Here's a roundup of news about abortion:
This week the Department of Health and Human Services "told hospitals that they 'must' provide abortion services if the life of the mother is at risk, saying federal law on emergency treatment guidelines preempts state laws in jurisdictions that now ban the procedure without any exceptions following the Supreme Court’s decision to end a constitutional right to abortion," Zeke Miller reports for The Associated Press. The directive could provide clarity for doctors who say they're afraid to provide routine care to women suffering miscarriages.
Newsrooms should reframe abortion coverage to capture the complexity of American viewpoints on the topic. They should also reconsider internal rules about avoiding political speech, which often stifle conversation on the topic and leave journalists poorly prepared to capture the nuances of the issue, writes Kelly McBride, the Senior Vice President and Chair of the Poynter Institute's Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership.
A pharmaceutical company has submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration for an over-the-counter birth control pill. If approved, it would be the first such medication available nationwide without a prescription. Read more here.
More babies will be born now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, but rural areas in many states are so-called "maternity deserts" with little or no access to childbirth services. Some who oppose abortion say the government should expand services that make it easier for people to bear and raise children, but it's a subject of fierce debate among those who favor smaller government. Pregnancy and childbirth costs an average of $2,854 out-of-pocket for people enrolled in large group health-insurance plans, according to a new data analysis.
Even in states where abortion is legal, many women with autoimmune diseases are being denied access to methotrexate, a critical and commonly prescribed medication that can cause miscarriages (and is uncommonly used off-label to induce abortion). One Texas pharmacist refused to dispense it to an 8-year-old girl. Some doctors say they've been ordered to deny prescriptions because of fears that they could be sued. Without medication, many patients risk irreversible organ damage or death. Read more here.
Abortion providers are trying to open new clinics as close as possible to states with abortion bans. Meanwhile, most abortion clinics in Montana have barred out-of-state patients from receiving abortion pills for fear that they could be sued.
Women in the sparsely-populated rural West may face outsized difficulties in accessing abortion. Read more here.
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