More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Find stories here about healthcare in all its forms, including abortion and contraceptive care. Healthcare is a human right, and there are feminist providers and activists around the world working to ensure access for everyone across different income levels and identities.
President Trump’s first seven weeks back in office have been spent abandoning the American people—tearing apart vital programs, withholding funds that save lives and purging the federal workforce. Last Tuesday, he addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time in his second term. Throughout the speech, he boasted about abandoning international agreements, expediting environmental deregulation and gutting federal resources.
Hansen’s disease, also called leprosy, is treatable today—and that’s partly thanks to a curious tree and the work of a pioneering young scientist Alice Ball in the 1920s. She laid fundamental groundwork for the first effective leprosy treatment globally. But her legacy still prompts conversations about the marginalization of women and people of color in science today.
The Trump administration’s sudden dismantling of nearly all foreign aid, including the work carried out by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has upended the government agency’s longtime strategic role in implementing American foreign policy.
USAID is a government agency that, for more than 63 years, has led the United States’ foreign aid work on disaster recovery, poverty reduction and democratic reforms in many developing and middle-income countries. USAID’s budget has always been small—but USAID’s projects have had an outsized effect on the world.
Republicans’ proposed Medicaid cuts would strip healthcare from millions, including half of U.S. children, one in five Americans, and 40 percent of all pregnant women.
With so much at stake for America’s women and families, representatives in Congress should be working to strengthen and expand Medicaid and the coverage it provides, rather than decimate a program that touches the lives of over two-thirds of this country. The fact that these cuts are even proposed, let alone have passed, is a sign that we are in an unprecedented moment of extremism.
When a war forcibly displaces tens of thousands of people, UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, equips displacement camps and medical personnel with critical supplies—including condoms, oral and injectable contraceptives, contraceptives implants and intrauterine devices.
When an earthquake tumbles whole city blocks, UNFPA puts contraceptives onto emergency relief convoys, alongside kits for delivering babies and medicines to stop internal bleeding.
When a cyclone slashes through remote island communities, UNFPA sends contraceptives just as it sends sterile medical equipment.
Why? Because contraceptives are part of life-saving humanitarian care.
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.
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:
—A judge in Indiana has temporarily ruled to protect doctors from being forced to share abortion records with the government.
—Idaho became the sixth state to consider murder charges for abortion patients.
—U.S. District Judge Adam B. Abelson temporarily halted the Trump administration’s termination of DEI programs.
… and more.
The impact of climate change exacerbates health risks and discrimination for people with albinism, particularly women, who face unique challenges in healthcare and education.
“This larger fight is really a global fight and continental fight against the dominance of ableism,” said Sarah Bosha, lawyer and co-author of a new study, “The Forgotten Ones: The Impact of Climate Change on the Health and Well-being of Persons with Albinism.”
Abortion laws are affecting how physicians treat pregnancy loss and other complications because the procedures used in these cases are also used for abortions. We spoke to women who survived terrifying experiences, and we interviewed family members of those who died without care. They all felt unprepared as they entered emergency rooms, unaware of how abortion laws were reaching into pregnancy care.
They wished they had known what to expect and how to advocate for themselves and their loved ones.
We created this guide for them and anyone who finds themselves in the same position.
ProPublica’s investigation reveals that Texas’ abortion ban has led to a sharp rise in life-threatening complications, particularly sepsis, for women experiencing pregnancy loss.
Since the ban’s enactment, the rate of sepsis during second-trimester pregnancy loss has surged by over 50 percent, and maternal deaths in Texas hospitals have increased significantly, even as the national maternal mortality rate declined. Doctors cite the law’s vague emergency exception and the threat of legal consequences as key reasons for dangerous delays in care.
While some Texas lawmakers now acknowledge the need for legal clarifications, the Republican-controlled legislature remains divided, with some pushing for even stricter abortion penalties.