
Erin Heger
Erin Heger is a freelance writer living in the Kansas City area. Her reporting and essays on maternal mental health, parenting, and health-care policy have been featured in the Atlantic, Refinery29, Ravishly and DAME Magazine.
Erin Heger is a freelance writer living in the Kansas City area. Her reporting and essays on maternal mental health, parenting, and health-care policy have been featured in the Atlantic, Refinery29, Ravishly and DAME Magazine.
The pandemic has "really laid bare the fiction" that physical clinics are needed to safely provide abortion services.
The Trust. Respect. Access. coalition in Texas is pushing back against the anti-abortion ordinances by working with local activists to speak out.
A proposed bill in the state legislature would let New Yorkers use their tax returns to help people access abortion care.
The Trump administration's domestic "gag rule" has cut the Title X family planning program's capacity by 47 percent.
The federally funded Obria Group is spending up to 48 times more per patient compared to other clinics receiving Title X grants.
Abortion rights foes in the Democratic-majority New Hampshire legislature are "trying to bring the Trump administration’s abortion agenda" to the state, a Planned Parenthood official said.
These politicians have pushed radical abortion policies and rhetoric into the political mainstream, threatening the constitutional right to abortion.
Independent abortion clinics lack the visibility, institutional support, and financial resources of other providers, like Planned Parenthood.
These bills aren't about "dignity," abortion rights advocates say. They're about shutting down clinics and eroding abortion access.
The Kansas Supreme Court ruling that abortion is a fundamental right has sent anti-choice organizations and lawmakers scrambling.
The legal attack on patients' right not to be harassed comes amid a spike in threats and violence against abortion providers.
The bifurcation of abortion access in the United States means more clinics should be built on the border of states with onerous anti-choice restrictions, advocates say.
Anti-choice lawmakers in state legislatures have for years used fetal remains burial laws to create barriers and add costs to abortion care.
Extreme abortion bans, like the near-total ban passed this year in Georgia's Republican-majority legislature, are contributing to an increase in the number of people leaving their states to seek abortions.
Family planning officials in states with anti-choice restrictions see the new Title X rules as yet another barrier to health care for people with low incomes.
Officials in Austin, Texas believe they've found a way around a Republican state law targeting a lease agreement between the city and a Planned Parenthood health center.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is creating unnecessary administrative burdens for those receiving abortion care through ACA plans.
Republican-backed legislation in Ohio would mandate that teachers use anti-choice talking points in sex ed classes.
City councils are passing abortion bans that serve to confuse and intimidate those seeking abortion care. Pro-choice advocates are pushing back.
The law is intended to target the Planned Parenthood health center in Austin, Texas, which doesn't provide abortion care.
Anti-choice government officials have altered rules and regulations to shut down abortion care facilities across Missouri.
Illinois Democrats' pro-choice push could help providers cope with an influx of out-of-state patients by expanding the number of medical professionals who can provide in-clinic abortion services.
A group of Black mothers in Mississippi are receiving $1,000 a month as part of a basic income program designed to provide an income floor and help people out of poverty.
The latest slate of President Trump's judges include longtime abortion rights foes who could undo reproductive rights for decades to come.
Adding women of color to judicial seats in Harris County, Texas, not only bolsters racial diversity on the bench, but could affect bail reform and housing cases.
“Abortion stigma is everywhere. In medical institutions ... even among people who have abortions, and the only way we can ever hope to overcome stigma is to talk about it."
“The assumption of personal responsibility that is underlying this policy doesn’t necessarily take into consideration the challenges people are facing on a daily basis," said Jessica Greene, a health policy professor.
The push for better pay from teachers this summer is a result of the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling that the state was not adequately funding education.
Sixty-one of 68 members voted on Saturday in support of removing the language.
Kansas could make history this fall if its U.S. Congressional Democratic candidates are successful.
Planned Parenthood has fought against workers' union drives since at least the early-2000s. “I’m passionate about reproductive health but ... I am so disillusioned by the exploitation of those working and sacrificing for the cause.”
“What happened at the fundraiser triggered post traumatic stress disorder symptoms because the perpetrators were people on my side who I am not supposed to be fighting."
A fight in Colorado over Planned Parenthood unionization has some wondering why the reproductive health-care champion would stand in the way.
Likely voters in Virginia overwhelmingly support Medicaid expansion in every state house and state senate district, according to recent data.
Cutting Planned Parenthood out of the Medicaid program harms the 7,000 Medicaid patients who visit Planned Parenthood health centers every year in Missouri, leaving them with few options to access preventive health care.
Forty percent of LGBTQ respondents of color reported their employer has LGBTQ-inclusive leave policies, while 27 percent say they are afraid to request time off to care for a loved one because it might disclose their LGBTQ identity.
Should the Kansas Supreme Court find the legislature’s school funding attempts are still in violation of the state constitution, lawmakers will be back for a special session or risk schools not opening in August.
Kansas schools need $2 billion in additional funding over the next five years, according to a study commissioned by state legislators.
The Nebraska GOP plan to deny Title X funds to health centers that perform, counsel about, or refer for abortion services would harm family planning health centers in the state, potentially setting them up to violate federal law.
Republican lawmakers in 2013 reduced the state’s top income tax rate and extended tax cuts for oil and gas companies, leaving Oklahoma with a budget deficit that has resulted in drastic cuts to social services, including education.
Tax cuts for oil and gas giants have starved state coffers as teacher pay in West Virginia has stagnated. Senate President Mitch Carmichael has opposed any oil and gas tax increases that could be used to pay teachers decent wages.
“Do they know how brave a child has to be to come out to their parents that they are transgender? .... And on top of that, how frightening it is to read the new Republican resolution?”
In states where GOP lawmakers have not expanded Medicaid access, "the families we are talking about who would be subject to the work requirement are really the poorest families. They are struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis.”
"We have socially constructed women into law as lacking agency and being incapable of making their own decisions.”
“If we could take even just a fraction of the money that we spend on foster care and give it to families where kids are being removed and put into foster care, we could prevent much of the need for foster care."
“These policies are based on an idea that drug use is prevalent among welfare recipients, and that harmful stereotype is simply not true."
“[Ed] Gillespie has tried to appeal to the far right during the campaign and align himself with the religious right, and if he wins he will owe them."
“These are the positions we find ourselves in as women. We might advocate for access to reproductive health care, but when we need it we find ourselves alone.”
Josh Svaty cast ten votes against abortion rights during his time in the GOP-held Kansas legislature.
Attack ads tried to tap into the GOP’s fervent anti-abortion base by claiming Democrat James Thompson supports taxpayer-funded sex selective and later abortion care.