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Texas' highest court on Friday refused to ensure that doctors in the U.S. state are not prosecuted for abortions they believe are necessary in medically complicated pregnancies, rejecting a lawsuit by 22 patients and physicians. The Texas Supreme Court's decision follows an earlier ruling from the court denying a woman's request for an emergency abortion of a non-viable pregnancy. In both cases, plaintiffs said the medical exception to the state's near-total abortion ban was unclear, and left doctors unwilling to perform medically necessary abortions in the face of severe penalties including potentially life in prison. (Pierson, 6/1)

The Senate will vote on Wednesday on legislation that would protect access to contraception at the national level, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced in a letter to colleagues Sunday. A vote on the bill, which is led by Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, is an effort to force Republicans to stake out a position on a hot-button issue during an election year. (Beggin, 6/2)

Every morning for a year and a half, Logan Whitehead, 24, rubbed a clear gel on his shoulders, waited for it to dry, then went about his day as usual. “It was basically like a hand sanitizer solution,” said Whitehead, who lives in Torrance, California. “Smelled like hand sanitizer, looked like hand sanitizer.” The gel wasn’t hand sanitizer, though. It was a hormonal solution meant to block Whitehead’s sperm production. The gel was male birth control. (Hopkins, 6/2)

For seven years, Jacqueline Brock endured grueling fertility treatments – and all of the emotion that came with it. “I had to stop going to outings with our friends because they’d bring their kids or talk about their kids, and I would just cry,” she said. “I didn't go to a lot of baby showers and things because I couldn't physically handle it.” (Krebs, 6/2)

When Mana Parast was a medical resident in 2003, she had an experience that would change the course of her entire career: her first fetal autopsy. The autopsy, which pushed Parast to pursue perinatal and placental pathology, was on a third-trimester stillbirth. “There was nothing wrong with the baby; it was a beautiful baby,” she recalls. We’re not done, she remembers her teacher telling her. Go find the placenta. (Marie Porter, 6/1)