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abortion rights
Separating Abortion and Pregnancy-Loss Care Harms Everyone
New bills seek to reinforce a false binary between abortion care and care for pregnancy loss, but this will only harm pregnant patients and further restrict access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare.
Mar 29, 2026
People experiencing pregnancy complications in states that restrict abortion have died preventable deaths; others have been forced to bleed out while waiting for providers to deem their conditions were life-threatening enough to receive care under narrow legal exceptions or had to travel out of state for emergency abortion care. Meanwhile survivors of rape and incest have been denied care, despite exceptions that supposedly permitted abortion in those circumstances.
This is the new reality of seeking pregnancy-loss care and abortion care post-Dobbs. But instead of addressing the root issue—abortion bans and restrictions—policymakers are advancing a new strategy: redefining abortion itself. These new bills seek to reinforce a false binary between abortion care and care for pregnancy loss, but this will only harm pregnant patients and further restrict access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare.
For example, a bill in Utah would allow people who have obtained abortion care for certain reasons (such as treating an ectopic pregnancy; removing a dead fetus; or in the cases of fetal anomaly, rape, or incest) to request that their medical record state that the abortion was “involuntary.” The proposed legislation attempts to legally codify the distinction between “elective” abortions and those obtained for medical reasons to further stigmatize abortion care. The bill’s sponsor has been at the forefront of restricting abortion in Utah, and claims this bill is for medical records and to prevent patient “distress.” However, there is no need for legislators to define medical care for the sake of providers or patients. People’s reproductive experiences are highly personal, and the language they use to describe them should be up to them—not politicians.
In other states, attempts to omit care for pregnancy loss from the legal definition of abortion opens the door for abortion to be further restricted. In Missouri, Wisconsin, and South Dakota, bills are being pushed that change the definition of abortion to exclude a range of pregnancy-loss care. Wisconsin’s bill, for example, aims to “exempt [this care] from abortion restrictions,” implying that there is some reproductive healthcare that should be protected, while some should not.
The only way to ensure that people in medical emergencies or who have experienced violence can get the care they need is expanding and protecting abortion care for all.
These bills all also rely on language that personifies the fetus or embryo, advancing the long-held anti-abortion goal of granting full legal rights to embryos and fetuses. Fetal personhood directly undercuts pregnant people’s rights and can be used to target other reproductive healthcare such as forms of contraception and IVF. While this language was eventually removed from the South Dakota bill, its inclusion when it was first introduced exposes the policymakers' intention: to carve out some forms of pregnancy care and use that as a foundation to attack abortion care.
The push to “clarify” exceptions, or what care can be provided under abortion bans, stems from understandable public outrage—outrage we share. The horrific outcomes for pregnant people who have died preventable deaths are the direct result of abortion bans--but adding legal carve outs designed by the same policymakers who champion draconian abortion laws is not the way to ensure that everyone has access to essential pregnancy-loss care.
The truth is, it’s impossible to silo abortion care from the rest of reproductive healthcare through medical or legal frameworks. Abortion, pregnancy-loss care, and pregnancy care are interconnected by their practices, medications, and the people that provide and obtain them. The only way to ensure that people in medical emergencies or who have experienced violence can get the care they need is expanding and protecting abortion care for all.
Separating abortion care from pregnancy-loss care also does not align with many people's lived experiences. Guttmacher research shows that people’s understanding of the boundaries between reproductive experiences are deeply nuanced. The author and model Chrissy Tiegen, for example, has been public about redefining her own pregnancy loss as an abortion, which she proceeded with after learning she would not survive the pregnancy without medical intervention. Ultimately, how someone defines their pregnancy outcome and the care they receive is subjective, and policymakers’ efforts to establish clear legal distinctions ignore the frequently blurred boundaries between these experiences.
Categorizing abortions as elective or "involuntary” is not only stigmatizing and medically unnecessary but ignores the complexities of people’s reproductive lives. Likewise, “clarifying” exceptions is simply another tool of the anti-abortion movement to further restrict and stigmatize abortion. What pregnant people need is compassionate and personalized care, not further state involvement in their bodies and decisions.
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National Abortion Providers, Thank You!
On this National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, during Women’s History Month, we reflect on what it truly means to lead change by honoring providers who stand courageous in clinics across the country.
Mar 10, 2026
Each March, as the world turns its gaze toward Women’s History Month, we are reminded of the countless women whose courage, intellect, resilience, and leadership have reshaped our world. For 2026, the national theme—“Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future”—honors the women who are reimagining and rebuilding systems to ensure long-term sustainability: environmental, economic, educational, and societal. It recognizes women’s leadership in creating a future rooted in equity, justice, and opportunity for all.
Within that narrative sits a group of women and gender-expansive people whose work rarely appears in history books but whose impact resonates through lives across the nation: abortion providers.
On March 10, National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, we are called to honor these fearless caregivers who sit at the frontlines of reproductive healthcare. They embody the very essence of this year’s Women’s History Month theme of leading change and shaping a future where bodily autonomy, dignity, and compassionate care are not just ideals but realities.
Abortion providers deliver essential medical care in the face of extraordinary adversity. They confront threats, protests, harassment, legal warfare, and violence—all aimed at trying to silence them, intimidate them, or push them out of the work they know is crucial. They endure anti-clinic demonstrations, surveillance by extremists, and political rhetoric designed to vilify not just a medical procedure but the fundamental humanity of the people they serve. Despite this, they show up day after day with resolve and open hearts.
Just as the suffragists, civil rights leaders, and healthcare pioneers of earlier eras were architects of change, today’s abortion providers are reshaping what justice looks like in the 21st century.
Their courage is deeply personal. It is the exam room conversation where a provider listens without judgment. It is the moment they guide a patient through a complex decision with clarity and care. It is the steady hand on a shoulder trembling with fear and hope. This is leadership: not in some distant boardroom, but in shared humanity. This is sustainability: building systems of care that endure in the face of relentless attack.
At the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), we fund patients and eliminate financial barriers. But it is abortion providers who make care happen. They are the ones with the medical training, the compassion, the resilience, and sometimes the very bodies standing between patients and an unsafe, uncertain future.
Our work at WRRAP could not exist without these providers at the forefront. They are our partners in every sense bridging policy and possibility, funding and freedom, fear and resilience. We provide financial support so a patient doesn’t have to choose between rent and care, but it is the provider who opens their door, who holds space for people, who offers healing and hope in a world that so often refuses it.
To the providers who dedicate their lives to this work: We see you, we thank you, and we honor you. You are shaping a sustainable future, one where people have autonomy over their bodies and futures; one where care is delivered with compassion, dignity, and respect; one where equity is more than a slogan but a lived practice.
The work of abortion providers is history making. Just as the suffragists, civil rights leaders, and healthcare pioneers of earlier eras were architects of change, today’s abortion providers are reshaping what justice looks like in the 21st century. They are environmental stewards of well-being, economic innovators in equitable care delivery, educators in dignity and consent, and societal leaders in advancing reproductive freedom for all.
Being a provider today means doing the work under threats that others can scarcely imagine. It means navigating legal labyrinths designed to block care, enduring hostile legislative sessions, and facing protests that seek to make the act of healing itself controversial. And yet, providers persist, not because it is easy, but because it is necessary.
On this National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, during Women’s History Month, we reflect on what it truly means to lead change by honoring providers who stand courageous in clinics across the country, whose safety has been threatened because they chose care over fear, whose compassion has saved futures with every patient they serve.
To every abortion provider today: Thank you for leading. Thank you for caring. Thank you for building a future rooted in justice, compassion, and dignity.
We are grateful beyond words, and we stand with you. This is our collective power.
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The VA is Ripping Away Abortion Care for Veterans... Again
This isn’t just a rollback. It’s a deliberate erasure of rights that we fought for in the wake of deeply personal and collective loss.
Jan 25, 2026
In 2022, my wife and I lost our first child. We named them June. They were deeply wanted and fiercely loved. In one fateful appointment, our entire worlds changed. We learned that June had a severe fetal bladder abnormality and was unable to produce amniotic fluid. Without it, their lungs would never develop. They would not survive.
We made the impossible decision to end the pregnancy—an act of compassion, love, and medical necessity.
At the time, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) had a total ban on abortion care and counseling.
No exceptions for rape. No exceptions for incest. Not even to save a veteran’s life.
Veterans and our families deserve futures built on compassion, justice, and love—not fear.
After our loss, the only way I felt I could keep breathing was to turn that grief into meaning. I shared our story with lawmakers to help reverse this dangerous policy so that veterans and their families could turn to the VA—no matter the circumstance or where they lived. That fall, the VA finally took steps to reverse the ban, signaling a long-overdue shift toward care, autonomy, and dignity.
But that progress was short-lived.
The VA just finalized a new abortion ban policy that, once again, excludes exceptions for rape or incest and offers only vague assurances that it will intervene if our lives are at risk. They initially implemented this enormous change in secret without telling veterans or their families.
In effect, it returns the VA to what was once the most extreme abortion ban in the country—an outright prohibition on care and counseling that applies to every VA facility nationwide, regardless of state law.
This isn’t just a rollback. It’s a deliberate erasure of rights that we fought for in the wake of deeply personal and collective loss.
And it is not happening in isolation. The same administration driving this ban is also working diligently to eliminate gender-affirming care, defund programs for minority and underrepresented veterans, and strip inclusive language and data collection from federal policy. The message is unmistakable: Some veterans count. Others don’t.
Veterans are not a monolith. We are a diverse community—LGBTQIA+, people of color, disabled, parents, caregivers, survivors, and yes, women too. Our community exists at every intersection of identity and experience, and our families serve alongside us. Our care cannot be conditional. Our humanity is not negotiable.
Policy is never just about one issue. It is intersectional—because our lives are intersectional.
Reproductive care cannot be separated from gender-affirming care, from disability access and mental health, from racial justice, or maternal health. Our needs don’t exist in silos, and neither do we. When one right is taken away, the loss reverberates across all the others.
I’ve seen what’s possible when we refuse to stay silent—how lived experience can reshape policy and expand care that has never existed before. And I know exactly what is at stake when care is denied. Pregnancy can change on a dime.
June’s life, though brief, transformed mine. Through their memory, I found purpose. I found a voice. And in their honor, I will continue working to ensure that no veteran or family ever has to face what we faced alone.
We should be building systems rooted in care, equity, and truth. We should be honoring the fullness of who veterans are, how we serve, and how we build our families. Instead, our fundamental rights are being stripped away—one policy memo at a time—and once again, we are being asked to fight for the right to make personal decisions about our health, our futures, and our families.
I will not allow June’s legacy to become another casualty of politics. Their life will be a call to care.
This moment demands more than endurance. It demands action.
The policies we pass—within the VA and beyond—shape the futures of veterans and the people who love us. Had my wife not been able to access critical care in her time of need—had we not been given the chance to make the most compassionate choice amid impossible circumstances—we might never have known the joy of raising our child today, a joy born from grief and shaped by love.
Veterans and our families deserve futures built on compassion, justice, and love—not fear.
Because in the end, we are all only human.
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