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'Exclusion With a New Name': IOC Bans Trans Women, Those With Sex Differences From Olympics
The genetic testing put forward by the committee "fuels suspicion, invites public scrutiny, and puts already vulnerable athletes at risk," said one advocate.
Mar 26, 2026
A new policy unveiled Thursday by the International Olympic Committee was presented as a ban on transgender athletes from participating in women's sports—but considering just one transgender woman has participated in the international games since they have been eligible to, critics said the new rules would likely have a greater impact on cisgender women with natural variations in hormones, who have already faced degrading treatment and exclusion in the sports community for years.
IOC president Kirsty Coventry, who campaigned to lead the organization with calls to "protect" women's sports in the Olympics, said that starting with the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, athletes will be required to take a one-time genetics test with the screening using a cheek swab, blood test, or saliva sample.
"Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females," said Coventry, adding that the new policy “is based on science and has been led by medical experts."
The IOC worked with experts to determine how to approach the issue of transgender women in sports, which in recent years has become the subject of talking points for the Republican Party in the US and other right-wing leaders. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last year barring transgender women from competing on women's college sports teams.
The committee conducted a review not just of transgender athletes but of those who have differences in sexual development (DSD), such as being intersex, and compete in women's sports. The review has not been publicly released, but the IOC said it found athletes born with male sexual markers had physical advantages even if they were receiving treatment to reduce testosterone.
The IOC had previously allowed transgender athletes to participate in the Olympic Games if they were reducing their testosterone levels. In 2021, a weight lifter from New Zealand, Laurel Hubbard, became the first transgender women to compete at the Olympics after transitioning.
Boxers including Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan and Imane Khelif of Algeria have been subject to scrutiny and genetic testing regarding their sex; Lin was recently cleared to participate in World Boxing events in the female category. Both competed in the 2024 Olympics in Paris and won gold medals.
Khelif has said she naturally has the SRY gene that the IOC's screening would test for, and that she has naturally high levels of testosterone.
Under the IOC ruling, athletes who do not have the typical female XX sex chromosomes and have DSD will also be banned from competing. People with DSD are not always aware of their status.
South African runner Caster Semenya, who has a rare genetic trait giving her elevated levels of testosterone, was subjected to genetic testing after her fellow competitors complained about her appearance when she won a gold medal in a world championship in 2009.
Genetic screening for Olympic athletes "is not progress—it is walking backward," she told The New York Times. "This is just exclusion with a new name.”
Payoshni Mitra, executive director of the advocacy group Humans of Sport, told the Times that the new policy simply "polices women’s bodies."
“It fuels suspicion, invites public scrutiny, and puts already vulnerable athletes at risk," she said.
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Georgia Judge Denounces Murder Charge in Abortion Case as 'Extremely Problematic'
States that have criminalized abortion are "getting much more explicit" in pushing to prosecute women for obtaining abortion care, said one rights advocate.
Mar 24, 2026
A state judge in Georgia on Monday set a bail payment at just $1 for a woman who was charged with murder earlier this month after she took abortion pills to end a pregnancy—a charge about which Judge Steven G. Blackerby of State Superior Court expressed extreme skepticism.
“I think that charge is extremely problematic,” Blackerby said during a hearing that the woman, Alexia Moore, attended virtually. “That is going to be a hard charge to convict upon.”
District Attorney Keith Higgins, who is overseeing the case against Moore, also did not appear convinced that the 31-year-old should be imprisoned for the medication abortion she had last December. He told the judge that "whatever bond the defendant can make that will allow her to get out of jail is appropriate," and noted that police in Kingsland, Georgia had brought charges against Moore without his office's support.
Higgins said he was not ready to drop the murder charge altogether, but said he was also not prepared to present the case to a grand jury.
Moore had been in jail for about two weeks when the hearing took place. Investigators in Kingsland accused her of “unlawfully and with malice aforethought [causing] the death of Baby Girl Moore.” In addition to malice murder they charged her with possession of a controlled substance and a dangerous drug.
She was rushed to Southeast Georgia Health Center on December 30 after experiencing severe abdominal pain. Court records showed Moore told the medical staff she had taken about eight pills of misoprostol, a pill that can be used for medication abortion, and oxycodone for pain. She went into labor at the hospital and delivered a baby who was determined to be in the second trimester of development. The baby was declared dead about an hour after birth.
She said she had bought the medication online and believed herself to be less than 14 weeks pregnant.
The Kingsland Police Department did not specifically cite Georgia's six-week abortion ban—which the state Supreme Court has allowed to remain in effect despite a Superior Court ruling that permanently enjoined the ban and found it unconstitutional—but The New York Times reported that documents supporting the department's arrest warrant "echoed aspects of the ban, including saying that 'the baby was well beyond six weeks of conception.'"
The police said Moore was charged with murder because “the victim became a person at the moment of live birth.”
Higgins acknowledged in court that the malice murder charge may not meet "factual and merit" standards, and both Blackerby and Kelly Turner, Moore's defense attorney, noted that Georgia law prohibits the criminalization of someone who has induced an abortion on themself.
The Current, a Georgia-based outlet, also reported that "privacy issues" are likely to be scrutinized in court if the district attorney continues to pursue the case.
"A security guard at Southeast Georgia Health Center in St. Marys called police after medical staff said that Moore had ingested abortion medication and the infant was older than six weeks, according to police records, which also cited Moore’s previous abortion history," reported The Current.
Turner argued in court that Moore legally procured the misoprostol and noted that her blood tests and hospital records did not show Oxycodone in her system.
"Today’s decision is a reminder that justice is not served by accusation alone," said Don Plummer, press officer for the Georgia Public Defender Council, which is representing Moore.
Author and advocate Jessica Valenti of Abortion, Every Day emphasized after Moore's arrest that the murder charge shows how states that have criminalized abortion care are "getting much more explicit" about the anti-choice movement's desire to punish women for obtaining abortions—even though in the past, laws have typically avoided prosecuting them.
A 31-year-old in Georgia has been arrested and charged with murder for allegedly ending her pregnancy with abortion medication.
Here’s what we know: pic.twitter.com/EXAcMqEdak
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) March 16, 2026
The district attorneys of Georgia's four largest counties pledged in 2019, after the passage of the Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, that they would not prosecute people who obtain abortions.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, women in states including Kentucky, Ohio, and South Carolina have faced charges for obtaining abortion care and for suffering pregnancy loss. An Ohio woman sued medical providers last year for conspiring with police to fabricate a criminal case against her; she had been charged with felony abuse of a corpse after having a miscarriage, but a grand jury declined to indict her.
"I really hope that people are paying attention to this," said Valenti of the attempt to bring charges against Moore. "They really are counting on us being too overwhelmed to act, so it's incredibly, incredibly important that we let them know we're paying attention."
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The Most Obvious Question Liberal Media Refuses to Ask About the Iran War
Though much of the media now expresses doubt about Trump's war, the moral foundation of anti-war opposition has largely disappeared, replaced instead by a narrow strategic debate over costs, risks, and political consequences.
Mar 16, 2026
Doubtless, the war launched by US President Donald Trump is not popular among ordinary Americans.
According to the latest public opinion poll, only a minority of Americans—part of the dwindling core of Trump's supporters—believe that the US-Israeli aggression against Iran has merit.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in early March 2026, only 27 percent of Americans approve of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran—while 43 percent disapprove and 29 percent are unsure.
This pro-war constituency is likely to remain supportive of Trump until the end of his term in office, and long after.
However, the war on Iran is not popular, and it is unlikely to become popular, especially as the Trump administration is reportedly fragmented between those who want to stay the course and those desperate for an exit strategy. Such a strategy would allow their president to save face before the midterm elections in November.
Mainstream media—aside, of course, from the pro-war chorus in right-wing news organizations, podcasters, and think tanks—also recognize that their country has entered a quagmire.
If it continues unchecked, it will likely prove worse than the war in Iraq in 2003 or the long war in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years and ended with a decisive American defeat in August 2021 following the withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of the Afghan government.
Both wars have cost US taxpayers an estimated $8 trillion, including long-term veteran care and interest on borrowing, according to the Brown University Costs of War Project.
While it is important to highlight the unpopularity of America’s latest military adventure, such opposition must rest on moral and legal grounds.
Iran is already promising to be even more costly if the insanity of the war—instigated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war-crazed government—does not end very quickly.
Many Americans may understand the difficult situation in which Trump's unhinged behavior and his unexplained loyalty to Netanyahu have placed their country. What they rarely confront is the moral dimension of that crisis.
Though they speak of the war’s failure—the lack of strategy, the lack of preparation, the absence of an end goal, and the confusion surrounding its objectives—very few in mainstream media have taken what should have been the obvious moral position: that the war itself is criminal, unjustifiable, and illegal under international law.
That position should have been obvious the moment the first bomb was dropped over Tehran. The aggression—particularly while negotiations between Iran and the United States were underway under Omani mediation—was ethically indefensible.
Any remaining doubt should have disappeared when US-Israeli strikes hit civilian areas, including schools and residential districts in the city of Minab in southern Iran, killing hundreds of civilians, mostly children and women.
This moral silence is not new. In fact, it has often been masked by a familiar rhetorical device: the selective invocation of women's rights.
In nearly every US war on Arab and Muslim countries, women's rights have featured heavily in the propaganda used to justify war. The vast majority of mainstream media organizations, think tanks, human rights groups, and activists—even those who rejected military interventionism on principle—agreed at least on that particular premise: the urgency of women's rights.
They used Malala Yousafzai as a symbol of girls’ education and women’s rights, presenting her as a model of American benevolence. At the same time, they ignored the fact that among the countless innocent Muslims killed across the Middle East and Asia in the last few decades—some counts place them in the millions—children and women represented a large share of the victims.
The same scenario was repeated in Gaza during the ongoing genocide, where UN agencies estimate that women and children make up roughly 70 percent of the more than 72,200 Palestinians killed since October 2023. According to data compiled by ‘UN Women’ and Gaza’s health authorities, the total includes an estimated 33,000 women and girls.
Yet mainstream media continues to center Israeli claims about abuses of women's rights by Hamas in Gaza, as if the tens of thousands of women killed and maimed by Israeli bombardment were not even worthy of serious consideration.
The same pattern is now repeating itself in Iran. The administration of Donald Trump—a man known for his degrading views and actions toward women—has been allowed, along with war criminal Netanyahu, to frame the war against Iran as a struggle for women’s rights and liberation.
They cultivated a network of supposed women's rights activists, presenting them as authentic Iranian voices whose mission was to rescue women from massive human rights abuses in their own country. Even on the Left, many fell into that trap—denouncing Trump on the one hand, while still absorbing and reproducing his and Israel’s propaganda.
Now that thousands of women and children have been killed or wounded in the US-Israel unprovoked, unethical, and illegal war on Iran, many of these same voices have fallen silent, quietly placing women's rights on hold until the outcome of the onslaught becomes clear.
Though much of the media now expresses doubt about Trump's war, the moral foundation of anti-war opposition has largely disappeared, replaced instead by a narrow strategic debate over costs, risks, and political consequences.
Complaints about rising energy prices, commentary about Trump's political immaturity, and criticism of his failure to assess the situation properly before ordering bombs to fall have replaced the moral argument altogether.
Equally absent is Netanyahu's role in the war, as well as the stranglehold Israel exerts over successive US administrations—Republican and Democrat alike—including the supposedly ‘America First’ president.
This logic dominates much of the mainstream strategic debate. Commentators such as Fareed Zakaria, Thomas Friedman, and others have repeatedly argued, in one form or another, that the United States must avoid being consumed by Middle Eastern conflicts and instead concentrate on what they describe as the central geopolitical challenge of our time: the rise of China.
While it is important to highlight the unpopularity of America’s latest military adventure, such opposition must rest on moral and legal grounds.
That said, mainstream liberal media should not be confused with genuine anti-war voices. Their objection to war is rarely principled. They tend to oppose military interventions only when those wars fail to serve US strategic interests, threaten corporate profits, or risk undermining Israel’s long-term security.
This is not opposition to war.
It is the logic of war itself.
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