Respect Life

A panel of federal advisers voted May 10 in favor of a pharmaceutical company’s request to sell a type of their birth control pills over the counter and without a doctor’s prescription, clearing the way for the Food and Drug Administration to approve such sales of oral contraception.

A majority of Americans say the abortion drug mifepristone should remain on the market in the U.S., according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, as the drug remains at the center of an ongoing legal battle.

Despite the support for the practice from some Republican governors, a growing number of Republican state lawmakers are backing efforts to repeal the death penalty, marking a notable shift in conservatives’ views on the matter.

Lawmakers in the Kansas Legislature voted April 26 to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a “born-alive infants protection act.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill April 20 that will eliminate the state’s requirement that juries in capital punishment cases agree unanimously to recommend death sentences, lowering the number of jurors needed to hand down a death sentence to the lowest threshold of any U.S. state.