Annual Research Highlights 2025

Publications

In 2025, ANSIRH researchers contributed 70+ peer-reviewed publications to the field. These articles appeared in the most respected journals of reproductive health, global health, public health, and beyond. Below is a list of links to summaries for selected 2025 publications. To access the full list of publications, visit our Research and Tools page and select Research Publications in the right-hand dropdown. 

• Abortion Restrictions
  • ANSIRH Debunks Questionable Junk Analysis on Abortion Safety
  • New study uncovers astronomical travel burdens, costs, and delays in care, post-Dobbs
  • Post-Dobbs restrictions stop clinicians from preventing future health harm for patients, study shows
• ​Medication Abortion and Telehealth Abortion:
  • No-test medication abortion screening criteria may disproportionately exclude some marginalized groups from telehealth abortion care
  • New research confirms patients can self-screen for medication abortion: Experts call for OTC access
  • Telehealth abortion expands abortion care access and affordability and helps avoid stigma and shame
• Providers, Pregnancy, and Pop Culture
  • Abortion Onscreen in 2025
  • Patients express mistrust in providers as sources of accurate cannabis information, study finds
  • Mix of political opinion found in comment sections of abortion plotline videos, study finds

Op-eds

In 2025, ANSIRH researchers penned 7 op-eds, including op-eds published in The Washington Post and The Hill. Titles and links for these are listed by author below.

• Daniel Grossman, MD: Science, not politics, should lead abortion decisions at the FDA (The Hill)
• Carole Joffe, PhD: Three Years After Dobbs, Abortion Numbers Have Surprisingly Gone Up and The Legacy of Dr. Warren Hern: Abortion Provider, Women’s Health Advocate and Target of Hate (Ms. Magazine)
• Katrina Kimport, PhD: How abortion laws focusing on fetal viability miss the mark on women’s experiences (The Conversation)
• Gretchen Sisson, PhD: An author separates the fiction of orphanhood from the reality (The Washington Post)
• Ashley Tsai: Breaking The Silence: Infertility and the Asian American Experience (Mochi Magazine)
• Ushma Upadhyay: The FDA’s ‘data guy’ should trust the data on the abortion pill (The Hill)

Media articles featuring ANSIRH

In 2025, our work was featured in over 200 media articles. A few highlights are listed below. Please see our website for a curated list of media articles.

• Three Years After Dobbs, ‘the Reality Is People Are Getting Abortions’ (The New York Times)
• After Abortion, Some People Report Worsening Mental Health. It’s Not About Regret, Experts Say (Rewire News)
• The Abortion Pill Is Safe. Scientists Fear an FDA Investigation Will Ignore Science (Scientific American)
• Federal agencies are studying safety of abortion drug mifepristone, driving new concerns about limits on access (CNN)
• Abortion-Pilled: Lawsuits seeking to scare women away from medication may have the opposite effect. (New York Magazine)
• Katrina Kimport, PhD, highlights how abortion bans are leading to substandard pregnancy care (Contemporary OBGYN)
• Costco won't be selling abortion pills. Here's why that matters. (MSNBC)
• Sarah Raifman, PhD, MSc, highlights the link between heavy drinking and pregnancy (Contemporary OBGYN)
• Travel time, costs for abortions increased after state bans, researchers find (Stateline)
• Abortion Bans May Be Making Second-Trimester Abortions More Likely (Time)
• Abortions in the US are on the rise three years after Roe v Wade was overturned (The Guardian)
• The number of abortions kept rising in 2024 because of telehealth prescriptions, report finds (AP)
• Telehealth and shield laws aided abortion rise last year, report says (The Washington Post)
• Science Shattered (ProPublica)
• The Unexpected Triumph That Followed the Overturning of Roe (The Nation)
• A Convenient Piece of Junk Science (The Atlantic)
• Everything You Need to Know About Abortion Later in Pregnancy (RePROs Fight Back)
• The right’s new playbook to restrict access to abortion pills (Vox)
• The anti-abortion movement readies its gameplan for Trump 2.0 (Politico)
• Religious directives at Catholic hospitals complicate emergency care for pregnant women (PBS)
• Abortions Are Rising—Even After Dobbs. A New Book Explains Why (Mother Jones)
• Teens Across the Country Face Tough Abortion Restrictions (Medscape)
• She was tracking post-Roe abortions. The government just pulled her funding. (The 19th News)
• Policies that single out pregnant people’s drinking aren’t working, but there are other policies that appear to help (Institute of Alcohol Studies)
• Why overturning Roe v. Wade only made America's abortion rate rise (Salon)
• The Women Most Affected by Abortion Bans (The New York Times)
• Where the Conservative War on Abortion Pills Is Headed (The Cut)
• Emergency contraception pill could be an alternative to mifepristone for abortions, study suggests (AP)
• New Research Finds Potential Alternative to Abortion Pill Mifepristone (The New York Times)
• An author separates the fiction of orphanhood from the reality (Washington Post)

Legal and Policy Activities

This year, ANSIRH experts continued to uplift reproductive health science in policy, legal, and cultural debates. ANSIRH researchers and research were featured in a number of court hearings, legal proceedings, and congressional hearings in 2025:

• In May, Dr. Antonia Biggs served as an expert witness in a Michigan case that struck down the state’s mandatory 24-hour waiting period for receiving abortions
• In June, Dr. Monica McLemore wrote an op-ed as Board Chair of Washington Health Benefit Exchange urging Congress to reject proposed cuts to state-based health insurance marketplaces, which would effectively eliminate affordable health coverage for millions.
• ANSIRH participated in efforts to enact AB 45 in California, which adds legal protections for research data. Signed into law by Gov. Newsom in September, the new statute will help to protect study participants who may disclose information about their reproductive health and prevent that information from being subpoenaed by states hostile to abortion access, for example.
• In August, ANSIRH and UCLA Law Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy (CRHLP) submitted a joint letter on behalf of more than 260 researchers to the FDA reaffirming mifepristone’s 25-year safety record and urging the FDA to continue grounding future decisions in science.
• In September, ANSIRH researchers submitted a letter in response to a proposed rule change that would end all abortion care provided by Veteran Affairs (VA). In the submitted analysis, which included data from the landmark Turnaway Study, ANSIRH shared that the VA’s estimates on the effects of the proposed rule change on society were drastically underestimated.  
• Dr. Katrina Kimport provided expert testimony in Hodes & Nauser v. Kobach, a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights against several Kansas abortion restrictions. As a result of this lawsuit, a Kansas state court issued a temporary injunction in October blocking these laws from going into effect.

Other highlights from 2025

• Our researchers and staff received the following awards and recognitions in 2025:
  • Dr. Carole Joffe was honored with the Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology by the American Sociological Association.
  • Dr. Monica McLemore received fellowships from the New York Academy of Medicine, The Hastings Center for Bioethics, and the Academy of Diverse Leaders in Nursing. She also was honored with the 2025 Trailblazer Award from the National Black Nurses Association.
  • Dr. Gretchen Sisson won the American Sociological Association’s Family Section William J. Godde Book Award.
  • Dr. Miranda Hill and Dr. Josie Urbina won 2025 Changemakers in Family Planning Awards from the Society of Family Planning.
  • Dr. Nancy Berglas, Dr. M. Antonia Biggs, Dr. Lori Freedman, Dr. Katrina Kimport, Dr. Lauren Ralph, Dr. Sarah Roberts, Dr. Corinne Rocca, and Dr. Ushma Upadhyay all received awards for Outstanding Research Mentorship from UCSF Department of Medicine.
  • This year, Dr. Daniel Grossman received an Outstanding Resident Teaching Award for 2024 – 2025 from UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences.
• Our researchers were featured in 25+ radio shows, podcasts, and video interviews, including Dr. Lori Freedman discussing religious directives at Catholic hospitals on PBS; Dr. Katrina Kimport sharing stories of post-Dobbs pregnancy care on Physician’s Weekly; Dr. Dan Grossman breaking down the science behind medication abortion on Outlawed; and Dr. Gretchen Sisson, highlighting her research on adoption for WNYC.     
• Dr. Carole Joffe and co-author David S. Cohen published their book, After Dobbs: How The Supreme Court Ended Roe But Not Abortion, which showcases interviews with 24 people across different fields in abortion and state political environments to uncover how the abortion-providing community prepared for and responded to the Dobbs decision. Dr. Joffe also published a new edition of Reproduction and Society, which assembles an authoritative collection of the best scholarship on reproductive matters to help students and readers think critically and more expansively about acts of reproduction as social phenomena, especially in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
• Dr. Karen Scott published SACKRED Birth: Mobilizing A New Quality Paradigm in Obstetric Care, which argues for the need for a more culturally and scientifically responsive, relevant, and rigorous obstetric quality paradigm defined, valued, and shaped for, by, and with Black mothers and birthing people.
• Dr. Katrina Kimport published When Roe Fell: How Barriers, Inequities, and Systemic Failures of Justice in Abortion Became Visible, which examines the history, politics, and practical experiences of abortion leading up to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, placing this judicial decision in a longer history of abortion in the United States.
• In May, ANSIRH researchers published an analysis of the FDA’s report on adverse events associated with the use of mifepristone among consumers data and concluded again that medication abortion is still very safe and effective.
• This year, Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary revealed plans to conduct a new review of mifepristone’s safety based on an unverified and biased report from The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC). In response, Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, PhD, MPH conducted a nine-point review of major failings in the report.
• The Abortion Onscreen project, which studies portrayals of abortion on TV and film and analyzes what these portrayals tell us about cultural understandings of abortion in an annual report, celebrated its 10th anniversary this year.
• One staff member joined ANSIRH in 2025: Ally Han, Project Coordinator. Dr. M. Antonia Biggs was also named Associate Director of ANSIRH this year.

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