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…
+ On Wednesday, Sept. 2, Gloria Steinem, feminist, social activist and cofounder of Ms., died in her New York City home. She was 92. Her posthumous memoir, An Unexpected Life, just hit the New York Times best-seller list.
+ The family of Tierra Walker, who died in 2024 after she was refused a medically necessary abortion under Texas’ abortion ban, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and several of Walker’s doctors and nurses in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit. Walker’s family alleges Texas’ abortion ban and the providers’ refusal to offer Walker an abortion contributed to her death. The suit accuses the state’s politicians and doctors of “deliberate indifference, discrimination, and medical mistreatment.”
+ House Republicans have formally censured Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) for his documented inappropriate conduct toward women staffers, including excessive unwanted attention and gifts ranging from flowers and purses to personalized handguns. Edwards has ended his reelection campaign, making him the fourth member of Congress so far this year to leave his seat after alleged misconduct toward women.
+ Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, spent a decade as part of a cult that trafficked and sexually exploited children and young women, former members allege. The AA-support-group-turned-cult’s leader, Michael Quinones, controlled every aspect of members’ lives. The FCC chair is supposed to regulate U.S. media, but Carr was the author of Project 2025’s FCC section, where he planned to use the FCC to attack the free press and opponents of the administration, and reward corporations instead. A former member of the cult, Lydia, told The Guardian, “A man who has the power to control what types of stories the mainstream public have access to is a man who should expect the narrative of his own life to fall under scrutiny.”
+ New York’s Citywide Doula Initiative announced during Black Breastfeeding Week that 4,200 people received doula care through the program since its launch in 2022. The city’s health plan has also expanded to include doula coverage beginning in 2027.
Let’s not forget what else was sent our way over the last month…
Thursday, Sept. 3: United Airlines Passenger Reports Sexual Harassment During Flight
During Labor Day weekend, a 25-year-old woman on a United Airlines flight from Rochester, N.Y., to Newark reported that the man sitting next to her was masturbating while intentionally looking at her. She alerted the flight crew, but a flight attendant told her no other seats were available. She stood until landing, when the attendant told her she had to return to her seat.
“On multiple instances, I said I feel uncomfortable doing that,” the woman—who remains unidentified—told NBC.
Throughout the one-hour flight, the woman was expecting legal consequences for the man as they deplaned. She later found out the airline never reported the incident to authorities.
NBC reports that the woman took her experience to the Federal Aviation Administration and contacted the FBI after the airline failed to provide her with the appropriate safety measures. United Airlines told People magazine they are investigating the situation and have compensated the woman with a $100 travel credit.
Tuesday, Sept. 8: Amazon Sued for Pregnancy Discrimination in New York
A lawsuit filed against Amazon on Sept. 8 alleges that the company violated the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which took effect in June 2023, and New York state labor law by denying pregnancy accommodations to hundreds of workers in New York over the past year.
According to the Associated Press, women were denied requests for chairs for resting, bathroom/water breaks and time off for prenatal appointments, or if the women were experiencing a medical emergency that went beyond their time off, they received warnings of termination or being fired completely.
The women who required working in positions that required standing were also consistently denied the accommodation of chairs, causing at least one woman to be considered high-risk by her doctor and to submit a request for intervals to sit down and to carry less weight, which Amazon later denied.
Another plaintiff was also high-risk with preeclampsia, and denied a chair too because, according to the company, “If I give you a chair, I have to give everybody else a chair,” the suit said. Another pregnant woman shared she suffered severe abdominal pain due to the heavy object lifting—still, Amazon denied her additional time off because she had maxed out her time. Many women came forward during the lawsuit with their experiences attempting to receive suitable care during pregnancy from Amazon. Yet, many were continuously ashamed of the company’s lack of safety for their pregnant laborers.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel has publicly responded by denying the allegations, stating that the lawsuit “contains inaccuracies” and denying that Amazon violates federal law on pregnancy accommodations.
Wednesday, Sept. 9: Ectopic Pregnancy Deaths Have Nearly Doubled Post-Dobbs, New Report Finds
Almost 200 women have died in the U.S. due to an ectopic pregnancy between 2020 and 2025, a new ProPublica analysis of data from the CDC shows. This is an enormous jump from the previous six years, when there were about 100 ectopic pregnancy deaths recorded.
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision took effect in 2022, ending Roe v. Wade. Most of the ectopic pregnancy deaths since then have occurred in states with abortion bans, suggesting these bans are dissuading doctors from providing care for ectopic pregnancies or patients from seeking it. Even though most abortion bans do make exceptions for ectopic pregnancies, which are never viable, patients sometimes have to wait days or weeks for a definitive diagnosis. With OB-GYNs leaving abortion-ban states after Dobbs, appointment wait times are increasing, which means greater and greater risk of an ectopic pregnancy rupturing, triggering massive internal bleeding and causing the patient’s death.
With prompt medical care, ectopic pregnancies are very treatable. “A death related to ectopic pregnancy should never really be an event,” Philadelphia OB-GYN Dr. Alice Abernathy told ProPublica. However, care for an ectopic pregnancy involves terminating the pregnancy, and evidence has shown that just because a state has an exception for the “life of the mother” does not mean this exception will necessarily be used or be effective in saving women’s lives. With doctors in abortion-ban states facing steep fines or life in prison for performing an abortion ultimately deemed illegal, many doctors feel forced to think very carefully before agreeing to offer abortion care, even when the patient’s life is at risk.
According to Michelle Maloney, an attorney representing multiple Texas women allegedly denied care for life-threatening ectopic pregnancies, “I don’t think specific exemptions address the massive gray areas that arise in pregnancy.”
Monday, Sept. 14: Former Student Sues ‘Cornell 7’ Fraternity Brothers Accused of Gang-Raping Her
“Jane Doe,” a former Cornell University student, has filed a lawsuit alleging she was coerced into taking incapacitating drugs, then gang-raped by seven Chi Phi fraternity brothers over a period of several hours at their fraternity house in October 2024. The plaintiff is suing Cornell University, several fraternity and sorority organizations and the seven Chi Phi members: Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar. Despite the defendants openly discussing the rape over text as it was occurring—including a message advertising “free pussy”—not a single fraternity brother in the 57-member Chi Phi group chat intervened or called 911.
The case has sparked public outcry for Cornell’s handling of the crime when Jane Doe originally reported the assault to university police in 2024. According to The Washington Post, the seven students accused in the complaint were given temporary suspensions, and Cornell ultimately expelled only two, while the other five were assigned disciplinary workshops and essay-writing assignments. (Cornell has denied that writing essays was the “sole consequence” but has not offered further clarification, citing student privacy laws.) None of the seven men have been criminally charged for their role in the assault.
The Cornell case has notable parallels with the Brock Turner case from 2015, when Turner, then a Stanford student-athlete, raped an unconscious woman (later identified as Chanel Miller) outside a fraternity party on campus. Despite Turner’s conviction of three felony sexual assault counts, he was sentenced to only six months in prison, then released after three months for good behavior. Judge Aaron Persky (whom the state of California later recalled) said he gave Turner the light sentence because Turner was a promising young swimmer and he didn’t want to ruin his future.
“Yes, I think we actually should ruin the futures of adult men who drug and gang rape a woman, thanks for asking,” one woman recently posted, referring to the “Cornell 7.”
On Monday, Ms. writer Emma Cieslik wrote:
“Public outrage helped bring the case back into view, but it cannot be the primary way that we seek justice. What matters now is whether Cornell and law enforcement answer the questions raised by Doe’s lawsuit … and whether the next student who comes forward has to wait for the Internet to demand those answers.”
Tuesday, Sept. 15: The Lost Count of Miscarriages in ICE Detentions
As of September 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped documenting the number of miscarriages in detention centers, after ICE provided data to The Guardian regarding a Freedom of Information Act request that was eventually approved.
According to The Guardian, “ICE recorded 18 miscarriages during the first nine months of the Trump administration, the documents show, but the agency has no data on miscarriages after Oct. 3, 2025.”
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the ICE agency, says even though the agency wasn’t publicly announcing the miscarriage count, that it had an “internal” tracking system to maintain a file, and later admitted the agency never kept count of the data after Oct. 3, 2025.
Tuesday, Sept. 15: Lawsuit Filed Against Epstein’s Estate Alleging Possession of Child Sexual Abuse Material
Yet another lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein alleges that he possessed “child sexual abuse material (CSAM) of countless children.” It brings to light a new crime against Epstein, who was federally charged with sex trafficking minors in 2019. The class-action lawsuit, filed by two survivors of Epstein’s CSAM crimes against the co-executors of the Epstein estate, says Epstein stole nude or partially nude photos of children and transported them across state lines.
One of the plaintiffs is Jane Doe, who alleges that Epstein stole nude photos of her at age 12. The other plaintiff is known as “Amy,” who is the victim of “actively traded CSAM which has been in distribution since the late 1990s to present day” that she believes came from Epstein’s estate. It also says that “despite contemporaneous reports made to law enforcement, specifically alerting law enforcement that Epstein had obtained these photos of Jane Doe, and similar photos of another minor, no one in law enforcement took action to prosecute anyone or even investigate these reports.”
The lawsuit also alleges he created a “modeling book” of “sexualized images” of children that was kept in his New York mansion. The lawsuit alleges, “at least in the 2000s, Epstein had his assistant take nude, sexualized photographs of multiple children, paid them for the images, and then used those photographs for his own sexual gratification and perhaps that of others.” It also alleges that their photos were in the possession of, viewed and sent by, and accessible to Epstein and his coconspirators.
They filed the lawsuit on behalf of themselves and a class of other victims of Epstein’s CSAM. Their lawsuit claims that “to our knowledge, none of the victims identified in that report, or in any other CSAM discovered in Epstein’s collection, have ever received notice,” and that other victims deserve justice.
Meanwhile, another CSAM case has made fewer headlines but shows just how unprotected children are from predators in the U.S. Three weeks before the Epstein lawsuit was filed, on Aug. 25, a court dismissed a possession charge against a Wisconsin man, Steven Anderegg, who was accused of creating thousands of AI-generated images of child sexual abuse. Anderegg AI-generated more than 13,000 sexually explicit images of children, which are nearly indistinguishable from real images of abuse, known as AI-CSAM. Charges made by federal prosecutors for producing, distributing and transferring the AI-CSAM remain.
Tuesday, Sept. 15: Yet Another Woman Indicted for Pregnancy Loss
A jury in Lima, Ohio, has indicted a 22-year-old woman for “abuse of a corpse” after she was arrested in February when she suffered a miscarriage and placed the fetal remains in the trash. This case follows the eerily similar pattern of the many other pregnancy loss arrests that have occurred over the past few years since Dobbs: A young, vulnerable woman—often a woman of color—suffers a pregnancy loss, then police arrest her for allegedly taking abortion pills or other vague claims of abuse of a corpse after a miscarriage.
In just the past year, the War on Women Report has reported on these stories:
- In August 2026, police arrested a teenage girl in North Carolina for allegedly taking abortion pills 31 weeks into her pregnancy, prompting her to go into early labor.
- In March 2026, police arrested a 31-year-old woman in Georgia on murder and drug charges after she allegedly took abortion pills.
- In February 2026, more than a year after seeking medical help for a miscarriage, a young couple in Booneville, Ky., were arrested for alleged “reckless homicide.”
- In July 2025, a South Carolina woman was reported to Child Protective Services and arrested for “desecration of human remains” after suffering a miscarriage and placing the fetal remains in the trash.
- In June 2026, a Pennsylvania teenager and her mother 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 the “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 2025, Texas finally dropped charges against 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 2025, a 24-year-old woman in Georgia was arrested and imprisoned after suffering a miscarriage.
Sept. 16 and 17: ICE and CBP Agents Charged with Violence, Assault and Attempted Murder
On Sept. 16, an ICE agent, Christian Castro, was arrested for shooting a man Jan. 14 in Minneapolis, then allegedly lying to FBI agents about the shooting. This is the first time an ICE agent was charged after Operation Metro Surge.
The victim, Julio Sosa-Celis, lost his leg after being shot through the door of his own home after an officer had engaged in a car chase with Sosa-Celis’ roommate. Federal prosecutors charged Sosa-Celis and his roommate with assaulting a federal agent, then had to drop the charges after surveillance cameras showed that they had not assaulted anyone, and Castro had lied six times to an FBI agent.
On Sept. 17, a federal jury convicted a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer, Luis Uribe, of 10 counts of deprivation of rights, among other counts. He assaulted, threatened and robbed four women by following them to their hotel rooms, forcibly entering their rooms, threatening them with a gun issued by CBP along with his badge. Prosecutors say that this occurred on at least six occasions toward women of Chinese descent in the Chicago area in 2022. He robbed all of them, sexually assaulted two of them and tried to assault the others. Two said they were working as prostitutes at the time. Prosecutors also said that one woman, who switched hotels in fear of his actions, was threatened with a knife by Uribe before his attempt to assault her was interrupted by a knock.
Friday, Sept. 25: LSU Football Player Found Responsible for Raping Woman Student
The same month the details of the Cornell case emerged, a student at Louisiana State University is seeking criminal charges against a student football player for allegedly sexually assaulting her in October 2025. A Title IX investigation at the university level has found that the student-athlete is “responsible” for “sexual assault” and “forcible rape.” However, an appeals judge reduced his punishment from suspension to probation.
As the LSU and Cornell cases show, sexual assault remains an enormous problem on college campuses, and is particularly rampant in student athletics and Greek life. Thirteen percent of U.S. college students experience rape or sexual assault, and 26.4 percent of women undergraduates (compared to 6.8 percent of men) experience sexual violence during their time on campus. Women college students aged 18 to 24 are three times more likely to experience sexual violence than women in general.
The beginning few months of the school year—where we are right now—is an especially high-risk period known as the “Red Zone,” with over 50 percent of campus sexual assaults occurring between the beginning of the fall semester and Thanksgiving break.
The LSU and Cornell rapes both took place in October (though one year apart). The LSU case, which centers on a Black woman, has also been receiving significantly less news attention than the Cornell gang-rape case despite both stories breaking at around the same time.
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A note from Ms. editors: We want to hear from you for The Majority, a new campaign collecting stories about how reproductive freedom has enabled readers to build the lives they want and need.
Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans support reproductive healthcare access. Yet public debate overlooks the lives shaped by abortion access, contraception, IVF, miscarriage care, maternal healthcare or comprehensive sex education—countless women who chose to pursue an education, have children, not have children, protect their health and chart their own future. What’s your reproductive freedom story? Add your voice. Together, these stories will help show not only why reproductive freedom remains a majority value, but also what it makes possible.
