abortion

The nation’s largest provider of reproductive health services, including abortions, will exit the federal family planning program over the Trump administration’s “domestic gag rule,” which prohibits clinics receiving Title X funds from discussing abortions with patients.

Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of America acting president and CEO, told reporters Monday that its clinics receiving Title X grants would begin submitting notices of withdrawal. The Department of Health and Human Services is requiring clinics to submit compliance plans by the end of the day.

Rep. Steve King demanded an apology over the weekend from GOP leaders and media outlets that criticized him for speculating that humankind may not exist without our species’ history of rape and incest.

The embattled Iowa Republican claimed, misleadingly, that he was misquoted in a Des Moines Register article — later picked up by The Associated Press — about comments he made defending his view that abortion should be illegal in all cases, including in instances of rape and incest.

Iowa Rep. Steve King is facing new calls to resign in the wake of his latest inflammatory remarks — this time for saying humanity might not exist were it not for rape and incest.

Speaking before the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, Iowa, the Republican congressman made the comment while defending his opposition to exceptions for rape and incest in anti-abortion legislation, The Des Moines Register reported. 

Advocates, state lawmakers and legal organizations are setting up the infrastructure to prepare for potential changes to the landmark 1973 abortion rights case Roe v. Wade.

Four major conservative advocacy groups will host an event next January that will train abortion opponents on policies and activism strategies to implement under the assumption that the Supreme Court eventually may change its precedent and expand states’ authority over abortion.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said Thursday it would allow a Trump administration rule to take effect that would prohibit certain providers like Planned Parenthood from being eligible for federal family planning funds.

The move is a blow to abortion rights groups that have been fighting the policy in court. The Health and Human Services rule would prevent any provider of abortions or abortion referrals from qualifying for federal family planning funding under the program known as Title X.

Updated 7:53 p.m. | Kentucky Democrat Amy McGrath reversed course Wednesday night on whether she would have voted for Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, just a day after launching her campaign to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

McGrath tweeted that she would have voted against Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the high court, after saying in an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal earlier in the day that she “probably would have voted for him.”

To put it delicately, Marjorie Dannenfelser was skeptical of Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries. In the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, she signed on to a letter that urged voters to choose someone else. Trump, who’d once described himself as “very pro-choice,” could not be trusted on abortion, wrote Dannenfelser and her colleagues, all women opposed to abortion rights.

As the head of the anti-abortion advocacy group Susan B. Anthony List, Dannenfelser and her co-signers — among them Beverly LaHaye, founder of Concerned Women for America, and former Colorado GOP Rep. Marilyn Musgrave — added that they were “disgusted” by Trump’s treatment of women. They mentioned specifically then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who Trump said had “blood coming out of her whatever” when Kelly questioned him at a presidential debate, and Trump’s fellow 2016 candidate, Carly Fiorina, whose looks he criticized, saying “Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”

The Supreme Court today steps into the national debate about the restrictions state lawmakers can put on abortion clinics, but the two most likely rulings won’t settle the issue nationwide.  

The justices will hear oral arguments in a challenge to a Texas law that regulates the operation of abortion clinics because of what state officials say is a concern for women’s health. The Texas law is similar to those in more than a dozen other states.  

Conservatives now have yet another reason to revere Antonin Scalia : In death, he just may keep Donald Trump from becoming the GOP nominee.  

In every presidential election I can remember, both major parties have issued two warnings: This is the most important election of our lifetime. And it will decide the balance of the Supreme Court for decades to come.