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The Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday that frozen embryos are people and someone can be held liable for destroying them, a decision that reproductive rights advocates say could imperil in vitro fertilization (IVF) and affect the hundreds of thousands of patients who depend on treatments like it each year. The first-of-its-kind ruling comes as at least 11 states have broadly defined personhood as beginning at fertilization in their state laws, according to reproductive rights group Pregnancy Justice, and states nationwide mull additional abortion and reproductive restrictions, elevating the issue ahead of the 2024 elections. Federally, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide this term whether to limit access to an abortion drug, the first time the high court will rule on the subject since it overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. (Rosenzweig-Ziff, 2/19)

In its decision, the Alabama Supreme Court did not address the question of whether “extrauterine children” should be treated as human beings, but it did find that state law did not specify what state an unborn child is to be in. “The relevant statutory text is clear: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies on its face to all unborn children, without limitation,” the court’s decision stated. The court found that there is no unwritten exception, as the defendants have argued, to the law that applies to “unborn children who are not physically located ‘in utero’ — that is, inside a biological uterus — at the time they are killed.” (Choi, 2/19)

Reports that Donald Trump plans to endorse a 16-week national abortion ban quickly exacerbated the pending political battle on abortion policy to come during the 2024 presidential campaign, with advocates on both sides seeing the report as advantageous to their side. (Cohen, 2/16)

Allies of former President Donald J. Trump and officials who served in his administration are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban or the laws enacted in conservative states across the country. Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from 1873, to criminalize the shipping of any materials used in an abortion — including abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions in America. Lerer and Dias, 2/17)

A major anti-abortion group is praising a published report that Donald Trump has privately told people he supports a national ban on abortion after 16 weeks of pregnancy, though his campaign denied the report and said the former president plans to “negotiate a deal” on abortion if elected to the White House again. Trump, the frontrunner to be the 2024 Republican nominee, has repeatedly refused to back any specific limits on abortion as he campaigns, though he has called himself “the most pro-life president in American history.” (Price and Fernando, 2/16)

The number of patients receiving abortions in Florida each year continues to rise. There were 84,052 abortions performed in Florida last year, according to an update to 2023 totals that the Agency for Health Care Administration published on Jan. 31. That’s up from 82,192 in 2022.The increase in abortion totals was once again driven by patients who don't live in Florida but traveled to the state for the procedure. (Colombini, 2/19)

When disabled Texans used to visit abortion clinics, staffers would remember them. They may have needed in-clinic accommodations or American Sign Language Interpreters, and they appeared infrequently. Still, they came. But more than a year since performing abortions became illegal in the state of Texas, disabled people have become a “missing population” at the clinics still providing abortions out of state, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion provider. (Bohra, 2/20)

Some state governments and federal regulators were already moving to keep individuals’ reproductive health information private when a U.S. senator’s report last week offered a new jolt, describing how cellphone location data was used to send millions of anti-abortion ads to people who visited Planned Parenthood offices. Federal law bars medical providers from sharing health data without a patient’s consent but doesn’t prevent digital tech companies from tracking menstrual cycles or an individual’s location and selling it to data brokers. (Mulvihill, 2/17)

Abortion rights could be on the ballot in nearly a quarter of states this November, raising concerns among supporters about the ability to fund major campaign efforts in all of them. From deep-red Arkansas and Missouri to purple Arizona and Nevada, activists are already competing with each other for a limited pool of cash and auditioning for the national progressive groups they need to fund their efforts to enshrine protections in state constitutions. (Messerly and Miranda Ollstein, 2/19)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: The Powerful Constraints On Medical Care In Catholic Hospitals Across America

Nurse midwife Beverly Maldonado recalls a pregnant woman arriving at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Maryland after her water broke. It was weeks before the baby would have any chance of survival, and the patient’s wishes were clear, she recalled: “Why am I staying pregnant then? What’s the point?” the patient pleaded. But the doctors couldn’t intervene, she said. The fetus still had a heartbeat and it was a Catholic hospital, subject to the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” that prohibit or limit procedures like abortion that the church deems “immoral” or “intrinsically evil,” according to its interpretation of the Bible. (Pradhan and Recht, 2/17)

Transgender-related issues have become perhaps the biggest rallying call to Christian conservatives, more than abortion rights or same-sex marriage. That shift worries advocates who note transgender people are already disproportionately prone to stress, depression and suicidal behavior when forced to live as the sex they were assigned at birth. ... The Alliance for Full Acceptance’s executive director, Chase Glenn, a transgender man, called it “dehumanizing” to have his existence politicized. (Pollard, 2/18)