Reproductive Freedom For All, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, and other partners hosted a press call on Thursday morning to highlight immigration detention as an urgent and immediate reproductive justice issue. (Access a recording from today’s call here.)
Reproductive freedom and justice advocates called for oversight and accountability for the human rights violations and the medical neglect and mistreatment of pregnant, postpartum, and/or nursing people in detention across the country. Overwhelmingly, speakers agreed that the Trump administration is choosing to enforce its extreme agenda rather than the safety of pregnant people.
Experts convened to speak on the crisis at hand, share the consequences for pregnant individuals and their children in detention, bring to light real-life examples, and discuss future actions from organizations, including legal actions to hold this administration accountable.
“For months now, we’ve seen reports of pregnant people in ICE custody experiencing medical neglect and abuse,” stated Yvonne Gutierrez, Reproductive Freedom for All Executive Director. “This is state-sanctioned violence. Trump’s anti-abortion and anti-immigrant attacks are part of the same agenda, aimed at controlling people’s bodies, denying care, and targeting communities they deem less deserving of freedom and dignity. This is dangerous, and it’s escalating. We will keep fighting for a world where everyone has the freedom to make decisions about their bodies and their futures, and where families are protected by their government, not targeted.”
“We’ve had enough of these attacks on immigrant communities, designed to instill fear and confusion and deter people from accessing healthcare and essential services,” declared Lupe M. Rodríguez, Executive Director, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice. “We know that actions to separate families and make it harder for people to make their own decisions about their bodies and lives violate our reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. Immigrant justice IS reproductive justice. Everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from, should be able to get the health care they need; live safe, healthy lives; and raise their families with dignity.”
“Unaccompanied immigrant youth must be able to access the full range of reproductive health care, including abortion, under the current law,” Brigitte Amiri, Deputy Director, American Civil Liberties Union, Reproductive Freedom Project, stated. “Any attempts to restrict abortion access for youth in immigration shelters will be devastating. If any youth in ORR custody is denied access to reproductive health care, they should contact us at 212-549-2633.”
“Our pregnant clients tell us they don’t know when or if they will be able to go to the OBGYN, and when they do go, they aren’t told when their next appointment will be,” said Jesus Gonzalez, Managing Social Worker, Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Arizona. “We currently have a client who is in her third trimester and has no information on what the plan would be if she were to give birth while detained. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to secure release from detention for anyone right now, including people who are pregnant or suffering from serious illnesses. While our clients have reported poor conditions in detention for many years, what we’re seeing now is a choice on behalf of ICE and the federal government to detain everyone that they can, regardless of their medical history and regardless of whether they can obtain the medical care they need in ICE custody. We are sounding the alarm on the real harms of detaining pregnant people and the danger that this poses to their health and the health of their babies. We call on ICE to immediately release all pregnant people from detention and stop this harmful practice of detaining pregnant people.”
“Healthcare access is not a nice-to-have, it’s lifesaving. And reproductive health care should never be seen as optional — it’s a dignity that all women deserve,” said Rochelle Garza, President of the Texas Civil Rights Project. “Texans know this fight deeply. Those of us living on the border have experienced this cruelty for years. And it’s no coincidence that many of these immigration detention centers, whether they are run by ICE or ORR, are located in Texas. Or that the enforcement methods here have spread across the country. It’s past time to shut down these facilities and end detention of families and any medically vulnerable individuals.”
“The story of my mom– a woman who crossed the border pregnant with me– reminds me that migration and reproductive healthcare are inextricably tied. Despite people traveling miles in the hope of a better life, immigration status, financial conditions, and dehumanizing treatment create significant barriers to care,” said Congresswoman Delia C Ramirez (D-IL), lead sponsor of the Melt ICE Act. “Reproductive justice is a human right and immigrant justice demands the dismantling of systems that criminalize migration, tear apart families, and deny immigrants access to health care and full personhood.”
Trump’s HHS Targets 13 States Where Abortion Coverage is Protected With New Investigation
In other developments, The Guardian recently reported that Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services has launched investigations into 13 states that currently require health insurance plans to cover abortion care, claiming that these protections violate the Weldon Amendment.
Reproductive Freedom for All-endorsed New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill criticized the investigationsin a statement last Thursday as “nothing but a fishing expedition wasting taxpayers’ money.”
“I will fight tooth and nail to defend and protect New Jerseyans’ abortion rights against attacks from Donald Trump, or anyone else,’ she said. ‘New Jersey requires health insurance plans to follow all applicable laws, including protecting women’s reproductive freedom.”
The Weldon Amendment has long been used to let politicians and health care entities impose their personal beliefs on patients—allowing hospitals, insurance companies, and individual health care professionals to deny care, coverage, or referrals for abortion care.
This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has sought to weaponize the Weldon Amendment to attack states that have passed laws to safeguard abortion access. In 2020, the Trump Administration announced it would withhold $200 million in federal Medicaid funds quarterly from California by claiming that the state’s requirement for abortion coverage in health care plans violates the Weldon Amendment.
“Trump and his allies have lied time and again by saying that they’re leaving abortion access up to the states—and this latest move from Trump’s HHS reaffirms that this was never going to be the case. This is part of a broader strategy to chip away at abortion access nationwide, including in states where it is legally protected, and the Trump administration won’t stop pressuring providers, restricting medication abortion, and challenging health care coverage until they reach that goal,” Reproductive Freedom for All stated.
For over 50 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.
The repeal of Roe v. Wade by the ultra-right majority Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022 not only overturned women’s ability to control their own body, decide their own future, even save their own life, but the next phase, endowing a fertilized egg, embryo or fetus with personhood, essentially strips women of their personhood, altogether.
Women are not just second-class citizens, without the right to self-determination as a man is entitled to, women are mere brood mares, a slave of to the state, not much different than a beast of burden, without any rights at all – not the right to life, due process, equal protection, privacy, cruel and unusual punishment.
And the SAVE Act will make it difficult for women to regain their rights, their personhood by putting up discriminatory barriers to voting.
“Didn’t we already fight these battles?” one asked at a recent ReachOut America-Long Island meeting hosting Lynn M. Paltrow, the founder and former executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (now Pregnancy Justice), now a leader of The Beacon for Democracy, who has been fighting these same battles since the 1960s.
In 13 states with absolute abortion bans, women no longer have the same protection under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 to keep their sensitive health information private from vigilantes, bounty hunters, spurned partners or prosecutors who are arresting women for using abortion medication and even women who have suffered a miscarriage.
Women who are on the brink of death, suffering in pain, or losing their ability to ever have a baby, no longer have the same right to Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), mandating care, or for that matter, the same protection against cruel and unusual punishment as a mass murderer awaiting capital punishment.
And to make sure a woman has no ability to obtain reproductive health care, they are prosecuting doctors, nurses, healthcare workers – even those out of state where abortion care is legal.
The result is to create “maternity deserts” – places that no longer have doctors, healthworkers, too afraid of prosecution for providing care – and a rise in maternal and infant mortality. So much for “pro-life.”
Even when abortion was theoretically protected under the Constitution, states built barriers to access – requiring abortion clinics to meet unnecessary standards, allowing protesters to intimidate patients and healthworkers, even forcing pregnant women to undergo invasive probes and to look at the image of the fetus in their womb to shame her into abandoning her intention to abort. You would think that would violate the 4th amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches.
Or how about banning doctors from giving factual information about reproductive health – a violation of their First Amendment right to free speech?
Texas and Alabama are among the states that are trying to ban pregnant women from traveling out of state to places like New York State, even prosecuting family members who might provide aid. It doesn’t matter, as the Justice Department is now arguing, that the Constitution protects the right to travel across state lines and engage in conduct that is lawful where it is performed and that states cannot prevent third parties from assisting others in exercising that right. Florida was monitoring girl athletes’ menstrual cycles.
There’s a Pregnant Workers Fairness Act that went into effect in 2023 (thanks Biden-Harris) that requires employers to give reasonable accommodation to pregnant women, but Texas has decided it can ignore it.
And none of these have anything to do with “protecting life” (if that were true, these same people wouldn’t be blocking gun control even preventing doctors from inquiring whether parents store their gun safely, despite the fact gun violence is the greatest killer of children). Rather, it is about controlling, disenfranchising, disempowering and dehumanizing women.
“Abortion laws were a way of controlling women without seeming to. But abortion is about a medical procedure and ending pregnancy,” said Lynn M. Paltrow, an attorney and activist on behalf of reproductive justice, who has been fighting for reproductive justice since the 1960s/before Roe.
Indeed, while the anti-abortionists like to portray women seeing reproductive care are Jezebels, wanton or promiscuous women (no mention of those who are raped or victims of incest), six in 10 are already mothers and half have two or more children. As Paltrow noted, women seek abortion care for many different, personal reasons including not being able to afford more children or having health issues that would be compromised by pregnancy. Also, one in four pregnancies result in miscarriage, which requires a procedure, dilation and curettage (D&C), that falls under the same definition (and ban) as “abortion,” while 80 percent of pregnancy deaths are preventable, according to the CDC.
The United States, already with the highest rate of maternal and infant mortality of any high-income country due to the lack of universal health care, is seeing these rates surge in states that have total or near total bans on abortion. And yet, the number of abortions is not going down – only access to prenatal care and to legal, safe abortions.
Right wingers use abortion to rally the Christian Right, waving the banner of “pro-life.” Reproductive Rights activists made a mistake by framing the issue as the right to abortion rather than a woman’s human rights, Paltrow maintained – an echo of Hillary Clinton’s famous speech in Beijing 30 years ago, “Women’s rights are human rights,” the First Lady declared.
“The movement tends to narrow everything down to abortion rights but the issue is not defending particular medical procedure, it’s about defending the people who sometimes need to have the procedure as a full, whole person…Abortion laws were a way of controlling women without seeming to. But abortion is about a medical procedure and ending pregnancy,” said Paltrow.
But the most serious an assault on women’s rights, freedom, liberty and self-determination is the Religious Right’s crusade to establish the personhood of an embryo, fetus – essentially giving this entity, that cannot exist on its own, more rights than the mother whose own “personhood” becomes irrelevant.
Since the embryo or fetus cannot speak for itself, this gives the state authority and power over the woman – making her nothing more than a breeder cow or literally a slave of the state. (You would think this would violate 13th amendment, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”)
She notes that personhood – or citizenship – according to the Constitution’s post-Civil War amendments, applies to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
You would think that equal protection and due process would apply to the mother (and should have been used to establish Roe v. Wade, instead of the right to privacy), but if an embryo or fetus has “personhood rights”, the woman does not.
A Catholic judge ruled that the expectant mother “has placed herself in a special class of persons who are bringing another person into existence. I submit a woman who carries a child to viability is in fact a member of a unique category of persons.”
What does “a unique category of persons” mean in practical terms? Fewer rights, no bodily autonomy.
Persons in this “unique category,” Paltrow said, lose their right to life, liberty, freedom of religion, due process of law (procedural), bodily integrity (medical decision making), privacy in medical information, privacy in reproductive decision making, being free of unreasonable searches and seizures and being free of cruel and unusual punishment, their right to reasonable bail, counsel, right to parent, right to equal protection of the law (race and sex), right to freedom of speech and conscience, as well as human rights more broadly.
In other words, a slave of the state.
What does that mean? It gives the state, the authorities, some nasty neighbor the ability to prosecute a woman for her behavior during pregnancy – if she has a glass of wine, uses marijuana, smokes a cigarette, goes skiing, even drives a car or falls down the stairs – while women are forced by the state to come to the brink of death or lose their future futility without receiving health care.
Between 1973 (the year Roe v. Wade was decided), up to 2005 (32 years), there were 413 arrests of women who miscarried. Between 2006 and 2022 (17 years), there were 1387 arrests – that is three times the incidents in less than twice the time interval. But in just the two years since 2024, the year Dobbs overturned Roe, there have already been 412 arrests of women who miscarried – a number equal to the 32 years.
Among those prosecuted: a woman who fell down steps while pregnant, went to the hospital for treatment, was reported and arrested on her way home to her two other children, for attempted feticide.
Paltrow provided some horrifying examples from cases she fought:
Pamela Rae Steward Monson had a baby that died shortly after birth. She was arrested for medical neglect – not getting to the hospital quickly enough on the day of delivery, not getting prenatal care early enough. And when she did go to the doctor, everything the doctor told her became a weapon against her. Ultimately, she was found to be at fault because “she subjected herself to the rigors of sexual intercourse.”
Though Paltrow won the case (it was featured on “Nightline,”) “it launched hundreds of cases because prosecutors saw arresting a woman for something she did or did not do during pregnancy as a way of getting on TV.”
Another case involved Angela Carter, who had survived childhood bone cancer but had lost a leg. But after she was pregnant, she found a tumor the size of a football. “She wanted to live, so wanted to have the chemo or surgery that would save her life, even if it posed a risk to the fetus” Paltrow related. Instead, her desires were ignored and a judge – who never met her – appointed a lawyer to represent the interests of the fetus and ruled that she would have to undergo a Caesarean section to remove the 25-week old fetus – which in those days, had little chance of survival – even though the operation could kill Angela. Though she refused the C-section, the judge ordered it anyway. The baby lived two hours then died; Angela lived two days, then died.
In 2008, Jennifer Jorgensen, a Long Islander, was pregnant when she was involved in an automobile crash that killed two others. She was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated and manslaughter, and though the baby was born alive, the prosecutor couldn’t convict her for anything but her behavior while pregnant that caused the accident. “They couldn’t convict her for the two who died, but violating her special obligation to unborn child.”
But this is New York State. Patrow’s group, National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Pregnancy Justice, filed an amicus brief in state Supreme Court arguing that there is no state law that says a woman can be held criminally liable for something she did or didn’t do while pregnant.
In a 2011 case (Dray v. Staten Island University Hospital), a Northwell Hospital had a secret policy allowing a doctor to overrule a mother’s decision if the doctor felt the fetus was at risk. That led to a woman being given a c-section against her will.
Since then, New York has passed an Equal Rights Amendment to the state constitution, outlawing discrimination on the basis of sex, pregnancy, or pregnancy outcome. “Abortion can’t be banned in New York State and women cannot be held criminally liable for doing something in pregnancy that somebody else doesn’t like.”
In contrast, 80% of arrests and prosecution of pregnant women that NAPW documented come from states that have passed abortion bans, like Mississippi and Texas.
“Blaming women is particularly cruel because, thanks largely to the abortion bans, there are now ‘maternity care deserts’. Since August 2023, more than 5.6 million women live in counties with no or limited access to maternity care services.
“They have nowhere to go because doctors don’t want to be in a state where they can be prosecuted for addressing a woman’s pregnancy crisis.”
Not surprisingly, the United States has the highest rate of maternal mortality of any high-income nation, and the rates of maternal and infant mortality are highest in states with abortion bans.
“Over 80 percent of those deaths are preventable. MAGA wants to lock up women as murderers – South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and Oklahoma are proposing to make homicide laws applicable to women who have abortions.”
A Nebraska teenager who had a medicinal abortion was sentenced to 90 days in jail. A Texas woman, Mallori Patrice Strait, 33, was arrested (the charge was abuse of a corpse) and spent nearly five months in jail after a December 19, 2024, incident where she experienced a miscarriage in a Whataburger bathroom in Converse, Texas. (The charge was later overturned for lack of evidence, but still.)
“If fetuses are declared children, they will be covered under criminal law,” she notes, citing a case where a woman who had a cocaine addiction, gave birth, and was convicted of delivery of drugs to a minor through her umbilical cord.
There is also renewed effort to extend abortion bans to banning contraception as murder.
If the “pre-born” have personhood and a right to life, “we lose our right to life.”
“The push to have fetus as person – fetal rights – is an argument based on fantasy that fertilized egg, embryo, fetus inside woman’s body are really outside” and have more constitutional rights than any person (including mother).
Instead, “make [reproductive justice] a conversation about our personhood, our experience, someone who needs to be treated with a right to healthcare.”
Feeling empowered to deny a woman’s personhood, though, goes back to the fact this country was founded on the notion that one could own and control people (slavery). After being shipped to America, slave women were raped – forced reproduction was a primary way slaveholders made money – producing more slaves to sell, she said.
“We need to change the conversation [from abortion] to personhood… We win when we make argument that this isn’t just about abortion, it is about women being recognized as people.”
The nearly 50 years of legal abortion made a huge difference for women – their lives were better, maternal and infant mortality went down.
Before even before 1973 when abortion was illegal, as many as 12 million were having illegal abortions – “a form of mass civil disobedience.”
Before Roe, she said, 20-25 percent of pregnancies ended in abortion.
Today, post Dobbs, despite the bans, the number of abortions has actually increased – because there is safe, effective medication and groups organized to get it – a post-Roe abortion “underground railroad”. (Actually, more than 50 percent of abortions are through medication and not that gruesome surgical procedure the anti-abortionists love to display.)
“Research shows restricting reproductive freedoms does not lead to fewer abortions- abortion bans only make abortion dangerous as people turn to unregulated back alley procedures. Maternal, infant mortality rise especially in marginalized communities.”
How ironic that other countries have seen a green wave of abortion rights. Over the past 30 years, more than 60 countries and territories – many Catholic conservative countries like Ireland – liberalized their abortion laws.
(After Dobbs, France amended its Constitution to make sure women would have their reproductive rights. “The rights of women are reversible — you are never sure to have really won,” said Geneviève Fraisse, a French feminist philosopher. “The proof is in the United States.”)
Meanwhile, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) just this month (Women’s History Month) introduced legislation in the Senate that would revoke FDA approval of mifepristone and make it illegal to distribute nationwide. The bill builds on legislation Hawley introduced last year that targeted mifepristone access through the mail.
The Mississippi House and Senate voted to advance House Bill 1613 that creates criminal penalties for anyone who manufactures, sells, distributes, dispenses, or prescribes medication abortion, including mifepristone and misoprostol. House Bill 1613 takes Mississippi’s already extreme abortion ban a step further by seeking to criminalize any manufacturer or provider of abortion medication, punishing any violation of this law with up to 10 years in prison, and empowering the state’s attorney general to sue people for violating the law and to recover monetary damages. (Wouldn’t you love this kind of penalty for manufacturers of assault weapons that are used in mass murder?)
Last year, Texas initiated legal action against New York doctor Maggie Carpenter for mailing mifepristone to a Texas resident, marking a major legal test of state abortion bans vs. shield laws. New York officials refused to enforce the $100,000 judgment due to state shield laws. (So just imagine if a Republican, like Bruce Blakeman, defeats Kathy Hochul for governor.)
So, with 60 percent of Americans saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases (38% say it should be legal) and 55 percent supporting medication abortion, to succeed in nationalizing abortion bans and dehumanizing women, they have to strip or suppress voting rights – fundamental to protecting every other right – especially by women, a majority of whom consistently vote Democrat.
The SAVE Act would require every American citizen to show a passport or birth certificate and government ID with the same name to vote. While 146 MILLION Americans do not have a passport (which is expensive, and is akin to charging a poll tax in the Jim Crow days; also passports take weeks to get, Trump has shut down thousands of places that issued them, are valid for 10 years during which a person could get married/divorced/remarried), 69 MILLION women do not have a valid birth certificate due to surname changes -a clear violation of 19th Amendment, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
Under the SAVE Act, with exception of NY, WA, VT, Mi, MN, your RealID driver’s license would not be acceptable proof of US citizenship; the birth certificate will not be proof of citizenship if the name does not match; a marriage license will not be acceptable proof of the change of name from the birth certificate and RealID, a woman would have to have her name legally changed. And while already registered women might feel secure, the act would allow purges of voters without notification and time to correct any error.
And just as there is more control over a woman’s uterus than an assault weapon, the same party that blocks universal background checks or any regulation of gun ownership when “gun” or “firearm” is NEVER used in the Constitution (“arms”, which in 1781 meant any weapon worn on the body, is used once), but “vote” and “voting” is used 37 times in the Constitution, in order to set up a government “by the People, for the People,” it will be easier to buy an assault weapon than to vote.
Come out March 28 for the third No Kings protests.
This would be the third No Kings protest – each one bigger than the last, with ever more grievances to protest (ICE/deportations, military in the streets, launching wars without Congress, suppressing free press, public education, free speech, voting rights, environment and climate destruction).
But what is disturbing is that Women’s Rights have kind of receded into a background (it was more prevalent at the earlier Hands Off! Protests).
On March 28, bring Women’s Rights back to the forefront.
Go to www.nokings.org to find a protest to join. So far, close to 3,000 protests are planned.
This fact sheet was provided by Reproductive Freedom for All(formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) which for 55 years has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, standing up to protect the rights of the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion:
2025 affirmed critical truths that will be at the forefront of our fight in 2026—voters continue to reject abortion bans and support reproductive freedom champions at the ballot box; anti-abortion actors are escalating, not retreating, despite their proven unpopularity; and the human cost of abortion bans is mounting while the full damage is still untold.
Here are the topics that shaped 2025—and how we’re expecting them to play out in 2026:
1: GOP Attacks on Medication Abortion as Proxy for a National Ban
Trump and his allies spent this year mounting coordinated attacks on mifepristone, making clear that restricting medication abortion is the most immediate path to a national abortion ban. By targeting mifepristone through courts, federal agencies, and obscure laws, anti-abortion extremists are attempting to override state protections, medical consensus, and public opinion—and we expect them to double down in 2026. But the reality remains: Medication abortion is safe, effective, and widely used. While abortion bans have devastated access in many states, care persists thanks to telehealth and shield laws, and medication abortion is on the rise.
Key Moments in 2025:
● This year marked 25 years since the FDA approved mifepristone, which has been rigorously studied and used by more than 7.5 million people.
● Renewed litigation as states like Florida, Texas, and Missouri aim to further restrict mifepristone.
● Movement in Missouri v. FDA—GOP-led states’ attempt to revive a dismissed challenge and restrict mifepristone access. This comes after federal district Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk (in Texas) transferred the case to the Eastern District of Missouri, which is conveniently stacked with Trump-appointed, anti-abortion judges.
● Continued reliance on junk science as anti-abortion groups ramp up their outlandish, unscientific claims to stigmatize and surveil medication abortion.
● Quiet groundwork by the Trump administration to misuse the Comstock Act to ban the mailing of mifepristone.
2: “Leave It Up to the States”: Shield Laws vs. Criminalizing Abortion Care
2025 revealed a direct and growing clash between states protecting abortion care and states attempting to criminalize care within and beyond their borders. Shield laws protected patients and providers from extraterritorial legal actions by states that have banned abortion. This prompted aggressive backlash from anti-abortion extremists who have made it crystal clear that they never actually intended to leave abortion access up to individual states.
Key Moments in 2025:
● Sixteen Republican attorneys general urged Congress to override state shield laws.
● Texas enacted HB 7, yet another bounty-hunter abortion ban that encourages private individuals to sue manufacturers, distributors, and providers of medication abortion to receive a minimum of $100,000 in damages.
● States like Texas and Louisiana attempted to bypass other states’ shield laws, while California, New York, Vermont and other blue states strengthened and expanded protections for abortion providers and patients.
● New data from the Society of Family Planning showed an increase in telehealth-provided medication abortion care in the first half of 2025, including from legal shield-state providers.
What We’re Watching in 2026:
● Escalating interstate legal conflicts and congressional efforts to preempt shield laws as the GOP continues to pursue a national abortion ban.
● Copy-cat legislation as anti-abortion lawmakers in state legislatures across the country seek to replicate Texas’s HB 7, the new bounty-hunter ban targeting manufacturers, distributors, and providers of medication abortion. Some states will go even further and attempt to target people who help others access medication abortion care.
3: The GOP-Manufactured Health Care Crisis
Republicans used 2025 to advance a broader assault on health care access—gutting coverage, defunding providers, and driving up costs to push care even further out of reach. As we head into 2026, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced premium tax credits are set to expire, threatening coverage for more than 22 million people, and more health care clinics and rural hospitals across the country are at risk of closing.
Key Moments in 2025:
● In July, Trump and his allies in Congress passed a deeply unpopular budget bill that defunds Planned Parenthood, decimates Medicaid, and ultimately strips health coverage from 15 million people.
● In September, Congressional Republicans shut down the federal government for 43 days—the longest in history. While ignoring calls for a bipartisan spending bill to mitigate their manufactured health care crisis, they did find plenty of time to keep attacking abortion.
● Anti-abortion Republicans slashed funding for Title X, the nation’s only federal funding program dedicated to family planning.
What We’re Watching in 2026:
● An expected January vote on House Democrats’ clean three-year extension of the ACA enhanced premium tax credits. As the ACA fight continues, expect Republicans to keep pushing anti-abortion misinformation to distract from skyrocketing health care costs and their refusal to extend the tax credits.
● The Supreme Court potentially taking up Planned Parenthood Federation of America v. Kennedy—yet another case that threatens Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood and other providers that offer abortion care.
● Intensifying scrutiny of increased public funding for anti-abortion centers, especially as legitimate medical providers lose critical resources.
4: So-Called “Personhood” and Expanding Attacks Beyond Abortion
Republicans accelerated efforts to codify harmful “personhood” ideology—granting legal rights to zygotes, embryos, or fetuses—confirming what reproductive freedom advocates have long warned: Anti-abortion extremists were never going to stop at abortion. “Personhood” ideology lays the groundwork to restrict in vitro fertilization (IVF), contraception, stem cell research, and pregnancy management. Trump and his allies want these threats to fly under the radar because they know just how extreme and unpopular they are. While these laws are often framed as technical changes or isolated incidents, the policies are part of an insidious strategy to launder these unpopular and unworkable ideas, assert even more control over our bodies, and redefine reproductive health care out of existence.
Key Moments in 2025:
● Trump signed an executive order that targeted trans people and defined life as beginning at conception, inserting “personhood” ideology into official administrative policy.
● The self-proclaimed “father of IVF,” Trump confirmed he does not plan to require health insurers to provide coverage for IVF—after campaigning on making these services free.
● House Speaker Mike Johnson quietly worked to successfully remove IVF coverage for active duty military members from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
● Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo vetoed SB 217, which would have expanded access to fertility care by lowering costs and protecting access amid GOP efforts to ban IVF.
● The South Carolina Legislature seriously considered SB 323, a total abortion ban that would have treated abortion as homicide and set the foundation to restrict birth control, IVF, and emergency contraception.
● The Trump administration destroyed $10 million worth of contraceptives, justifying it by falsely categorizing birth control as an “abortifacient.”
What We’re Watching in 2026:
● Renewed domestic gag rule threats (Trump already revived the global gag rule from his first term) that extend anti-abortion ideology into broader domestic health systems.
● The federal government’s continued attacks on birth control, including threats to falsely conflate IUDs and other forms of contraception as abortion care.
● Expanded criminalization efforts as states use laws based on “personhood” ideology to prosecute miscarriage and other pregnancy outcomes.
● Anti-abortion groups’ increased reliance on junk science to vilify IVF and providers who offer a full range of fertility care as part of their broader efforts to sow distrust in legitimate medical institutions and providers while pushing people toward the anti-abortion centers they fund.
5. Rigging the System from the Courts to the Ballot Box
Knowing 8 in 10 Americans support the legal right to abortion care, anti-abortion extremists have doubled down on consolidating power—stacking courts, rewriting rules, and manipulating democratic systems—to impose an unpopular agenda voters repeatedly reject. This strategy targets reproductive freedom alongside voting rights and democracy itself, even as voters continue to push back and are poised to do so again in 2026.
Key Moments in 2025:
● Abortion was a galvanizing issue that drove turnout and victories from coast to coast during the 2025 elections.
● After retaking office, Trump moved quickly to completely overhaul the federal government—stacking every level and branch with extremists ready to advance Project 2025’s priorities.
● The Trump administration also confirmed dozens of judicial nominees to the federal bench—including 13 that have extreme anti-abortion records. These confirmations have set the stage for judges to rubber-stamp Trump’s anti-abortion agenda in the courts.
● Californians overwhelmingly passed Prop 50 to push back against Trump’s redistricting in Texas and other attacks on democracy.
● In response to successful state abortion ballot measures, including in his home state of Missouri, Sen. Josh Hawley and his wife, Erin Hawley—an attorney and key figure in overturning Roe v. Wade—launched a dark money group to promote anti-abortion ballot measures across the country. The move reportedly sparked backlash even within the White House, underscoring just how politically toxic these efforts are.
● Anti-abortion lawmakers in Missouri passed legislation that puts a constitutional amendment on the ballot that, if approved by voters, would remove the abortion protections Missouri voters approved last year. Anti-abortion extremists in Arizona tried to do the same thing, but after advocacy led by Reproductive Freedom for All, this bill was defeated.
What We’re Watching in 2026:
● The 2026 midterms as a referendum on abortion bans and government overreach.
● Nevada’s Question 6, which aims to protect abortion rights in the state constitution, returning to the ballot for final voter approval after a decisive victory in 2024.
● Massive spending by anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which pledged millions to buy the Georgia and Michigan Senate seats.
● High-stakes redistricting and voting rights cases, including Louisiana v. Callaisbefore the Supreme Court, with major implications for representation and democracy.
6: Maternal Mortality and the Human Cost of Abortion Bans
The consequences of abortion bans became even more visible in 2025 as investigative reporting documented more heartbreaking and preventable deaths of pregnant people denied care. Maternal mortality rates are on the rise in states with abortion bans, yet those same states are making it harder to investigate by obfuscating and suppressing data.
Key Moments in 2025:
● Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Black mother and nurse from Atlanta, was kept on life support for more than 90 days—against her family’s wishes, and long after being declared brain dead—because of Georgia’s extreme abortion ban and so-called fetal personhood ideology.
● Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old Black mother from San Antonio, died from preeclampsia after being denied an abortion during a high-risk pregnancy—despite repeatedly asking for care—under Texas’ extreme abortion ban.
● After Georgia dismissed all members of its Maternal Mortality Commission last year, the state is now keeping the new members secret.
● The Trump administration rescinded the 2022 Biden-era guidance that affirmed federal law protects emergency abortion care—putting lives at risk and creating confusion for providers who still have a legal obligation to provide this care.
What we’re watching in 2026:
● Continued erosion of emergency care protections.
● Ongoing suppression of maternal mortality data by anti-abortion extremists.
● More dangerous miscarriage and pregnancy outcomes in ban states, where emergency interventions and complications are rising.
The storylines that unfolded in 2025 have set the stage for 2026, and the stakes are clear: An extremist minority is escalating authoritarian efforts through every level of power—and our rights and freedoms are at risk. This next year will test whether democracy and science prevail over coordinated and escalating attacks, with control of Congress and the future of reproductive freedom on the line.
Governor Kathy Hochul has signed legislation strengthening New York’s shield law that protects abortion providers from out-of-state prosecution. The bill enhances New York’s current shield law to allow medical providers to include only the address of the dispensing health care practice on the prescription label instead of the name of the provider or practice and requires pharmacies to abide by a prescriber’s request to remove their name from the prescription label. This legislation builds on a law signed by Governor Hochul in January, days after Louisiana officials attempted to extradite a New York-based doctor who prescribed FDA-approved abortion medication through telehealth.
“New York State is standing up to anti-choice zealots who threaten the sanctity of women’s health care and the medical professionals who provide it,” Governor Hochul said. “My message to anyone who attacks our civil liberties is simple — not here, not now, not ever.”
In December, 2024,Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, a New York doctor and founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, for providing abortion-inducing drugs to a Texas resident. In January 2025, Louisiana prosecuted the same doctor. (The Biden Administration made it clear that women could receive abortion-inducing drugs through telemedicine. Governor Hochul refused to extradite the New York doctor for prosecution to Texas and Louisiana.)
Legislation S.4587/A.5285 strengthens shield law protections for health care professionals and their patients, building on legislation signed by the Governor earlier this year. This legislation enhances shield law protections by ensuring health care professionals can request pharmacies to replace their name with the practice address on prescription labels, further safeguarding provider and patient privacy.
“I am proud to sponsor legislation, alongside Assembly Member Karines Reyes, RN, to strengthen New York’s telehealth shield law and solidify New York’s role as a national leader in protecting abortion rights,” stated State Senator Shelley B. Mayer. “New York’s brave doctors are taking significant personal risks to help women access reproductive care, and as red states pursue legal action against New York physicians performing within the scope of their practice, we must support these medical professionals. I would like to thank Assemblymember Karines Reyes for her partnership, Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and my colleagues who supported this important legislation, and Governor Kathy Hochul for signing it into law and keeping women’s access to reproductive rights at the forefront of New York’s priorities. I also want to express my deep gratitude to the dedicated doctors who are committed to ensuring women across the country have access to critical healthcare.”
Assemblymember Karines Reyes said, “I applaud Governor Hochul and my colleagues in the Legislature for enacting my bill to swiftly strengthen our state’s shield law for abortion telemedicine services. We must ensure that New York’s medical professionals, especially in smaller practices, are able to remove personal addresses from the prescription bottles that are given to women seeking reproductive and abortion care. This will allow all parties to focus on care for women and pregnant persons, and discourage violations of patient and provider privacy.”
“I am grateful for Governor Hochul’s leadership in strengthening protections for health care providers and patients,” New York City Council Member Farah N. Louis said. “As Chair of the Committee on Women and Gender Equity in the New York City Council, I know how essential it is to ensure reproductive care remains safe and accessible—especially as we face relentless attacks on our rights. We must continue to fortify these protections and stand firm against any efforts to undermine our bodily autonomy, and continually reinforce New York’s role as a sanctuary for reproductive freedom.”
New York City Council Member Lynn Schumann said,“As Chair of the New York City Council’s Health Committee, I applaud Governor Hochul for taking decisive action to protect reproductive health care providers and patients in New York. At a time when extremists across the country are working to criminalize essential health care, this legislation reaffirms our state’s commitment to safeguarding providers and ensuring that everyone can access the care they need without fear. New York will always be a safe haven for reproductive freedom.”
