Abortion

Although a heartbeat ban was introduced in the Kansas House in 2013, the bill didn’t make it far. Drafted late in the session and after a massive abortion omnibus was already a near-done deal, the bill received a brief hearing in a house committee but no further action.

The legislation, which bans sex-selective abortions, telemed abortions, and coverage of abortion in the state health insurance exchange and could close many of the state’s abortion clinics, now heads to Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s desk for his signature.

On Tuesday lawyers for the State of Arizona asked a federal judge to dismiss a legal challenge to a 2011 law that bans abortions based of the race or gender of the fetus, because the challengers have no standing to sue.

With her passport back in hand, a Norwegian woman at the center of a Dubai rape claim dispute said Monday that officials dropped her 16-month sentence for having sex outside marriage in the latest clash between the city's Islamic-based legal codes and its international branding as a Western-friendly haven.

Over the last three years, more than a dozen states have prohibited and restricted family planning funding to reproductive health centers that provide abortion services with separate, private funding. And a handful of states have even managed to block the flow of federal funds to reproductive health providers.

Just hours after a massive anti-abortion bill was signed into law by Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry, new legislation was introduced to restrict safe abortion access in the state even further. On Thursday, Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford) introduced HB 59, a “prohibition on abortion after detection of a fetal heartbeat.”

A roller-coaster reproductive rights battle in North Carolina has taken another turn. SB 353, a piece of legislation originally written as a motorcycle safety bill that was amended to include multiple anti-abortion restrictions, has been sent to the state senate’s rules committee for review.

Texas state troopers spent an hour and a half Friday confiscating tampons and sanitary pads, among other items, from Texans hoping to enter the public gallery to watch the final debate over HB 2, an omnibus anti-abortion bill that would shut down all but five abortion clinics in the state. The move meant that menstruating people would either have to refrain from entering the gallery, or do so without sanitary products.

After the Texas Senate's passage of a drastic anti-abortion bill Friday evening, reproductive health advocates say the number of women who will be forced to get 'black market abortions' near the US-Mexico border is likely to skyrocket.

On a list of the 25 most common American surgeries produced by the American Medical Association and the American College of Surgeons, abortion does not appear at all. PolitiFact Texas gave Perry's claim a "Pants on Fire" rating and said this: "This claim not only lacks a factual basis, it's ridiculous."