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By Anna Barrett | Staff Writer

“Bans and restrictions on abortion care have resulted in patients across the country being denied care, even in instances of pregnancy loss and miscarriage.” - Molly Meegan, on how the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization impacts pregnant patients who miscarry.

Data released by ALSDE shows that counties in the Black Belt saw an increase in both second and third graders who reached the cut score on the reading ACAP test this academic year while the overall state remained stagnant. (Getty Images)

EDUCATION

District level data shows Black Belt elementary schoolers made gains in reading

By Andrea Tinker

District-level data released by the Alabama State Department of Education showed that 80.18% of second grade students and 88.18% of third graders that took the state’s 2025-26 standardized reading test scored above the state’s cut score. Most school systems had the same percentage of students score above the cut score from the 2024-25 school year, but Black Belt counties improved.

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The Alabama Reentry Task Force is working to develop a definition for recidivism to reduce it by half in the next few years. (Will McLelland for Alabama Reflector)

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Alabama Reentry Task Force to continue defining recidivism

By Ralph Chapoco

The Alabama Reentry Task Force will refine its definition of recidivism, which is a key metric to improve the state’s reentry efforts. Reentry 2030 is the initiative that Board of Pardons and Paroles Director Cam Ward proposed to improve the chances for people who were incarcerated in Alabama’s prisons to successfully return to their communities.

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Mylissa McNeill, sitting outside her home in Jacksonville, Ark., earlier this year, says she was denied prompt miscarriage care in August 2022. (Katie Adkins/Arkansas Advocate)

HEALTHCARE

Miscarriage management remains muddled 4 years after Dobbs

By Sofia Resnick

In August 2022, two months after the Dobbs decision, Mylissa McNeill miscarried at 18 weeks. Doctors in Missouri and Kansas declined McNeill treatment, and she was not treated until she travelled to an Illinois hospital three days later. Miscarriage management today has become a “wait-and-see” approach, rather than medical intervention, according to a new study from the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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