SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
american medical association
'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.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Medical Groups Tell EPA: Don't Kill 'Main Tool' to Combat Climate Crisis
"It is unconscionable that the agency charged with protecting Americans from environmental threats would consider rescinding policies based on years of evidence-based practice," said the head of one nursing group.
Sep 22, 2025
Over 120 top health and medical organizations on Monday joined the growing chorus of opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency's attempt to roll back the landmark legal opinion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the welfare of the American people.
"The Trump administration's effort to rescind the EPA's endangerment finding is not only dangerous—it's an attack on science and on the health of the American people. Undoing the endangerment finding would remove the federal government's main tool to combat climate change," explained Katie Huffling, executive director of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments.
The alliance joined the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health (MSCCH) in writing a letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. Other signatories include national organizations such as the American College of Physicians, American Medical Association, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, along with scores of state groups.
"The science is clear: Climate change is real, driven primarily by human-caused emissions, and harming both our health and the
economy today," the letter states. "The health harms of climate change caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are well understood and acknowledged by the American medical and scientific communities."
Today @docsforclimate.bsky.social released a letter signed by over 120 national/state orgs across medicine, nursing, pharmacy, & veterinary medicine, across 36 states recognizing #climatechange as a profound danger to our health. We’re asking EPA to protect the #endangermentfinding lnkd.in/grgEZ2qF
[image or embed]
— Lisa Patel, MD (@lisapatel.bsky.social) September 22, 2025 at 11:38 AM
The letter highlights various health impacts tied to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, which include an increased range for mosquitoes that spread diseases, worsening mental health, rising cardiovascular deaths, higher risks for respiratory conditions, and conditions that exacerbate chronic diseases. It emphasizes risks for pregnant people, children, and the elderly.
"No matter where they live, children are uniquely vulnerable to hazardous air pollution. Children are not little adults, and their lungs are still developing, putting them at greater risk for harmful impacts to their lifelong health and development," noted American Academy of Pediatrics president Dr. Susan J. Kressly.
"The Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to repeal the endangerment finding would jeopardize the progress we’ve made to protect child health and leave children susceptible to chronic illnesses, like asthma," she warned.
Challenging the Trump administration's argument for rolling back the 2009 finding, MSCCH executive director Dr. Lisa Patel stressed that "the administration's claim that climate change is not a significant threat is contrary to what nurses, doctors, and pharmacists witness every day in our clinical practice."
"Beyond the devastating toll of wildfires, unprecedented extreme heat, and superstorms and floods that decimate entire communities, we are seeing clinics and hospitals themselves damaged or destroyed, and critical supply chains disrupted," Patel pointed out. "That means in times of crisis we cannot provide even the most basic care patients desperately need."
National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners president Felesia Bowen declared that "it is unconscionable that the agency charged with protecting Americans from environmental threats would consider rescinding policies based on years of evidence-based practice."
The signatories are calling on the administration to not only withdraw its proposed rescission of the endangerment finding but also reaffirm the EPA's obligation to regulate GHG pollution under the Clean Air Act and strengthen protections against climate-related health threats through ambitious emissions standards.
"The science is compelling—climate change is a clear and present danger for the health of our patients and communities," said Dr. Alison Lee, Chair of the ATS Environmental Health Policy Committee. "Last week's National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report confirms what the medical community already knows: Climate change is harming our patients and, absent urgent action, the harms will escalate."
"Let us be clear—the medical community is standing together in its opposition to rolling back the EPA GHG endangerment finding," she added.
Also citing the report released last week, David Arkush, who directs the climate program at the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a Monday statement that "the EPA is proposing to move exactly opposite to the way that the law and its mission require—flouting overwhelming scientific evidence and ignoring required procedures to reach a predetermined political outcome on behalf of mass polluters."
"The agency should reverse course and drop this misguided and unlawful action," he argued. "Failing that, the courts should roundly reject it."
His statement and the medical coalition's letter come on the last day of the public comment period for the proposal, and after more than 1,000 scientists, public health experts, and economists sent another letter to Zeldin last week detailing why they "strenuously object" to his effort to repeal the legal opinion that underpins federal climate regulations.
The effort to repeal the endangerment finding is just one prong of Big Oil-backed President Donald Trump's war on climate policies, which also includes ending the collection of pollution data, clawing back $7 billion in federal grants for low- and middle-income households to install rooftop solar panels, declaring a national energy emergency, and ditching the Paris Agreement.
Keep ReadingShow Less
10 Groups Who Can and Must Do More to Fight Trumpism
All these groups have diminished themselves and their real potential to generate strong direct democratic pressures and arouse the citizenry.
Sep 06, 2025
This column is a plea to our readers to help get responses from groups whose duties and rhetoric should cause them to become much more active in countering the fascistic, dictatorial actions of Tyrant Trump.
All these groups have diminished themselves and their real potential to generate strong direct democratic pressures and arouse the citizenry.
We can guess the answer as to why these groups are so meek, but what is needed is for these groups to answer for themselves. (I recognize that there are a few luminous exceptions among them.)
1. Why aren’t the Democrats in Congress, just a few votes from a majority, much more aggressive vis-à-vis the controlling Republicans and President Donald Trump? Voters are vociferously demanding this at town meetings.
Lawmakers in the minority can hold many informal or “shadow” hearings in congressional committee rooms on the rising disasters of the Trump regime. They can invite knowledgeable witnesses and the media. They have done fewer than half a dozen of these events, which have received media coverage.
Moreover, they could do what the GOP does regarding Democratic presidents: Start laying the groundwork for impeaching Trump and several of his lawless, dangerous, out-of-control cabinet members.
2. Why has the media, for years, excluded coverage of what newsworthy, progressive, proven national citizen groups are doing to give the people the kind of effective voice on Capitol Hill and around the country that led in the 60s and the 70s to health, safety, and economic protections by congressional legislation?
3. Why do the most progressive members of Congress—e.g., Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and lately even Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)—refuse to return calls or answer letters urging them to adopt policies and conduct hearings back in their states, to build support for congressional action? Their disrespect is astonishing and unheard of between the GOP and, for example, the Heritage Foundation.
Are we too busy with our daily work and routines to carve out time to join this historic struggle to save our country?
They will not go on our radio or podcast to discuss their new books or causes. Most of the time, they don’t even bother to acknowledge these invitations with a polite refusal. It’s like calling into a congressional dark hole.
This posture is cutting deeply into their own influence in Congress and severing contacts with progressive groups’ millions of members around the country.
4. The medical societies and bar associations are not costing the Trumpsters any lost sleep as the latter deepen their illegal destruction of federal public health and safety programs. Their brazen violations of federal laws and provisions of the Constitution reflect their Big Bad Outlaw in the White House.
These doctors and lawyers may be sullen but are largely silent when they have considerable muscle to flex. After all, the American Medical Association single-handedly blocked in Congress during the 1940s and early 1950s President Harry Truman’s universal health insurance plan.
We have written twice to 50 state bar associations saying that they should be the first responders against the destruction of the rule of law by raw power. No reply from any of these influential groups. (See: Letter to Bar Associations)
5. Trump is destroying labor unions’ collective bargaining agreements inside the federal civil service. He is the most anti-labor president in modern times, reflecting his past, exploitive business record.
Yes, the major labor unions have filed numerous lawsuits and on Labor Day managed some vociferous demonstrations around the country, without announcing a Compact for American Workers (see my last week’s column: LONG OVERDUE DOMESTIC COMPACT FOR AMERICA).
They could do so much more to deploy organizers for action all over the country, reaching deep into Trump’s blue-collar supporters to ask them about anti-worker Trumpism: “Is this what you voted for? How about some big demos in DC around the White House and Congress? How about old-fashioned mass worker rallies, demanding the presence of lawmakers?
6. I and others have written about the silence of former presidents, except for a few mild public remarks. George W. Bush despises Trump, especially for Trump wiping out his administration’s anti-AIDS program in less developed countries. He is silent as he continues his painting. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, where are they? With their large constituency of voters, they could activate thousands to push Democrats in Congress. With their fundraising skills and lists, they could raise quick money to start “Trump, You’re Fired” groups all over the country, tying the Trump brand to the awful, cruel, and vicious cuts, closings, and firings of federal servants, protectors, and scientists. They know he is destroying America and our constitutional Republic. So why are they AWOL, basking in their comfort zones, instead of being patriotically on the impeachment ramparts?
7. What about the enlightened billionaires? They know the score and can see an ominous recession coming. Easily, they could fund new “civic strike organizations” working on Congress and the executive branch to give a sharp, continuing voice to the people increasingly harmed and deprived in both red and blue states (e.g., fast approaching loss of Medicaid and food programs and much more). (See the Economic Policy Institute report, “100 days, 100 ways Trump has hurt workers.” April 25, 2025)
8. Given how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal Palestinian Holocaust is affecting our country’s violated laws, priorities, freedoms, safety, and tax dollars, why does the media adamantly refuse to more credibly report the vast death and serious injury undercount in tiny Gaza (the geographical size of Philadelphia)? Instead of showing probative evidence of over 500,000 deaths (leaving an improbable 3 of 4 Gazans still alive), they report the Hamas narrowly defined fatality figure of over 63,000.
Hamas does not count tens of thousands under the rubble or the far greater number killed due to “no food, water, medicine, healthcare, fuel, and electricity.” It only counts the immediately identified deaths of Israel’s daily bombardments. ( See, The Lancet piece “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential” July 5, 2024). Editors and reporters know this, but they still are misleading their readers, viewers, and listeners using the Hamas de minimis figures as if they were the total fatalities from this Israeli regime’s mass slaughter of Palestinian babies, children, mothers, and fathers.
9. Then there are the Trump voters who, with few exceptions, have yet to admit that they have been conned big time by the cruel and vicious, egomaniacal, vengeful Trump. With Elon Musk, his smashing of the social safety net includes Trump voters big time around the country. Millions will soon lose their Medicaid, some veteran services, serious labor protections, and care for their children, to mention a few of his betrayals.
Trump voters need to keep reminding themselves, every time Trump shafts them, “We didn’t vote for this.” They knew he was a chronic liar, an abuser of women, a cheater and serial law violator, a promiser breaker from his first term, and a world-class BS-er. But they forgave this unstable personality because his speeches persuaded them that the Democrats had abandoned them. Well, now they have to face the grim realities and speak out collectively about what he is doing to them, his faithful supporters.
10. Then there is “US,” the citizenry. Are we too busy with our daily work and routines to carve out time to join this historic struggle to save our country? We have not seen the worst of what Trump is going to do, by any means. Take him at his word when he says repeatedly, “This is only the beginning.”
A dangerously unstable personality, Trump has expressed global fatalistic attitudes in past conversations. “Watch out and Step Up.” (Read my new book Civic Self-Respect to encourage you to join the 1% already active in the resistance.)
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular