This Mother’s Day weekend arrives amid extraordinary legal and political upheaval over reproductive freedom, voting rights and the economic survival of mothers.
Justice & Law
From the Halls of Congress to Out on the Trail, Women Beg the Question: Why Not You?
Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world—with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!
This week:
—Rachel Entrekin makes history by setting a new course record at the Cocodona 250 ultramarathon, becoming the first woman to win the race outright.
—Amy Acton could become Ohio’s first woman governor.
—Mother’s Day has always been about women’s political power.
… and more.
The First Mother’s Day Was a Protest
Far from mimosa brunches and hallmark greetings, the first Mother’s Day in the United States occurred against the scourge of war. In 1870, abolitionist and suffragist Julie Ward Howe who still had the horrors of the Civil War on her mind and was disturbed by the plight of war abroad called for an international movement of mothers as a way to call for peace and to protest the devastation of war.
History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. Mother’s Day comes this year as our nation and those across the globe are living with the dire consequences of a war with Iran Congress never authorized. The war has cost American lives as well as the lives of innocent children–including nearly 100 schoolgirls—in Iran. Former U.S. military officials have criticized the Pentagon’s strike and the lack of transparency around it. The president continues to threaten many of our global allies, as the rate of autocracies across the globe rise while democracies decline. All the while, costs continue to rise, making it harder and harder for working people to make ends meet.
The only way this crisis will become a catalyst for change is if we commit not just to rebuilding our nation, but to reimagining it as a nation that can hold all of us and to demand that our leaders drive bold change to achieve true democracy and true change for the next generation. A nation where it is unacceptable for children to go hungry while others enjoy nation-building wealth. A nation where it is unacceptable to detain children and infants based on their skin color or who their parents are or where they are from. A nation where every person finds the courage to call out the cruelty.
On this Mother’s Day, may we all be the mothers—and the fighters—our children need. If we don’t, who will?
Trump Administration Launches a Legally Bogus Investigation into Smith College
The Trump administration claims its investigation into Smith College is about defending women. In reality, it is an attack on the rights of women at Smith to define their own community, values and mission without political interference from Washington.
The Department of Education argues that by admitting transgender women and allowing them access to campus housing and facilities, Smith may have violated Title IX. But that argument collapses under even a basic reading of the law. Title IX simply does not apply to admissions at private undergraduate colleges like Smith.
The administration’s complaint is also striking because it is not based on evidence that Smith students have been harmed or excluded from campus life. There is no public record of students filing complaints about the college’s housing, bathrooms or locker rooms policies. Instead, this investigation grew out of pressure from a conservative advocacy group determined to use federal power to impose its ideological agenda on colleges and universities.
Smith’s campus policies were shaped over years by students, faculty and administrators themselves—including cisgender women students who pushed the college to open admissions to transgender women more than a decade ago.
At its core, this investigation is about far more than one women’s college. It reflects the Trump administration’s broader campaign against trans rights, higher education and liberal arts institutions that encourage critical thought, inclusion and intellectual independence.
Congress passed Title IX to expand educational opportunities for women. Now, the administration is attempting to weaponize that same civil rights law to undermine women’s education and bully colleges into abandoning their own principles.
As a Woman Without a Country, I Was Afraid to Become a Mother. If SCOTUS Limits Birthright Citizenship, Millions More Will Share That Fear.
I never knew if it was safe for me to have a child.
For most people, that question is about timing or readiness. For me, it was about something more fundamental. Not whether my child would belong in the United States, but whether I would be able to stay with them, have access to them, and be able to be their parent without fear.
When Mothers Speak, Medicine Must Listen
When my daughter was 2 weeks old, she stopped eating. She would go nearly 24 hours without food, crying constantly and losing weight while seeming to be in excruciating pain. Over five months, I took her to more than 50 doctors appointments searching for answers, only to be dismissed as hysterical, hormonal or “over-medicalizing” my baby.
By the time doctors finally recognized that she was suffering from a milk allergy and reflux, the prolonged pain had caused bottle aversion—a life-threatening condition in which babies become too traumatized to eat. She was later diagnosed with ARFID, a trauma-based eating disorder that still affects her today.
What happened to my daughter forced me to confront a devastating question: Would we have been treated differently if I weren’t a woman of color? Research has repeatedly shown that Black women and children are less likely to have their pain taken seriously by medical providers, and over the last decade, federal programs aimed at identifying and addressing those disparities began making meaningful progress. But under the Trump administration, many of those initiatives are being dismantled in the name of fighting “DEI,” with funding slashed, bias training suspended and research into racial disparities frozen or erased altogether.
My daughter is now in preschool—playing, laughing and growing—but she still struggles to eat enough to meet her nutritional needs.
Our story is not an isolated tragedy; it is a warning about what happens when healthcare systems stop listening to mothers and when political attacks on equity research blind medicine to its own biases. If we truly value mothers and children, we cannot treat efforts to understand racial disparities in healthcare as expendable.
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.
Tennessee Tries to Silence Women Nearly Killed by Its Abortion Ban: ‘We Will Have Our Day in Court,’ Pledges Lead Plaintiff
Tennessee was supposed to face nine women in court on April 27 in a closely watched trial over the state’s abortion ban—women who say they were denied emergency care, forced to flee the state for abortions, or pushed to the brink of death after suffering catastrophic pregnancy complications. After waiting nearly three years to testify publicly about what happened to them, the plaintiffs were prepared to finally take the stand.
Then, less than two business days before the trial was set to begin, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti (yes, the same Skrmetti whose name is now attached to the Supreme Court’s landmark anti-trans healthcare ruling) filed an appeal invoking a newly enacted state law which prevents Tennesseans from suing over any state law that harms them. The move stripped the court of jurisdiction over the case, abruptly halting the proceedings and potentially delaying the trial for months or years.
“We should be in court today standing up to Tennessee’s abortion ban,” the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement after the cancellation. “These women deserve their day in court. But Tennessee politicians refuse to listen.”
Among the plaintiffs is Allie Phillips, who says she was forced to travel to New York for an abortion after learning her fetus had a fatal diagnosis and that continuing the pregnancy put her own life at risk. By the time she arrived for care, she learned the fetus had already died in utero, placing her at heightened risk of infection and blood clots.
Phillips shares her story and reaction to the canceled trial, in her own words.
“I would have testified about how I would have risked my future fertility and my life if I had stayed pregnant in Tennessee. … I already had a 6-year-old daughter, Adalie, to raise. She needed me to live and be her mom. …
“We’re appealing. We don’t know how it will take but even if it’s five years, we will have our day in court. I’m not going anywhere.”
The Supreme Court Just Gutted the Voting Rights Act. Women Will Pay the Price.
The Court didn’t strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act—but it didn’t need to. By requiring proof of intentional discrimination, the majority has made it dramatically harder to challenge maps that dilute the voting power of communities of color. As Justice Elena Kagan warned, the provision is now “all but a dead letter.”
For the women elected from majority-minority districts, that shift is not abstract. These are the very districts that made their representation possible—and now, those districts are among the most vulnerable to being redrawn or erased.
The consequences were immediate. Within hours of the ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, Florida lawmakers advanced a new congressional map targeting majority-minority districts, including seats held by women.
In the 11 states most likely to face redistricting pressure, up to 36 such districts could be redrawn—12 of them currently represented by women.
As voting rights litigator Yael Bromberg explained, the Court is now effectively looking for a “smoking gun” of discrimination. Short of that, legislatures can redraw maps along partisan lines, even when the racial impact is clear.
The statute remains on the books, but its practical force does not. And what replaces it is not neutrality—it is discretion. State legislatures can choose which incumbents to protect and which to leave exposed, creating new opportunities to sideline women and weaken the political power of the communities that elected them.
What happens next will not hinge on another sweeping ruling, but on a series of decisions that are easier to overlook and harder to challenge—and that will determine, district by district, who gets to remain represented at all.
A Back-and-Forth in the Courts: Feminist Lawyers Ask the Supreme Court to Step In—and Abortion Pill Access Is Restored, For Now
The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily paused the Fifth Circuit’s Friday ruling that would have tightened access to mifepristone, preserving the current status quo while the justices consider the emergency appeal. The order keeps telehealth and mail access in place for now.
The Monday morning emergency action from the Court—which orders the Trump administration to answer by May 7—follows an urgent intervention from the manufacturers of mifepristone, GenBioPro and Danco.
Regardless of what the courts decide, international telehealth providers, community networks and websites selling pills are ready to ramp up services to fill the needs of Americans.