U.S. Repro Watch, April 18

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. An Indiana appeals court ruled that the state’s abortion ban violates religious freedom.

• In its April 4 ruling, the three-judge panel agreed with a lower court that plaintiffs with a religious objection to the ban should be exempt from it.  
• The challenge against the ban was brought by the ACLU on behalf of Hoosier Jews for Choice. The lawsuit argues that the ban violates an Indiana religious freedom law due to Jewish teaching that “a fetus attains the status of a living person only at birth.” The lawsuit also highlights the importance in Jewish law of protecting the life and health of the mother prior to birth.   
• The state may appeal the ruling to the state supreme court within the next 45 days. 

2. Hearing in the Center’s Tennessee “medical exceptions” case receives widespread media coverage. 

• The hearing was held April 4 in Blackmon v. State of Tennessee, the case brought on behalf of two physicians and seven women denied abortion care who faced serious pregnancy complications that put their health, lives and future fertility at risk. It challenges the medical necessity exception to Tennessee’s total abortion ban. 
• View photos and media coverage of the hearing here. 

3. A Texas woman is suing prosecutors who charged her with murder after she took abortion medication. 

• The woman, Lizelle Gonzalez, was charged with murder in 2022 and spent two nights in jail before the case was dropped. She filed the lawsuit in federal court on April 4.
• Under the abortion bans in Texas and other states, pregnant people who seek abortion do not face criminal charges, only doctors. 

4. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that a total abortion ban passed in 1864 can take effect.

• With the April 9 ruling, Arizona is set to become the 15th state to ban abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion in 2022.
• Once in effect, the ban will criminalize providers with a minimum sentence of two years in state prison and prohibit all abortions except when they are deemed “necessary” to save a pregnant person’s life. The Civil-War era ban—enacted before Arizona was a state—will become enforceable 45 days after the court issues its mandate.  
• Arizona voters will have the chance to protect their abortion rights through a ballot measure this November. 

5. In international news, Honduras’s total abortion ban is being challenged in a case presented before the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee. 

• The case involves Fausia, an indigenous Honduran woman and human rights defender who survived sexual violence and was forced to give birth after being denied emergency contraception and abortion care.
• Brought by the Center and the Centro de Derechos de Mujeres (CDM), the lawsuit argues that Honduras violated Fausia’s human rights by imposing pregnancy and forced motherhood on her. 
• The case—which marks the first time Honduras has been brought before the UN for its total abortion ban—seeks to ensure guarantees for Hondurans to access essential health services, including abortion. 

More young people are getting vasectomies and tubal ligation procedures. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, both vasectomies and tubal ligation procedures have have increased significantly in the U.S. in young people, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The increase in people aged 18 to 30 “likely reflects fear or anxiety among young people about restricted access to abortion and/or contraception,” explained the study’s lead author Dr. Jackie Ellison. 

Tubal ligation procedures (a.k.a. “having your tubes tied”) increased twice as much as vasectomies, the study found, reflecting the disproportionate impact of abortion restrictions on people who can get pregnant.

April 24: U.S. Supreme Court arguments in Idaho EMTALA case.

• In the case, Idaho v. United States and Moyle et al. v. United States, the Department of Justice is arguing that Idaho’s near-total abortion ban conflicts with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA)—a federal law requiring hospital emergency departments to provide “stabilizing treatment”—since it prevents Idaho hospitals from stabilizing patients in need of abortion care. The lawsuit will decide whether Idaho hospitals are obligated to treat these patients.
• The Center submitted an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief in the case March 28 on behalf of pregnant patients in states with abortion bans who were denied or delayed stabilizing abortion care while experiencing obstetrical emergencies.
• The hearing will be available to stream on the Supreme Court’s website.