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reproductive rights
'Sheer Cruelty': Outrage as GOP Moves Ahead With Measure to Defund Planned Parenthood
"This is nothing more than an attempt to end abortion in the United States, and they are willing to take away birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment and more to do it," said the head of the reproductive healthcare group.
May 15, 2025
As the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday voted along party lines to advance legislation that includes a measure which seeks to cut Medicaid funding for the abortion and healthcare provider Planned Parenthood, reproductive rights defenders are sounding the alarm on the impacts that such a move would have.
"This provision is about punishing Planned Parenthood health centers for providing abortion care, and threatening access to affordable birth control, wellness checkups, and cancer screenings for millions of people across the country in the process," said Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, in a statement on Wednesday.
"It is indefensible how far abortion opponents, who claim to care about women and families, are willing to go to shut down health centers and line the pockets of billionaires and big corporations," McGill added.
The measure is part of a sweeping GOP spending and tax cuts bill currently making its way through Congress. The House Energy and Commerce Committee's portion of the legislation also includes cuts to Medicaid and takes back unspent funds from Inflation Reduction Act grant programs.
The outlet NOTUSreported Wednesday that the measure pertaining to Planned Parenthood would bar the organization from receiving federal funds, even via Medicaid payments. According to the 19th, the language of the measure does not specifically call out Planned Parenthood, but is crafted to apply to the organization.
The proposed cuts would impact Planned Parenthood's ability to offer services like birth control, cancer screenings, and pap smears. Medicaid is already barred from providing funds for abortion care, which only account for a small percentage of the services that Planned Parenthood's affiliates provide.
"It's no surprise that a goal of this reconciliation bill is to force Planned Parenthood health centers to shut down. Republicans have been trying—unsuccessfully—to shut down Planned Parenthood for decades," said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, an abortion rights and reproductive freedom group. "Plain and simple, this legislation will mean millions of people will have nowhere to go for basic health care."
"The sheer cruelty and enormity of their actions, and the harm they will inflict on the very people they were elected to represent, is unconscionable," Timmaraju continued.
Rachana Desai Martin, chief U.S. program officer at the Center for Reproductive Rights, on Tuesday denounced the fact that Trump has already frozen millions in funding for Planned Parenthood through the Title X program.
Planned Parenthood has said freezing that funding "effectively blocks people from getting birth control, STI testing and treatment, and lifesaving cancer screenings."
Speaking Tuesday, before the committee advanced its portion of the bill, Martin said that the Center for Reproductive Rights stands with Planned Parenthood and all reproductive healthcare providers and that "these baseless, politically motivated attacks against reproductive health care providers must stop."
A leaked preliminary estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported on by Mother Jones this week estimates that the measure aimed at Planned Parenthood would cost taxpayers $300 million over the next ten years. According to the outlet, spokespeople at CBO did not offer comment on how they came to that $300 million figure.
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South Carolina Abortion Ban Forced Woman to Carry Fetus With No Heartbeat for Weeks
"My baby didn't have a heartbeat, and it still prevented me from getting care" under South Carolina's so-called "fetal hearbeat" law.
May 07, 2025
Weeks after sharing an emotional video on TikTok about her experience being told by doctors that they couldn't provide her with standard miscarriage care under South Carolina's abortion ban, Elisabeth Weber spoke out Tuesday about how she was forced to continue carrying her fetus for weeks after learning it had no heartbeat and had stopped developing.
As Weber toldPeople magazine, "My baby didn't have a heartbeat, and it still prevented me from getting care" under South Carolina's law—ironically called the Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act, so named because it bars residents from getting abortion care after fetal cardiac activity can be detected at about six weeks of pregnancy.
The 31-year-old mother of three found out in late March at nine weeks pregnant that her fetus—already given a name by Weber and her husband, who felt certain they were having a boy—had stopped growing at six weeks and one day.
Weber was sent home from her local ER to allow the miscarriage to be completed naturally, but she returned to the hospital after she continued to have symptoms of hyperemesis gravidarum (HG)—extreme, persistent nausea and vomiting—which she'd had with all of her pregnancies.
"They confirmed that for sure, the baby is dead," Weber said in her TikTok video, which was posted March 31. "No heartbeat, nothing like that. And they were talking about me getting a D&C [dilation and curettage], so that way my body won't have all these pregnancy symptoms... My body still thinks that I'm pregnant, it is not passing the baby the way it is supposed to."
@elisabeth__hope EDIT: I recorded this minutes after finding this information out, so not everything was worded correctly. I was raised in a cult and was forced to stand in front of abortion clinics as a CHILD. I am not conservative and I did NOT vote for trump.
♬ original sound - Elisabeth Hope
But a doctor at her second visit to the ER told her she would have to wait another week—two weeks from when her miscarriage was first detected—and have repeat ultrasounds to continue confirming the pregnancy was not viable before Weber could have a D&C, a standard procedure that is commonly used to remove fetal tissue that has not been naturally expelled after a miscarriage.
She told People that while mourning her loss and caring for her three children, she was "so sick" due to her HG.
"I have three kids, and waiting around to go into a mini-labor is just hard," Weber said.
"I can't believe that I'm being forced to carry around my dead baby," she told People. "They know it's gone, they know it's dead, they know it's stopped developing, and now I'm being forced to carry it... There's really no feeling like when your womb becomes a tomb."
Writer and advocate Jessica Valenti, who covers Republicans' attacks on reproductive rights at her newsletter, Abortion, Every Day, interviewed Weber shortly after she posted her TikTok video.
Valenti noted that while doctors told Weber they could provide her with standard miscarriage care only if she developed sepsis or began hemorrhaging before they were able to perform another ultrasound, HG's "symptoms can mimic those of infection and sepsis."
"How will she know if she's really sick from the retained tissue, she asks, if she's already feeling awful every day?" wrote Valenti in early April, when Weber was still waiting for treatment and carrying her nonviable pregnancy. "Weber also has asthma. She's afraid she won't be able to tell the difference between her usual shortness of breath and the signs of something much worse."
Weber told Valenti that at least one doctor she spoke with expressed regret about South Carolina's abortion ban, one of 19 state bans in the country.
"I could see it was breaking her heart just to say it," Weber said of the doctor, who told her, "I wish it was different. I wish we could help you."
Valenti wrote that "when Weber told her it was okay, the doctor responded, 'It's not okay.'"
Weber told People she was even denied a D&C after going to a different hospital where she found out that her "white blood cell count was super high."
"Everything was showing that I was in an active infection," she said, but she was still required to wait for care.
"Republicans would have us believe that their laws protect women's health, but what would they call what's happening [to] this South Carolina mom right now?" wrote Valenti in April.
In a video update Weber posted on TikTok last week after finally getting care, she shared that she and her husband had decided not to have any more children after their ordeal.
"We just can't chance going through something like that again," said Weber.
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Group That Helped Reverse Roe Sets Sights on Birth Control
"We tried to tell all those fuckers that if Trump was elected, we were going to get Handmaid's Tale-d," said one author.
Apr 16, 2025
Nearly three years after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' 2022 concurring opinion for the reversal of Roe v. Wadeelevated fears of Americans losing the right to contraception, a far-right legal group is working to limit access to birth control.
Jezebelreported Wednesday on the current anti-contraception effort by the conservative Christian group, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)—which has bragged that its "attorneys and staff were proud to be involved from the very beginning" in the fight to overturn Roe, the 1973 ruling that affirmed the right to abortion nationwide up until the Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization decision.
Last week, ADF wrote to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, urging HHS to "end funding to an organization that has become a radicalized opponent of health and of your agenda: the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) and its related entities." The legal group also recommended opening "a civil compliance investigation into whether ACOG improperly used HHS cooperative agreements to promote" diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
"If you have a uterus, it's a great time to get permanent birth control, and stock up on some Plan B and Ella."
The ADF letter states that an HHS agency, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), "pays ACOG to create online content and podcasts advocating DEI, gender ideology, and abortion advocacy. This program has allocated ACOG over $15 million and needs to be ended promptly to prevent the continued waste of taxpayer funds."
In addition to taking aim at funding for the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health (AIM)—which, according to its website, works to "make birth safer, improve maternal health outcomes, and save lives" with its content—ADF wants the Trump administration to "end HRSA's cooperative agreement with ACOG that radicalized the women's preventive services mandate under Obamacare."
Jezebel explained how ADF's attack on the Women's Preventive Services Initiative (WPSI) threatens access to birth control:
The Affordable Care Act says insurance companies have to cover a range of women's preventive health services without cost-sharing like copays or deductibles. The law doesn't name which services, but rather tasks an HHS agency to determine what services have strong evidence showing health benefits. That agency gave a contract to ACOG, which convenes the WPSI panel that includes representatives from its membership and three other major professional organizations. One of the panel's recommendations is that "adolescent and adult women have access to the full range of contraceptives and contraceptive care to prevent unintended pregnancies and improve birth outcomes." So insurance in the U.S. has to cover birth control pills, patches, rings, implants, [intrauterine devices, or IUDs], and tubal ligation without additional costs beyond people's monthly premiums.
Groups like ADF do not like this requirement—especially the mandated coverage of IUDs and emergency contraception like Plan B or Ella. Conservatives falsely claim that these methods block implantation of fertilized eggs, which they believe is tantamount to abortion. (ADF represented one of the plaintiffs in the 2014 Hobby Lobby case who objected to covering these methods.) "This mandate has included a coverage requirement for contraception, including some items that can prevent the implantation of embryos after conception," the ADF letter notes. "The failure to offer robust religious and moral exemptions to that mandate led to years of litigation and repeated trips to the U.S. Supreme Court." Yes, they want employers to be able to object to covering birth control in their insurance plans for either religious or moral reasons, which could really mean anything, including sexist and eugenic objections to single women or people with disabilities being sexually active.
ADF urges HHS to "conduct any scientific reviews in-house," Jezebel pointed out, noting recent mass layoffs at the department. "Alternatively, HHS could add members of anti-abortion groups to the advisory panel. Whatever happens here, potential changes to insurance coverage of certain birth control methods—based on the false idea that they cause abortions—is alarming."
On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump bragged about his role in reversing Roe—he appointed three of the court's right-wing justices—but also attempted to downplay reproductive rights as a key issue for voters.
Regarding contraception specifically, Trump swiftly tried to backtrack after signaling support for limits on birth control during a radio interview last May. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said at the time: "Trump is talking out of both sides of his mouth. Here he is encouraging the far right. Later, he claimed he didn't mean it. But he can't hide his record. And his allies still plan to restrict birth control nationwide."
The ideas in ADF's letter "did not appear out of thin air," Jezebel stressed Wednesday. "Ending mandated insurance coverage of Ella is a proposal in Project 2025 (page 485), as is restoring religious and moral exemptions (page 483), and ending this contract with ACOG (page 484). Trump tried to disavow the Project 2025 playbook on the campaign trail, but his administration is implementing much of it and conservative groups are asking him to enact parts he hasn't gotten to yet."
HHS cutting ties with ACOG is just a step. Many far-right forced pregnancy advocates want the Supreme Court to—as Thomas wrote three years ago—"reconsider all of the court's substantive due process precedents," including the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut ruling, which affirmed that the government cannot interfere in the procurement of contraceptives.
The new reporting led reproductive rights advocates to share their own healthcare experiences and encourage patients to seek out longer-term birth control like IUDs now, while they still have access to such options.
Feeling really grateful right about now for the tubal ligation I started fighting tooth and nail for at 19 and finally managed to score by age 27. We tried to tell all those fuckers that if Trump was elected, we were going to get Handmaid's Tale-d. www.jezebel.com/far-right-gr...
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— Brianna Karp ( @briannakarp.bsky.social) April 16, 2025 at 5:22 PM
"I've said this repeatedly but I'll say it again: If you're able, get an IUD," said content designer Shauna Wright. "It's easily removed but otherwise lasts for years. (Voice of experience here: Ask for a paracervical block pre-insertion, and if they refuse, find another dr.)"
Writer Effie Seiberg similarly said: "If you have a uterus, it's a great time to get permanent birth control, and stock up on some Plan B and Ella. (Ella works better for people 165-195 lbs.)"
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