MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide—the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.” We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.
Since our last report…
+ Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales has said he will not resign despite the release of newly surfaced explicit text messages between himself and his former aide, who died by suicide last year. A number of House Republicans have called for Gonzales’ removal amidst these sexual harassment allegations, but he hasn’t yet explicitly lost the support of any House members who formerly endorsed him.
+ Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Delaware abortion provider Debra Lynch, who operates the organization Her Safe Harbor, for allegedly mailing abortion pills into Texas. This isn’t the first time Paxton has made such a move: At the end of 2024, Paxton sued and attempted to extradite Dr. Margaret Carpenter of New York. Right now, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is also trying to extradite California’s Dr. Rémy Coeytaux for allegedly mailing pills to a patient in Louisiana.
+ While speaking at a town hall in Minneapolis, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was attacked by a man spraying her with a then-mysterious substance (now known to be water and apple cider vinegar) as she called for abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
+ Trump’s Department of Justice used the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act—intended to protect abortion clinics from harassment—to prosecute journalist Don Lemon for attending an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minn. The FACE Act technically protects places of worship as well as abortion clinics from disruption; however, the Trump administration said last year it will no longer use the FACE Act to prosecute people for harassing clinics.
+ Some good news from Cleveland: The Cleveland City Council passed Tanisha’s Law, creating a Community Crisis Response department to respond to non-violent mental health emergencies with trained, unarmed crisis teams. The law is named after Tanisha Anderson, who was killed by police in 2014 during a mental health crisis. Cleveland joins other U.S. cities, such as Denver, Austin, Texas, San Francisco, Eugene, Ore., and Albuquerque, N.M., that have passed similar mental health response laws.
Let’s not forget what else was sent our way over the last month …
Tuesday, Jan. 27: HHS Will Allow Pharmacies to Boycott Medication Abortion Drugs
The Trump administration has formally withdrawn a Biden-era rule that required pharmacies receiving federal funding to carry and dispense mifepristone, misoprostol and methotrexate. Mifepristone and misoprostol are the two types of pills used in medication abortions, and methotrexate treats ectopic pregnancies and some autoimmune disorders including rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
Under the rule—enacted in 2022 after the Dobbs decision overturned the federal right to abortion—pharmacists could still refuse to dispense the medication if they suspected a pregnant person was past the legal limit for an abortion. However, pharmacies still had to stock it in order to not discriminate on the basis of sex and disability. In 2023, mifepristone was removed from the rule, after a lawsuit from the far-right Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), even though mifepristone has many other medical uses besides abortion.
Now that the Trump administration has revoked the requirement entirely, pharmacists can refuse to stock misoprostol and methotrexate as well, despite numerous uses other than abortion. Over 90 percent of women of reproductive age who use methotrexate do so for reasons other than pregnancy, providing yet another example of how abortion bans limit women’s access to healthcare and treatment for conditions unrelated to abortion.
Wednesday, Jan. 28: Arkansas Woman Sues the State Over Abortion Ban
Arkansas’ near-total abortion ban is facing its first legal challenge since Dobbs.
Currently, Arkansas bans abortion with a narrow exception to save the pregnant person’s life. However, plaintiff Emily Waldorf, 40, said that exception did not apply to her when she was pregnant in September 2024 and suffering from cervical insufficiency, which occurs when the cervix dilates in the second or third trimester. The condition put her at high risk of going into labor before the fetus was viable, which could have led to a life-threatening infection.
After waiting five days for care in Arkansas and eventually being denied an abortion, Waldorf had to travel 240 miles to Kansas in an ambulance due to her risk of both infection and early labor. By the time she arrived, she was hemorrhaging due to the delay in care.
Three other women harmed by Arkansas’ abortion ban and Little Rock OB-GYN Dr. Chad Taylor join Waldorf in the lawsuit, brought by Amplify Legal, the litigation arm of the organization Abortion in America. Two of the plaintiffs, Chelsea Stovall and Allison Howland (who was pregnant by sexual assault), had to travel to Illinois for their abortions. Another plaintiff, Theresa Van, learned her pregnancy was nonviable and discussed plans with her husband for her funeral if she did not survive it, according to the complaint.
According to the lawsuit, Arkansas’ bans “are vague, confusing, and worse, extremely dangerous. How are pregnant Arkansans supposed to access comprehensive obstetric care when leaving Arkansas means traveling through some of the most remote parts of the state, and when Arkansas is surrounded by other states with their own abortion bans?”
Thursday, Jan. 29: Tennessee Gubernatorial Candidate Calls for Death Penalty for Abortion Patients
Tennessee state Rep. Monty Fritts (R-Tenn.), who is running for governor, doubled down on comments he made last year stating abortion providers and patients should be made liable for homicide and face the death penalty. “Murder is murder. I know that’s hard for people to hear,” he said in an interview with The Tennessee Holler.
Last August, at a Washington County Republican Party meeting,“God, Guns and Guts,” Fritts said, “If you kill a baby from embryo on up with a pill or a scalpel, we oughta execute you.”
Historically, the antiabortion movement has shied away from suggesting women who have abortions should be prosecuted, instead focusing on attacking abortion providers and lawmakers, but that appears to be changing. As Shoshanna Ehrlich recently wrote for Ms., the extremist so-called abortion “abolitionist” movement argues that women who have abortions should be prosecuted as murderers. Last year, an unprecedented South Carolina bill that would have criminalized abortion patients only barely failed to pass, and may still provide a blueprint for similar bills in other states.
Thursday, Feb. 5: Arizona Court Orders Uber to Pay $8.5M in Sexual Assault Case
In a landmark victory for survivor accountability, an Arizona jury in Phoenix has ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million to Jaylynn Dean. The verdict rejects the rideshare giant’s long-standing efforts to distance itself from the violence committed by its drivers, confirming that the companyis responsible for the safety of the passengers who trust its platform.
Uber has long maintained that it is not liable for its drivers’ misconduct, classifying them as independent contractors rather than employees. The Arizona jury rejected that classification, which consequently opens the viability for more than 3,000 other sexual assault cases involving Uber’s safety failures.
Sarah London, one of the lawyers representing Dean, hailed the verdict as a victory that “validates the thousands of survivors who have come forward at great personal risk to demand accountability against Uber for its focus on profit over passenger safety.”
Uber plans to appeal the decision.
Friday, Feb. 6:
+ Arizona Court Voids Restrictive “Roadblock” Abortion Laws
Arizona Judge Gregory Como struck down several abortion restrictions, ruling them unconstitutional under Arizona’s 2024 Abortion Access Act, officially known as Proposition 139.
Prop 139 is a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment that protects an individual’s right to an abortion before fetal viability, typically between 22-24 weeks. The amendment prohibits the state from enacting or enforcing any laws that deny, inhibit or interfere with a person’s access to abortion care.
Key changes include the following: Patients are no longer required to make two in-person visits—one for biased in-person counseling and another after waiting 24 hours for the abortion. Additionally, the ruling eliminates unnecessary ultrasounds, lifts the ban on telehealth for medication abortion and legalizes the mailing of abortion pills into Arizona. Finally, providers are no longer forced to deliver state-mandated disinformation or report on counseling sessions.
Lauren Beall, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Arizona celebrated the decision:
“When voters approved Prop 139, we recognized abortion as a fundamental right,” Beall said. “Today’s decision makes that vote tangible: it removes harmful legislative roadblocks that interfered with patients’ healthcare decisions … Together we celebrate this victory for bodily autonomy throughout our state.”
+ Winter Olympics Usher in New Firsts for Women Athletes
This year’s Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics was the most gender-balanced Winter Olympics in history, with 47 percent of the athletes women. The U.S. team’s roster also nearly reached gender parity with 115 women and 117 men athletes. Twenty-three-year-old Swedish mogul skier Elis Lundholm also made history this year as the first and only transgender athlete to compete in the Winter Games.
Women athletes on the U.S. team achieved a number of milestones.
- Figure skater Amber Glenn, 26, won a gold medal and became the first openly queer woman to represent the U.S. figure skating team at the Olympics.
- Alysa Liu, 20, became the first figure skater to win individual gold for the U.S. in 24 years.
- Skier Mikaela Shiffrin, 30, won gold in the women’s slalom, and Breezy Johnson, 30, won gold in the women’s downhill ski race (and was the first LGBTQ athlete to take gold for the U.S. in Milan).
The U.S. women’s hockey team, as well as the men’s, won gold against Canada in overtime. However, unlike the men’s team, the women’s hockey team refused Trump’s invitation to attend his State of the Union address, a day after Trump invited the men’s team and joked to them that he’d be impeached if he didn’t also invite the women.
Even with these accomplishments, it’s not easy to be a woman athlete at the Olympics. According to The 19th, Olympic athletes who are also mothers frequently lack childcare and other support during the games.
Monday, Feb. 9: White House Moves to Strip $600M from Four States
The Trump administration has cut $600 million in grants through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for programs facilitating HIV and STI prevention and HIV surveillance. The move directly affects four states primarily run by Democrats: California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota.
Lost funds would weaken essential public health tracking and prevention programs targeting certain populations. Cuts include gender transition support for youth in Illinois, HIV prevention therapy among Black women in Chicago, Latino and Black men who have sex with men in Colorado, and support programs for older LGBTQ adults in San Francisco.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the terminated funds did not “reflect agency priorities.” This is a direct contradiction, as the $600 million was included in the recent fiscal year Labor, Health and Human Services funding bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump on Feb. 3.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, alongside attorneys general from Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota, immediately filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s illegal withdrawal of funds.
On Feb.12, U.S. District Court Judge Manish S. Shah issued a restraining order against the administration, ruling that “recent statements plausibly suggest that the reason for the direction [to cut the funds] is hostility to what the federal government calls ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’ or ‘sanctuary cities.”
Wednesday, Feb. 11: Kentucky Woman Arrested for Miscarriage
More than a year after seeking medical help for a miscarriage, Deann and Charles Bennett, a young couple in Booneville, Ky., have been arrested for alleged “reckless homicide.” The couple went to the hospital after Deann miscarried and reported that the fetal remains were still at their home, prompting someone to call 911 on them.
Their arrest is part of the troubling trend of pregnancy criminalizations and post-miscarriage arrests that have been happening throughout the country since Dobbs, frequently targeting Black or low-income women:
- In July, a South Carolina woman was turned into Child Protective Services after experiencing a miscarriage and placing the fetal remains in the trash, leading police to later arrest her for “desecration of human remains.”
- In June, a Pennsylvania teenager and her mom were arrested after the teenage girl self-managed her abortion and buried the fetus. A release from the Susquehanna Regional Police falsely identified the fetal remains as a “baby” and claimed that “an East Donegal Township mother and daughter have been charged with concealing the death of a newborn baby and then abusing its corpse after inducing a dangerous at-home abortion.”
- In May, Texas finally dropped charges against Mallori Patrice Strait, a 34-year-old woman who was kept in prison for five months for alleged “abuse of a corpse” after she miscarried in a public restroom.
- In March, a 24-year-old woman in Georgia was arrested and put in prison after suffering a miscarriage.
Friday, Feb. 13: Anti-Trans Bounty Law in Kansas Takes Effect Despite Governor’s Veto
Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed an anti-trans bill from taking effect on Feb. 13, but was overruled by the state’s GOP majority, thus allowing the discriminatory law to take effect.
Kansas SB 244, nicknamed the “bathroom bounty” law, was passed in January 2026. The law allows Kansans to sue individuals they suspect to be transgender or nonbinary for $1,000 if those individuals enter single-sex public facilities that do not align with their sex assigned at birth. These facilities include restrooms and changing rooms.
Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD, responded to the override:
“The politicians who pushed this cruel bill did not use evidence; they used personal animus against hard-working Kansas residents who are transgender and just want the freedom to be who they are and live safely. The bill not only violates core American values of freedom, fairness, and family, but is yet another distraction from problems that elected officials actually need to solve – from affordability to jobs and community safety.”
Tuesday, Feb. 24: Polls Show Most U.S. Women Disapprove of Trump
In his 108-minute State of the Union address at the end of February, Trump taunted Democrats and undocumented immigrants and said, “We are the hottest country anywhere in the world!” However, new polling shows many in the U.S. disagree.
According to a series of CNN polls dropped ahead of the address, Trump’s ratings are at a new low, with a disapproval rating of 63 percent and an approval rate of just 36 percent. A majority of both women (66 percent) and men (60 percent) disapprove of how Trump has been doing as president during the past year of violent attacks on immigrants, cuts to public health and rollbacks on women’s and reproductive rights. Women, slightly more than men (63 percent versus 59 percent), believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Look to these trusted groups if you or a loved one needs to know more about reliable abortion care:
- Safe websites to buy abortion medication: Aid Access, Plan C Pills, Abortion Finder, I Need An A
- If you need help affording abortion care, contact an abortion fund near you.
- To protect your digital privacy when planning your abortion, click here.
- For free legal help as a patient or doctor, call If/When/How’s Repro Helpline: 844-868-2812
- For medical advice, contact the Miscarriage & Abortion Hotline: 833-246-2632
- If you need to know the abortion law in your state, look to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
