Abortion Opponents Intend To Whittle State Protections Backed By Voters

Politico: Abortion Opponents Prepare To Undermine Ballot Measures That Just Passed 
Anti-abortion groups on Tuesday unveiled their “Make America Pro-Life Again Roadmap,” an effort to chip away at federal and state access, including in nearly a dozen states that enshrined protections through ballot measures over the last two years. Drawing on the playbook they successfully used under Roe v. Wade to regulate clinics out of existence and outlaw particular methods of abortion, conservative groups plan next year to file lawsuits targeting federal regulation of abortion pills and push legislation in Congress and in at least 15 states they believe can circumvent constitutional amendments and court rulings protecting the procedure. (Ollstein, 11/12)

The Hill: Abortion Opponents Unveil Strategy To Undermine State Protections
The effort will kick off in earnest next year. The group believes their strategy of lawsuits and legislation will be able to successfully circumvent the states that have enshrined abortion protections in their constitutions. Many of the bills target mifepristone — one of the drugs commonly used in medication abortions. Some seek an outright ban, while others seek to replicate Louisiana’s legislation that classifies the drug as a controlled substance. Others aim to restrict access by claiming the drugs pose environmental risks. At least one piece of legislation argues that the chemicals in abortion pills pose a public health threat once they are passed through a person and then flushed into wastewater. (Weixel and O'Connell-Domenech, 11/12)

Abortion updates from Idaho, Kentucky, and Maryland —

AP: Women Suing Over Idaho's Abortion Ban Describe Dangerous Pregnancies, Becoming 'Medical Refugees' 
Four women suing over Idaho’s strict abortion bans told a judge Tuesday how excitement over their pregnancies turned to grief and fear after they learned their fetuses were not likely to survive to birth — and how they had to leave the state to get abortions amid fears that pregnancy complications would put their own health in danger. “We felt like we were being made refugees, medical refugees,” said Jennifer Adkins, one of the plaintiffs in the case. (Boone, 11/12)

AP: A Pregnant Woman Sues For The Right To An Abortion In Challenge To Kentucky's Near-Total Ban 
A pregnant woman filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to restore the right to an abortion in Kentucky in the latest challenge to the state’s near-total ban on the procedure. The suit, filed in state court in Louisville, claims that Kentucky laws blocking abortions violate the plaintiff’s constitutional rights to privacy and self-determination. It asks that both state laws be struck down by a judge in Jefferson County Circuit Court. The woman, a state resident identified by the pseudonym Mary Poe to protect her privacy, is about seven weeks pregnant, the suit said. She wants to terminate her pregnancy but cannot legally do so in Kentucky, it said. (Schreiner, 11/12)

KFF Health News: Maryland Is Training More Health Workers To Offer Abortion Care 
In the two counties around nurse practitioner Samantha Marsee’s clinic in rural northeastern Maryland, there’s not a single clinic that provides abortions. And until recently, Marsee herself wasn’t trained to treat patients who wanted to end a pregnancy. “I didn’t really have a lot of knowledge about abortion care,” she said. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, she watched state after state ban abortion, and Marsee decided to take part in the first class of a new training program offered by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland-Baltimore. (Varney, 11/13)

Also —

Axios: Homicide Found To Be Top Cause Of Maternal Death
Pregnant women or those who've given birth in the past year are likelier to be murdered than die from medical causes like preeclampsia or hemorrhaging, a new study in JAMA Network Open concludes. (Bettelheim, 11/13)