For Ohio Women, Kasich’s Anti-Choice Policies Extend Beyond Abortion

Our community health workers do in-home visits and teach everything from safe sleep, to birth spacing, to nurturing the baby, to making sure there’s the healthiest experience for the infant as possible, and the mom too.
We've been doing this program for 18 years. We were doing it in one county for many years, and we did such a great job that we were allowed to add a county. So we are actually currently the only agency in the state of Ohio that’s allowed to run the program in two counties, and that’s because we’ve had such a great success rate with the program...
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/03/15/3760507/planned-parenthood-kasich-ohio/

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Walked All Over Texas’ Restrictive Abortion Law

For the first time in history, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a major abortion rights case with three women on the bench.

 Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan all played an outsized role in the hearing for Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a case that’s as much about a woman’s constitutional right to choose as about who gets to impose rules around that choice.

 But it was Ginsburg, the court’s matriarch, who seemed the most invested in the nearly 85-minute session on Wednesday. She asked the first and last questions of both sides of the case — the clinics fighting to stay open and the state of Texas — but saved her most pointed darts by far for the Lone Star state....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ruth-bader-ginsburg-texas-abortion-law_us_56d78d8ee4b0000de403673e

‘No Access, No Choice’: A Pop-Up Museum Dedicated To Reproductive Rights

This week, the Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, one of the most influential abortion access cases to ever go before the court.....

 Just a few blocks from the Supreme Court, a national women’s advocacy organization set up a shipping container. It’s been there all week. Inside is an interactive exhibit, “No Access, No Choice,” where visitors can see videos of women telling their personal abortion stories, read about how abortion access has been challenged and defended throughout history, and share their own visions for what they think and hope women’s healthcare can be....
http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2016/03/04/3756661/a-look-inside-the-abortion-access-pop-up-museum-just-blocks-from-the-supreme-court/

Trump Takes His Fourth Position On Abortion In Three Days. He’ll Need To Change This One Immediately

Trump is having a lot of trouble making up his mind about where he stands on abortion...
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/04/01/3765914/trump-abortion-four-positions-three-days/

Fetal Tissue Research Uncovers New Information About Zika | ThinkProgress

New medical research has quickly advanced doctors’ understanding of how the Zika virus infects a fetus and how to detect its presence much earlier in a woman’s pregnancy. These findings — released Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine — would have been impossible to uncover without the help of one crucial, yet controversial, resource: tissue collected from an aborted fetus infected by Zika...
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/03/31/3765233/fetal-tissue-zika-study/

Trump's Abortion Comments: A Closer Look

Seth takes a closer look at Donald Trump's controversial statement that there should be "some form of punishment" for women who seek abortions.
https://youtu.be/VpGJlZinFxk

Spoiler Alert: Women Are Already Being Punished For Having Abortions | ThinkProgress

Multiple U.S. women -- with few options to get themselves to one of their state's dwindling legal clinics -- have been arrested for illegal abortions after they bought abortion-inducing medication online. And thanks to the growing number of laws aimed at protecting “fetal rights,” other women have been punished for doing activities that allegedly harmed their pregnancies. Americans have been charged with murder for allegedly seeking to harm their fetuses by attempting suicide, using illicit drugs, or even falling down the stairs...
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/03/30/3765073/women-punished-abortion/

FDA Updates Label For Abortion Drug, Making Access Easier In Some States

"The updated label is more aligned with evidence-based medicine and has the potential to expand abortion access for Ohio women," Chrisse France, executive director of the Preterm clinic in Ohio, said in a statement. "We are pleased to announce that as of today we will be offering medication abortion to more women, with fewer required visits."... 
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/30/472413911/fda-updates-label-for-abortion-drug-making-access-easier-in-some-states

Brazil Confiscates Abortion Pills From Pregnant Women Exposed To Zika

“I contacted Zika four days ago. I just found out I’m about six weeks pregnant. I have a son I love dearly. I love children. But I don’t believe it is a wise decision to keep a baby who will suffer. I need an abortion. I don’t know who to turn to. Please help me ASAP.”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/03/28/3763898/brazil-abortion-pill-confiscated-zika/

Why pediatricians care so much about the Supreme Court’s birth control case - The Washington Post

For the second time in two years, the Supreme Court justices tangled over a question about personal beliefs and birth control: Must employers who are religiously opposed to it cover it in their health plans? A prominent group of pediatricians hopes the answer will be yes...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/24/why-pediatricians-care-so-much-about-the-supreme-courts-birth-control-case/

“Little Sisters” Being Sold As Face Of Contraception Case

The effort to make the Little Sisters the public face of the case has been so extensive, in fact, that you could be forgiven if you didn’t know that the actual name of the case that the Supreme Court is hearing Wednesday is Zubik v. Burwell, which is a consolidated case that includes the Little Sisters’ challenge to the mandate as well as the challenges of six other plaintiffs, including the anti-abortion group Priests for Life and two Catholic dioceses...
http://religiondispatches.org/little-sisters-being-sold-as-face-of-contraception-case/

Birth control is back at the Supreme Court

WASHINGTON – The anti-birth control coverage camp is returning to the Supreme Court Wednesday, and they’re feeling under siege.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/birth-control-back-the-supreme-court

A Post-Scalia Court On Abortion (Tom Ashbrook, On Point)

Texas passed a law it says was for women’s health and half the state’s abortion clinics closed. Abortions rights supporters say that was the whole point – laws so burdensome that a lot of abortion and clinics would go away. Now, it’s before the Supreme Court. The biggest abortion decision in decades. And the court is down a judge. Yesterday it heard the arguments. This hour On Point, high stakes as the court, without Justice Antonin Scalia, takes on abortion – and a lot more. — Tom Ashbrook
Interview:
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2016/03/03/scalia-scotus-abortion-texas

FL bill to defund Planned Parenthood would send women to dentists, school nurses for healthcare needs

...“I don’t understand how they put this list together,” said Kheyanna Suarez, a student at Florida Atlantic University who first started visiting Planned Parenthood when she was 16. “Were they blind and mashed everything from Google on to one list? A dental office, a Salvation Army, an elementary school – I can’t go and get care at those places. If I have to leave my healthcare up to the places on that list, I am scared. I don’t think an elementary school can prescribe me birth control.”...
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/fl-bill-to-defund-planned-parenthood-would-send-women-to-dentists-school-nurses-for-healthcare-needs/

Senate Republicans Are Reminded: ‘Banning Abortion Doesn’t Make It Go Away’

Anti-choice activists testified at a U.S. Senate hearing on Tuesday that a fetus feels pain at 20 weeks' gestation, although an exhaustive scientific review says that's simply not the case... ...“Banning abortion doesn’t make it go away, it makes it more likely that women will have an illegal abortion,” Greene Foster said...
https://rewire.news/article/2016/03/15/senate-republicans-reminded-banning-abortion-doesnt-make-go-away/

Religion and Birth Control at the Supreme Court

If the harm that Senate Republicans are inflicting on the nation by refusing to consider filling the Supreme Court vacancy were not already self-evident, a case that the remaining eight justices are hearing on Wednesday drives the point home...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/21/opinion/religion-and-birth-control-at-the-supreme-court.html

Inside the 'Fetal Assault Law' Sending Pregnant Women to Prison

Tennessee considers extending a horrific anti-pregnant woman law. 
http://www.alternet.org/inside-fetal-assault-law-sending-pregnant-people-prison

11 Terrible Right-Wing Laws and Ideas Pushed by Far-Right Republicans Near You

It can happen to your town too. 
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/11-terrible-right-wing-laws-and-ideas-pushed-far-right-republicans-near-you

Texas abortion law

Supreme Court appears sharply divided...
Interview:
https://youtu.be/M9GQ8dBRMm0

Quote of the Day: "No, sir, I am not going to answer that"

Fascinating! What exactly is it that Blackburn is so loath to answer—and so unable to defend? Well, it turns out that she wants to issue a subpoena to get the names of individual medical researchers who use fetal tissue, and Rep. Jerrold Nadler wants to know why. Steve Benen picks up the story...
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/03/quote-day-no-sir-i-am-not-going-answer