Vice President JD Vance is encouraging anti-abortion activists to celebrate progress in limiting abortion. Vance highlights the Trump administration's achievements, including expanding a ban on U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion services. Vance spoke Friday at the annual March for Life in Washington, emphasizing the importance of increasing birth rates in the U.S. The Republican vice president also praises the Supreme Court's 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and President Donald Trump's leadership in appointing conservative jurists. The March for Life has become more celebratory since that Supreme Court ruling.
On Jan. 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Roe v. Wade decision, declared a nationwide constitutional right to abortion. (The court would overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, in the decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.)
Federal health officials have approved another generic version of the abortion pill, prompting outrage from abortion opponents. Anti-abortion groups quickly criticized the move on Thursday, calling it a "stain" on the Trump administration. The groups have been pushing for a safety review of mifepristone. The FDA first approved the drug as safe and effective in 2000. The new version of the pill is from drugmaker Evita Solutions. It's not the first generic version, which the FDA approved in 2019.
Clinics, advocacy groups and individuals who share abortion-related content online say they are seeing informational posts being taken down even if the posts don't clearly violate the platforms' policies. The groups, in Latin America and the U.S., are denouncing what they see as censorship even in places where abortion is legal. Companies like Meta say their policies have not changed, and experts attribute the takedowns to over-enforcement. But abortion advocates say the removals have a chilling effect even if they are later reversed, and navigating platforms' complex systems of appeals is difficult, if not impossible.
A federal judge says Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide must continue to be reimbursed for Medicaid funding. The judged ruled Monday as the nation's largest abortion provider fights President Donald Trump's administration over efforts to defund the organization in his signature tax legislation. The new order replaces a previous edict that initially granted a preliminary injunction. That injunction specifically blocked the government from cutting Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood members that didn't provide abortion care or didn't meet a threshold of at least $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in a given year.
On June 24, 1983, the space shuttle Challenger — carrying America's first woman in space, Sally Ride — coasted to a safe landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
A new report finds that the number of abortions in the U.S. grew in 2024 as more women obtained pills through telehealth. The latest WeCount project for the Society of Family Planning finds that 1 in 4 abortions uses medications prescribed by a provider who does not see the patient in person. That is up from 1 in 20 in the months before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The number may explain why another recent study found that fewer women crossed state lines for abortion in 2024 than the year before.
By SARA CLINE and GEOFF MULVIHILL Associated Press
A New York doctor has been indicted by a Lousiana grand jury for allegedly prescribing an abortion pill online in the Deep South state, which has one of the strictest near-total abortion bans in the country. Dr. Margaret Carpenter and her company, Nightingale Medical were charged on Friday with criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs, a felony. The case appears to be the first instance of criminal charges against a doctor accused of sending abortion pills to another state, at least since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and opened the door for states to have strict anti-abortion laws.
