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.

Why Is the Trump Administration Destroying Almost $10 Million of Contraceptives?

PUBLISHED 7/16/2025 by

After the richest man in the world shuttered the U.S. agency that provides aid for the world’s poorest, the government is now going to spend money destroying the contraceptives, medications and food items it chose not to distribute.

This includes $9.7 million in contraceptives that were bound for crisis areas—places like refugee camps and war zones. It includes $800,000 worth of high-energy biscuits, a kind of emergency food aid for people in the direst of circumstances—and enough of it to feed 1.5 million children for a week.

To be clear, all of these items have already been paid for by U.S. tax dollars. The Trump administration is about to spend more money to destroy them.

Women’s Health Needs Are Ever-Changing. It’s Time for Flexible Benefits That Meet Us Where We Are.

PUBLISHED 7/15/2025 by

With traditional group insurance, employees typically have just a few plans to choose from, none of which are a guaranteed fit. As a result, many women are forced onto a plan that fails to meet their medical needs, leaving them with high costs but still missing the support that matters most.

By switching group insurance to an Individual coverage health reimbursement arrangement (ICHRA), companies can provide the flexible and affordable benefits that meet women where they are. 

One-size-fits-all group insurance, selected by employers, no longer makes sense for female employees with unique and ever-evolving health needs. As employers across sectors embrace this new, flexible approach, more women stand to benefit from customizable coverage.

Virginia’s ‘Momnibus’ Is More Than a Set of Laws—It’s a Call to America to Protect Mothers Now

PUBLISHED 7/14/2025 by

The United States has long failed to adequately support its expecting mothers. Across the country, pregnant women face increasing barriers to essential care, resources and mental health support. Rates of postpartum depression are on the rise, maternal mental health is plummeting, childbirth-related death rates are climbing and women of color continue to suffer disproportionately due to entrenched racial disparities. The maternal health crisis is urgent—and long overdue for meaningful change.

Virginia took a significant step forward late last month, signing into effect a bundle of new laws and precautions created to improve maternal healthcare and offer support to pregnant women statewide. The legislation, dubbed the Virginia Momnibus, was championed by Democratic government officials, including Virginia state Delegates Don Scott and Destiny LeVere Bolling, and signals a historic step forward in Virginia’s approach to maternal health. 

We take a closer look at some of these measures.

America’s Healthcare Crisis Is Coming for All Women

PUBLISHED 7/11/2025 by and | UPDATED 8/21/2025 at 9:09 A.M. PT

Less access to healthcare—either by cutting Medicaid benefits or discouraging doctors from practicing in restrictive states—will affect antiabortion and pro-abortion women equally.

This is about far more than abortion. There will be more maternal deaths. There will be more deaths from cervical and breast cancer. More women will die from complications of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. There will be more suffering from infertility, endometriosis and fibroids.

Does anyone in power care? We certainly do. And we better make sure our voices are heard. All of our lives depend on it.

An Open Letter to Rep. Kat Cammack From a Medical Doctor: It’s Abortion Bans That Make Doctors Afraid to Act, Not ‘the Radical Left’

PUBLISHED 7/10/2025 by | UPDATED 8/5/2025 at 11:19 A.M. PT

No woman may escape the cruelty of the nebulous and varying restrictions on reproductive healthcare in the post-Roe world—as Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) discovered in May 2024 when faced with a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy shortly after Florida’s six-week abortion ban took effect. Concerned by the lack of clarity in the wording of the law on the limits of intervention in pregnant patients, doctors reportedly delayed administering intramuscular methotrexate to terminate the pregnancy, out of fear of prosecution.

I’m a doctor. In this chaotic landscape, where reproductive healthcare policy and medical reality appear woefully divorced, my colleagues and I don’t know what misstep could land us in senseless litigation or with felony charges.

Rep. Cammack, your voice and your story have power. I hope you use them to reintroduce nuance and common sense to the discussion on women’s lives. There are many of us who will extend a hand across the aisle and work together with you to right some of the senseless wrongs. 

Biotech CEOs to FDA: Don’t Let Politics Override Science on Abortion Pill

PUBLISHED 7/10/2025 by

Fifty-three biotechnology industry leaders and investors representing dozens of companies and organizations issued a letter late last month advising the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Follow the science on mifepristone, not political ideology.

The Biotech CEO Sisterhood initiated the letter, with Grace Colón as lead author and dozens of senior biotechnology leaders signed on in support. “We are urging the agency and the department to continue to follow the science,” said Colón, who warned that political interference in drug regulation undermines both public trust and the FDA’s authority.

The Minnesota Shooting Wasn’t Random—It Was a Predictable Resurgence of Violence

PUBLISHED 7/9/2025 by and

Minnesota experienced an act of devastating political violence last month: Former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, were killed in their home. State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette are recovering from life-saving surgeries after shielding their adult daughter from the gunman.

In recent years, we’ve seen attacks escalate against elected officials across the political spectrum. However, we must recognize that Hortman, Hoffman and the other targets on the gunman’s list are uniquely vulnerable because of the way that we treat abortion: We isolate abortion from mainstream care, in law and practice; and we exclude it from insurance coverage, hospital systems and routine medical training.

By treating abortion as unsafe and morally suspect, rather than as legitimate medicine, we further normalize hostility towards it, its providers, and the policymakers who uphold access to it.

Trump Is Ending Temporary Protected Status for Haitian Refugees. Here’s What That Means for Women.

PUBLISHED 7/6/2025 by

The Trump administration announced late last month it will terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian refugees in the United States. As a result of this decision, thousands of Haitian immigrants with legal status will become undocumented and eligible for deportation in September.

Women and girls face the brunt of violence in Haiti. Without TPS, Haitian women will be arrested by ICE, detained and eventually returned to a country where gangs frequently use sexual violence against women and girls to terrorize communities and gain control.

In 2024, the U.N. logged more than 6,400 cases of gender-based violence in Haiti.

Americans Want a Feminist Future—But in Order to Make it Happen, We Have to Rethink Our Entire Political System  

PUBLISHED 7/4/2025 by

Donald Trump has insisted that he has a “mandate” from voters to peddle his wildly unpopular policies—and, apparently, to stop at nothing to enforce them. But in reality, Americans by and large want a feminist future.

I talked to experts in gender and politics about the promise of a truly representative democracy—and what it will take for feminists to build one. The first episode of the brand-new Ms. podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward digs into the history and future of the feminist fight for both political representation and political power. The experts I spoke to for the episode reminded me that feminists have the power to redefine our democracy—and that rumors of our defeat have been greatly exaggerated.

Listen to the newest Ms. podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward—available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Will Create a Disaster for Rural Mothers and Babies

PUBLISHED 7/3/2025 by | UPDATED 8/21/2025 at 9:10 A.M. PT

Women and babies who live in areas that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump are likely to suffer some of the Big Beautiful Bill’s most sweeping and damaging effects.

The historically brutal Medicaid cuts—a staggering $930 billion slashed from the program over the next decade—could force as many as 144 rural hospitals around the U.S. to close their labor-and-delivery units or drastically scale back services.