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abortion rights
'Good Genes,' Anti-Abortion Laws, Declining Birth Rates, and What They Have in Common
Promoting good genes and limiting access to birth control and abortion are inextricably tied by two threads: white supremacy and the patriarchy. And they have been for more than 150 years.
Oct 12, 2025
From American Eagle’s campaign with Sydney Sweeney to the Trump administration’s efforts to limit access to birth control to the US birth rate hitting an all-time low, there has been a lot of noise online this summer, and every time something takes center stage, people come out of the woodwork telling us to not get distracted. To stay focused.
And I get it. I do. It’s a lot.
But we can’t just overlook one headline in favor of another, because in America, promoting good genes and limiting access to birth control and abortion are inextricably tied by two threads: white supremacy and the patriarchy. And they have been for more than 150 years—ever since the first time abortion was criminalized in America in the late 1800s.
In the words of Leslie Reagan (author of When Abortion Was a Crime): “White male patriotism demanded that maternity be enforced among Protestant women.”
When he wrote of American westward expansion, he asked: “Shall [these regions] be filled by our own children or by those of aliens? This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.”
Back in 2022, when Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health rolled back the protections granted by Roe v. Wade, the justices claimed to have reached the majority ruling, in part, because abortion rights weren’t “deeply rooted in the country’s history and traditions.” But here’s the thing: America had a long-standing tradition of abortion before it became widely outlawed in the late 1800s. In fact, for much of American history, terminating a pregnancy during the first four months wasn’t even considered abortion. It was simply an attempt to “restore menses.”
Before the end of the 19th century, a regular menstrual flow was considered essential to a woman’s health. Herbalists, midwives, and physicians recommended childbearing people sip herbal emmenagogic teas (teas that stimulate menstrual flow) in the days leading up to and throughout the course of their periods to maintain regularity and to restore menstruation if it arrived late.
It was this tradition that politicians and some doctors of the era (specifically those who were a part of the newly-created American Medical Association) wanted to eliminate.
The AMA was founded in 1847, creating a professional group for college-educated doctors (all men at the time). They were faced with a problem: The medical profession was still establishing itself, and so AMA doctors weren’t well-respected in America, but midwives, one of their primary competitors in the field, were. One of the many reasons for this was that midwives were willing to provide abortion services, something AMA-recognized physicians were unwilling to do because they claimed it violated the Hippocratic Oath.
One particular physician, Horatio Robinson Storer, saw abortion as an opportunity to help accredited physicians gain respect: If they could turn abortion into a moral issue, they could destroy public respect for midwives—allowing AMA physicians to take over the field of gynecological health and establish themselves as both the moral and scientific authority on medicine.
With the AMA at his back, in 1857 Storer started a campaign to change the way America thought about abortion—sending letters to physicians and newspapers, publishing books, and eventually working with legislatures to criminalize the practice.
What else was happening in 1857? The lead up to the American Civil War, which we all know was fueled by white supremacy. Not only was much of America fighting for the right to enslave people, they also feared being outnumbered by the very people they were trying to enslave. And with the declining birth rates among white, Protestant women, it was a well-founded fear (and one that wasn’t only limited to the South, especially with the influx of immigrants in northern cities).
Storer used this fear to his advantage.
When he wrote of American westward expansion, he asked: “Shall [these regions] be filled by our own children or by those of aliens? This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.”
The argument was a powerful one—one that changed the way America viewed abortion for 100 years. How did they do it? By destroying the concept of quickening, thereby reclassifying the restoration of menses as abortion and criminalizing those who practiced it. They stated quickening was little more than a feeling, and a feeling wasn’t medicine. This in turn discredited childbearing people as the ones who knew their own bodies best.
The AMA’s efforts culminated in the Comstock Law in 1873, which made the public discussion of birth control and abortion illegal by banning it as obscenity, and by 1880, every state had laws restricting abortion. Early-term abortion, which had once been considered an essential part of women’s healthcare, was labeled evil (and criminal) and midwives were rebranded as abortionists. These views of abortion continued for 100 years until Roe v. Wade gave people with uteruses the right to an abortion, and it’s clear they’ve persisted in the decades since.
Now, to be clear, most doctors today recognize abortion as healthcare. This isn’t meant to demonize modern-day physicians. But as we look to today’s headlines when it comes to the health of childbearing people, it’s almost impossible not to draw parallels, and keep this reality in mind as we fight to regain the rights the Supreme Court has stripped us of.
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Our Voices and Our Votes Matter
On this National Voter Registration Month, let’s honor the generations who fought, marched, and even died for the right to vote by doing our part.
Sep 28, 2025
In 2002, the National Association of Secretaries of State designated every September National Voter Registration Month. This is more than a month on the calendar; it’s a call to action to remind us of one of the most powerful truths in a democracy: Change doesn’t happen unless we show up.
It’s a reminder that our voices matter, our votes matter, and that the freedoms we often take for granted can only be protected if we exercise them at the ballot box.
In recent years, one freedom has been under relentless attack: reproductive freedom. Across the country, state legislatures have rolled back rights that generations before us fought to secure. People are being forced to travel hundreds of miles for medical care, to carry pregnancies against their will, and to endure unnecessary suffering because of political decisions made by elected officials. These policies don’t reflect the will of the majority. Poll after poll shows that most Americans believe in protecting abortion access and reproductive healthcare. But here’s the catch: Beliefs don’t change laws. Votes do.
That’s why National Voter Registration Month matters so deeply. It’s about more than filling out a form. It’s about building power to defend all of our freedoms: reproductive rights, voting rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, climate justice, disability rights, racial equity, and economic fairness. Every freedom we value is on the line, and the ballot box is where we fight for them.
Young people, your future is being decided whether you participate or not. Claim your power.
This message is especially urgent for young people. Generation Z and Millennials already make up the largest voting bloc in the country. Young voters have the numbers to decide elections and to set the course for the future. Yet too often, young voices are missing at the polls because they aren’t registered and don’t realize how simple the process can be.
Here’s the good news: In many states, high school students as young as 16 or 17 can preregister to vote. That means when they turn 18, they’re automatically added to the rolls and ready to participate in their first election. By the time they reach voting age, they’re not scrambling to meet deadlines; they’re already prepared to cast their first ballot and shape their future.
If you’re a young person reading this, or if you know one, don’t wait until the night before a big election to figure out the process. Go online today, check your state’s rules, and register, or preregister now. Encourage your classmates to do the same. Host a registration drive at your school. Post on social media. Because here’s the truth: Decisions about your future are being made right now by people in power. If you’re not registered, you don’t get a say.
National Voter Registration Month is also a reminder to all of us, no matter our age, that democracy is not a spectator sport. Registration deadlines vary by state, and millions of people lose their chance to vote every cycle simply because they missed a deadline or their information wasn’t updated after moving. Taking five minutes to check your registration could be the most important action you take this year.
The stakes have never been higher. The Supreme Court has already overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping away a nearly 50-year precedent. State legislatures are racing to see how far they can go in restricting abortion access. Some are even targeting birth control and IVF. None of this happened by accident. It happened because elections have consequences.
But there’s another side to that story: Protecting and expanding freedoms also comes down to elections. In states where voters showed up to pass ballot measures protecting abortion access, reproductive freedom is still secure. In districts where young people voted in record numbers, leaders committed to justice and equity were elected. The message is clear: When we vote, we win.
So, on this National Voter Registration Month, let’s honor the generations who fought, marched, and even died for the right to vote by doing our part. Let’s commit to registering ourselves, helping our neighbors get registered, and making sure every eligible high school student knows they can take action now.
Our freedoms are not guaranteed. They are defended or lost at the ballot box. If you care about reproductive freedom, if you care about climate justice, if you care about racial equality, LGBTQIA+ rights, or economic security, then voting is not optional; it is essential.
Young people, your future is being decided whether you participate or not. Claim your power. Register. Preregister. Show up. And know this: your voice, your vote, your freedom, our collective future, depends on it.
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Florida’s Anti-Vax Misogyny and Trump’s Hypocrisy
The Florida surgeon general believes you have sovereignty over your own body... unless you’re a woman!
Sep 11, 2025
On September 3, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo made news again. With a grinning Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at his side, he announced that his state would no longer require vaccines for children. Even more shocking were Dr. Ladapo’s subsequent admissions on national television.
Laced throughout were Republican hypocrisy and misogyny to which US President Donald Trump added an exclamation point a few days later.
“A Gift From God”
Describing Florida’s new anti-vaccine policy, Dr. Ladapo said, “Your body is a gift from God.” He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”
On September 7, he tried to defend his actions on CNN’s “State of the Union”:
Anchor Jake Tapper: “Before you made this decision to lift vaccine mandates for Florida, which include obviously public schools, did your department do any data analysis, did you do any data projections of how many new cases of these diseases there will be in Florida, once you remove vaccine mandates?”
Ladapo: “Absolutely not….There is this conflation of the science and sort of what is the right and wrong thing to do… I’m saying it’s an issue of right and wrong.”
Tapper confronted Dr. Ladapo with facts: 82% of Florida parents with kids in school wanted mandatory vaccines for children; every medical organization in the country (American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, Florida Medical Association) urged mandatory vaccines for children; and even Florida Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) supported Florida’s existing vaccine mandate, which allows religious exemptions.
Tapper: “All of these people are wrong, and you’re right.”
Ladapo: “Casting it in that way is not what I would do. It’s not how I would look at it.”
Dr. Ladapo then explained why facts don’t matter: “I share what is the right thing to do. Whether it’s popular or not…. It’s really about ethics. Is it really appropriate for a government or any other entity to dictate to you what you should put in your body? It is absolutely not appropriate.”
Then came Dr. Ladapo’s money quote: “You have sovereignty over your body.”
He forgot an important GOP caveat: unless you’re a woman.
Hypocrisy and Mysogyny
Dr. Ladapo and Gov. DeSantis campaigned to defeat a Florida abortion-rights measure on the November 2024 ballot. During that effort, Dr. Ladapo signed a letter to Florida TV stations telling them to stop running an abortion rights ad, asserting that it was false and dangerous. His letter also said that broadcasters could face criminal prosecution.
A federal court enjoined Dr. Ladapo’s actions as a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech and barred him from taking any further action to coerce or intimidate broadcasters running the commercials.
The abortion-rights initiative received 57% of the popular vote, but failed to meet the 60% supermajority required for adoption.
And Then Came Trump
But when it comes to misogyny and hypocrisy among government leaders, Trump has few peers. The day after Dr. Ladapo’s appearance on CNN, Trump addressed his newly-created Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible. He boasted that Washington DC’s crime rate was down 87% and asserted that it would be down even more—100%—if domestic violence wasn’t included in the city’s crime statistics:
Much lesser things, things that take place in the home, they call crime. You know, they’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say, ‘This was a crime, see?’ So now I can’t claim 100%.
The federal government has long recognized domestic violence as a national public health and safety crisis.
Among homicides in the United States, intimate partners kill almost 50% of female and 10% of male victims, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Family Violence.
A national survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 4 in 10 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced physical or sexual violence or stalking by an intimate partner.
An average of 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States—more than 12 million women and men over the course of a single year.
One in 4 women (24.3%) and 1 in 7 men (13.8%) aged 18 and older in the US have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
The same day Trump appeared at the Religious Liberty Commission, the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed E. Jean Carroll’s $83.3 million verdict against Trump for defamation. She had accused him of sexual assault in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman’s in Manhattan; he said that her claim was “totally false.” A jury found that Trump had acted with malice in defaming her.
The Epstein Story Gets Worse
Before September 8 ended, the dead hand of Jeffrey Epstein grabbed Trump again. For months, Trump had denied sending a signed sketch outlining a naked woman for inclusion in the child sex trafficker’s “50th-birthday book.” In addition to vehement denials, he sued The Wall Street Journal for $10 billion for publishing the sketch.
The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Epstein estate for the “birthday book.” On September 8, the committee’s Democrats released the page of the book on which that sketch appeared. The signature “Donald” is remarkably similar to Trump’s other signed notes at the time, although the White House still denied that it was his.
Meanwhile, on September 4, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was trying to help quell Trump’s ongoing Epstein debacle when he said that Trump had been an “FBI informant to try and take this [Epstein] stuff down.” Three days later, Johnson was eating those ridiculous words.
It’s All About Faith… in Marketing
In his hour-long rambling before the Religious Liberty Commission on September 8, Trump urged, “We have to bring back religion in America, bring it back stronger than ever before.”
Trump also said that he was donating his personal family Bible for display at the museum.
News reports of his appearance don’t indicate whether Trump’s “God Bless the USA” Bibles were on sale at the event. The autographed version is $1,000. The Presidential, First Lady, Vice President, Veteran, Platinum, Golden Age, and Inauguration Editions are $99.99 each. Trump earned $1.3 million from his Bible sales in 2024.
And don’t forget to check out Trump crypto, pumpkin spice, MAGA caps, jackets, tote bags, tumblers, gold sneakers, pickleball equipment…
If you don’t live near a Trump Store, those items and more are available at his online shop.
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