Selling Oppression to Gen Z Women
3.27.26
Click to skip ahead: The Pink Pill Pipeline; In the States: Arizona, Kansas, Iowa, Indiana; Trump’s Attacks on Birth Control; Republicans Are Still Avoiding Abortion—But Not Josh Hawley
The Pink Pill Pipeline
If you want to know Republicans’ plan for young women, look no further than CPAC—the Conservative Political Action Conference. (Imagine taking every crazy uncle in America off of Facebook and piling them on top of each other in a few stuffy hotel conference rooms.)
As part of the ongoing campaign to convince young women that they’d love being tradwives, CPAC hosted Isabel Brown—a 20-something blonde pundit who bemoans “attacks on masculinity” and tells other young women to have children as soon as humanly possible.
At her panel this week, Brown directed the audience to encourage their children “to have the courage to grow up and get married and have kids—more kids they can afford before they think they’re ready.” Brown also advised “deleting [your] dating apps and quitting birth control.”
Right-wing provocateur Benny Johnson urged the same during his (very loud) keynote speech, yelling to the audience that they’re “gonna out-breed the left!”
But my favorite part came when Johnson talked about a recent poll of Gen Z voters:
“When asked what the major priority is for their lives, young Trump voters—men and women—said my number one priority is having children and starting a family. That is the culture war right there! That is the victory, ladies and gentlemen!”
Johnson was even kind enough to include a screenshot of the poll he was talking about. Here’s the problem: I remember that poll—I wrote about it! And it most definitely did not say that the number one priority of young women who voted for Trump was having children. In fact, it was number 6.
Listen, there’s a reason that conservatives are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to persuade girls and young women that oppression is great for them, actually. They know those young women aren’t convinced—even the ones conservative enough to vote for Trump.
We’re not done talking about attacks on young women yet, but let’s take a brief break to dig into some state news.
In the States: Arizona, Kansas, Iowa, Indiana
Let’s start with Arizona, where Republicans are still moving to restrict abortion in spite of protections passed in 2024. This story will sound familiar, because we’ve heard some iteration of it in nearly every state that’s passed a pro-choice ballot measure: even though over 60% of Arizona voters supported an amendment codifying abortion access in the state constitution, Republicans have introduced over a dozen anti-abortion bills this year alone.
And as reporter Gloria Gomez points out in this must-read piece at the Arizona Mirror, some of those bills are meant to codify fetal personhood. (Like legislation that would allow for child support from the first pregnancy test.)
So how do Republicans get around the fact that they’re blatantly ignoring the will of the people? Rep Lisa Fink says, “There is a higher moral law that does not change based on votes or political outcomes.” In other words, fuck the constitution. Fink also claims that voters didn’t really understand what they were passing a ballot for when they supported Prop. 139.
Surely if these Republicans don’t support abortion, they’d get behind efforts to codify birth control, right? Right? Of course not. Gomez writes that this is the third year in a row that Democrats have unsuccessfully tried to protect contraception.
What’s that saying? When they tell you who they are, believe them.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the CARE Act today—legislation that outlaws the regulation of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. “We shouldn’t be spending tax dollars trying to interfere with that very personal, very private, medical decision,” Kelly said. Unfortunately, Republicans have the numbers to override her veto, and they’ve promised to do just that.
Oh, and remember how just yesterday we were talking about the way that conservative lawmakers are co-opting feminist language? In response to Gov. Kelly’s veto, Republican House Speaker Dan Hawkins said, “This governor is quick to talk about supporting choice, but that support disappears the moment a mother chooses life.” Blech.
For more information on the CARE Act, read our past coverage here and here. The short version is that Republicans have been introducing (and passing) these bills across the country. They give CPCs a sort of super immunity—preventing the state from intervening when the fake clinics lie to women, collect their data, or tell them they can ‘reverse’ their abortions. State leaders who try to protect women from the predatory religious organizations could be sued.
Iowa Republicans say they have no plans of backing off their plans to restrict abortion pills, even though the legislative session ends next month. Republican Rep. Jon Dunwell told local media he’s hopeful that they can pass House File 2563—which would prohibit the shipping of abortion pills into the state, and would require the medication to be prescribed in person.
Democrats, however, say it won’t get to a vote in time. From House Minority Leader Brian Meyer:
“We’re willing to have that debate and point out the absurdity of the bill. We’re willing to have any debate that they want to have, because that’s very unpopular with the people of Iowa.”
In fact, abortion bans are unpopular everywhere!
Finally, remember how a judge blocked enforcement of Indiana’s abortion ban for those who have religious objections to the law? The ACLU of Indiana explains what that means for pregnant folks in the state:
“Because the case was certified as a class action, the ruling applies to any Hoosier whose religious beliefs direct them to obtain abortions that would otherwise be impermissible. The court made clear that Indiana cannot force those individuals to choose between their religious beliefs and their bodily autonomy…Anyone with questions or concerns about how this ruling applies to them should reach out to the attorneys of the ACLU of Indiana at intake@aclu-in.org.”
Quick hits:
Montana abortion clinics speak up about the murder plot against a local provider;
Planned Parenthood patients mourn clinic closures in Indiana;
In Georgia, Reproductive Freedom for All and Planned Parenthood Action Fund have endorsed U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff;
And States Newsroom has a good roundup of repro legislation across the country.
ICYMI: Senate Republicans are pressuring the FDA to censor online speech about abortion pills—directing the agency to target telemedicine abortion organizations, seize their domains, and “permanently shut down” their websites.
Trump’s Attacks on Birth Control
Okay, back to attacks on young women.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration hosted its inaugural National Conference on Women’s Health, which—pardon our crudeness—feels analogous to Ted Bundy hosting a National Conference on Women’s Safety. The people who killed Roe, exacerbating a nationwide maternal mortality crisis and devastating women’s health, are the last people who should be holding a conference on this topic. But can we really be surprised at their shamelessness?
One of the top issues at the three-day conference was birth control—namely, using right-wing pseudoscience to delegitimize it. Unsurprising, from the administration that calls the Pill “abortifacient birth control.” Also unsurprising? That panelists were affiliated with groups like the Charlotte Lozier Institute—an organization that doesn’t believe in life-saving abortions.
Take what ‘experts’ said on a panel about endometriosis, a condition that can involve debilitatingly painful periods. Panelists said they didn’t agree with using birth control pills to manage symptoms, because this is at odds with their “values” and “cultural perspective.” Just as bad, the speakers framed their attacks on birth control as concern for women’s health—arguing that we should come up with a “real” treatment.
But let’s be clear: the party responsible for abortion bans—who are dissuading researchers from touching women’s health altogether—don’t care about how the medical system treats us. They care about stigmatizing birth control, and priming us (especially young women and girls) to accept the erosion of our basic rights.
Case in point: one of these same panelists said that sex education has become too focused on pregnancy prevention—part of a broader, concerning conservative trend normalizing—if not encouraging—teen pregnancy.
After all, Republicans tried to defund the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, blasting them as “radical indoctrination”; RFK Jr. has been fear-mongering about teenage boys’ sperm counts; and the Heritage Foundation dropped its hand-wringing about teen pregnancy in favor of a new term: the “non-marital teen birth rate.” That’s to say nothing of the fact that abortion bans are forcing teens to give birth.
While we’re talking about attacks on contraception, we’d be remiss not to shout out the excellent reporting from Emily Amrick—who you should follow, if you don’t already. Emily recently tracked and dissected years of anti-birth control articles at the right-wing rag Evie, the Peter Thiel-backed magazine that plans to launch a wearable period-tracker that collects data about your cycle. (Yikes.)
Amrick also recently uncovered an online smear campaign against birth control by female lifestyle influencers—whose videos all baselessly insinuate that birth control is responsible for declining fertility and demand for IVF. Check out the messaging below. Think they look a little similar?
Surfacing attacks like this matters: a 2025 study showed young women can sometimes feed a self-fulfilling prophecy, consuming such extensive anti-birth control propaganda that they eventually self-report worsened experiences with birth control. And per a 2024 poll from KFF, about a quarter of younger women (ages 18 to 25) report using “fertility awareness-based methods” over hormonal birth control.
These women also self-reported being more likely to change or consider changing their contraceptive method “based on something they saw or heard on social media.”
Republicans Are Still Avoiding Abortion—But Not Josh Hawley
Just one more bit of news before we let you go for the weekend: The Hill reports that the anti-mifepristone bill introduced by U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley gained a few supporters this week: Sens. John Cornyn, Ted Budd, and Marsha Blackburn. But that’s not going to do much to help Hawley in the House—where Republicans are not looking to stick their necks out on abortion rights before the midterms.
We told you about the “Safeguarding Women from Chemical Abortion Act” a few weeks ago: it would outlaw using mifepristone to end a pregnancy, and allow women who say they’ve been harmed by the medication sue manufacturers. “Mifepristone is almost always fatal to the unborn child, but it is also significantly dangerous for women,” Hawley said in a release.
He’s referring, of course, to the junk science study released last year by an anti-abortion organization. Their ‘research’ has been thoroughly debunked, but that hasn’t stopped Hawley and his ilk from trotting it out whenever possible.
As you likely know, Hawley is obsessed with abortion: in addition to popping up the bogus anti-mifepristone study, he’s led the campaign to pressure the FDA into reversing mifepristone’s approval, lobbied the Trump administration to crack down on the mailing of abortion pills, and even launched a dark money organization with his wife, anti-abortion attorney Erin Hawley.
But lots of Republican lawmakers aren’t diehard true-believers like Hawley—and like Donald Trump, they can see the pro-choice writing on the wall. According to NOTUS, most GOP lawmakers are staying as far as possible from Hawley’s bill—especially those who are campaigning.
Looking for a fun weekend activity? Hawley thought it would be a good idea to create a ‘hotline’ for women to call if they’ve been “harmed by chemical abortion.” So if you have an experience with abortion medication that you’d like to share with Sen. Hawley’s office, give him a call at (202) 224-6154, or email him at AbortionDrugHarms@hawley.senate.gov.
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I wish there were more studies/articles about female misogyny. In my opinion, Isabel Brown clearly falls into that category. Her speech at CPAC that tells women to quit birth control, get married early and have kids before they are ready is misogynistic as hell. It is deeply hostile towards women and is a prescriptive population, gender role enforcement strategy to meet a far right republican political goal that severely limits women's autonomy. That is f'd up.
Like legislation that would allow for child support from the first pregnancy test.”
This shows that the blastocyst matters more than the person who builds it. There is no legislation to support the woman who is incurring all the costs of pregnancy: medical, financial, physical. She gets no consideration. We need to make this very clear to young women. It will cost them dearly and if they complain they will be told to keep their legs closed.