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MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide—the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.” We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.
Since our last report…
+ A judge granted a preliminary injunction to partially block Idaho’s total abortion ban. The March 21 ruling upholds access to emergency abortion care in emergency rooms within St. Luke’s Health System under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal law requiring ERs treat emergency patients regardless of their ability to pay or insurance plan. Currently, the state’s Defense of Life Act enforces a near-total ban on abortion with few exceptions and imposes felony punishments on those who even attempt a ‘criminal’ abortion. However, this temporary block on the ban applies only to providers at St. Luke’s Health System, the plaintiff from the original suit against the state of Idaho and the largest healthcare system in the state.
+ Maine considers a bill that would permit doctors to omit their names from prescription labels for abortion pills. LD 538 seeks to amend the state’s Prescription Drug Labeling Law to allow providers to replace their own names with the names of their medical practices on prescription bottles for the abortion pill mifepristone and other generic equivalents. The bill comes in wake of attacks on shield laws for abortion providers, as seen in the case of Dr. Maggie Carpenter, the New York doctor indicted in Louisiana for prescribing mifepristone to a patient there.
+ Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) and Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) introduced the Stop Comstock Act to Congress in an effort to prevent Trump and fellow antiabortion proponents from abusing the long outdated Comstock Act. Enacted in 1873—over 150 years ago– the act sought to ban the mailing of anything “for any indecent or immoral nature,” including contraception, pornography anything used in the practice of abortion. Today, antiabortion extremists are trying to revive this long dormant law to ban the mailing of popular birth control methods and abortion medications. The Stop Comstock Act seeks to repeal this “zombie law” to protect access to birth control and mifepristone.
+ In a win for Montana, a district court permanently blocked multiple restrictions that would have effectively eliminated abortion access for most patients on Medicaid, especially people living in rural or tribal areas. The restrictions would have narrowed the definition of “medically necessary” care under which abortion is allowed and limited the number of qualified abortion providers covered by Montana’s Medicaid program, preventing people in Montana from accessing abortion care under Medicaid in nearly all cases.
+ After dismissing its entire maternal mortality committee last year, Georgia relaunched a new committee in February, but will not reveal who the new members are. After ProPublica published investigations into the preventable deaths of Candi Miller and Amber Nicole Thurman, the Georgia Department of Public Health fired its original committee, claiming that someone from the committee must have inappropriately shared information with an outside source.
+ At a town hall in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, men from a private security firm grabbed Teresa Borrenpohl and forcibly dragged her from the room after she spoke out at the meeting, responding to speakers making antiabortion remarks. Caught in a now-viral video, security guards pulled Borrenpohl from her seat into the aisle, laid her facedown on the floor and tried to zip-tie her hands before dragging her out the door.
Let’s not forget what else was sent our way this month …
Thursday, March 13: Missouri Could Provide Tax Credit to Anyone Who Donates to a Crisis Pregnancy Center
HB 1176, introduced in February by state Rep. Christopher Warwick (R), would allow taxpayers to donate to antiabortion “pregnancy resource centers” instead of paying state income tax, with a 100 percent credit up to $50,000. If it passes, the bill will directly divert resources away from necessary public infrastructure like education and healthcare. Although the bill currently only has three co-sponsors, the House voted to continue its review.
HB 1176 follows another bill introduced last month prohibiting tax credits for people who paid for an abortion. Notably, Missouri residents voted less than six months ago to overturn the state’s strict abortion ban in November, becoming the first state to successfully reverse a near-total ban.
Monday, March 17: Texas Arrests Midwife for Allegedly Performing Abortions
In Houston, midwife Maria Margarita Rojas and her coworker Jose Ley were arrested for illegally performing abortions, according to court records and Texas’ attorney general Ken Paxton. This marks the first criminal arrest of alleged abortion providers since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
According to a statement from Paxton, Rojas has been charged with the “illegal performance of an abortion” and with practicing medicine without a license. In Texas, doctors who provide abortions can be punished with imprisonment and civil penalties including fines of at least $100,000. Rojas now faces up to 20 years in prison.
According to Rojas’ friend and fellow midwife Holly Shearman, quoted in The New York Times, Rojas was driving to one of the clinics she operates in the Houston area when police pulled her over at gunpoint and handcuffed her. “She said they wouldn’t tell her what was happening.”
Jessica Valenti wrote, “Paxton, a political operator who picks cases strategically, likely chose Rojas”—a Latina woman who serves primarily low-income women of color—“because he believes Americans won’t find her sympathetic—whether due to racism, classism, or the stories his office plans to spin.” Valenti also compared Rojas’ arrest to the recent case in Louisiana where prosecutors indicted New York abortion provider Dr. Maggie Carpenter and arrested the mother who acquired abortion pills for her teenage daughter, claiming that she “coerced” her daughter into having an abortion despite coerced abortion not being mentioned in the indictment.
Tuesday, March 18 and Friday, March 21: Pennsylvania Teenager Investigated after Self-Managed Abortion; Georgia Woman Arrested After Miscarriage
Two examples of pregnancy criminalization came out of Pennsylvania and Georgia this month.
In Pennsylvania, a teenager is being arrested for “abuse of a corpse” after self-managing an abortion and burying the fetus in her backyard, according to Jezebel. After receiving a tip from one of the teenage girl’s friends, police began investigating the girl and her mother upon finding fetal remains. No charges have been filed yet and the case remains under investigation.
Meanwhile, a few days later in Georgia, a 24-year-old woman has been arrested and put in prison after suffering a miscarriage. Because she put the fetal remains in the trash, police arrested the woman—found unconscious and bleeding near her apartment—and charged her with “concealing the death of another person” and “abandonment of a dead body.”
The case is similar to that of Brittany Watts, another woman of color, who filed a lawsuit earlier this year after she was charged with abuse of a corpse when she sought miscarriage care at an Ohio hospital.
Monday, March 24: Supreme Court Will Decide if Medicaid Beneficiaries Can Choose their Own Medical Providers
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic may jeopardize this freedom of choice, not only to those seeking abortion or reproductive care, but to any Medicaid patient seeking treatment. The Court will hear oral arguments on April 2.
In 2018, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster issued an executive order requiring the Department of Health & Human Services to exclude abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood, from Medicaid coverage. Planned Parenthood then sued the state to block the order, citing the state’s violation of the “free-choice-of-provider” provision, a federally accepted amendment to Medicaid dating back to 1967 that has since guaranteed Medicaid recipients the freedom to choose their own doctors.
Formerly Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the case rose to the Supreme Court, only to be sent back down to the District Court by a remand in 2023. SCOTUS later granted certiorari in Dec. 2024. This month, at least 14 amicus briefs have been submitted by supporters of the free choice provision following countless submissions in Feb. by antiabortion advocates.
Medicaid has expanded healthcare opportunities for low-income patients since the 1960s. Curtailing accessibility to reproductive healthcare simply because the state deems reproductive care to be not “qualified” for insurance coverage does not only impact abortion, but also other procedures conducted at centers like Planned Parenthood, including cancer screenings, contraception distribution and STI tests.
Monday, March 24: New Texas Bill Claims to ‘Clarify’ Abortion Ban, But Critics Say it Won’t Protect Women
In Texas, lawmakers are hailing a new “Life of the Mother” bill, SB 31, as bipartisan legislation that would expand protections for women by clarifying when abortions are allowed within the state in order to save a patient’s life.
However, skeptics of the bill argue that SB 31 would do little to actually help women facing pregnancy-related medical emergencies. It would only attempt to explain when doctors can provide a life-saving abortion, but would not expand access to medically necessary abortion or modify Texas’ current abortion ban.
Amanda Zurawski, who sued Texas after nearly dying when doctors refused to end her nonviable pregnancy, told the Texas Tribune, “It is unclear whether Senate Bill 31 would have prevented my trauma and preserved my fertility had it existed in 2022. I do believe the bill comes from a place of concern, but I believe the bill is flawed and should be improved.”
Meanwhile, Jessica Valenti warns that the new bill is a Republican strategy to quietly resurrect an outdated 1925 abortion ban. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s new proposed “Life of the Mother” bill—partially written by antiabortion group Texas Right to Life—would amend the 100-year-old ban, supposedly helping doctors understand when they can perform abortions when needed to save a woman’s life. Valenti explains that updating the 1925 abortion ban would allow Texas courts to enforce elements of the 100-year-old law that are no longer in effect: “This Texas law made performing an abortion a felony unless it was done to save the patient’s life. But unlike the state’s modern bans, the century-old law also made it a felony to help someone ‘procure’ an abortion—and it didn’t explicitly protect patients from prosecution.”
Texas’ nonprofit abortion funds have argued in court that the state could use this clause to pursue criminal charges against them and anyone who helps a patient access an abortion.
Wednesday, March 26: More States Consider Anti-Trans Legislation
We have already seen the Trump administration’s eagerness to oppress trans freedoms through executive orders attacking sports, gender identity markers, and access to gendered public facilities. Trump’s aggression against trans rights has further encouraged conservative state legislatures to push back against trans freedoms.
At the beginning of the month, Texas state Rep. Tom Oliverson (R) introduced a bill to the legislature proposing to categorize identifying as trans on a legal document a felony. The proposed bill, HB 3817, asserts that self-identifying as anything other than one’s sex at birth is “gender identity fraud.” Texas is no stranger to anti-trans legislation: More than 170 bills have already been proposed in the state legislature in the 2025 session alone targeting its LGBTQ population, as Equality Texas reports. but this extreme example would categorize “knowingly mak[ing] a false or misleading verbal or written statement to a government entity or the person’s employer” a felony punishable by jail. Additionally, Texas AG Ken Paxton has ordered all gender markers for trans Texans be reverted to their sex at birth.
This comes after state Rep. Brent Money (R) introduced HB 3399 to the Texas legislature in February, a bill that would prohibit the use of Medicaid for any gender-affirming treatment and limit the types of gender-affirming care doctors are allowed to provide. Thankfully, Oliverson and Money’s bills currently have no other sponsors and are unlikely to pass.
Other conservative states are following suit with Texas’ onslaught of anti-trans legislation.
- In Georgia, HB 267 passed, reverting school bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams to strict categorization by sex. The bill, backed by Frontline Policy Council, a Christian anti-LGBTQ hate group, passed with roughly a two-thirds majority vote in the House, with three Democrats even voting in approval.
- In Montana, HB 446 also seeks to criminalize identifying as trans.
Great Job Ava Slocum & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
