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…
+ More restrictive abortion laws in a particular area are linked to a higher risk of depression for women residents, according to research from Columbia University. The findings are based on a 25-year national study linking abortion restrictions and mental health outcomes. “Even prior to Dobbs, state-level abortion restrictions were already associated with adverse population mental health,” said Dr. Sarah McKetta, professor of epidemiology at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.
+ Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales has dropped his bid for reelection after the House opened an inquiry into his sexual relationship with Regina Santos-Aviles, a subordinate (Gonzales’ Uvalde district director) who died by suicide last year. Texts between Santos-Aviles and Gonzales show her attempting to deter her boss’ advances.
+ An Ohio appeals court dealt a final blow to Senate Bill 27, permanently blocking the state’s attempt to mandate the burial or cremation of fetal tissue. The court cited the law as unconstitutional and upheld the voter-approved amendment codifying abortion rights into the Ohio Constitution.
+ More than 8 million people worldwide took to the streets for the third No Kings protest on March 28, protesting Trump, ICE raids and the war in Iran. (Here are some of our favorite signs.)
+ New Mexico legislators passed a first-of-its-kind bill ensuring fully funded universal childcare for families of all income levels. Democratic Gov. Lujan Grisham (D) intends to sign the bill into law.
Let’s not forget what else was sent our way over the last month …
Thursday, March 5: Indiana Court Grants Religious Exemptions to State Abortion Ban
In a major ruling, a Marion County court has sided with Hoosier Jews for Choice and five anonymous women who argued that Indiana’s abortion ban conflicts with their right to religious freedom. Under the new decision, Indiana cannot enforce its abortion ban against people whose religious beliefs allow them to obtain abortion care even in situations that the state’s restrictive abortion laws don’t cover.
As of August 2023, Indiana’s law Senate Enrolled Act 1 (SEA 1) bans nearly all abortions except in very narrow exceptions, making it one of the strictest abortion bans in the country.
The case’s plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU of Indiana, belong to a range of faith traditions, including Judaism, Islam and independent spiritual belief systems. They opted to challenge the state’s abortion ban on the basis that it imposes a Christian-centric religious view of when life begins, even though Indiana has a diverse population with a variety of religious beliefs about abortion. In the class-action lawsuit, the ACLU argued that Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act—which then-Gov. Mike Pence passed in 2015—allows an exception to SEA 1 for Indiana residents whose religious beliefs require access to abortion care despite the state’s ban.
Similar lawsuits are also unfolding right now in other states as plaintiffs use religious liberty laws to try to dismantle abortion bans. The ongoing case Planned Parenthood Association of Utah v. State argues Utah’s abortion ban violates the state’s constitutional provisions on religious freedom. In Kentucky, an appellate court ruled in July 2025 that plaintiff Jessica Kalb, a Jewish woman, has standing to challenge Kentucky’s abortion ban on the basis of her religion.
“Symbolically, the case and others like it serve as an important reminder that people of faith can be found on all sides of the nation’s abortion divide,” wrote law professor Mary Ziegler. “And religiously motivated plaintiffs can establish that there are important limits on the state’s ability to criminalize abortion, especially for those whose deeply held beliefs would be the most burdened.”
Friday, March 6: The End of the Telehealth Lifeline? Louisiana’s High-Stakes Legal Siege
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is spearheading a legal offensive to criminalize the mailing of mifepristone and misoprostol into the state.
In the case of Markezich v. FDA, Louisiana is seeking a preliminary injunction that would effectively dismantle the federal telehealth infrastructure for medication abortion.
This case is a strategic inflection point; a ruling in favor of the state could establish a national precedent that strips millions of their access to autonomous, life-saving healthcare and overrides well-established federal FDA safety protocols.
By treating safe reproductive medications as Schedule IV controlled substances, Louisiana aims to treat healthcare providers like drug traffickers, signaling a future where the state, not the patient or the FDA, dictates the boundaries of medical safety.
Katie Keith, director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at Georgetown Law, spoke out about the dangers of this precedent.
“This would have huge repercussions for women, for their doctors, especially in states where abortion remains legal. Telehealth access is very, very safe and effective; it would also be extremely disruptive to have to go in-person.”
Wednesday, March 11:
+ Ohio Bill Would Force Doctors to Report Every Pregnancy to the State
In a new dystopian twist, Republicans in Ohio have introduced HB 754, which would create a state-run registry of pregnancies in order to track pregnancy outcomes, making it easier to criminalize illegal abortions. Under the potential law, healthcare providers would be required to file a “certificate of life” with the Ohio Department of Health within 10 days of seeing a pregnant patient and identifying a fetal heartbeat.
In cases of pregnancy loss, doctors would have to register every “fetal death” with the state, specifying whether the pregnancy ended in miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion, and require a “cause of death” to be certified within 48 hours. If the state finds a death suspicious, a coroner or medical examiner would be brought in to investigate the case.
Since the end of Roe v. Wade, criminalization for pregnancy outcomes has been on the rise in the U.S. Just this month, the War on Women Report is covering the case of Alexia Moore in Georgia. Over the past few months, we’ve tracked five other cases of women, usually women of color, arrested after suffering miscarriages in Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and Pennsylvania.
+ State-Mandated Outing: Idaho’s $100,000 Threat to Student Privacy
The Idaho House passed HB 822, an extreme bill forcing educational and healthcare professionals to report transgender students to their parents.
Under this law, entities would be liable for reporting any signs of social transitioning, including a student using a name or nickname other than their legal one; using pronouns that do not align with their sex assigned at birth; using facilities like restrooms or locker rooms meant for another sex; or requesting to play on a sports team that matches their gender identity.
Professional entities that fail to report a student face up to $100,000 in civil penalties, a fine highly disproportionate to other Idaho civil offenses. The House GOP majority blocked testimony and debate from lawmakers and community members opposed to the bill.
A minority report filed by Idaho House Democrats asserts: “HB 822 is constitutionally vulnerable, operationally unworkable, and harmful to the very children and professionals it purports to protect.”
The bill now heads to the Idaho Senate for consideration.
Friday, March 13: Georgia Woman Charged With Murder After Allegedly Taking Abortion Pills
In Georgia, 31-year-old Alexia Moore, an Army veteran and mother of two, has been arrested on murder and drug charges for an alleged abortion in December. Police claimed she “unlawfully and with malice aforethought caused the death of Baby Girl Moore.”
Georgia bans abortion after six weeks, before most women even know they’re pregnant. However, no state currently allows the prosecution of abortion patients, only abortion providers (and, in Texas, anyone else who helps a pregnant patient get an abortion). In Moore’s case, prosecutors are trying to get around this limitation by claiming “the victim became a person at the moment of live birth” because Moore was rushed to the emergency room in extreme pain and gave birth to a severely premature infant who died soon after.
Moore is already a mother to a 6-year-old and a 9-year-old. After her arrest, her mother, Edith Moore, said she was discharged from the Army in good standing due to her suffering from PTSD.
Judge Steven G. Blackerby called Moore’s murder charge “extremely problematic” and set the bail at just $1. However, Moore had to pay a $1,000 bond for each drug charge, when the “drugs” in question were the abortion pills she allegedly took and a painkiller.
Since Dobbs, there have been hundreds of pregnancy-related arrests throughout the U.S., according to a recent report from Pregnancy Justice. Moore’s case shares many of the hallmarks of similar post-miscarriage or post-self-managed abortion arrests: The abortion patient is Black or from a marginalized, low-income community, and police use deliberately misleading and attention-grabbing language to describe the arrest, leading local news to treat the case as a crime story.
While most similar cases have involved police arresting patients after miscarriages (and often charging them with “abuse of a corpse”), Moore’s case is especially significant because it’s one of the first post-Dobbs examples so far of a patient being arrested after allegedly self-managing an abortion in a ban state.
Saturday, March 14: Florida Judges Are Overriding Birth Consent
A chilling ProPublica report reveals how two pregnant Black women in Florida were forced into “Zoom Court” while in active labor. From their hospital beds, they watched as judges and lawyers appeared on tablets to override their medical consent and mandate unwanted C-sections.
Cherise Doyley, a mother and experienced doula, and Brianna Bennett, a mother of three, had made informed plans to birth their babies vaginally. Due to potential complications of the pregnancies, hospital staff and Florida politicians dismissed the women’s rights to make their own medical decisions and ordered them to have C-section surgeries, with the rationale of protecting the fetus.
Mentally competent patients traditionally have the right to choose their medical care, including the right to refuse. In Florida and many other states, court-ordered medical procedures are just one of the ways pregnant patients’ rights are increasingly restricted.
Kimberly Mutcherson, a Rutgers University law professor, describes the efforts to chip away at those rights as rooted in the concept of fetal personhood: “All of it essentially is about the state’s ability to decide that a fetus, at any point during a pregnancy, is more important than the person who’s pregnant.”
The antiabortion agenda is increasingly working to advance policies and laws favoring fetal personhood over a woman’s personal autonomy. When the state can enter a delivery room and override a conscious and competent patient’s consent, it signals a transition from medical care to state-mandated medical conscription.
Tuesday, March 17:
+ Montana Man Charged with Planning to Murder Abortion Provider
In Montana, 20-year-old Charles Felix Jones has been charged with planning to shoot and kill a Missoula abortion provider. Jones confessed to authorities that he went to the doctor’s house and watched from outside while he ate dinner with his wife. He went into the backyard, planning to shoot the doctor, but changed his mind at the last minute and threw the gun into the house through a window.
Jones also confessed to shooting the door of a different Montana clinic in 2023, planning to bomb a clinic in Whitefish, Mont., in 2024, and planning to kill the CEO of Planned Parenthood.
Episodes of antiabortion violence such as these have spiked in the U.S. since the Dobbs decision in 2022, including incidents of death threats, clinic trespassing and invasion, and stalking of patients, providers and staff. But antiabortion violence stretches back decades further. Since the 1993 murder of abortion provider Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola, Fla., antiabortion extremists have murdered 11 additional U.S. abortion providers and planned 26 attempted murders.
In November, another antiabortion extremist was charged in a shooting outside of a Planned Parenthood in South Carolina. And last summer, a different extremist fatally shot Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, a known reproductive rights advocate, and her husband Mark Hortman in their home.
In 1994, a year after Gunn’s murder, Congress passed the then-bipartisan Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which protects abortion clinics, patients and doctors from harassment and violence. After the FACE Act was signed into law, antiabortion violence dropped by 30 percent.
However, in January 2025, Trump pardoned 23 antiabortion extremists who were in prison for violating the FACE Act. Shortly after, the DOJ ordered prosecutors to stop enforcing the FACE Act in clinic harassment cases except in extraordinary circumstances, such as murder—essentially turning a blind eye going forward to antiabortion extremists planning violent actions against abortion patients and providers.
+ The Seven-Day Trap: The Manufactured Title X Funding Cliff
The House Democratic Women’s Caucus and Reproductive Freedom Caucus sent a letter demanding that HHS ensure an emergency full-year funding extension for all current Title X recipients, who are at risk of losing their funding on March 31, 2026.
Due to unnecessary delays in releasing grant applications (that should have been released by HHS no later than Dec. 31, 2025), Title X public health departments and nonprofit reproductive health clinics are scrambling after being told they have one week to complete an application process that usually takes three months to complete or lose their funding.
Title X is the nation’s only federally funded program dedicated to family planning. Passed by President Richard Nixon in 1970, the once dependable grants that offer life-saving healthcare access, such as free birth control, cancer and STI screenings to millions of low-income or uninsured patients, are at risk.
Without the emergency full-year funding extension that lawmakers demand, State leaders are systematically killing off the telehealth services that give 2.8 million Americans the power to manage their own health.
Thursday, March 26: IOC Mandates Genetic Sex Testing for 2028 Games
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced a radical shift from its previous stance on transgender and intersex eligibility to compete. Departing from their 2021 policy of “no presumption of advantage,” the IOC now mandates that only athletes who are biologically female may compete in the female category.
The IOC is classifying biological females through a one-time SRY gene screening. The SRY gene is a segment of DNA typically found on the Y chromosome that initiates male sex development in utero and indicates the presence of the testes (testicles).
IOC president Kirsty Coventry and the committee defended the exclusionary policy as necessary to protect the “fairness, safety, and integrity” of the female category. They based the decision on research suggesting that male puberty provides physical advantages in strength and power that are retained even after hormone therapy.
A coalition of human rights, sports and scientific groups has criticized the new rule as a massive setback for gender equality and could set women’s sport back 30 years. Executive director of Humans of Sport, Dr. Payoshni Mitra, pushed against the policy.
“Requiring women and girls to undergo mandatory genetic screening just to participate in sport would revive a practice that—even if it’s a ‘one-time test’—violates women’s and girls’ privacy, exposes them to extreme public scrutiny, humiliation, and opens a pathway to medically unnecessary interventions.”
The Trump administration praised the IOC’s decision, linking it to the president’s February 2025 executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” The new policy will be strictly enforced for all athletes leading into the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Games.
March 31: Attacks on Bodily Autonomy Have Created a Patchwork of Care
The latest installment of rePROs Fight Back’s annual 50-State Report Card finds that access to sexual and reproductive healthcare in the United States remains deeply unequal and increasingly under threat, with the nation once again earning an overall failing grade.
Now in its 14th year, the report evaluates all 50 states and Washington, D.C., across 11 indicators—including sex education, abortion access, Medicaid expansion and gender-affirming care—grouped into prevention, affordability and access. The findings underscore a widening “patchwork of care,” where a person’s ability to access basic services depends heavily on where they live.
This year, just five states—California, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Washington—received top marks, while half the country earned failing grades, including Texas and much of the South and Midwest. The report attributes the nation’s continued “F” in large part to sweeping federal and state-level attacks on bodily autonomy, including disruptions to Title X funding and major cuts to Medicaid that threaten coverage for millions, restrict access to providers like Planned Parenthood, and put already-strained rural healthcare systems at further risk.
Advocates warn that these policies disproportionately harm those already facing systemic barriers to care—including people with low incomes, Black and brown communities, young people, LGBTQ+ individuals and people with disabilities—and that the current trajectory shows little sign of slowing. As attacks on abortion, contraception and gender-affirming care intensify, the report frames the moment as an escalating human rights crisis—one that demands sustained resistance to ensure equitable access to reproductive healthcare nationwide.
