Developments in Abortion, Autonomy, and Access:
This week’s Reproductive Health Digest is a bit shorter than usual as we await several key court rulings and next week’s election results. We’ll be back with full coverage once those developments are clear.
Below, we cover the expanding reach of fetal personhood - from an Arizona man winning damages for his partner’s 2018 abortion to Florida’s attorney general voicing his support for the legal concept. We also discuss litigation challenging research into Idaho’s Ob-Gyn crisis, ballot initiatives in Missouri, and the Trump administration’s newly-signed executive order purporting to establish a task force for women’s health. Finally, for a refresher of where abortion will be on the ballot next week, please review the last edition of the Digest. As always, please read on to the end for the news that you need to know.
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Overview:
An Arizona man has been awarded damages in connection with his partner’s 2018 abortion, raising concerns about the legal application of fetal personhood;
An Idaho judge is set to review records in a lawsuit challenging 2025 reporting documenting the post-Dobbs reduction in the Ob-Gyn workforce in the state;
Florida’s Attorney General signaled his support for fetal personhood in a podcast interview earlier this month, raising concerns about continued access to reproductive care, including IVF;
In next week’s election, Missourians will vote on a ballot measure designed to make it more difficult for legislators to overturn previously approved constitutional amendments;
The Trump administration signed an executive order establishing a “Women’s Health Task Force,” even as it has curtailed funding, research, and access to care over the past two years;
Post-Dobbs, research appears to indicate that pregnant people are more likely to be victims of homicide in states with abortion bans; and
New reporting shows that pregnancy criminalization is on the rise in Oklahoma.
This Week’s News:
Arizona Man Awarded Damages in Connection With His Partner’s 2018 Abortion:
An Arizona man has been awarded nearly $70,000 in damages in connection with his ex-partner’s 2018 abortion. As ProPublica reported in 2022, the man filed a lawsuit alleging multiple violations of law, including medical malpractice and wrongful death, following his partner’s lawful medication abortion at an Arizona clinic. He sought to act as the representative of the aborted fetus’s estate. In 2024, an Arizona judge declined to extend the state’s wrongful death statute to an aborted fetus; however, the case continued on limited grounds. The man argued that, although his ex-partner had fully consented to the abortion, the clinic had failed to satisfy certain medically unnecessary informed consent technicalities prescribed by Arizona statute. Earlier this year, he was awarded damages for emotional and psychological distress as a result of that alleged failure. Importantly, the informed consent statute at issue has since been struck down following the 2024 passage of an abortion rights constitutional amendment. Although the judge rejected the plaintiff’s fetal personhood argument, the use of state law to seek damages over a legal abortion is concerning in its own right.
Judge to Review Records in Case Challenging Idaho Ob-Gyn Study:
In 2025, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article documenting the sharp decline in Ob-Gyns practicing in Idaho after the state implemented a total abortion ban. The article has been widely cited to illustrate the detrimental impacts that abortion bans have on healthcare. In the run-up to next week’s election, during which Idaho voters will decide whether to pass a law restoring pre-viability abortion rights, anti-abortion activists filed a lawsuit attempting to discredit the study’s findings. The petition follows an earlier public records request to Boise State University (BSU) that yielded minimal documentation, and it seeks additional records related to the research process. An attorney representing the university has maintained that BSU responded in good faith with the only record responsive to the plaintiffs’ request. Following a hearing, Idaho Judge Nancy Baskin will privately review BSU’s records related to the research before making a public ruling.
Florida Attorney General Champions Fetal Personhood Strategy as Conservative Groups Advance Broader Restrictions on Fertility Care:
In recent podcast remarks, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier outlined his strategy to leverage the full authority of his office against abortion access. Specifically, he cited his intervention in a Broward County surrogacy proceeding, where he invoked constitutional anti-slavery arguments to challenge surrogacy contracts, as a vehicle to establish fetal personhood before the state judiciary. While the affected infant and adoptive parents have since relocated out of the U.S., Uthmeier has appealed the case, with a likely goal of securing a state Supreme Court ruling recognizing embryos as legal persons. Legal experts warn that incorporating fetal personhood into the law could severely restrict or eliminate abortion, surrogacy, and in vitro fertilization across Florida. This judicial strategy aligns with a broader national effort led by conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation, which have drafted model state reporting legislation in states like Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma defining human embryos as living organisms from fertilization. Although those regulatory reporting mandates have not yet passed, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine warns that they would threaten patient privacy, increase legal liability for healthcare providers, and lay the groundwork for sweeping restrictions on fertility care nationwide.
Missouri Voters to Consider Amendment 6 to Protect Citizen-Led Initiatives From Legislature Overturns:
In next week’s election, Missouri voters will be asked to decide on a measure intended to strengthen the citizen initiative process. Organized by the Respect Missouri Voters coalition after collecting over 300,000 signatures, Amendment 6 asks voters to establish the initiative and referendum petition process as a fundamental constitutional right. The measure responds directly to recent legislative efforts to alter or overturn voter-approved ballot measures, including the 2024 passage of paid sick leave regulations and the constitutional amendment enshrining reproductive freedom up to fetal viability. If passed, the amendment would prohibit the General Assembly from weakening initiative powers, maintain current statewide simple-majority passage thresholds, authorize courts to revise ballot summaries, and require an 80% super-majority in both legislative chambers to alter or repeal any citizen-enacted law. The proposal reached the ballot following a Missouri Supreme Court decision overruling the Secretary of State’s refusal to certify the measure. In addition to voting on Amendment 6 next Tuesday, voters will also decide Amendment 3, a legislatively referred measure that would undo the state’s 2024 reproductive rights protections and re-implement a near-total abortion ban.
Trump Signs Executive Order Establishing “Women’s Health Task Force”:
On October 19th, Trump signed an executive order entitled “Advancing Women’s Health to Improve Outcomes in All Phases of Life.” The purported aim of the order is to direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish a ‘Women’s Health Division within an appropriate institute or center within 90 days” in order to advance research into women’s health conditions. The order has been met with skepticism by a public that has watched this administration erase CDC webpages related to contraception and reproductive healthcare, gut NIH funding, withhold critical Title X funds, defund Planned Parenthood, and take consistent action to increase the cost of basic healthcare. Additionally, as Suzanne Bell, a Johns Hopkins demographer, discussed with The 19th, it is difficult to imagine how the current administration will advance women’s health when it has weaponized an anti-DEI agenda to restrict research that includes terms like “gender” and “pregnant individual.” The executive order itself issues restrictive mandates with respect to funding, stating that one function of the Women’s Health Division will be to “develop accountability for grant recipients to enhance adherence to the NIH policy requiring research to account for sex as a biological variable.” While many provisions of the order are relatively uncontroversial, it says little about implementation, enforcement, or cost, and its timing, just weeks before the midterm elections, is notable.
Pregnant People More likely to be Victims of Homicide in Abortion Ban States:
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has published new research on the relationship between homicide perpetrated against pregnant people and abortion bans. Homicide is consistently a leading cause of death for pregnant people, exceeding rates of the most common obstetrical complications like cardiovascular disease and hemorrhage. The latest research in JAMA utilized “US mortality data from 2016 through 2024,” and found that although “national homicide mortality decreased” after the pandemic, “post-Dobbs trajectories diverged between states with and without sustained abortion bans,” with the homicide rate for “women of reproductive age in states with total or near-total abortion bans” exceeding the counterfactual by 7% in 2023 and 15% in 2024. Additional research shows that abortion bans have been linked to a rise in intimate partner violence, and the authors of the JAMA study note that “being denied a wanted abortion has been associated with prolonged exposure to violence and persistent economic hardship.” Although the Dobbs decision remains too recent to yet have data interrogating the long-term impact of abortion bans on the health and safety of pregnant people, early research appears to consistently demonstrate that restricting reproductive freedom correlates with increased levels of violence.
Pregnancy Justice Report Reveals Over 200 Pregnancy-Related Prosecutions in Oklahoma Post-Dobbs:
A national study published by Pregnancy Justice found that more than 900 women across 23 states faced criminal charges related to their pregnancies in the three years following the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Oklahoma accounts for 222 of those cases. Researchers attributed Oklahoma’s high case volume, which trailed only South Carolina, to a 2020 state Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that interpreted unborn fetuses as children under Oklahoma’s child neglect statute. The vast majority of charges statewide and nationwide involved allegations of child endangerment, abuse, or neglect in connection with substance use during pregnancy. Additionally, three Oklahoma cases involved allegations related to seeking or researching abortion care. Legal scholars and health advocates noted that most cases originated in healthcare settings – they warn that this kind of criminalization of pregnancy outcomes harms patient care by damaging the physician-patient relationship and deterring patients from seeking medical treatment.