U.S. Repro Watch, December 10

U.S. Repro Watch provides periodic updates on news of interest on U.S. reproductive rights. Here are a few recent items you won’t want to miss.

1. Arizona abortion providers sued to block the state’s 15-week abortion ban under the state’s voter-approved abortion-rights amendment.

• The Center for Reproductive Rights and its partners argue that the ban violates the state’s new constitutional amendment protecting the fundamental right to abortion, which voters overwhelmingly approved in November.
• “The constitutional amendment voters approved last month made it clear that Arizonans value the right to access safe, compassionate care, including abortion,” said Dr. Paul Isaacson, M.D., a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “I am hopeful that the courts will honor the will of the people and restore their right to make deeply personal decisions about their own bodies.”
• A similar case has been filed to block Missouri’s abortion ban after voters passed an amendment to protect abortion there. The Missouri AG said he would continue to enforce the state’s abortion ban despite the will of voters.

2. Bodily autonomy rights were back at the United States Supreme Court as it heard a case about Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

• The case has implications that go far beyond transgender health care, including for birth control, in vitro fertilization (IVF), and bodily autonomy at large. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed concern that some of the state’s arguments could undermine the “foundations of some of our bedrock equal protection cases” such as Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage nationwide.
• While defending the ban, Tennessee’s Attorney General argued that since Dobbs allowed states to ban abortion, they should also be able to ban gender-affirming care. Several justices also drew a parallel between abortion and gender-affirming care, claiming that courts ought to remain “neutral” on such rights and defer to state legislatures.
• 23 states are currently enforcing bans on gender-affirming care for young people, and more than half of those states also have total abortion bans in effect.
• Listen to an audio replay of oral arguments in the case here.

3. In Idaho, it will soon be a crime to help young people leave the state for an abortion due to a recent federal court ruling.

• The court’s ruling allows Idaho to enforce a first-of-its-kind law against those who harbor or transport a minor to get an abortion out of state without parental consent.
• In another Idaho ruling, a federal appeals court ruled that the state’s attorney general cannot pursue legal action against doctors who refer patients to other states for an abortion, as doing so would violate their right to free speech.

4. A Wyoming judge struck down two abortion bans, ruling both unconstitutional.

• One of the laws bans abortion entirely while the other bans medication abortion. In her ruling November 19, Judge Melissa Owens wrote that the bans “impede the fundamental right to make health care decisions for an entire class of people, pregnant women.”
• Plaintiffs argued that the bans violate a 2012 state constitutional amendment guaranteeing Wyoming residents the right to make their own healthcare decisions.

5. Texas and Georgia not investigating maternal deaths tied to the states’ abortion bans.

• After ProPublica reported that at least five women died after being denied or delayed emergency care for severe pregnancy complications under state abortion bans—three in Texas and two in Georgia—for now, those states will not be reviewing maternal deaths that occurred since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
• Texas’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC), which is responsible for investigating the deaths of pregnant people and helping reduce maternal mortality in the state, announced it won’t be examining any pregnancy-related deaths from 2022 and 2023—including deaths that are potentially linked to the state’s abortion bans.
• After Georgia’s MMRC determined the deaths of the two women were preventable—which “unleashed a torrent of outrage over the fatal consequences” of abortion bans—state officials, citing confidential information that was “inappropriately shared,” fired the entire MMRC.

State lawmakers are already ramping up for their legislative sessions next year, pre-filing anti-abortion bills for lawmakers to consider when they reconvene. In Texas, lawmakers introduced a bill that would force internet service providers to block any site that contains information about abortion. This is the second time state lawmakers have tried to censor abortion content online.

Texas is also seeking to reclassify abortion pills as “controlled substances.” The same law passed in Louisiana last year and has made it harder for doctors to save lives in situations like miscarriages and hemorrhaging after childbirth.