The state of reproductive rights is dire

In the dystopian present, women's bodies are not their own.

Even though the White House would like to have us believe it is laying low on abortion, make no mistake: The state of reproductive rights is dire in all corners of the country. Today’s column, a summary of just a single week of headlines, paints a spectacularly damning, dystopian picture.

In the states:

In Georgia, an Atlanta hospital is forcing Adriana Smith, a pregnant woman declared brain dead, to remain on life support until her fetus can be delivered, likely another three months away. As Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, told NPR: “Her family deserves the right to have decision-making power about her medical decisions. Instead, they have endured over 90 days of retraumatization, expensive medical costs, and the cruelty of being unable to resolve and move toward healing.” Even the local FOX News station could not resist the headline, “‘Handmaid’s Tale’ in real life?”

In Texas, home to some of the nation’s harshest abortion laws, a new bill—SB2880, dubbed the “most alarming anti-abortion bill since Dobbs”—passed the senate and is now making its way through the legislative process. It would allow anyone who manufactures, distributes, mails, prescribes, or provides abortion pills to be sued for up to $100,000 in cases where a medication abortion results in the “wrongful death” or “personal injury” of a fetus or pregnant person. It purports to apply beyond state lines, an explicit attempt to undermine “shield laws” in effect in 18 states and the District of Columbia to protect abortion providers; would extend the statute of limitations for civil claims and criminal penalties from two to six years; would encourage a “biological father of the unborn child” to sue; and would create liabilities for attorneys and judges. Check out The Cut’s in-depth explainer, especially about potential national impact.

At the Wisconsin Republican state convention this weekend, delegates approved a party resolution calling for enforcement of the state’s 1849 abortion ban that went into effect after the Dobbs ruling. The threat of the archaic law, now before the state Supreme Court after lower courts ruled it does not apply to providers, has helped fuel massive pro-choice voter turnout in two high-profile state judicial elections. No surprise the delegates also just approved resolutions to ban same-day voter registration and limit measures by which absentee ballots are tallied. This combination of priorities speaks volumes about the party’s view of the interplay of democracy and abortion.

American Reproductive Centers, a fertility clinic located in southern California, was attacked in a targeted bombing over the weekend. Given the long history of violence against abortion providers and clinics, the scene is ominous. Doubly so since the Trump administration announced early on that the Department of Justice would no longer enforce the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, the 1994 law that makes it illegal to damage a facility because it provides reproductive health care. Thus far, crickets on the bombing from the so-called “fertilization president.”

In Congress and at the U.S. Supreme Court:

With all eyes on the Republicans’ big, beautiful budget reconciliation bill, University of California Davis law professor Mary Ziegler warns it also contains a sneak attack on abortion – a provision to deny Medicaid funding to any “large provider of abortion services.”

In a potential double whammy, as the U.S. Supreme Court term starts to wrap, among the anticipated rulings is Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic—whether individual states (in this case South Carolina) can remove Planned Parenthood clinics from Medicaid programs. On the eve of oral arguments, I wrote for The Contrarian: “To be clear, the policy does not just affect those seeking abortions; Medicaid already prohibits coverage of most abortions in the state. The policy extends to every other service Planned Parenthood offers, from contraceptive prescriptions to cancer screenings…. This decision surely will reverberate nationally … all in service of Project 2025’s goal to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood.”

In federal agencies:

After the Trump administration agreed to dismiss a federal case seeking to restrict telehealth access to mifepristone, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. betrayed the true endgame. Last week, he testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that the Food and Drug Administration would undertake “a complete review” of mifepristone based solely on a widely debunked report claiming harm to women from its use. [Troves of rigorous testing over decades points to its safety.] Politico broke the story of “Rolling Thunder,” the broader campaign to pressure the FDA to remove abortion pills from the market entirely.

Heads up that this is the week that Trump’s grand plan to increase IVF access is due. Back in February, after the White House issued its Expanding Access To In Vitro Fertilization executive order, I interviewed Rutgers Law Professor Kimberly Mutcherson, expert in bioethics and reproductive health, law, and technology, to unpack for The Contrarian the myriad red flags raised—from how agencies would define families to looming interagency and fiscal chaos. Watch this page! We will be providing real-time assessment when the full proposal goes public.

And there you have it. We cannot let these stories—individually and the collective mass, especially—get lost in the crush of deliberate chaos driven by Trump, which would be as much a danger to democracy as the assaults on our bodies and rights and freedoms themselves.

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.

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