The political debate over contraception has always suffered from a framing problem. Call it "birth control" and the conversation narrows, it sounds like a lifestyle choice. But for the roughly 1 in 10 women living with PCOS, and the estimated 10% with endometriosis, hormonal contraceptives aren't about preventing pregnancy. They are, often, the primary treatment available. Combined hormonal contraceptives are considered a first-line medication for PCOS patients, and for endometriosis, they are necessary for prevention of disease recurrence following surgical treatment.
Which makes the current policy moment alarming. The Heritage Foundation's latest report, building on Project 2025, treats contraception itself as a cultural problem to be solved. That ideology is now colliding with real healthcare infrastructure. President Trump's FY2026 budget funded Title X at zero dollars, and the House mirrored this request, eliminating the only federal program dedicated solely to family planning. Meanwhile, only 16 states and D.C. broadly protect contraceptive access, while 16 actively restrict it.
Undergirding all of this is a deliberate strategy: conflating contraception with abortion to make restriction politically palatable. Social media amplifies fear-based misinformation, a Surgeon General nominee called contraception a "disrespect for life," and a 2025 Supreme Court ruling in Medina v. Planned Parenthood removed patients' ability to sue when states block Medicaid funding to contraceptive providers, eliminating a key legal protection that had held the line for decades.
The people this reaches first aren't abstractions. They're the PCOS patient who loses IUD coverage, the endometriosis sufferer whose rural Title X clinic just closed. That's not a side effect of this policy agenda. It's the point.
Something quiet and consequential is happening across American workplaces, boardrooms, and government: the word "women" is disappearing, not by accident, but by design.
In January 2025, the Trump administration signed executive orders dismantling decades of workplace equality infrastructure, defining "illegal DEI" as any program touching on race or sex. The language was so vague it sent companies and institutions scrambling to self-censor well beyond what the law requires. Researchers scrubbed "female" from grant applications. Corporations quietly disbanded women's employee resource groups. The political climate made acknowledging women a liability.
The numbers reflect the damage. Women were paid 18.6% less than men in 2025, a widening after the gap had reached a series low the year before. It marked the second consecutive year the wage gap grew, an unprecedented back-to-back setback. Men joined the labor force in 2025 at three times the rate of women. Meanwhile, in March 2025, the U.S. became the only country to vote against the UN Commission on the Status of Women's annual gender equality document, forcing a vote for the first time in the body's 70-year history.
Scholars who study authoritarianism have long noted that erasing women from public life is a hallmark of democratic backsliding. Progress requires naming things. When the word disappears, so does accountability for what happens next.
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