Louisiana Set To Lose Last Two Planned Parenthood Clinics
The clinics, scheduled to close Sept. 30, provided medical care for more than 10,000 patients last year. In other reproductive news: Hey Jane expands its reproductive telehealth care to Michigan; the Tennessee attorney general鈥檚 office demands abortion records from medical centers; and more.
Planned Parenthood will close its two clinics in Louisiana on Sept. 30 as the organization faces funding challenges under President Trump鈥檚 tax and spending package.聽Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast President Melaney Linton said in a statement the Louisiana closures are a 鈥渄irect result of relentless political assaults.鈥澛犫淭his is not a decision we wanted to make; it is one we were forced into by political warfare. Anti-reproductive health lawmakers obsessed with power and control have spent decades fighting the concept that people deserve to control their own bodies,鈥 she wrote. (O鈥機onnell-Domenech, 8/6)
New York-based Hey Jane has expanded its telehealth business to Michigan, offering abortion pills and emergency contraception, also known as the morning-after pill or Plan B, as well as birth control and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, yeast infections, urinary tract infections and more. The expansion of Hey Jane into Michigan comes as access to in-person abortion and other reproductive health care shrinks in the state 鈥 despite a 2022 ballot initiative that amended the Michigan Constitution to protect the right to legal abortion. (Shamus, 8/5)
Contraception is a routine part of life for many Americans and polls show people across political parties agree that it should be legal and accessible. But the Trump administration is walking back access to birth control for some people 鈥 including withholding funding from a Nixon-era program that guarantees access to contraception for low income people. (Riddle, 8/7)
Scientific breakthroughs 鈥斅爁rom next-generation vaccines to long-acting medications to prevent HIV 鈥 are fueling new hope in women鈥檚 health. But experts warn that persistent gaps in funding and access could stall that progress. (MacPhail, 8/6)聽
Abortion news from Tennessee, Montana, and Pennsylvania 鈥
The Tennessee attorney general鈥檚 office has subpoenaed four medical groups in the state for records of abortions performed over the last several years as part of a lawsuit over the exceptions to the state鈥檚 near-total abortion ban, court documents obtained by the Guardian show. The four subpoenas were issued this spring to Vanderbilt University medical center and a Tennessee hospital run by the national Catholic chain Ascension, as well as two smaller medical practices in Tennessee, Heritage Medical Associates and the Women鈥檚 Group of Franklin. (Sherman, 8/6)
Two groups, which were shot down unanimously by the Montana Supreme Court when they tried to halt a provision to protect the right to an abortion hours before it became part of the state鈥檚 constitution, have kept a vow to take the fight to a state district court. The Montana Life Defense Fund and the Montana Family Foundation filed suit in Yellowstone District Court late Tuesday afternoon, asking Judge Thomas Pardy to declare Constitutional Initiative 128, passed overwhelmingly by voters in November 2024, invalid because the full text was not printed on the ballot itself, something the group argues makes not just CI-128 illegal, but every amendment passed since 1978. However, the group is only challenging the passage of the abortion amendment because of a two-year statute of limitations. (Ehrlick, 8/6)
Shannon Noelle Jones waived her preliminary hearing today, prosecutors said. She allegedly obtained the medication for her daughter against medical advice. She and her daughter then buried the birth remains in the back yard of their home on the 100 block of Village Square Drive in an effort to conceal the pregnancy and subsequent birth from Jones鈥 husband and others, authorities claim. (Schweigert, 8/6)