For my final entry of the year, we thought it worthwhile to offer a snapshot—a year’s worth of reporting on the depth of damage this administration has wreaked on women’s health, with real-time Contrarian reporting noted.

The post A Very Bad Year for Women’s Health appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

The post The Most-Read Ms. Stories of 2025 appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

This week:
—Democratic candidates won elections across the country.
—At Crooked Con last week, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) laid out her priorities for when Democrats regain power in Congress: "We’ve got to fix the Voting Rights Act, we have to deal with the money in politics, we have to deal with the Supreme Court and we need immigration reform."
—ICE targeted childcare workers and is accused of inhumane detention conditions.
—Nancy Pelosi announced her retirement in 2027.
—Trump's approval ratings continue to fall, a year out from the 2026 midterms.
—Many popular lubricants aren't safe for vaginal health.

… and more.

The post Keeping Score: Democrats Dominate Key Elections; Federal Government Reopens After 43 Days; ICE Targets Childcare Centers appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

There is, in fact, an alternative to the Trump plan: The Right to IVF Act, introduced by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, would require employer-sponsored health plans and public health insurance, including Medicaid and military plans, to cover treatments. The bill also addresses discrimination and forbids the restriction of access to IVF based on marital status or sexual orientation.

Republicans have voted it down twice.

The post Trump’s IVF Announcement Fails Families—But Duckworth’s Right to IVF Act Could Deliver appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

Adriana Smith’s experience of coerced reproduction is a devastating example: a Black nurse and mother declared brain-dead, yet kept on life support for months to sustain her pregnancy under Georgia’s restrictive abortion laws. This is what pronatalism looks like in practice—the state asserting ownership over a Black woman’s body.

As Black feminists, we understand that reproductive choices are personal, but they are also deeply shaped by structural power. Pronatalist leaders and influencers cloak their agenda in the language of family and morality, but in truth, they seek to restrict autonomy and consolidate control. Reproductive justice, by contrast, insists on every person’s right to decide whether and how to have children, and to parent in safety and dignity.

The post Who Gets to Procreate and Parent? A Black Feminist Critique of the Pronatalist Agenda appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

This is not a coherent pro-family agenda. It is chaos disguised as care—fertility promoted when politically useful, maternal health ignored when inconvenient, and science dismissed when it interferes with corporate interests. Families are promised new beginnings, but stripped of the very resources needed to support them.

Until mothers and children are placed at the center of policy—not as props but as the purpose—the reproductive hypocrisy will persist.

The post IVF Promises, Healthcare Cuts: The New Reproductive Hypocrisy appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

Ideally, it is best to consider egg-freezing when you are under 35 to maximize both egg quality and quantity. The challenge for younger patients is freezing eggs at a point where you get maximum success without overkill. If there is still a high probability that a woman will conceive naturally, the time and money dedicated to egg freezing may be best spent elsewhere. The goal of freezing eggs is to ensure a high probability of success in the future, but not to freeze so early as to render the time, effort and expense unnecessary. In our estimation, between ages 31 and 34 is a sweet spot to freeze: early enough to avoid a decline in quality, but late enough to be potentially useful. We can freeze eggs earlier, but there is a reasonable chance you aren’t going to need them after all.

The post Your Future on Ice: Why Younger Women Are Freezing Eggs—and What They Often Don’t Know appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

Suppose your baby had a fatal condition that prevented lung development, leaving no chance for survival—and that your only opportunity to hold the child alive would be as it gasped for air, turned blue and died in your arms.

Would you follow the wishes of Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton—two men who know nothing about you or your family—and remain in Texas, risking your wife’s health and future fertility in service of their political party’s abortion bans that have no exceptions for babies with fatal fetal anomalies?

The post After Losing Two Babies, a Family Wrestled with Grief—Not Jail. Would Texas’ New Law Change That? appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

The post Trump’s IVF Walkback Opens the Door to a Catholic ‘Alternative’ 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.