The CARE Act is "model legislation" created by the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-abortion, conservative Christian legal advocacy group. The Wyoming bill says that pregnancy centers, many of which are affiliated with religious organizations, need legal protection after facing "unprecedented attacks" following the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The bulk of the money Missouri gives to its crisis pregnancy centers comes from federal funds meant to assist families experiencing poverty with basic necessities and child care, Republican Rep. Jason Smith said on the U.S. House floor in January. As many as $3 of every $4 for pregnancy centers in Missouri was from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in 2024, and in the 2026 fiscal year, it will be $2 out of $3.
We've known for years that mifepristone is risky, but it's really just in the last few years that we've learned this drug is inherently dangerous and it's inherently prone to abuse. Hawley bases his opinion about the death pill on a 2025 study conducted by conservative think tank, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which found that 11% of people taking the drug suffered serious adverse effects.
When I took the assessment, shortly after leaving my partner, he scored an 8/10. If I had gone through with our pregnancy, he would have scored a 10. But we didn't have children because five years earlier, in a Chicago clinic, I'd had a medication abortion. At the time, the danger only registered as a faint sense of unease, nothing like the five-alarm fire my life would later become.
Health Sciences Center and Texas Tech University system spokespeople didn't return Inside Higher Ed's requests for comment Thursday on who within the institution decided to nix the speech, but the Health Sciences Center sent a statement to the Scorecard saying the center "evaluated the request and determined that it is not in the best interest of the university to host this event on campus."
Since the fall of abortion rights, no abortion provider has been convicted of violating a state ban. Proceedings underway in Texas might soon change that. Last March, Ken Paxton, Texas' Republican attorney general, filed civil and criminal charges against a Houston midwife, accusing her of performing illegal abortions and practicing medicine without a license. Texas law permits penalties of up to life in prison for performing abortions. The midwife, Maria Margarita Rojas, has responded that the state just can't prove their case.
Nearly 200 anti-abortion bills have been introduced in 29 states, according to an estimate by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization. "In 2026, medication abortion remains one of the central battlegrounds in the fight over reproductive autonomy, with policymakers in several states pushing bills that would criminalize patients, restrict telehealth and mailing, and even misclassify abortion pills as controlled substances or environmental hazards," Kimya Forouzan, Guttmacher's principal policy adviser for state issues, said in a statement.
The outcome of a trial over Missouri's abortion regulations could ripple far beyond the state, potentially creating new availability for women in the Midwest and South who can't access abortion close to home. As a judge weighs the constitutionality of a litany of state restrictions on abortion, the stakes are clear for Missouri women: The decision could hamper access for nearly everyone in the state - or greatly broaden it in ways not seen in decades.
Two days after his second inauguration, one of Donald Trump's first actions of his second presidency was to pardon nearly two dozen anti-abortion extremists, who had violently and illegally barricaded reproductive rights clinics, in some cases injuring staff and patients in the process, and in others, stealing aborted embryos and fetal tissue. At the time, Center for Reproductive Rights President Nancy Northrup told Jezebel the pardons were a "get-out-of-jail-free card inviting anti-abortion extremists to step up their attacks on reproductive health clinics with impunity."
Two amendments were ultimately added to the bill following the debate on the House floor: One would threaten up to life in prison for giving abortion pills to a pregnant person without their knowledge. (Administering drugs without consent is already a crime, but this amendment dramatically escalates the penalty.) The other makes it illegal to raise funds or distribute money to buy abortion pills, potentially destroying the crucial and life-saving work of abortion funds.