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A federal judge Friday temporarily blocked Tennessee from enforcing a law banning adults from helping minors get an abortion without parental permission. In a 49-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger argued that the Republican-controlled state cannot “make it a crime to communicate freely” about legal abortion options even in a state where abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy except for a handful of situations. Trauger’s decision means that the law will be placed on hold as the case make its way through court. (Kruesi, 9/21)

The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care — far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds. From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period, according to an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute. The nonprofit research group scoured publicly available reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and shared the analysis exclusively with NBC News. (Edwards, Essamuah and Kane, 9/21)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: She Was Accused Of Murder After Losing Her Pregnancy. SC Woman Now Tells Her Story

Amari Marsh had just finished her junior year at South Carolina State University in May 2023 when she received a text message from a law enforcement officer. “Sorry it has taken this long for paperwork to come back,” the officer wrote. “But I finally have the final report, and wanted to see if you and your boyfriend could meet me Wednesday afternoon for a follow up?” (9/21)

Deb Jenssen never wanted her children to suffer from the disease that killed her brother at 28. The illness, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, initially manifests in childhood as trouble with strength and walking, then worsens until the heart or the muscles controlling the lungs stop working. She decided to get pregnant using IVF so that she could select embryos without the mutation for the disorder. But when she ended up with just two viable embryos—one with the mutation—the clinic urged her to transfer both. (Khamsi, 9/20)