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The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would revoke guidance to the nation's hospitals that directed them to provide emergency abortions for women when they are necessary to stabilise their medical condition. That guidance was issued to hospitals in 2022, weeks after the US Supreme Court upended national abortion rights in the US. It was an effort by the Biden administration to preserve abortion access for extreme cases in which women were experiencing medical emergencies and needed an abortion to prevent organ loss or severe haemorrhaging, among other serious complications. The Biden administration had argued that hospitals including states with near-total bans needed to provide emergency abortions under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. That law requires emergency rooms that receive Medicare dollars to provide an exam and stabilising treatment for all patients. Nearly all emergency rooms in the US rely on Medicare funds. The Trump administratio
The Trump administration on Monday asked a judge to toss out a lawsuit from three GOP-led states seeking to cut off telehealth access to abortion medication mifepristone. Justice Department attorneys stayed the legal course charted by Biden administration, though they didn't directly weigh in on the underlying issue of access to the drug that's part of the nation's most common method of abortion. Rather, the government argued the states don't have the legal right, or standing, to sue. The states are free to pursue their claims in a district where venue is proper, but the states' claims before this court must be dismissed or transferred pursuant to the venue statute's mandatory command, federal government attorneys wrote. The lawsuit from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri argues that Food and Drug Administration should roll back access to mifepristone. They filed their complaint after the Supreme Court preserved access to mifepristone last year. They want the FDA to prohibit telehealth ...
The Defence Department will no longer reimburse service members for travel out of state to get reproductive health care, including abortions and fertility treatments, according to a new memo. The directive signed this week eliminates a rarely used Biden administration policy enacted in October 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and more states began to impose increased abortion restrictions. Signed on Wednesday by Jeffrey Register, the director of the Pentagon's human resources department, the memo simply shows red lines crossing out the previous regulation and offers no other guidance. Asked if service members would still be allowed time off to travel at their own expense, the department had no immediate answer. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the policy change shameful. Our service members go wherever they need to in order to bravely serve our country and because President Trump's extremist Supreme Court
President Donald Trump vowed to support anti-abortion-rights protesters in his second term as tens of thousands of demonstrators rallied in Washington on Friday for the annual March for Life. We will again stand proudly for families and for life, Trump declared in a pre-recorded video address. Protesters had come to the capital for decades to call for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, which affirmed a constitutional right to an abortion. Now, with the repeal of Roe in 2022, they are now on the inside rather than the outside. With Trump's return to the White House and Republicans in control of Congress, the activists want to build on their victories. Our country faces the return of the most pro-family, most pro-life American president of our lifetimes," Vice President JD Vance told the crowd in his in-person speech. Vance hailed Trump's previous actions on abortion, saying the president delivered on his promise of ending Roe" and appointed hundreds of anti-abortion judges. Abortion was ..
President Donald Trump has announced he would pardon anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading abortion clinic entrances. Trump called it "a great honour to sign this". "They should not have been prosecuted," he said as he signed pardons for "peaceful pro-life protesters. The people pardoned were involved in the October 2020 invasion and blockade of a Washington clinic. Lauren Handy was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for leading the blockade by directing blockaders to link themselves together with locks and chains to block the clinic's doors. A nurse sprained her ankle when one person pushed her while entering the clinic, and a woman was accosted by another blockader while having labour pains, prosecutors said. Police found five fetuses in Handy's home after she was indicted. Trump pardoned Handy and her nine co-defendants: Jonathan Darnel of Virginia; Jay Smith, John Hinshaw and William Goodman, all of New York; Joan Bell of New Jersey; Paulette Harlow and Jean ..
Carrying her infant daughter, 19-year-old Sithulisiwe Moyo waited two hours to get birth-control pills from a tent pitched in a poor settlement on the outskirts of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare. The outreach clinic in Epworth provides Moyo with her best shot at achieving her dream of returning to school. I am too young to be a baby-making machine," she said. "At least this clinic helps me avoid another pregnancy. But the free service funded by the US government, the world's largest health donor, might soon be unavailable. As he did in his first term, US President-elect Donald Trump is likely in January to invoke the so-called global gag rule, a policy that bars US foreign aid from being used to perform abortions or provide abortion information. The policy cuts off American government funding for services that women around the world rely on to avoid pregnancy or to space out their children, as well as for heath care unrelated to abortion. Four decades of on-again, off-again ...
Arizona voters have approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion access up to fetal viability, typically after 21 weeks a major win for advocates of the measure in the presidential battleground state who have been seeking to expand access beyond the current 15-week limit. Arizona was one of nine states with abortion on the ballot. Democrats have centered abortion rights in their campaigns since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Abortion-rights supporters prevailed in all seven abortion ballot questions in 2022 and 2023, including in conservative-leaning states. Arizona for Abortion Access, the coalition leading the state campaign, gathered well over the 383,923 signatures required to put it on the ballot, and the secretary of state's office verified that enough were valid. The coalition far outpaced the opposition campaign, It Goes Too Far, in fundraising. The opposing campaign argued the measure was too far-reaching and cited its own polling in sayi
In the upcoming US presidential election, the issue of abortion rights is emerging as a significant factor that is influencing Indian American women's voting preferences. This demographic group, which is a part of the second-largest immigrant community in the United States, is showing a strong inclination towards supporting candidates who advocate for reproductive rights. Meeta Damani, an Indian American documentary filmmaker living in the New Jersey area, has been working in the community with a particular focus on women and children. It is a crucial issue for both men and women in the Indian American community as well. It is interconnected like if there is a woman and the child is going to be born unhealthy, that is going to affect the entire family. At the end of the day, it is about freedom and one's choice. I feel the women voters will make their voice very clear, she said. Looking at the clarity of thought on this subject among Indian American women, it is not a surprise that
Abortion and reproductive rights have been central to the races for president and governor in North Carolina, a battleground state that has more moderate abortion restrictions than elsewhere across the South. That's been even truer in the fight for a seat on the state Supreme Court that abortion rights supporters say will play an important role in determining whether Republicans can enact even more restrictions. Registered Republicans currently hold five of seven seats and could expand that majority even further in Tuesday's election. Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat who is running for reelection, is focusing heavily on the issue and touts her support for reproductive rights. Her first television ad featured images of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, who prefers to restrict abortions earlier than the current 12 weeks. She says her GOP rival for the court could be a deciding vote on the bench for such restrictions. This is an issue that is landing in fron
A court order that says hospitals cannot federally be required to provide pregnancy terminations when they violate a Texas abortion ban will stay for now, the Supreme Court said on Monday. The decision is another setback for opponents of Texas' abortion ban, which for two years has withstood multiple legal challenges, including from women who had serious pregnancy complications and have been turned away by doctors. It left Texas as the only state where the Biden administration is unable to enforce its interpretation of a federal law in an effort to ensure women still have access to emergency abortions when their health or life is at risk. The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order, and there were no publicly noted dissents. Texas had asked the justices to leave the order in place while the Biden administration had asked the justices to throw it out. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the decision a major victory". The Biden ...
Melania Trump revealed her support for abortion rights on Thursday, ahead of the release of her upcoming memoir, exposing a stark contrast with her husband, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, on the crucial election issue. In a video posted to her X account on Thursday morning, the former first lady defended women's "individual freedoms" to do what they want with their bodies -- a position at odds with much of the Republican Party and her own husband, who has struggled to find a consistent message on abortion while wedged between anti-abortion supporters within his base and the majority of Americans who support abortion rights. "Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard," Melania Trump said in the video. "Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth: individual freedom. What does 'my body, my choice' really mean?" The video appears to confirm excerpts of her self-titled memoir
Anti-abortion leaders said on Wednesday that they're undeterred after Donald Trump said he would veto a federal abortion ban, the first time he has explicitly said so after previously refusing to answer questions on the subject. During Tuesday night's vice-presidential debate, the Republican presidential nominee posted on his social media platform Truth Social that "everyone knows I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it". He then said that abortion rights should be left up to the states -- his most common response to questions about the issue since Roe v Wade was overturned by a conservative majority that included three of Trump's own appointees to the Supreme Court. In the two years since the ruling, abortion rights have emerged as a major vulnerability for the GOP, which has struggled to find a consistent message on the path forward, while driving turnout for Democrats. With the election less than five weeks away, Trump has