Dear John,

There are years that bruise, and years that break open the truth. 2025 did both.

It showed us what happens when power is exercised without mercy—when Presidential pardons are handed to convicted violent clinic invaders, when the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE ) is abandoned in all but name, when extremists learn that the door to violence has been left unlatched.

Clinics closed across the country as tens of millions of dollars in Title X family-planning funds were frozen without warning. Providers from California to Maine watched patients lose care overnight; hundreds of clinics have already closed their doors, many more are now bracing for that fatal blow.

And still, our Clinic Access Project monitored every known anti-abortion extremist group. We tracked incidents in real time.  We worked with law enforcement.  We secured clinics.

We kept doors open—not because it was easy, but because it was essential.

This war is not only ongoing. It’s escalating. And we are on the front lines.

We need your help, your support, your generosity—more than ever.

Because even as clinics struggle to survive, Republican leaders are plotting a new tactic—one that uses bureaucracy as a weapon.

Behind closed doors, they are advancing a spending bill that would prohibit Affordable Care Act marketplace plans from covering abortion—even in pro-choice states. Even where state law requires abortion coverage.   Even where private insurance or state dollars pay for it.

As Senator Ron Wyden warned, this is nothing less than a national backdoor abortion ban—a policy maneuver designed to erase access not with police tape, but with red tape.

If enacted, it would override state protections, gut coverage for millions, and unravel decades of progress. Twelve states currently require abortion coverage in ACA plans. Under this scheme, all of those protections would vanish.

This is chillingly familiar.   It echoes the cruelty of the Hyde Amendment, but reaches further, deeper, with more calculated intent.

And at the same time, extremists and Trump-aligned operatives continue efforts to ban mifepristone—the very medication the Feminist Majority Foundation community fought for since 1989 and won approval for. Today, nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States rely on this safe, essential drug. It is now more intensely targeted than ever.

This is the landscape we walk into in 2026.  This is why we cannot wait until the new year to to build up our financial resources and to continue to take action.

Because feminism—real feminism—has no borders.

In Afghanistan, girls can no longer go to school. Women cannot work. They are banned from journalism, universities, law, leadership, even public parks. They are, by design, being erased.

And yet they resist. Quietly. Boldly. Bravely.

Young Afghan women, teach math to girls in secret. In the back room of their family’s homes, behind curtains drawn tight, they whisper lessons that—if discovered—could cost them their lives.

With your help, we’ve stood with them and countless others.  We’ve provided laptops, stipends, online tutoring, mental-health support, and community.  We have helped lift their stories into the halls of the United Nations, where the call to name gender apartheid as a crime against humanity is finally echoing.

Let us be clear:  The Taliban’s treatment of women is not simply cruel.  It is a methodical assault on identity and existence.  It is GENDER APARTHEID.  If the world cannot name it, it cannot stop it.

We are committed to naming it.  To fighting it.  To standing with Afghan women every step of the way.

Our Feminist Campus Program is now the largest feminist student network in the country. Across hundreds of campuses, young women are not waiting for change—they are creating it.

At George Mason University, students launched a week-long “Feminist Power Pop-Up”: 12 events, 3 teach-ins, dozens of volunteers, and hundreds of new student voters registered.

At the University of Pittsburgh, students didn’t just table—they marched into classrooms to deliver voter guides. “We weren’t just registering voters,” a sophomore pre-law student, told us. “We were reclaiming our future.”

This year alone, Feminist Campus groups held more than 700 events.  They defended access.  They organized under threat.  They turned outrage into infrastructure.

This is what the future looks like when we invest in it.

Every clinic we defend, every extremist we monitor, very state where access hangs by a thread, every student organizer preparing for 2026. Every Afghan woman whose whisper of resistance must be amplified—all of it depends on special, generous friends like you.

So we ask:   Will you stand with us again?  Will you help us prepare for the onslaught that will only intensify in 2026?

Your tax-deductible gift—whether $35, $100, $250, $1,000, or more—builds the shield we need around the rights we have fought so hard to protect.

Let’s meet this moment with the courage it demands.

With resolve and deep gratitude,

Ellie Smeal, President

Kathy Spillar, Executive Director

P.S. Contributions are tax deductible. For gifts of stock and contributions from Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) contact Elizabeth Wilson [email protected]