Quote:From gutting $1 trillion from Medicaid to enrich billionaires and big corporations to ripping away health tax credits from over 12 million women to tearing away reproductive freedom, the GOP is regressing women’s health by decades. To get a glimpse of the fallout from the GOP’s radical corporate agenda, look no further than its impact on caregivers. Standing 63 million strong — more than 60 percent of whom are women — caregivers are having the rug pulled out from under them. Now, millions of women caregivers, like Susan from Colorado, are losing critical Medicaid income that helps keep their families afloat — forcing them to make impossible decisions between rent, groceries, and, most gut-wrenchingly, giving up caring for their loved ones in order to afford Republicans’ skyrocketing health care costs.

Quote:Speaking with El Médico Interactivo, a Medscape Network platform, he said, “The health system is nearly collapsed. Pediatric emergencies have more than doubled — from 53,000 in 2020 to 122,000 in 2024.” He noted that MSF-supported hospitals were the only functional facilities in several provinces.
“Conditions differ widely across provinces. In some regions, the economic crisis is severe, and access to healthcare is extremely limited. The situation is better in cities such as Kabul and Herat. However, the ongoing economic collapse makes it difficult for many to afford travel, medical care, and basic medicines. We often see patients arriving in a critical condition because of the long distances they must travel, lack of resources, or limited health awareness that delays care,” Marcou said.

Quote:A large, long-term study led by an Albert Einstein College of Medicine researcher has found that the introduction of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in community settings is highly effective in protecting young women from infections caused by the cervical-cancer-causing virus—including women who didn’t even receive the vaccine. The study was published today in JAMA Pediatrics.

“There are two encouraging takeaways from our study,” said lead author Jessica Kahn, M.D., M.P.H., professor of pediatrics and the Dr. Ernest Baden Chair in Head and Neck Pathology at Einstein. “First, HPV vaccines work remarkably well in a real-world setting, even among women at high risk for HPV and who may not have received all vaccine doses. Second, we saw clear evidence of herd immunity, meaning when enough people are vaccinated, the vaccine indirectly protects unvaccinated people by reducing overall virus transmission. These results reinforce the potential of the HPV vaccine to prevent infection and, ultimately, eliminate cervical cancer globally.”

Quote:The fragility of our labs and schools today is not normal. It has been manufactured by leaders trading our future for their twisted vision of America, who weaken the very institutions that protect us so they may stand untouched upon our ruins. 

Hundreds of millions of dollars in research funds have been cut from the National Institutes of Health, threatening thousands of grants, even cutting from the indirect costs that support the electricity, lights and heat keeping our laboratories running. 

Quote:Lesbian and bisexual women are more likely to be low-income, more likely to be parents and more likely to rely on Medicaid. They could fall through the cracks of Trump’s new tax law.

Quote:A History of Criminalized Rest

For much of American history, menopause wasn’t just misunderstood; it was criminalized. In the 1800s and early 1900s, physicians routinely diagnosed middle-aged women with “climacteric insanity.” Symptoms included unrefreshing sleep, hot flashes, heartburn, and “inattention to ordinary domestic affairs.” The cure? Institutionalization. A husband’s word could land a woman in an asylum with no trial or formal diagnosis required.
The diaries women wrote from inside these institutions are harrowing. Mary Huestis Pengilly, a 59-year-old teacher and mother of six, lost her daughter and home. When she told her doctor she needed “good food and rest,” she was committed to St. John’s Lunatic Asylum. Her hidden diary describes acute neglect and abuse.

Quote:To identify PFAS presence in products, scientists typically begin by deploying a broad-stroke screening tool: the assessment of total fluorine in a sample. They generally deem fluorine usage as “intentional” — or deliberate in a product’s formulation, as opposed to accidental contamination — when levels surpass a specific safety threshold....

In the current study, the researchers narrowed their focus on 59 reusable hygiene products — such as period underwear, reusable pads, menstrual cups and reusable incontinence underwear and pads — from North America, South America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific....
 
These preliminary screenings showed that period underwear and reusable pads likely had the highest rates of intentional PFAS use: 33 percent and 25 percent of items in each of these product categories, respectively....
 
Following the initial fluorine scans, the scientists then chose 19 products for targeted analyses of 31 “ionic” and 11 “neutral” types of PFAS...
 
In the more precise PFAS tests for the 19 period products, the researchers detected the compounds in 100 percent of the products, with two types of neutral PFAS — 6:2 and 8:2 fluorotelomer alcohols (FTOH) — boasting the most abundant presence.

Quote:The threats to cuts also arrive as the Trump administration pushes its “Make American Healthy Again” initiative, which Chubb finds ironic.
“You know what? There’s lots of research going on to get us healthier and keep us healthier, and those are cuts that should not be made,” Chubb said. “It’s so shortsighted to shoot first and aim later.”

Quote:In fact, for most of human history, women weren’t meant to be thin; they were meant to be strong. Neolithic women had arm bones 11 to 16% stronger than the rowers to 30% greater than typical Cambridge students, according to a 2017 study. Bronze Age women showed a similar pattern, with arm bones up to 13% stronger than rowers.

Quote:Bursts of the “return to skinny” have always surfaced at pivotal moments — right when women are on the brink of claiming more power. It’s no coincidence. The flapper look took hold in the 1920s just as women won the right to vote — a new, boyish silhouette for a new kind of woman, one who was suddenly politically powerful. In the 1960s, Twiggy’s thin, androgynous frame became the face of fashion right as the women’s liberation movement was gaining traction, challenging traditional roles and demanding equality. In the 1990s, heroin chic surged in popularity as women flooded law schools, boardrooms, and newsrooms in record numbers — a visual counterpunch to female ambition.

And now, at a moment when women are redefining aging, owning their midlife, and fighting urgently for reproductive autonomy, the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs feels eerily familiar. Each wave of skinny fixation has echoed like a cultural recoil — a shrinking aesthetic that emerges just as women expand their influence.

Quote:The emerging science paints a clearer picture: women are not the weaker sex. We’re just built differently—and to last.