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Planned Parenthood filed a federal lawsuit Sunday to "protect abortion access" in Ohio following Attorney General Mike DeWine's report that facilities in Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland improperly disposed of fetal remains. DeWine announced Friday that a four-month investigation of the three facilities found aborted fetuses from Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio in Mount Auburn and the Columbus clinic contracted with a company that heats the tissue to kill bacteria and disposes of the remains in a Kentucky landfill. (Butts, 12/13)

State officials were expected to seek an injunction against Planned Parenthood after an investigation by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine found it violated the state Administrative Code requiring “humane” disposal of aborted fetuses. Now that action will depend on whether Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. of U.S. District Court in Columbus grants Planned Parenthood’s request for an immediate court order to prevent the state action. (Rowland, 12/14)

Aborted fetuses from Planned Parenthood clinics in Ohio are ending up being disposed of in landfills, according to an investigation from the state’s attorney general. The investigation, according to a Friday press release, concluded that the three Planned Parenthood affiliates in Ohio have sent fetal remains to companies that in turn disposed of them in landfills. (Sullivan, 12/11)

The federal lawsuit filed in Columbus follows an investigation by the state's attorney general into the organization's three facilities in Ohio that provide abortions. Attorney General Mike DeWine announced the probe in mid-July after anti-abortion activists began releasing undercover videos they said showed Planned Parenthood personnel negotiating the sale of fetal organs. (12/13)

[The lawsuit] comes two days after Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, a Republican, said he would file his own injunction to block those facilities from sending fetal remains to companies that then disposed of them in landfills. DeWine said doing so violated state administrative rules. (12/13)

Almost two months after Texas Republican leaders announced they would kick Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid, it hasn't happened. The organization is still receiving federal and state funds to provide health care for about 13,500 low-income women a year, and the state officials who called for a cutoff, including Gov. Greg Abbott, have fallen silent on why the funding continues. (Ura and Walters, 12/12)

Republican lawmakers in the Arizona Legislature on Friday promised to try again to block all funding for Planned Parenthood in the coming legislative session. The announcement from Senate President Andy Biggs comes despite a 2014 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld rulings preventing Arizona from stopping non-abortion funding through the state's Medicaid plan to the group. (Christie, 12/12)

Abortion rates in the United States are at their lowest levels since the government started tracking them in the 1970s. A report issued Friday by the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics said that in 2012, the year with the most recent data, there was a 35 percent drop in abortions during the past two decades 0r about 13 abortions for every 1,000 women. (Regan, 12/13)