Carrie N. Baker

When a government starts trashing books and banning fields of study, it has gone beyond censorship: democracy itself is under threat. In the wake of Hampshire College's closure, Republican attacks on higher education — and liberal arts education in particular — feels closer to home than ever before. In a 2021 speech titled “

Late on Friday, May 1, judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals—notorious among abortion-rights advocates and legal commentators for being highly conservative and hostile to abortion access—entered a nationwide ban on U.S. clinicians dispensing the abortion pill mifepristone by mail after a telehealth consultation.The court’s ruling reimposes a medically unnecessary requirement lifted by the FDA in 2021 that patients must pick up the medication in person from a clinician—overriding a lower court’s ruling from April, as well as the advice of medical experts. The ruling applies across the United States.While some clinicians in the U.S. have said they will shift to a misoprostol-alone protocol—which is very safe and effective, but has more side effects—women can still obtain abortion pills with mifepristone and misoprostol from international telehealth providers for a sliding fee, community networks for free and websites selling pills, starting at $85. The organization Plan C lists reliable providers on their website at plancpills.org.

As a professor at Smith College and chair of the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, I have closely followed the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education—and on my field in particular.This week, those attacks landed squarely on my own campus: The Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation into Smith’s policy of admitting transgender women, arguing the college may be violating Title IX by recognizing gender identity rather than “biological sex.” The probe—prompted by a complaint from a conservative advocacy group—questions whether a women’s college can remain legally “single sex” while including trans women, and raises the possibility of federal penalties or loss of status.This move is not an isolated action. It is part of a broader campaign to redefine civil rights protections in ways that exclude transgender people, and to pressure colleges and universities into compliance with that vision.It is also one of many recent attacks on higher education—especially liberal arts institutions—by Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration, aimed at universities they view as out of step with a conservative, anti-feminist agenda. In a 2021 speech titled “Universities Are the Enemy,” JD Vance declared, “We must aggressively attack the universities in this country. … Maybe it’s time to seize the endowments, penalize them for being on the wrong side of some of these culture war issues.”Women’s, gender and sexuality studies teaches students to think critically, to question the status quo and to understand how power shapes our lives across gender, race, class, sexuality and more. These are precisely the kinds of questions that have made the field a target. Rather than engage with this work, critics have increasingly sought to discredit or dismantle it altogether. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 provides a roadmap for doing just that—but many of these strategies have already been tested at the state level.

As legal battles over abortion pills continue to play out in the courts , many people across the United States are asking the same urgent question: If the Supreme Court or lower courts restrict access to mifepristone by mail, how can American women still get abortion pills?

If the Court does nothing, the lower-court ruling could snap back into place, threatening mail-order and telemedicine access to mifepristone, one of the two drugs commonly used in medication abortion. But abortion rights advocates say the story does not end there. Telemedicine abortion networks, shield-law protections, advance provision and community-based access have already reshaped abortion care in the post- Dobbs landscape —and those systems are continuing to evolve.

“One in three Americans are under-babied,” said Trump's Medicare and Medicaid chief Dr. Oz last week, echoing J.D. Vance's contempt for childless women as “cat ladies.” Guided by evangelical supporters, the Trump administration is eroding longstanding civil rights laws protecting women and girls in education and the workplace, restricting access to contraception and abortion, and weakening social support systems for single mothers and their children. They are advancing policies and rhetoric that pressure women to marry men, exit the workplace, prioritize childbearing, and give birth to as many babies as possible. The goal of this full-scale attack on women's economic independence and bodily autonomy is to make the patriarchal family the center of American life.

“One in three Americans are under-babied,” said Trump’s Medicare and Medicaid chief Dr. Oz last week, echoing JD Vance’s contempt for childless women as “cat ladies.” Guided by evangelical supporters, the Trump administration is eroding longstanding civil rights laws protecting women and girls in education and the workplace, restricting access to contraception and abortion, and weakening social support systems for single mothers and their children.

“One in three Americans are under-babied,” said Trump’s Medicare and Medicaid chief Dr. Oz last week, echoing J.D. Vance’s contempt for childless women as “cat ladies.” Guided by evangelical supporters, the Trump administration is eroding longstanding civil rights laws protecting women and girls in education and the workplace, restricting access to contraception and abortion, and […]

As Republicans create ever higher barriers to abortion that push abortion seekers later into pregnancy, U.S.-based activists are learning from Latin American feminists who have developed protocols to make second-trimester medication abortion easier and safer.

Abortion Rates Continue to Climb as Telehealth Reshapes Post-Dobbs America, according to new #WeCount data.