Buoyed by a pivotal election nearly two years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down federal abortion protections in 2024, patients, doctors and activists fought to renew and expand reproductive rights while others pushed for further restrictions. Here are some of the people and organizations that influenced reproductive health law and abortion access this year.
Women wanting to get pregnant affected by abortion bans
In state legislatures, before Congress, in court, in presidential campaign ads, and on stage Democratic National Conventionwomen across the country are reliving the worst moments of their lives as they try to roll back abortion restrictions that have transformed reproductive health care in America.
A year after Kentucky banned abortion, Hadley Duvall she began to publicly talk about how, at the age of 12, she was raped by her stepfather, which caused her to become pregnant. She advocated for abortion rights in ads for Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s 2023 re-election campaign and appeared in national Democratic campaign ads this year.
Kaitlyn Joshuaof Baton Rouge represented many Louisiana women at this year’s Democratic National Convention, speaking out about what is becoming an increasingly common history lack of access to miscarriage treatment after the state passed a strict abortion ban. Then Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill questioned Joshua’s story on social media.
Kristin Lyerlyan obstetrician-gynecologist from Wisconsin, is one of many doctors across the country who have sued over state abortion bans that they say have changed medical practice. Lyerly participated in this year civic engagement experiment in Madison, where strangers came together and shared life experiences that shape their views on abortion. Even when abortion rights were protected in Roe v. Wade, Lyerly stated that she was almost forced to give birth to a stillborn baby instead of a less invasive abortion procedure. As a Democrat, she also ran a campaign focusing on reproductive rights in a conservative congressional district, a race in which lost.
Allie Phillips as a Democrat, she ran for a seat in the Tennessee Legislature after the state’s abortion ban prevented her from terminating an unviable pregnancy in her home state, forcing her to go to New York for care. She lost the race, but he said in November that she plans to continue the fight for reproductive rights and announced a fresh pregnancy. Phillips is a plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit with other affected women and doctors to clarify the state’s health care exemptions. Panel of three judges ruled in October that doctors cannot be punished for performing an emergency abortion to save a patient’s life.
Amanda Żurawski developed sepsis in Texas after her water broke at 18 weeks of pregnancy, and doctors waited for days to terminate the pregnancy for fear of prosecution under the state’s strict abortion ban. She has since become an outspoken supporter of abortion rights. She campaigned heavily for abortion rights candidates this year and has stated that she wants to continue working in politics.
Charlotte Lozier Institute
The high-profile federal lawsuit abortion was made possible in part by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of anti-abortion political powerhouse Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Data from the institute played an significant role in the plaintiffs’ case to revoke federal drug approval for mifepristone, and was directly used as part of U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s reasoning for awarding the position to the plaintiff physician. Researchers found a significant boost in the number of Medicaid-funded emergency room visits following medication abortion over two decades, which also paralleled the boost in access to medication abortion overtime. Public health experts he told States Newsroom that the researchers exaggerated their findings and appeared to link all emergency department visits to earnest adverse events such as sepsis. Their conclusions contradicted numerous studies showing low rates of earnest adverse events with mifepristone, prompting further analysis by curious scientists and the academic press that published them.
In February Sage withdrew three studies developed by researchers Charlotte Lozier and published in the journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology between 2019 and 2022 after a reader-led investigation found errors in study methodology and data representation. The team responsible for the research included vice president Charlotte Lozier and director of data analytics James Studnicki and longtime anti-abortion researchersincluding the then-CEO of one of the plaintiff groups in the medication abortion lawsuit. They sued Sageclaiming that the withdrawals were unjustified and politically motivated.
United States Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the abortion drug lawsuit this summer – not as to the substance of the case, but as to the position of the plaintiff doctor. Anti-abortion activists took an oath find another plaintiff who could potentially convince the court that abortion pills are too unsafe. After the Supreme Court remanded the case to a lower court, in October the intervening states of Idaho, Kansas and Missouri amended their complaint, which no longer cites the withdrawn research documents but instead quotes fresh article from Studnicki and other Charlotte Lozier researchers making similar claims.
Supreme Court of Alabama
A common infertility treatment, in vitro fertilization, came into the spotlight in February after the Alabama Supreme Court decided by an 8-1 vote that frozen embryos should be considered babiesin a wrongful death lawsuit related to the accidental destruction of embryos.
A lower court dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the embryos did not meet the legal definition of a child. But w majority opinion siding with couples who sued a Mobile fertility clinic, Judge Jay Mitchell cited a 2018 state constitutional amendment providing “protection of the rights of the unborn child.” He also cited an 1872 statute allowing civil lawsuits for wrongful death of children and argued that it did not expressly include an exception for frozen embryos. Mitchell argued that the law “applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation.” Chief Justice Tom Parker, an influential conservative Christian activisthe quoted biblical texts in his agreed opinionwriting, “Even before birth, all men bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without obliterating His glory.”
Shortly thereafter, many IVF clinics in Alabama were closed until the state legislature passed the measure passed the act in March, which extended criminal and civil immunity to in vitro fertilization clinics for surgery. This created main issues for families spending tens of thousands of dollars on time-intensive treatments. Alabama’s ruling also caused fear among citizens families fighting for offspring in other states with abortion bans and showed that infertility treatment enjoys broad support among voters of both political parties. Republicans updated theirs national party platform include support for access to in vitro fertilization. During his presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump he promised: “Your government will pay or your insurance company will be required to cover all costs associated with IVF treatment” – something he he probably couldn’t do it without congressional action. Meanwhile, GOP members of Congress they largely opposed IVF protection and access laws.
Mark Lee Dickson and Jonathan Mitchell
This year, lawyer Jonathan Mitchell and pastor Mark Lee Dickson together experimented with ways to prevent out-of-state abortionsusing his home state of Texas as his main testing ground. Mitchell, a former Texas attorney general, used little-known state laws to dethrone abortion funds, doctors and women who left the state for abortions. as The Texas Tribune reportedthe actions caused fear and confusion but did not lead to charges. Mitchell had previously filed trial for unintentional death against women who allegedly helped their friend obtain an abortion drug that has since been discontinued.
Through the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn project, Dickson and Mitchell helped pass approximately 80 ordinances in cities and counties, mostly in Texas, but also in strategically located cities in abortion access states such as Illinois and New Mexico. Some ordinances state that a doctor in a state where abortion is legal cannot perform an abortion on a resident of a city that has passed one of these laws. Some ordinances prohibit the operate of this city’s highways to take a person to an out-of-state abortion clinic. Some cite a dormant federal anti-obscenity law known as the Comstock Act, which they say the federal government should enforce to mean abortion pills cannot be shipped through the mail.
Like Mitchell and Dickson’s 2021 six-week abortion ban in Texas helped designmany of these ordinances are unenforceable by the governments that pass them, instead allowing private citizens to sue other residents or doctors for “aiding and abetting” abortion. Activists suffered weighty losses on Election Day, with most voters in conservative Amarillo, Texas voting to reject the resolution blocking abortion-related travel on heavily trafficked roads. But just before the end of the year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion drugs to a Texas residentwhich Dickson told States Newsroom is a victory for the anti-abortion movement. He said he plans to push for local anti-abortion ordinances in Arizona and Missouri in 2025, which repealed abortion bans in November.
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