More Than A Magazine, A Movement
The effects of Trump’s reshaping of NSF and other national science agencies will be felt far beyond these institutions. Trump’s aversion to science and research is well-known. So, it is not surprising that the country’s top scientific research agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), were among those […]
Earlier this month, I attended a “power breakfast” hosted by the Chamber of Mothers, an organization and movement driving national support for mothers. I was shocked and frankly disillusioned by how much basic maternal healthcare was emphasized as an area of desperate need.
The way the U.S. understands, or refuses to understand, maternal health makes even asking for care a baffling proposition. Dawn Huckelbridge, founder of Paid Leave for All, recounted the moment she truly became “fired up and fed up” after giving birth to her first child. Huckelbridge was prepared in every sense: She had a supportive partner, health insurance and parents who could help her out. Upon delivering her baby, what she recalls as a traumatic experience for her mind and body, she was given even more resources for the baby: diapers, blankets, instructive care literature.
And when she asked her doctor, “Well, what about me? What do I have to do to take care of my body?” he replied, “Things just have a way of healing.” That was the official prescription for a mother who had been carrying a baby for 40 weeks and had only given birth a moment ago.
“I’d hate to believe that it’s because we don’t care about mothers and that we don’t want to see them in power,” said Erin Erenberg, co-founder and CEO of the Chamber of Mothers.
In the first few months of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, one thing has become crystal clear: The war on gender and racial equity is being waged in a new arena—on the battleground of data.
This fight isn’t waged with tweets or soundbites. It’s carried out through budget cuts, shuttered research programs and disappearing federal surveys. It’s a quiet but devastating assault on the tools we rely on to tell the truth—and to hold those in power accountable. And the message is chilling: If we can’t measure inequality, maybe we can pretend it doesn’t exist.
When race is stripped from maternal health reports, we overlook the crisis facing Black mothers. When LGBTQ+ identity is erased from youth surveys, we lose critical insight into mental health and safety. When disability status is omitted from labor market data, inequities in access and pay go unaddressed.
We need a renewed federal commitment to the research infrastructure that allows us to see and solve inequality—not ignore it.
The FDA maintains burdensome, medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone, which is used in combination with another medication—misoprostol—for early pregnancy termination. This combination of medications is safer than Viagra and Tylenol and is now used in approximately two-thirds of all abortions in the United States.
Over the last decade, the FDA has removed some of the restrictions on mifepristone, including a requirement that the medication be dispensed in person by doctors, but the agency still requires prescribers and pharmacies to register with the drug maker and requires patients to sign a counseling form with redundant, inaccurate and confusing information, all of which has decreased access to the medication.
To remove these requirements, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit in May 2023, Whole Woman’s Health Alliance v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, asking a federal district court in Charlottesville, Va., to order the FDA to lift these restrictions on mifepristone.
On Monday, May 19, 2025, the court heard oral arguments on cross motions for summary judgment in the case. “The Trump administration has made it clear that they do not care about science, or our health and safety,” said CRR on social media. “They only care about taking away our rights. But we refuse to let that happen. We’re ALL IN on this fight.”
The House Rules Committee is set to meet at 1 a.m. ET on May 21 to discuss Medicaid funding cuts that would essentially defund Planned Parenthood. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that blocking patients from using their Medicaid insurance plan to obtain sexual and reproductive healthcare at Planned Parenthood clinics would increase the deficit by $300 million.
“The fact of the matter is, if Republicans get their way—if they succeed in shutting the doors of Planned Parenthood clinics across the country—millions of women will have nowhere else to turn,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “After all, two-thirds of Planned Parenthood health centers are in rural and medically underserved areas—places where there’s already a shortage of clinics and healthcare professionals. And for a lot of these patients, Planned Parenthood is literally the only provider in reach and in budget. They literally can’t afford to lose this care.”
Three months ago, 30-year-old Adriana Smith was declared brain-dead. But a hospital in Georgia is keeping her “alive” on life support because of the state’s strict abortion ban.
“In what universe does a hospital in Georgia … believe that they can take ownership of Adriana Smith’s body?” asked Michele Goodwin on a recent emergency episode of On the Issues: Fifteen Minutes of Feminism. “According to the hospital, she is now an incubator. … This is not science fiction, though I wish that it were.”
“I think every woman should have the right to make their own decision,” Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, said. “And if not, then their partner or their parents.”
I’ve been writing for decades about America’s on-again-off-again support for the reproductive healthcare of women around the world, focusing on the Republican presidents who have slashed funding and jeopardized women’s lives.
When I spoke by phone to Seema Ghani in February, there was something more. Unlike many women I had reached out to this year in countries that have relied on the United States for financial support, Ghani was not afraid to speak to me—even though her homeland, Afghanistan, is the world’s most oppressive for women.
Eighty-three percent of queer women reported birthing complications. From systemic bias to outdated medical policies, lesbians face a maternal health system that was never designed with them in mind.
In a stunning move that could mark the first step toward a nationwide ban on abortion pills, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has ordered the FDA to reevaluate its decades-old approval of mifepristone—a medication used safely by over 7.5 million Americans over the last quarter-century for abortion and treatment of miscarriages.
The directive, based on a single junk-science report from an antiabortion group, signals a dangerous shift: the politicization of FDA policy and a coordinated push to strip access to medication abortion across the country.
“If she could have put off the baby for two more years, she could have saved up a nest egg and created her family the way she wanted. Instead, she was trapped with a baby too soon.”
Abortions are sought by a wide range of people for many different reasons. There is no single story. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls. (Share your abortion story by emailing myabortionstory@msmagazine.com.)
“Seven more days. To find out what is happening inside my body. What is poisoning my body. Starving my body. Starving my life of joy and laughter.”