Latest news with #KatCammack
E&E News
2 hours ago
- Politics
- E&E News
GOP renews deregulation push despite megalaw loss
As Republicans crafted their party-line megabill this summer, some conservative hard-liners hoped the legislation could be a vehicle for a long-sought rollback of agency rules. But instead, the budget reconciliation megabill passed without any language from the 'Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act,' which would dramatically expand congressional veto power over agency rules. Now, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — chief sponsors of the deregulatory bill — say they want to get 'REINS' over the finish line through any means necessary. Indeed, the House has included a version in fiscal 2026 spending legislation. Advertisement 'There is not a singular cut that we could make that would mean as much as long-term regulatory reform,' Cammack said in an interview. The 'REINS Act' would give Congress final approval over major rules. Sponsors also want to make it easier to scrap existing agency rules. The measure fits squarely within conservative government-shrinking priorities and has near universal support among the Republican conference. But while 'REINS' likely can pass the GOP-controlled House on its own — and did in 2023 — its chances of hitting 60 votes to overcome a Senate filibuster are slim. That landscape ups the stakes for Republican sponsors to work the bill into a must-pass funding package or a reconciliation bill, the latter of which requires only a 51-vote majority in the Senate. Yet a parliamentary scuffle that played out in final stages of the megabill fight indicates that conservatives face an uphill battle to get 'REINS' done. A reconciliation bust Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) said the White House backs his efforts. | Francis Chung/POLITICO Lee, who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources committee, made 'REINS' a top priority of his during the reconciliation process. He hoped to rewrite the rule-busting language to ensure it complied with the Byrd rule, which dictates that everything in a reconciliation package be budgetary in nature. But that effort ultimately fell short, with Lee being the only senator willing to bat for it. Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled against 'budgetary REINS,' as Lee called his provision, despite Lee meeting with her and redrafting the legislation numerous times. 'We had many, many iterations, lots of back and forth, and it was looking favorable. We were getting favorable responses. And then, I believe it was on the day of the bipartisan Byrd bath that we ended up getting an adverse ruling,' Lee said. According to Lee, President Donald Trump supported the inclusion of 'REINS' in the reconciliation bill. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. But among his fellow senators, Lee was alone in pushing the measure. Some GOP Senators doubted from the beginning that it would ever be eligible for inclusion in the reconciliation bill. Even Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who co-sponsors the stand-alone version of 'REINS,' was not in Lee's corner. Paul chairs the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which he confirmed to POLITICO's E&E News has jurisdiction over 'REINS.' But he left the language out of his committee's portion of the megabill. 'It's a policy, and it's difficult to put policy into a budget resolution,' Paul said in an interview. House action likely Lee told POLITICO's E&E News that he will attempt to fit the deregulatory language into a future reconciliation package — even if he has to continue to push for it alone on the Senate side. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he wants to do at least one, and potentially two, more reconciliation bills while Republicans have control of both chambers of Congress. 'I feel like, had we had more time, we could have worked out some of the bugs on ['REINS'],' Lee said. 'Even that adverse parliamentarian ruling is one that I think we could work through. That's a potential option.' On the House side, Cammack said she is preparing for 'all sorts of contingencies' when it comes to 'REINS.' Her next step is to put a standalone version of the bill on the House floor, where she predicts it will pass. She is also incorporating 'REINS' language into appropriations bills in the House. Johnson's office did not respond to request for comment about the effort. Neither of the appropriations bills passed by the House so far — Defense and Military Construction-VA — include language related to rulemaking authority. But the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill, released last week, includes language barring new rules that are deemed by the White House to cost over $100 million or pose 'a major increase in costs or prices' for individuals, industries or government agencies. In a news release, the House Appropriations Committee said that the Financial Services bill 'codif[ies] the Regulations in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, which curbs unelected bureaucrats from having unfettered regulatory power.' Although that language will likely pass the House, it may struggle to gain sufficient support in the Senate. If it does get stripped out of the appropriations process, Cammack is already looking toward using a second reconciliation process as a shot for 'REINS.' 'We're obviously very interested in a second attempt at a reconciliation process, especially given the fact that the Senate parliamentarian was green-lighting our language and then decided in the eleventh hour that she wasn't going to,' Cammack said. GOP skepticism Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) at the Capitol in June. Despite his support for 'REINS,' he's skeptical of it passing in the current environment. | Francis Chung/POLITICO While Lee and Cammack are optimistic, other Senate Republicans remain doubtful that a parliamentarian ruling would change in a future reconciliation package. 'I don't know why it would change,' Paul said. 'I would like to get ['REINS'] passed. But short of getting 60 Republicans or Democrats having an epiphany, you know, it's hard to pass legislation.' Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) is similarly skeptical that 'REINS' could be included in a future reconciliation package. 'I just don't know how you'd word it so that it was budgetary,' he said. Still, he said, it remains important that Republicans keep pushing for major regulatory rollbacks. 'The 'REINS Act' is one of those things that puts a check on the co-equal branches of government. For me, it would be a very high legislative priority if we could get it done,' he said. This story also appears in Climatewire.
USA Today
2 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Women's history museum has been a long time coming. Congress is trying again.
Lawmakers are renewing a bipartisan effort to buld a women's history museum on the National Mall. WASHINGTON ‒ In a rare Congressional effort crossing party lines, Democrat and GOP lawmakers are calling for funding for a new women's history museum on the National Mall that would join museums celebrating African American and Native American history. Supporters of the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum said it's important to have a place to showcase the critical role of women in the United States. 'Our nation's history has been shaped by strong, trailblazing women whose stories deserve to be told,'' Florida Rep. Kat Cammack, co-chair of the Republican Women's Caucus, said in a statement. 'Sharing those stories is the first step in honoring their monumental accomplishments.'' Members of the Democratic Women's Caucus and the Republican Women's Caucus sent a letter July 21 urging a congressional committee to support funding for the museum. The effort faces major hurdles, including the Trump administration's campaign to eliminate diversity initiatives and a push by Republican congressional leaders to drastically cut federal spending. 'It feels like just an absolute Herculean effort to even get people to remember that we are still fighting for this,'' Rep. Hillary Scholten, a Democrat from Michigan, told USA TODAY. 'It's just been such a challenging effort.' Bipartisanship effort 'truly unique' Republican and Democratic women lawmakers, including Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., have long pushed for the museum to join other Smithsonian Institution museums, including the National Museum of the American Indian and the National African American Museum of History and Culture. Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, and the late Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, introduced a measure in 2020 to establish the museum. Congress approved a package that included the women's history museum and the National Museum of the American Latino. Then-President Donald Trump signed the legislation. There have been related bills over the years, including one to build the museum on the National Mall and another to fund it. Scholten and others acknowledge the challenge to get funding this year, but urged the House Appropriations Committee last week to include it in a spending bill. 'We wanted to make it a priority, to put the women's history (museum) top of mind because as things are getting shut down, we want to say, 'Not this one. Remember how important this is as we move forward,'' she said. The fact that both Democrats and Republicans support the museum should help, said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. 'It's wonderful to see that this is coming from women on both sides of the aisle,'' she said. Scholten, a vice chair of the Democratic Women's Caucus, said some women lawmakers are banding together around the issue. She noted there are a few other bipartisan efforts this Congress, including the congressional softball team. '(We) are united in making this happen so that we can tell the stories of women changemakers over the years,' she said. 'So many important stories that need to be told' While it has had bipartisan support, some Republican lawmakers have objected to the creation of museums they say are based on 'group identity.'' In 2020, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, blocked legislation to create the Latino and women's history museums saying 'the last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation." The Trump administration has pushed to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across all federal agencies. Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order blasting institutions he said spread 'divisive ideology.' That order named some Smithsonian Institution museums, including the women's history museum. More: Trump sets sights on national African American history museum More: Civil rights leaders rally around National Museum of African American History Walsh said while efforts to share histories of women and people of color are labeled as DEI or dangerous, they help fill gaps in telling the nation's history. 'It isn't taught in schools and young people, young women and young men – all of us – need to know this history,' she said. Trump has shown signs of support for the women's history museum. At an event at the White House in March, Trump told Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., he supported her bipartisan bill to put the museum on the National Mall. 'You get that going and we're going to back it 100%,'' he said at an event this spring. Scholten said supporters welcome a meeting with Trump to discuss the museum. 'We would love to have an audience with him and explain the importance of this museum and why there's no reason it shouldn't be able to happen right now,'' she said.
Fox News
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Rep. Kat Cammack Responds To The Left's Fearmongering About Healthcare: 'Should Actually Read The Text Of The Big, Beautifull Bill'
Florida Republican Congresswoman Kat Cammack joins Fox Across America With Jimmy Failla to explain how her Democratic colleagues are misleading their constituents about the changes to Medicaid outlined in President Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' that he signed into law earlier this month. 'Not only do we have a literacy crisis in the country where people either can't or refuse to read, And so they're just taking whatever headline or, you know, soundbite they see on TikTok or whatever platform they get their news from. And they're like, oh, my gosh, they're stripping health care. And I'm a negative reinforcement person, so I love bringing these people into the office to chat with them. And the look on their face when you actually explain to them and show them in black and white in the text. And they're like, oh, but why don't I know that? Then all of a sudden they're mad. They're mad that they haven't been given that information despite the fact that they're sitting in their mom's basement with a little tinfoil hat on watching MSNBC on repeat over and over and over and again. It's wild to me the stories that have come up about the big beautiful bill. Effectively, the people who voted against it wanted higher taxes and more government dependency. I mean, that's really what it comes down to, but. I guess if you're a 25-year old guy in your mom's basement and she's been making you know hot pockets for you while you play on your PS5 whatever and all of a sudden you've got to go work 18 hours a week or go to school for 18 hours a week or volunteer heaven forbid for 18 hours a week, this bill is going to be a problem for you because we're cutting it off. No more handouts.' Jimmy also playfully suggests a few Congress-themed names for the baby girl Rep. Cammack and her husband are soon welcoming into the world. Check out the podcast to hear their full discussion!
Vox
01-07-2025
- Health
- Vox
Confusing abortion bans hurt patients. But there's a cost to making them clearer.
is a policy correspondent for Vox covering social policy. She focuses on housing, schools, homelessness, child care, and abortion rights, and has been reporting on these issues for more than a decade. By the time Republican Rep. Kat Cammack arrived at a Florida emergency room, she was facing an urgent medical crisis: Her pregnancy, then five weeks along, had become ectopic and now threatened her life. It was May 2024, and though Florida's new and particularly restrictive six-week abortion ban did allow abortion in cases like hers, Cammack said she spent hours convincing hospital staff to administer the standard treatment for ending nonviable pregnancies. Doctors expressed fears about losing their licenses, prompting Cammack to pull up the legislation on her phone to show them that her case fell within legal parameters. Now pregnant again, Cammack recently described her experience to the Wall Street Journal, accusing the political left of 'fearmongering' and creating confusion among health care providers that ultimately puts patients at risk. Her view — that confusion stems from abortion rights advocates, not the laws themselves — has become a rallying point for anti-abortion leaders. Christina Francis, the head of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, blames mainstream medical groups like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) for misleading doctors about when they can provide abortions in states with bans. 'They've…stated that doctors couldn't intervene in those [life-threatening] situations or they would face prosecution, and in fact, they're still peddling that lie,' she told Vox. 'They [just] put out posts on the anniversary of Dobbs saying the same thing, and they have a 'Blame the Bans' campaign where they're actively lying to practicing physicians and telling them that they have to wait until their patient is actively dying.' But doctors argue they're scared for good reason. The laws create genuine legal risk in complex medical situations, particularly when state officials contradict the courts' interpretations of medical exceptions. That uncertainty played out dramatically in late 2023 in the case of Kate Cox, a Texas woman whose pregnancy developed fatal fetal abnormalities; a judge ruled the law's exception permitted her abortion, but the state's attorney general threatened to prosecute any doctor who performed the procedure. (Cox ultimately crossed state lines to end her pregnancy.) Other high-profile cases of doctors hesitating to provide emergency care have surfaced in the media, adding significant pressure on anti-abortion lawmakers who insist there's no legislative ambiguity to be found. Related District attorneys could be a last defense against abortion bans Partly in response, red state lawmakers have been moving to address — or at least signal they're addressing — gray areas in their laws, passing 'clarifications' to give doctors more concrete guidance on when they can provide emergency abortions and how criminal penalties would kick in. The Guttmacher Institute found that this is one of the top legislative trends for reproductive health care this year, with 42 bills introduced across 12 states. Three of those bills — in Texas, Kentucky, and Tennessee — were signed into law, and Texas's took effect earlier this month. Most Americans — across parties, genders, and regions — favor allowing abortion when the pregnancy endangers the mother's life or results from rape or incest, and strong majorities also back exceptions for severe fetal anomalies or serious health problems. All state abortion bans currently include exceptions to 'prevent the death' or 'preserve the life' of the pregnant patient, and many also include some sort of health exception, typically to prevent 'permanent' damage to a 'major' bodily function. The new clarification bills could help prevent the death of some patients but do little to expand access to some of the abortion exceptions voters support. Clarifying laws that were supposedly clear The new bills proposing amendments to abortion bans are fueling debates over whether incremental improvements are worth the risk of creating false confidence that major legal obstacles have been resolved. This year's fight in Kentucky clearly captured that disagreement. The state's local ACOG chapter helped craft the legislative language and supported the proposed clarification bill, calling it an 'acceptable short-term solution.' However, the national ACOG organization, along with Planned Parenthood and some OB-GYNs with Kentucky Physicians for Reproductive Freedom, successfully urged Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, to veto it. 'Although supporters of House Bill 90 claim it protects pregnant women and clarifies abortion law in Kentucky, it actually does the opposite,' Beshear declared. (The legislature overrode the governor's veto two days later.) As confusion mounts, supporters of abortion restrictions have doubled down on the argument that this is really not a big deal. Francis, the head of the anti-abortion OB-GYN group, argues that the bans are clear and don't need to be rewritten — doctors simply need better education. 'So many of these state laws have been in place for either three years or close to three years, and there's not been a single doctor prosecuted for intervening when a woman's life would be in danger,' she said. But Francis also acknowledged that physicians were left without reliable guidance from hospitals, state agencies, and professional associations, institutions with attorneys who are themselves uncertain. A Washington Post investigation from late 2023 found that hospital lawyers and compliance teams often hesitated to advise doctors definitively, leaving physicians unsure when and how they could legally act. Some anti-abortion leaders have gone so far as to allege that physicians are deliberately withholding abortion care to make a political point. Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee argued it wasn't his state's ban that was harming women, but 'other factors like doctors' independent choices not to provide permissible abortions.' Still, even as conservatives double down on their accusations of fearmongering, Republican-led states have been quietly adjusting their laws to ease doctors' fears of being prosecuted for providing emergency care. Utah lawmakers rewrote their emergency exception so doctors do not need to wait for an 'immediate' threat to a patient to provide an abortion. Some states, like Idaho, have moved to scrap their 'affirmative defense' provisions — meaning doctors would no longer have to be charged with a crime first and then prove in court that the abortion was medically necessary. Tennessee moved this year to provide specific examples of what constitutes a permissible exception, including PPROM (the rupture of fetal membranes before 24 weeks of gestation), severe preeclampsia (a high blood pressure disorder), and other infections risking uterine rupture. Texas's changes to its abortion law took effect on June 20. Its legislation, like Utah's, clarifies that doctors can perform abortions when a pregnant patient faces a life-threatening condition caused or worsened by pregnancy without waiting for that risk to become 'imminent.' The law also standardizes the definition of 'medical emergency' across various state statutes, and it requires training for doctors and lawyers to learn more about these exceptions. 'We all thought it is important that the law be crystal clear,' state Sen. Bryan Hughes, who introduced Texas's clarification bill this year, said in the legislature. Last fall he defended his state's abortion ban, which he also authored, as 'plenty clear' and blamed news organizations for muddying the waters. The new Texas bill was backed by the Texas Medical Association, the Texas Hospital Association, and leading anti-abortion groups like the Texas Right to Life. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the largest national anti-abortion lobbying groups, praised the passage of Texas's law, stating it will 'end the confusion caused by the abortion lobby through direct education to doctors.' Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America also championed a South Dakota law passed last year that required the state to produce a video on how doctors can legally perform abortions to save the life of a pregnant woman. In the state's subsequent six-minute video, the South Dakota Department of Health secretary says a patient does not need to be 'critically ill or actively dying' for a doctor to end a pregnancy. (Abortion rights supporters have blasted the video, which they say provides no real guidelines or legal clarity to practicing physicians.) Some legal advocates for abortion rights warn the reforms will fail to resolve the underlying confusion. The bills are 'not to clarify anything. This is just so politicians can say they fixed it,' Molly Duane, a senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told Vox. 'The reason I know this is because the anti-abortion lobby has been pretty open about the fact that they were the ones drafting the bills. For a lawyer like me that spends all day, every day, looking at these, it's quite obvious that there's no additional language here that addresses the questions the doctors actually have.' ACOG also opposed Texas's bill, and the group's general counsel Molly Meegan wrote last month that 'the solution to a bad law is not to further legislate that law. It is to get rid of the law.' The tough choices abortion rights supporters face One of the hard realities abortion rights advocates face is that in order to secure more legal protection for physicians working under vague abortion bans, they often must accept language crafted by anti-abortion lobbyists that could make things worse in the future. That controversial language can limit what types of procedures get classified as abortion or can introduce ideological terms like 'maternal-fetal separation,' which are not standard in mainstream medical practice and can help justify or require medical alternatives to abortion, like cesarean deliveries and inductions of labor, that carry greater risk for patients. While such semantic distinctions may offer doctors some short-term legal protection, activists warn they risk reinforcing a false moral hierarchy between 'good' and 'bad' abortions and stigmatize some forms of care rather than helping the public understand that all these procedures fall under the same broader category of abortion. Some of the bills also codify new 'fetal personhood' language, which is part of an effort to extend constitutional protections to embryos. Abortion advocates warn this sort of language could help anti-abortion lawmakers strip patients and doctors of additional rights down the line. Beshear echoed these concerns in his veto announcement, blasting the clarification bill for using 'new definitions that have been advanced by advocates who oppose in vitro fertilization and birth control.' He warned that using such language sets 'a stage for future legislation and litigation' that put health care options at risk. Many physicians say they do not feel reassured by these clarifications. If anything, they feel more confused and nervous. The push for clearer laws reveals a fundamental tension: Abortion rights advocates say exceptions like 'ectopic pregnancy' with no further detail are too vague, yet also argue that the practices of medicine are too complex to codify in law. Republican lawmakers point to legislative language granting deference to physicians' 'reasonable medical judgment,' but advocates say that standard is still too open-ended. More precise language might help in typical cases but risks excluding the edge cases where doctors need protection most. Given these trade-offs, abortion rights supporters are left grappling with a basic strategic question: whether imperfect progress is worth the potential costs. 'I think that's the age-old question,' said Kimya Forouzan, a state policy researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, which has been tracking legislative trends. 'If one person could get help getting an abortion that's great but at the same time these [clarification] bills are not causing the problem that abortion bans create to go away.' Sarah Osmundson, a maternal-fetal medicine physician in Tennessee, captured the challenge of working with patients facing high-risk pregnancies in a state with a strict abortion ban. Writing in the New York Times in 2023, she explained why she supported modest changes to her state's abortion ban, even as she understood the arguments of fellow abortion rights supporters that such imperfect amendments come with risks. 'I worry that reproductive rights advocates may be digging into untenable positions and failing to listen to those affected most by the current reality,' she wrote. 'Do we support incremental changes that provide minimum safety for pregnant women and physicians?' Ultimately, lawmakers drafting clarification bills have been careful to not expand access to care in any significant way. Many still exclude abortions for rape and incest — despite polling showing that majorities of Americans want those carve-outs — and almost no state allows abortion for mental health reasons, despite mental health conditions accounting for over 20 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in the US. Many European countries permit mental health as an acceptable health exception to abortion bans. Looking ahead, Americans should expect to see more incremental legislative tweaks coupled with state-mandated training, as anti-abortion leaders hail the passage of such medical education, or 'med ed,' laws. Whether this strategy proves durable may depend on how much evidence accumulates that the core problems — criminal penalties, prosecutorial discretion, hospital risk management — run deeper than confusion about legal language. The med ed campaigns represent an acknowledgment that something needed fixing. The remaining question is this: What happens when the fixes don't fix it?
Vox
01-07-2025
- Health
- Vox
Can abortion bans be made a little less bad?
is a policy correspondent for Vox covering social policy. She focuses on housing, schools, homelessness, child care, and abortion rights, and has been reporting on these issues for more than a decade. By the time Republican Rep. Kat Cammack arrived at a Florida emergency room, she was facing an urgent medical crisis: Her pregnancy, then five weeks along, had become ectopic and now threatened her life. It was May 2024, and though Florida's new and particularly restrictive six-week abortion ban did allow abortion in cases like hers, Cammack said she spent hours convincing hospital staff to administer the standard treatment for ending nonviable pregnancies. Doctors expressed fears about losing their licenses, prompting Cammack to pull up the legislation on her phone to show them that her case fell within legal parameters. Now pregnant again, Cammack recently described her experience to the Wall Street Journal, accusing the political left of 'fearmongering' and creating confusion among healthcare providers that ultimately puts patients at risk. Her view — that confusion stems from abortion rights advocates, not the laws themselves — has become a rallying point for anti-abortion leaders. Christina Francis, the head of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, blames mainstream medical groups like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) for misleading doctors about when they can provide abortions in states with bans. 'They've…stated that doctors couldn't intervene in those [life-threatening] situations or they would face prosecution, and in fact, they're still peddling that lie,' she told Vox. 'They [just] put out posts on the anniversary of Dobbs saying the same thing, and they have a 'Blame the Bans' campaign where they're actively lying to practicing physicians and telling them that they have to wait until their patient is actively dying.' But doctors argue they're scared for good reason. The laws create genuine legal risk in complex medical situations, particularly when state officials contradict the courts' interpretations of medical exceptions. That uncertainty played out dramatically in late 2023 in the case of Kate Cox, a Texas woman whose pregnancy developed fatal fetal abnormalities; a judge ruled the law's exception permitted her abortion, but the state's attorney general threatened to prosecute any doctor who performed the procedure. (Cox ultimately crossed state lines to end her pregnancy.) Other high-profile cases of doctors hesitating to provide emergency care have surfaced in the media, adding significant pressure on anti-abortion lawmakers who insist there's no legislative ambiguity to be found. Related District attorneys could be a last defense against abortion bans Partly in response, red state lawmakers have been moving to address — or at least signal they're addressing — gray areas in their laws, passing 'clarifications' to give doctors more concrete guidance on when they can provide emergency abortions and how criminal penalties would kick in. The Guttmacher Institute found that this is one of the top legislative trends for reproductive health care this year, with 42 bills introduced across 12 states. Three of those bills — in Texas, Kentucky, and Tennessee — were signed into law, and Texas's took effect earlier this month. Most Americans — across parties, genders, and regions — favor allowing abortion when the pregnancy endangers the mother's life or results from rape or incest, and strong majorities also back exceptions for severe fetal anomalies or serious health problems. All state abortion bans currently include exceptions to 'prevent the death' or 'preserve the life' of the pregnant patient, and many also include some sort of health exception, typically to prevent 'permanent' damage to a 'major' bodily function. The new clarification bills could help prevent the death of some patients but do little to expand access to some of the abortion exceptions voters support. Clarifying laws that were supposedly clear The new bills proposing amendments to abortion bans are fueling debates over whether incremental improvements are worth the risk of creating false confidence that major legal obstacles have been resolved. This year's fight in Kentucky clearly captured that disagreement. The state's local ACOG chapter helped craft the legislative language and supported the proposed clarification bill, calling it an 'acceptable short-term solution.' However, the national ACOG organization, along with Planned Parenthood and some OB-GYNs with Kentucky Physicians for Reproductive Freedom, successfully urged Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, to veto it. 'Although supporters of House Bill 90 claim it protects pregnant women and clarifies abortion law in Kentucky, it actually does the opposite,' Beshear declared. (The legislature overrode the governor's veto two days later.) As confusion mounts, supporters of abortion restrictions have doubled down on the argument that this is really not a big deal. Francis, the head of the anti-abortion OB-YGN group, argues that the bans are clear and don't need to be rewritten — doctors simply need better education. 'So many of these state laws have been in place for either three years or close to three years, and there's not been a single doctor prosecuted for intervening when a woman's life would be in danger,' she said. But Francis also acknowledged that physicians were left without reliable guidance from hospitals, state agencies, and professional associations, institutions with attorneys who are themselves uncertain. A Washington Post investigation from late 2023 found that hospital lawyers and compliance teams often hesitated to advise doctors definitively, leaving physicians unsure when and how they could legally act. Some anti-abortion leaders have gone so far as to allege that physicians are deliberately withholding abortion care to make a political point. Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee argued it wasn't his state's ban that was harming women, but 'other factors like doctors' independent choices not to provide permissible abortions.'Still, even as conservatives double down on their accusations of fear-mongering, Republican-led states have been quietly adjusting their laws to ease doctors' fears of being prosecuted for providing emergency care. Utah lawmakers rewrote their emergency exception so doctors do not need to wait for an 'immediate' threat to a patient to provide an abortion. Some states, like Idaho, have moved to scrap their 'affirmative defense' provisions — meaning doctors would no longer have to be charged with a crime first and then prove in court that the abortion was medically necessary. Tennessee moved this year to provide specific examples of what constitutes a permissible exception, including PPROM (the rupture of fetal membranes before 24 weeks of gestation), severe preeclampsia (a high blood pressure disorder), and other infections risking uterine rupture. Texas's changes to its abortion law took effect on June 20. Its legislation, like Utah, clarifies that doctors can perform abortions when a pregnant patient faces a life-threatening condition caused or worsened by pregnancy without waiting for that risk to become 'imminent.' The law also standardizes the definition of 'medical emergency' across various state statutes, and it requires training for doctors and lawyers to learn more about these exceptions. 'We all thought it is important that the law be crystal clear,' state Sen. Bryan Hughes, who introduced Texas's clarification bill this year, said in the legislature. Last fall he defended his state's abortion ban, which he also authored, as 'plenty clear' and blamed news organizations for muddying the waters. The new Texas bill was backed by the Texas Medical Association, the Texas Hospital Association, and leading anti-abortion groups like the Texas Right to Life. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the largest national anti-abortion lobbying groups, praised the passage of Texas's law, stating it will 'end the confusion caused by the abortion lobby through direct education to doctors.' Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America also championed a South Dakota law passed last year that required the state to produce a video on how doctors can legally perform abortions to save the life of a pregnant woman. In the state's subsequent six-minute video, the South Dakota Department of Health secretary says a patient does not need to be 'critically ill or actively dying' for a doctor to end a pregnancy. (Abortion rights supporters have blasted the video, which they say provides no real guidelines or legal clarity to practicing physicians.) Some legal advocates for abortion rights warn the reforms will fail to resolve the underlying confusion. The bills are 'not to clarify anything. This is just so politicians can say they fixed it,' Molly Duane, a senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told Vox. 'The reason I know this is because the anti-abortion lobby has been pretty open about the fact that they were the ones drafting the bills. For a lawyer like me that spends all day, every day, looking at these, it's quite obvious that there's no additional language here that addresses the questions the doctors actually have.' ACOG also opposed Texas's bill, and the group's general counsel Molly Meegan wrote last week that 'the solution to a bad law is not to further legislate that law. It is to get rid of the law.' The tough choices abortion rights supporters face One of the hard realities abortion rights advocates face is that in order to secure more legal protection for physicians working under vague abortion bans, they often must accept language crafted by anti-abortion lobbyists that could make things worse in the future. That controversial language can limit what types of procedures get classified as abortion or can introduce ideological terms like 'maternal-fetal separation,' which are not standard in mainstream medical practice and can help justify or require medical alternatives to abortion, like cesarean deliveries and inductions of labor, that carry greater risk for patients. While such semantic distinctions may offer doctors some short-term legal protection, activists warn they risk reinforcing a false moral hierarchy between 'good' and 'bad' abortions and stigmatize some forms of care rather than helping the public understand that all these procedures fall under the same broader category of abortion. Some of the bills also codify new fetal personhood language, which is part of an effort to extend constitutional protections to embryos. Abortion advocates warn this sort of language could help anti-abortion lawmakers strip patients and doctors of additional rights down the line. Gov. Beshear echoed these concerns in his veto announcement, blasting the clarification bill for using 'new definitions that have been advanced by advocates who oppose in vitro fertilization and birth control.' He warned that using such language sets 'a stage for future legislation and litigation' that put health care options at risk. Many physicians say they do not feel reassured by these clarifications. If anything, they feel more confused and nervous. The push for clearer laws reveals a fundamental tension: Abortion rights advocates say exceptions like 'ectopic pregnancy' with no further detail are too vague, yet also argue that the practices of medicine are too complex to codify in law. Republican lawmakers point to legislative language granting deference to physicians' 'reasonable medical judgment,' but advocates say that standard is still too open-ended. More precise language might help in typical cases but risks excluding the edge cases where doctors need protection most. Given these trade-offs, abortion rights supporters are left grappling with a basic strategic question: whether imperfect progress is worth the potential costs. 'I think that's the age-old question,' said Kimya Forouzan, a state policy researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, which has been tracking legislative trends. 'If one person could get help getting an abortion that's great but at the same time these [clarification] bills are not causing the problem that abortion bans create to go away.' Sarah Osmundson, a maternal-fetal medicine physician in Tennessee, captured the challenge of working with patients facing high-risk pregnancies in a state with a strict abortion ban. Writing in the New York Times in 2023, she explained why she supported modest changes to her state's abortion ban, even as she understood the arguments of fellow abortion rights supporters that such imperfect amendments come with risks. 'I worry that reproductive rights advocates may be digging into untenable positions and failing to listen to those affected most by the current reality,' she wrote. 'Do we support incremental changes that provide minimum safety for pregnant women and physicians?' Ultimately, lawmakers drafting clarification bills have been careful to not expand access to care in any significant way. Many still exclude abortions for rape and incest — despite polling showing that majorities of Americans want those carve-outs — and almost no state allows abortion for mental health reasons, despite mental health conditions accounting for over 20 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in the US. Many European countries permit mental health as an acceptable health exception to abortion bans. Looking ahead, Americans should expect to see more incremental legislative tweaks coupled with state-mandated training, as anti-abortion leaders hail the passage of such medical education, or 'Med Ed,' laws. Whether this strategy proves durable may depend on how much evidence accumulates that the core problems — criminal penalties, prosecutorial discretion, hospital risk management — run deeper than confusion about legal language. The Med Ed campaigns represent an acknowledgment that something needed fixing. The remaining question is this: What happens when the fixes don't fix it?
