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Federally-funded clinics that provide contraception and other reproductive health services have one week to apply for new grants after the Trump administration released long-delayed guidance Friday night. Current funding runs out April 1. The delay in the release of the guidance for the Title X Family Planning Program, which clinics had expected to receive before the end of last year, had health care leaders and elected officials warning that millions of low-income patients could lose access to birth control, STI tests, cancer screenings and other care. (Ollstein, 3/13)

The state of Indiana is appealing a Marion County judge’s March 5 ruling in favor of an additional religious right exemption to Indiana’s near-total abortion ban, but legal experts believe the ruling could present a way to claw back the right to an abortion following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. (Kukulka, 3/14)

Wyoming’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a six-week abortion ban this week, prompting a new lawsuit and some lawmakers to call it “an insult to voters and our institution”. Mark Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, signed the bill while simultaneously warning of its constitutional hurdles, noting that prior abortion bans were struck down by the state’s all Republican-appointed supreme court this January. Almost immediately, an identical set of plaintiffs filed suit against the new bill. (Neff, 3/15)

On the afternoon of Sept. 9, 2024, Cherise Doyley was in her 12th hour of contractions at University of Florida Health in downtown Jacksonville when a nurse came in with a bedsheet and told her to cover up. A supervisor brought a tablet to Doyley’s bedside. Gathered on the screen were a judge in a black robe and several lawyers, doctors and hospital staff. “It’s a real judge in there?” Doyley asked the nurse at the beginning of what would be a three-hour hearing. “Now this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” (Yurkanin, 3/14)

In North Carolina, where a clinician practices can make all the difference for someone seeking maternity care — it’s the birth equivalent of “location, location, location.” Dozens of counties have no local obstetrics care, so families are forced to travel long distances for deliveries. That distance to care for rural patients has been linked to higher rates of cesarean sections, preterm births and maternal complications. (Fredde, 3/16)