More Than A Magazine, A Movement
The Perfect Birth: Pushing Back Against a Broken Industry, by Avital Norman Nathman, with Deborah Wage, vigorously challenges the Heritage assessment and zeroes in on maternity care voids (sometimes called maternity care deserts) throughout the country.
Nathman and Wage spoke to Ms. reporter Eleanor J. Bader shortly before the book’s release.
The Trump administration has gotten rather … hormonal. As someone who cares deeply about the science and politics of all kinds of bodily matters, including and especially hormonal health and treatments, it is a truly bizarre exercise to unpack the latest news.
Last week, the defense secretary took to the airwaves to announce new mandatory screening of testosterone levels for all military members over 30, arguing the need to “optimize performance,” “combat Operator Syndrome” (a physical and behavioral condition uniquely attributed to soldiers who undergo intense training) and “maximize mission readiness.” Anyone deemed testosterone-deficient will be offered hormone therapy, presumably including the 230,000 women in active-duty service — who presumably may seek access to estrogen, progesterone and/or testosterone (hard to say given that women were not mentioned).
But of course, debate over optimal hormonal health is hardly the point. Only the most jacked-up soldiers fulfill Hegseth’s military fever dream — which he has made clear is devoid of women, whom he wants removed from combat roles altogether (he also has continued to block promotions of active-duty female Naval officers). The Trump administration has already banned transgender soldiers, at least based in part on the theory that their hormone treatments (though, in this case, they’d call it gender-affirming care, with a sneer) would be challenging to sustain.
It is not easy for me to put aside Hegseth’s distorted recasting of testosterone. That said, it happens to be true that federal regulatory guidelines for its usage are in need of an update and upgrade. As a menopause advocate, I fight hard for a world in which accessible, affordable hormonal care and treatment is a priority for all.
Picture a map of the United States. It’s 2022, and in southern states like Texas and Tennessee, there are clusters of black dots that represent independent clinic closures. These are abortion care black holes: communities where it’s no longer possible to get an abortion at a nearby clinic.
Fast forward to present. It’s 2026, four years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and black dots have multiplied in states across the country. It no longer matters if the state is red or blue, governed by conservatives or progressives. None are immune to the increasing weight of political pressure, financial strain and operational difficulty that are forcing independent clinics to close or stop providing abortion care.
Each of these black dots is a community suffering a healthcare crisis, and they are proliferating across the United States at a rapid rate.
Independent clinics are often the only places to get clinical abortion care, unbiased information and support for pregnancy options. They are where people go to feel safe and respected, whether they are getting an abortion, continuing a pregnancy or getting gender-affirming care. In small towns and rural spaces, these clinics are often the only safe place for many people, especially those who are LGBTQIA+. If clinics close, there is often nowhere else to go.
And once abortion clinics close, it’s not as simple as reopening when they can, if they can. Even if a specific restriction is lifted, severe financial constraints, continued political hostility, threats of violence and legal uncertainty still stand.
Few medical advances have saved more lives than vaccines. Yet the Trump administration continues to undermine that success by politicizing public health and discrediting decades of scientific evidence. The recent flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base—which sickened nearly 300 service members after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ended the military’s longstanding flu vaccine requirement—offers a stark reminder of what happens when ideology replaces evidence.
This is not an isolated incident. From weakening federal vaccine recommendations under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to fueling distrust in routine immunizations, the administration’s anti-science agenda is already contributing to preventable outbreaks and declining vaccination rates.
Public health should never be a partisan project, and the costs of treating it as one are measured in illness, lost readiness and lives put at unnecessary risk.
We’ve been here before.
When Dobbs v. Jackson came for abortion care in our states, we did two things: We opened clinics across state lines so our patients would still have a legal option. And we stayed. We kept our original clinics open, expanding the care we’d always offered or always wanted to offer.
When U.S. v. Skrmetti came for gender-affirming care, we kept providing that too, because abortion care patients and transgender patients are not separate communities.
The calculation patients make before they walk through the door is identical for both communities: Will I be seen? Will I be safe? Will the person across from me treat my body with humanity, or like a problem to be managed?
June marks anniversaries of both Dobbs and Skrmetti, and that conviction has never felt more urgent. Long before these two cases, the intersection of abortion rights and trans rights was already living in our waiting rooms; in the patients who received reproductive care and gender-affirming hormone therapy under the same roof; in the person who drove hours across the state because we were the only provider they trusted; and in those who trust us with their whole-person care because their grandmothers, mothers, sisters, aunts and friends have relied on our clinics for care for 50 years.
Between our two organizations, we’ve earned a century’s worth of experience at the practice of staying and enduring. CHOICES has kept their doors open for 52 years, and the Women’s Health Centers of West Virginia and Maryland will celebrate 50 years of care on June 24—the same day Roe v. Wade was overturned four years ago.
Support independent clinics in hard places keeping the doors open. And when the next fight comes, show up for the communities under pressure. Remember that those targeted first won’t be the last, but they will be the ones to lead the way.
Four years after Dobbs, it’s clear that reproductive freedom is not an abstract political issue. It is the freedom to build a life.
This week, we’re launching The Majority campaign—and we want you in it. The ask is simple: Finish the sentence, “Access to reproductive choices gave me the freedom to …”
The responses so far are from women and men, parents and nonparents, abortion patients and birth control users, people who needed miscarriage care, gender-affirming healthcare, fertility treatment, or simply the ability to decide their own future.
These are some of the stories we can’t stop thinking about.
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 month: news from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Denmark, Mexico and more.
The United States is one of only seven countries lacking a federal mandate for paid maternal or family leave. Within the country, only 13 states and D.C. have paid family and medical leave programs, acting as a lifeline for families.
Often considered by lawmakers to be a program too expensive to start, it’s the cost of inaction that lawmakers should be concerned with, according to Dawn Huckelbridge, executive producer of a new short film Lifelines and founding director of Paid Leave for All.
“A lot of people miss their baby’s first smile. … They’re not there to hold their parent’s hand because they can’t get the time off work. … However it is funded in the long run, it is putting money back into the economy. It is saving jobs.”
Title X is the federal program that funds family planning and reproductive health services nationwide—and under President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for 2027, it would be effectively eliminated, reshaping access to care for women across the country.
What is perhaps most jarring, on close reading, is not only what the budget proposes, but how it speaks. The language throughout the administration’s budget and HHS documents departs from traditional bureaucratic norms, adopting a tone that is at times openly mocking and vilifying. Programs serving women, LGBTQ people and marginalized communities are described in terms that signal not just opposition, but disdain. It is a stark reminder that federal budgets do more than allocate resources—they reflect who this government is for, and who it is not.
(This essay is part of an ongoing Ms. series examining the real-world impact of President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget. Across sectors—from healthcare and childcare to immigration enforcement and food assistance—the series explores what the administration’s funding priorities reveal about who government serves, and who it leaves behind.)
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.”