Over the next decade, more than 11 million Americans—mostly women and children—are expected to lose health coverage, while deep food assistance cuts and work requirements will push even more families into crisis. Advocates call the bill a massive transfer of wealth to the rich at the expense of the poor, a policy that will shutter rural hospitals, deny essential care and worsen maternal mortality.

As Sen. Raphael Warnock puts it plainly: “If you cut $900 billion out of Medicaid, people are going to die.”

The post One Megabill for the Megarich appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

The bill, introduced in February and drafted by National Right to Life, the oldest antiabortion organization in the country, outlines legislation that would impose a near-total ban in South Carolina—where a strict six-week ban has already been in place since May of 2023.

A hearing before the Senate Medical Affairs Subcommittee is scheduled for Oct. 1.

Jessica Valenti and Kylie Cheung in Abortion, Every Day called the bill "a shocking attack on free speech. Referring someone for an abortion would be a felony, as would sharing information about how to get an abortion. Pro-choice websites would be illegal ... even giving someone gas money to get an out-of-state abortion could land you in prison for 30 years."

The post South Carolina Is Trying to Apply Racketeering Laws to Criminalize Abortion Providers appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

What does this mean in practice?

It means people like Colleen—who discovered she had breast cancer because of an affordable visit to Planned Parenthood—will face new barriers to care.

It means patients who already struggle to cover basic expenses will be asked to pay out-of-pocket for lifesaving services.

And it means thousands of people living in rural or medically underserved areas may have no nearby provider at all.

The political fight over Planned Parenthood has always been framed as a battle about abortion, but the immediate impact is much broader: fewer clinics, fewer screenings, and fewer chances to catch disease before it’s too late.

The post The Antiabortion Movement’s Decades-Long Goal Achieved: Planned Parenthood Defunded appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

The antiabortion industry has long aimed to “replace” Planned Parenthood, and since Roe's fall, so-called pro-life operatives claim these clinics fill gaps in prenatal and postpartum care and address maternal and infant mortality. These claims are false. Their mission—to block abortion—directly conflicts with providing actual, lifesaving healthcare.

Project 2025 seeks to disqualify Planned Parenthood from Medicaid and end “religious discrimination in grant selections"—code for funneling federal dollars to crisis pregnancy centers.

“Let’s call this what it is: a calculated, coordinated attack on poor women and families,” says Debra Rosen, executive director of Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch. Low-income women are being denied care at real health centers and funneled into ideological storefronts. The hypocrisy is breathtaking, and the consequences will be deadly—a manufactured, avoidable public health crisis.

The post Trump’s Republican Trifecta Sets Up Massive Transfer of Tax Dollars from Reproductive Health Clinics to Unregulated Crisis Pregnancy Clinics appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

In 2025, I have to admit this month is yet another joy I am doing my best not to let the relentless news-and-doom cycle ruin. Curating a round-up of breaking headlines about gender and democracy is surely not for the faint of heart or spirit.

I’ll be doing all I can to channel Taylor Swift (Trump only wishes he could) and trying to salvage August so that it is “sipped away like a bottle of wine.”

The post ‘It Was Never Mine’: August, Autonomy and the America We’re Losing appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

Unfortunately, pregnant and postpartum people are at the center of the crisis created by the One Big Beautiful Bill—recently passed by both the House and Senate and signed into law by Donald Trump—which guts Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.

If clinics are shuttered, hospitals are closed and providers are stripped from Medicaid, what happens to people forced to carry pregnancies without care? They will face unmanaged labor, untreated postpartum depression, and dangerous complications alone.

In a nation that mandates childbirth but slashes access to care, the question isn't whether outcomes will worsen. It's how many will suffer—and how many won't survive.

The post You Must Have Your Baby, But Sorry, You Have No Insurance appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

On July 2, the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University hosted its annual Supreme Court Term in Review, co-hosted by Ms. magazine, Ms. Studios, the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Constitution Society. The event brought together legal scholars, litigators, journalists and activists to reflect on the most consequential rulings of the 2024-'25 term.

“We should not have to have seances with slave owners to know what our rights are today.”
—Lourdes A. Rivera

“The president can, with the stroke of a pen, revoke your constitutional right to citizenship.”
—Jamelle Bouie

“The Supreme Court and Congress are basically enabling this. Not just being feckless, but enabling it.”
—Lourdes A. Rivera

“I thought Justice Barrett was extraordinarily disrespectful toward Justice Jackson in that opinion.”
—Mark Joseph Stern

“We get hope from our clients and the communities that are stepping up when many elite institutions are not.”
—Skye Perryman

The post ‘They’re Not Following the Law—They’re Imposing Conservative Values’: Key Takeaways From the Ms. 2025 Supreme Court Term in Review appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

This is about far more than abortion. There will be more maternal deaths. There will be more deaths from cervical and breast cancer. More women will die from complications of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. There will be more suffering from infertility, endometriosis and fibroids.

Does anyone in power care? We certainly do. And we better make sure our voices are heard. All of our lives depend on it.

The post America’s Healthcare Crisis Is Coming for All Women appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

These are not isolated outcomes. Rather, they reveal a coordinated national strategy. Here are five myths we believe need to be dispelled to counter the challenges that lie ahead.

The post Five Ways the GOP Is Quietly Paving the Road to a National Abortion Ban appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

Since our last report:
—On June 14, between 4 and 13 million people attended No Kings rallies nationwide to protest President Trump’s immigration and economic policies.
—Four states—California, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey—have petitioned the FDA to undo restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone.
—Some good news out of Montana: This month, the state supreme court struck down three abortion restrictions that Republican lawmakers passed in 2021.

… and more.

The post War on Women Report: MAGA Republicans Hope to Turn Miscarriage Into a Crime and Gut Planned Parenthood appeared first on Ms. Magazine.