My Predictions for Women’s Health in 2026

After last year, we can expect continued attacks on bodily autonomy and additional barriers to care.

If 2025 was a “very bad year” for women’s health, 2026 promises a continued rise in attacks on bodily autonomy and barriers to care. Among the immediate and longer-term challenges, here is what I am watching out for this year:

Photo by Aiden Frazier on Unsplash

Fallout from the failure to renew Affordable Care Act subsidies ... Now that Congress let premium tax credits expire, millions of Americans face a spike in premiums. Nearly 24 million people receive healthcare through the ACA Marketplace, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the vast majority (93 percent) rely on subsidies to afford their insurance. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the number of uninsured people in the United States is about to increase by more than 30 million over the next decade, as the cost of health insurance premiums for most is expected to more than double.

As ever, women bear the brunt of this burden. According to the National Women’s Law Center, last year 11.2 million women enrolled in the ACA, 10 million of whom used premium tax credits. Not surprisingly, low-income women are far less likely to have employer-sponsored health insurance. A particularly bitter pill is the rollback of gains women won under the ACA, which barred sex discrimination in pricing and premium rates, ensured pregnancy care was not saddled with “pre-existing condition” status; and guaranteed coverage of preventive services like contraceptives and cancer screenings. Needless to say, the collateral damage stands to be cataclysmic.

… only to be exacerbated by medical deserts and defunding of Planned Parenthood. Women who are uninsured are also more likely to have unexpected pregnancies, which inevitably crashes into the Trump administration’s unabashed effort to “defund” Planned Parenthood. The prohibition of Medicaid reimbursements for any and all care it provides, abortion notwithstanding, has led to the closure of about 50 of its clinics across the country this past year.

All the while, medical deserts are becoming the new normal for more and more patients. According to the prescription price-comparison site GoodRx, 81 percent of U.S. counties—home to more than 120 million people—now meet this definition, which includes lack of access to a combination of pharmacies, primary care, hospital beds, trauma centers, and/or community health centers. No surprise: There is distinct overlap of those criteria in states that have restrictive abortion laws, as clinicians who provide reproductive care continue to relocate in increasing numbers.

At a time when maternal and infant mortality rates are rising, especially for Black women, we may see further devastation via more deaths from cervical and breast cancer, and more suffering from conditions like endometriosis and fibroids.

More (and more brazen) criminalization of pregnancy outcomes. In the face of escalating prosecutions and surveillance of women for their pregnancy outcomes, 2026 opens with a story shared by Jessica Valenti on her Substack, Abortion Every Day, about a Kentucky woman arrested and charged with fetal homicide. Though states often leverage statutes seemingly unrelated to pregnancy—charges like child endangerment, homicide, or “abuse of a corpse” statutes—Valenti warns this case might signal a new boldness. She writes: “While Republicans continue to insist they have no interest in punishing women, they’ve been ramping up efforts to do just that: In the last year alone, more than a dozen states have considered laws that would charge abortion patients with homicide—which in some states could mean the death penalty.”

Obstacles (and limited opportunities) from federal health agencies. The attack on medication abortion was teed up in 2025 for maximum impact in 2026. Get ready for the Food and Drug Administration to reexamine the otherwise unimpeachable safety record of mifepristone, and the Environmental Protection Agency to consider whether to add mifepristone to its recently updated list of contaminants that public utilities have to track in drinking water. (“People need to understand that they are likely drinking other people’s abortions,” claims Student for Life, despite that scientists assure that mifepristone waste does not harm people, animals, or the environment.)

The FDA did one thing right in 2025 when it removed the “black box warning” on estrogen products for menopause. This does not mean there won’t be further fallout; the immediate next round of work entails helping the public and clinicians understand what the labeling status change does (and doesn’t) mean and ensuring accurate, nuanced engagement takes its place. The FDA also may be primed to address other overlooked menopause treatments, including female dosages for testosterone treatments.

Which leads to the most hopeful portion of this column: menopause policy, an unusually ripe moment for state and local advances. New Jersey will become the third state—with Louisiana and Illinois—to mandate insurance coverage for menopause treatments when Gov. Mikie Sherill signs a recently passed bill into law later this week. Menopause will also be front and center in California, when Gov. Gavin Newsom announces the state budget; he pledged to include elements of the 2025 bill he vetoed that would both require health insurance policies to provide coverage for evaluation and treatment for perimenopause and menopause symptoms, as well as improve menopause education opportunities for medical professionals.

In state legislatures and city councils across the country, red and blue alike, it looks likely there will be continued momentum. After the banner year for menopause that was 2025, there is now a trove of legislative language and fiscal analyses from which the next round of lawmakers can pick and choose and adapt – from improving patient and professional education to ensuring treatment affordability to countering workplace discrimination.

And a bright spot in Wyoming: The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Wyoming Supreme Court has ruled that a ban on abortion pills is unconstitutional—and that abortion bans in general also are. The Post reported: “ ‘Although a woman’s decision to have an abortion ends the fetal life, the decision is, nevertheless, one she makes concerning her own health care,’ Wyoming Chief Justice Lynne Boomgaarden wrote in the court’s ruling.” But the fight is not over. The state’s governor is pressing the state legislature to pass a constitutional amendment that could go before voters as soon as this year.

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A new report released Monday by the Center for Reproductive Rights, “Trump’s (Second) First Year: New and Emerging Threats to Reproductive Rights,” is a good primer for what’s happened, and a stark reminder of what remains at stake. Check it out.

These are my early predictions for 2026. The Contrarian will keep track and circle back to see what unfolds. With women’s lives are on the line, we simply cannot look away.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law. She also leads strategy and partnerships at Ms. Magazine.

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