The Trump administration is endangering women’s reproductive health

  The Trump administration has made drastic cuts to federal programs that protect the health of Americans, putting women’s health at particular risk. Job cuts described as a “bloodbath,” along with restructuring within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will dismantle programs that support women’s health, including those that focus on chronic and infectious disease, injuries, mental health, genetic disorders, substance use, and health disparities. These cuts will scale back efforts to prevent, treat, and discover cures for illnesses and diseases, including many that affect women’s reproductive health.

10 egregious things you may not know about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

  Congressional Republicans passed a radical budget and tax bill—the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—on a party-line vote. Many of the plan’s key elements will increase families’ costs for health care, food, and utilities—such as historic cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as well as terminating tax credits to produce more American-made energy—and are deeply unpopular according to recent survey data. Several provisions, however, remain less understood because they’ve received less media attention or were added during rushed negotiations that took place overnight and behind closed doors.

  This article details several lesser-known provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that will increase costs and limit Americans’ ability to meet their basic needs; create a slush fund for Trump administration overreach; and waste taxpayer money.

The Supreme Court has overturned precedent dozens of times in the past 60 years, including when it struck down legal segregation

  It is a central principle of law: Courts are supposed to follow earlier decisions – precedent – to resolve current disputes. But it’s inevitable that sometimes, the precedent has to go, and a court has to overrule another court or even its own decision from an earlier case.

  In its upcoming term, the U.S. Supreme Court faces the question of whether to overrule itself on abortion rights. Recent laws in Texas and Mississippi restrict the right of women to terminate pregnancies in ways that appear to challenge the long-standing precedent of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which allowed women to have abortions in most circumstances.

I helped patients get through abortion clinic parking lots and what I saw was horrifying

  In the first three months of 2019, more than 300 restrictive abortion bills were introduced, proposing everything from making abortion a felony to increasing restrictions on clinics. Recently, the Georgia Legislature moved to join three other states in enacting “heartbeat” bans that will prohibit abortion after fetal pole cardiac activity can be detected — as early as six weeks, before many people know they’re pregnant — essentially outlawing the procedure in those states.

  Abortion barriers are not new. In order to receive an abortion, the average person will pay anywhere from $400-$1,000 for the procedure, travel up to 168 miles, and wait up to 72 hours. Low-income people and people of color face additional barriers, such as trouble getting time off, difficulty securing travel funds, and bans on insurance coverage. Even after jumping all of these bureaucratic hurdles, people still face physical obstruction and harassment at the clinics themselves from anti-abortion protestors.

Women are driving the resistance

  The 2016 election season was a troubling reminder of the stubborn persistence of sexism and misogyny. Whether or not they chose to vote, millions of women across the United States were forced to confront a stark reality: Their country had elected a president who built his campaign on division, professing to want to empower women even as he consistently embraced and deployed hostile, disparaging rhetoric about and toward women. President Donald Trump has also surrounded himself with and elevated men—such as Vice President Mike Pence, former chief strategist Steve Bannon and Attorney General Jeff Sessions—who have consistently supported anti-women policies.

Jamila Taylor: How President Trump’s policy agenda hurts mothers

  President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been an all-out war on women. Despite statements he has made about supporting women and “invest[ing] in women’s health,” he has ushered forth an agenda that will go down in history as one of the most egregious efforts in decades to deny women’s fundamental rights. On the first Mother’s Day with Trump as president, let’s take a deeper look at how his anti-woman policies could have a particularly harmful effect on mothers.

Darrio Melton: Watch out for the second year of the quadrennium

  Each year, the joke around the State House is that the best time to slip something into the law and not be held accountable by news media and constituents is the second year of the quadrennium. By this point, media attention has usually shifted to the upcoming presidential election, and 2018 is far enough away that voters won't be looking ahead yet.

  In 2012, the second year of the last quadrennium, the Republican supermajority pushed through its infamously unconstitutional immigration bill, those lawmakers pulled the teeth out of their signature ethics bill, and pushed through a dozen or so incentives to help businesses over families.

Elizabeth Robinson: Diverse pro-life groups present loving choices for mothers and unborn babies

  One of the oft-chanted maxims of the pro-choice movement is, “Keep your hands off my body.” And it is a mantra that has never settled with me. While I can certainly understand wanting to keep a stranger’s hands away, I have always wondered why those advocating for abortion never allowed the unborn child to voice the same refrain.

  The most basic argument surrounding the pro-life versus pro-choice issue is one of rights. The rights of the unborn child weighed against the rights of the woman carrying it, but the current judicial climate places the burden on scientific advancement to prove when life begins. The current standard of “viability” has already replaced the outmoded trimester standard implemented under Roe v. Wade, and some states like Alabama have passed “fetal pain” laws, which pushed the mark further to the twentieth week, when the child has a nervous system developed enough to feel pain.