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A U.S. appeals court on Monday revived an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center's challenge to a New York state law that prohibits retaliation against employees for getting abortions or making other reproductive health decisions. A panel of the Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the state law violates Evergreen Association Inc's constitutional right to freedom of association by forcing the nonprofit, which counsels patients against getting abortions, to employ people who go against its message. (Wiessner, 2/27)

KHN: NYC Makes Clear Its Intent To Lead On Abortion Access 

New York City has long been a haven for people who want an abortion, and new city programs and policies aim to make sure it remains one since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade and tossed abortion regulation back to the states. In 1973, before Roe legalized abortion nationwide, New York was the only state that generally allowed abortions without a residency requirement or medical restrictions before fetal viability, according to the Guttmacher Institute. A year earlier — 1972 — more than 100,000 women traveled to New York City for a legal abortion. (Andrews, 2/28)

Nearly 70 cities and counties across rural America have banned abortion in the past few years as part of a slow-burning conservative campaign to outlaw the procedure everywhere. The ordinances, debated in states from California to Ohio, aim to prevent health clinics from offering abortions or allow private civilians to sue providers. Most of the bans have had no practical impact, passing in tiny towns without abortion providers such as Willey, Iowa — population 73 — or in states such as Louisiana and Texas, which already ban abortion. (Dewey, 2/27)

Anti-abortion counseling centers, often called “crisis pregnancy centers,” may soon face an existential choice in Minnesota: Leave behind their explicit agenda of dissuading people from having abortions or risk losing state funding. While some center operators could see that as a nonstarter, state Democrats may leave the door open for them to continue receiving taxpayer dollars — albeit under a battery of rules some Minnesota lawmakers hope could expand services for pregnant people amid the country’s rapidly shifting abortion landscape. (Lussenhop, 2/28)

Lawmakers say Tennessee’s top legal chief has voiced concerns about the legality of the state’s abortion law, adding an extra layer of urgency among some Republicans to insert exemptions into one of the strictest bans in the country. According to House Speaker Cameron Sexton, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti advised lawmakers that proposed changes to the so-called trigger law would better protect it from court challenges. And Sen. Richard Briggs, who joined a recent teleconference with Skrmetti and lawmakers, said the attorney general has “concerns” about the existing law. (Mattise and Kruesi, 2/27)

Allie Phillips of Tennessee was 19 weeks pregnant with a girl she and her husband already named Miley Rose when she went to see a high-risk obstetrician on Friday morning. A technician began to conduct an ultrasound scan, but suddenly stopped and went to get the doctor. The 28-year-old expectant mom was left lying on the table and texted a friend to see if that had ever happened to her. “Never,’” the friend replied. The doctor entered and directed Phillips’ attention to the screen and a gap in a white line down the middle of her baby’s brain. The doctor explained that the gap showed the brain had not fully divided into the right and left hemispheres. (Daly, 2/28)

Collecting abortion data has always been difficult: People are often unwilling to share their experiences with researchers, and the United States has no centralized count of abortions performed. Every state collects data differently, and some refuse to share it with federal researchers due to privacy concerns. Sometimes researchers have to estimate abortion incidence based on historical trends because up-to-date data isn’t available. (Mithani, 2/27)

Jessa Duggar Seewald, of 19 Kids and Counting fame, revealed in a YouTube video that she was recovering from a “D&C” — which stands for dilation and curettage, a common medical procedure used in cases of dangerous, unwanted, or non-viable pregnancies. Duggar, and subsequent media coverage, called the procedure “a miscarriage.” Abortion-rights advocates and people in the medical community say it’s the same thing as an abortion, which Duggar and her family say they are vehemently against. (Bloch, 2/27)