Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, women’s reproductive rights in America have faced an unrelenting assault under President Trump’s renewed leadership. From the Oval Office to the courtroom to Congress, Trump has allowed the pro-life movement to return in full force through a series of legislative and executive actions. Now that the movement enters the modern era, so too do its lobbying strategies. The pro-life movement has turned to social media influencers as the final key to carrying out its agenda and winning over the approval of American women.
The Typical Approach Gets Revamped
The Trump Administration has targeted women’s access to reproductive care in several ways since its return. First, the administration refused to enforce the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal law requiring hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment to all patients in emergency situations, including life-saving abortion care. Women living in states with abortion bans are left with the option of waiting until near death or fleeing the state to receive health care. In June 2025, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic ruled that red states may exclude Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs without fear of legal retaliation under the “free-choice-of-provider” provision. Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide have already closed their doors or ended abortion services in anticipation of state action. Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed July 4, 2025, suspended Medicaid payments for one year to abortion providers that received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023, ignoring the fact that abortion clinics (like Planned Parenthood) frequently offer additional medical services like contraception, pregnancy tests, and STD testing to individuals. A week later, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Ronald F. Kennedy Jr. ordered the F.D.A review of the “safety and efficacy” of mifepristone (the “abortion pill”) at the behest of nearly two dozen Republican Attorney Generals’ demands. This unnecessary review is clearly politicized, as more than 100 studies have already found that mifepristone is a drug that can be safely used to end pregnancy. As of now, an update on the F.D.A.’s review is still pending.
These attacks represent the typical approach. But, now that the pro-life movement has gone digital, women are being attacked through another channel (one they often fail to recognize and sometimes even ignorantly embrace): the “womanosphere.” Inspired by the term “manosphere” (the right-wing, anti-feminist online network popularized by figures like Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, and Theo Von), the “womanosphere” does not appear overtly political at first glance. Made up of a conglomeration of female influencers and lifestyle brands, its content features celebrity puff pieces, happy images of mothers with children, or healthy, wholesome cooking recipes, all seemingly harmless, aesthetic, and even comforting content. However, when one considers the narratives this content highlights and the ones it omits, a clear political agenda emerges — one that aligns seamlessly with the anti-abortion movement’s recent attacks on reproductive rights.
The Tradwife Movement
Tradwife (short for “traditional wife”) influencers entered the mainstream consciousness through their TikTok popularity in 2020, when quarantined viewers were desperate to find excitement and comfort in even the most minute household tasks. These women contribute to the womanosphere subtly, employing covert propaganda tactics that romanticize the pro-life movement’s vision for America. Tradwife videos consistently follow the same formula: they feature a woman, a wife and mother, cooking a homemade meal from scratch for her family with organic ingredients straight from the farm. In the background are her several children and a cross hanging upon the wall. She is always thin and pretty with immaculate hair and makeup. More often than not, she is already pregnant with her next child. Estee Williams, Hannah Neeleman (Ballerina Farm), and Nara Smith stand out as the most well-known of the bunch. The image these women have created is serene and possibly even tempting to the overworked woman viewing their content as she struggles with the demands of motherhood, professional careers, and school. However, what this content implicitly suggests is that life is better when women adhere to “traditional” gender roles and instead pursue the paths of homemaking and nurturing children, a return to a 1950s past that would be abhorrent to second-wave and modern-day feminists alike.
To the feminist critics who raise concern against the harmful nature of tradwife content, Estee Williams responds, “Feminism started with choice… some people have a problem with what I’m posting about my lifestyle, so it’s clearly not all about choice anymore.” Williams correctly identifies that feminism is all about choice: it welcomes women who wish to be CEOs and those who wish to be homemakers equally. However, Williams fails to acknowledge that her content contributes to an ideology that wishes to shame women from their right to choose. From their position of privilege, tradwife influencers like Williams idealize a lifestyle that places bearing and raising children as a woman’s top priority, ignoring that for many women, motherhood is not always a choice freely made. Williams does not have to face the reality that an unwanted pregnancy can upend a low-income woman’s life, sinking her into financial hardship by limiting her educational or career opportunities. She does not face the truth that in states with abortion bans, it is only women with the means to travel who will not be forced to endure pregnancies that may risk their lives. For these women, the decision of whether or not to become a mother is shaped not by desire but by economic circumstance and the absence of reproductive freedom. The womanosphere’s presentation of domesticity and motherhood as the ultimate choice ignores the harsh realities this would impose on vulnerable women and reinforces a culture where female autonomy is constrained by the illusion of choice.
Wellness Rages War on Birth Control
In addition to tradwives, several influencers and brands within the womanosphere have weaponized wellness to take advantage of genuine anxieties surrounding women’s and children’s health to initiate an outright attack on hormonal birth control. This portion of the womanosphere mirrors Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) campaign and is led by influencer Alex Clark, who has launched a crusade against corporate agriculture, pharmaceutical companies, and the medical establishment. While this is not an inherently harmful mission, the alternative solutions Clark offers to women’s health are not backed by science and instead strip women of the ability to control their bodies. By lamenting hormonal birth control’s negative side effects, Clark instills fear in her female viewers and cites obscure studies to claim that it accelerates aging, induces abortion, causes depression, weight gain, cancer, and future fertility issues. Instead, she suggests women pursue “natural” birth control methods through fertility tracking. While hormonal birth control is known to occasionally have the unpleasant side effects of headaches, nausea, mood swings, weight gain, sore breasts, and acne, Clark has unreasonably amplified these individual negative experiences, misleading her viewers.
What’s most alarming is that the promotion of anti-birth control messaging is not just isolated to Clark. In a study done at La Trobe University, over 100 TikTok videos under five hashtags related to contraception methods (#birthcontrol, #contraception, #thepill, #naturalbirthcontrol, and #cycletracking) were analyzed. These videos reached a large audience, gaining nearly five billion views and 14.6 million likes in total. The results found that 53% of these video creators explicitly rejected hormonal birth control and 38% endorsed fertility tracking as a “natural” alternative. This new wave of anti-birth control content poses a serious threat to women’s health and autonomy. Natural methods of contraception, such as fertility tracking, are among the least effective types of birth control, with as many as 24 out of 100 women who use natural family planning becoming pregnant within their first year. To avoid a pregnancy via fertility tracking, women must be near perfect at tracking their ovulation, their basal body temperature, and examining their cervical mucus — something not even a doctor can do with complete certainty. They must be prepared to sacrifice spontaneity in their sex lives while abstaining during their fertile window and ensure they have a partner who is not sexually coercive or violent. This is not a viable method for the majority of American women, and it is a method that places sole responsibility for contraception upon women, a reality Clark and others are diminishing for the sake of “wellness.”
By manipulating their “wellness” brand into shaming hormonal options as toxic or unnatural, influencers are exploiting women’s health anxieties and leaving young women vulnerable to unintended pregnancies. Undermining “the pill” is an attack against decades of scientific progress in reproductive rights under the guise of self-care. By redefining control over one’s body as a rejection of modern medicine and science, the wellness movement is not liberating women—it is quietly leading them back to a world where their sexual and reproductive choices are dictated by fear and misinformation.
Reclaiming Choice
With the womanosphere in full swing, women find themselves targeted at all angles: legal, statutory, regulatory, and now, personal. The parasocial relationships that exist between influencers and their viewers have allowed the anti-abortion movement to invade the minds and homes of women across America, influencing them to give up work, stay at home, support their husbands, and have more children. If viewers do not awaken to the womanosphere’s propaganda, there will be very few of them ready to rally against whatever the Trump Administration’s next attack on reproductive care may be. All public content has the potential to be political; the wellness advice and wholesome cooking recipes being shared by tradwives are no exception. What may seem to be harmless can carry subtle ideological messaging and shape the way viewers think about their choices and freedoms. However, recognizing these powers also lends hope toward a path forward. The same networks that are attempting to subdue women into complacency and subservience against the patriarchy can be just as easily harnessed to amplify truths, organize, and connect women, fueling a resistance against the very forces that seek to control their bodies.
Featured Image Source: The Times
