State and federal proposals to regulate and restrict medication abortion are expected to continue in 2026 as abortion opponents claim, without mighty evidence, that abortion drugs are hazardous to patients and the environment. (Getty Images)
As we enter the fourth year without federal protection for abortion rights, groups that helped overturn Roe v. Wade are focusing on cutting off access for abortion pills. How numerous lawsuits with the advent of the abortion drug mifepristone, state and federal proposals to regulate and limit drug abortions are expected to continue in 2026. Abortion opponents argue that medication abortion, despite its mighty safety recordis hazardous to patients and the environment.
Abortion bans exist largely unpopularbut as we head into the midterm election year, some lawmakers in states with strict abortion bans have already drafted bills to introduce fresh restrictions. Here’s a look at early legislative trends emerging in abortion bills recently introduced or filed before the fresh year.
Proposals to restrict abortion pills or study environmental effects
A nationwide anti-abortion group for several years Students for American Life spread unfounded claims that mifepristone is polluting US waterways and drinking water, model legislative project to regulate the removal of medical abortions and required environmental studies at the federal and state levels.
In 2025, lawmakers in at least seven states introduced bills to impose environmental restrictions on the abortion drug mifepristone or mandate environmental testing. Laws introduced this year in Texas, Wisconsin AND Wyoming would require public water systems to be tested for traces of mifepristone.
Bills in Maine, Montana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin AND Wyoming would require providers to make medical waste collection kits available to patients for the collection and return of tissue following a medical abortion. Women often flush tissue associated with drug abortions and miscarriages, which usually occur in the first trimester of pregnancy.
These bills, with the exception of Pennsylvania’s bill, would also require in-person medication dispensing and screening, effectively banning telehealth abortions.
None of these proposals have passed, but they are likely to be reintroduced in 2026 as abortion opponents continue to call for environmental regulation of abortion pills, including at the federal level.
In June, 25 Republicans in Congress sent a letter to the US Environmental Protection Agency asking about the potential for regulating mifepristone as The New York Times reported.. And as Politics was recently reportedStudents For Life lobbied the agency to add mifepristone to a recently updated list of contaminants that utilities will be required to monitor in drinking water. It’s too behind schedule to put a fresh drug on the list, which is updated every five years.
However, according to Politico, EPA staff have advised anti-abortion activists to utilize the upcoming public comment period to ask the agency to include busy metabolites in mifepristone. EPA collects nationwide data on chemicals on this list that can be used to set future federal limits.
Bills for wrongful death of a fetus
In Florida, where abortion is banned after the sixth week of pregnancy, lawmakers recently moved forward HB289 before the 2026 session, which would allow parents to file a wrongful death lawsuit for the loss of a developing fetus and seek compensation for mental pain and loss of support. Its companion bill, SB 164filed for the third year in a row by Republican Sen. Erin Grall faces an uphill battle in the Florida Senate, he said Florida Phoenixwhich noted that jurors could be asked to consider the wages the fetus could earn throughout its life as part of the compensation to which the parents might be entitled.
Groups opposing the legislation as far-reaching and likely to raise liability exposure for OB-GYNs specializing in high-risk pregnancies include the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the Florida Justice Reform Institute and Doctors Company, the nation’s largest physician-owned medical malpractice firm.
One of the bill’s leading advocates, Andrew Shirvell, founder and executive director of Florida Voice for the Unborn, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that they should continue to expand “the remedies provided by Florida law to hold accountable those who continue to illegally take the lives of unborn children in our state.”
Another bill, HB 663would allow a family member to sue someone for performing or attempting to perform an abortion up to two years after the fact and pay damages of up to $100,000, even if the woman consented or if the abortion was performed in another state or country where the procedure is legal.
Attempts to defeat or circumvent ballot measures regarding abortion rights
Even though Missouri voters approved an amendment protecting abortion rights in the state constitution in 2024, wide access has not returned to the state. According to state data, between January and October, only 80 abortions were performed in clinics in Missouri, and an additional 79 abortions took place in hospitals and were considered medical emergencies.
A January trial could determine whether Missouri’s anti-abortion laws violate a voter-approved amendment. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have introduced a fresh one amendment to the constitution regarding voting in 2026 that would ban almost all abortions in the state, with circumscribed exceptions.
In 2023, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights through fetal viability and prohibiting the state from interfering with or punishing someone for exercising that right. But Republicans have made progress anti-abortion laws create restrictions that hinder access to abortion, without directly disregarding the amendment.
This legislative session, which ends on December 31, was introduced by State Senator Kyle Koehler SB309which could add further steps to accessing medication abortion and would require doctors to provide a state-required script describing the risks of mifepristone. It would also allow patients, their parents if they are minors, or the father of the fetus to file a lawsuit if they believe the patient was not informed about taking the pills.
Ohio in November The House passed HB 485which would require students in grades five through 12 to watch the fetal development film “Meet Baby Oliva,” created by the national anti-abortion group Live Action, or a similar film. The Live Action film has already been released criticized by reproductive health advocates as not being fully medically true and comprehensive. Similar bills have been introduced this year in dozens of states and have become law in many states Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota AND Tennessee.
Abortion records privacy
Privacy concerns related to reproductive health in the post-Roe era, they persist across the country. Lawmakers in states that protect abortion rights continue to seek to strengthen medical and data privacy protections for abortion, which is almost entirely illegal in the country. a dozen states.
In Indiana, where the legislative session began in December, it was introduced by Senator La Keisha Jackson SB109. Under this arrangement, a healthcare provider’s report on abortion submitted to the Indiana Department of Health as a medical record will be confidential and not subject to disclosure as a public record. In state lawsuit brought by two OB-GYNs An Indianapolis appeals court in December upheld the confidentiality of those files, known as termination pregnancy reports.
In Washington state, Democratic legislators still aren’t developing legislative projects that would regulate license plate readers after reports that Texas authorities searched thousands of cameras as far as Washington and Illinois to find a woman they believed had self-medicated an abortion.
Calls for forced vasectomy for convicted rapists
State restrictions on abortion typically hold health care providers accountable, but women do imprisoned or accused for their pregnancy outcomes. One Democratic lawmaker in Alabama, where abortion is banned throughout pregnancy except to save the life of the pregnant woman, has introduced legislation that would impose harsh penalties on men convicted of rape or incest that resulted in pregnancy.
Democratic pre-declared candidate Juandalynn Givan HB 46 would allow abortion to protect the mother’s health or if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. It would also require men convicted of rape or incest to pay for an abortion and undergo vasectomy or castration, as the court decides. as “Alabama Spotlight” reported.the bill is unlikely to be considered, but for Givan it’s really about starting a broader conversation about bodily autonomy.
“We have already removed the double standard,” Givan said. “Have you seen a bill that tells a man what he can’t… do with his body? You haven’t, apart from the standard laws that deal with rape and incest, which we already know is definitely a crime.”
Anticipated federal policy decisions during Trump’s second year
In his first year back in office, President Donald Trump reversed many of the Biden-era policies aimed at increasing access to abortion, including the previous administration’s interpretation that Emergency Treatment and Labor Act covers abortions necessary to save the life of a pregnant person even in a country that has banned abortion.
More major federal policy decisions regarding abortion are expected in 2026. The Food and Drug Administration has agreed to review the safety of mifepristone, but abortion opponents have recently called for FDA Commissioner Martin Makary will be firedaccusing him of delaying the review until after the midterm elections in November.
Just a few months earlier, in July, controversial Medicaid policy emerged effectively preventing funding for Planned Parenthood clinics and other nonprofit clinics offering abortions expires. It’s unclear whether Republicans will renew the funding cap or let it expire — allowing the nation’s largest network of reproductive health clinics to continue providing services to non-abortion-related Medicaid patients.
This story was originally produced by News from the USwhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes the Ohio Capital Journal and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
