U.S. Repro Watch, April 26

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

1. A new study by the Center for Reproductive Rights and others found that most Oklahoma hospitals are unable to provide clear and accurate information on their emergency obstetric care policies.

• Jointly published by the Center, Physicians for Human Rights, and Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice, the study found that most Oklahoma hospital staff provided opaque, contradictory, or incorrect information about their policies on when abortion care is available. They also provided little reassurance that clinicians’ medical judgment and pregnant patients’ needs would be prioritized. 
• Oklahoma currently has three overlapping and inconsistent state abortion bans in effect, fueling confusion about clinicians’ ability to provide care during obstetric emergencies—even when the lives, health, and safety of pregnant people are at stake.
• Read the full report, No One Could Say: Accessing Emergency Obstetrics Information as a Prospective Prenatal Patient in Post-Roe Oklahoma, here.

2. Amanda Zurawski, lead plaintiff in Zurawski v. State of Texas, testified today about her experience with Texas abortion bans before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

• Zurawski, from Austin, was denied abortion care after she experienced preterm pre-labor rupture of membranes at 18 weeks of pregnancy. Only after she was diagnosed with sepsis would doctors perform an emergency abortion, and Zurawski spent the next three days in the ICU fighting for her life.
• At the Committee hearing, Zurawski appealed to lawmakers to put a stop to abortion bans like Texas’s—“barbaric restrictions that are being passed across the country” and are “having real life implications on real people.”
• This is the first hearing focused on reproductive rights in the House or Senate this Congress.
• Watch the replay of the livestream of the Committee hearing here and learn more about the case, Zurawski v. State of Texas, here.

3. An abortion pill manufacturer filed a new lawsuit April 19 attempting to keep mifepristone on the market.

• GenBioPro, which manufactures the generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone, is seeking to block the FDA from enforcing an order that would roll back access to the medication by reinstating burdensome restrictions and reversing all FDA actions related to it since pre-2016. If this ruling were to take effect, GenBioPro’s 2019 approval of its version of mifepristone could be revoked.
• The company argues that the FDA cannot order a suspension of its product as it violates their due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.
• Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court has blocked the lower court’s decision, leaving abortion medication available while the case proceeds. Read all about the case, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, here.

4. Efforts to restrict and protect abortion advanced at the state level.

• North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum signed into law a bill banning abortion, making North Dakota the 13th state in the U.S. to criminalize abortion care.
• A city in New Mexico is challenging a state law prohibiting local governments from restricting access to abortion.
• The Nevada Senate approved legislation protecting abortion providers and patients from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions and a measure to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution.
• Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a package of bills into law to protect access to abortion and gender-affirming care. One of the bills protects providers and patients from legal actions by other states.

May 4: Hearing on Wisconsin’s pre-Roe ban.

• A state court will hear arguments over Wisconsin’s total criminal abortion ban dating back to 1849. Soon after Roe was overturned, Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit arguing that the ban was unenforceable. Confusion over the status of the law has forced providers to suspend abortion care in the state.

In light of an increasingly hostile landscape for abortion access, the Abortion Defense Network was recently launched to connect people with legal assistance, specifically people working to provide or support abortion care. Under the program, people will be matched with trusted attorneys who can provide legal advice, information, and resources.