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North Carolina Abortion Providers and Reproductive Justice Activists File Sweeping Litigation Challenging Multiple Abortion Restrictions
Restrictions Disproportionately Impact Black North Carolinians and People in Rural Areas
RALEIGH, North Carolina
Abortion providers in North Carolina and SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective sued today challenging several medically unnecessary abortion restrictions that have pushed abortion out of reach in the state and stigmatized essential health care. The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of North Carolina, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Decades of attacks on reproductive rights and health care access by state legislators have already led to provider shortages and an inadequate public health infrastructure in the state, with the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbating these issues. These discriminatory policies violate civil and reproductive rights, and disproportionately impact North Carolina's communities of color, particularly Black communities, as well as rural communities.
The restrictions being challenged include:
- A licensing scheme that arbitrarily singles out abortion providers with medically unnecessary and onerous requirements;
- A ban on qualified advanced practice clinicians (APCs), such as physician assistants, certified nurse-midwives, and nurse practitioners, from providing abortions;
- A ban on the use of telehealth for medication abortion;
- A requirement that providers deliver state-mandated biased counseling with no medical benefit to their patients; and
- A mandatory delay for patients seeking an abortion of at least 72 hours after they receive state-mandated information.
The groups issued the following statements:
Statement from Anjali Dalal, senior staff attorney, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project:
"Since 2011, politicians have passed more than 460 medically unnecessary laws to push abortion out of reach. The laws we are challenging today create a web of restrictions that limit whether, when, and under what circumstances people may obtain an abortion. They serve only as obstacles in the way of needed medical care, and should be struck down to ensure North Carolinians can access abortion, and ensure pateints from surrounding states, that are increasingly hostile to abortion, can do the same."
Statement from Monica Simpson, executive director, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective:
"For true reproductive freedom, we need far more than the legal right to abortion. If we are not able to get reproductive health care when we need it, from providers we trust, in spaces that are accessible and affirming to our communities and our needs, then we are not actually free. As a North Carolina native, I've seen firsthand how these laws insult the dignity and humanity of Black and brown women, trans, and non-binary folks; we have been denied full access to reproductive justice for far too long. SisterSong joins this lawsuit as a continuation of our communities' deep and ongoing leadership in North Carolina and across the South. We know we will see the end of racist, misogynist abortion laws in this state."
Statement from Elizabeth Barber, reproductive freedom fellow at the ACLU of North Carolina:
"People aren't truly free if we can't make our own decisions about our bodies, our lives, and our futures. Access to healthcare should be safe, affordable, and free from government interference. We are hopeful that the court will uphold the basic rights of North Carolinians by removing barriers that currently restrict access to safe reproductive healthcare and tie the hands of medical professionals who should be free to provide the best care for their patients."
Statement from Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America:
"For decades, the reproductive rights of North Carolinians have been relentlessly attacked by politicians in the state legislature who have created a complex web of medically unnecessary requirements designed to push abortion access out of reach. Today, our nation is also facing dueling, emergent public health crises: state-sanctioned racist violence against people of color and COVID-19. The lawsuit filed today in North Carolina is one piece of our fight to ensure patients can access essential health care, including vital family planning services -- regardless of who they are or where they live."
Statement from Nancy Northup, president & CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights:
"These laws do nothing but make it harder to access abortion and should be struck down. North Carolina legislators should be expanding access to health care, not restricting it. This is particularly important during a pandemic. That means expanding the use of telehealth and getting rid of needless barriers that serve no medical purpose."
Access to abortion is limited in North Carolina as a result of decades of political attacks that reached a fever pitch under former Gov. Pat McCrory. During the McCrory-Forest administration, 11 abortion facilities were shut down, leaving 91 percent of North Carolina counties without an abortion provider and disproportionately hurting rural communities. And politicians showed they'd stop at nothing to chip away at abortion access even further. Then-Speaker of the House Thom Tillis infamously added numerous abortion restrictions into a motorcycle safety bill as a backdoor attempt to quietly erode reproductive rights on the final day of the 2013 legislative session.
The plaintiffs in the case are Planned Parenthood South Atlantic; SisterSong; A Woman's Choice of Charlotte, Inc.; A Woman's Choice of Greensboro, Inc.; A Woman's Choice of Raleigh, Inc; three doctors; and one advanced practice clinician. They are represented by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of North Carolina, and the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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ICC Collecting War Crimes Evidence Against Sudanese Militia After Darfur Massacre
The court said the actions of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, who are backed by a US ally in the UAE, "may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity."
Nov 04, 2025
The International Criminal Court said it is collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region following a massacre committed by a militia group and amid reports of widespread starvation.
In a statement published Monday, the ICC—the international body charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity—expressed "profound alarm and deepest concern over recent reports emerging from El-Fasher about mass killings, rapes, and other crimes" allegedly committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which breached the city last week.
According to the Sudan Doctors Network (SDN), a medical organization monitoring the country's brutal civil war, the militants slaughtered more than 1,500 people in just three days after capturing El-Fasher, among them more than 460 people who were systematically shot at the city's Saudi Maternity Hospital.
The ICC said that "such acts, if substantiated, may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute," the court's founding treaty, which lays out the definitions for acts including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
The court said it was "taking immediate steps regarding the alleged crimes in El-Fasher to preserve and collect relevant evidence for its use in future prosecutions."
The announcement comes shortly following a new report from the UN-affiliated Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the world's leading authority on hunger crises, which found that famine has been detected in El-Fasher and the town of Kadugli in Sudan's South Kordofan province. Twenty other localities in the two provinces—which have seen some of the civil war's worst fighting—are also in danger of famine, according to the report.
The two areas have suffered under siege from the RSF paramilitary, which has cut off access to food, water, and medical care. The IPC says it has led to the "total collapse of livelihoods, starvation, extremely high levels of malnutrition and death."
According to the UN's migration authority, nearly 37,000 people have been forced to flee cities across North Kordofan between October 26 and 31. They joined more than 650,000 displaced people who were already taking refuge in North Darfur's city of Tawila.
Sudan's civil war, which began in 2023, has created the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with potentially as many as 150,000 people killed since it began. Over 12 million people have been displaced, and 30.4 million people, over half of Sudan’s total population, are in need of humanitarian support.
The recent escalation of the crisis has led to heightened global scrutiny of RSF's chief financier, the United Arab Emirates. In recent days, US politicians and activists have called for the Trump administration to halt military assistance to the Gulf state, which it sold $1.4 billion in military aircraft in May.
On Tuesday, Emirati diplomats admitted for the first time that they "made a mistake" supporting the RSF as it attempted to undermine Sudan's transitional democratic government, which took power in 2019 after over three decades of rule by the Islamist-aligned dictator Omar al-Bashir. Those efforts culminated in a military coup in 2021 and an eventual power struggle for control over the country.
However, as Sudanese journalist Nesrine Malik wrote in The Guardian on Monday, the UAE "continues to deny its role, despite overwhelming evidence."
"The UAE secures a foothold in a large, strategic, resource-rich country, and already receives the majority of gold mined in RSF-controlled areas," Malik wrote. "Other actors have been drawn in, overlaying proxy agendas on a domestic conflict. The result is deadlock, quagmire, and blood loss that seems impossible to stem, even as the crisis unravels in full view."
"Sudan’s war is described as forgotten, but in reality it is tolerated and relegated," she continued. "Because to reckon with the horror in Sudan... is to see the growing imperialist role of some Gulf powers in Africa and beyond—and to acknowledge the fact that no meaningful pressure is applied to these powers, including the UAE, to cease and desist from supporting a genocidal militia because the UK, US, and others are close allies with these states."
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"If I have money left over, then I will eat."
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Beneficiaries of federal food aid are expressing anger and bewilderment at the Trump administration's efforts to use the program as a hostage to end the current shutdown of the federal government.
On Monday, the Trump administration said that it would partially restart funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the wake of two district court rulings mandating that the administration use emergency funds set up by Congress to continue the program.
The administration said that it would only fund around 50% of the $8 billion in total monthly benefits, while also warning that there could be delays before SNAP beneficiaries are able to access the funds.
In interviews with The Guardian, several SNAP beneficiaries fumed that their ability to access food for themselves and their families is being used as a political football by the administration.
Wisconsin resident Betty Standridge, who had been relying on SNAP to afford food after being hospitalized, told The Guardian that, without the funds, "I will not be able to replenish my food for the month, therefore I will do without things like fresh produce, milk, eggs."
Donna Lynn, a disabled veteran who lives in Missouri, also said that she would have to make significant cuts to her budget if SNAP benefits were not replenished.
"It comes down to paying for my medications and my bills or buying food for myself and for my animals," she said. "So I pay for my medications and bills and get what food I can for my animals, and if I have money left over, then I will eat."
A Wisconsin retiree named Sandra, meanwhile, told The Guardian she feared that the administration was angling to permanently end SNAP even after the end of the government shutdown.
"I'm dumbfounded by the cruelty," she said.
Before the administration allowed more than 40 million people—nearly 40% of whom are children—to go without food assistance on November 1 and refused to use a contingency fund to keep SNAP running, the Republican Party passed roughly $186 billion in cuts to the program in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer.
The bill expanded work requirements, shifted some of the cost of SNAP to the states, and restricted benefit increases, leaving millions of people vulnerable to losing their benefits.
Betty Szretter, a New York retiree whose daughter depends on SNAP benefits, told NBC News that she regrets voting for President Donald Trump in 2024, and said she's worried that his focus appears to be elsewhere—like the corporate-funded construction of a ballroom at the White House—rather than on helping people like her family.
“I think deep down he wants to help the country with things like food insecurity,” she said. “But now he is busy out of the country and demolishing the White House. I know that is being paid for with private funds, but those could be used to help people... It all seems very selfish."
CBS News on Tuesday interviewed a Baltimore resident named Kelly Lennox, who has been relying on SNAP for the last year-and-a-half after a car accident that required multiple surgeries left her unable to work. She said the halt of SNAP payments was a particularly harsh blow given that she's deep in medical debt in the wake of the accident.
Now, she says she'll have to rely on local food pantries to keep from going hungry.
"I'm going to have to make use of the pantries and work with their schedule, because if I use actual money for food, it takes away money I need to pay for my residential parking permit, gas, and union dues," she said.
Roughly 42 million people living in the US currently receive SNAP benefits, and The Washington Post estimates that SNAP payments account for 9% of all grocery sales in the US.
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'How Is That an Assault?' DC Residents Scoff as Trial Starts for Man Who Chucked Sandwich at Trump Agent
"I don't know how a DC jury would convict," said one resident who was not selected to serve on the jury.
Nov 04, 2025
The trial of Sean Dunn, a former Justice Department employee who threw a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent in protest in early August, began Monday, weeks after US Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office failed to secure a felony indictment.
Dunn, who is now facing a misdemeanor assault charge, has become a symbol of public resistance to and disdain for President Donald Trump's deployment of masked federal immigration agents to the streets of US cities.
DC residents who were not chosen to serve on the jury for the trial expressed deep skepticism that the latest attempt to indict Dunn would end any differently than the first.
"How is that an assault?” one DC woman asked of Dunn's sandwich throw, which was caught on video. Before hurling the sandwich, Dunn screamed at the agents and called them "fascists."
Another person who was not selected to serve on the jury told CNN that they "don't know how a DC jury would convict."
The trial is expected to be quick. The judge, Trump appointee Carl Nichols, called it "the simplest case in the world" and predicted a two-day trial.
Dunn's lawyers have argued in court that the Trump administration's prosecution attempts amount to "a blatant abuse of power."
"The federal government has chosen to bring a criminal case over conduct so minor it would be comical—were it not for the
unmistakable retaliatory motive behind it and the resulting risk to Mr. Dunn," Dunn's lawyers said. "Mr. Dunn tossed a sandwich at a fully armed, heavily protected Customs and Border Protection officer. That act alone would never have drawn a federal charge. What did was the political speech that accompanied it."
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