Dear John,

Two big abortion stories broke this week. The Trump administration take its first steps towards a nationwide ban on abortion pills. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered the FDA to reevaluate its decades-old approval of mifepristone, on the basis of a single junk-science report from an antiabortion group. Carrie Baker, a Ms. contributing editor, has the details and what this all could mean, in her article below.

And in Georgia this week we learned of a woman who, despite having been declared brain-dead when she was 9 weeks pregnant, has been forcibly kept alive for the past three months against her family's wishes, due to the state’s strict “heartbeat law” abortion ban. Adriana Smith’s family say they were given no choice in the matter. “It’s torture for me,” said her mother. “I come here, and I see my daughter breathing on a ventilator, but she’s not there.” Dr. Michele Goodwin, Ms. Studios executive producer, explains the tragic situation in this week’s podcast, “Fifteen Minutes of Feminism: Dead, Pregnant & Imprisoned in Georgia – The Adriana Smith Case,” featured below.

Meanwhile, in Congress, we watched the contentious debates over Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”—which could have some pretty ugly impacts, if Republicans in Congress get their way and push it through. The bill’s trillion dollar cuts will primarily impact programs like Medicaid and SNAP, which provide healthcare and food for tens of millions of people in the U.S. every day. The bill could cost nearly 14 million people their health care—and it would raise healthcare costs for even more. It also includes a plan to defund Planned Parenthood—a plan that, rather than saving money, would actually cost taxpayers $300 million over the course of the next ten years, per the Congressional Budget Office. And while it would boost the child tax credit, a sneaky provision would disqualify a number of U.S.-born children from receiving the tax break, by cutting off undocumented immigrants.

These are cuts that will, of course, overwhelmingly impact women. In a letter to the the Republican Members of the House Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Agriculture Committees, where hours (and sometimes days)-long negotiations were taking place this week, members of the Democratic Women’s Caucus pointed out that nearly a third of SNAP households with children are single parent homes—and nine out of 10 of those are headed by women. What’s more, they wrote, “cuts to SNAP could steal food from the mouths of 11 million children ages 5 to 17; 4.4 million children under the age of 5; and 7.8 million seniors ages 60 and older.” Medicaid cuts will also have dire consequences for women and their families: Medicaid covers 41 percent of births in the U.S., along with basic reproductive care for 17 million women, annual check ups and emergency care for 39.4 million children, coverage for 63 percent of nursing home patients who are overwhelmingly women, and much more.

But of course Trump thinks it’s “beautiful”—it’s him and his billionaire friends like Elon Musk who stand to benefit from the hefty tax breaks that the Medicaid and SNAP cuts will fund. The bill extends Trump’s already-significant 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy even further. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded that “extending the expiring tax cuts for individuals and large estates would double down on the flaws in the 2017 law by giving the biggest benefits to the wealthy, ballooning the deficit, and failing to significantly boost economic growth, workers’ earnings, or other benefits for workers."

What else are those cuts funding? Surprise, surprise—the bill allocates an additional $100 billion to defense spending, and an additional $90 billion to Homeland Security, presumably to help fund Trump’s increasingly draconian deportations of migrants and political dissenters.

As members of the House sat through marathon meetings this week, some of which passed the 12 hour mark, it’s no wonder people on both sides of the aisle were dozing off in their seats. But here at Ms., we couldn’t be more awake—because too much is at stake for us to not be paying attention. As the debates and battles continue next week, we promise to keep you informed.

Onward,

Weekly Digest

Weekly Digest

Letter from an Editor | May 17, 2025

This Week's Must-Reads from Ms.

Critical Programs for Women and Families Face Deep Cuts in House Budget Bill

FDA Review of Abortion Pill Signals First Step Toward Nationwide Ban

The National Science Foundation Canceled Our Grant Because It Focused on Women

Why Do MAGA Women Dress Like That?