Rosemary Westwood

One of Louisiana’s last abortion clinics is asking the Louisiana Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling and block the state’s near-total abortion ban from being enforced.

Nearly all abortions are again illegal in Louisiana as of Aug. 1, after an appeals court ruled the state’s near-total abortion ban can take effect.

A Louisiana appeals court has ruled the state’s near-total abortion ban can take effect — but the decision still requires a formal order from a lower court judge for the law to be enforced.

Pregnancy can be treacherous, especially for people with a variety of health conditions, from heart failure or a history of dangerously high blood pressure to a cancer diagnosis. Doctors in Louisiana say these are the kinds of cases where someone might benefit from an abortion — but may no longer get one when Louisiana’s near total-abortion ban takes effect.

In emails, the heads of Louisiana’s biggest hospital systems reminded their staff of an existing state law: people who get illegal abortions and seek medical care for abortion complications in Louisiana are required to be reported to the state.

In a hearing Friday over Louisiana's trigger laws that would ban most abortions, a judge in New Orleans declined to extend a temporary restraining order against the ban that had taken effect immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, only to be halted by a lawsuit filed by a state abortion clinic.

The Louisiana Department of Health has detected the first case of monkeypox in a Louisiana resident and a second case in an out-of-state resident visiting Louisiana.

With Louisiana’s abortion ban temporarily blocked by a judge’s order, Attorney General Jeff Landry is threatening the medical licenses of doctors who continue to provide abortion care at the state’s three abortion clinics.

The clinic at the center of this week's Supreme Court decision on abortion plans its next moves. Jackson Women's Health Organization is in its final days of providing legal abortions in Mississippi.

The clinic at the center of the Supreme Court's Roe decision is Jackson Women's Health Organization. The last clinic to provide abortions in Mississippi, it lost its fight to preserve abortion rights.