Abortion Access

Abortion is an essential healthcare service. Abortion access is varied across the world and throughout the United States due to anti-abortion legislation. Access is often dependent on social factors such as income, race, geographic region and citizenship status.

A Back-and-Forth in the Courts: Feminist Lawyers Ask the Supreme Court to Step In—and Abortion Pill Access Is Restored, For Now

PUBLISHED 5/1/2026 by | UPDATED 5/4/2026 at 9:19 A.M. PT

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.

Trump’s Budget Plunders Birth Control and Reproductive Health Programs—With Open Derision for Americans Who Need Them

PUBLISHED 4/30/2026 by

Title X is the federal program that funds family planning and reproductive health services nationwide—and under President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for 2027, it would be effectively eliminated, reshaping access to care for women across the country.

What is perhaps most jarring, on close reading, is not only what the budget proposes, but how it speaks. The language throughout the administration’s budget and HHS documents departs from traditional bureaucratic norms, adopting a tone that is at times openly mocking and vilifying. Programs serving women, LGBTQ people and marginalized communities are described in terms that signal not just opposition, but disdain. It is a stark reminder that federal budgets do more than allocate resources—they reflect who this government is for, and who it is not.

(This essay is part of an ongoing Ms. series examining the real-world impact of President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget. Across sectors—from healthcare and childcare to immigration enforcement and food assistance—the series explores what the administration’s funding priorities reveal about who government serves, and who it leaves behind.)

War on Women Report: Rise of ‘Sleep Porn’; Georgia Midwives Sue for Right to Practice; Louisiana Family Massacre Exposes Deadly Intersection of Domestic Violence and Guns

PUBLISHED 4/29/2026 by and

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:
—Access to mifepristone remains protected for now, after a U.S. district court granted a stay in Louisiana v. FDA.
—A new CNN investigation reveals a sprawling online network where drug-facilitated sexual assault, marketed as “sleep porn, ” is filmed, shared and monetized, drawing millions of viewers. Meanwhile, survivors face steep barriers to reporting and justice.
—The Ohio House passed the Indecent Exposure Modernization Act, an extreme bill that seeks to ban any expression or performance of drag where minors are or may be present. The proposed ban includes even daytime family-oriented events such as drag queen story hours, where performers dress up as storybook characters and read to children at libraries or bookstores.
—In a devastating shooting spree spanning three locations, Shamar Elkins shot and killed eight children, seven of whom were his own, and severely wounded two women: his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh, and Christina Snow. Both women are mothers to the deceased victims.
—In Georgia, a group of reproductive healthcare advocates is challenging the state’s restrictions on some forms of maternal healthcare, arguing that Georgia’s current laws give doctors too much control over midwives’ ability to practice.
—Nine women in Tennessee are suing the state over its abortion ban after nearly denying due to being denied abortion care.

… and more.

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

PUBLISHED 4/24/2026 by

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.

‘A Warning Shot’: DOJ Indictment of Southern Poverty Law Center Sparks Outcry Across Civil and Women’s Rights Movement

PUBLISHED 4/24/2026 by and

The U.S. Department of Justice’s criminal case against the Southern Poverty Law Center marks a stunning escalation in the federal government’s attacks and aggression toward civil rights organizations. A grand jury has indicted the SPLC on charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering—allegations the organization has called false and politically motivated.

The charges are rooted in bad-faith characterizations of payments SPLC made to informants in extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Trump’s DOJ is attempting to argue these payments counted as financial support. In reality, the SPLC’s work helped dismantle some of the country’s most prominent white supremacist groups.

For feminist and civil rights groups, the indictment is the clearest sign yet of an escalating campaign to intimidate the nonprofit sector, criminalize civil rights advocacy and silence dissent. In their view, the administration is not only attacking outcomes or messages, but working to turn the machinery of government itself against advocacy groups: criminal law, regulatory scrutiny and national security frameworks.

After Years of Silence, Texas Medical Board Issues Training for Doctors on How to Legally Provide Abortions

PUBLISHED 4/23/2026 by , and

For the first time since Texas criminalized abortion, the state’s medical regulator has instructed doctors on when they can legally terminate a pregnancy to protect the life of the patient—guidance physicians long sought as women died and doctors feared imprisonment for intervening.

The new training from the Texas Medical Board was released nearly five years after the state passed its strict abortion ban in 2021, threatening doctors with severe penalties. Pregnancy became far more dangerous in the state after the law took effect: Sepsis rates spiked for women suffering a pregnancy loss, as did emergency room visits in which miscarrying patients needed a blood transfusion; at least four women in the state died after they didn’t receive timely reproductive care. More than a hundred OB-GYNs said the state’s abortion ban was to blame.

The new medical training, which ProPublica obtained under a public records request, assures doctors they can now legally provide abortions, even when a patient’s life isn’t imminently in danger, and goes over nine example scenarios, including a patient’s water breaking before term and complications from an incomplete abortion. 

But medical and legal experts who reviewed the training said the case studies represent only the most straightforward situations doctors encounter. The complications that women face in pregnancy are varied, complex and impossible to capture in a brief presentation, many cautioned. One attorney called the training “the bare minimum.”

Keeping Score: Pennsylvania ERA Secures Abortion Rights Win; Civil Rights Groups Investigate Trump Admin Delays in Childcare Payments; Senate Upholds Near-Total VA Abortion Ban

PUBLISHED 4/23/2026 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—In a landmark ruling shaped by Pennsylvania’s ERA, a state court struck down a decades-old ban on using Medicaid funds for abortion.
—Trump continued to attack voting rights, threatening mail-in ballots and moving towards a nationalized registration database full of errors.
—An estimated 8 million people attended the latest “No Kings” protests.
—A Michigan court ruled that the state’s Pregnancy Exclusion law, which prevents providers from honoring pregnant women’s documented end-of-life decisions, violates a voter-approved 2022 constitutional amendment.
—A federal judge blocked RFK Jr.’s changes to routine vaccination schedules.
—The Supreme Court ruled against Colorado’s ban on dangerous “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ youth.
—Housing markets are declining in states with abortion bans as young people leave or avoid those areas.
—Senators demand the Trump Administration release lifesaving Title X funding.
—Twenty-five states received a failing grade on access to sexual and reproductive healthcare.
—High levels of contamination were found in braiding hair.
—Women are driven away from coaching college sports by pay inequities and other systemic barriers.

… and more.

Banned From Talking About Third-Trimester Abortion Care at a Texas Medical School: The Ms. Q&A with Dr. Shelley Sella

PUBLISHED 4/23/2026 by

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) cancelled Dr. Shelley Sella’s scheduled campus talk in January about her recent book Beyond Limits: Stories of Third-Trimester Abortion Care, which she had been invited to give by the Texas Tech chapter of Medical Students for Choice (MSFC) in collaboration with MSFC’s Board of Directors. The administration told right-wing outlet Texas Scorecard that it decided hosting her was “not in the best interest of the university.” The decision to ban Sella from campus was made after days of coordinated activism by the Turning Point USA chapter at Texas Tech in conjunction with two antiabortion activists: Mark Lee Dickson and Jim Baxa. 

The cancellation of Sella’s talk was not “an anomaly,” as Jessica Valenti of Abortion, Every Day writes, but part and parcel of the “antiabortion snitch culture” on college campuses—”part of the broader conservative attack on academia that’s gained steam over the last few years.”

“And it’s not just impacting a few schools or professors,” Valenti continues. “Antiabortion groups are determined to eradicate any iota of pro-choice speech on college campuses. Now is the time for us to make as much noise as possible and not back off one single inch.”

Taking seriously Valenti’s call to “make noise” rather than retreat in the face of escalating efforts to suppress pro-abortion speech, Ms. sat down with both Sella and Claire Surkis, a medical student in Connecticut who serves on MSFC’s Board of Directors, to explore the impact and implications of the university’s actions.

Women Attorneys General Are Not Backing Down

PUBLISHED 4/21/2026 by

In the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, there have been concerted efforts in states across the country and by the Trump administration to further limit access to abortion, but also to reproductive healthcare access and rights more broadly.

These efforts have not gone unchecked. A coalition of Democratic state attorneys general across the country have been working in concert to counteract many of these measures and to protect access to reproductive healthcare within their states—through enacting safe harbor or shield laws, defending state laws and constitutional provisions providing residents with the right to provide and obtain abortions, and filing lawsuits against the Trump administration and other states where necessary, to name a few.

Within this coalition, another pattern emerges: the role of Democratic women attorneys general fighting back against efforts to undermine reproductive justice. This group of attorneys general includes Vermont AG Charity Clark, Arizona AG Kris Mayes, Delaware AG Kathy Jennings, Massachusetts AG Andrea Campbell and Michigan AG Dana Nessel.

Trump’s DOJ Claims Biden Administration Was Wrong to Prosecute Clinic Violence

PUBLISHED 4/15/2026 by

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has released an 882-page report Tuesday about the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The Act does just what it sounds like it would do: Makes it possible for individuals who provide medical care or want to receive it to enter clinics that provide reproductive health care without being subjected to violence, threats, intimidation, or physical obstruction. The law allows federal prosecutors to criminally charge people who violate it and gives victims the right to bring civil lawsuits against aggressors.

The report concludes that the Biden administration “weaponized” the DOJ against people protesting outside abortion clinics, and that it criminalized their conservative beliefs. But it doesn’t hold up very well. It’s politics in the guise of prosecution, an effort to justify Trump’s pardons of 24 abortion opponents who harassed patients and attacked clinics and curry favor with parts of his base.