Abortion Access Can’t Depend on Rage Donations

Now, almost three and a half years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the numbers are clear that abortion in the U.S. has, to the shock of most, continued to rise. But we also have data showing that a small but not trivial number of people are continuing their pregnancies to birth due to abortion bans. To us, what this shows is clear: that overturning Roe has prompted ingenuity, persistence, and resistance among providers and patients but is also leaving many people behind. Ultimately, this is no way to deliver healthcare.

The provision of healthcare—and abortion is healthcare—must be publicly supported in order to be equitable and accessible. When this assistance relies on inconsistent large-scale private donations, as well as the almost-supernatural work of abortion providers and supporters, it’s no wonder that some people are slipping through the cracks, even while abortion numbers are rising.

There Is Nothing Patriotic About Denying Veterans Abortion Care

Claiming that abortion care is not an essential medical service, in August the Trump administration proposed a new rule to “reinstate the full exclusion on abortions and abortion counseling from the medical benefits package” for veterans and their dependents.” The proposed rule change drew fierce public opposition from a wide range of groups during the requisite 30-day comment period.

Then, under the cover of the holidays, the full exclusion on abortion and abortion counseling for veterans and their dependents took effect, by way of a legal directive issued in a Dec. 18 DOJ memo.

“You can’t thank a veteran for putting her body on the line for her country, then turn around and take away her right to control it. There is nothing patriotic about denying our nation’s heroes the care they deserve and the ability to determine their own futures.”

I’m a Texan. But I Don’t Know if I Can Be a Texas OB-GYN.

Mary (not her real name) tells her story to Bonnie Fuller:

“Texans don’t give up easily, and I’m a Texan. I’m in my second year of medical school in Texas, and I’m studying to be an OB-GYN.

“I grew up in Texas, and I’m open-minded about staying in the state to practice obstetrics and gynecology after I graduate, despite the laws that ban most abortions from conception. A lot of the people that I love are in Texas, and there’s this big draw to stay here because it’s my community. I really want to care for other women.

“But what worries me most about practicing here is that I won’t be able to provide certain types of care because of the laws. I worry about the moral distress I’ll feel if I’m unable to act in particular cases—especially in emergency situations when a woman might need a termination and the law says that you can’t do one.”

The Supreme Court Case That Could Shield Unregulated Pregnancy Clinics From Oversight

On Dec. 2, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin, an unregulated pregnancy clinic’s constitutional challenge to the New Jersey attorney general’s subpoena for information about its operations, including donor records. 

Despite being awash in revenue, and serial reports of fraud, waste and illegal use of taxpayer funds, these antiabortion clinics are positioning to realize a long-term goal: to “replace” Planned Parenthood and Title X programs and secure federal taxpayer funds to advance an agenda that promotes childbirth and undermines evidence-based healthcare. 

As right-wing politicians decimate the reproductive health delivery system for low-income and uninsured Americans, the UPC industry is ramping up the narrative that their unregulated pregnancy clinics are the answer to the maternal healthcare deserts their policies have created. 

Most media observers are predicting the Court will rule for the crisis pregnancy center, First Choice. If it does, unregulated pregnancy clinics nationwide will be further emboldened to resist any state oversight, including of their medical services. A bold, innovative, multi-front action by reproductive justice advocates, public health professionals and pro-choice officials is the only way we ensure they can’t succeed. 

Novel ‘Truth Is’ Shows What It Really Takes for a Teen to Get an Abortion in 2025

Truth Is is a pro-choice novel in every sense of the phrase. Truth’s choice to move forward with an abortion is made early on in the novel and the majority of the book focuses on her life and her choices after her decision.

I hope that years from now, a student picks up this book and reads about the challenges that the book’s main character Truth faces and goes, “Is that really how it was back then?”

For adults who engage with Truth’s story, I want us to consider the limitations we sometimes unknowingly put on young people. I want us to consider the heights young people could reach if they were granted opportunities and community support, the way Truth ultimately does in the novel.

Dobbs Has Triggered Widespread Discrimination in Non-Reproductive Healthcare

In the years since Roe was overturned, physicians across a wide range of medical specialties have described how abortion bans are undermining their ability to follow evidence-based standards of care. Dermatologists, oncologists, neurologists, cardiologists and others told Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) that they are regularly forced to alter treatment plans, delay urgent care or avoid prescribing the most effective medications simply because those treatments could harm a pregnancy. These constraints are creating a chilling effect that reaches far beyond reproductive health and into the everyday practice of medicine.

As PHR’s Michele Heisler and Payal Shah explained, abortion bans are also fueling discriminatory care. Reproductive-age women are routinely denied the best available treatments, while men with the same conditions face no such barriers. Even within the group of reproductive-age women, clinicians are making decisions based on subjective judgments about a patient’s “contraceptive reliability”—a practice that opens the door to bias and disproportionately harms marginalized patients.

This two-tiered system of care is not hypothetical: It is already shaping medical decision-making in ban states, with dangerous consequences for patients’ health and lives.

Alliance Defending Freedom Succeeded in Overturning Roe. Now It’s Turning to the United Kingdom.

If you follow the fight over abortion access in the U.S., you’ve likely heard of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The powerful nonprofit was instrumental in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. ADF drafted model legislation used to defend Mississippi’s 15-week ban and has long championed policies targeting LGBTQ+ rights, contraception access and same-sex marriage.

Now, ADF is setting its sights across the Atlantic. The organization—which boasts operations in 112 countries—has been quietly expanding its influence in Britain through its new alliance with the right-wing Reform Party, led by populist figure Nigel Farage.

The Reform-ADF partnership is following a familiar playbook: reframing reproductive rights as a free-speech issue. ADF has backed efforts to challenge the Public Order Act of 2023, which established “safe access zones” around abortion clinics—150-meter perimeters designed to prevent harassment and obstruction. Despite broad public support for these zones (77 percent of Britons favor them), Farage and his allies have called the policy a “sinister crackdown on expression.”

“There is a clear pattern here of U.S.-funded antiabortion activists testing the limits of the new U.K. law, seemingly trying to find the most acceptable-looking behavior to gain public sympathy, and then using that to try to tear down the law,” said Karen Wright, public affairs manager for Humanists U.K. “It is deeply concerning to see efforts from outside groups attempting to influence domestic law, particularly when it comes to women’s reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy.”

New California Shield Law Protects Abortion Pill Patients, Prescribers and Pharmacists

California’s new shield law, AB 260, represents a bold reimagining of what it means to protect reproductive freedom in a post-Dobbs America. By allowing prescribers and pharmacies to omit identifying information from mifepristone labels—and by ensuring that confidential logs can’t be accessed by out-of-state authorities—the law does more than safeguard privacy. It dismantles the machinery of fear and surveillance that antiabortion extremists have built to track, intimidate and punish people for exercising bodily autonomy. In a nation where a single prescription can become evidence in a courtroom, California has declared: not here.

The legislation’s power lies in its refusal to accept intimidation as the cost of care. It shields patients, prescribers and pharmacists alike, and even mandates coverage of mifepristone regardless of the FDA’s shifting political winds. At its core, AB 260 is both a legal and moral statement—that access to abortion medication is not a privilege to be defended in court, but a right to be protected in law. For anyone navigating pregnancy in hostile states, California’s message carries weight and relief: You can seek care without fear that your name, your doctor’s name or your pharmacist’s name will be weaponized against you.

America Is an Increasingly Dangerous Place for Women and Girls 

In America’s hyper-macho, gun-drenched culture, growing up female has never been safe. But under the Trump administration, America is becoming a much more dangerous place for women and girls.

America is dangerous for women and girls because our leaders choose to make it so. The Trump administration has already begun blocking access to abortion and Medicaid coverage for reproductive health, as well as targeting the rights of pregnant people within the 2023 Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

Already, the macho culture of the U.S. has steadily made women’s safety in the nation decline. Around 41 percent of women in the U.S. have experienced sexual violence, while a third of women reported severe assault by a husband or boyfriend. The normalization of gun violence and violent pornography have also run rampant across the country, making America more dangerous day by day.

Americans Oppose Criminalizing Abortion. Too Many Policymakers Aren’t Listening.

Since the Supreme Court decided on Dobbs v. Jackson and overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, more than half of U.S. states have passed laws that dramatically restrict and criminalize abortion. These laws assign criminal penalties—including fines and prison time—not only to healthcare providers who provide abortions or write prescriptions for abortion pills, but in some cases, also to people who assist abortion seekers. Yet, a growing body of research suggests these punitive measures do not reflect the views of most Americans.