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Tiny spaces and cries of gibberish are not enough to derail an effort to explicitly enshrine abortion rights in the Michigan Constitution, according to a ruling issued Thursday by the state's highest court. The ruling, the court's first dealing at all with abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the national constitutional right to an abortion afforded under Roe v. Wade, means Michiganders will have the chance to amend the state Constitution when they cast their ballots this fall. (Boucher, 9/8)

The anti-abortion group opposing the effort argued that due to missing spaces and other formatting errors the text circulated to voters for their signatures was too confusing, making the petition invalid. The majority wrote that despite the typos, the meaning of the amendment was not changed. “Regardless of the existence or extent of the spacing, all of the words remain and they remain in the same order, and it is not disputed that they are printed in 8-point type. In this case, the meaning of the words has not changed by the alleged insufficient spacing between them,” the court ruled. (Weixel, 9/8)

The South Carolina Senate voted Thursday night to tighten abortion restrictions but failed to pass a total ban after a heated debate revealed the ongoing struggle among Republicans to define a cohesive post-Roe strategy. The chamber voted to gut a bill that would have prohibited abortion without exception for rape or incest, instead choosing to add more limits to the state’s existing law that bans abortion after six weeks. That law is temporarily blocked by the state Supreme Court because of ongoing litigation. (Sasani, 9/9)

The Texas Supreme Court has opted to keep in place a legal process that allows minors to seek a judge's approval to have an abortion without parental consent, though state law now bans the procedure in most circumstances. (Goldenstein, 9/8)

Abortion opponents in Texas on Thursday asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit by an organization that provides financial assistance to women seeking abortions challenging a Texas law that allows private citizens to sue anyone who facilitates an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. (Pierson, 9/8)

In Texas, it’s not just women who are fired up about access to abortion and registering to vote in large numbers following this summer's historic Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade. A new analysis from political data and polling firm TargetSmart found that while Texas’ new voter registrants are evenly split between men and women, they are younger and more Democratic than before the June ruling. (Goldenstein, 9/8)

A Hamilton County judge said he needs more time to decide whether or not to put a pause on a six-week abortion ban in Ohio. Judge Christian Jenkins said in a Thursday hearing that he would not issue an opinion because the court still has questions about how the case moves forward. “The court would like to investigate the threshold issue of jurisdiction and the effect of the (state) supreme court still not having dismissed the case,” Jenkins said on Thursday. (Tebben, 9/9)

A little more than two months into enforcement of Ohio’s harsh abortion restrictions, doctors are describing scenes of almost unimaginable anguish — and increased risks to women and girls who become pregnant. According to them, in all but the most dire medical emergencies, they and their patients have had to take up to 15 minutes with a bureaucratic process that some docs say is meant to shame women before allowing them to end pregnancies that pose a threat to their lives. Other women have partially delivered fetuses too undeveloped to survive only to see the delivery stall. In that condition, with the fetus partly out, they also have had to sign paperwork — and then wait for 24 hours, or for the fetus’s heart to stop. (Schladen, 9/7)

The Idaho Legislature has asked a federal judge to reconsider his decision blocking the state from enforcing a strict abortion ban in medical emergencies. In court documents filed Wednesday, attorneys for the Legislature said Senior U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill incorrectly followed the guidance of President Joe Biden’s administration rather than using the standards set by Congress when he found that Idaho’s ban appeared to violate a federal law governing emergency health care services at Medicare-funded hospitals. (Boone, 9/8)

Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office said it thinks the Florida Supreme Court should reverse a decades-old position that a privacy clause in the state Constitution protects abortion rights. (Saunders, 9/8)

Julie Reed, the executive vice president of the Indiana State Medical Association, said the abortion law deepened the existing philosophical concerns physicians have with government interference with patient-physician relationships. While health care workers who already have jobs here might ultimately stay, she and other health care providers and advocates told IndyStar they think recruitment will become the bigger problem. (Rudavsky and Herron, 9/9)