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Legal Wrap: States Start Sessions With Rush of Anti-Abortion Measures

The legislative session kicked off in the states with a bunch of new anti-abortion bills, along with the conviction of an Indiana woman for feticide and neglect of a dependent.

The legislative session kicked off in the states with a bunch of new anti-abortion bills and the first-ever conviction in Indiana of a pregnant woman for feticide for a self-induced abortion. Shutterstock

Legal Wrap is a round-up of the latest legal and reproductive justice headlines.

RJ Court Watch is back! In the first episode of 2015, Imani Gandy and I talk about the Purvi Patel conviction and how anti-choice laws will only guarantee more heartbreaking cases like hers.

Just a reminder that most state legislatures are now in session, which means anti-choice lawmakers are busy queueing up a bunch of new anti-reproductive rights bills. Rewire Data has you covered, though.

Andrea Grimes has another must-read, this time on lawmakers in Texas who want to appoint lawyers for dead women’s fetuses—because one Marlise Muñoz is apparently not tragic enough.

The Obama Administration has gone 4-to-0 in the federal appeals courts in cases challenging the accommodation process for exempting out of the birth control benefit.

There’s a constitutional showdown in Alabama over marriage equality.

The Roberts Court is awful, but not so awful that it rejected a breastfeeding rights lawsuit on the grounds that men can lactate too, as was widely reported.

Zoe Greenberg covers a damning report issued by the Women in Prison Project that showed prisoners in New York getting “shockingly substandard” reproductive health care.

As the measles outbreak in this country spreads, some conservative lawmakers want to make it easier for parents to opt out of vaccinating their kids.

Meanwhile, law professor Marci Hamilton has this great piece on why religious exemptions for vaccines need to be repealed now.

Didn’t see this coming: Republicans delay confirmation of Loretta Lynch, the first Black woman to be nominated for attorney general.

Georgia is set to execute its first woman since 1945, which raises the complicated issue of gender disparities in capital punishments and executions.

Conservative legislators in Iowa are, once again, trying to strip the state supreme court of any jurisdiction to hear challenges to marriage equality bans.

Some people have a deeply disturbed understanding of free speech. Defense attorneys claim a video of two North Dakota hockey players having sex with a minor is protected by the First Amendment.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is tired of everyone suggesting he’s anti-gay. He’s just anti-gay rights. There’s a difference, apparently.

File under: Creeping Fetal “Personhood.” A Mississippi bill, now in the state senate, would allow a person to sue under the state’s wrongful death statue on behalf of an unborn child.

At the Daily Beast, Keli Goff asks whether aid in dying will be the new abortion when it comes to hot-button cultural issues of the 2016 presidential race.

Finally, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a national treasure. Do not miss Irin Carmon’s interview with the Notorious RBG for your latest reminder why.