�鶹Ů��

Rachel Jensen was excited to embark on the next phase of her training in obstetrics and gynecology — a fellowship in complex family planning in North Carolina. But when it came time for her to pack her bags and move from Baltimore, Maryland, to the Triangle last summer, Jensen found a legal landscape much different than what she had signed on for. (Crumpler, 7/16)

A state court judge’s ruling Monday keeps an abortion-rights question on the November ballot in South Dakota. Judge John Pekas dismissed a lawsuit filed by an anti-abortion group, Life Defense Fund, that sought to have the question removed even though supporters turned in more than enough valid signatures to put it on the ballot. (7/15)

A U.S. appeals court on Monday said Oklahoma cannot access federal family-planning grants that were withdrawn after the Republican-led state refused to refer pregnant women to neutral counseling services that included information about abortion and other options. The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' requirement that Oklahoma refer patients to a national hotline in order to receive grant funding did not violate a federal law barring grants from being used to encourage abortion. (Wiessner, 7/15)

Former President Trump says Project 2025 goes “way too far” in its abortion policy recommendations, his latest attempt to distance himself from the plan drafted by many former members of his administration. In an interview with Fox News’s Harris Faulkner that aired Monday, as the Republican National Convention kicks off in Milwaukee, Trump said Project 2025 was written by “a group of extremely conservative people” with whom he disagrees. (Weixel, 7/15)

Jeanine Valrie Logan sat in traffic for nearly two hours while she was in labor with her third child. Logan was determined to have her daughter at a birth center — a type of small facility focused on childbirth, often staffed by midwives. But there weren’t any birth centers near her home in the south suburbs, so she traveled nearly 30 miles to Berwyn. (Schencker, 7/15)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Before Michigan Legalized Surrogacy, Families Found Ways Around The Ban

The first time Tammy and Jordan Myers held their twins, the premature babies were so fragile that their tiny faces were mostly covered by oxygen masks and tubing. ... It was an incredible moment, but also a terrifying one. A court had just denied the Myers’ parental rights to the twins, who were born via surrogate using embryos made from Jordan’s sperm and Tammy’s eggs. (Tammy’s eggs had been frozen before she underwent treatment for breast cancer.) (Wells, 7/16)

A wave of Republican-led states have restricted care for children with gender dysphoria, and they’re turning to Dr. Stanley Goldfarb and his organization, Do No Harm, for legislative strategy and hand-picked medical experts, POLITICO’s Daniel Payne reports. Goldfarb, a former dean at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school and a retired kidney doctor, has become a go-to source of medical information in making the case to restrict gender-affirming care. (Leonard and Cirruzzo, 7/15)