SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
mifepristone
When it Comes to Women’s Health, The Trump Admin’s Hypocrisy is on Full Display
President Donald Trump and his cronies are peddling lies about abortion care while touting their farce advancements for women’s health.
Nov 22, 2025
Earlier this month, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made an announcement regarding the removal of broad “black box” warnings from Hormone Replacement Therapy products for menopause.
As an OB-GYN PA with more than a decade of experience in reproductive care, I know what decisions women and patients are grappling with when it comes to their health and maternal care. I also know first hand the devastating consequences of denying patients critical care when they need it the most and stripping access to care that’s been proven to be safe and effective after decades of research.
President Donald Trump and his cronies are peddling lies about abortion care while being hypocrites when touting their farce advancements for women’s health. Right now, Trump and his anti-abortion administration are pulling every string possible to ban abortion and that includes banning abortion medication.
Ironically, Commissioner Makary said in a statement that “women and their physicians should make decisions based on data, not fear,” and anti-abortion extremist Kennedy Jr. said that the administration is “returning to evidence-based medicine and giving women control over their health again.”
Contrary to their assertion of trusting research and doctors, right now, the Trump administration is working to roll back access to mifepristone and reproductive care, with Makary and Kennedy Jr. at the helm.
At the press event for this announcement, while responding to a question from a reporter, Makary said that the administration is “sticking with our philosophy that the government is not your doctor.”
So, which is it? Does this administration trust women and patients to consult their physicians for what’s best on making personal medical decisions, or is that only convenient messaging when it’s pushing forward their extreme agenda?
The healthcare crisis in America is a dire one, and yet, the Trump administration continues to play political games and feign ignorance as to how their efforts to ban abortion nationwide will have a catastrophic impact on women and patients across the country.
It has been 25 years since the FDA approved mifepristone, a safe, effective medication that has reshaped abortion care in the US.
Contrary to their assertion of trusting research and doctors, right now, the Trump administration is working to roll back access to mifepristone and reproductive care, with Makary and Kennedy Jr. at the helm.
At the urging of anti-abortion politicians and junk science, the FDA has agreed to revisit its approval of mifepristone, because extremists condemned the FDA approving a generic abortion pill just last month.
We must continue to call out this hypocrisy, because Republicans know that imposing Project 2025’s abortion agenda risks significant political backlash, particularly in battleground states where abortion is either legal or popular. More than 6 in 10 Americans support keeping medication abortion available. Even many Trump voters oppose new restrictions.
Let’s be clear—this administration’s attacks on mifepristone are a national abortion test.
Project 2025, spearheaded by Trump, Kennedy Jr., and Makary, would dismantle access to one of the safest, most widely used medications in the country. Medication abortion accounted for nearly two-thirds of all US abortions in 2023.
Will women and families retain the ability to make private medical decisions—or will patients have their rights ripped away and be forced to jump through unimaginable hoops just to receive care?
If Republicans were actually committed to prioritizing women’s health in their agenda, they would invest in healthcare so expecting mothers across the country have access to the most comprehensive care available, including abortion care.
If Republicans were actually committed to protecting women and advancing medical research, they wouldn’t pull funding from clinics and hospitals dedicated to providing care for women and patients nationwide, especially in rural communities where resources are already sparse.
I’m not buying this feigned effort toward showing allyship toward women, when everything that this administration has done since January has been an assault on women’s health and the care we undoubtedly need. Physicians and providers like me spend years in schooling and training so we can provide the best care to our communities, and yet this administration undermines those years of dedication and expertise to appease an extreme anti-abortion minority.
If Trump, Makary, and Kennedy Jr. want to walk the walk in advancing women’s healthcare, they should start with looking at themselves and acknowledging the harm that they are doing across the country to the detriment of the American people.
Lives are at stake, and we are waiting for them to mean what they say.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Texas House Passes Attack on Mailed Abortion Pills That 'Will Fuel Fear' Nationwide
"Texas: Land of the free! Also Texas: We want you to surveil your neighbor, see if they've missed their period, snoop through their trash and mail, and sue whoever sent them medication abortion."
Aug 29, 2025
Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives on Thursday night advanced another anti-abortion bounty hunter bill, this one taking aim at medications mailed from states that support reproductive freedom so Texans can choose to end pregnancies.
House Bill 7 passed 82-48 along party lines during Texas' second special legislative session of the year. The proposal from state Rep. Jeff Leach (R-67) still needs approval from the Senate—which previously passed similar legislation—before it heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. He has signed various attacks on reproductive rights, including Senate Bill 8, a 2021 state law that entices vigilantes with $10,000 bounties to enforce a six-week abortion ban.
Like S.B. 8, the new bill relies on lawsuits filed by private citizens. H.B. 7 would empower them to sue out-of-state healthcare providers, medication manufacturers, and anyone who mails or otherwise provides abortion pills to someone in the state for up to $100,000 in damages per violation—even if no abortion occurs. Under pressure from some anti-choice groups, Republicans added language allowing vigilantes to keep only $10,000; the rest would go to a charity they choose.
"It's designed to trap Texans into forced pregnancy," Shellie Hayes-McMahon, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, told the Houston Chronicle. "Instead of fixing the crisis they (Texas lawmakers) manufactured, they're doubling down to punish anyone who dares to help a Texan. This bill is not about safety, it's about control."
Republicans in the Texas House have introduced another way to try to harm patients, providers, and manufacturers in the state. HB 7 would allow anyone to sue a manufacturer, distributor, or provider of medication abortion—even without proof of care being provided.
[image or embed]
— Reproductive Freedom for All (@reproductivefreedomforall.org) August 29, 2025 at 10:34 AM
The bill is part of a broader effort to stop the flow of abortion medications—mifepristone and misoprostol—into states that have ramped up restrictions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority reversing Roe v. Wade in 2022.
As GOP lawmakers have worked to further restrict reproductive freedom, Democrat-controlled states have enacted "shield laws" to protect doctors and patients. Laws enabling telehealth abortions are key targets for Republican officials and far-right activists—including "anti-abortion legal terrorist" Jonathan Mitchell, the chief architect of S.B. 8 who's now representing a Texas man in a wrongful death case against a California doctor accused of providing pills that his girlfriend used to end her pregnancy.
The New York Times reported that "supporters hope and opponents fear" H.B. 7 "will serve as a model for other states to limit medication abortion by promoting a rash of lawsuits against medical providers, pharmaceutical companies, and companies such as FedEx or UPS that may ship the drugs."
Supporters and opponents also anticipate court battles over the bill itself. "Texas is sort of the tip of the spear," Marc Hearron, the associate director of litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the Times. "It's setting up a clash."
H.B. 7 is "pushing up against the limits of how much a state can control," Hearron added. "Each state can have its own laws, but throughout our history, we have been able to travel across the country, send things across the country."
Texas: Land of the free! Also Texas: We want you to surveil your neighbor, see if they've missed their period, snoop through their trash and mail, and sue whoever sent them medication abortion. https://bit.ly/4lM2sXF
[image or embed]
— Center for Reproductive Rights (@reprorights.org) August 28, 2025 at 4:45 PM
After Thursday's vote, Blair Wallace, policy and advocacy strategist on reproductive freedom at the ACLU of Texas, warned in a statement that "H.B. 7 exports Texas' extreme abortion ban far beyond state borders."
"It will fuel fear among manufacturers and providers nationwide, while encouraging neighbors to police one another's reproductive lives, further isolating pregnant Texans, and punishing the people who care for them," she said. "We believe in a Texas where people have the freedom to make decisions about our own bodies and futures."
Keep ReadingShow Less
GOP AGs Urge Congress to Crack Down on Shield Laws and Telehealth Abortions
The Republican coalition targeted California and New York, both home to doctors who have been targeted by legal cases for allegedly providing abortion pills to patients in states with strict bans.
Jul 30, 2025
While a recently filed lawsuit in Texas jeopardizes the future of telehealth abortions, some Republican state attorneys general don't want the GOP-controlled Congress to wait for the results of that case, and this week urged leaders on Capitol Hill to consider passing federal legislation that would restrict doctors from shipping pills to patients to end their pregnancies.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority ended nationwide abortion rights with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization three years ago, anti-choice state lawmakers have ramped up efforts to restrict reproductive freedom. At the same time, some Democratic officials have enacted "shield laws" to protect in-state providers and traveling patients.
Led by Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, 16 state AGs on Tuesday wrote to top congressional leaders from both parties, calling on them to "assess the constitutional authority it may have to preempt shield laws."
Griffin also sent cease-and-desist letters to two entities shipping abortion medication within the United States and two website companies that provide services to LifeOnEasyPills.org. Reporting on the AG's press conference, South Carolina Daily Gazette noted that "if the entities don't cease advertising abortion pills in Arkansas, Griffin said his office may bring a lawsuit against them for violating the state's deceptive trade practices law."
While Griffin also "said he believes what he is asking lawmakers to do is different from a federal abortion ban that the closely divided Congress has seemed hesitant to tackle," according to the Daily Gazette, advocates for reproductive rights disagreed.
Responding to the letter to Congress on social media, the advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All shared a petition opposing a national abortion ban. It says that Republican President Donald Trump "has proven time and time again that he is out of touch with the 8 in 10 Americans who support protecting abortion rights."
"On the campaign trail he spewed whatever lies he could to get him reelected. Now he'll use the Project 2025 playbook to further restrict our right to access abortion, contraception, fertility treatments, and more," the petition warns. "We must stop him."
Yesterday, 16 Republican attorneys general sent a letter to congressional leadership urging them to override state telemedicine abortion shield laws.Sign the petition below to stand up to Republican lawmakers!act.reproductivefreedomforall.org/a/no-nationa...
[image or embed]
— Reproductive Freedom for All (@reproductivefreedomforall.org) July 30, 2025 at 3:48 PM
In addition to Griffin, the Tuesday letter is signed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The GOP coalition targeted two states, arguing that "when New York or California refuses to respect a criminal prosecution or a civil judgment against an individual who is accused of violating the abortion laws of another state, they are refusing to give full faith and credit to that state's judicial proceedings."
Last December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against a provider in New York. He sued Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT), for providing two drugs used in medication abortions—mifepristone and misoprostol—to a 20-year-old resident of Collin County.
In February, on the same day that Texas State District Judge Bryan Gantt ordered Carpenter to pay over $100,000 in fines and fees, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill sought to extradite the ACT doctor. Her state classifies mifepristone and misoprostol as dangerous controlled substances.
While Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed the extradition warrant sought by Murrill and the district attorney, New York is one of nearly two dozen states with shield laws for reproductive healthcare, and its Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, said that "I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana—not now, not ever."
On Monday, Paxton took legal action against Taylor Brucka, the clerk in Ulster County, New York, for refusing to make Carpenter pay the $100,000 penalty. Bruck told The Guardian that "it's really unprecedented for a clerk to be in this position" and "I'm just proud to live in a state that has something like the shield law here to protect our healthcare providers from out-of-state proceedings like this."
Meanwhile, another case involving a California doctor emerged in Texas earlier this month: A man filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Dr. Rémy Coeytaux for allegedly mailing to Galveston County medication that his girlfriend used to end her pregnancy. His lawyer is Jonathan Mitchell, an "anti-abortion legal terrorist" who previously served as the state's solicitor general and was the chief architect of its law that entices anti-choice vigilantes with $10,000 bounties to enforce a six-week ban.
Mary Ziegler, an abortion historian and law professor at the University of California, Davis, recently told Mother Jones that "the whole game for Jonathan Mitchell is to get into federal court... both because he wants to shut down doctors in shield law states, like everyone in the anti-abortion movement, and because he wants a federal court to weigh in on the Comstock Act," a dormant 1873 law that criminalized the shipping of "obscene" materials, including abortifacients.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular