Reproductive Freedom for All – one of the country’s oldest pro-choice groups – backs Jackson in his fight against Republican Susan Collins

One of the oldest abortion rights groups in the US is endorsing Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominee in Maine’s critical US Senate race, according to details first shared with the Guardian.

Reproductive Freedom for All is supporting Jackson, the former state senate president, in challenging Susan Collins – the five‑term Republican incumbent who has been dogged on the campaign trail for her role in overturning abortion access in the US.

A call revealing Todd Blanche’s plans to crack down on mifepristone lays bare the danger

The abortion pill is a miracle. Mifepristone, then called RU-486, was synthesized by a French lab in the 1980s; in combination with misoprostol, commonly used as ulcer medication, it cuts off the body’s supply of progesterone, halts the development of a pregnancy, and incites contractions, which empty the uterus. The drug allows pregnancies to be terminated with a shocking degree of reliability and ease. Gone are the concoctions of ergot and Spanish Fly dispensed by 19th century midwives, which only sometimes worked to induce a miscarriage; gone are the backroom procedures of the pre-Roe US, when drunk, lascivious, incompetent or cruel providers wielded bent coat hangers in dirty rooms. The abortion pill is safe, effective and cheaper than ever. And since Dobbs, it’s everywhere: even if you live in a state with an abortion ban, you can get the pills shipped to your house in the mail. Since Roe was overturned, there has not been a return to the terror of mass death that marked the pre-Roe era of septic abortion wards, where women routinely found themselves maimed, sickened or killed. There’s exactly one reason why: because illegal abortions were largely unsafe without the pill, and they are extremely safe with it.

So of course, the Trump administration and their allies on the American right are trying to get rid of it. And this month, they gained a powerful new ally when Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and an anti-abortion zealot, was confirmed as attorney general.

The congresswoman’s decision is an assertion of women’s freedom and dignity at a time when our status is rapidly eroding

“Don’t be weird about this,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive star and rumored 2028 presidential contender, said on her live video broadcast as she raised her shirt to angle the syringe into her abdomen. Then, with resignation, “even though I know all of you will be.”

The New York Democrat is 36 years old, and this week she revealed that she is beginning the process of freezing her eggs during Congress’s August recess. In the video, Ocasio-Cortez said that she was seeking to destigmatize the realities of women’s lives as they navigate the conflicting demands of professional aspiration and family building; she explained to viewers the process of the hormonal injections she was administering to herself, showing them the drugs and injector she was using arrayed on a paper towel, beside a disinfecting towelette. The procedure, Ocasio-Cortez explained, was not covered by her insurance, and she would be paying “100% out of pocket”. She had been saving to afford it for some time. “This is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life,” she said, going on to assert her hope that transparency about such questions will destigmatize women’s reproductive lives and promote their dignity.

My name is Darina,” says an elfin teen, ponytail pulled through the back of her cap, and “next year I’ll be earning 150,000 rubles (nearly $2,000) a month.” Darina works at what she calls “the world’s largest drone factory,” helping to assemble versions of the Iranian Shahed drone. “My parents are proud of me. Wanna do the same?” She asks as she advertises a polytechnic in Tatarstan. The Russian government, in the face of war and looming demographic disaster, has been relaxing child labor laws since 2022, making it easier to put 14-year-olds to work. Now, legislators are open about the need to reform “outdated” restrictions on employing minors in industries that were “considered dangerous 20 years ago.” Drone production is not the only part of the war effort to which teenagers are being recruited. This month in a “content camp” in Moscow, soldiers and state media propagandists trained 120-plus teens on how to make videos, use AI, and grow their audiences as aspiring influencers. Vladislav Golovin, a former soldier and a leader of Russia’s Young Army Cadets National Movement, said the program had “created a huge team of kids who understand how to broadcast government values.” 

But many young people, subject to year-round conscription, subject to internet shut downs and subject to surveillance, have little desire to spread propaganda. Instead, according to Google Trends data, growing numbers of Russians are seeking information on how to emigrate. A new exodus would accelerate Russia’s deep demographic crisis. Already, up to a million people are thought to have left Russia since the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. According to one recent count, nearly 210,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the war with Ukraine, with other estimates suggesting over 1.2 million casualties, including 325,000 deaths. And Russian fertility rates are the lowest they have been for 200 years. Anton Kotyakov, the labor minister, has told Vladimir Putin that the country faces a labor shortage of 11 million people by 2030.

So concerning is this crisis that Rosstat, the national statistics agency, has stopped publishing monthly demographic data. State officials and local governors have been told to compete to come up with the most innovative solutions to a seemingly intractable problem. The pressure on Russian officials and the Kremlin is leading to desperate measures, including guidance from the Russian health ministry that women who say they do not want to have children should be referred to a psychologist. Nothing the Russian state has tried has worked, from financial incentives (extended even to schoolgirls under 18) to banning advertising that supposedly promotes “child-free” lifestyles and so-called “LGBTQ propaganda.”   

Alongside “anti-woke” policies disguised as family values, is rising xenophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric that has led to a marked decline in the number of foreigners living in Russia. The Kremlin’s anti-migrant policies include a new system to monitor migrant workers through biometric registration, location tracking, and intensified police oversight. The Russian parliament is currently debating enhancing the number of offences that can be punished by deportation or substantially increased fines. Much of it is targeted at Russia’s Central Asian migrants who make up an overwhelming majority of immigrant labor. Some Central Asian governments, notably Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, have now urged their citizens to think twice about going to Russia for work. 

Russia has been publicizing political stunts such as its “shared values visa” in which applicants from 46, largely developed, nations are given temporary residence permits if they profess to support “traditional Russian values.” The visa, the Kremlin has said, is “Russia’s response to what it perceives as the harmful effects of Western neoliberal policies.” But only a tiny fraction of the immigrants Russia needs will be Westerners who apply for such a visa; instead, Russia has been diversifying its pool of migrant workers by looking further east. Around 72,000 work permits were issued to Indian nationals in 2025, up from just 5,000 in 2021. Russian officials have signaled they are ready to accept “unlimited” numbers of workers from South Asian countries like India, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar.

While the Kremlin is looking to South Asia and Africa to address its immediate need for workers (and soldiers), the ambition in the longer term is to boost Russian birthr rates, despite the signal failure of ongoing attempts. 

In the U.S., there have been several moves borrowed from the Kremlin’s playbook, including the restriction of abortion, the attempt to deny women birth control, and even alarm at the fall in teen pregnancies. But data released this month showed that women in the U.S. gave birth to 710,000 fewer babies in 2025 than they did in 2007, a reflection of two decades of steadily dropping birth rates. Russian demographer Salavat Abylkalikov, at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Germany, says “if the birth rate has fallen below the level of simple reproduction, it is almost impossible to raise it back.” Especially when financial incentives cover just a fraction of childcare costs. 

In any case, Abylkalikov says, “in Russia, death is much more profitable than birth: in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, the government provides around 1,000,000 rubles (about $12,000) for each child, but if one person goes to war and dies, the family receives up to 12 million rubles in total. That's more than $120,000. This is the economy of death.” The evidence, from countries like Russia, Hungary and the U.S., is that appeals to tradition, to religion and to female “responsibility” do not work, when support for families is limited. And while migration is an obvious fix to demographic questions everywhere, it’s politically toxic.

Russia knows it is hurtling towards demographic doom but can do little to halt the momentum. Its policies are riddled with inconsistencies — a strong line in anti-migration rhetoric and bullying, while being forced to import workers and soldiers from Asia and Africa; a patriarchal view of women’s roles, mostly confined to the domestic, while increasingly reliant on women to take the jobs of the men who are fighting and dying in Putin's war; and encouraging more women to give birth, while employing children to build drones. With family values like these, no wonder young Russians are hesitant to procreate.

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