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Reproductive Rights blog
The Jane Collective and Chicago's Underground Abortion Service How a group of Chicago women ran an underground abortion service before Roe, what happened when police arrested seven of them in May 1972, and what their story teaches organizers now. Abortion Ballot Measures Since Dobbs and What Voters Decided From Ohio's Issue 1 in 2023 through the ten states that voted in 2024, a guide to the abortion measures that passed and failed, and to how legislatures tried to change the rules. Eisenstadt v. Baird and Birth Control for Unmarried People How a 1967 lecture at Boston University, a package of contraceptive foam and a jail sentence led the Supreme Court in 1972 to extend the right to birth control to unmarried people. EMTALA, Emergency Rooms and Abortion When a Pregnancy Turns Dangerous What the 1986 federal emergency-care law requires of hospitals, why the Supreme Court ducked the abortion question in 2024, and what changed when guidance was pulled in 2025. Florida's 60 Percent Rule and the Amendment That Won a Majority and Lost Florida's abortion amendment won about 57 percent in 2024 and still failed. Where the 60 percent rule came from, the honest case for supermajorities, and the case against them. Griswold v. Connecticut and the Clinic Opened in Order to Be Closed In 1961 Estelle Griswold opened a New Haven birth control clinic hoping to be arrested. Here is how that deliberate test case created the constitutional right to privacy. How Medication Abortion Works and Why Its Safety Record Matters in Court General information on the two-drug medication abortion regimen approved in 2000, what decades of research show about its safety, and why that evidence keeps deciding legal fights. How to Testify Before a State Legislative Committee How statehouse committee hearings work, from bill numbers and witness registration to written testimony and the two minutes at the table, and how ordinary people use them to shape a bill. IVF After the Alabama Supreme Court's Frozen Embryo Ruling How a 2024 Alabama ruling that frozen embryos count as children under a wrongful-death law paused IVF clinics, what the quick legislative fix left open, and why personhood matters. Kansas Voters Rejected an Abortion Amendment in August 2022 Six weeks after Dobbs, voters in deeply Republican Kansas defeated an amendment to remove abortion protections. How the campaign was won and what it taught every ballot fight since. Mifepristone, the FDA and the Supreme Court Case Thrown Out for Standing Why the Supreme Court's unanimous 2024 mifepristone ruling turned on standing rather than safety, what the doctors who sued actually claimed, and how the challenges kept going afterward. Roe v. Wade Began as a Dallas Lawsuit Filed in 1970 How a 1970 complaint filed by two young Texas lawyers against the Dallas district attorney climbed to the Supreme Court, and what its long road says about rights won in court. Shield Laws and Telehealth Abortion Across State Lines Louisiana indicted a New York doctor in 2025 for mailing abortion pills, and New York refused to hand her over. How shield laws work and why they set up a constitutional collision. Texas SB 8 and the Private Lawsuits Designed to Dodge Judicial Review How Texas wrote a six-week abortion ban that no state official enforced, why that design kept federal courts from blocking it in 2021, and why the trick outlived Roe. The Comstock Act of 1873 and an Old Law Back in the Abortion Fight Why an 1873 anti-vice law that banned mailing contraceptives and abortion supplies is still on the books, how courts narrowed it, and why it now hangs over abortion pills by mail. The Leaked Dobbs Draft and the Last Weeks of Roe v. Wade A leaked draft in May 2022 told the country Roe was about to fall. Here is what the final Dobbs ruling held, how it differed, and how it moved abortion law to the states. What the Dobbs Opinion Actually Held, and What It Left to the States A plain reading of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization: the majority's reasoning, the three concurrences, the joint dissent, and the open questions it handed to legislatures.