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abortion rights
If the Government Wants More Babies, It Should Make Parenthood Affordable
Gen Z women refuse to have our bodies and reproductive agency pressed into service in some futile attempt to balance the books of a chaotic economy.
Sep 20, 2026
Gen Z women like me are having fewer babies. That shouldn’t be a surprise—with prices for everything going up, our parents’ steady jobs, white picket fences, and retirement packages feel much less attainable for us.
But the government wants to make us change that. In the US and elsewhere, anxiety over aging populations and shrinking labor forces has been woven into the claim that women in their 20s somehow owe the economy more babies.
Our fertility becomes an asset on a balance sheet to counteract falling birth and marriage rates. Women who choose to put our own lives and interests first get branded “childless cat ladies,” as Vice President JD Vance once called us. But if being in no rush to get pregnant means I’m a selfish cat lady, I’m proud to claim the title.
A better path would be to pass policies that support women who do want to have children but can’t afford it: like paid leave, affordable and reliable childcare, and making family planning and perinatal care accessible for all.
Half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended, reflecting a broad pattern where women’s power to choose when and whether to have children is compromised, contested, and unequally distributed. Pro-natalism—a set of policies or attitudes designed to pressure women into having more children—is part of that pattern. It stigmatizes those who resist as selfish.
To me at age 21, being “selfish” means finishing my degree before even thinking about starting a family. It means refusing to take on a dependent while still outgrowing my own dependency. It means treating my body and my reproductive choices as my own rather than as a budget line item or labor input. It means doing what I have to do to navigate an economy where costs are skyrocketing.
Today, the average cost of raising a child from birth to 18, including daycare ($17,264 annually for five years), food ($4,208 a year), and transportation ($4,422 a year) comes to over $300,000 and counting.
Under the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, Congress created $1,000 “Trump Accounts” as a “baby bonus” to encourage women to have more babies. But in that case, they’re missing a few zeroes. And since money is kept in a stock market index fund until the babies turn 18, it won’t help parents with the high costs of raising kids.
So much for the carrot. Then there’s the stick—attacking reproductive healthcare so pregnancy is harder to avoid. For starters, abortion bans have spread across the country since the Trump administration’s hand-picked Supreme Court justices overthrew Roe v. Wade.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has removed federal funding for teen pregnancy prevention programs, opting for abstinence-focused, fertility-tracking curricula instead—which studies show result in higher teen pregnancy rates.
The administration has also undermined Title X, the only federal program providing family planning services to low-income people. Historically there has been bipartisan support for it. But last year, funding for 22 Title X grants was frozen, putting 834,000 people at risk of losing access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and more. That funding was later restored thanks to a lawsuit, but next year’s budget proposes to eliminate it again.
A better path would be to pass policies that support women who do want to have children but can’t afford it: like paid leave, affordable and reliable childcare, and making family planning and perinatal care accessible for all. These should be consistently funded, reliable commitments that don’t get yanked back when administrations change.
Rejecting these attacks doesn’t mean I don’t want a family or child someday. It means the choice belongs to me and to every woman, on her own terms. Gen Z women refuse to have our bodies and reproductive agency pressed into service in some futile attempt to balance the books of a chaotic economy.
No recycled misogynist insults about cat ladies, no performative “baby bonus” bribes, no motherhood medals are going to override my own power to choose when or whether I have a child. If that makes me selfish, it’s a label I accept happily.
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The Right Invests in Sex Ed—Progressive Philanthropies Should Too
While money pours into groups peddling abstinence-only programs, our health educators march on without funding for professional development and our sex ed advocates fight on without the resources to win.
Aug 18, 2026
Sex education is both everywhere and nowhere. If you scroll through right-wing news sites or visit a school board meeting, you’d think the content of our schools’ health curriculum—and who has the power to shape it—has become the all-consuming debate of the decade. On one side of the aisle, it has. Just this summer, the Trump administration canceled millions in funding to Teen Pregnancy Prevention programs, announcing plans to promote abstinence-only curricula that encourage marriage and procreation. The political left, on the other hand, has stayed far too quiet about sex ed. As leaders of nonprofit organizations working to expand access to research-based comprehensive sex education, we’re left wondering why programs with the power to build a progressive, empathetic, and pluralistic society barely make the progressive agenda—and are severely underfunded.
While the right has devoted time and resources toward rallying its base against comprehensive sex education, most progressive philanthropies and initiatives have yet to match their level of investment. Extremist actors and organizations have funded school board candidates; passed legislation promoting anti-abortion educational tools and mandating medically-inaccurate curricula; and fearmongered at the local, state, and national level. While money pours into groups peddling abstinence-only programs, our health educators march on without funding for professional development and our sex ed advocates fight on without the resources to win.
This dramatic imbalance in funding has little to do with what’s best for young people and much to do with politics, power, and extremism. The right has placed immense value in sex education as a tool to further its ideological agenda. Young people in the process of forming their own values and beliefs are particularly vulnerable to curriculum steeped in extremist political rhetoric, and the right has chosen the classroom as the place where the next generation of voters will encounter its narrow vision of conservative “family values.” For example, politicians in over 20 states have introduced or passed bills requiring public schools to show a misleading, manipulative, and scientifically-inaccurate animated video about fetal development in the classroom, often as early as third grade. The video, “Meet Baby Olivia,” was created and funded by the national extremist group Live Action for the explicit purpose of indoctrinating students and building anti-abortion sentiment. Politicians have also restricted LGBTQ+-inclusive messages, language, and pride flags from classrooms through “Don’t Say Gay” legislation and other tactics. By preaching abstinence and peddling shame and stigma in the classroom, the right is strengthening its hold on the American electorate for decades to come.
Students bear the brunt of this political strategy. Studies show that comprehensive sex education helps students become healthier and more successful adults. Sex education leads to lower sexually transmitted infection rates, fewer unintended pregnancies, and better self-esteem. Beyond that, sex education bolsters students’ emotional intelligence, offering young people the language to name their feelings, move through stress, and communicate through disagreement. Without it, students are left without the necessary tools to navigate puberty or to seek help in the face of mental health challenges and sexual violence or harassment. In other words, sex education quite literally saves lives.
We urge funders to see sex education as the upstream investment that pays off now—in the well-being of our youth—while also safeguarding the future of our democracy.
It is clear that the right recognizes the power of sex education, and that we should, as well. Comprehensive sex education includes lessons on empathy, fostering students’ understanding of difference and diversity, and how to respect those who do not share their backgrounds or beliefs. Conservative figureheads increasingly warn against “toxic empathy,” or compassion for people at the margins of society, in favor of rigid adherence to political dogma. Empathy is a threat to fascism, and the far-right is correct in tracing its origin to the classroom. By fostering empathy and emotional intelligence, well-funded sex education builds a strong citizenry that supports pluralism and democratic values. Sex education is a fundamental pillar of democracy, though it stands on shaky ground.
Although the foundations and philanthropies working to build a progressive, equitable, and democratic society have not matched the right’s investment in sex education, it isn’t too late to take action. Investing in sex education can take many forms. Progressive philanthropies can fund organizations that develop curriculum and train educators, support campaigns to enact pro-sex education legislation and stop harmful legislation at state level, or elect friendly school board candidates. Lawmakers and administrators require technical assistance to update their state’s standards and bolster public awareness, and educators desperate to give their students accurate information need professional development resources and support navigating attacks from extremist agitators.
To be sure, foundations have their hands full. Heightened attacks on civil liberties and bodily autonomy at every level of government have required funders to make tough choices. It may seem idealistic to propose investing in long-term strategies to safeguard democracy when so many issues and organizations need urgent support right now, for direct services and efforts to protect what remains of our access to abortion care and HIV prevention programs. As leaders at the helm of nonprofits, we understand what it means to make tough decisions. However, investments that bolster all of the issues and communities we care about are worth making. We urge funders to see sex education as the upstream investment that pays off now—in the well-being of our youth—while also safeguarding the future of our democracy.
By protecting and expanding access to sex education, funders will help raise a generation equipped to understand their bodies; navigate difficult conversations; and build strong, resilient communities. They will also lay the groundwork for a more progressive, more just society. What could be of more value?
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Samuel Alito's Anger Problem
The right-wing Supreme Court justice has a well-established pattern of outbursts that has not subsided with his remarkable success in dragging this country backward.
Jul 23, 2026
You might think that an archconservative who has used his lifetime seat on the Supreme Court to send US law back to the 1920s would take a victory lap and maybe chill just a bit. But no. Despite his success in helping to dismantle abortion rights, attacking public-sector labor unions, elevating gun rights, promoting “religious liberty,” and destroying the Voting Rights Act, Justice Samuel Alito Jr. is still seething mad, motivated by ideological extremism and a stack of personal grievances, some dating to his childhood in Trenton, New Jersey.
Alito’s well-established pattern of outbursts was on full view during the court’s June 26 announcement of several late-term rulings. He set the tone for the session by reading a summary of his cruel 6-3 majority opinion that denied political asylum-seekers the right to enter the country before reaching the US-Mexico border (Mullin v. Al Otro Lado). Finishing quickly, he paused before moving on to summarize another of his opinions. Justice Sonia Sotomayor apparently took the break in the action as a cue to read a synopsis of her dissent. Dissenters often refrain from reading their summaries, but there is nothing unusual about them opting to speak up, provided they give advance notice of their intentions.
Sotomayor blasted Alito’s handiwork. “The consequences of today’s decision are predictable,” she said. “More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not.” Her remarks apparently enraged Alito, making him look, in the words of NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nine Totenberg, like “he had just bitten into a lemon.”
“There is much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read,” Alito said, uttering remarks that, in the staid confines of the nation’s most august judicial body, were veritable obscenities that prompted audible gasps from spectators and reporters in the gallery. A court spokesperson later clarified that Alito was in fact notified of Sotomayor’s plans, but to date, he has not publicly apologized. Like the president whose policies he almost always supports, Alito invariably overreacts and never recants.
The problem is not that Alito has personal hang-ups—we all do—but that so many of his hang-ups have become the law of the land.
Who can forget Alito sneering on live TV during Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address, mouthing the words “not true” as the president decried the court’s Citizens United opinion and the impact it would have on future elections, including greater foreign influence? Since then, Alito has only gotten more unhinged and offensive, becoming a regular featured speaker at Federalist Society events, railing against the legalization of gay marriage, labeling the Second Amendment and freedom of religion as “unfavored” constitutional rights, and condemning liberals as a threat to civil liberties.
In September 2021, Alito went ballistic after The Atlantic magazine staff writer Adam Serwer penned a column accusing the court’s right-wing majority of releasing a 5-4 shadow-docket ruling on Texas’ newly enacted vigilante abortion law in the middle of the night to minimize public outcry. In an hour-long live-streamed speech delivered at University of Notre Dame, he excoriated the press for portraying the court’s conservatives as “a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways,” and for feeding “unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution.”
In June 2023, Alito again went off the rails with an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that lambasted a ProPublica report that in 2008 he took a luxury fishing trip to Alaska, flying for free aboard a private jet owned by Republican megadonor Paul Singer. The problem, according to ProPublica, wasn’t just that Alito had failed to recuse himself from reviewing lawsuits involving Singer’s hedge fund, but that he also failed to note anything about the excursion on the annual financial disclosure forms required under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.
Claiming he had no duty to reveal the junket, he argued that his spot on the private jet “would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat” if he had not accepted the billionaire’s offer of a free ride, and that gifts of “hospitality” need not be reported. In a follow-up interview with the Journal, he added, “Congress did not create the Supreme Court” and “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.”
Alito’s official court opinions have been equally acerbic and hyperbolic. They arguably reached a crescendo in his 2022 majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization). Not content with simply overruling the 50-year-old precedent on which US women had come to rely as an essential part of their healthcare, he wrote: “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”
When used by a high court justice, the phrase “egregiously wrong” is an insult and a sign of contempt. And to add further insult, Alito reached deep into the bowels of Anglo-American common law to override Roe, citing the work of Henry de Bracton, a 13th-century English cleric and judge who condemned abortions as homicide, and a 17th-century English jurist who sentenced at least three women accused of using witchcraft to death.
What’s behind Alito’s fury and habit of issuing norm-breaking invective? As Georgia State University law professor Eric Segall told The Wall Street Journal in an article published this month, “Alito thinks of the other side as the enemy.” And true to Segall’s observation, Alito unwittingly admitted as much at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner in 2024, when documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor asked whether there was any way the country could overcome its terrible polarization, then surreptitiously recorded Alito’s answer that “there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”
Like most extremists, Alito has views that derive not just from his abstract political beliefs, but from his lived experiences growing up in a predominantly white Christian community as the son of deeply religious Catholic Italian immigrants, and later as an out-of-place right winger at Princeton University and Yale Law School.
In a revealing new biography, Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement, journalist Peter S. Canellos offers a compelling psychological portrait of Alito as a man dismayed by the demographic and secular changes that have transformed and, by his estimation, degraded the country of his boyhood. Alito has been on a mission to reverse those trends ex cathedra from his perch on the Supreme Court.
The problem is not that Alito has personal hang-ups—we all do—but that so many of his hang-ups have become the law of the land. On June 30, NPR’s Totenberg erroneously reported that Alito planned to retire so that President Donald Trump might nominate a younger right-wing zealot to the bench. The story turned out not to be true and was promptly retracted. Too bad for her—and even worse for the country.
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4 Years After Dobbs, Abortion Is Still on the Ballot
This November, will the American people show up to the polls to defend reproductive freedom? Or, will our elected officials succumb to pressure from extremists seeking to ban abortion nationwide?
Jul 08, 2026
In today’s post-Roe world, the current landscape of abortion care is not defined by a single sweeping law or dramatic congressional vote. Instead, it is shaped by something far more subtle, sinister, and more consequential for millions of Americans. As we speak, every lever of government is being used to chip away at our reproductive freedom—and anti-abortion extremists are just getting warmed up.
This November, will the American people show up to the polls to defend reproductive freedom? Or, will our elected officials succumb to pressure from extremists seeking to ban abortion nationwide?
This year marks four years since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated federal protections for abortion care. As the lead plaintiff in Zurawski v. Texas, I have felt the full weight of the deadly Dobbs decision, and what happens when extremism infiltrates our democracy leading to devastating consequences for women and patients nationwide.
In a recent New York Times piece entitled “The Missing Middle in the Abortion Debate,” the author asserts that candidates need to find a “middle ground” and compromise when it comes to abortion laws in states like Texas. But the reality is that there is no “middle ground” when lives are at risk.
Protecting abortion access is still popular with Americans across the political spectrum, and yet, anti-abortion extremists and lawmakers continue to ignore what most Americans want.
As soon as Roe was overturned, states with anti-abortion legislatures quickly instituted trigger bans resulting in several women dying in states like Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina after being denied or delayed abortion care. In the years since we lost federal protections for abortion rights, many more women and patients from across the country have jumped through unimaginable hurdles just to seek care they needed.
Let me be clear, the piece treats abortion like a line on a chart. I know how being denied abortion care can mean the difference between life and death, and I also know that compromising on reproductive rights can cost women their lives.
My husband Josh and I always knew we wanted a family, so after trying for over a year, I found out that I was pregnant with my baby girl, Willow. However, at 18 weeks pregnant, our lives completely changed when we learned that my cervix had prematurely dilated, that amniotic fluid was leaking from my body, and that Willow was not going to survive to birth. Because of the Dobbs decision, which happened two months prior to everything I was experiencing, doctors sent me home because they could not legally treat me. Days later, I was in the ICU with sepsis, fighting for my life. Today, because I was denied the care I desperately needed, I am unable to bear children in the future.
My pregnancy was wanted. My daughter Willow was wanted. In a perfect world, I would be growing my family with my husband and daughter by my side. Instead, I turned my trauma into advocacy and have spent the last four years fighting for women across the country to be able to access safe abortion care.
Right now, anti-abortion extremists are leveraging every opportunity to ban abortion nationwide—no matter the cost. They are orchestrating a layered, coordinated effort to restrict abortion access through our judicial system, state legislatures, and federal agencies. Anti-abortion extremists are taking these measures to achieve several goals at one time: eliminate abortion care without further complicating their chances in the upcoming midterm elections.
And yet, anti-abortion politicians and lawmakers have been relentless in their efforts to chip away at abortion access. From Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-M. attacks on medication abortion, and Senate Republicans upholding President Donald Trump’s ban on abortion care for veterans or demanding anti-abortion riders in critical funding legislation—these extremists have demonstrated a clear commitment to enacting their anti-abortion agenda.
What’s alarming is that these attacks are not happening in isolation. Republicans are publicly avoiding discussion of abortion ahead of November. However, wherever they are governing, they are actively fighting to take away our freedom to choose.
Though the post-Dobbs landscape was initially framed as “a return to states’ rights,” the reality is that Trump and his administration have taken a number of covert steps to diminish abortion care, while allowing states to lead the charge in an all out assault on abortion rights. Republican-led state legislatures are advancing laws to block the mailing of abortion medication, criminalize its distribution, and even classify these medicines as controlled substances.
Furthermore, several states have taken up lawsuits similar to Louisiana v. FDA to challenge federal approval and distribution rules. In other words, state-level bans are being weaponized to attack all forms of abortion care and eliminate a patient’s ability to receive comprehensive reproductive healthcare.
As we look toward November, now more than ever we must be mindful of who will stand up for reproductive freedom—because lives are on the line. Abortion is on the ballot once again, and we deserve to know who will protect our freedoms without hesitation or compromise.
I recently traveled back to Washington, DC to tell my story alongside more than 150 abortion storytellers to talk about the impact of the Dobbs decision on our lives and in our communities. We met with both Democratic and Republican offices to stress the importance of fighting for reproductive freedom to save lives.
Protecting abortion access is still popular with Americans across the political spectrum, and yet, anti-abortion extremists and lawmakers continue to ignore what most Americans want. According to the latest data by Navigator Research, a majority of Americans continue to believe that abortion should be legal in most cases and that lawmakers who support anti-abortion policies, including banning or restricting contraception and abortion nationally, are deal-breakers.
The debate is no longer just about whether abortion is legal in a given state. It’s about who controls the systems that determine access: courts, agencies, supply chains, and Congress.
Extremists are weaponizing the machinery of democracy to erode our freedoms—not all at once, but piece by piece, at the expense of American lives. Now more than ever, we must use our voices at the ballot box and beyond to fight back.
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4 Years Ago, Trump's GOP Took Away Our Abortion Rights—Now, We Must Regain Congress to Win Them Back
As long as Republicans are in power, none of our rights are safe. They are decided election by election, one seat in Congress at a time.
Jun 24, 2026
Years before Republicans overturned Roe v. Wade, I sat in a hospital bed, preparing for my own abortion after a devastating pregnancy loss.
The grief was consuming. My husband and I were mourning the abrupt loss of a future we had longed for. At the time, I never considered myself to be fortunate. That feeling didn’t seep in until nearly eight years later—when Republicans began passing extreme abortion bans across the nation, unleashing widespread, preventable suffering upon millions of women.
In that hospital room, I was surrounded by compassionate doctors who offered me a choice between a surgical or medication abortion—the best forms of treatment available to prevent severe bleeding and infection. Yet now, those same methods of care are considered felonies across dozens of states, and are being actively targeted by Republicans. While I was welcomed into the wing of my local hospital for the procedure, women today are forced to travel hundreds of miles for care or told to wait in hospital parking lots until their lives are in jeopardy before they can legally be treated. While I took time to recover at home—both physically and emotionally—after leaving the hospital, women today are handcuffed, investigated, and even threatened with murder charges after suffering their own miscarriages.
Republicans have made it clear: They don’t care about the cruelty of their bans, the women’s lives that are being lost to them, or that the vast majority of Americans want abortion access to be legal and protected. Their extremist agenda has not only stripped women of their freedoms; it has caused widespread pain—including sharp spikes in life-threatening infections, infant and maternal deaths, and worse miscarriage outcomes than in states without abortion restrictions.
As attacks remain in full steam, abortion has already had an outsized influence on the 2026 midterms.
But the most horrifying part of all is that Republicans are not stopping here.
Emboldened by extremist MAGA allies, the US Supreme Court is currently considering whether to outlaw telehealth, mail, and pharmacy delivery for abortion medication, instead requiring patients to obtain it in person. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is conducting a sham Food and Drug Administration “review” of mifepristone—a safe, effective, and FDA-approved medication used in the majority of abortions in the US—in order to lay the groundwork for national restrictions. These attacks could result in the biggest rollback to abortion access since the Dobbs decision.
As the president of EMILYs List, I’ve seen firsthand that Republicans’ relentless pursuit of their anti-abortion agenda remains a motivator for voters nationwide. American women are fed up with their bodies, their health, and their lives being treated like political pawns—and until Republicans stop attacking our rights, the desire to protect abortion will continue driving voters to the polls.
That proved true in 2025, when Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger won historic governorships against anti-abortion Republicans who had clear intentions of enacting extreme restrictions in their home states. Abortion was also one of the most powerful drivers of Democratic wins downballot across Virginia, where every EMILYs List-endorsed woman running to flip a Republican-held seat did just that in November, protecting our majority in the House of Delegates and protecting Virginians from a surefire ban.
As attacks remain in full steam, abortion has already had an outsized influence on the 2026 midterms. Over the last two months, I’ve met with voters on the ground across the nation, including in key US House flip districts, where Denise Powell (Neb.-02), Lindsay James (Iowa-02), and Marni Von Wilpert (Calif.-48) battled out competitive primary victories solidified by their staunch pro-choice bonafides. We’re seeing this at the state level too, like in Pennsylvania, where Brittany Bloam (Pa.-HD45) cruised to a primary win over Pat Catena, a Democrat who unsuccessfully tried rebranding as pro-choice, despite a record proving the exact opposite.
Voters trust women like these to fight for abortion access in their communities because they have never wavered in their support of women’s right to choose, and they have the track record to prove it. These women are our strongest pathway to taking back power in Congress and pumping the breaks on Republicans’ unhinged agenda.
Four years without Roe, it’s clearer than ever: As long as Republicans are in power, none of our rights are safe. They are decided election by election, one seat in Congress at a time. And this November, they depend wholly on firing anti-abortion Republicans, and electing Democratic pro-choice women to lead the fight to take back our freedoms.
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Reproductive Justice Is a Men's Issue, Too
If men are part of the pregnancy equation, and they are, then they must also be part of the solution by advocating for abortion rights and taking shared responsibility for contraception.
Jun 21, 2026
There is a dangerous myth embedded in the fight for reproductive justice: that the battle is solely about women, or even solely about those who can become pregnant. It is not. It is equally about men, especially those who hold power, and perhaps more critically, those who choose not to use it, because silence, in this moment, is not neutral. It is consequential.
Across the United States, reproductive rights are being dismantled by legislative bodies that remain overwhelmingly male. Men still make up roughly 73% of Congress, while some state legislatures, particularly those passing the most restrictive abortion bans, exceed 80% male representation. The result is accelerating policy built on distance: lawmakers regulating bodies they will never inhabit, consequences they will never personally endure.
As educator and activist Jackson Katz has long argued in his work, including his TED Talk “Violence Against Women, It’s a Men’s Issue,” gender-based injustices are too often framed as “women’s issues,” allowing men to disengage. Katz argues that the silence of men who consider themselves allies is itself part of the system that allows harm to continue. In the context of reproductive rights, that silence has had profound consequences.
And yet, there is a growing body of work challenging exactly this imbalance, calling attention to the role men play not just in policy, but in pregnancy itself. In Ejaculate Responsibly, author Gabrielle Blair reframes the abortion debate with striking clarity as an advocate for condoms and vasectomies; she says, “Women are expected to practice and learn how to use birth control, I don’t think it’s unrealistic to ask men to learn how to use their birth control options.” The premise is simple but often ignored: Pregnancy does not occur without male participation, and yet responsibility overwhelmingly falls on those who become pregnant.
This Father’s Day, men have a choice: to continue benefiting from silence and distance, or to finally recognize reproductive justice as their fight too.
Blair further notes that men are fertile continuously and capable of causing multiple pregnancies, while women and other people who can become pregnant have limited reproductive windows. Yet public policy overwhelmingly regulates the latter, not the former.
At the ground level, the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP) knows the human impact. Funding abortion care from coast to coast and working with more than 700 clinics nationwide, WRRAP supports thousands of patients each year, many navigating financial hardship, domestic instability, or complete abandonment by their partners.
WRRAP’s experience consistently reflects a painful pattern: Patients are often left carrying the financial burden alone after disclosing a pregnancy. Costs related to transportation, childcare, lodging, lost wages, and medical care frequently fall entirely on the pregnant person, even though pregnancy itself involves two people.
This is where the conversation about men must deepen, because while men are part of every pregnancy, they are often absent from its consequences. For WRRAP, 69% of patients have had their partner abandon them, placing the financial burden on the patient.
What would it look like if that changed? What if men were held financially accountable for pregnancies from the moment they occur, including the cost of abortion care? What if responsibility extended to ensuring that the pregnant person had the resources to make the decision that is right for them?
It is a question that exposes a fundamental inequity. The current system allows men, whether lawmakers or partners, to exert influence without bearing equivalent responsibility. They can legislate restrictions without experiencing the outcomes. They can disengage from pregnancies without absorbing the costs. And when they do neither, when they simply remain silent, the system continues unchecked.
The political reality is impossible to ignore. Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, more than 1,500 politicians, overwhelmingly male, have supported abortion bans or severe restrictions.
Meanwhile, public opinion data from Pew Research Center show that a majority of men support legal abortion access in at least some circumstances. Yet support in polling has not translated into sustained advocacy, organizing, or political pressure.
Katz’s work emphasizes that change requires more than awareness, it requires action. Men must see themselves not as peripheral to this issue, but as central to it. They must challenge harmful narratives in their own circles, advocate for policies that protect access, and support organizations like WRRAP doing the work.
Because reproductive justice is not just about access to care, it is about who bears the burden. Right now, that burden falls disproportionately on pregnant people: those navigating financial instability, healthcare barriers, social stigma, and abandonment, often without support.
If men are part of the equation, and they are, then they must also be part of the solution. Not quietly. Not passively. But visibly, vocally, and materially invested in the fight for reproductive justice.
This Father’s Day, men have a choice: to continue benefiting from silence and distance, or to finally recognize reproductive justice as their fight too through advocacy, accountability, and even shared responsibility for preventing pregnancy, including vasectomies.
This piece was provided by American Forum.
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What We Learned When We Stayed to Provide Abortion- and Gender-Affirming Care
On the anniversary of both Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and US v. Skrmetti, support independent clinics in hard places keeping the doors open.
Jun 18, 2026
We’ve been here before. When Dobbs 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 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 like a problem to be managed, or a life to be supported? June marks anniversaries of both Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and US v. Skrmetti, and that conviction has never felt more urgent.
Long before Dobbs or Skrmetti, 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 (GAHT) 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. Throughout that history, our organizations have been guided by a simple principle: When members of our community are targeted, excluded, or denied the care they need, we do not look away. We listen, we adapt, and we show up.
When abortion care moved across the border after Dobbs, the patients who remained still needed care they couldn’t access at home. The wall between reproductive healthcare and LGBTQIA+ healthcare that exists in policy language and funding categories has never existed in our exam rooms.
What connects every patient who walks through our doors, whether they’re coming in for an abortion or a hormone therapy appointment, is something our staff recognized long before we had language for it: the experience of arriving at a clinic while carrying the weight of a political target on your back. A clinic’s job of creating a space where people can receive care without shame or fear has always been exactly the same job regardless of why they came.
Bodily autonomy is the foundational principle of reproductive rights, and it only means something if it applies to everyone.
Marty had learned, growing up as a transgender person in rural Maryland, to brace himself before every medical appointment, because finding healthcare that was both competent and genuinely affirming had always required a fight. What he found at our clinic was a staff that met him without conditions, no justifications required, no explanations asked for. His mother has supported the Women’s Health Center (WHC) since its earliest days, and used to volunteer as a clinic escort. Watching the same clinic support her son in his gender-affirming care gave her, in her own words, a peace she hadn’t known she needed. When gaps in care left Ben, a transgender West Virginian, navigating painful dysphoric cycles and a transition that had stalled, he found his way to WHC West Virginia. Today, he says that every time he looks in the mirror, he sees more of himself looking back.
When one of our providers first interviewed to work for CHOICES, she didn't really know much about gender-affirming care. In the time she has been with CHOICES, she has cared for hundreds of gender-affirming care patients across the mid-South. "It's clear how important this care is for patients," she shared. "After patients start hormone replacement therapy, they come back as a much more energetic, vivacious person.” Since the state of Tennessee has restricted gender-affirming healthcare, including banning minors from accessing care, our patients are experiencing increased anxiety and fear about their privacy, safety, and continued access to care. CHOICES' provider shared, "Hormone replacement therapy is routine, like every other service we offer.” If something has such a profound impact on someone's life, why wouldn't we keep this care accessible?
The pattern behind Skrmetti is one reproductive rights advocates should recognize immediately, because it follows the same logic as the restrictions that led to Dobbs: They come for the most vulnerable first, in the states where the political ground is most hostile, and they build from there. Idaho passed the first transgender athlete ban in 2020, West Virginia followed with the Save Women’s Sports Act in 2021, and Tennessee’s restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors moved through the courts the same way abortion restrictions moved state by state in the years before Dobbs. Since abortion care moved across the border, thousands have received gender-affirming and LGBTQIA+ care at our clinics, even as the political, legal, and financial pressure on both organizations has intensified.
Bodily autonomy is the foundational principle of reproductive rights, and it only means something if it applies to everyone. When it becomes conditional, granted to some patients and denied to others, it stops being a principle and starts being a permission slip, and permission slips get revoked. The fights to protect abortion access and gender-affirming care are not parallel struggles that happen to share a difficult political moment. They are the same struggle, rooted in the same conviction, playing out in the same clinics with the same patients, and the forces working to end both of them have always understood that connection even when the rest of us have sometimes lost sight of it.
Between our two organizations, we’ve earned a century’s worth of experience at the practice of staying, 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.
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Hands Off Our Bodies, Hands Off Our Future
I’m a climate justice organizer. Here's why I’m fighting for reproductive justice.
May 24, 2026
Earlier this year, in a horrific conversation with white supremacist podcaster Joe Rogan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook to rank women’s appearances in 2004, argued that the tech world needs more masculine energy.
Any serious look at the tech world and it’s clear it’s a space already overrun by the male ultra-wealthy class: 88.92% of IT CEOs alone are white men. This is the same cultural demographic and argument now overtaking our governmental systems as well. It’s an arrogance that demands control of all, from the bodies of women, trans folks, queer folks, and young people, to violent control of our environment, the plants, animals, landscapes, and non-human bodies that provide the world’s strength.
Days after serial-sexual-assaulter and white supremacist Donald Trump won the 2024 US presidential election, neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes tweeted, “Your body; my choice.” At his inauguration, Trump proclaimed (insert characteristic Trump voice), “We’re going to drill, baby, drill.”
These two statements are deeply related, echoing the same narratives of control, extraction, exploitation, and domination over our bodies, relatives, and communities.
Our movements must understand the intuitive reality that the attacks on reproductive rights, on reproductive access, and on our bodily autonomy are the same attacks as those on our environment.
All of this is why I found myself outside the Philadelphia Women’s Center near my college on February 8. With dozens of local community members from the grassroots organization Abortion Rights Philadelphia, we chanted, “Abortion is a human right, not just for the rich and white.” Together, we sang Chappell Roan and Beyoncé, building a wall of joy between the clinic’s patients and the masses of anti-abortion protesters, by and large older white men, who had gathered with dramatized pictures of fetuses, attempting to dox and scare patients from accessing their healthcare.
Attacks on the Environment are Attacks on Reproductive Rights
Our movements must understand the intuitive reality that the attacks on reproductive rights, on reproductive access, and on our bodily autonomy are the same attacks as those on our environment. And we must understand the inverse as well.
As New York City-based Afro-Puerto Rican reproductive and climate justice activist Hennessy García points out, “Where we see environmental injustice, we see reproductive injustice as well.” They go hand in hand.
For example, breathing in polluted air increases the likelihood for pregnant people to give birth prematurely. The same is true for exposure to water pollution, toxins from superfund sites and brownfields, proximity to fossil fuel infrastructure, and the effects of extreme heat. All of these environmental hazards are, by and large, located in communities of color, especially low-income communities, across the country. This means that when Trump chants, “Drill, baby, drill” and loosens our already weak environmental protections, he’s putting pregnant people of color at risk of both climate and environmental injustices and harms.
This is also the case for women and transgender or non-binary (TGNB), intersex, and LGBTQIA+ people, independent of pregnancy, and for disabled people as well, due to societal structure, gendered roles, discrimination, and resource inequity. It is also true that sexual violence rates for women and TGNB folks increase significantly in the aftermath of climate disasters.
The clear takeaway here: Women and TGNB people’s lives and sexual and reproductive health are being threatened by Trump, fossil fuel companies, and their Democratic allies, worsening climate and environmental crises.
The Goal is Domination
This is all intentional. While Trump bars the words “environmental justice,” “gender,” “female,” “women,” and “pregnancy” from federal agencies and refers to Gaza and Palestine as “demolition site[s],” he also pushes a proposal of a $5,000 cash “baby bonus” to every American mother after delivery. The Trump administration wants women, on one hand, to reproduce endlessly, and on the other hand, it condemns women in Black and brown communities to death, displacement, and genocide. Whether those be Black and brown communities overburdened by fossil fuels and extractive infrastructure, by police brutality and deportation, or whether they be like in Gaza, by incessant deadly bombardment.
Look at Elon Musk and his 14 children with four different younger women. In November, he tweeted, “Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy, we should teach fear of childlessness.” As Arwa Mahdawi of The Guardian argues, “It’s easy for Musk, who will never have to carry any of the children he’s so keen on having, to be blasé about pregnancy risks: He can outsource them all,” pointing to one of his partners, Grimes, who almost died during the pregnancy of their son X Æ A-12.
As Garcia says, “People with the ability to get pregnant are not machines.” But that’s exactly what the Trump-Musk administration wants.
It’s all, ultimately, about building logics for masculine control across every area of our lives, bodies, and world.
They want those who fit into their racialized view of “America” to reproduce endlessly, and they want those who don’t to be oppressed, to work as capital creators, and to, in many cases, die.
There’s a deep, contradictory nature to this logic. On one hand, Trump is trying to stop people of color from accessing abortion or contraceptive care, and on the other, he is trying to literally facilitate their deaths. And for white women, he’s encouraging them to give birth as much as possible, yet still not offering childcare or maternal care—instead, he scrubs the word “pregnancy” from the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s offering $5,000 to women who give birth—a measly sum compared to the $237,482 it takes to raise a child in the US—and simultaneously plans to limit childcare and eliminate Head Start. Ultimately, it’s not just about eugenic-reminiscent reproductive policy; it’s about control. It’s about strategic destabilization, whether it’s control of land—from Black, brown, and Indigenous communities to Gaza, Panama, and Greenland—or control of bodies and reproductive, life-making capacities, from Nick Fuentes’ “Your body; my choice” to the aforementioned actions of the administration. It’s also about exploitation, whether it’s mass deportations or labor exploitation, like the forms of slavery and exploitation for incarcerated individuals appearing across the country, from Louisiana to California.
Layer in the climate crisis and mass inaffordability, and this image of control becomes an even more frightening picture.
These same narratives of masculine control are what propel anti-climate, pro-fossil fuel policy in this current administration. Trump’s stated goal with his Department of Energy, now led by fracking CEO Chris Wright, is to “unleash [a] aolden era of American energy dominance.” He’s also created the National Energy Dominance Council to bolster fossil fuel exploitation of our climate, of indigenous lands, and of communities of color. The through line is that these men are trying to dominate.
We see this also in popular narratives against climate action. Professional misogynist and sex trafficker Andrew Tate wrote in a now-infamous Twitter exchange, ultimately leading to his arrest, “@GretaThunberg, please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions,” attaching an image of his collection of over 33 sports cars.
Writing about the exchange, author Rebecca Solnit wrote: “There’s a direct association between machismo and the refusal to recognize and respond appropriately to the climate catastrophe. It’s a result of versions of masculinity in which selfishness and indifference—individualism taken to its extremes—are defining characteristics, and therefore caring and acting for the collective good is their antithesis.”
Flaunting dominance over people and nature is deemed manly, whilst care is deemed as unmanly. And, taking action with respect to justice, the environment, or our collective future—as epitomized by Greta Thunberg—is deemed as womanly.
It’s all, ultimately, about building logics for masculine control across every area of our lives, bodies, and world.
To Fight This, Our Movements Must Be Deeply Cross-Sectional
These dynamics don’t care for separations between environment and climate or climate and reproduction—it’s all a question of exploitation and increased power and domination for the white male ultra-wealthy few. To face this, our movements for justice, too, must be just as deeply intersectional.
The SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, a storied reproductive justice organization, defines “Reproductive Justice [as] the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities” (italics added).
There is no reproductive justice without ending fossil fuel expansion. There is no reproductive justice without a just, Indigenous, and worker-led societal transformation to renewable, community-controlled energy.
It means placing bodily autonomy at the center of our fight for climate justice, and breaking down the divides between our movements.
It’s time for us to incorporate reproductive justice just as deeply into our fight for climate justice. That means for us in the climate space to show up at our local abortion clinic to protect patients; it means connecting with and learning from local reproductive justice organizers in our area; and it means bringing in a reproductive justice platform into our climate policy. It doesn’t just mean supporting Planned Parenthood; it means listening to the Reproductive Justice movement and finding the local fights, whether legislative or practical, near you, and getting involved. It means funding local abortion funds that are always in need of donations, like those affiliated with the grassroots National Network of Abortion Funds.
It means placing bodily autonomy at the center of our fight for climate justice, and breaking down the divides between our movements. It means rejecting centrist politicians like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who claim leadership on reproductive rights and climate justice, while vetoing legislation to protect those seeking reproductive and gender-affirming care and fast-tracking new fossil fuel pipelines.
There is no other way to face the capitalist fossil-fueled heteropatriarchical oligarchy that has now overtaken our government and seeks to dominate us all.
Climate justice is reproductive justice.
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Samuel Alito Gets the Facts Wrong... Again
In majority opinions gutting abortion rights and voting rights, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made crucial errors.
May 17, 2026
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the conservative majority’s opinions in two of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in recent years: 1) Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—overruling Roe v. Wade; and 2) Louisiana v. Callais—neutering the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In both cases, Alito recited and relied on asserted “facts” that did not exist.
Alito Rewrote History to Ban Abortion
Ohio State University Prof. Treva Lindsey observed, ”From the nation’s founding through the early 1800s, pre-quickening abortions—that is, abortions before a pregnant person feels fetal movement—were fairly common and even advertised.“
But Alito claimed incorrectly in Dobbs that “no common-law case or authority... remotely suggests a positive right to procure an abortion at any stage of pregnancy” and, in the United States specifically, “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.”
Writing for the three dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan called Alito “embarrassingly” wrong. There was no such “unbroken tradition,” and historical evidence undermined his claim. But the conservative majority got its desired outcome.
Roberts Began the Assault on the Voting Rights Act
In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority began undermining the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case. Prior to that decision, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination in voting had to obtain federal approval before making changes to election rules—a process known as preclearance. The state or locality had to prove that any changes would not disadvantage racial and ethnic minorities.
Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.
Roberts argued that the elections of 2008 and 2012—when there was no difference in voter participation rates between Black and white voters (i.e., no “turnout gap”)—meant that the Voting Rights Act had done its job and preclearance could be suspended.
Even at the time, Roberts’ reasoning was suspect. The elections of 2008 and 2012 were anomalies—not the end of the turnout gap—because Barack Obama’s candidacy had driven up Black turnout.
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted another flaw in Roberts’ logic: “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Justice Ginsburg was correct, and now democracy is getting wet. A 2024 study concluded:
The formerly covered states [subject to preclearance] have large nonwhite populations and large turnout gaps, leading to some of the largest statewide turnout distortions in the nation. Put differently, a decade after Shelby County, the turnout gap continues to have a disproportionate impact in precisely the parts of the country that were once covered due to their histories of racially discriminatory voting practices.
Stated simply, “[S]ince 2013, the racial turnout gap around the nation has exploded.”
Alito Finished the Job
Justice Alito ignored the exploding turnout gap in striking the fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act on April 29, 2026. For decades previously, the court had ruled repeatedly that a state could not undermine minority voters’ power to choose their desired candidates by drawing legislative districts that dispersed such voters across majority-white districts. Instead, states had to create “majority-minority” districts, thereby assuring minority representation in statehouses and Congress.
In its amicus brief to the court in the Callais case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) ignored the trend after 2013 and argued that majority-minority districts were no longer necessary because “the racial gap in voter registration and turnout had largely disappeared, with minorities registering and voting at levels that sometimes surpassed the majority. Shelby County, 570 U.S. at 547-548.” To emphasize the point, the DOJ observed, “Since 2004, black voters have turned out at higher rates than white voters in two of five presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”
Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.
Alito parroted the DOJ’s sophistry: “Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”
As election experts have observed, Alito’s claim that Black and white turnout reached parity in 2 of the 5 most recent presidential elections “represents egregious cherry-picking. [H]e was not referring to recent elections, but to those in 2008 and 2012—the years that Barack Obama ran for president. In the three most recent presidential elections, the trend shows exactly the opposite. The indisputable fact is the racial turnout gap is widening, and the Roberts Court is partially responsible [because of its Shelby County decision].”
Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.
Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.
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A Public Health Emergency: How Abortion Bans Are Fueling Maternal Deaths in America
People living in states that have banned abortion are nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after compared with those in states where abortion remains legal and accessible.
Apr 10, 2026
The maternal mortality crisis in the United States is a national embarrassment, and it’s unfolding in real time. The US continues to have one of the highest maternal death rates among high-income countries, and the situation is getting worse, not better. Behind this trend is a growing body of research showing that state abortion bans directly contribute to increased maternal mortality, especially in communities already burdened by systemic inequities.
Maternal mortality has traditionally reflected deep structural problems in a healthcare system that fails to serve all people equally. In 2024, the US maternal mortality rate ticked upward again, reversing a brief decline and demonstrating that the crisis is far from over. Experts point to a range of causes, including reduced access to prenatal care, maternity care deserts, and strained hospital systems, all problems intensified in states with abortion restrictions and in states with increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
A comprehensive analysis from the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mortality figures shows that people living in states that have banned abortion are nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after compared with those in states where abortion remains legal and accessible. What’s more, in supportive states where abortion has remained legal, maternal mortality has declined by about 21% since 2022, suggesting that access to comprehensive reproductive care saves lives.
Restricting abortion does more than eliminate a medical procedure; it forces people to carry pregnancies that pose very real health risks. Childbirth has inherent dangers from hemorrhage and infection to hypertensive disorders and cardiac events, and the risk of death from pregnancy is at least 44 times higher than from abortion. When abortion is inaccessible, people are compelled to continue unwanted or medically unsafe pregnancies. That dynamic alone drives increased deaths that could otherwise have been prevented.
Bans do not reduce the prevalence of abortion; they reduce its safety, push people into riskier medical scenarios, and leave pregnant people with fewer options even when their health is at stake.
Racial and socioeconomic disparities in maternal mortality did not begin with the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Black birthing people in the US have long faced significantly higher death rates than white birthing people, a symptom of deep structural racism in healthcare, poverty, and chronic stress. But abortion bans have exacerbated these inequities.
In states with abortion bans, Black birthing people are more than three times as likely as white birthing people in those same states to die from pregnancy-related causes. Those figures make crystal clear that when we talk about maternal mortality, we are talking about a crisis of racial inequity, class inequity, and political neglect. States with the worst maternal health outcomes, including Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, are predominantly in the South and have enacted some of the most restrictive reproductive laws.
These disparities compound with other conditions such as limited access to early prenatal care—which the CDC reports has declined across the country, with the steepest drops among Black mothers. Delays in early care are associated with worse outcomes for both mother and baby and are worsened by the closure of maternity care facilities in rural and under-resourced areas.
For undocumented and immigrant communities, the maternal mortality crisis is layered with additional barriers. Fear of immigration enforcement, including ICE, deters people from seeking care, even in emergencies. Clinics in border states with large immigrant populations were already medically underserved before Dobbs, and abortion bans have deepened that inaccessibility. Many undocumented people lack insurance, fear reporting, or face economic barriers that make traveling for care impossible. These structural obstacles do not just delay care, they can literally cost lives.
Immigrant and mixed-status families are disproportionately concentrated in states with abortion bans, like Texas, Arizona, and Florida, meaning that people who already face the greatest systemic barriers to healthcare are also the most likely to lack access to safe abortion or comprehensive maternal services. This intersection of racist policy, reproductive restriction, and anti-immigrant enforcement creates a perfect storm that pushes already vulnerable people further to the margins and deeper toward harm.
Critics of abortion argue from moral or ideological positions, but the evidence shows that access to abortion care is fundamentally a matter of public health. Bans do not reduce the prevalence of abortion; they reduce its safety, push people into riskier medical scenarios, and leave pregnant people with fewer options even when their health is at stake.
We are now witnessing a preventable loss of life, and the window to act is closing.
We know how to prevent many maternal deaths: Expand access to comprehensive reproductive care (including abortion), strengthen prenatal and postpartum support, increase Medicaid coverage, invest in maternity care infrastructure, and dismantle the historic and systemic inequities that predict who lives and who dies. We know these interventions work because states that have protected reproductive rights are already seeing declines in maternal mortality.
To ignore this crisis is to ignore evidence, dignity, and the lives of pregnant people, especially those in Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and economically disadvantaged communities.
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