"A whole-society problem"
Vol 5, Issue 4: April 2025
Welcome back to the Lighthouse! My partner and I don’t do any active gardening (yet), but the few plants I transferred from my late grandma’s garden to our house a few years ago are starting to wake up again. The rhubarb is already looking quite lush, the few clustered hyacinths are blooming next to the single daffodil, and I can see the leaves of the tulips growing rapidly. All of these April showers really are bringing on May flowers!
Earlier this month was Black Maternal Health Week, and soon after was National Infertility Awareness Week. It’s hard not to see the connections between the reproductive issues we’re dealing with here in the U.S. and what is happening with pregnant people in Gaza and Sudan, knowing how fertility and maternal health are heavily impacted by the systems we struggle within — whether it’s war and genocide or being inside of the racist, imperial belly of the beast. Our fates are tied up in one another’s, and it’s important to remember that as we fight for solutions together.
On the public health front, COVID levels are still relatively low in Wisconsin as we sit in the lull between winter and summer surges. If you (or people around you) are wondering why it’s still important to take precautions like masking even when levels are lower, the Pandemic Accountability Index released another updated “What COVID-19 Does To The Body” in March that details all of the ways even a “mild” infection can adversely impact the body. From a political & material angle, Beatrice Adler-Bolton of The Death Panel podcast shared a wonderful thread on Bluesky that highlights the true class warfare inherent in the U.S. COVID-19 response. And from the Gauntlet, here’s an examination of the MAHA movement’s underlying embrace of eugenics that explains why anyone would be fine with their children dying from preventable “natural” diseases like measles, whopping cough, and COVID. As Sharon Astyk says, Join the Resistance — wear a mask.
Now, onto the newsletter!
Yes, America Should Make It Easier to Have Kids—But Trump Wants to Punish Childless and Single Women
“This is not by accident. There is a difference between using the power of the government to support families in choosing to have more children, and using the power of the government to compel women into childbearing and punish women who don’t comply. The Trump team is picking the latter.”
By now, you’ve probably heard about the various ideas that the Trump administration has recently floated to increase the U.S. birthrate, including creating a $5,000 “baby bonus,” improving IVF access, and awarding a “National Medal of Motherhood” to mothers with 6+ children (I wonder where he got that last idea?). On the surface, some of the ideas may seem generally good — $5k certainly would help parents with new children with supplies, time off of work, childcare, etc! But the deeper you look, the more troubling these ideas are, especially in the context of everything else this administration (and our country as a whole) is doing. And it betrays what their actual goals are, beyond just “more babies.”
For one thing, there’s the tariffs. Yes, those tariffs. While diapers and formula are often made in the U.S., other necessary items like strollers and car seats are often made abroad, largely in China where the tariffs will affect consumer prices the most. Even if the tariffs don’t end up impacting formula prices, the same unsanitary practices at Abbott Laboratories that led to massive formula shortages a few years ago reportedly haven’t changed, amid troubling revelations from ProPublica that, as the FDA sees its workforce slashed, “[t]he new head of the FDA division that oversees baby formula is a corporate lawyer who previously defended Abbott against a lawsuit.” Another victim of indiscriminate resource slashing, the Department of Health and Human Services has been forced to layoff employees for the sake of “efficiency,” resulting in massive cuts to maternal health and reproductive medicine programs (including ones that would help IVF efforts).
Meanwhile, increasingly frequent climate disaster events are disrupting peoples lives (and births) as the current administration continues to push for imaginary “clean coal” that both leads to adverse pregnancy outcomes and contributes to the very climate change that increases those dangerous disasters. They’re also pushing for more AI usage and bypassing environmental regulations to build data centers more quickly, both of which contribute to pollution that disproportionately affects Black communities and increases adverse health outcomes. And these examples just scratch the surface when it comes to ways that our current administration (and frankly, those before) have set up a system in which they can claim they want to “help families” while actively working against what families actually need. So what’s the actual point then?
To find out, you just have to listen to what pronatalists are saying, right out in open: they think low income families are tax drains (the welfare queen myth is alive and well), they don’t support paid family leave (which is especially helpful for single parents), and they want IVF to help people create “genetically selected humans” with high IQs (hello, eugenics). And it almost goes without saying, but they overwhelmingly believe in “traditional” family structures, which really just means white, cis, straight marriages where the man works and the woman is a homemaker. At the end of the day, that’s what the real goal is here. Not just more babies, but certain kinds of babies, from people who believe themselves to be genetically superior, being raised to have certain “traditional” values.
Anyone who believes that we all deserve to make reproductive choices for ourselves and to have the resources we need to thrive knows that these “solutions” won’t actually make a meaningful dent for parents, especially those that need material change the most. We need to focus on bold changes, not flashy-sounding ideas with no real substance. As Jill Filipovic says at the end of her piece:
“This is, in other words, a whole-society problem. And so a $5,000 baby bonus seems like the very least we can offer new parents who will blow through that in short order in a nation with no other support systems for them. But we could also offer real support systems instead of medals, scholarship slots and one-time baby bonuses.”
See also: For more on pronatalism and how reproductive justice is a better alternative, check out Manufactured Motherhood: Trump’s Pronatalism Agenda and the Erosion of Reproductive Rights.
What's Happening at Lakeshore Liberation?
My website is officially moved! While the business is still on hiatus, feel free to poke around the updated website and let me know what you think (or if you have suggestions for the future)!
What’s Going on in Reproductive Justice
The Wisconsin Senate once again overwhelmingly passed a measure to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage from just 2 months to a full year, seeking to make our state the second to last to do so, but once again, Republican Speaker of the Assembly Robin Vos is hinting at blocking it because he thinks any attempt at expanding welfare is bad, even if it means saving lives.
A Georgia woman was found bleeding and unconscious near her apartment building after she disposed of the fetal remains from the miscarriage she had just experienced in a nearby dumpster. As if she hadn’t already been through enough, she was then charged with “concealing the death of another person” and “abandonment of a dead body,” despite there being no clear guidelines for people experiencing miscarriages on how the remains should be dealt with. Thankfully, the charges were dropped after intense public pushback, but that doesn’t take away the traumatic experience she endured in effectively being criminalized for her pregnancy loss.
In an article for Romper, Katie McPherson calls for people to stop posting pictures of other people’s children online without their consent. As she explains, even “private” accounts aren’t really private, whether from AI data scraping or from people in our lives that may not have good intentions, and it’s important to make informed decisions about when and how we share photos of children. (NPR interviewed Leah Plunkett about the topic of sharing photos of kids online last year, with some different angles to the issues that are worth reading, too!)
From the summer 2024 issue of Hammer & Hope, No Money, No Milk recounts what is known about a wet-nurse strike that took place in Chicago in 1937. It’s a fascinating look at the intersection of labor and reproductive justice from the era of the Great Depression.
The Conversation’s Curious Kids section is filled with articles for young learners to answer science questions like, “Are twins allergic to the same things?” and “Why do trees have bark?” It’s a great free resource for learning about new topics together!
What’s Going on in Wisconsin
Wisconsin certainly isn’t immune to the anti-immigrant fury of the current administration. Earlier this month, at least 27 UW students and alumni had their visas terminated by the federal government with no explanation, only to have the terminations thankfully get reversed after legal pushback. More recently, a Milwaukee County judge was charged with, “obstruction and with concealing an individual,” based on little evidence except that she seemed annoyed by ICE’s decision to arrest the man in the courthouse while he was there for an unrelated reason and that she let him into the hallway (where they had additional officers waiting) through a different door. As expected, the usual suspects are claiming the judge was nefariously trying to smuggle him out to avoid arrest while everyone else sees this for what it is: an attempt at making an example out of any judge who isn’t bending over backwards to help ICE deport as many people as possible.
The Trump administration is threatening to take away Title 1 funding (which is meant to help low income students) from school districts that don’t comply with it’s ridiculous, backwards claims that DEI programs violate civil rights laws — with no actual evidence of this, jut vague assertions — and that, in order to adhere to such laws, the schools must remove all DEI programs. While some Wisconsin districts are complying, our state education depoartment has broadly said that Wisconsin will not. As Superintendent Underly said, “I could not in good conscience sign a new certification because we’re already in compliance with the federal law, and we’ve reaffirmed that with the U.S. Department of Education.” I’m glad she is not caving to this cowardly threat!
On July 19th, local Sheboygan business Ampersand Supply Co will be hosting a zine-making event in honor of International Zine Month. And best of all, it’s free!
If you’re 18 or older and live in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services can send you free at-home HIV and STI tests!
What I've Been Reading
Shanice McBean’s recent essay gives a great real-life example of what centering abolition can look like in practice (and how it’s often messy and imperfect as we work towards the necessary systemic changes) as she reflects on what it means to embrace kindness and empathy instead of fear.
Sophie (of SophiefromMars) wrote a piece called The Forever Box that interrogates the punitive ways we treat people that we deem “bad.” It’s a fairly quick read that gives readers a lot to chew on.
What I'm Watching
We finally finished our full Psych rewatch (technically we still have two movies left, but we’re done with the show!) and have moved onto a speedy rewatch of Severance season one so we can finally see season two. As we go, I’m remembering why I loved the show so much the first time around!
What I'm Listening To
I’ve been enjoying the Fascism Barometer podcast, and it was especially cool to hear the recent conversation between the host and Shelby Chestnut, the Executive Director of the Transgender Law Center. Together, they discuss trans liberation in the midst of fascism and what collective action can look like. I also appreciate that the linked page for this episode includes a variety of resources that give listeners plenty more to dig into and do!
A recent Outward podcast episode discusses the history of how the gay rights movement became so trans-exclusionary. A very timely discussion as we live in the aftermath and continuation of that.
Places to Donate To & Actions to Take
Please share and support Liz’s Gender Affirming Surgery Fund!
Care for All is looking for clinic escort volunteers!
MPower Alliance is fielding increased need for their services and declining funding, putting them at risk of not being able to continue operation. If you’re able to donate, please help them stay afloat!
With increasing policing of peoples’ reproductive lives, the Repro Legal Defense Fund could use financial support to keep doing what they do best.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
Feel free to share them below or contact me directly.