The policy choice to allow crisis pregnancy centers to remain unregulated raises important questions about patients’ lack of access to quality health care, beginning with free pregnancy tests, accurate pregnancy-related diagnostic tests, prenatal care, social services, treatment for complex conditions such as diabetes and cancer that can be exacerbated by pregnancy, postpartum care (including mental health care), and newborn and infant care. Some of these centers attract women who simply can’t get a free pregnancy test and free diapers anywhere else. Why are we allowing fraudulent, deceptive pregnancy centers to fill in these gaps in care instead of demanding access to quality medical care for everyone? 

Manufacturing facilities, mining sites, and even electric power plants emit toxic air pollutants. This industrial air pollution often carries negative health consequences for people who are exposed.

Yet the risk of exposure is not equal across the United States. Exposure to industrial air pollution differs across neighborhoods based on racial makeup, income level, and urban versus rural areas. This difference is stark. We found a 45-fold difference between the most and least exposed neighborhoods.

Banning mifepristone will do little to decrease the number of abortions overall, as research shows repeatedly. It would, however, make abortion more expensive, increase travel burdens and delay care to later gestational ages. This would compound other burdens imposed by various states, such as mandatory waiting periods and forced ultrasounds that serve no medical purpose and are designed to make pregnant people less likely to get an abortion. Although these burdens exist for all who seek abortions, they are especially burdensome for Black, brown and Indigenous individuals, for those who live in rural areas and for many immigrant populations.

If the goal is to reduce the prevalence of abortion, evidence-based and tested policies such as improved access to contraception would be a more prudent path to pursue.

Empirical research is critical to understanding the impact and outcomes of reproductive health strategies, policies, and practices around the world. But we also need to understand the mechanisms that undermine access to reproductive healthcare, how different factors such as race, class, and gender function both individually and together to impact access, as well as variation across and within different regions. It is also important to consider reproductive health in the context of international relations, given the disparate impact of high resource countries on healthcare access in low resource countries through foreign policy, trade, and foreign aid money and institutions. Funders and institutions can play a vital role in addressing the SDGs by facilitating more research into these and other questions, which need to be addressed along the pathway to demonstrable societal impact.