It’s been three and a half years since Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and removed federal protections on the bodily autonomy of half the country’s population. As a reporter and as someone with a uterus, I have made an effort to monitor developments in reproductive rights throughout the nation, and have found myself increasingly disturbed at the level of extremist policy that is working its way throughout the legislature. 2025, to no one’s surprise, was even worse for reproductive rights than 2024, and if we want any hope of improving things in 2026, it’s important to understand why. So as we step into the new year, let’s take one more look at the old one.

There’s a lot to look at, of course. I’m going to attempt to touch on as many major trends as I can, but won’t be going into anything resembling depth. I highly encourage you to use this article as a starting point for your own research. Additionally, if you want a place to watch for future updates, no one is more dedicated to the coverage of reproductive rights than independent journalists Jessica Valenti and Kylie Chueng, who are the reasons I know about half the issues that I do. They have a great eye for pointing out snowballs in their earliest stages, and were the first to report on cases like that of Dr. Remy Coeytaux, a doctor from California who Louisiana is attempting to prosecute for shipping abortion pills across state lines in hopes of bringing shield laws before the decidedly anti-abortion Supreme Court.

If the last part of that sentence made absolutely no sense to you, don’t worry. The targeting of telehealth is the first item on my list.

As everyone knows, criminalizing something people desperately want—and in the case of abortion, need—to do doesn’t stop it. Thousands of people living in states that restrict abortion opt to travel to those that still protect abortion in order to get the care they need. However, medications like mifepristone provide a cheaper and therefore more accessible alternative. Mifepristone, typically used in combination with misoprostol, is a drug that can be used to safely and effectively abort a pregnancy in the first or second trimester. Thanks to telehealth services, it can also be prescribed and mailed to people living in states where abortion is banned by doctors working in states without restrictions. This is a system that has undoubtedly saved lives, bringing care to those that desperately need it.

However, legislators in anti-abortion states absolutely hate this, and have been making attacks on telehealth abortions from multiple angles, with the aforementioned lawsuit being just one example. As states like Louisiana and Texas have made it clear that they’re trying to target telehealth providers, states like California have pushed back by passing protections—called shield laws—for doctors working in their states. By bringing criminal charges against people like Dr. Coeytaux anyways, prosecutors are hoping that the case will escalate to the Supreme Court, which will likely rule shield laws unconstitutional, thus blocking telehealth abortions.

They’re also chipping at the legitimacy of mifepristone as a drug. Despite the fact that mifepristone has been used safely by millions of people—it was used in a whopping 63% of abortions in 2023—since its approval by the FDA in 2000, there’s been a push in legislation and in the Health and Human Services department to present them as harmful. 

The latter is seen in the FDA’s recent review of mifepristone, which comes on the tail of anti-abortion backlash at the approval of a generic version of the drug. Despite the fact that hundreds of studies have proven the medication is both safe and effective, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., opted to devote the department’s already dwindling resources to the review. Peter Lurie, the former associate commissioner for public health strategy and analysis at the FDA, was quoted by Scientific American in that same article, declaring that “there is every reason to fear that this study will be a cherry-picking, data-contorting exercise designed to support a predetermined conclusion of lack of safety.”

In the legislature, the main push against mifepristone has been in bogus claims that the pills are somehow contaminating the water supply and causing infertility. This is typically combined or even conflated with the equally nonsensical claim that the tissue from miscarriage and/or abortions is also contaminating water. This claim is especially relevant to us here in Wisconsin, where Republican lawmakers pushed for a bill that would require those who had a miscarriage or an abortion to use ‘catch kits’ to store the tissue and bring it to a doctor under the guise of campaigning for ‘clean water’. These same lawmakers have been known to withhold funds for actual clean water programs, such as the replacement of lead pipes. There’s also been a surge in bills calling for the testing of water for mifepristone (for a more in depth look at the evolution of this piece of rhetoric, I suggest you read this excellent article by Jessica Valenti).

There’s also been a variety of lawsuits—the most recent coming from Texas and Florida—suing the FDA with the goal of revoking the approval of mifepristone and its generics, as well as banning telehealth prescriptions of abortion medication. These suits are couched in many of the same nonsensical claims that a heavily studied medication is somehow dangerous or immoral in a way no reproducible study can verify. They also skew data or pull it from entirely retracted studies.

But the point isn’t to tell the truth. It’s to prevent people from getting abortions by any means necessary.

This is especially seen in the push for criminalization. Republicans have been working double time to criminalize both doctors and patients, implicitly and explicitly. Confusing legislation surrounding abortion causes healthcare providers to turn patients away for fear of the harsh legal and social repercussions. Similarly, bounty-hunter laws like the one passed in Texas make anyone—and I truly mean anyone—even remotely related in helping someone get an abortion a target. These laws work to create an atmosphere of fear around abortion, discouraging people from seeking one. There’s also been numerous cases wherein women have been prosecuted for the supposed murder of their fetus upon having a miscarriage or abortion.

Another tool of fear is found in the push to remove ‘buffer zones’ around abortion clinics. These zones were created to prevent the harassment of care providers and patients at abortion clinics. Removing them will add another barrier to care for many.

Then there’s the push for the normalization of extremist positions, like the legislators calling for abortion patients to receive the death penalty, one of whom openly stated to the Guardian that their goal was not to pass these bills, but to desensitize voters to the idea of it.

Of course, normalization of extreme violence by the state is par for the course with abortion bans. Ms. Magazine has a running list of every woman who has died a preventable death thanks to abortion bans, and studies have found that maternal mortality rates in states that have banned abortion are doubled when compared to states where it’s legal. While no state has imposed a death penalty yet, it is important to remember that these bans are already killing people.

Lives aren’t the only thing these bans cost, however. Access to abortion, like access to birth control (another recent target of Republicans that is beyond the scope of this article), is an economic necessity. According to a review from the University of Richmond, “In states where abortion access is most restricted, women and children experience poverty at the highest rates in the nation.” Abortion helps women stay above the poverty line, as well as helping them obtain and retain work. By targeting abortion, Republicans are also trying to target women’s financial freedom.

Another major target in information. Like with mifepristone, Republicans are seeking to spread as much misinformation about abortion as possible, while making real information inaccessible. This can be seen in the growing legislative support for Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), which often lack any sort of medical license and exist almost exclusively to spread misinformation to people in desperate situations (for more information on CPCs and why they’re harmful, check out this brief from the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts), and in the targeting of young people. 

Numerous states such as North Dakota, Idaho, Tennessee, and Kansas have passed legislation mandating that public schools show students ‘Baby Olivia’, an anti-abortion video which has been criticized as being misleading at best by numerous medical professionals. Additionally, bills like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), if passed, could—and, as experts warn, would—be used to censor online information about abortion for both minors and adults. By age-gating important information on reproductive healthcare, lawmakers aim to prevent minors from accessing this knowledge, while also making it near impossible to access anonymously, as many adults may want or need to do.

Bottom line, things were—and are—pretty grim for reproductive rights. 

But it’s important to keep in mind that despite what Republicans—and, bafflingly, some Democrats—might claim, abortion isn’t actually a controversial issue. A recent survey found that 81% of Americans believe that abortion shouldn’t be managed by the government, with similar polls throughout the years yielding similar results. This breakdown from Abortion, Every Day shows that even the majority of Republican voters don’t support abortion bans.

So, as we step into the new year, remember that. Remember all of this. Stay informed, question everything, vote if you can, and never give up hope.