[[link removed]] Ms. Memo: This Week in Women's Rights
December 10, 2025
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.
They Came for Nurses. What They’re Really Coming for Is Women’s Power—and Your Healthcare [[link removed]]
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(Raquel Natalicchio / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
By Ms. Editors | In a quiet regulatory maneuver with seismic consequences, the U.S. Department of Education—under the direction of Republican members of Congress—has proposed reclassifying all graduate nursing degrees as “non-professional.” What sounds like an obscure bureaucratic shift is, in reality, a direct attack on the women who make up nearly the entire nursing workforce and who hold together America’s fraying healthcare system.
The change stems from a new, internal definition of “professional degrees” tied to borrowing limits in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Medicine, dentistry, law, pharmacy, optometry and veterinary programs all make the cut. Graduate nursing does not. That includes nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, clinical nurse specialists, nurse anesthetists—the advanced practice roles that keep rural, poor and underserved communities alive.
Beginning July 1, 2026, nursing students would lose access to the higher federal loan caps reserved for “professional” programs and would be limited to the far lower graduate-loan ceiling of $20,500 per year, with a lifetime maximum of $100,000. By contrast, medicine, dentistry and law students—professional fields still dominated by men—would retain access to $50,000 per year and $200,000 total.
Gone would be the Grad PLUS program, which currently allows students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance, including housing and childcare.
Gone would be the financial backbone that makes graduate nursing possible for first-generation students, working mothers and women of color.
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International Telehealth Provider ‘Abortion Pills in Private’ Ready to Ramp Up if FDA Restricts Mifepristone [[link removed]] Where ACA Premiums Could Spike Most in 2026 if Congress Lets Enhanced Tax Credits Expire [[link removed]]
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Republicans’ ‘National Backdoor Abortion Ban’ [[link removed]] Misogyny, Racism, Power: Connecting the Dots in the Violent Far Right [[link removed]]
What we're reading:
Because it's hard to keep up with everything going on in the world right now. Here's what we're reading this week:
* "Trump Wants Americans To Make More Babies. Critics Say His Policies Won’t Help Raise Them.” — KFF Health News [[link removed]]
[link removed] [[link removed]] Tune in for a new episode of Ms. magazine's podcast, On the Issues with Michele Goodwin on
Apple Podcasts [[link removed]] + Spotify [[link removed]] .
Over the past several months, the Epstein files have been extensively covered by the media. But too often, the voices of actual survivors are missing. In this episode, we’re filling that gap and shifting the focus to where it belongs: to the survivors and what justice means to them. Dr. Michele Goodwin is joined by Jessica Michaels, a sexual assault awareness advocate and Epstein survivor.
We hope you'll listen, subscribe, rate and review today!
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