U.S. Repro Watch, February 22

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. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that unimplanted human embryos should be considered children.

• The court ruled on February 16 that frozen embryos are children for the purposes of the state’s wrongful death of a minor law.
• IVF typically involves fertilizing multiple eggs and determining which embryo may have the best chance of survival.
• On February 21, Alabama’s largest hospital paused in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments as providers and patients across the state scrambled to assess the impact of a court ruling and the criminal penalties involved.

2. A location data company tracked patient visits to 600 Planned Parenthood clinics and sold that data to an anti-abortion ad campaign.

• The company, Near Intelligence, allegedly tracked people’s visits to nearly 600 Planned Parenthood locations across 48 states and provided that data to one of the largest anti-abortion ad campaigns in the nation.
• Abortion rights supporters have feared this type of data could also be used by anti-abortion government officials to prosecute people who get abortion care after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion.
• Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is calling on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the company.

3. A Tennessee House panel advanced legislation that would make it a crime to help a minor get an abortion in another state.

• The bill is part of a growing trend by the anti-abortion movement to prevent people from leaving their state for abortion care.
• The Tennessee measure would make it illegal for an adult to “recruit, harbor, or transport” a pregnant minor to get an abortion without consent from the minor’s parents. The legislation must still clear the full House and Senate chambers.

4. The Center filed a lawsuit in Michigan to challenge three abortion restrictions still on the books despite voter approval of an abortion rights amendment.

• In November 2022, Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved the Reproductive Freedom for All Act (RFFA), which amended the state constitution to protect reproductive freedom.
• While most of Michigan’s abortion restrictions were repealed after the amendment passed, some still remain.
• The Center’s lawsuit, filed February 6, aims to block three restrictions: a 24-hour waiting period, mandatory biased counseling, and a law that severely limits which clinicians can provide abortion care.

5. Florida’s Supreme Court heard arguments February 7 about the language of an abortion rights ballot measure.

• Florida’s anti-abortion Attorney General asked the court to block the proposed amendment that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, arguing that the language was too complicated for voters.
• The Court has until April 1 to decide whether the amendment will be put to a vote this November.

Pregnant women living in U.S. states with limited abortion access face higher levels of intimate partner homicide.

This was among the findings from a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS), which found significant differences in homicide rates of pregnant women, particularly by firearms, between states based on policies regarding abortion access.

The researchers analyzed data of homicides that occurred between the years 2018-2020, before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and classified states as restrictive, neutral or protective towards access to abortion. Restrictive states had a 75% higher rate of peripartum homicide. (Peripartum was defined as people currently pregnant or within one year postpartum.) Firearms were used in 63.4% of homicides among the peripartum group.

“Our country’s maternal mortality rates are extremely high, and what’s even more striking is that the greatest contributor to the high mortality rate is homicide,” said the study’s lead author Grace Keegan. Despite representing 4% of the global population, the United States has the 5th highest number of intentional homicides in the world.

March 7: Kate Cox, the Center’s client, will be a guest at the State of the Union address.

• Kate Cox, a Texas woman who was denied an emergency abortion in December after her pregnancy was diagnosed with a lethal fetal condition that endangered her health and future fertility, will be attending the president’s State of the Union address as a guest of the Bidens.

March 26: U.S. Supreme Court hearing on the case threatening nationwide access to medication abortion.

• The lawsuit, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, was filed by anti-abortion advocates to challenge the FDA’s initial approval of the abortion medication mifepristone as well as the FDA’s more recent actions to increase access to the medication.
• Medication abortion is the most common method of abortion in the United States and has a two-decade well-documented safety record.
• An audio feed of the argument will be live-streamed on the Court’s website, and the Court is expected to post the audio of the arguments later that day. 

April 4: Hearing in Tennessee’s abortion ban “medical exceptions” case.

• The Center filed the case in September 2023 on behalf of women who were denied abortions while experiencing dangerous pregnancy complications.
• The hearing in the case, Blackmon v. State of Tennessee, will take place at the Tennessee Twelfth Judicial District Court at 9 a.m. CT/10 a.m. ET.