�Թϲ�����

Since then, abortion providers in Texas say their worst fears have come to fruition. They describe women traveling hundreds of miles to get an abortion while out-of-state clinics grow backlogged and their own clinics rapidly confront possible closure. This time abortion providers want the court ... to act rather than wait for its ongoing lawsuit to proceed at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The conservative-leaning appeals court is not poised to act before December, the abortion providers say. (Weber, 9/23)

Before the law took effect, abortion rights advocates and providers sued to block Texas state judges from enforcing the law and court clerks from accepting lawsuits alleging violations of S.B. 8. The defendants, who are state officials, in turn claim the lawsuit against them is improper, and have asked that the case be dismissed. That case is pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which despite expediting the proceedings, will not hear the matter until December at the earliest. (Kruzel, 9/23)

The city of Chicago has taken out full-page ads in The Dallas Morning News to encourage Texans unhappy with the state’s new abortion law and other issues to leave the state. The ads tout Chicago’s tech and business sector as well as the city’s more liberal politics, pointing to voting rights, abortion and an emphasis on science as a means to combat COVID-19. (Kelley, 9/23)

Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance appeared to defend the near-total ban on abortion in Texas during a local news interview this week, saying he did not believe that rape or incest should necessarily be exceptions for the procedure. "I think in Texas they're trying to make it easier for unborn babies to be born," Vance told Spectrum News's Curtis Jackson in Columbus on Wednesday when asked about the Texas law. "There is a view, common among leaders of the Democratic Party, that babies deserve no legal protections in the womb. That is a common view in the Democratic Party and all I'm saying is that view's wrong." (Manchester, 9/23)

Guam’s government is appealing a judge’s ruling that removed a barrier to women in the U.S. territory accessing telemedicine abortions. ... The Guam attorney general’s office and the Guam Medical Board of Examiners filed notice in court this week they are appealing a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocked a provision of Guam law that forced patients to have an in-person visit before abortion medication can be prescribed via telemedicine. (Kelleher, 9/24)

A federal appeals court plans to hear arguments Friday on whether it should overturn a lower court ruling that permanently blocked a restrictive abortion law passed in Georgia in 2019.The hearing comes amid a heightened focus on abortion with the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month allowing a similarly restrictive Texas law to take effect. The justices also plan to hear arguments in December on Mississippi’s attempt to overturn the high court’s decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which affirmed the right to an abortion. (Brumback, 9/24)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday pushed back against a San Francisco archbishop’s denunciation of the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill in Congress to create a statutory right for health-care professionals to provide abortions. ... The House legislation, H.R. 3755, would codify the protections provided by the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, legalized abortion nationwide. In a statement Tuesday, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone condemned the measure as “nothing short of child sacrifice” and asked Catholics to “immediately to pray and fast for members of Congress to do the right thing and keep this atrocity from being enacted in the law.” (Sonmez, 9/23)

Approval of the U.S. Supreme Court fell to a new low of 40 percent this month, according to a new poll released by Gallup on Thursday. The surveys were conducted from Sept. 1-17, around the time the Supreme Court declined to block an extremely restrictive Texas abortion law as well as allow college vaccine mandates to continue, Gallup noted. (Choi, 9/23)