My go-to information source about anything dealing with women’s body autonomy.

We told you
We told you
We told you

That they were coming for BIRTH CONTROL.

Jessica Valenti
@JessicaValenti
Close to a year ago, I flagged that the White House had classified IUDs, birth control pills & hormonal implants as “abortifacient birth control.” The news was buried six paragraphs into a NYT story—and wasn’t mentioned in the headline or social promo

Jessica Valenti
@JessicaValenti
Replying to @JessicaValenti
That brings us to this week: WaPo reported on the story after getting ahold of administration emails. They’re making it seem like calling birth control ‘abortion’ was just the result of idiotic men who don’t know anything about women’s health But don’t get it twisted—this was a *deliberate move*

Jessica Valenti
@JessicaValenti
Replying to @JessicaValenti
Yes, I’m sure stupidity was involved—but this was not a random error. Multiple agencies made the “abortifacient birth control” claim—not just one rogue employee. That term is also straight out of the anti-abortion playbook: they’re using it rn in lawsuits fighting health coverage for contraception
4:59 PM · Jul 15, 20261.3KViews

Jessica Valenti
@JessicaValenti
Replying to @JessicaValenti
It’s also not an accident that the administration moved to save condoms but not any other kind of contraception—it aligns with the ‘abortifacient birth control’ classifications used by groups like Students for Life
https://x.com/JessicaValenti/status/2077438009838915748

Abortion Is a Losing Issue for Republicans. Birth Control Might Not Be.
Contraception has a PR problem—and the White House is exploiting it
Jessica Valenti
Jul 16

Donald Trump doesn’t want to talk about abortion. He’s well-aware that the issue is a loser for Republicans, and our felon president really doesn’t like losing. That’s why, much to the annoyance of the anti-abortion movement, the Trump administration hasn’t enforced the Comstock Act—which would make mailing abortion pills a federal crime. It’s also why the FDA has slow-walked its ‘safety study’ of abortion pills, and why Trump himself is so intent on pretending to be reasonable on the issue.

Abortion is just too popular to pick any big public fights over.

That doesn’t mean the White House plans to leave women alone—they like fucking with us far too much for that. Instead of attacking abortion rights, the Trump administration is going after what they believe is a far easier target: birth control.

That’s right, they’re skipping past abortion and going straight for contraception.

Law professor Mary Ziegler first floated this idea in a Boston Globe column a few months ago, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Ziegler wrote that “the Trump administration may find it easier to change policy on birth control than on abortion.” After all, contraception has a serious PR problem right now: conservatives have flooded young women’s algorithms with disinformation about the Pill, women on social media are sharing their (very real) stories of painful IUD insertions, and many American women feel ignored or dismissed by the medical professionals tasked to care for them.

As a result, criticism of birth control is no longer purely seen as misogynist drivel. The rise of MAHA has created an opening for Republicans to attack contraception under the auspices of “protecting women.” And that’s exactly what they’ve been doing since Trump returned to office.

Last year, the White House froze more than $65 million in grants for Title X—the nation’s family planning program. Then, just a few months ago, the administration issued new guidance for how those federal dollars should be spent: instead of helping low-income Americans access contraception, the administration directed programs to promote “natural family planning methods.” Contraception is only mentioned once in the entire 67-page document, and only to state that it’s “overprescribed.”

With this guidance—through just one document—the Trump administration changed a long-standing federal program that helps people afford birth control into one that “assist[s] clients in achieving healthy pregnancies.”

A few weeks ago, the White House made similar changes to the nation’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. After cutting $67 million from programs that focused on contraception, the administration published two “notices of funding opportunities” instructing new grantees to teach teenage girls period tracking instead. They’re calling it “body awareness.”

If the goal is to reduce teen pregnancy, why recommend a notoriously ineffective method—especially for teens, whose periods are often irregular? Well, the idea of “menstrual cycle classes” for students came from Emma Waters—Gen Z’s Phyllis Schlafly—who advises the Trump administration on how to increase the nation’s birth rate. It makes sense, then, that the administration’s sole mention of birth control in those funding documents is a prompt to teach students about the downsides of “ovarian suppression compared to approaches that address root causes.”

Republicans have even tried to sugar-coat the defunding of Planned Parenthood and other clinics—which put over one million women at risk of losing contraception access over the last year. Conservatives want us to believe that the country’s most-trusted reproductive healthcare providers are actually predatory or unnecessary.

Even with federal funding restored, the damage has been incalculable. So what’s supposed to fill this massive healthcare gap? How does the White House want to fix the reproductive and maternal healthcare deserts their policies created? Crisis pregnancy centers—which not only can’t prescribe birth control, but won’t.

The administration has propped up these fake clinics as reasonable replacements for the real clinics their policies have shuttered, directing American women to sketchy data collection tools and even laying the groundwork to funnel Title X funding to the religious groups. I warned about this strategy in 2023: