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Nevada residents will vote on whether to protect the right to abortion in the state this November, as abortion rights groups try to continue their winning streak with measures that put the issue directly before voters. The Nevada secretary of state’s office certified on Friday the ballot initiative to amend the State Constitution to include an explicit right to abortion after verifying the signatures required. ... In Nevada, abortion is legal through 24 weeks of pregnancy. But organizers of the ballot initiative are seeking to amend the State Constitution to protect abortion up to the point of fetal viability — also around 24 weeks — because it is harder to change the Constitution than repeal state law. (Taft, 6/30)

The decision is the latest in a string of legal disputes over the status of abortion in Iowa. It comes after the court in 2022 there is no "fundamental right" to abortion, and a 2023 case in which the court split 3-3 on what the correct legal standard should be for judging the constitutionality of abortion laws. The law the court says can take effect bans most abortions after fetal cardiac activity can be detected – about the sixth week of pregnancy – with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. (Morris, 6/28)

Abortion-rights groups in Florida are locked in a battle with the state over the cost for a ballot measure that would overturn the state’s six-week ban. The fight is over a seemingly obscure fiscal impact statement estimating the cost to the state for passing the proposed constitutional amendment. It highlights how both pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion forces are clawing for every inch of ground ahead of a campaign that will see tens of millions of dollars spent across the country’s third-largest state. (Sarkissian, 6/30)

A Kentucky judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by three Jewish mothers who argued that the state's near-total abortion ban violated the religious freedoms of those who believe life begins at birth, not conception. On Friday evening, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Brian Edwards said the group of women lacked standing to bring the case and sided with the state's attorney general, who defended the state's abortion laws. In Kentucky, abortions are banned in almost all circumstances except in cases when a pregnant woman's life is in imminent danger of death or permanent injury. (Kim, 6/29)

Katherine Farris has been an abortion provider for more than 20 years, and she says that this past year has been the hardest of her career — by a long shot. (Crumpler, 7/1)

After news broke that the Supreme Court would allow emergency abortions again in Idaho, a message went out to the entire staff of St. Luke’s Health System on the organization's intranet. If a very sick pregnant patient comes to the emergency room or labor and delivery triage, the message said, staff will no longer have to send them out of state for an abortion, according to Peg Dougherty, deputy general counsel for the health system. Doctors could once again terminate a patient's pregnancy to protect her health, not just to save their life, Dougherty said. (Yancey-Bragg, 6/28)

Nicole Miller had gone to the emergency room in Boise, Idaho, after waking up with heavy bleeding in her 20th week of pregnancy. By afternoon, she was still leaking amniotic fluid and hemorrhaging and, now in a panic, struggling to understand why the doctor was telling her that she needed to leave the state to be treated. “If I need saving, you’re not going to help me?” she recalls asking. She remembers his answer vividly: “He told me he wasn’t willing to risk his 20-year career.” Instead, that evening, hospital workers at St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center put Ms. Miller on a small plane to Utah. (Zernike, 6/28)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Idaho’s OB-GYN Exodus Throws Women In Rural Towns Into A Care Void

The ultrasound in February that found a mass growing in her uterus and abnormally thick uterine lining brought Jonell Anderson more than anxiety over diagnosis and treatment. For Anderson and other patients in this rural community who need gynecological care, stress over discovering an illness is compounded by the challenges they face getting to a doctor. (Orozco Rodriguez, 7/1)

At a convention center in Lander, roughly 150 people mingled and chatted at the first-ever Wyoming Reproductive Freedom Summit on June 22. Some sat at round white tables, while others checked out booths from organizations like Wyoming Health Council and Pro-Choice Wyoming. Marci Shaver is from Goshen County. She said the issue of abortion access hits close to home for her. “I had seven pregnancies that had to be terminated and under the law that they tried to put through post-Roe, my second pregnancy would have killed me,” she said. (Habermann, 6/28)

One morning last spring, Hollie Cunningham’s father was drinking coffee and watching Good Morning America on his patio when he saw Austin Dennard, a Dallas-area OB-GYN, on the screen. Through tears, Dennard described the devastation of having learned her pregnancy wasn’t viable. Then, she recounted the struggle of leaving Texas for an abortion the state wouldn’t allow. It sounded all too familiar — it was the same situation Cunningham had faced just months earlier. (Goldenstein, 6/29)

A push to boost the ranks of men fighting for abortion rights picked up a fresh recruit in a driveway here the other day, some four months before Florida voters will decide whether to add abortion rights to their constitution and effectively scrap the state’s six-week ban. The pitch came from Ethan Temple, an earnest 20-year-old promoting the amendment in shirt-soaking humidity. More guys need to get “off the sidelines,” such as by knocking on doors and rallying in support of bodily autonomy, he told Jordan Gulbronson, a web designer returning from a bagel run. (Calvert, 6/30)

Julie Burkhart, co-owner of Hope Clinic, which provides abortions in Granite City, Illinois, said that Biden’s weak showing on the topic sparked a sense of “discouragement, alarm and concern” among her colleagues. ... Supporters of abortion rights say they will stick to their messaging ahead of the election. They’re attempting to steer voters away from Biden’s poor performance by focusing on his administration’s overall goals and decisions about who should be in charge of influential health care agencies. (Edwards, Dunn, Kane, Herzberg and Barakett, 6/29)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: 1st Biden-Trump Debate Of 2024: What They Got Wrong, And Right

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, shared a debate stage June 27 for the first time since 2020, in a confrontation that — because of strict debate rules — managed to avoid the near-constant interruptions that marred their previous encounters. Biden, who spoke in a raspy voice and often struggled to articulate his arguments, said at one point that his administration “finally beat Medicare.” Trump, meanwhile, repeated numerous falsehoods, including that Democrats want doctors to be able to abort babies after birth. (6/28)