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 Casualties of Title X Cuts: Cancer Screenings, Fertility Treatments and Sex Ed

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.

The Data We Don’t Collect Is Killing Women

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, at least 10 women have died as a direct result of their inability to access healthcare. But this number is only a guess, because there’s no single place that records and tracks these tragedies. And that’s not just an oversight—it’s a choice. At the same time, women seeking reproductive care are more digitally surveilled than ever before.

Without a national system to track the consequences of abortion bans, preventable deaths are disappearing into the void—by design.

Yes, America Should Make It Easier to Have Kids—But Trump Wants to Punish Childless and Single Women

The Trump administration wants to juice the birthrate. This isn’t surprising: Vice President JD Vance is an ardent pronatalist. So is shadow president Elon Musk, who seems to be working on populating Mars with his own progeny.

Abortion opponents, who make up a solid chunk of Trump’s base, want to see women have more babies whether we like it or not. Republicans and the Christian conservatives who elect them have generally been on the “be fruitful and multiply” side of things.

What’s different this time around, though, is that the Trump team is looking at carrots, not just sticks, in their baby-boom strategy. While the old way was to restrict abortion and make contraception harder to get, some of the proposals now include things like cash for kids, mommy medals, reserving scholarship program spots for young people who are married with children and (somewhat bizarrely) menstrual cycle education so women can figure out when they’re fertile and a national medal for motherhood for women with six or more children.

The administration is also considering policies that would effectively punish people for being single.

These Women Couldn’t Get Life-Saving Care. Now They’re Changing the Law.

A group of Texas women denied life-saving healthcare during their wanted pregnancies are feeling “cautiously optimistic” and “hopeful” after meeting with state legislators and urging changes to an abortion-related bill currently working its way through the legislature.

These women have been telling their devastating stories of life and loss for years. So why are they just starting to break through and spur legislative action from Republican lawmakers now?

“You have to keep repeating it. And so as painful as it is for me to relive those days and to relive my story, I will continue to do it for my daughter.”

Our Baby Was Bleeding. I Was Jobless. Medicaid Was Our Lifeline.

When I lost my job while on maternity leave, I never expected I’d soon be in a hospital while my infant underwent emergency surgery. As my life became a highwire act, Medicaid became a safety net for my family.

Our Medicaid plan provided 100 percent coverage for what would’ve been thousands of dollars in hospital and surgical bills. It covered my baby’s follow-up appointments with specialists and his prescription formula. It covered all of our basic health needs. It covered my therapy.

The U.S. Aid Freeze: Counting the Global Cost of Chaos

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On the first day of his second stint in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing all U.S. foreign assistance. Four days later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio halted foreign aid work already underway. Soon after that, Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and Rubio canceled 83 percent of its programs.

“Since Inauguration Day, I’d say the Trump administration has immediately gone to work in reckless, heartless and shameless ways that have attacked sexual and reproductive health and rights [and] LGBT rights,” said Caitlin Horrigan, senior director of global advocacy for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

‘Make Motherhood Great Again’: Pronatalism Finds a Comfortable Home in the Trump Administration

Once dismissed as fringe, pronatalism has moved into the mainstream—finding powerful champions in Trump, Vance and Musk, and gaining policy traction within the administration. Rooted in eugenics, antifeminism, and anti-immigrant sentiment, this ideology casts high birthrates as a patriotic duty and low fertility as a national threat.

Now, federal policies are beginning to reflect this dangerous worldview—one that sees women’s bodies as tools of the state and reproductive freedom as collateral damage.

South Carolina Wants to Block Medicaid Patients From Planned Parenthood. Will SCOTUS Let It?

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, a case that could determine whether Medicaid patients have the right to sue when states deny them access to qualified healthcare providers like Planned Parenthood.

While the legal question is narrow, a ruling in favor of South Carolina could embolden other states to cut off Medicaid funding for reproductive healthcare, disproportionately impacting low-income patients and people of color.