The South Carolina House of Representatives approved on May 17 a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, paving the way for a significant change to the legality of abortion in one of the few Southern states that has not yet added restrictions to the procedure after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.
In a two-hour hearing on May 17 looking at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of an abortion pill, federal judges seemed to have a harsher line of questioning for attorneys for the federal government and the drug maker, indicating they might be sympathetic to those challenging the drug’s availability.
Legislation in North Carolina that bans most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, which the state’s bishops say “represents progress toward building a culture of life,” will now become law after the state’s Republican-controlled General Assembly overrode the Democratic governor’s veto.
An advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on May 10 to recommend that a birth control pill be sold in the U.S. without a doctor’s prescription.
North Carolina legislators appear poised to pass a ban on abortions after 12 weeks despite objections from the state’s governor.
The New York State Catholic Conference called Gov. Kathy Hochul “terribly misguided” in her focus, after the governor signed legislation that makes abortion medication more accessible in New York, including at state universities.
Abortion bans failed in Nebraska and South Carolina, two Republican-led states, in the final week of April following a successful effort in North Dakota.
Lawmakers in the Kansas Legislature voted April 26 to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a “born-alive infants protection act.”
A six-week abortion ban signed into law April 24 by North Dakota’s Republican governor, Doug Burgum, is being hailed by the state’s Catholic bishops as an “important step toward making the state a sanctuary for life.”
After its defense of a state law limiting abortion made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in the court’s subsequent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June, Mississippi passed a package of bills that state officials said demonstrate creating a safety net for both mothers and babies.
