Sophie Novack
By Sophie Novack:
New Lawsuit Challenges Dozens of Texas Anti-Abortion Restrictions
Trump Sides with Ken Paxton to Argue Pre-Existing Conditions Protections are Unconstitutional
In a brief filed Thursday night, the DOJ said it would not defend the ACA in a lawsuit brought by Texas and other Republican states.
Millions of Texans with pre-existing medical conditions cannot be denied coverage by insurance companies under protections established in the Affordable Care Act. Now, Attorney General Ken Paxton wants to throw patients with pre-existing conditions back to the mercy of insurance … Read More
‘We Love Our Neighbors, but It’s a Sin’: A Dispatch from a ‘Sex Ed Sitout’
Even though a majority of Texans support evidence-based sex education, religious right advocates have lobbied against teaching contraception in schools.
On a Monday morning in late April, Marcia Lamb’s 6-year-old son, Braeden, is running around the playground at Austin’s Zilker Park, making the most of an unusual reprieve from school. Braeden and Marcia drove from Corpus Christi that morning to … Read More
What Could Happen if Trump Cuts Family Planning Funds from Planned Parenthood? Look at Texas.
A proposed Trump rule would block federal Title X funds from providers that perform or refer for abortions.
A new Trump administration rule proposes cutting off federal family planning dollars to any health care provider that performs abortions or even refers patients for the procedure. Federal funds are already banned from paying for abortions, but the rule could … Read More
Texas Has the Most Cities More than 100 Miles from an Abortion Clinic, Study Finds
Texans in some cities must travel as far as 300 miles one-way for the procedure.
Health care “deserts” are often considered to be a rural phenomenon, but a study published this week illustrates the degree to which the wave of anti-abortion legislation in red states has wiped out abortion access even in higher-population areas. This … Read More
Five Months After Sexual Misconduct Allegations Surface, Still No Changes to Senate Policy
Senator Lois Kolkhorst, who has been tasked with developing the new policy, said it will be released in the “near future.”
In the weeks after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct were made against two Texas senators last year, their colleagues called for “zero tolerance” and said changes “must happen now.” Five months later, lawmakers still haven’t updated the Senate’s 23-year-old, one-page … Read More
Trump Administration Orders Refugee Shelters to Direct Pregnant Teens to Anti-Abortion Clinics
“The government certainly has been relentless in their attempts to find ways to force their anti-abortion beliefs on this population,” said an ACLU attorney.
Circumventing a recent court order, the Trump administration has issued new marching orders to refugee shelters around the country: Direct pregnant teens in their care to anti-abortion clinics, provide medically inaccurate information about pregnancy and promise that the federal government … Read More
Lawmaker: State Metric for Success of Women’s Health Program is ‘Totally Misleading’
New data shows nearly half of the providers in the low-income Healthy Texas Women program saw zero patients last year.
Texas’ health agency touts its growing provider list as evidence that the state’s low-income women’s health program is rebounding after devastating budget cuts and the exclusion of Planned Parenthood. But reproductive rights advocates have long said that the number of … Read More
‘Heart-Wrenching, Gut-Wrenching’: How Child Therapy Providers Deal with State Budget Cuts
Lawmakers have given providers an impossible task: deliver the same level of services to more kids, with far less money.
There was a moment Charlcie Flinn considered giving up. It was July 2016, and the child therapy services program in Wichita Falls that Flinn had run for more than 20 years announced it was shutting down due to state budget … Read More
Indoctrinated
For one woman, that made a painful loss even worse — and she worries it could soon become routine across Texas.
A Catholic hospital in Austin forces patients who miscarry to consent to fetal burials. For one woman, that made a painful loss even worse — and she worries it could soon become routine across Texas. by Sophie Novack @sophienovack April … Read More