Would You Wear a Period-Tracker Funded by Peter Thiel?

11.11.25

Click to skip ahead: In Senate Republicans Attack Pro-Choice States, the GOP is holding Americans’ healthcare hostage using abortion restrictions. Period Tracking With Peter Thiel reports that the pronatalist billionaire is funding wearable technology to collect data on women. Attacks on Birth Control looks at MAHA’s anti-contraception myths. In the States, news from Oklahoma, Ohio, Missouri, and more. In the Nation, some weirdo anti-abortion behavior from the head of HUD. And in Extremism Watch, an ‘academy’ for anti-abortion extremists.

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Senate Republicans Attack Pro-Choice States

Well, we called it: Kylie warned yesterday that any Republican movement on extending healthcare funding would almost certainly come with demands for abortion restrictions—specifically, an attack on abortion coverage in pro-choice states. And that’s exactly what’s happening: the GOP is holding Americans hostage in an attempt to pass a backdoor abortion ban.

NBC News reports today that Senate Republicans say they’d be open to extending Affordable Care Act funds, but only if Democrats agree to prohibit any ACA plan from covering abortion—even those funded by pro-choice states. Remember, the Hyde Amendment prevents federal funds from being used on abortion, but some plans offer coverage because states use their own funds. In twelve states, that abortion coverage is required.

Republicans claim they’re just trying to close some kind of state ‘loophole’ to the Hyde Amendment: Sen. Mike Rounds told NBC Democrats are “never going to get any Republican votes” as it stands, “because we believe strongly taxpayer dollars should not go to fund abortions.”

The truth, of course, is much simpler: the GOP was never going to leave abortion ‘to the states’.

To no one’s surprise, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America is behind all of this—lobbying GOP lawmakers by declaring “a vote for this extension is a vote for abortion coverage.” President Marjorie Dannenfelser even warned that “votes will be scored, and double-weighted, in each member’s profile on SBA Pro-Life America’s National Pro-Life Scorecard.” (Oh no—not their permanent record!)

Democrats, thankfully, say they’ll never agree to further restrictions. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said, “it’s a nonstarter.”

I hope they stick to it.

Period Tracking with Peter Thiel

Well this is terrifying: the billionaire-backed Evie magazine—a conservative publication that says IUDs can make you hear voices and drown your children—plans to launch a wearable period-tracker that collects data about your cycle, sleep, diet, and movement.

This true nightmare fuel is a project of Brittany Hugoboom, the conservative influencer who created Evie and a period-tracking app with her husband, Gabriel. It gets worse: the Hugobooms are funded by none other than pronatalist Trump ally, Peter Thiel.

That’s right, the billionaire behind Palantir and the rise of JD Vance is very interested in women’s pregnancies: Thiel bankrolled Hugoboom’s “28” app, which has raised all sorts of questions about data-collection and privacy in post-Roe America.

Abortion, Every Day has been warning about Evie and its connection to Thiel since the end of Roe. We’re talking about a man who has lamented women’s right to vote funding the collection of women’s private health data in a country that’s increasingly hostile to reproductive rights. What could go wrong!?

That’s to say nothing of Evie itself, which is responsible for reporting some of the most egregious misinformation imaginable. The publication has claimed that the copper of an IUD can “play a role in certain mothers drowning their newborns [and] committing suicide,” and that hormonal birth control gives women’s bodies a response that is indistinguishable from PTSD.

News of the wearable technology—which the Hugobooms say will be a ring or watch—is somewhat buried in this New York Times piece about the “MAHA-fueled rise of natural family planning.” Given…well, everything, we thought it was worth highlighting.

Attacks on Birth Control

Speaking of the MAHA attacks on contraception, that Times piece is well worth a read. It digs into a lot of what Abortion, Every Day has been tracking—like the way conservatives are co-opting feminist rhetoric to bash hormonal birth control.

Consider this quote from Giovanni Vitale II, co-founder of a group that organizes fertility tracking classes:

“Our main goal is to tell women that their bodies are beautiful and fertility is a good thing. They don’t need to put these extra chemicals and devices into their bodies to figure out what’s going on. They can do it in a natural way.”

And MAHA influencer Alex Clark says, “It’s not very feminist to think that women are too stupid to know how our cycles work and be able to avoid pregnancy naturally.”

It’s unfortunately smart messaging: they’re tapping into real frustration women have over not being listened to or respected, and are turning that into distrust for one of the most important advances in women’s health and freedom.

The insidious cultural attack against hormonal birth control is happening at the same time that the Trump administration has labeled some kinds of contraception ‘abortifacient birth control’, laid off nearly all Title X staff, and shuttered Planned Parenthood clinics across the country. And—as NYT’s Caroline Kitchener reported earlier this year—the White House is also in the middle of pushing policies to ‘encourage’ women to have more children.

We’re not done yet! Last week, AED broke the news that the Heritage Foundation is lobbying RFK Jr. to run a ‘safety study’ on hormonal contraception—claiming it’s dangerous not only for women, but for men who may inadvertently consume birth control pills via groundwater. (If you’ve been reading the newsletter a while, you know that tactic is part of a broader batshit ‘abortion in the water’ claim.)

The group even says that women’s birth control could make women less attractive to men. Quelle horreur!

Mary Ziegler digs more into that push over at Slate, pointing out how much the Overton window has shifted. “Not only is Heritage taking a swing at birth control, the group is asking RFK Jr. to focus on the interests of men,” she writes.

Read more about the campaign below:

The Group Behind Project 2025 Wants RFK Jr. to ‘Study’ the Pill

In the States

A bit of good news out of Oklahoma: the state Health Care Authority is taking a stand against Gov. Kevin Stitt’s anti-abortion loyalty pledge. For those who need a reminder: the Republican governor signed an executive order that forces healthcare providers who receive state Medicaid funding to sign an attestation that they don’t perform abortions or work with a medical group that does. More than that, providers need to swear that they won’t refer patients for abortions, or affiliate with any pro-choice organization that “facilitate[s] the procurement” of abortions.

It’s a shocking attack on free speech—one that could strip Medicaid reimbursements from providers who so much as donate money to an abortion fund or support a pro-choice group that has a link to a clinic on their website. After all, what does it mean to “affiliate” with a group that “facilitates” abortion?

But today, KGOU reports that the Oklahoma Health Board has voted against an emergency rule that would implement the order and require providers to submit the pledge. The board noted, correctly, that the language of the executive order is dangerously vague.

Unfortunately, the attestation form was already emailed to providers in September; and board members expect that some providers will seek a temporary injunction or take legal action.

Board chair Marc Nuttle said, “If you have 1,000 out of 77,000 that rejected it as some sort of boycott, who gets hurt on this—well, the citizens of Oklahoma.”

We’ll keep you updated on this one as we learn more.

Moving on to Ohio, where voters codified abortion rights in the state constitution in 2023. That hasn’t stopped Republicans from working to repeal or hobble that amendment ever since. Their most recent move? A bill restricting abortion medication that doesn’t even mention the word.

We first told you about House Bill 324 last month: essentially it would require medications to be prescribed in person if they’re shown to cause “severe adverse effects in more than 5% of users.” It just so happens that right now, conservatives are pushing a junk science study that claims mifepristone causes “severe adverse effects” in over 10% of patients.

That means that the legislation could end up being a de facto ban on telehealth abortion medication. The bill will get its fourth hearing this week before the House Health Committee.

Jaime Miracle of Abortion Forward says, “Let’s call this what it is: a political attack on the will of the people who have so clearly demonstrated that reproductive rights are important to them.”

Ohio Republicans have also pushed other abortion restrictions—like a waiting period—under the guise of protecting women’s health and safety. It’s all bullshit, of course.

Speaking of bullshit: Missouri Republicans are still hellbent on overturning the will of voters and reinstating the state’s total abortion ban. As is the case in Ohio, conservatives are furious that voters passed a pro-choice ballot measure—Amendment 3.

But Republicans aren’t just forcing abortion back on the ballot—they’re deliberately trying to conceal the fact that their measure is a ban. They’re even calling it Amendment 3 in an attempt to trick voters into supporting the measure!

That’s not all. As activist and attorney Bridgette Dunlap writes in a Missouri Independent op-ed this week, legislators have reached “a new level of egregiousness—they are using rape victims, incest victims and women in medical distress as bait.”

It’s true: the first lines of the measure ask voters if they want to support abortion access for miscarriages, medical emergencies, and rape victims.

“If they are not stopped by the court of appeals, the ballot summary will tell voters the measure would protect abortion access for these individuals when it would actually take it away,” Dunlap writes.

Quick hits:

• Nashville Scene has an interview with Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi;

• The Austin Statesman has an op ed from Texas’ Jane’s Due Process on the human rights crisis inflicted by the state’s abortion ban;

• And congratulations to the Chicago Abortion Fund in Illinois on their 40th anniversary!

In the Nation

In case you needed another reminder that the Trump administration is filled to the brim with extremists: Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner recently held court with Heartbeat International—the country’s largest network of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.

Turner and other White House staffers met with the powerhouse anti-abortion group as part of Heartbeat’s “Babies Go to Congress” initiative—where the HUD secretary made a series of alarming remarks conflating abortion with murder, calling it an “atrocity,” and praising crisis pregnancy centers:

“Your work combats the lie that pro-abortion crusades spread, the lie that our side is only pro-birth but not pro-life…They say that we care for babies only when they’re in the womb, but that we care nothing for them or for their mothers once they’re actually born.”

Turner also claimed that if CPCs could speak to abortion seekers, they would no longer “believe the lie that their personal happiness depends on the idea that they should sacrifice their children.” But I’ll say it: Sometimes, personal happiness does rely on having an abortion!

As you all know, most CPCs don’t provide actual health care. When they provide resources like diapers or baby clothes, the groups often require the pregnant person to ‘earn’ the items by attending Bible study classes. Some CPC owners have been found using state funding to pay their own mortgages or operate hemp businesses. And Heartbeat International, in particular, is a mess: it wasn’t so long ago that Abortion, Every Day uncovered that the organization was sharing women’s private health data.

Here’s the thing: this meeting matters. Because even as Donald Trump tries to publicly distance himself from anti-abortion extremism, his administration is in bed with the movement’s top groups. Just last month, Politico reported that anti-abortion organizations effectively shaped Trump’s recent reversals on IVF.

Turner’s meeting with Heartbeat exposes the administration’s close ties to the largest network of CPCs in the nation—at a time when state surveillance of pregnancy, criminalization of pregnant people, and taxpayer funding for these groups are all surging.

Quick hits:

• Reproductive Freedom for All posted a breakdown of all the election night abortion wins;

• The Nation went long on abortion bans and fetal personhood;

• And Rewire has a column on “How Unemployment Shaped My Reproductive Health Care.”

Extremism Watch

In an extremely ominous development, Operation Rescue’s Randall Terry is launching an “academy” to train anti-abortion activists—citing the Trump administration’s embrace of violent anti-abortion extremists as a motivating factor.

Rescue Resurrection will take place during the first week of December in Memphis, Tennessee, and among its slate of speakers are a handful of activists who proudly list “Trump Pardonee” as a badge of honor. (Literally, it’s in their bios.)

Remember—days after taking office, Trump pardoned two dozen anti-abortion extremists convicted of violating the FACE Act—the federal law prohibiting violence against abortion clinics. Around the same time, Trump and Vance told anti-abortion activists they didn’t need to worry about being arrested anymore, and Trump’s Justice Department announced it would no longer prosecute FACE Act cases.

Abortion, Every Day warned at the time that the administration was essentially green-lighting anti-abortion violence—which has been on the rise for years. In the first year after Dobbs, the National Abortion Federation reported that providers saw a 538% increase in people obstructing clinic entrances, a 913% increase in stalking, and a 144% increase in bomb threats.

So it’s no coincidence that Terry is launching his “academy” now.

For those unfamiliar with Terry and Operation Rescue: they’re one of the leading perpetrators of anti-abortion domestic terrorism. The group facilitates what they call “clinic rescues” to invade or blockade abortion clinics—and to harass, or even assault, staff and patients. The group is also known for printing “Wanted” posters with abortion providers’ names and addresses on them.

After an extremist assassinated abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in 2009, Terry openly sympathized with the killer and doubled down on calling the late provider a “mass murderer.” In other words, these people are the worst of the worst.

And next month, they’ll be training more activists to be just like them.

All of which is to say—this is a really good time to reach out and support your local abortion clinics, abortion funds, and clinic escorts. Also take the time to learn more about clinic violence at the National Abortion Federation. News like this is upsetting, but remember that we’re all here to protect each other.