A warning bell for all women in America

The gap in access is only going to stretch further and affect more of us in the years to come. We better make sure our voices are heard.

By Jennifer Weiss-Wolf and Sharon Malone

The two of us, a doctor and a lawyer, join forces frequently to write about women’s health and advocate for increased medical research for midlife and menopausal care—a population that has never been prioritized by the federal government. This week’s Contrarian column is our effort to sound a warning bell for all women in America, young and older, in red states and blue states alike.

Women are more than half the population. We birth the future—bringing children into the world and caring for the elderly. We work. We pay taxes. We are voters.

And yet.

It is abundantly clear that among our nation’s leaders—in the White House and federal agencies, in Congress and state legislatures, and in the courts—too many simply do not care if women die.

And more of us indeed will die. This is not hyperbole or Sen. Joni Ernst-style conjecture. The United States has entered an era of state-sanctioned deprivation of women’s bodily autonomy that not only deprives girls and women of legal rights—for the first time in history, daughters have fewer freedoms than their mothers and grandmothers enjoyed—but compromises our collective health and well-being.

Reproductive care, of course, has been a central target, especially in the three years since the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization revoked the federal right to abortion. Most recently, President Donald Trump’s atrocious “big, beautiful bill,” signed into law on Independence Day, opens the door to a farther-reaching care crisis by way of a provision that effectively defunds Planned Parenthood, cutting off the organization’s federal Medicaid funding for at least one year—a move that could result in closure of as many as 200 clinics and denial of basic medical care for over a million patients.

It is part of a one-two punch, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic that Medicaid patients don’t have a right to freely choose their own medical provider if that provider happens to be Planned Parenthood.

In both scenarios, women can now be deprived of lifesaving care like cancer screenings and a wide array of general and reproductive health services, including diabetes screening, testing for sexually transmitted infections, birth control, and menopause treatments.

None of this is happening in a vacuum but rather is part of a fast-deteriorating medical landscape. The United States currently faces a doctor shortage, with OB-GYNs affected severely. By 2030, we can expect to be down more than 5,000 OB-GYNs nationwide because of early retirement and burnout alone. Those left will be practicing with danger hanging over their heads.

More than half of medical students today are female and of reproductive age. Why would they choose to train and practice in a state that not only restricts their ability to do their jobs but also limits their own ability to access care that they might need?

Nor is it by accident that states with the most restrictive abortion laws already most acutely feel the effects of the emerging shortage. In the first year after Dobbs, 42% of surveyed clinicians who provided abortions in states with near-total or six-week bans relocated to another state, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association—nearly all of them to states that had not imposed a ban. In comparison, just 9% of those who practiced in a state that allowed abortion relocated to another state.

One of the inevitable results is the emergence of medical deserts, which are only bound to get worse. These deserts are also more prevalent in states with restrictive abortion policies (which also happen to largely overlay with the map of the old Confederacy and current-day red states). This is as much a calamity for maternal health as it is for abortion access.

Here is what it means for all of us: Women’s health encompasses the totality her lifespan, not just her reproductive years. About one in four women in this country will want or need an abortion in her lifetime. Eighty percent will bear at least one child. One hundred percent will need cancer screening and counseling for menopause.

Less access to health care, either by cutting Medicaid benefits or discouraging doctors from practicing in restrictive states, will affect pro-life and pro-choice women equally. This is about far more than abortion. There will be more maternal deaths. There will be more deaths from cervical and breast cancer. More women will die from complications of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. There will be more suffering from infertility, endometriosis, and fibroids.

The gap in access is only going to stretch further and affect more of us in the years to come. Does anyone in power care? We certainly do. And we better make sure our voices are heard. All of our lives depend on it.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law. She also leads strategy and partnerships at Ms. Magazine. Sharon Malone is Dr. Sharon Malone is a DC-based OB/GYN and Certified Menopause Practitioner on a mission to empower women to take charge of their health. and the author of “Grown Woman Talk: Your Guide to Getting and Staying Healthy.”

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