
Maggie Jo
Buchanan
Senior Director, Women's Initiative
The Women’s Initiative develops robust, progressive policies and solutions to ensure all women can participate in the economy and live healthy, productive lives.
Abortion rights are under attack. Our proactive agenda provides a road map for state and federal lawmakers to develop and enact policies that ensure equitable, safe access to abortion. In coalition, we will push back against restrictions that impede access to this critical health care service.
People are more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes in the United States than in any other high-income country. Working closely with partners, we develop policy interventions to curb the maternal health crisis, eliminate racial disparities, and advance investments in maternal health care.
To address pay disparities, especially for women of color, our comprehensive work advocates for measures such as the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA). The PFA would strengthen equal pay protections, prohibit employer retaliation, and limit employers’ reliance on salary history to make hiring decisions.
Women are crucial to a thriving economy and families’ economic stability and must be at the heart of any economic recovery. We research solutions that maximize women’s economic participation and respond to competing demands of work and family, such as a national paid family and medical leave program.
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Senior Director, Women's Initiative
Senior Vice President, Rights and Justice
Managing Director
Associate Director, Women's Health and Rights
Senior Policy Analyst
Policy Analyst
Associate Director, Women’s Economic Security
Research Assistant
The Women’s Initiative works to secure women’s health and bodily autonomy, economic stability, equality, and access to equitable opportunities and uphold other reproductive, civil, and human rights. We firmly believe that the diverse experiences of women across race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, faith backgrounds, and other factors—and the challenges they face—must be at the center of the national policy debate.
To ensure access to care, it is critical to protect patient privacy whenever possible.
Elyssa Spitzer reacts to Kansas' recent vote to retain its state constitution’s protection of a right to abortion. She discusses why, despite this important victory for women’s health and equality, abortion rights should not be left to the ballot but instead be recognized in the federal constitution as a fundamental right.
Sen. Marco Rubio’s purported paid parental leave plan would hurt, rather than help, women by cutting the retirement benefits they need.
While it is critical that Congress works to codify the promise of Roe v. Wade and ensure equitable access to abortion care, the federal government must take what steps it can now under the scope of the Hyde Amendment to increase access to care and protect patients.
Abortion is protected by state law in more than 20 states, many of which have expanded access to abortion by making it more affordable, codifying state-level reproductive rights, broadening the types of providers able to offer care, and protecting abortion providers and access to clinics.
By rejecting medical reality, politicians are demonstrating their extreme cruelty.
Understanding how the key social determinants of health—including housing, employment, and education—affect perinatal health is critical to ensuring that federal policies support healthy babies and families.
The misclassification of contraception as abortion by anti-abortion lawmakers is an alarming step down a path toward government control over women’s bodies and futures.
Americans in states with regressive anti-abortion laws now have fewer human rights protections than those in countries criticized for their records on women’s rights.
Lauren Hoffman and Rose Khattar discuss how businesses should be supporting their workers' reproductive choices since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.
Responding to the judicial overreach of a radical Supreme Court majority will require long-term structural reforms to the courts and immediate action to mitigate the harms caused by their wrongly decided decisions.
The right to abortion has been denied—but the fight for basic freedom and dignity continues.