U.S. Repro Watch: Four Updates You Won’t Want to Miss, 05.21.25

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

1. Abortion access to improve in Michigan and Maryland.

• A Michigan court struck down several state abortion restrictions as violations of the state’s voter-approved constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights. The case was brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of Northland Family Planning Center and Medical Students for Choice to challenge the restrictions, including a law mandating that patients receive biased “counseling” and then wait at least 24 hours before obtaining abortion care. In her ruling, Judge Sima Patel agreed that the laws violate the state constitutional right to abortion and rejected the state’s arguments that the laws protect patients’ health.
• Maryland is launching a first-of-its-kind program to give financial assistance to people seeking abortion care, drawing from unused Affordable Care Act funds. Beginning July 1, the state will allocate $25 million annually to pay for abortions—regardless of patients’ insurance status.

2. Anti-abortion members of Congress are trying to dismantle a law protecting reproductive health care providers and patients from violence.

• Known as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act), the law prohibits the use of force against people seeking and providing reproductive health services, such as abortion and fertility care.
• The bill to repeal the FACE Act was introduced by Congressman Chip Roy. On May 17, a fertility clinic was bombed in Palm Springs, California.
• Renee Chelian, founder and CEO of Northland Family Planning Centers in Michigan, submitted testimony for the House Judiciary Committee, describing her experiences with clinic violence and the importance of the FACE Act.
• Urge your representative to vote NO on the FACE Act repeal.

3. Congress is poised to defund Planned Parenthood and leave a giant gap in the U.S. health care system.

• House Republicans released a new budget proposal that would block all federal funding for Planned Parenthood and other health centers that provide abortion care. This would shut down clinics across the country and leave a huge gap in the health care system.
• Such “cuts” would actually increase the budget deficit by $300 million, according to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.
• For many people, Planned Parenthood is their only source of reproductive health care. One in three women has gotten care at a Planned Parenthood health center, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

4. President Trump’s proposed budget includes major cuts to reproductive health care.

• The administration released its 46-page “skinny budget,” outlining early funding priorities as Congress begins its appropriations process.
• Though non-binding, the proposal, released May 2, would eliminate all funding for Title X family planning program, defund the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, strip nearly $200 million from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and cut nearly $700 million from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The mental health of OB-GYNs has taken a major hit since the right to abortion was overturned.

Seven in 10 OB-GYNs in states with near-total abortion bans reported symptoms of anxiety and depression following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, according to a study published in Occupational & Environmental Medicine. Twenty percent of participants said they felt hopelessness, helplessness, and disappointment because of legal changes that affected their work. Many described their distress as a “moral injury” and felt silenced by political interference in patient care.

Thursday, May 22: Center to argue the case of Celia Ramos before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

• In Peru during the 1990s, thousands of women were forcibly sterilized as part of a state policy—including Celia Ramos, who died in 1997 after being surgically sterilized without her consent.
• The Center is representing Ramos’s family before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), the highest human rights court in the Americas. It will be the first-ever IACtHR case to address Peru’s forced sterilization policy.