Maternal Health

The health of women during pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period should be a positive experience. However, the United States is plagued by a maternal health crisis, in which the U.S. continues to have the highest rate of maternal deaths of any high-income nation. Maternal mortality and morbidity rates are particularly high for women of color.

The War on Drugs Was a War on Black Mothers

PUBLISHED 9/29/2025 by

In the late 20th century, the so-called “crack baby epidemic” became a media obsession. Politicians, prosecutors and even physicians bought into a false narrative: that poor Black women who used cocaine during pregnancy were dooming their children to lives of permanent brain damage, misery and crime. The stories were sensational—and wrong. What these accounts ignored were the actual conditions of women’s lives: poverty, lack of healthcare, untreated trauma and mental illness. Instead of compassion, women like Regina McKnight—raped, grieving, depressed and self-medicating—were met with prosecution, prison sentences and public shaming.

The truth is, there was no epidemic of “biologically inferior” babies. Rigorous scientific research—largely disregarded by mainstream media—showed that cocaine exposure did not cause the catastrophic outcomes predicted by pundits. Yet the racialized panic over “crack babies” justified criminalizing pregnancy, targeting Black mothers, and fueling the broader war on drugs. These myths, and the policies they spawned, continue to shape how our legal and healthcare systems treat women—especially women of color—today.

[An excerpt from Michele Goodwin’s book Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.]

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The road to recovery—and the right to recovery—is essential to a free and fair democracy. This essay is part of a new multimedia collection exploring the intersections of addiction, recovery and gender justice. The Right to Recovery Is Essential to Democracy is a collaboration between Ms. and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health at Georgetown Law, in honor of National Recovery Month.

Twenty-Five Years of Mifepristone: How Activists Brought the Abortion Pill to America and Changed Reproductive Health Forever

PUBLISHED 9/25/2025 by

At the urging of antiabortion advocates and politicians, and based on a flawed and biased report put out by an antiabortion group, the Trump administration announced the launch of a new review of mifepristone—despite 100 peer-reviewed scientific studies proving the safety and efficacy of these medications and safe use by over 7.5 million U.S. women.

On the 25th anniversary of FDA approval of mifepristone, reproductive rights supporters are celebrating the creative, determined and courageous advocates who brought this medication to market.

One organization that played a critical role in bringing mifepristone, known as RU-486, to the United States was the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF)—today the publisher of Ms.

The Antiabortion Movement’s Decades-Long Goal Achieved: Planned Parenthood Defunded

PUBLISHED 9/24/2025 by

Republicans have finally achieved a decades-long goal: defunding Planned Parenthood. In July, President Trump signed a spending bill that blocks Medicaid reimbursements and federal grants for nonprofit health centers that provide abortions—including Planned Parenthood—even though federal law already prohibits Medicaid from covering abortion. The result is that more than a million low-income and disabled patients who rely on Planned Parenthood for contraception, STI testing, and cancer screenings can no longer use their insurance there. Hundreds of clinics across the country are expected to close, and in many communities, there are no alternatives waiting to replace them.

What does this mean in practice?

It means people like Colleen—who discovered she had breast cancer because of an affordable visit to Planned Parenthood—will face new barriers to care.

It means patients who already struggle to cover basic expenses will be asked to pay out-of-pocket for lifesaving services.

And it means thousands of people living in rural or medically underserved areas may have no nearby provider at all.

The political fight over Planned Parenthood has always been framed as a battle about abortion, but the immediate impact is much broader: fewer clinics, fewer screenings, and fewer chances to catch disease before it’s too late.

IVF Promises, Healthcare Cuts: The New Reproductive Hypocrisy

PUBLISHED 9/23/2025 by

In today’s political landscape, fertility has become a brand—plastered across speeches and press releases as a symbol of family values and new life. But behind the fanfare (and empty promises) of IVF expansion lies a much darker truth: Healthcare systems are collapsing, maternity wards are closing, and protections against toxic chemicals are being rolled back. The result is a reproductive paradox in which women are pushed to give birth in environments that are increasingly hostile to their survival.

This is not a coherent pro-family agenda. It is chaos disguised as care—fertility promoted when politically useful, maternal health ignored when inconvenient, and science dismissed when it interferes with corporate interests. Families are promised new beginnings, but stripped of the very resources needed to support them.

Until mothers and children are placed at the center of policy—not as props but as the purpose—the reproductive hypocrisy will persist.

Your Future on Ice: Why Younger Women Are Freezing Eggs—and What They Often Don’t Know

PUBLISHED 9/23/2025 by , and

Egg freezing allows fertility preservation even if you are not ready to be pregnant now, allowing you to take matters into your own hands. It enables you to preserve your ability to have genetically-related children later in life, while freeing you for other pursuits such as careers, seeking increased financial stability or simply finding the right partner without the pressure of the biological clock. It may permit women who partnered later in life to have a second or third child, even if conceiving the first child is uncomplicated.

Ideally, it is best to consider egg-freezing when you are under 35 to maximize both egg quality and quantity. The challenge for younger patients is freezing eggs at a point where you get maximum success without overkill. If there is still a high probability that a woman will conceive naturally, the time and money dedicated to egg freezing may be best spent elsewhere. The goal of freezing eggs is to ensure a high probability of success in the future, but not to freeze so early as to render the time, effort and expense unnecessary. In our estimation, between ages 31 and 34 is a sweet spot to freeze: early enough to avoid a decline in quality, but late enough to be potentially useful. We can freeze eggs earlier, but there is a reasonable chance you aren’t going to need them after all.

After Losing Two Babies, a Family Wrestled with Grief—Not Jail. Would Texas’ New Law Change That?

PUBLISHED 9/21/2025 by

What would you do if your pregnant wife learned that the baby you both desperately wanted was doomed to die just minutes after birth?

Suppose your baby had a fatal condition that prevented lung development, leaving no chance for survival—and that your only opportunity to hold the child alive would be as it gasped for air, turned blue and died in your arms.

Would you follow the wishes of Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton—two men who know nothing about you or your family—and remain in Texas, risking your wife’s health and future fertility in service of their political party’s abortion bans that have no exceptions for babies with fatal fetal anomalies?

The War on Children

PUBLISHED 9/5/2025 by

American children die at stunning rates because of policy choices, and mostly because of policy choices made by the “pro-life” right.

The Republican Party has long claimed the mantle of defending life. The new Republican Party has promised to make America healthy again. Instead, they’re leaving kids sick and dead.

This is a war on children. It is also a war on women. The “women and children” framing can feel incredibly condescending, but the truth is that women’s and children’s lives and wellbeing are indelibly intertwined. Women make children with our bodies; if we are not well, they are not well. Women still do most of the work of raising and nurturing children; if they are not well, we are not well. This does not apply to every single woman on earth. But it applies to women as a class, and to children as a class.

Trump’s IVF Walkback Opens the Door to a Catholic ‘Alternative’

PUBLISHED 9/3/2025 by | UPDATED 10/13/2025 at 9:03 P.M. PT

When Donald Trump anointed himself the “father of IVF” on the campaign trail, he promised to expand insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization—a move that was more pronatalist than pro-choice. In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order to explore reducing insurance-plan and out-of-pocket costs for IVF without a national insurance mandate. Now, reports indicate that the “father of IVF” is walking back his campaign promise just as a religiously motivated “alternative” threatens to enter mainstream medicine and be codified into law.

How Texas Abortion Restrictions Are Driving Doctors Away: ‘By Following the Law, I Was Doing the Wrong Thing Medically’

PUBLISHED 9/2/2025 by

Texas’ abortion bans have driven hundreds of physicians to leave the state, retire early, or avoid practicing and training there altogether. Dr. Lou Rubino is one of many doctors forced out, unable to provide not only abortion care but also life-saving emergency treatment.

“I remember very clearly the moment I knew I was done. I could no longer practice as a women’s healthcare doctor in Texas.

“I had a patient, probably 18 or 19 years old. I was doing an ultrasound, and she told me she needed an abortion for her safety. She said, ‘I’m too young. I don’t feel safe with my partner. I’m scared. I need an abortion.’

“When a patient tells me they feel unsafe with a partner, I take that very seriously. Pregnant people are at high risk of harm from abusive partners. It’s a dangerous time. She knew what she needed, and I knew it was wrong for me to say no. … I asked myself: Am I the kind of doctor who does the wrong thing? I’m not. And Texas couldn’t force me to be.

“Not long after, my husband and I moved to Virginia, where I now practice.”

Finding the Power in Single Black Motherhood

PUBLISHED 8/24/2025 by

We can say, “We knew this would happen,” and tell Black single mothers, “I told you so,” all day long, but then what? There’s something hollow in the phrase—especially when it follows public documentation of abuse.

If we are people who truly believe that Halle Bailey, Keke Palmer and Skai Jackson deserved better, then we should be extending that same belief to the women we actually know.

(This essay is part of a collection presented by Ms. and the Groundswell Fund highlighting the work of Groundswell partners advancing inclusive democracy.)