Author

Anna Claire Vollers

Anna Claire Vollers

Anna Claire Vollers covers health care for Stateline. She is based in Huntsville, Alabama.

Escorts, using umbrellas, shield clients from the gestures and voices of anti-abortion activists standing on the sidewalk in front of Alabama Women’s Wellness Center in 2019 in Huntsville, Ala. Some states have passed laws requiring health care providers to give patients information about abortion reversal. Medical professionals say the treatment is not supported by science. (Eric Schultz/The Associated Press)

Abortion opponents push state lawmakers to promote unproven ‘abortion reversal’

By: - November 30, 2023

Read more Stateline coverage on how states are either protecting or curbing access to abortions.   Anti-abortion organizations are pushing state lawmakers to promote a controversial and unproven “abortion reversal” treatment — flouting the objections of medical professionals who point out it is not supported by science. In the past several years, Republican lawmakers in […]

Faith-based maternity homes ‘create a haven’ in states with strict abortion laws

By: - October 4, 2023

CHILTON COUNTY, Ala. — At the end of a gravel road that runs through a wooded property in Chilton County, Alabama, a plain white two-story house sits overlooking a small pond. Outside the house, everything is tranquil: The swings on the new playground nearby are quiet, the pond is still, the rocking chairs lined up […]

As child poverty doubles, states launch or expand their own tax credits

By: - September 25, 2023

The federal pandemic-era child tax credit expansion lifted millions of children out of poverty in the second half of 2021. But Congress allowed it to expire at the end of that year, and new U.S. census data shows the child poverty rate more than doubled in 2022, erasing the record gains that were made. “It […]

Midwife Stephanie Mitchell speaks at the Mothers of Gynecology monument in Montgomery, Ala., in August 2023. Mitchell is trying to open a birth center in Alabama and has sued the state. Supporters say such centers could improve birth outcomes in the South, which has some of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the country. (Anna Claire Vollers/Stateline)

Hospitals block much-needed birth centers in the South

By: - August 14, 2023

When Katie Chubb announced in 2021 she was planning to open a freestanding birth center in Augusta, Georgia, it seemed like everybody in town was excited about it. She met with local physicians and nurses who said they would welcome her Augusta Birth Center as a provider of midwifery services for low-risk pregnancies. Hundreds of […]

Laws banning gender-affirming treatments can block trans youth from receiving other care

By: - July 31, 2023

In some states, new laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth are dissuading health care providers from offering mental health services and other medical care that isn’t explicitly banned by those laws. In the first few weeks after Mississippi’s law went into effect in February, nurse practitioner Stacie Pace said she was fielding calls and […]