More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women. It develops in a woman’s cervix, the lowermost part of the uterus. Cervical cancer is almost always associated with an HPV infection, which can be sexually transmitted.
In its Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic ruling last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a devastating blow to reproductive health clinics across the nation. A substantial slate of decisions issued by the Court Friday dealt several more severe blows to the rule of law and our constitutional rights—though a silver lining was the Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act’s preventive-care mandate.
In a landmark decision released Thursday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of South Carolina in Medina v. Planned Parenthood, granting states the authority to exclude reproductive health clinics from their Medicaid programs—even when those clinics provide essential care such as cancer screenings, birth control and STI testing. This decision could embolden Republican-led states to “defund” Planned Parenthood across the country.
Clara Bingham, Jamia Wilson and Jessica Valenti on the state of abortion access and the feminist resistance rising up in every state in the U.S.:
“The 14th Amendment is what antiabortion activists are using right now to fight for fetal personhood. Anytime you see the 14th Amendment mentioned, that’s what it’s about.”
“We are no longer first-class citizens in banned states.”
“There are countries in this world where the pro-life movement is the movement that is about choice. … They’re surprised when they hear the framing of pro-life being used to dominate and control women’s bodies.”
“As terrible as things are every single day, in every single community and in every single state, there are rooms full of women, and there are rooms full of activists who are working their asses off, who are using their time, their money, their energy to make sure that if someone needs care, they can get it, whether or not we see it.”
Over 70 million people, including 13 million women of reproductive age, are enrolled in Medicaid—America’s biggest single health insurance program. Now, congressional Republicans are ready to take an axe to it. Proposed Republican cuts to Medicaid would strip millions of women of affordable access to birth control, prenatal care, STI treatment and other essential healthcare services.
The Trump administration earlier this month cut more than $65 million in federal funding for family planning under Title X, the program signed into law by President Richard Nixon that has supported comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services—including contraception, cancer screenings, infertility treatments, pregnancy care and STI testing—for low-income Americans since 1970. The cuts will impact dozens of clinics nationwide, including nine Planned Parenthood affiliates, and leave seven states without any Title X funding—to say nothing of other funding cuts and freezes to social services like Social Security and Medicaid.
In March, Nourbese Flint, president of the national abortion justice organization All* Above All, wrote a piece for Ms. about Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid, which would strip healthcare from millions of Americans, including 40 percent of all pregnant women in the United States. Last week, I spoke with her about the Title X freeze on reproductive healthcare and the long-term effects of these funding cuts, which will put infant and maternal healthcare even more in jeopardy.
As a community-based researcher, I’ve spent countless hours speaking with women in the Mississippi Delta about their experiences with healthcare, their knowledge of cervical cancer prevention and the barriers they face in accessing care. These conversations have reinforced what we already know: Black women in Mississippi are dying from preventable diseases—not because solutions don’t exist, but because those solutions are not reaching them. The Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative (SRBWI), in collaboration with Human Rights Watch, recently released a report highlighting these inequities.
But while we work to increase awareness, figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continue to spread dangerous misinformation about the HPV vaccine, undermining efforts to protect our communities.
The New York Times recently published a 3,000-word investigative report claiming to have found “scores of allegations” against Planned Parenthood for misconduct, medical malpractice, mismanagement and labor violations. Released within a month of Trump’s inauguration, the article appears timed to provide ammunition for the ongoing right-wing attack on reproductive rights.
The NYT could have invested its significant resources into investigating how Planned Parenthood plays a unique and irreplaceable role in the U.S. healthcare system as the nation’s leading provider of sexual and reproductive healthcare and largest sex educator. By choosing to publish what reads as a hit job on Planned Parenthood at this political moment, while failing to devote any resources to investigating the opaque and unregulated antiabortion industry vying to defund and replace Planned Parenthood, the NYT has done a grave disservice to readers, especially women and girls who need reproductive healthcare.
The first time Donald Trump was president, he imposed a strict, overseas antiabortion policy that caused 108,000 women and children to die and 360,000 people to contract HIV/AIDS, according to a journal of the National Academy of Sciences. If voters send him back to the White House, those numbers, staggering as they may be, would be dwarfed by what comes next, reproductive rights advocates contend.
A new state-by-state women’s health scorecard released this week by the Commonwealth Fund reveals mounting disparities in women’s health and reproductive care across the U.S.
Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island top the rankings for the scorecard, which is based on 32 measures of healthcare access, quality and health outcomes. The lowest performers were Mississippi, Texas, Nevada and Oklahoma.
The findings raise concerns over the state of women’s healthcare and the ripple effects of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has significantly altered access to critical reproductive health care services.
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: the horrifying effects of Louisiana’s abortion ban; state lawmakers fight over access to contraception and IVF; Gloria Steinem turns 90; soccer players advocate for uniforms without white shorts; fighting against deepfake voter suppression efforts; West Texas A&M university bans drag shows; transphobia from healthcare providers; and more.