Author: Jennifer Weiss-Wolf

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is the executive director of Ms. partnerships and strategy. A lawyer, fierce advocate and frequent writer on issues of gender, feminism and politics in America, Weiss-Wolf has been dubbed the “architect of the U.S. campaign to squash the tampon tax” by Newsweek. She is the author of Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity, which was lauded by Gloria Steinem as “the beginning of liberation for us all,” and A Citizen’s Guide to Menopause Advocacy, together with Dr. Mary Claire Haver (featuring a foreword by Maria Shriver). Her forthcoming book When in Menopause: A User’s Manual and Citizen’s Guide (Hachette US-Sheldon Press) will be published in Fall 2026. She is also the executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU Law. Find her on Twitter: @jweisswolf.

The Fifth Circuit Proves Abortion Is on the Ballot this November

A highlight of being in Ireland has been following the local news, especially the robust abortion beat: Irish lawmakers have been waging a loud fight to expand abortion rights—in particular, to ensure unnecessary waiting periods don’t impede access to care.

Breaking headlines from the United States were a dark juxtaposition.

The U.S. is one of only four nations worldwide actively rolling back reproductive rights.

And now we’re threatened with yet another fight: The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling late last week aiming to create the most significant setback to abortion access since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision four years ago.

The three-member panel, two of whom are Trump appointees, blocked a 2023 FDA policy allowing mifepristone to be prescribed by telehealth providers and delivered by mail—a decision that applies to all states, whether abortion is legal or not, and where voters have mobilized to pass ballot measures and enshrine reproductive rights in their state constitutions.

This Fifth Circuit ruling is not the final word on the case. The two pharmaceutical companies that make mifepristone, Danco and GenBioPro, immediately filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. On Monday, Justice Samuel Alito announced an administrative stay through May 11, meaning the decision is on hold until at least then, while the justices review the appeal and decide whether the medically unnecessary in-person dispensing requirements can be reimposed for the duration of the litigation.

In the spirit of the fighting Irish, readers should take heart that the community of U.S. abortion providers, advocates and support networks “have shown amazing resilience and tenacity since the Dobbs decision,” according to Kelly Baden of Guttmacher. “They will continue to do what they can do to ensure that everyone, regardless of where they live, can access the abortion care they need.”

So, for now, our citizen mobilization strategy must be twofold: Support those who directly deliver those services and get ready to get loud. The abortion fight shows that access to healthcare, the integrity of science, the rules of democracy, and the right to bodily autonomy are not only all interconnected, but they are all on the ballot this November.

The Gun Crisis Is a Maternal Health Crisis. Virginia Shows What a Comprehensive Response Looks Like.

When the shots rang out at the Washington Hilton, it had not even been a week since the nation mourned the eight children shot dead in Shreveport, La., seven of whom were the gunman’s own. Two women, including his wife, were also shot but survived; another child jumped off a roof to escape the shooting.

More than just about anywhere else in the country, American classrooms have become ground zero for preparing kids. That was the first thought I had when I heard real-time Saturday night dispatches, reporters claiming they instinctually knew to crouch under tables. That’s not instinct. That is an entire generation raised on active-shooter drills. (I’ll never forget my then 8-year-old daughter nonchalantly explaining to me the difference between color-coded school drills. “Don’t be silly, Mom, no one has to go in the closet for a Code Yellow.”)

Not surprisingly, mothers have taken up the mantle.

Over the past week, a suite of gun safety bills headed to Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s desk, several of which she signed into law, and others she amended, including a ban on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines—Virginia would be the 11th state to enact such a ban—as well as protections for domestic violence survivors, age limits on gun purchases, safe storage requirements and industry accountability measures.

She simultaneously signed bipartisan legislation known as the Momnibus, which aims to improve and expand healthcare coverage for mothers and families, particularly women who face the highest risks, by codifying the need to collect maternal health data, supporting mental health screenings of new parents, and expanding insurance and Medicaid coverage for a variety of care.

Paid family and medical leave is the third key advance, which Spanberger signed into law last week as well.

As we look ahead to the midterm elections, remember there are indeed policies that can make us safer and healthier. Don’t let anyone in the political establishment convince us it is not so.

From Pennsylvania to Illinois to California: A Wave of Good News for Women

It is a relief to point to bona fide good news coming from the states, often some of the best laboratories for democracy.

In Pennsylvania, an appeals court struck down a decades-old law banning the use of state Medicaid funding to cover abortion. Truly remarkable is the majority’s decree that reproductive autonomy is enshrined in the equal protection provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution, guaranteed under its Equal Rights Amendment. ERAs can be game-changing for bolstering legal protection against a wide array of discrimination—including on the basis of pregnancy, age, disability, and immigration status—as well as for addressing adjacent issues such as pay equity and transparency and gender-based violence.

Upcoming judicial elections in Georgia are fast becoming a reproductive rights referendum, as happened last year in Wisconsin. Activists are raising funds in force. 

Idaho voters will likely get to weigh in directly on abortion rights in the November midterms.

… and more.

Fewer Teen Births Is Good, Unless You’re the Patriarchy

How on-brand for the federal government to announce that U.S. birth rates are falling—just as The Testaments, the long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, dropped on Hulu.

In the fictional nation of Gilead, first envisioned by Margaret Atwood in her 1985 dystopian novel and expanded on screen for nearly a decade now, declining fertility catalyzed a Christian nationalist revolution in modern-day America, spawning a society rooted in patriarchal dominance and state-sanctioned violence. The Testaments, now three episodes in, is making a deliberate appeal to Gen Z and young viewers, featuring the spectacularly savvy Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday among Gilead’s tradwife-in-training rebels.

Doubly fascinating then, that it is the real-life status of teen birth rates in particular now driving the news. In a drop considered “extraordinary” by statisticians, the number of babies born to mothers between the ages of 15 and 19 fell by 7 percent in 2025.

Nevertheless, many on the right jumped directly into the fray to publicly lament that teens are having fewer babies.

A Government That Chooses War Over Childcare

President Donald Trump made his priorities unmistakable when he dismissed federal support for childcare, telling his budget director: “Don’t send any money for daycare. … We’re fighting wars.” In choosing to fund a costly, unpopular war in Iran over investing in families, the administration is treating childcare as optional—something states should handle alone—even as costs soar beyond what most households can afford.

That decision comes amid a deepening affordability crisis. Childcare now routinely exceeds $1,000 a month per child, and by the government’s own benchmark, true affordability would require families to earn close to $400,000 a year.

While federal dollars have historically helped states provide care, the administration is pulling back—and even targeting states that are trying to expand access. The result is a widening gap between what families need and what the government is willing to support.

Forget the ‘Manosphere’—The ‘Meno-Sphere’ Is the Voting Bloc With Real Power

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A recent report from centrist think tank Third Way predicts many of the “swingy, moderate, low-propensity young men” who supported Trump will sit out the midterms this year.

So who should progressive political strategists and hopefuls turn their attention to? The oft-forgotten, invisible aging woman, or, what we like to call the meno-sphere.

There are many good reasons to prioritize the electoral and mobilization potential of women over 50. Back in 1992, The New York Times published a piece called “Mighty Menopause,” which posited that the then-rise of Baby Boomer women in politics was a direct result of hormonal shifts and that the “biological changes wrought by menopause” ultimately bolster women’s “interest in power and increase their ability to use it.”

If ever there were a moment to prove that to be true, it’s now—as our daughters’ and granddaughters’ rights are rolled back, as communities are terrorized, as the power elite’s willful alignment with the rot becomes clearer by the day.

Women in the Military Put Their Lives on the Line. The Trump Administration Is Stripping Their Rights

As the war in Iran rages on another week, 13 United States armed service members have been killed, three of them women. Nearly 20 percent of those currently serving across the entire U.S. military are women—who also represent the fastest-growing segment of the veteran population, more than 2 million strong today.

Not surprisingly, women who serve are also a direct target of the misogyny of the Trump administration.

The War on Our Bodies Is a War on Democracy

It is essential to zero in on abortion rights and the array of attacks happening in real time throughout this country. The headlines may not always be above the fold, but that doesn’t make the reality any less dire—not for the people whose health and lives are at risk, and not for what it says about and means for the health of our democracy.

After all, the fight for bodily autonomy is one and the same as the fight for the body politic.

Yeah, the ’90s Were Cool, but We’re Ready to Fight Now

“Mom, what were you like in the 90s?” The question has gone viral—and the response, a flood of celebrity flashback montages, captures the likes of Halle Berry and Courteney Cox in their Kodachrome heyday, set to (what else?) the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris.” The trend dovetails FX’s Love Story, the trashy yet wildly popular mini-series purporting to depict the behind-the-scenes courtship and ill-fated marriage of Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr.

I always appreciate when Gen X, the perennially forgotten generation, gets its props.

Dissecting Trump’s (Short) Women’s History Month Statement, Line by Line

When the White House issued a presidential message to kick off Women’s History Month, my first reaction was genuine surprise. Honestly, I did not think WHM was still recognized by the federal government.

President Donald Trump’s brief (four paragraphs) public statement doubled down on the administration’s regressive societal vision, casting women primarily as caretakers and pillars of the “American family,” while pointing to a slate of policies he claims empower them.

But a closer look at the statement reveals a familiar mix of culture-war signaling, selective policy claims, and omissions that obscure the real impacts of the administration’s agenda on women and families.

I think often about the role of the media at this moment—an obligation intrinsically greater than reporting the verbiage that comes out of the White House. It is on all of us to explicitly counter double-speak and lies and to leave a paper trail of truth for posterity. This week’s column does just that: It dissects Trump’s WHM proclamation line by line and tests each claimed reform against the record.