Latest news with #post-Roe
Boston Globe
25-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Man sues over girlfriend's abortion in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Orchestrating the effort is Jonathan Mitchell, a conservative attorney who helped construct Texas's 'heartbeat' law, the most restrictive abortion measure passed before Roe's fall. The lawsuit Mitchell set in motion alleges that the doctor violated the Comstock Act, a 19th century federal law that bans the mailing of 'obscene' materials, including abortion-related materials. Now in a post-Roe era, Democratic lawmakers and abortion advocates have worried that the government would invoke Comstock to ban medication abortion, which accounts for most abortions in the United States. Advertisement The case is a new approach alleging state and federal law violations - filed in federal, rather than state court - though it's too early to tell how viable that strategy will be. Advertisement 'This very much has the feeling of taking matters into your own hands,' said Mary Ziegler, a professor of law at the University of California at Davis. The plaintiff, Jerry Rodriguez, is suing California-based physician Remy Coeytaux for more than $75,000. Rodriguez, who stated that he is suing on behalf of 'all current and future fathers of unborn children,' is asking the court for an order blocking Coeytaux from mailing abortion pills. His complaint adds that he plans to sue the manufacturers and distributors of the abortion pills if they are identified during discovery. Coeytaux did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post, and it was unclear whether he had retained an attorney as of Thursday. In Texas, women who get an abortion cannot be prosecuted. But antiabortion activists in the state have publicly sought out men who are willing to bring cases against people who helped their partners have an abortion. Mitchell, who declined to comment Wednesday, has represented men in at least two similar cases out of Texas, both filed in state court. In a 2023 lawsuit, a man alleged that three women helped his ex-wife get abortion pills to end her pregnancy. That case was later dropped. In May 2024, Mitchell helped a man file a petition to investigate an ex-partner's out-of-state abortion, setting up for a wrongful-death lawsuit. In the new federal court complaint, filed Sunday, Rodriguez alleges that Coeytaux mailed abortion pills to his girlfriend's estranged husband in September 2024. The pair were not divorced when Rodriguez and the woman began dating but were already legally separated, according to the lawsuit. Rodriguez's girlfriend, whom The Post is not naming because she is not a plaintiff and to protect her privacy, took abortion pills on two occasions, once in September and another in January, to end two pregnancies after her estranged husband and mother 'pressured her,' according to the complaint. On Monday, Rodriguez filed a separate wrongful-death lawsuit in state court against the estranged husband and mother; Mitchell is also representing him in that case. Few details of the relationships between Rodriguez, his girlfriend, her mother and her estranged husband are included in the lawsuit. According to Rodriguez's complaints, his girlfriend is now pregnant again. Advertisement Since the Supreme Court in 2022 struck down the constitutional right to the procedure, the number of abortions has increased, bolstered by medication abortions enabled by telehealth, data shows. In an attempt to thwart that access, officials in red states are launching attacks on the shield laws in blue states that keep the pills flowing across the country. Texas and Louisiana are pursuing legal action against a New York doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to patients in those states, which both ban nearly all abortions. To the frustration of prosecutors, New York officials have refused to comply, citing the state's shield law. As a result, the conservative strategy to punish providers had slowed in state courts, though experts say the cases could end up on the Supreme Court's docket and ultimately reshape medication abortion access. In the meantime, the federal lawsuit has emerged as a new method to potentially curb abortion access. Carmel Shachar, a law professor at Harvard Law School, said the case designed by Mitchell uses a different legal framework, but the end goal remains the same - to 'close that telehealth loophole.' Advertisement
Yahoo
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Women and men diverge more than ever on support for abortion rights, poll shows
Three years after the fall of Roe v Wade and months after an election that heavily focused on the fight over abortion rights, men and women have never diverged more on their support for access to the procedure, according to new polling from Gallup released Monday. Sixty-one percent of women now identify as 'pro-choice', but only 41% of men say the same, Gallup found. The same percentage of women identified as 'pro-choice' in 2022, just after the decision to overturn Roe was leaked, but at the time, 48% of men also did so. Prior to Roe's collapse, men and women were never more than 10 points apart from one another on the issue, according to decades of Gallup polling. Men and women are also in record disagreement over whether abortion is moral, as 57% of women and 40% men say that it is. Just 41% of men say that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, while 56% of women say the same. These gender gaps are likely less due to post-Roe changes in men's attitudes towards abortion than in changes in women's attitudes, said Lydia Saad, Gallup's director of US social research. Specifically: women have become a lot more supportive of abortion since Roe fell. In 2021, 52% of women and 45% of men identified as 'pro-choice'. 'In general, we see that with abortion, that the party that wants to change the status quo is the one that has more energy on the issue,' Saad said. 'For years, it was more the pro-life respondents who said that they will only support a candidate who shares their views on that issue. Whereas, since 2022, we've seen it flip.' Sudden political upsets do have the power to dramatically change people's beliefs, Saad said. Typically, however, those changes don't last and people revert to their norm views within a few years. Men's declining support for abortion may thus be a sign that they are reverting to their norm – but Saad was surprised women are still so energized by the issue. 'A line had been crossed for women,' Saad said. 'If you were generally supportive of abortion rights before, you became much more so.' Similarly, men who identify as Democrats have, like women, become much more likely to back abortion rights. Between 2020 and 2021, 63% of Democratic men said that they believed abortion should be legal in most circumstances; as of 2025, 78% of Democratic men say the same. Saad is not exactly sure why support for abortion rights is dwindling among men. Although this is the lowest level of support among men for the 'pro-choice' label in a decade, she is not convinced that this decline will continue. 'It's more just a out of sight, out of mind issue for men,' Saad said of abortion's legality. 'Whereas for women – it's just been more salient.' At this point, it's difficult to tell whether men are becoming more actively opposed to abortion or whether they are simply becoming more conservative overall, Saad said. Men are already more likely to be Republicans, and Republicans typically oppose abortion rights. A mere 19% of Republican men think abortion should be legal in most circumstances. Saad suspects Gallup's findings may be tied to shifts in the political views of young men, who proved to be surprisingly conservative in the 2024 election. Fifty-six percent of men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Donald Trump. 'We have to see where this goes,' Saad cautioned. 'If it's sustained, then we would really have to take a close look at why.'
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Our film imagined a post-Roe nightmare. Then it came true
When I first met Amy in the emergency room, she had a minor laceration on her finger. She claimed it was from an accident in the kitchen, but her cowering posture, downcast eyes and hesitant responses to basic questions suggested there was more to her visit than she was letting on. Amy reminds me of the girls I grew up with. Delicate, but exhausted and under pressure. She works long hours at a convenience store with a manager who offers no flexibility. Determined to save enough for college classes toward her degree, Amy has also shouldered the responsibility of supporting her mother, who has grown dependent on painkillers. She cleans homes to cover unexpected expenses, like becoming pregnant after a condom broke during sex, but she was unable to scrape together enough cash to purchase the morning-after pill. On June 3, the Trump administration revoked guidance that required hospitals to provide emergency abortions for patients in need. This national directive was issued in 2022 by the Biden administration, using the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and it was intended to assist women facing medical emergencies and other serious complications. The Trump administration's action is just the latest salvo in an ongoing battle, one in which reproductive freedom seems to be losing ground every day. The mood, among both doctors and patients, is one of persistent uncertainty and fear. Here in the emergency room, Amy and I both feel it. The cut on Amy's finger was a ruse — a desperate act to access care. She is pregnant and doesn't want to be. But in our state, abortion is illegal. As an emergency physician, I tell her – quietly – that if she travels to another state, she can receive proper care. She'll need to budget a certain amount of cash for travel expenses. We keep this conversation between us. The possibility of this scene has become all too familiar a worry in real life, but the truth is that Amy isn't real. And I'm not really an emergency physician, I just play one in a movie. A few months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, while we were both still attending journalism school at New York University, my friend Nate Hilgartner approached me about a film he wanted to write and direct about the ethical implications of a post-Roe world. He had me in mind to play a doctor in a rural town torn between her duty to help her patient and the imperative to obey restrictive new laws. It would be an American horror story, he told me. At the time, it seemed prophetic but impossible, a bit of artful exaggeration to warn against a dystopian tendency. Today, it's our reality, and in some ways, things are worse. The consequences of a woman not receiving the reproductive healthcare of her choice could lead someone like our fictional protagonist to lose her ability to create a life on her own terms, trapping her in a cycle of poverty with a lack of education. In Georgia, a pregnant woman who has been declared brain-dead is being kept on life support until her baby can be delivered. Across the country, women have been turned away from emergency rooms after suffering ectopic pregnancies, which require an emergency abortion to prevent potentially fatal outcomes. Doctors have been reprimanded and fined, including Caitlin Bernard, an OB-GYN from Indiana, who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim denied an abortion in Ohio. Three years ago, all of this would have sounded like fiction, a fever-dream storyline out of The Handmaid's Tale. An investigation by ProPublica in December 2024 revealed that doctors in states with abortion bans often feel abandoned by lawyers and hospital leaders when seeking guidance on how to proceed with patients in emergencies. Since information about managing the bans in each state have been provided only on a 'need-to-know' basis, many doctors are left to navigate alternative options on their own, with some becoming too afraid to offer care, fearing professional and personal consequences. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.) described the situation as doctors 'playing lawyer' and lawyers 'playing doctor,' leaving pregnant women facing life-or-death situations caught in the middle. Experts warn that the decision to eliminate access to emergency life-saving abortions will further exacerbate the crisis for doctors. The Trump administration's order to revoke emergency abortions sends a clear message to women who lack adequate resources to afford proper care. EMTALA, enacted in 1986, was designed to protect patients and ensure they receive stabilizing emergency care, regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay. While all pregnant women benefited from this law, it now appears that only those with sufficient health care and life circumstances will be able to survive potential emergencies. I am a writer and an actor, not a doctor. But for a time I imagined what it was like to be seated across from a woman scared and uncertain about the choices she could make about her body. Amy may not be real, but her plight is. Many of us may not admit it, but we've had our scares, moments where we've had to seriously consider the possibility of what we'd do if confronted with a pregnancy we weren't ready to have. At an age where I contemplate my own reproductive future, I am given pause: How can anyone assume there will never be complications in their pregnancy? Stories like Amy's aren't just about the right to make decisions about our bodies; they're also about the painful truth that those choices often come with a cost. When we set out to make this film, No Choice, we hoped to imagine a plausible future — not to prophesy our present reality. We could never have predicted just how quickly real-world headlines would not only validate our story, but outpace its darkest possibilities. Making a film was just one of many actions we hope other people will take to challenge the belief that a woman's body belongs to the state, not to herself. No Choice premieres in Los Angeles at the Dances With Films festival on June 23 — just one day shy of the third anniversary marking the fall of Roe v. Wade.
Politico
13-06-2025
- Health
- Politico
The post-Roe fight over data privacy
Hey everyone! I hope you are all having a lovely Pride Month. Thanks for reading Women Rule. We'll be on hiatus next week and back in your inbox on June 27. Reach out and say hello: klong@ and ecordover@ This week I had a chat with Rep. Sara Jacobs on her reintroduction of the My Body, My Data Act. The post-Roe era has elevated a new data privacy fight, as concerns grow over how reproductive and sexual health data is collected and disclosed. But the issue has been front of mind for Rep. Sara Jacobs for years, even prior to the Dobbs decision. The California Democrat reintroduced the My Body, My Data Act on Thursday, which aims to increase protections for those who use apps and sites that collect reproductive and sexual health data, such as period tracking apps. Jacobs points to certain instances where reproductive health data, which is not protected under HIPAA, has been used to investigate and prosecute users in states with strict abortion laws. Jacobs describes the push to protect reproductive and sexual health data as 'the abortion fight of the 21st century.' The bill, which was introduced in 2022 and then reintroduced the following year, would provide consumer protections for users who disclose their reproductive and sexual health data on apps and websites. This includes limiting the data that can be collected to only that which is necessary to provide a certain product or service, and bolstering transparency from companies on how that data is collected, retained and shared. Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sponsored the bill's Senate counterpart. The legislation was introduced twice before, first in 2022 and again the following year, but made little headway. And with a Republican-controlled Congress, the bill's reintroduction will likely result in a similar fate. Women Rule spoke with Jacobs on the reintroduction of the bill, which comes on the heels of the three-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. I first wanted to talk a little bit about the bill. I think especially in a post-Roe world, there's growing concern over government tracking on period apps and other apps and sites related to reproductive and sexual health. I first introduced this bill because right after the opposite decision came down when Roe v. Wade was overturned, I started getting all these messages from friends and peers wondering what they should do about their period tracking apps, and I also use a period tracking app, and we started looking into it and there's basically no protections for this kind of reproductive and sexual health data. It's not covered under HIPAA, and so we're already seeing people try to use this data to go after people who are getting abortions and those helping them in states that have criminalized abortion. We know that they want to go after this data, and so I think it's incredibly important that we as Congress do something to protect this very sensitive data. Actually, there was a poll two years ago that showed that 2 in 3 Americans, including 54 percent of Republicans, support Congress making it illegal for apps and search engines to sell their reproductive health data. Why is it important for this bill to pass now? Well, in 2017, even before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Mississippi police used Google search history to go after someone and alleged that she had an abortion. In 2022, the police used Facebook messages in Nebraska as part of an investigation into an abortion illegal under state law. More recently, a data broker sold cell phone and geolocation data to an anti-abortion political group that then used that information to dispense misinformation about reproductive health to people who had visited 600 abortion clinics in 48 states. And more Americans are turning to online clinics for medication abortions. Young people increasingly use the internet, live online, we are googling questions about medicine, we are using Ubers to get places, right? And all of this data can be misused, and we know the lengths that police and prosecutors will go to to try and intimidate or prosecute people for having abortions. With a Republican controlled Congress, it seems unlikely that the bill will pass, but have you received any support from across the aisle? Unfortunately, while I work in a bipartisan way with a lot of Republicans on data privacy, when it comes to this kind of data, they have been unwilling to engage even though they claim to support data privacy. We're coming up on the three-year anniversary of Roe v. Wade being overturned, and you've mentioned a few examples. Could you talk about how the Dobbs decision has impacted those who use these reproductive and self sexual health tracking apps and sites? Look, especially in states that have criminalized abortion — something like 1 in 3 women live in a state that has criminalized abortion in some way — there is an incredible amount of fear that even if they have a natural miscarriage they could be prosecuted because they Googled something once or that this kind of information can be used against [them] and weaponized against people. I think as we're seeing more and more states and as we know that at the end of the day this Republican Party wants a federal abortion ban, it's more important than ever that we protect people's data. Is there anything in particular about the My Body My Data Act that you would like to highlight? This is the abortion fight of the 21st century, right? Because it's about access and it's about how they're enforcing these really horrible laws. Americans are now becoming more aware of how their data is being used and stored, in part because of DOGE and what Elon Musk is doing. And we know that women are often trying to find the apps and services that claim to safeguard their data, but each individual person shouldn't have to try and figure this out on their own, and it shouldn't be up to companies to do the right thing. This is the exact kind of thing you need the government for, to protect very sensitive health data. And young people intrinsically understand this issue from both sides of the aisle. But part of what's hard is that so many of my colleagues do not understand this. There's just a bit of a mismatch between Congress and the American people on this issue. POLITICO Special Report How Kamala Harris Is Processing the LA Unrest by Melanie Mason for POLITICO: 'Harris has been choosy about when to weigh in publicly on politics since leaving Washington. So her statement on social media this week denouncing President Donald Trump's activation of the National Guard as a 'dangerous escalation' instantly lent itself to frenzied tea leaves reading. … For Harris, it was a natural issue to speak up on for several reasons, according to one of the people familiar with her thinking and granted anonymity to speak freely. First, she's coming at this as a lifelong Californian who came up in law enforcement and has made the rule of law a driving theme of her career. She also empathizes with the protesters, after growing up steeped in the civil rights protests of her childhood and campus anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s.' Trump's DOJ Indicted a Democratic Congresswoman. The Case Could Fall Apart. by Ankush Khardori for POLITICO: 'The decision to proceed with an indictment following the initial charges against the New Jersey Democrat comes at a politically volatile moment — following President Donald Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard and the Marines in response to protests in Los Angeles, and in the midst of ongoing wrangling over the scope and legality of the administration's deportation effort. In recent weeks, that effort has generated heartrending images from courthouse arrests and more admissions of mistaken deportations from the Justice Department. Meanwhile, the administration is moving to deport hundreds of thousands of people who entered the country legally under the last administration.' Phil Murphy Skated to the NJ Governor's Mansion. Mikie Sherrill Might Not Have it So Easy. by Matt Friedman and Madison Fernandez for POLITICO: 'Rep. Mikie Sherrill was the vanguard of the anti-Trump backlash in 2018. Just months after the political unknown declared her Democratic candidacy for Congress and began raising money at a fast clip, the 24-year Republican incumbent bowed out rather than face the first competitive general election of his career. Sherrill easily won what had long been a safe Republican district in a blue wave election that flipped the House. Now, Sherrill stands as Democrats' bulwark against a red tide after winning the party nomination for New Jersey governor Tuesday night.' Number of the Week More on that here. MUST READS Doctors Report the First Pregnancy Using a New AI Procedure by Alice Park for Time Magazine: 'Doctors at Columbia University Fertility Center have reported what they are calling the first pregnancy using a new AI system, in a couple that had been trying to start a family for nearly two decades. The pregnancy was possible due to an advance developed by the Columbia team, led by Dr. Zev Williams, director of the center, to address azoospermia, or a lack of detectable sperm in the ejaculate. Male factors account for about 40 percent of infertility in the U.S., and azoospermia is responsible for about 10 percent of those cases. Until recently, there was little doctors could do to address the lack of sperm needed to fertilize an egg, other than using donor sperm.' Domestic Abusers Could Have Easier Path to Getting Gun Rights Back Under Trump Proposal by Jennifer Gerson for The 19th: 'The Trump administration is proposing a change to how people convicted of crimes can have their gun rights restored, raising concerns over what this means for victims of domestic violence. The Democratic Women's Caucus and the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Robert Hinchman, senior counsel at the Department of Justice (DOJ), criticizing an interim final rule that would move the responsibility for determining if someone gets their gun rights back from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to the Office of the Attorney General. While the ATF is part of the DOJ, the letter says the proposal would create 'an apparent lack of an objective, holistic process for making' these decisions.' Senate Democrats File Bill to Prevent Ban on Transgender Military Service by Luis Martinez for ABC News: 'The 'Fit to Serve Act' would prohibit the Defense Department from banning transgender service members from serving in the military. If passed, the law would prevent the DOD from denying access to healthcare on the basis of gender identity, and it would also prohibit the military from forcing service members to serve in their sex assigned at birth. It would also make it illegal for the military to discriminate against service members on the basis of gender identity.' QUOTE OF THE WEEK Read more here. on the move Fortune journalist Emma Hinchliffe was promoted to editor of the Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter at the publication, leading editorial for the 28-year-old franchise. Martina McLennan is now director of policy communications for economic and health policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. She previously was communications director for Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). (h/t POLITICO Influence) Cara Duckworth is now SVP of comms at USTelecom – The Broadband Association. She previously was chief corporate comms officer at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. (h/t POLITICO Playbook)
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Democrats introduce bill that aims to protect reproductive health data
Three Democratic members of Congress are introducing a bill to limit companies' ability to hoover up data about people's reproductive health – a measure, they say, that is necessary to protect women from persecution in the post-Roe v Wade era. Representative of California, Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon on Wednesday will file the My Body, My Data Act in both the US House and Senate. The bill aims to block companies from collecting, using, retaining or disclosing information about someone's reproductive health unless that data is essential to providing a requested service. This provision would apply to information about pregnancy, menstruation, abortion, contraception and other matters relating to reproductive health. 'Young people live our lives online, right? That includes tracking our periods, but it also includes our phones tracking our location and using Google to think about your medical care or how to obtain an abortion for yourself or a friend, or ordering abortion pills online, or using an Uber to travel to an abortion clinic,' Jacobs said. 'All of those things are tracked online, and none of those are protected right now.' Law enforcement officials have already attempted to use people's data trails to identify abortion seekers. In 2022, the year that the US supreme court overturned Roe, Nebraska brought a series of felony and misdemeanor charges against a teenager and her mother in connection to the teen's abortion. The charges relied on Facebook chats, which the social media giant had turned over. (Both the teenager and her mother pleaded guilty and were sentenced to time behind bars .) In 2023, anti-abortion activists used cellphone location information to send anti-abortion messages to people who had visited some Planned Parenthood clinics. And in May, a Texas police officer searched tens of automatic license plate reader cameras, including in states that permit abortion, for a woman who officials suspected of self-managing an abortion. The post-Roe landscape is also creating more opportunities for online surveillance. In recent years, orders for abortion pills online have spiked, as tens of thousands more Americans have used online services to obtain pills to 'self-manage' their own abortions. A number of women have also faced criminal charges over miscarriages, leading abortion rights advocates to worry that women who Google phrases like 'how to get an abortion' and then miscarry could find themselves in law enforcement's crosshairs. 'It doesn't deal with everything in terms of data brokers, but it does put women in a much stronger position to protect their rights,' Wyden said of the My Body, My Data Act. 'Reproductive rights are the ultimate privacy priority, because the fundamental right of a woman to control her own body and her own healthcare is as private as it gets.' An earlier version of the bill was introduced in 2023. Given that Republicans control Congress, the bill is not likely to pass. 'I have many Republican colleagues who say they care about data privacy. We work together on data privacy in every other area, but when it comes to anything abortion-related, they refuse to do it,' Jacobs said. 'This is also the third oldest Congress in history, and I'll be honest, many of my colleagues don't understand how period tracking apps or website searches or location data even work.' Jacobs says she uses a period tracker run by a company based in Europe that is subject to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, a set of strict regulations that governs how businesses obtain and handle people's online data. While the US has no similar regulations on the federal level, Washington state in 2023 became the first in the country to create a state version of the My Health, My Data Act. That law covers health data that is not otherwise protected by the US Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (Hipaa) – including information about reproductive healthcare services – and requires companies to give their customers more privacy disclosures and seek their authorization before selling their data. It also gives Washington residents the ability to demand those companies delete their personal information. Jacobs advises people to use apps based in states with some degree of protection for reproductive health data. She added: 'If you live in a state that is really criminalizing abortion and going after people, you should be careful about what you put online.'
