Pregnancy

These stories cover pregnancy in its relation to legislation and sex discrimination, abortion access, parenting and everything in between. Because of U.S. laws that put fetuses’ health above the fundamental human rights of pregnant people, they are often treated as second-class citizens.

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.

Trump Considers Blocking Abortion Access for Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors in Federal Custody (Again)

PUBLISHED 4/4/2026 by and

A looming policy change threatens to undo existing protections and leave pregnant immigrant teens in federal custody without meaningful access to abortion care.

We won’t know what direction the rule will take until the proposed rule is released, but if the Trump administration’s antiabortion policies—such as the reinstatement of the Veterans Administration’s ban on abortion and abortion counseling, the defunding of Planned Parenthood and the reinstatement of an expanded global gag rule—are any indication, the rights of this marginalized population are at great risk.

Abortion Provider Challenges Colorado Parental Notification Law Under 1972 ERA and 2024 Right to Abortion Amendment

PUBLISHED 3/25/2026 by

As Republicans ever more relentlessly attack abortion rights in states across the country, women’s rights advocates are rediscovering underutilized state equal rights amendments (ERAs) and using newly passed abortion rights amendments to state constitutions to challenge longstanding barriers to abortion in blue states.

Colorado is now ground zero for that fight, where Dr. Rebecca Cohen is challenging a state law requiring young women under the age of 18 to notify a parent 48 hours before accessing an abortion or navigate the courts to obtain permission to access this basic care.

Some legislators who voted for the Colorado parental notification law explicitly said they hoped it would be a deterrent to young women engaging in sexual activity—“but nobody seems very invested in their partners paying a price for it,” said Rupali Sharma, litigation co-director of The Lawyering Project, which represents Cohen.

 “Not only is the state trying to coerce you to carry your pregnancy to term, but it’s treating you fundamentally differently than your male partner, who has also participated in bringing this pregnancy along,” said Sharma. 

Keeping Score: Trump Attacks Iran, Pressures Senate Republicans to Pass ‘Show Your Papers’ Voter Registration Bill; States Expand Access to Childcare and Paid Leave

PUBLISHED 3/19/2026 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:
—Dolores Huerta breaks her silence at 96: “I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor.”
—Trump pressures Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, a “show your papers” policy that would require U.S. citizens to show a passport or birth certificate in order to register to vote.
—A performative personnel exchange at DHS: from Kristi Noem … to Markwayne Mullin?
—The U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, killing at least 1,332 people.
—March 10 is Abortion Provider Appreciation Day.
—DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was fired, as ICE reports 32 deaths in detention facilities in 2025.
—Access to early prenatal care is declining in the U.S., especially in states with abortion bans.
—A record one-third of American workers not have access to government-mandated paid leave.
—The U.S. deported a gay woman to Morocco, where her sexuality is illegal and she faces violence from her family.
—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed gender-affirming mental healthcare for trans youth is “child abuse.”
—New Mexico and New York take steps towards free universal childcare.
—Jessie Buckley took home the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her role in Hamnet. The film was directed by Chloé Zhao, one of nine women to ever be nominated for the award of Best Director and the only woman nominated this year.

… and more.

Pregnancy Care Includes Abortion, Whether We Admit It or Not

PUBLISHED 3/17/2026 by

Here’s what I know as an OB-GYN: Any book about birth that ignores abortion access isn’t just incomplete—it’s dangerous.

I also know that any person researching birth plans needs to know how state laws could limit their care during a pregnancy complication, even if they never imagined needing an abortion. Even if they self-identify as being staunchly antiabortion. 

This is precisely why I talk about abortion in my book, a book meant for people who want to have a baby.

Ms. Global: Iranian Girls’ School Hit in U.S.-Israeli Strikes, Taliban Legalize Domestic Violence, The Netherlands’ First Gay Prime Minister, and More

PUBLISHED 3/5/2026 by and | UPDATED 3/22/2026 at 4:55 P.M. PT

The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to healthcare. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This week: stories from Iran, Afghanistan, the Netherlands and more.

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.

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.”

Josh and Erin Hawley’s ‘Love Life Initiative’ Signals a New Phase of the Antiabortion Fight

PUBLISHED 2/18/2026 by | UPDATED 2/20/2026 at 7:34 A.M. PT

Erin and Josh Hawley’s new dark-money group, the Love Life Initiative, arrives at a moment when abortion opponents are shifting tactics. With Roe overturned and sweeping bans already in place across much of the country, the focus is now on cutting off the remaining paths to care—through ballot measures, advertising campaigns and state-level policy fights designed to reshape public opinion and law from the ground up. The Hawleys frame this effort as a moral crusade to restore a national “culture of life.”

But in practice, it is an escalation of a post-Dobbs strategy that has already restricted access across wide swaths of the United States.

The consequences of that strategy are increasingly stark. Pregnant women in states with abortion bans are dying after being denied care, and people living in those states face significantly higher risks during pregnancy, with women of color bearing the brunt.

At the same time, public support for abortion rights has grown, and abortion-protective states have moved to shield providers and patients from out-of-state enforcement.

The Love Life Initiative reflects a movement determined not only to defend its legal victories but to reverse that growing acceptance—by reshaping the political and cultural terrain on which the abortion debate now unfolds.