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reproductive justice
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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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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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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National Abortion Providers, Thank You!
On this National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, during Women’s History Month, we reflect on what it truly means to lead change by honoring providers who stand courageous in clinics across the country.
Mar 10, 2026
Each March, as the world turns its gaze toward Women’s History Month, we are reminded of the countless women whose courage, intellect, resilience, and leadership have reshaped our world. For 2026, the national theme—“Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future”—honors the women who are reimagining and rebuilding systems to ensure long-term sustainability: environmental, economic, educational, and societal. It recognizes women’s leadership in creating a future rooted in equity, justice, and opportunity for all.
Within that narrative sits a group of women and gender-expansive people whose work rarely appears in history books but whose impact resonates through lives across the nation: abortion providers.
On March 10, National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, we are called to honor these fearless caregivers who sit at the frontlines of reproductive healthcare. They embody the very essence of this year’s Women’s History Month theme of leading change and shaping a future where bodily autonomy, dignity, and compassionate care are not just ideals but realities.
Abortion providers deliver essential medical care in the face of extraordinary adversity. They confront threats, protests, harassment, legal warfare, and violence—all aimed at trying to silence them, intimidate them, or push them out of the work they know is crucial. They endure anti-clinic demonstrations, surveillance by extremists, and political rhetoric designed to vilify not just a medical procedure but the fundamental humanity of the people they serve. Despite this, they show up day after day with resolve and open hearts.
Just as the suffragists, civil rights leaders, and healthcare pioneers of earlier eras were architects of change, today’s abortion providers are reshaping what justice looks like in the 21st century.
Their courage is deeply personal. It is the exam room conversation where a provider listens without judgment. It is the moment they guide a patient through a complex decision with clarity and care. It is the steady hand on a shoulder trembling with fear and hope. This is leadership: not in some distant boardroom, but in shared humanity. This is sustainability: building systems of care that endure in the face of relentless attack.
At the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), we fund patients and eliminate financial barriers. But it is abortion providers who make care happen. They are the ones with the medical training, the compassion, the resilience, and sometimes the very bodies standing between patients and an unsafe, uncertain future.
Our work at WRRAP could not exist without these providers at the forefront. They are our partners in every sense bridging policy and possibility, funding and freedom, fear and resilience. We provide financial support so a patient doesn’t have to choose between rent and care, but it is the provider who opens their door, who holds space for people, who offers healing and hope in a world that so often refuses it.
To the providers who dedicate their lives to this work: We see you, we thank you, and we honor you. You are shaping a sustainable future, one where people have autonomy over their bodies and futures; one where care is delivered with compassion, dignity, and respect; one where equity is more than a slogan but a lived practice.
The work of abortion providers is history making. Just as the suffragists, civil rights leaders, and healthcare pioneers of earlier eras were architects of change, today’s abortion providers are reshaping what justice looks like in the 21st century. They are environmental stewards of well-being, economic innovators in equitable care delivery, educators in dignity and consent, and societal leaders in advancing reproductive freedom for all.
Being a provider today means doing the work under threats that others can scarcely imagine. It means navigating legal labyrinths designed to block care, enduring hostile legislative sessions, and facing protests that seek to make the act of healing itself controversial. And yet, providers persist, not because it is easy, but because it is necessary.
On this National Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, during Women’s History Month, we reflect on what it truly means to lead change by honoring providers who stand courageous in clinics across the country, whose safety has been threatened because they chose care over fear, whose compassion has saved futures with every patient they serve.
To every abortion provider today: Thank you for leading. Thank you for caring. Thank you for building a future rooted in justice, compassion, and dignity.
We are grateful beyond words, and we stand with you. This is our collective power.
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Immigration Detention Is Reproductive Violence
Politicians who call themselves “pro-life” support policies that detain pregnant people, criminalize pregnancy, and separate families.
Dec 21, 2025
Early this month, The 19th reported that a 22-year-old mother named Nayra Guzman was kidnapped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on her way to the neonatal intensive care unit to see her newborn daughter, just days after a long and complicated delivery. While her daughter remained hospitalized, Guzman—still recovering from a C-section and managing Type 1 diabetes—was taken to an immigration detention center and held for 34 hours without adequate medical care, food, or water, or access to a breast pump.
This is not an isolated failure. It is reproductive violence by design.
Immigration in the US has always been about control—controlling who belongs, who gets to build a family, and who is deemed worthy of safety and care. Early laws like the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1924 Immigration Act codified eugenicist ideas about which communities were deemed “desirable” and which the country sought to exclude. During World War II, Japanese Americans were subject to mass incarceration, families were separated, pregnancies endangered, and women sterilized. More recently, between 2017 and 2021, more than 4,600 children were kidnapped at the US border—1,360 of whom still remain unaccounted for.
Reports show this has been the deadliest year in immigration detention since 2004. Next year is projected to be even worse. People are dying from untreated infections, suicide, dehydration, and preventable complications. Investigations have documented hundreds of human-rights abuses—including pregnant people miscarrying, being shacked across their stomachs during transport, placed in solitary confinement, and denied translation during medical procedures.
We must dismantle the systems that cage people, separate families, and dictate who is allowed to parent safely.
Major medical, public health, and advocacy organizations have long recognized that pregnant and postpartum people should not be incarcerated. Under the Obama administration, ICE was directed to avoid the detention of pregnant people whenever possible, citing serious health risks and the agency’s inability to provide appropriate care. Under both Trump terms, those protections were rolled back. And last month, Intercept uncovered that the Trump administration has been actively concealing how many pregnant people are in ICE custody.
What we don’t know should scare us even more. Until recently, the Department of Homeland Security was required to publish semiannual reports detailing how many pregnant, postpartum, and lactating people were detained, and what care they received. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, those reports have stopped, and Congress quietly dropped the reporting requirement altogether.
Without even basic reporting requirements, what happens inside detention becomes nearly impossible to track, and people vanish. They are transferred in the middle of the night, across state lines, with no transparency, and no way for their families to know where their loved ones are or if they’re safe.
What we are seeing today are the consequences of a system rooted in racialized policing and mass incarceration—one that criminalizes migration and is built to financially benefit from human suffering. Today, detention quotas and private contracts dictate immigration policy.
For nearly a century after Ellis Island first opened, immigration detention was relatively rare. But by the 1980s, as the "War on Drugs" expanded the criminal legal system, immigration enforcement adopted the same punitive logic. The Reagan administration imposed the nation’s first immigration detention quota, ensuring that thousands of migrants—many fleeing violence or seeking family reunification—would be incarcerated at any given time. After 9/11, detention intensified with the “War on Terror” and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Private prison companies secured lucrative federal contracts, new facilities opened nationwide, and immigration violations—many of them civil, not criminal—were now punished with incarceration. ICE’s own data shows roughly 72% of people in detention have no criminal record. Yet thousands are incarcerated for civil violations that carry no criminal penalty under federal law.
As prison beds became profitable, people became commodities. Today, the US operates the largest and fastest-growing immigration detention system in the world. In July, Congress budgeted $45 billion for ICE to build more immigration detention centers, and an additional $30 billion for arrests and deportation. The two biggest private prison companies, CoreCivic and GEO Group, have reported record-breaking profits and described the Trump administration as offering “unprecedented growth opportunities.”
As climate change, war, and economic and political instability drive global displacement and migration, the US has responded with cages instead of care. And apathy feels endless. Politicians who call themselves “pro-life” support policies that detain pregnant people, criminalize pregnancy, and separate families. The American people, exhausted and complacent, have learned to tune it out. Silence has become a coping mechanism.
Working in policy, I live with a constant tension: I know change is incremental, that the system moves slowly, but I am also an abolitionist. I do not believe in prisons or borders. I believe health and reproduction are human rights, and that no one should be imprisoned for migrating or for being pregnant. I think of my policy work as harm reduction—protecting people’s dignity and autonomy now, as we fight for collective liberation in the future.
Calls to release pregnant people from detention are growing. In November, the Democratic Women’s Caucus declared the treatment of pregnant, postpartum, and nursing people in ICE custody “unacceptable,” and last week, Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez introduced a resolution urging congressional action.
But that demand cannot come from advocates and politicians alone—change depends on ordinary people determined to not look away. Our outrage is long overdue. Call your representatives and let them know that cruelty is a political choice we refuse to normalize. Join groups organizing on the ground, donate to local defense funds, and talk about this in your circles.
In the long term, we must dismantle the systems that cage people, separate families, and dictate who is allowed to parent safely. That vision is at the heart of reproductive justice—because every struggle is connected, and every win brings us closer to the world we deserve.
As Fannie Lou Hamer said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
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Young Pregnant People Need Choices, Not Shame
With young people’s autonomy so limited, we must ensure young pregnant and parenting people have the support they need.
Aug 09, 2025
Access to affordable family planning and sexual health services is under attack, with the current administration threatening millions of dollars in Title X funding.
Millions of poor, uninsured, low-income individuals rely on this program not only for contraception but for cancer detection, HIV testing, and other essential services. The administration’s hostility toward proven programs like this puts young people at greater risk of pregnancy, in an environment where reproductive choices are limited. The consequences of abortion bans are clear: People are getting sick and losing their lives because access to basic reproductive healthcare is being stripped away. But what if you are young? What if you are Black? What if you live in a state restricting abortion? What if you do not get to decide?
For young pregnant people, these bans and funding cuts are even harder to navigate because of barriers to their independence. With the potential cuts to Title X programs, young people’s access to contraception will be even more limited. If they become pregnant when they don’t want to be, some states that still allow abortion have restrictions requiring consent from parents. With young people’s autonomy so limited, we must ensure young pregnant and parenting people have the support they need.
Reproductive justice is a human rights framework coined in 1994 by 12 Black women in response to the reproductive rights and health groups that excluded the lived experiences of those who have been marginalized. This concept includes the right to parent, the right not to parent, the right to parent children in safe and healthy communities, and the right to bodily autonomy. Young people, too, deserve reproductive justice.
What if young people had access to healthcare free from biases and shame?
A powerful misconception is that we are often just one decision away from shaping the course of our lives. But it isn’t the one individual decision. It’s the collective punitive reaction from society that stands in the way of young people getting the support they need. For the young pregnant person who is parenting, there is a systemic lack of support coupled with stereotypes that lead to negative outcomes.
As a child, my knowledge about the consequences resulting from decisions we make about our bodies was limited to the concrete and practical, such as skinning my knee in the neighborhood kickball tournaments when I ran around the bases too quickly. That knowledge quickly expanded when my older sister became pregnant as a teen, and I observed the organized shunning she experienced from family members to healthcare workers to teachers and friends. This was the first time I witnessed shame. I heard how family members talked about her pregnancy as a defining moment, as if any glimpse of a future was now extinguished. Those family members and friends who were “supportive” disappeared once my niece was born. It was at this moment that I decided that I wanted to offset that shame for her, for us, for every young Black girl who is navigating a pregnancy.
I did my best to be a supportive little sister as a child, standing up to all who spoke negatively about my sister and her choices. This experience stayed with me, and as a first year medical student, I founded Sisters Informing Healing Living Empowering (SIHLE) Augusta, renamed Choices Within Reach, an organization that works to support young Black mothers in Augusta, Georgia, through providing community, financial resources, and infant supplies. For the past seven years, in addition to my medical and residency training, we have worked to disempower the systems that shame and marginalize young people about their reproductive choices. Transforming that childhood rage to triumph, this ever-expanding sisterhood is my greatest accomplishment.
Now, as an OB-GYN and community organizer, I continue to hear the echoes of my sister’s story through my patients and the young people I serve in Georgia.
These stereotypes of young parenting people that go back to public condemnation of “teen moms” and “welfare queens” in the 1970s and 80s are still alive in the collective shunning of young Black pregnant people. In many schools, there is a “pregnant student” policy that states that the school won’t make accommodations for a pregnant student unless required by documented medical circumstances. High school students are not granted “maternity leave.” These policies are penal and don’t support the pregnant student’s success, especially when combined with isolation that the pregnant adolescent may be enduring within her community.
It is these punitive policies and attitudes that lead to statistics like only 50% of teen mothers receive their high school diploma by age 22, compared to 90% of teens who do not give birth in their adolescence. The lack of education and support makes it hard for them to find job opportunities, leading to a hard time making ends meet, and so on. This is a collective shunning of young motherhood.
These roots also shape our healthcare system. Just as young moms slip through the cracks of the community, they also often do in the healthcare system. Adolescent medicine providers try to close these gaps for young people. However, the gap widens when they become pregnant. Is it the OB-GYN who receives little to no training on how to specifically care for a pregnant teen or the pediatrician who has not specialized in pregnancy that is trying to care for the teen who is pregnant? When the gaps are felt by young moms, they might disengage from prenatal care, lose trust in their providers, and face poor health outcomes for the mother and baby.
This is especially true when the stereotypes of pregnant adolescents are woven into the implicit and explicit biases of the providers. These biases affect how their providers view them, the care they receive, and their outcomes. Kia, who experienced pregnancy at 16 years old, had her pregnancy confirmed by her pediatrician, who had been caring for her since she was an infant. However, once her urine pregnancy test was positive, there was an obvious disconnect. They told her she could no longer be seen in the office and was not offered any options counseling, OB-GYN references, or even an ultrasound. This experience led Kia to delay seeking prenatal care. What if the pregnancy was in the wrong location? What if there were complications? As we attempt to close the gap of maternal morbidity and mortality rates in the U.S., which are disproportionately higher in Black people, we must address the systems that increase risks faced by young Black parents.
The fight against the societal punishment of young Black parents is an issue of reproductive justice. In a nation where systemic barriers persist, the futures of young Black parents don’t come down to personal choices; they are intricately tied to the what kind of support, education, and resources they can access. It is far beyond time to restructure the narratives and fill the gaps society created for our young Black pregnant and parenting people.
What if we had culturally sound, group prenatal care that focused on and highlighted the needs of young, Black pregnant people? What if we built a community that came together to support young parents with childcare, financial resources, and school or job support? What if medically accurate, comprehensive sex education were available to all young people? What if young people had access to healthcare free from biases and shame? We can create the kind of world where we all have equitable access to the full spectrum of reproductive freedoms, no matter our age or location.
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Beyond Motherhood: Reclaiming Women's Agency in an Era of Control
We must advocate for a society where women's autonomy, choices, and identities are respected and celebrated in all their diverse forms, irrespective of their maternal status.
Jul 16, 2025
I have yet to be a mother, but I froze my eggs a few years ago, and am thankful to have that choice to have a family of my own one day—that ability to have a choice was taken away from a woman in Georgia who was declared brain dead in February, yet kept on life support and forced to carry her fetus until she gave birth this June. This harrowing situation unfolded because hospital officials feared they'd violate Georgia's law banning most abortions after fetal cardiac activity.
A few years ago, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, some anti-abortion advocates were taking issue with IVF procedures, citing that destroying unused embryos is equivalent to taking a life.
In May 2025, a car bomb exploded in the parking lot at a fertility clinic in Palm Springs. Upon hearing the news, I immediately felt concern for the individuals who kept their eggs and embryos at this clinic. While no individuals or reproductive materials were harmed, the fear was palpable for me, having stored my own eggs in a Massachusetts clinic. This incident was deemed an act of terrorism, carried out by the perpetrator because of his anti-natalist views—his belief that it is wrong to have children.
What all these stories have in common is the insidious attempt to control women—control our reproductive health, our bodies, whether we live or die. They are only the most recent examples of how women's choices are being systematically stripped away.
This societal obsession with motherhood as the pinnacle of female existence not only devalues women who choose not to have children or are unable to, but it also places undue pressure on those who do.
Even the way those in power respond shows a disturbing and deeply ingrained narrow view of women and their choices. In response to the Palm Springs incident, Attorney General Pam Bondi stated in a post on X, "Let me be clear: The Trump administration understands that women and mothers are the heartbeat of America. Violence against a fertility clinic is unforgivable." That sentence, though seemingly innocuous, reveals a troubling worldview. It implies that women are primarily valued as mothers, that our worth as women is intimately connected to our reproductive lives, and our health choices are directly tied to our ability to fulfill this singular role.
Yet, there are myriad valid reasons why a woman may never have children: health issues, infertility, personal choice, not finding a suitable partner, or socioeconomic instability, to name a few. Despite this, the current Trump administration and the conservative faction in our country seem fixated on justifying womanhood solely through the lens of motherhood. This reductive stance is evidenced by Vice President JD Vance's dismissive "childless cat lady" comment, where he questioned the stake of childless individuals in the nation's future, and further underscored by the Trump administration's proposals for 'baby bonuses' and tax-deferred investment accounts designed to incentivize childbirth.
Consider the ripple effects of this narrow perspective.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade has paved the way for states to make abortion illegal or incredibly restrictive, fundamentally stripping women of their agency and bodily autonomy. Once pregnant, in 41 states, a woman's body is now no longer entirely her own, but rather a vessel subject to state control.
The very act of bombing a fertility clinic, while deplorable, was deemed so primarily because a fertility clinic is associated with the creation of babies. The outrage stemmed from the perceived threat to potential motherhood, not necessarily the broader violation of individual liberty or the act of terrorism itself.
This singular focus extends to how women are perceived even in death. The Georgia case forces us to confront a horrifying reality: Even when a woman is brain dead, her bodily autonomy can be overridden in favor of a fetus. Her existence, in this context, is reduced to her reproductive capacity, even in her final moments. This legal and ethical quagmire highlights how deeply ingrained the concept of women as mere incubators has become in some interpretations of the law.
Individuals should be valued for more than their potential or actual role as mothers. I do not disagree that motherhood can be a profoundly important and vital aspect of life, and for many, it is. As someone who still hopes to be a mother, it is for me. Yet, I do not know the future, and there is a real possibility that I may never have children. Therefore, to define a woman's entire identity and worth by her reproductive capacity is a dangerous reduction, not to mention emotionally charged for individuals such as myself. Like any human, women are multifaceted beings with diverse aspirations, careers, contributions to society, and personal lives that extend far beyond the biological function of childbearing.
This societal obsession with motherhood as the pinnacle of female existence not only devalues women who choose not to have children or are unable to, but it also places undue pressure on those who do. It limits our collective imagination of what a woman can be and achieve. We must challenge this pervasive narrative and advocate for a society where women's autonomy, choices, and identities are respected and celebrated in all their diverse forms, irrespective of their maternal status. It is time to assert that a woman's life, and her death, should be her own.
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A Post-Roe world Is a Post-Rights World
The loss of Roe wasn’t just about abortion, it was a green light to dismantle reproductive freedom at every level.
Jun 24, 2025
It has been three years since Roe v. Wade was overturned. A seismic ruling shattering the constitutional right to abortion sent this country into a public health crisis. In the aftermath, millions of people have been stripped of autonomy over their own bodies, forced into pregnancies they did not choose, denied medication for miscarriages, and criminalized for seeking basic healthcare.
This is not a post-Roe world. It is a post-rights world. And we are still living through the consequences.
Across the nation, 19 states now have near or-total abortion bans. In many more, access has been drastically limited by targeted restrictions, clinic closures, and political interference. But the loss of Roe wasn’t just about abortion, it was a green light to dismantle reproductive freedom at every level. The attacks have expanded to birth control, emergency contraception, gender-affirming care, IVF, and even medical privacy.
Gerrymandered districts, activist judges, and extremist lawmakers continue to pass laws that do not reflect the will of the people.
Everyday clinics and doctors are under siege. Providers are being driven out by threats, legal risks, and burnout. Many Planned Parenthoods and independent clinics in banned states no longer provide abortion care at all. That burden has fallen on organizations like ours—small, often women-, queer-, and BIPOC-led abortion funds doing the lifesaving work of helping patients afford care and travel across state lines. But the need has skyrocketed, and funding has not. Foundations give less than 2% of their dollars to direct abortion support. We are asked to do more with less while the people we serve pay the price.
Survivors of rape or domestic violence are forced to carry pregnancies because they don’t qualify for their state’s narrow exceptions. Minors have to beg courts for permission to terminate pregnancies. Patients sleep in cars while waiting for appointments in the closest legal state. And we are their safety net and will continue to be in this man-made disaster.
Meanwhile, politicians—mostly white, mostly male—continue to play God with our lives. They are not doctors. They are not ethicists. They are not the people bearing the risks, the trauma, or the responsibility of pregnancy. And yet they are the ones deciding who deserves healthcare and who doesn’t.
Nowhere is that clearer than in Georgia, where a heartbreaking story made national headlines. Adriana Smith, a 31-year-old woman, was declared brain dead four months ago. But because she was pregnant, her body was kept alive by machines—not out of medical necessity, but due to Georgia’s abortion ban, which includes personhood language that grants legal rights to embryos at six weeks gestation. Her family was forced to watch as she was kept on life support against her wishes. In Georgia, the embryo inside her had more legal value than Adriana herself.
This is what happens when politicians legislate ideology. When we prioritize hypothetical life over a real one: a daughter, a sister, a human being, we lose not just rights, but our humanity.
And still, we hear silence when it comes to men’s responsibility.
No law mandates men to support a child they helped create before birth. No one is tracking their behavior, forcing paternity tests, or denying their autonomy. They are not losing jobs, skipping school, or facing stigma for becoming parents. Yet the full burden of pregnancy, childcare, and judgment falls squarely on the pregnant person who are forced to risk their health, financial stability, and futures to carry pregnancies. Where patients are denied their fundamental rights under the guise of “protecting life.” Where the father of a child can disappear without consequence.
It has been three years since Roe fell. And still, we are shouting the same truths:
- Abortion is healthcare.
- Bodily autonomy is a human right.
- Pregnancy should never be a punishment.
The majority of Americans agree. Poll after poll shows that most people support legal abortion and reproductive freedom. Yet the system is rigged. Gerrymandered districts, activist judges, and extremist lawmakers continue to pass laws that do not reflect the will of the people.
But here’s the truth: Roe was never enough. It was the floor, not the ceiling. Even before its fall, access was unequal based on race, income, zip code, and immigration status. Roe protected a legal right, but it didn’t guarantee access, safety, or justice. And we should not be fighting to go back to that flawed baseline. We must demand a future that does better for all of us.
So, what do we do?
We keep fighting—harder than ever. We vote like our lives depend on it, because they do. We support abortion funds that are on the frontlines, providing help when no one else will. We demand accountability—not just from politicians, but from the people in our communities who stay silent. We uplift the stories of those who’ve been harmed by these cruel policies, and we refuse to let them be erased.
And we imagine a future where our rights are not just restored but expanded. A future rooted in justice, equity, and compassion. A future where no one is forced to give birth against their will, and no one dies waiting for the law to catch up to basic humanity.
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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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The Fight for Abortion Care Is a Fight for Equality
Women’s History Month exists because, for centuries, women’s contributions were erased, dismissed, or outright stolen. Today, we see that same erasure in real-time when lawmakers craft policies that disregard the needs and realities of half the population.
Mar 29, 2025
Every March, we celebrate Women’s History Month—a time to honor the trailblazers who fought for our rights and recognize how far we have come. But it is also a time to take stock of the battles we’re still fighting, and one of the most urgent is the fight for abortion care.
Abortion access isn’t just about healthcare; it’s about power, equality, and dignity. It’s about recognizing that pregnant people should have the same autonomy, agency, and opportunities as anyone else. Yet, time and time again, legislation is used as a weapon to strip us of our rights, rendering us invisible in the eyes of those who hold power.
When abortion rights are restricted, the effects ripple far beyond the individual. The economic consequences are devastating. Studies have shown that being denied an abortion drastically increases the likelihood of a person living in poverty. The landmark Turnaway Study found that people who were unable to access an abortion were four times more likely to experience financial insecurity, struggle with housing instability, and be trapped in cycles of domestic violence.
In a system where half the population can be denied life-saving medical care, how can we claim to value equality?
This is not just a coincidence—it’s by design. Anti-abortion legislation is not about “life”; it’s about control. It’s about keeping people, especially women and those who can become pregnant, economically vulnerable and dependent. It’s about ensuring that the structures of power remain unchallenged, forcing people to carry pregnancies they cannot afford while denying them the resources to escape poverty.
The hypocrisy is staggering. Many of the same politicians who push for abortion bans are the ones gutting social safety nets—cutting funding for childcare, slashing paid family leave, refusing to raise the minimum wage, and the list goes on. They claim to care about “life” while making it impossible for parents to provide for their children. This is not pro-life; it is anti-equality.
The United States already has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations, and the numbers are even more alarming for Black and Indigenous people, who die at three to four times the rate of their white counterparts during childbirth. When states restrict abortion access, they force more people into dangerous pregnancies, increasing these mortality rates even further.
The recent surge of abortion bans and restrictions has created a healthcare crisis. Patients experiencing pregnancy complications—such as miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies—are being turned away from hospitals or left to suffer until their lives are at imminent risk. Doctors fear prosecution for providing necessary care, and pregnant people are treated as legal liabilities rather than human beings.
In a system where half the population can be denied life-saving medical care, how can we claim to value equality?
Women’s History Month exists because, for centuries, women’s contributions were erased, dismissed, or outright stolen. Today, we see that same erasure in real-time when lawmakers craft policies that disregard the needs and realities of half the population.
Look at how abortion laws are written—by men who will never face the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy, let alone a dangerous one. Look at how reproductive healthcare is treated as an afterthought, even though it is central to economic stability, personal freedom, and public health.
Every time a law is passed that strips away abortion access, it is another message that we do not matter. That our health, our futures, our choices are secondary. That we are expected to sacrifice our bodies and our well-being to maintain a system that was never built for us in the first place.
This isn’t just an attack on reproductive rights; it’s an attack on gender equality itself.
Abortion access is not a fringe issue—it is fundamental to equality. If we want a world where women and pregnant people are not just tolerated but truly valued, we must fight for policies that recognize our full humanity.
That means protecting abortion access at every level—through legislation, through the courts, through elections, and through supporting each other. It means funding organizations that help people get the care they need, regardless of where they live—organizations like WRRAP. It means holding politicians accountable and refusing to let them silence us.
Women’s History Month is a reminder that progress is not given—it is won. The right to vote, the right to work, the right to own property, the right to make decisions about our own bodies—none of these rights were freely handed to us. They were fought for, tooth and nail, by those who refused to be invisible.
Now, it is our turn. The battle for abortion justice is the battle for equality itself, and we cannot afford to lose.
This op-ed was distributed by American Forum.
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