up from about two in 10 a decade earlier, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

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Planned Parenthood CEO warns budget bill could devastate group and slash abortion access in blue states

Alexis McGill Johnson says nearly 200 health centers could close if US House passes sweeping tax-and-spending bill

Planned Parenthood stands to lose roughly $700m in federal funding if the US House passes Republicans’ massive spending-and-tax bill, the organization’s CEO said on Wednesday, amounting to what abortion rights supporters and opponents alike have called a “backdoor abortion ban”.

“We are facing down the reality that nearly 200 health centers are at risk of closure. We’re facing a reality of the impact on shutting down almost half of abortion-providing health centers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of Americas’s CEO, said in an interview Wednesday morning. “It does feel existential. Not just for Planned Parenthood, but for communities that are relying on access to this care.”

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Supreme court paves way for South Carolina and other states to defund Planned Parenthood

Decision could embolden red states in US to block clinics that provide abortions from receiving Medicaid funds

The US supreme court has paved the way for South Carolina to kick Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program over its status as an abortion provider, a decision that could embolden red states across the country to effectively “defund” the reproductive healthcare organization.

The case, Medina v Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, centers around a 2018 executive order from South Carolina’s governor, Henry McMaster, that blocked clinics that provide abortions from receiving Medicaid reimbursements. “Payment of taxpayer funds to abortion clinics, for any purpose, results in the subsidy of abortion and the denial of the right to life,” McMaster said at the time, even though the reimbursements could not be used for abortions. Abortions are also now banned in South Carolina after six weeks of pregnancy.

More details soon

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Republican representative’s ectopic pregnancy clashes with Florida abortion law

Kat Cammack blames left’s fearmongering after medical staff hesitated to give her drugs needed to end pregnancy

A Florida Republican congresswoman is blaming fearmongering on the left for the reluctance of hospital staff to give her the drugs she needed to end an ectopic pregnancy that threatened her life.

Kat Cammack went to the emergency room in May 2024 where it was estimated she was five weeks into an ectopic pregnancy, there was no heartbeat and her life was at risk. Doctors determined she needed a shot of methotrexate to help expel her pregnancy but since Florida’s six week abortion ban had just taken effect medical staff were worried about losing their licenses or going to jail if they did.

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New Rio de Janeiro law requires public hospitals to display anti-abortion signs

Opponents view the controversial act as part of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict abortion access

A new law has just come into force in Rio de Janeiro requiring all public hospitals and clinics run by the municipal government to display anti-abortion signs bearing messages such as: “Did you know that the unborn child is discarded as hospital waste?”

Reproductive rights activists view the act as the latest example of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict access to abortion in a country that already has some of the world’s most restrictive laws.

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MPs back bill to end criminal penalties for abortion in key vote – as it happened

Parliament votes on biggest shake-up to reproductive rights in England and Wales in 60 years

Casey says in the past government has talked relentlessly about the need for better data sharing between departments.

But she says there is a need to consider making this mandatory.

I was there when the tragedy of Soham happened. We knew at that point that if we had had better data sharing there’s a possibility that we might have saved those girls’ lives. There’s certaintly an absolute clarity that intelligence would have been much faster in either avoiding it or or actually finding that dreadful human being earlier.

And we’ve known that forever onwards. And so I think there is also an issue that the Home Office can’t drag their feet on, looking at police intelligence systems, given we’ve living in the 21st century. Probably everbody in this room can connect within seconds. Yet we had Befordshire police finding a young boy that was being, in my mind trafficked to London. But the data intelligence system did not make it easy for them to find that he was in Deptford and being circled and dealt with by predators.

I feel very strongly on issues that are as searing as people’s race, when we know the prejudice and racism that people of colour experience in this country, to not get how you treat that data right is a different level of public irresponsibility.

Sorry, to put it so bluntly, I didn’t put it that bluntly yesterday, but I think it’s particularly important if you are collecting those sorts of issues to get them 100% right.

When we asked the good people of Greater Manchester Police to help us look at the data we also collected – I think it’s in the report – what was happening with child abuse more generally, and of course … if you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it’s disproportionately Asian heritage. If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, and it is white men.

So again, just note to everybody, really outside here rather than in here. Let’s just keep calm here about how you interrogate data and what you draw from it.

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Calls for abortion law change grew louder as number of prosecutions rose

While parliament was moving towards more liberal abortion laws more women were being arrested or investigated

Calls for decriminalisation of abortions have been growing louder in recent years – in line with a growing number of women being prosecuted for terminating their pregnancies.

Until 2022, it is believed that only three women had ever been convicted of having an illegal abortion in the 150 years since 1861, when the procedure was made illegal under the Offences Against the Person Act.

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MPs vote to decriminalise abortion in step forward for reproductive rights

Amendment to crime and policing bill will change law to end prosecution of women who terminate pregnancies

British MPs have voted to decriminalise abortion, marking the biggest step forward in reproductive rights in almost 60 years.

In an amendment to the government’s crime and policing bill, parliament voted to change the criminal laws that govern abortion in England and Wales so that women procuring a termination outside the legal framework cannot be prosecuted.

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London mayor reverses TfL ban on ads calling for abortion decriminalisation

Sadiq Khan seeking ‘urgent review’ of decision to ban adverts from British Pregnancy Advisory Service

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has stepped in to reverse a ban on adverts on the London transport network calling for abortion to be decriminalised.

It is understood that the mayor is seeking an “urgent review” of a Transport for London (TfL) decision to ban the adverts from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas) charity on the grounds they may bring the Metropolitan police into disrepute.

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