Reproductive Justice, Rights & Health

The Supreme Court on Wednesday was divided over whether a federal law requiring hospitals that participate in Medicare to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment” in an emergency overrides an Ida

The living dead lurk in law books. So-called "zombie" statutes remain in legal codes around the country — archaic and unenforceable, but not quite deceased either. Given the right conditions, even long-dormant statutes can stir to life and wreak havoc, a fact made clear by the reanimation of Arizona's 1860s criminal abortion law.

The Arizona Supreme Court's resuscitation of a near-complete abortion ban penned decades before women had the right to vote kicked open the door to another legal anachronism: a Vietnam War-era constitutional challenge that may yet have some life in it.

TUCSON, Ariz. (KVOA) — All eyes remain on our state nearly one week after the Arizona Supreme Court's monumental ruling for a near-total abortion ban.

At the time, male physicians sought to dominate health care over midwives, and anti-abortion advocates felt threatened by immigrants, historians said.

The case hinged on statutory interpretation, not the merits of the state's 1864 ban.

Arizona officials are scrambling to address a near total abortion ban revived by the state’s Supreme Court this week, before the Civil War-era law almost completely halts access to Arizona’s already limited abortion services.

ABC15 is answering viewer's questions about abortion after the recent state Supreme Court ruling.

A proposed amendment to the Arizona constitution would make abortion legal until the baby could survive on its own without medical help, but does have some exceptions.

Without court action, Arizona could go back to an 1864 law making virtually all abortions illegal sometime later this year.

The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos created during fertility treatments should be considered children.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, immediately stripping women of their constitutional right to abortion. The devastating effects of this decision can be seen as states begin to criminalize abortion. Abortion is now illegal in 16 states, and anti-abortion lawmakers in other states are rushing to follow suit, threatening to make abortion inaccessible to an estimated 33 million women across the country. The impact of this decision on women’s health was almost immediate.

"Abortion access has been transformed by medication abortion pills. These pills have made safe abortion possible around the world, even in the most restrictive legal contexts. Abortion Beyond Borders follows these pills as they are moved by feminist activists from India into Ireland, Northern Ireland, Poland and the USA. It explores how medication abortion pills and the activists who supply them have changed abortion access, impacted politics, and catalyzed progressive reforms. Abortion Beyond Borders offers an unprecedented, up-close look into the global self-managed abortion movement"--

"The story of the National Organization for Women-its structures, trials, and revolutionary mission-told through the work of three extraordinary, little-known members"--;In the summer of 1966, crammed into a D.C. hotel suite, twenty-eight women devised a revolutionary plan. Betty Friedan, the well-known author of The Feminine Mystique, and Pauli Murray, a lawyer at the front lines of the civil rights movement, had called this renegade meeting from attendees at the annual conference of state women's commissions. Fed up with waiting for government action and trying to work with a broken system, they laid out a vision for an organization to unite all women and fight for their rights. Alternately skeptical and energized, they debated the idea late into the night. In less than twenty-four hours, the National Organization for Women was born. In The Women of NOW, the historian Katherine Turk chronicles the growth and enduring influence of this foundational group through three lesser-known members who became leaders: Aileen Hernandez, a federal official of Jamaican American heritage; Mary Jean Collins, a working-class union organizer and Chicago Catholic; and Patricia Hill Burnett, a Michigan Republican, artist, and former beauty queen. From its bold inception through the tumultuous training ground of the 1970s, NOW's feminism flooded the nation, permanently shifted American culture and politics, and clashed with conservative forces, presaging our fractured national landscape. These women built an organization that was radical in its time but flexible and expansive enough to become a mainstream fixture. This is the story of how they built it--and built it to last.

Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled to federally decriminalize abortion on Wednesday, finding that the current ban on the procedure is unconstitutional.

The Arizona Supreme Court has agreed to consider the petition of an anti-abortion doctor who argues that a near-total abortion ban from 1864 should be the law of the land

Planned Parenthood asks court to reconsider South Carolina's 'heartbeat' abortion ban Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers on Thursday asked South Carolina's top court to reconsider its Wednesday ruling upholding the state's recent ban on abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected.In its petition, Planned Parenthood said that the South Carolina Supreme Court had left undecided whether fetal cardiac activity refers to the first regu…

If the court had its way, the clock would turn back to 2016.

In the 14 months since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, advocacy groups have sought to protect abortion rights through state constitutional amendments.

Women in Texas with complicated pregnancies will be exempted from a state abortion ban under a temporary injunction issued on Friday.

"Over its half-century of public life, Roe v. Wade took on meanings that extended far beyond its original purpose of protecting the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship. At various times, it forced us to confront hard questions about judicial activism and restraint, the believability of science, racial justice, the suppression of religion, and much more. Mary Ziegler explores the transformations of meaning that have kept abortion on the front lines of our political and social battles"--

The modern Republican Party is the party of conservative Christianity and big business-two things so closely identified with the contemporary GOP that we hardly notice the strangeness of the pairing. Legal historian Mary Ziegler traces how the antiabortion movement helped to forge and later upend this alliance. Beginning with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Buckley V. Valeo, right-to-lifers fought to gain power in the GOP by changing how campaign spending-and the First Amendment-work. The antiabortion movement helped to revolutionize the rules of money in US politics and convinced conservative voters to fixate on the federal courts. Ultimately, the campaign finance landscape that abortion foes created fueled the GOP's embrace of populism and the rise of Donald Trump. Ziegler offers a surprising new view of the slow drift to extremes in American politics-and explains how it had everything to do with campaign spending.

Celeste Burgess pleaded guilty to illegally concealing human remains after using the abortion pill.

Contrary to its critics, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is not illegitimate or lawless. It is a highly consequential but fundamentally ordinary ex

Nearly half of Arizona’s pregnancy related deaths in 2022 were tied to mental health or substance use disorders, with 98% deemed preventable, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. And communities of color and rural communities see disparate effects and a lack of perinatal care.

Twelve of Arizona’s 15 county attorneys are calling for Gov. Katie Hobbs to rescind her recent executive order that limits them from prosecuting abortion-related cases. The attorneys sent a letter

Arizona pharmacists will be able to dispense birth control - pills, the patch or a ring - to patients without a prescription.