+ Some good news out of Georgia: Prosecutors have dropped all charges against 24-year-old Selena Chandler-Scott after the national backlash that came when they arrested her after her miscarriage and charged her with concealing a death and abandoning a dead body. (Protest works—don’t look away.)

+ On Saturday, April 5, over 1,200 demonstrations took place nationwide to protest the recent policies and actions of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. It is estimated more than 600,000 people participated in rebuking their attacks on education, healthcare and social security, calling for “hands off” these essential pillars of American democracy.

Let’s not forget what else was sent our way this month …

Tuesday, April 1: DOGE Cuts $35 Million in Funding for Title X Family Planning Services and Research

This is not a mere funding cut. This is a direct attack on women’s health and safety that will disproportionately affect low-income individuals and marginalized communities. 

Trump recently deemed himself the “fertilization president,” among his efforts to incentivize women to give birth, even introducing a “National Medal of Motherhood” (an idea first popularized by the Nazis)—yet he just cut millions in maternal health funding and research, including programs for IVF, which he ironically has been openly promoting. DOGE also fired roughly a quarter of staff at the Department of Health and Human Services. Among these cuts was almost the entirety of its department dedicated to preventing sexual violence. 

About 30 percent of patients (or over 800,00 people) will lose access to care from Title X, according to the Guttmacher Institute—including sexual and reproductive healthcare services like birth control, STI testing and cancer screenings, So far, seven states have lost the entirety of their Title X funding. Planned Parenthood has already been forced to close three locations in Michigan, with more shutdowns likely to occur nationwide.

Tuesday, April 1 and Friday, April 25: New Laws Target Teenagers’ Reproductive Rights and Sexual Health

New legislation from Florida and Texas is making it harder than ever for teenagers to access reproductive healthcare.

Texas

At the beginning of April, Texas Republicans introduced SB 2352, a bill targeting anyone who helps a teenager obtain an out-of-state abortion. (Texas is one of 12 states with total abortion bans.) SB 2352 would make it a second-degree felony to help anyone under the age of 18 travel out of state for an abortion, whether by transporting the minor or funding their travel (such as by giving them money for gas).

Amy O’Donnell from antiabortion organization Texas Alliance for Life said the bill “is really just about protecting children.” However, Lucie Aravallo from the nonprofit Jane’s Due Process—which provides financial support and travel assistance to Texas teens (17 or younger) for abortion in states where it is legal—said the bill effectively takes community support away from teenagers: “Especially for young people that are in unsafe family systems, are in juvenile detention or in the current foster care system, this bill will currently limit any ability that they have to access abortion care, even out of state. We cannot believe that, with all of the problems the state is facing, that they are choosing to make it even harder for young people to access necessary care.”

Florida

Meanwhile, the Florida House just passed a bill requiring that teenagers have parental approval in order to access STI treatment, advancing the bill to the Senate. If the bill becomes law, doctors won’t be able to treat minors for STIs without the explicit consent of their parents. The legislation also removes a so-called “loophole” in Florida law that allowed doctors to prescribe birth control to minors deemed to be at risk of health hazards otherwise.

The bill would remove a layer of privacy with doctors to which teenagers were formerly entitled. At the same time, according to 2023 data from the Florida Department of Health, Florida teenagers are currently contracting STIs including chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis at the highest rate since 2008.

Opponents of the bill say that it poses a particular risk to children afraid to confide in their parents about STIs or sexual assault. Most Democrats have opposed the bill, as does state Sen. Alexis Calatayud (R-Miami), who said, “We have to consider how we protect vulnerable populations, and we cannot hope the best for them with the policy without creating some sort of protections for them.”

Thursday, April 10: SAVE Act Passes in the House by a Thin 220–208 Majority

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act is a bill that seeks to mandate in-person proof of citizenship for those registering to vote, restricting voting registration by mail and requiring the presentation of a birth certificate or U.S. passport. The SAVE Act now moves to the Senate, which resumed its session this week.

Misinformation and myths about non-citizen voting have been debunked countless times, yet House Republicans continue to defend the SAVE Act as a prevention against voter fraud. 

The SAVE Act is blatant voter repression: Out of all U.S. citizens, 146 million do not possess a passport, including 69 million married women. Anyone who has changed their name from what is listed on their birth certificate—due to marriage, divorce or gender transition—will face disproportionately stricter barriers to voting. Additionally, communities who face greater challenges to accessing documents like passports and birth certificates will become further disenfranchised. 

Tuesday, April 15: Nebraska Bill Would Mandate Post-Abortion Funerals

Legislators in Nebraska are advancing a bill that would require abortion providers to bury or cremate fetal remains and embryonic tissue after an abortion, leaning into fetal personhood arguments and attempting to shame and punish women who have abortions.

Nebraska state senator Bill Hansen claimed that the bill (LB 632) would uphold the “dignity” of a fetus; however, the requirement would only apply to remains from “elective” abortions, not natural miscarriages.

The bill has sparked controversy in the Nebraska’s Senate. State Sen. Ashlei Spivey (D)—founder of the reproductive justice organization I Be Black Girl—called it a “back-door attempt to ban abortions” in the state. (Abortion is currently legal in Nebraska up to 12 weeks.) She said, “The reality is LB 632 disrespects patients by essentially imposing a funeral requirement for abortion,” and that the “human dignity” claim “cannot be further from the truth,” since “imposing this type of requirement without the patient having any say in the matter is wrong and, furthermore, insulting.”

State Sen. Megan Hunt questioned what “evidence” the state would need to enforce the funeral requirement and “how much blood has to be on the pad” to require a burial or cremation. She argued that the bill could pave the way for an abortion “bounty” and promote civil penalties against abortion providers. Jessica Valenti sounded the alarm about this bill’s implications to criminalize pregnancy loss: “A bill like the one in Nebraska would make it easier for prosecutors to argue that women who don’t dispose of their miscarriages ‘properly’ are breaking the law.”

Wednesday, April 16: U.K. Supreme Court Rules That the Legal Definition of “Woman” Refers Only to Biological Sex

The case was brought against the Scottish government by For Women Scotland, an anti-trans group who argued that legal protections for women should only apply to those born biologically female. After the ruling, trans women possessing a gender recognition certificate (GRC) no longer have access to women-only spaces they used to. 

In a vicious statement on X, conservative leader Kemi Badenoch defended the Court’s decision on the grounds of a “victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious.” The Court’s decision blatantly discriminates against trans women and will almost certainly result in a rollback in trans rights and legal protections.

“The fear is back,” a trans woman named Janey, 70, told The Guardian. “The fear I had when I first started my transition in 1979, that people will hurt me.”

The next day, on April 17, President Trump sued Maine for allowing trans athletes to participate in women’s sports, a reminder that these attacks on trans freedoms are not isolated incidents. 

Wednesday, April 16: Washington Becomes First State to Pass Legislation Expanding Access to Hormone Therapy

The new law, HB 1971, requires that healthcare providers reimburse patients for a “12-month refill of prescription hormone therapy obtained at one time by an enrollee.” However, controlled substances, including testosterone, will be exempt. The bill passed with a 40-9 bipartisan majority in the Senate which included 6 Republican votes.

This legislation is a huge victory for trans rights. Even under the harshly anti-trans Trump administration, Washington is setting an example that will hopefully encourage more states to create legal protections for trans healthcare. 

Wednesday, April 16: Trump Tries to Eliminate Head Start Funding for Early Childhood Education

As part of DOGE’s sweeping budget cuts, the White House is asking Congress to eliminate funding for the federal program Head Start. This cut would get rid of early education and childcare for more than half a million low-income children in the United States.

Individual members of Congress are speaking out about the proposed cuts. A group of 42 senators—including Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.)—wrote a letter to HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., arguing that Head Start provides education as well as health and social services to 800,000 children every year. The program is an important source of childcare for working families in rural and Tribal regions and offers services for parents including housing support and adult education. It takes some of the childcare burden away from working mothers, allowing low-income women to pursue education and jobs outside of the house.

Head Start grantees are currently still waiting for payments and grant renewals from the Office of Head Start. Grants for some programs end on April 30, but the programs have received little to no communication about their grant renewals. On April 16, Head Start centers serving more than 400 children in Sunnyside, Wash., closed due to funding delays. They reopened on April 22 after federal funds finally arrived; however, Jorge Castillo, CEO of Inspire Development Centers in Central Washington, has expressed worries over Head Start’s future in 2026. “We need to continue fighting for these awesome programs because it all depends on the president,” he told Northwest Public Broadcasting. “I have faith that if all of us work together, it will make a big impact.”

Monday, April 21: Trump Administration Considers ‘Birth Incentives’ Encouraging Women to Marry and Have Kids

For the last several weeks, the White House has been making plans to try to increase the United States’ birth rate, according to reporting from The New York Times. JD Vance, Elon Musk and Donald Trump (who have around 22 children between them) are increasingly leaning into the far-right pro-natalist movement urging Americans into traditional family structures with a husband, wife and multiple kids. Many Christian conservatives—and Elon Musk—have long claimed that falling birth rates around the world will have devastating consequences. (The world is actually nowhere near running out of humans; demographers estimate that the human population will reach 9 billion by 2037.)

Some of the Trump administration’s plans to increase the U.S. birth rate include:

• Giving every American mother a $5,000 “baby bonus” after delivering,
• Reserving 30 percent of Fulbright scholarships for applicants who are married or have children—even though most people applying for Fulbrights are recent college grads,
• Preparing a report, to be released in May, recommending ways to make IVF more accessible and affordable (despite Republican attacks on IVF as being adjacent to abortion),
• Offering tax credits to married couples with children,
• Funding programs for educating young girls in school about their menstrual cycles and conception—in other words, teaching children how to get pregnant
• And offering a “National Medal of Motherhood” to mothers with six or more children (an idea that has its roots in Nazi Germany).

The proposals all hinge on a specific definition of a family—a straight married couple with children—which leaves out families who don’t conform to a traditional structure or traditional gender roles. Jessica Valenti wrote, “The administration’s ‘baby boom’ push isn’t just about boosting the birthrate. It’s about reasserting a rigid, traditional vision of American family life: one where parents are straight, women are submissive, and the bro-natalists in charge get to pretend it’s all for the good of the nation.”