Pregnancy Loss and Miscarriage

After Years of Silence, Texas Medical Board Issues Training for Doctors on How to Legally Provide Abortions

PUBLISHED 4/23/2026 by , and

For the first time since Texas criminalized abortion, the state’s medical regulator has instructed doctors on when they can legally terminate a pregnancy to protect the life of the patient—guidance physicians long sought as women died and doctors feared imprisonment for intervening.

The new training from the Texas Medical Board was released nearly five years after the state passed its strict abortion ban in 2021, threatening doctors with severe penalties. Pregnancy became far more dangerous in the state after the law took effect: Sepsis rates spiked for women suffering a pregnancy loss, as did emergency room visits in which miscarrying patients needed a blood transfusion; at least four women in the state died after they didn’t receive timely reproductive care. More than a hundred OB-GYNs said the state’s abortion ban was to blame.

The new medical training, which ProPublica obtained under a public records request, assures doctors they can now legally provide abortions, even when a patient’s life isn’t imminently in danger, and goes over nine example scenarios, including a patient’s water breaking before term and complications from an incomplete abortion. 

But medical and legal experts who reviewed the training said the case studies represent only the most straightforward situations doctors encounter. The complications that women face in pregnancy are varied, complex and impossible to capture in a brief presentation, many cautioned. One attorney called the training “the bare minimum.”

Say Their Names: The Women Who Died After Being Denied Emergency Abortion Care

PUBLISHED 4/4/2026 by

We know the names of nine women who have died after doctors denied them life-saving care because of fears they would be criminally prosecuted under abortion bans: Josseli Barnica, Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, Amber Nicole Thurman, Candi Miller, Porsha Ngumezi, Taysha Wilkinson-Sobieski, Nevaeh Crain, Tierra Walker and Ciji Graham.

At least three least three more women—all unnamed at this time—died between October 2022 and July 2024 as a result of denied or delayed emergency abortion care, according to a March 2025 study released in academic journal CHEST.

In all, public health experts estimate that abortion bans have led to the deaths of at least 59 women—but we may never know their names.

In a lawsuit involving denial of emergency care to pregnant women, the National Women’s Law Center filed a brief documenting more than 100 cases of women almost dying when hospitals denied emergency medical care because of abortion bans—though “the true number [of cases] is likely significantly higher,” according to the brief.

Congress should move to pass two critical protections: The Women’s Health Protection Act, which would establish a statutory right for healthcare providers to offer abortion services and for patients to receive them; and the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH) Act, which would ensure that every person who receives healthcare or insurance through the federal government will have coverage for abortion services.

Senate Blocks Effort to Restore Abortion Access for Veterans

PUBLISHED 3/13/2026 by | UPDATED 3/30/2026 at 10:21 A.M. PT

In the final days of 2025, under the cover of the holidays, Trump’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) instated a total ban on abortion and abortion counseling.

The new policy applies to all VA healthcare facilities across the U.S., including in states where abortion remains legal. As a result, the VA now has “one of the strictest abortion bans in the country,” according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

In late January, Sens. Patty Murray, Richard Blumenthal, Chuck Schumer and Democratic members of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee introduced a joint Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution—an oversight tool through which Congress can overturn rules issued by federal agencies, by a simple majority—to nullify the administration’s abortion and abortion counseling exclusion.

Garnering a same-day endorsement by an array of veterans’, medical, women’s, and reproductive health and rights organizations, they urged “both chambers to act swiftly to overturn this extreme policy that puts veterans’ health and safety at risk.” 

A State of the State for Women: Taking Stock of the Fight for Democracy at Home and Abroad

PUBLISHED 3/5/2026 by

March’s Women’s History Month arrives at a moment when our rights, and democracy itself, feel newly precarious.

From feminist perspectives on the war in Iran, where women and girls remain at the forefront of resistance, to the troubling parallels between authoritarian crackdowns abroad and the rollback of reproductive rights here in the United States, the throughline is hard to ignore: Democracy rises and falls with women’s movements and mobilization.

Taking stock of the moment, I’m highlighting reporting and analysis that help make sense of where we are now—from the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes in places like El Salvador, to new data revealing stark disparities in women’s well-being across U.S. states.

At the same time, as the country approaches its 250th anniversary, initiatives like Ms.’ FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists remind us that women’s ideas, resistance and organizing have always been central to the project of democracy—and remain essential to its future.

War on Women Report: Kentucky Woman Arrested for Miscarriage; Kansas Anti-Trans Bill Takes Effect; Polls Show Most U.S. Women Disapprove of Trump

PUBLISHED 2/27/2026 by and

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:
—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Delaware abortion provider Debra Lynch, who operates the organization Her Safe Harbor, for allegedly mailing abortion pills into Texas.
—More than a year after seeking medical help for a miscarriage, Deann and Charles Bennett, a young couple in Booneville, Ky., have been arrested for alleged “reckless homicide.”
—Trump’s Department of Justice used the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, intended to protect abortion clinics from harassment, to prosecute journalist Don Lemon for attending an anti-ICE protest.
—The Trump administration withdrew a Biden-era rule that required pharmacies receiving federal funding to carry and dispense mifepristone, misoprostol and methotrexate.
—Arkansas’ near-total abortion ban is facing its first legal challenge since Dobbs. 
—Some good news from Cleveland: The Cleveland City Council passed Tanisha’s Law, creating a Community Crisis Response department to respond to non-violent mental health emergencies with trained, unarmed crisis teams.
—In a landmark victory for survivor accountability, an Arizona jury in Phoenix has ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million to Jaylynn Dean.
—Also in Arizona: Judge Gregory Como struck down several abortion restrictions, ruling them unconstitutional.

… and more.

Immigration Detention Is Failing Women and Children—By Design

PUBLISHED 2/26/2026 by

The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley has been the subject of an onslaught of headlines in recent weeks, but the truth is, it’s been routinely criticized for inhumane conditions for years. But what we are seeing now, as Trudy Taylor Smith put it to me, is horror “on a shocking scale.” Children describe being served worm-infested food and dirty water, getting little or no classroom time and being perpetually sick. A toddler nearly dies because of medical neglect. A teenage boy with symptoms consistent with appendicitis is turned away by a nurse. There is no better way to describe it than state-sponsored child abuse.

If this isn’t stomach-churning enough, consider what is happening a few hours south, where girls’ reproductive healthcare and freedom is also in grave crisis. Pregnant and unaccompanied migrant children are being sent to San Benito, Texas.

Why Texas? Why else? … Because it is a place where abortion is illegal and high-risk pregnancy care is unavailable.

“Putting pregnant kids in San Benito is not a decision you make when you care about children’s safety,” one source said plainly.

This is entirely by design, pulled straight from the Project 2025 playbook. The constant split-screen scene in Texas is representative of the nation MAGA wants us to be, “where the cruelty is the point” and where the anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-freedom banner is flown.

We have to keep these stories—and all the women and girls in this state, willingly or not—front and center in the democracy movement. Their humanity is at the heart of all of ours.

Keeping Score: Voters Disapprove of Kristi Noem and ICE; Winter Olympics Nears Gender Parity; Challenges to State Abortion Bans Continue

PUBLISHED 2/25/2026 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—“Kristi Noem sees immigrants like me as subhuman,” says Santiago Mayer, executive director of Voters of Tomorrow.
—A majority of U.S. voters think DHS Secretary Kristi Noem should be removed, and disagree with how ICE is operating.
—Women are 47 percent of athletes at the Winter Olympics in Milan.
—California Gov. Gavin Newsom fired back at threats from Louisiana over abortion protections.
—President Trump appointed no women of color to federal judgeships in his first year in office.
—A new Kansas law introduces a “bounty hunter” aspect to transphobic bathroom bills.
—Some ICE detention facilities and prisons refuse to provide appropriate menstrual products.
—A Kentucky couple was arrested over a year after seeking care for a miscarriage.
—A wave of “common sense” candidates, more than half women, recently won competitive school board races in swing states. Sixty-two percent of “extremist” candidates lost their elections, showing that culture war tactics like book bans may no longer resonate with local voters.

… and more.

Maya Shankar on Infertility, Surrogacy, and Choosing to Be Childfree

PUBLISHED 2/20/2026 by

Over 70 percent of Indian Americans support abortion access and reproductive rights. But you wouldn’t know it from the public conversation. We’re not testifying at hearings, writing op-eds or speaking openly about the messy, painful realities of our own reproductive lives. In a community that prizes privacy and propriety, the body remains one of the last taboo subjects—especially when it doesn’t cooperate.

Maya Shankar didn’t plan to break that silence. But then again, Shankar—a cognitive scientist, best-selling author and host of the award-winning podcast A Slight Change of Plans—has built her entire body of work around what happens when life refuses to follow the plan.

“There’s a special stigma reserved for childfree women,” she says. “And certainly that stigma holds in the South Asian community.”

“Society often says, ‘Always chase your dreams, never accept failure, keep going,'” she adds. “And there are limits on that.”

“It’s just an ongoing conversation,” she says. And then, without prompting: “I’m childfree today. And I feel more joyful and happy and peaceful than I ever have.”

‘I Needed to Know I Was Not the Only One’: Talking Honestly About Pregnancy Loss and Reproductive Grief

PUBLISHED 1/29/2026 by and

Award-winning cartoonist Chari Pere and award-winning author and psychologist Dr. Jessica Zucker are on a mission to normalize talking about the complexities of reproductive grief in order to help people feel less alone.

Reproductive grief encompasses the range of emotional, psychological and even physical responses that can follow experiences like miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility, termination for medical reasons or other disruptions in a person’s reproductive journey. It is a kind of loss that is often invisible to others but deeply felt—an ache shaped not only by what happened, but by what could have been. Despite how common it is, reproductive grief remains largely unspoken, shrouded in silence and shame.

As Wisconsin Democrats Push First-Ever Pregnancy Loss Protections, State Republicans Advance Embryo ‘Personhood’

PUBLISHED 1/17/2026 by

In late 2025, Wisconsin Senate Republicans passed SB553, a bill that defines embryos, fertilized eggs and fetuses as “unborn children” and “human beings” from the moment of fertilization. The bill passed with the support of every Republican senator and opposition from all Democrats. SB 553 also attempts to redefine the word “abortion,” asserting that a termination performed to prevent the death of a pregnant woman is not an abortion if it is not “designed or intended to kill the unborn child.”

Doctors also warn that SB 553 quietly functions as a personhood law by stating that once an egg is a human being from the moment of fertilization. By granting fertilized eggs status as human beings, the bill is giving those eggs legal rights which are equal to those of their pregnant mothers. While Gov. Tony Evers has said he will veto the bill if it reaches his desk, Wisconsin state Sen. Kelda Roys says its passage reveals Republican lawmakers’ intent.

Roys recently introduced the Pregnancy Loss Protection Act, the first bill of its kind in Wisconsin. Its goal is to prevent overzealous prosecutors or law enforcement officers from targeting people who experience miscarriage or stillbirth, while also pushing back against a broader Republican effort to confer legal personhood on embryos from the moment of fertilization.