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reproductive healthcare
In a Post-Roe America, Knowledge Isn’t Just Power—It’s Survival
This is a critical moment in history for both patients and physicians alike to stay informed—because the moves happening now could reshape access to reproductive healthcare nationwide.
Jul 02, 2025
Three years ago, I remember exactly where I was when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. My stomach sank. As an OB/GYN PA with more than a decade in reproductive care, I knew this wasn’t just devastating—it was going to reshape the healthcare landscape completely.
The conversations I’d been having with patients for years—about abortion, birth control, miscarriage, pregnancy loss, pain—were about to get harder, more complicated, and more dangerous.
I had the honor of joining over 100 incredible storytellers in Washington, D.C. for the Our Voices, Our Stories, Our Future: Free & Just Storyteller Summit, to mark three years since the deadly Dobbs decision.
In emergencies, minutes matter. I’ve been in those rooms. And I can tell you: When someone is crashing in front of you, the last thing you should be doing is calling legal.
I am still in awe of the number of people who were courageous enough to travel from across the country to tell their stories and fight for reproductive freedom. We laughed together, we cried together, and we shared our visions for a better future.
We also came to D.C. to meet with lawmakers to remind them that Dobbs didn’t just overturn Roe: It changed lives.
Although the fall of Roe didn’t end abortion in this country, it made it exponentially harder to access. It made it scarier. It deepened the segregation of healthcare access in America. If you’re wealthy enough to travel for care, you might still be okay. But if you’re not—if you’re young, uninsured, working class, Black, or Brown—you’re at greater risk. And we know abortion bans lead to higher maternal mortality, especially for Black women.
Let’s be clear: The anti-abortion zealots behind Dobbs were never going to stop there. In the three years since, I’ve watched extremists celebrate it as a win for “states’ rights,” while women are forced to flee their home states for basic care. “Leaving it to the states” doesn’t mean freedom. It means chaos. It means harm. It means people die.
That’s not an exaggeration—that’s reality.
And President Donald Trump? He doesn’t need to sign a national abortion ban to wreak havoc. He and his allies are already gutting protections through rollbacks, legal loopholes, and silence where there should be leadership.
Recently, Trump’s Supreme Court ruled that states can block people relying on Medicaid from choosing Planned Parenthood as their trusted healthcare provider, a devastating blow to abortion rights and reproductive healthcare—specifically, the freedom of millions of people who use Medicaid to choose Planned Parenthood as their healthcare provider.
The court put millions of Americans’ essential right to reproductive care at risk, and it will devastate communities all across the country just so Republicans in Congress can completely gut Medicaid for millions more Americans. Earlier this month, the Trump administration rescinded federal guidance that protected abortion access in emergencies. That guidance made clear what EMTALA—our federal emergency care law—already guarantees: If a pregnant patient shows up to the ER in crisis and needs an abortion to survive, they must get care.
Now that guidance is gone. And providers are left wondering if they’ll be sued—or even arrested—for doing their jobs.
In emergencies, minutes matter. I’ve been in those rooms. And I can tell you: When someone is crashing in front of you, the last thing you should be doing is calling legal.
And now they’ve set their sights on medication abortion—specifically mifepristone. This medication has been safely used by more than 8 million people over the last 20+ years. It’s not only essential for abortion care—it’s critical for miscarriage management too. But extremists don’t care about science, or safety. They care about control.
If they succeed in restricting mifepristone, it won’t just impact abortion access. It will gut miscarriage care. It could force providers to delay or deny treatment. And it could shut down clinics that rely on it to function—clinics already hanging on by a thread.
This is how they win. Not just with bans, but with quiet sabotage. With red tape. With fear. With confusion. With back-handed backdoor restrictions on our rights to bodily autonomy.
This is a critical moment in history for both patients and physicians alike to stay informed—because the moves happening now could reshape access to reproductive healthcare nationwide.
That’s why I started Take Back Trust—because people need more than outrage. They need answers, and they need tools. Patients need to walk into an ER or a clinic and know what to say, what to ask, and what their rights are.
Take Back Trust is a national resource hub helping people navigate this broken system. Whether you’re facing a miscarriage, scheduling a birth control visit, or trying to figure out if your state still protects you—we’ve got your back.
I am inspired by the words of former Vice President Kamala Harris, who surprised us via video at the Summit. “I know these are difficult times, and it requires a whole lot of courage, and it requires a level of optimism, to remember that we’re fighting for something, not against something,” the former Vice President reminded us. “And in that way we are doing good and important work that is about upholding fundamental rights, such as the freedom of an individual to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do.”
As a clinician, a content creator, and a full-time reproductive rights advocate working at the intersection of medicine and movement, I’ll keep showing up. I’ll keep saying the quiet parts out loud. Because we’re not going back—and we’re not backing down.
We can’t afford to.
Lives are on the line. Not someday, today.
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Don’t Be Fooled: Trump’s Attacks on Medicaid Are an All-Out War on Reproductive Justice
Attacks on Medicaid are just the latest tactic used by anti-choice politicians to strip us of our bodily autonomy and further deny us access to lifesaving reproductive healthcare.
Apr 15, 2025
When U.S. Congress recently approved a budget proposing nearly $880 billion in spending cuts to execute President Donald Trump’s agenda, which will almost certainly mean funding tax cuts for the wealthy, it didn’t just target unnecessary spending—it targeted our healthcare.
Republicans claim this is about combating fraud, but we know the truth. Let’s be clear: Slashing Medicaid by billions of dollars is a direct attack on critically needed health services, as it covers essential healthcare like doctors visits, hospital care, cancer screenings, reproductive healthcare, and more. These cuts threaten not only our access to care, but our fundamental rights to live and thrive.
Attacks on Medicaid will impact millions of Americans, but will disproportionately harm marginalized groups, including people with disabilities; the elderly; low-income families; and most severely Black women, girls, and gender-expansive people. Given the wide-ranging impact these cuts will have on people’s ability to control their health, bodies, lives, and reproduction, this isn’t just a healthcare issue—it’s a matter of reproductive justice.
Expanding Medicaid in more states, increasing access to doula care, and committing to researching racial discrimination in the healthcare system are just a few of the steps we must take.
Medicaid is a lifeline in addressing the deep inequities in healthcare coverage, and any cuts to this vital program threaten to unravel the limited progress we’ve fought so hard to make. Currently, Medicaid funds almost two-thirds of Black births, provides coverage for almost a third of Black women, and insures over half of Black girls. The fact of the matter is that Black women, girls, and gender-expansive people have the most to lose, and it’s undeniable that Medicaid cuts will only exacerbate the Black maternal mortality crisis our communities are already struggling to survive.
It is true that providing lifesaving healthcare to millions of people comes at a cost. But when politicians start looking for ways to trim the federal budget, Medicaid is often first on the chopping block. And yet, slashing Medicaid has proven politically impossible—because the truth is, 8 in 10 Americans overwhelmingly support it. People like being able to see a doctor when they need to, and they recognize Medicaid is essential in making that possible.
Despite its popularity, cuts to Medicaid may soon become reality because of decades of relentless attacks on reproductive justice by our elected leaders. From forced sterilization, to shackling women during birth, from the Hyde Amendment and to overturning the federal right to an abortion, this country has an insidious history of reproductive abuse—particularly against Black women. Now, attacks on Medicaid are just the latest tactic used by anti-choice politicians to strip us of our bodily autonomy and further deny us access to lifesaving reproductive healthcare.
Access to healthcare should never be determined by income or zip code, but these cuts force states to make up this deficit by either raising taxes or slashing education budgets, further burdening our communities. Rural Americans, particularly, will suffer as rural hospitals often rely heavily on Medicaid funding to stay afloat. These cuts will worsen maternal healthcare deserts, which have 1 in 6 Black babies born in areas with limited or no access to essential maternal care.
What’s worse, adding “work requirements,” which were narrowly avoided under Trump’s first administration, will also be used as a tool to remove people from Medicaid. Not because they are not working, but because new bureaucratic reporting requirements will create confusion, and ultimately cause people, including people with disabilities and the elderly, to be disqualified from coverage.
In reality, 92% of Medicaid beneficiaries under 65 are employed, debunking the harmful stereotype that people on Medicaid are not working. There is a long history of scapegoating poor people for receiving social services and adding increased burdens to show they “deserve” help. This is the same racist welfare reform narrative we have heard for decades—the false “welfare queen” myth, used to police Black women, incarcerate Black mothers, and justify cuts to social services.
Make no mistake, Black women will bear the brunt of these Medicaid cuts. Yes, our healthcare system, including Medicaid, has flaws, but slashing coverage for the most vulnerable Americans is not the solution. During a time when access to reproductive healthcare is under attack like never before and Black maternal mortality rates are still continuing to rise, we need policy solutions rooted in reproductive justice.
This means centering Black women, girls, and gender-expansive people who are disproportionately impacted by Medicaid cuts and the policies driving these changes. Expanding Medicaid in more states, increasing access to doula care, and committing to researching racial discrimination in the healthcare system are just a few of the steps we must take. Our lives—and our future—depend on it.
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Lawmakers Ruin Lives When They Restrict Reproductive Care
They aren’t “pro-life.” They aren’t saving lives. All too often, when women can’t get miscarriage treatments or other emergency care, they’re ending lives.
May 23, 2024
We all deserve the right to make informed decisions about our own health. That right has been in danger for years—and since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it’s under siege.
I grew up in the South with an abstinence-only education—if you can call that an “education.”
This approach, which teaches nothing about sex except not to have it, is an utter failure. It’s been proven to have no effect on reducing adolescent pregnancies. And couples who’ve received abstinence-only messaging use less birth control and STD protection than couples who’ve been taught about them.
In states like mine where care has now been prohibited, it’s not the pregnant person, their family, and doctors who determine their care.
When I went to college and became aware of the harmful effects of abstinence-only “education,” I joined a peer-based sex-ed group on campus. We were health and sex positive. But abortion was still only discussed in the shadows, in hushed tones, if at all.
But now, like sex ed, these discussions need to be out in the open.
When my birth control failed, I became pregnant. My now-husband and I were in a long-distance relationship while he finished a paramedic program. We were considering marriage, but we weren’t there yet and didn’t have enough money to raise a child. We made what was, for us, the responsible decision.
The truth is, all kinds of people get abortions. More than half are already parents. People who identify as “pro-life” get abortions, and people who are married get abortions. And the vast majority of Americans support the right to choose an abortion.
After my legal abortion, I began volunteering at an abortion clinic in Florida. Years later, I was offered a job at the Yellowhammer Fund, which provides support to pregnant people seeking reproductive care and family planning in Alabama and across the South.
Reproductive healthcare wasn’t easy even before the Supreme Court reversed Roe, especially in the South.
For instance, in Alabama, we had only three healthcare providers willing to provide abortion care. The state imposed stricter than national average gestational limits, a two-visit prerequisite, and a 48-hour waiting period. If the situation was an emergency, the documentation for a medical exception was extremely difficult to obtain.
Now it’s even worse. Not only can we not provide care, we can’t help patients cross state lines to get it elsewhere. We can’t even help patients understand where and how they can receive the abortion care they need. Our speech has been criminalized.
In states like mine where care has now been prohibited, it’s not the pregnant person, their family, and doctors who determine their care. It’s ideologically extreme lawmakers with no medical background or knowledge of individual circumstances who dictate those deeply personal decisions.
We’re doing what we can. For now, we can direct people seeking abortion care to published articles where they can find information. We can still help families with legal challenges and provide safe sex kits.
Importantly, we’re also training community members across the rural South to be advocates and supportive resources for those seeking reproductive justice. And the Yellowhammer Fund has launched a lawsuit to restore our right to help clients find abortion care, and there is some hopeful movement.
But we also need lawmakers to know that every decision they make restricting reproductive care is life-ruining. They aren’t “pro-life.” They aren’t saving lives. All too often, when women can’t get miscarriage treatments or other emergency care, they’re ending lives.
Midwives and birthing centers need to be free to care for their patients in ways that maximize that patient’s health and family, free of state control and threats of prison. This is a message that the majority of Americans support. We need to make sure lawmakers listen.
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