Women’s Health

Women everywhere deserve accessible, affordable and comprehensive healthcare. This includes reproductive healthcare like contraception, abortion, sex and relationship education, STI prevention and treatment, cancer screenings and counseling. However, lawmakers have long attempted to restrict or reduce this care in ways that harm women.

I’m a Texas-Born OB-GYN—But Abortion Bans Are Forcing Me Out

PUBLISHED 7/26/2025 by

Vi Burgess is a resident physician in Colorado, in training to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology. The Texas resident went to medical school in the Lone Star State, but says she’d be terrified to return home to practice medicine.

“I’d be terrified to go back to Texas to practice as an OB-GYN after I finish my residency. I’d be absolutely terrified. It’s not so much that I’d be terrified of getting thrown in jail, but terrified that I won’t be able to provide care to a woman—and that would lead to serious harm or death.

“I think that’s every doctor’s biggest fear—not being able to help and ultimately ending up hurting someone. But that’s the situation that OB-GYNs and other doctors are now in, in Texas.”

How Dare We Not: On the Feminist Future of Care 

PUBLISHED 7/24/2025 by

On July 30, Medicare and Medicaid turn 60. The anniversary probably won’t receive much celebration, not even a decent sheet cake at Costco. But for those of us who’ve ever been sick, broke or chronically both—and let’s be real, that’s most of us—these two programs are more than government policies. They are lifelines. Feminist infrastructure. Miracles wrapped in red tape. 

Medicaid and Medicare are the government’s half-hearted whisper of “okay, fine, you can live,” buried under broken fax machines and six hours of hold music—and still, they are miraculous. 

So let’s get to work with petitions, protests, poetry and better policy. When we fight for these programs, we’re not begging for scraps. We’re demanding infrastructure for care. We’re saying, Our dignity is not a rounding error. We are not too complicated or too expensive or too much. We are exactly the point. 

Happy birthday Medicaid and Medicare, the baddest Leos in American policy—dramatic, protective, always carrying us all on their backs while being called “too much.” We see you. We need you. And we’ll fight for you. How dare we not?

(This essay is part of a collection presented by Ms. and the Groundswell Fund highlighting the work of Groundswell partners advancing inclusive democracy.)

You Must Have Your Baby, But Sorry, You Have No Insurance

PUBLISHED 7/21/2025 by | UPDATED 8/21/2025 at 9:08 A.M. PT

Medicaid is a cornerstone of maternal healthcare, providing coverage for nearly two-thirds of women of reproductive age and financing 42 percent of all births in the United States, according to an analysis by KFF. That means almost half of all new parents—disproportionately low-income—depend on it for prenatal care, safe delivery and postpartum support.

Unfortunately, pregnant and postpartum people are at the center of the crisis created by the One Big Beautiful Bill—recently passed by both the House and Senate and signed into law by Donald Trump—which guts Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.

If clinics are shuttered, hospitals are closed and providers are stripped from Medicaid, what happens to people forced to carry pregnancies without care? They will face unmanaged labor, untreated postpartum depression, and dangerous complications alone.

In a nation that mandates childbirth but slashes access to care, the question isn’t whether outcomes will worsen. It’s how many will suffer—and how many won’t survive.

Menopause Finally Gets a Seat at the Table

PUBLISHED 7/18/2025 by

On Thursday, July 17, the FDA held a two-hour briefing featuring political leadership and a panel of doctors to focus on menopausal hormone treatments. Among the issues addressed was a decades-old labeling requirement for estrogen products—a.k.a. the “black box warning.”

FDA commissioner Martin Makary appears willing to consider scrapping it on packaging for localized vaginal estrogen treatment. The FDA should do so: The label is inaccurate and utterly alarming.

In the case of menopause, a rare combination of bipartisan commitment and robust public attention reflect not just heightened interest among constituents, but also proof of the democratic process actually working.

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. 

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.