| Ms. Memo: This Week in Women's Rights
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From the ongoing fight for abortion rights and access, to elections, to the drive for the Equal Rights Amendment, there are a multitude of battles to keep up with. In this weekly roundup, find the absolute need-to-know news for feminists. |
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(Roy Rochlin / Getty Images for DNC) |
By Jenifer McKenna | Within days of the election, antiabortion leaders started calling on the incoming administration to defund Planned Parenthood and family planning clinics that refer patients for abortion, and redirect that funding to “pro-life” pregnancy centers.
While serial attacks on abortion rights seize the headlines, the anti-choice movement has quietly built an on-the-ground network of unregulated pregnancy clinics—also known as crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) and antiabortion centers (AACs)—that is eroding access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare and electioneering against abortion rights, mostly under the radar and increasingly on the public dime.
CPCs pose as harmless community resources and licensed women’s health clinics in need of public support. They are, in fact, part of a multi-billion-dollar industry that is directly tied to the extremist legal and advocacy groups that overturned Roe and are now going after medication abortion, contraception, IVF and no-fault divorce.
With a staggering $1.7 billion in annual revenue, an estimated 3,000 locations and 100,000 staff and volunteers, the CPC industry is the grassroots backbone of the anti-choice movement. Radical groups including Heartbeat International, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Students for Life, Turning Point USA and others—many involved in Project 2025—leverage this 50-state network to influence state policy and, under the guise of providing healthcare, siphon escalating taxpayer dollars into the antiabortion movement.
While CPCs have had some access to federal funding since the 1990s, Republican-led states have piloted a dramatic infusion of taxpayer funding into the CPC industry, especially since the 2022 Dobbs ruling. Now, as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans take power, they are certain to also ramp up federal funding for CPCs, making American taxpayers in every state underwrite these unregulated pregnancy clinics. They will justify doing so claiming CPCs “provide medical care that is driving down maternal mortality.” There is no evidence this is true.
Not only are CPCs entirely ill-equipped to deliver maternal healthcare, their unlicensed practice of medicine, trafficking of medical disinformation, and unguarded collection of sensitive personal health data actually threaten women’s health and safety. Yet, in more and more communities, unregulated pregnancy clinics are the only resources available to pregnant women and teens, as maternal care deserts proliferate nationwide.
The new administration and Congress are poised to make this grim reality worse: by massively boosting the flow of federal taxpayer dollars to unregulated pregnancy clinics.
(Click here to read more) |
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Because it's hard to keep up with everything going on in the world right now. Here's what we're reading this week: |
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| Tune in for a new episode of Ms. magazine's podcast, On the Issues with Michele Goodwin on
Apple Podcasts + Spotify.
In this episode, we continue to assess and reckon with the 2024 election results. How did abortion rights prevail, while anti-abortion lawmakers were elected in the very same states? What will a Trump administration mean for women’s rights, federal courts, agencies and throughout government? Are there any safeguards left as a check or restraint on abuse of office? And, what silver linings can we find among the election results? We hope you'll listen, subscribe, rate and review today! |
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