Communities with high birth and marriage rates could soon gain an advantage in securing federal transit money — a long-sought goal of the Trump administration but one that a top Democratic appropriator calls “bizarre and dystopian.”

The Federal Transit Administration wants to revamp a multibillion-dollar program that helps state and local authorities fund infrastructure projects such as rail improvements and new bus lanes. Public feedback on the administration’s plan, which was rolled out Oct. 1, is being accepted through mid-November.

The idea would fulfill a priority of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to steer grant money to parts of the country with birth and marriage rates higher than the national average, a policy initiative he unveiled shortly after being sworn into office early last year.

Under the transit proposal, the FTA would cover up to 10 percentage points more of a project’s costs if an area’s average birth and marriage rates meet, exceed or are just below nationwide thresholds.

“Moving forward, the federal government is focusing on smart, affordable projects with high ridership. If you want federal funding, your project needs to align with where communities and families are actually growing,” the Transportation Department said in a statement.

But the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee had harsh words for the proposal.

“Tying funding for transit projects to marriage rates and how many babies a woman has is the sort of bizarre and dystopian idea you’d expect in a TV show, not actual policy put forth by the U.S. government — yet here we are,” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state said in a statement.

She said President Donald Trump “wants to weaponize federal grants to wage his backward culture wars and punish Democrats.”

A former FTA administrator during the Obama administration also was critical.

“It’s throwing a bone to these ideologues who want to incentivize child rearing and marriage,” said Peter Rogoff, who previously led Sound Transit in the Seattle area and is now a transportation consultant. “But it’s ludicrous on its face to try to achieve that goal through an infrastructure program.

“Does anyone really believe that there are couples out there saying, ‘Hey, sweetheart, you and I should get married and raise a passel of kids because a dozen years from now, maybe they’ll build light rail out to our neighborhood?’” he asked.

Duffy, who has nine children, has urged young people to tie the knot and “have lots of kids.” He’s one of several Cabinet members with big families, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, DHS head Markwayne Mullin and Health and Human Services chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The national fertility rate sank to a record low in 2025 — 53.1 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. Trump has said he will be known as the “fertilization president.”

Trump Supporters:

You voted for the P-Grabber. You voted for an adhjucated abuser. You voted for a man who degrades women constantly.

And now you’re upset that 7 men acted JUST LIKE THE GUY YOU VOTED FOR. (And 43 others were ok with this crime just like Trump supporters)

Don’t act like you care about this. Your actions speak louder than your words. .

Abortion Is Always on the Ballot

Even when the word never appears.

There is a dangerous mistake we make every election year.

We look at the ballot and ask:

Is abortion on it?

If there isn't a constitutional amendment, referendum, or ballot initiative with the word abortion printed across it, we assume the answer is no.

But abortion is always on the ballot.

Because we are not simply electing people.

We are electing power.

We are choosing the legislators who will write the next abortion law.

The governor who will sign it—or veto it.

The attorney general who will decide whether to challenge abortion providers, defend a restriction, pursue an out-of-state clinician, or take a fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

The members of Congress who can write federal abortion legislation and determine the direction of federal policy.

And we are helping determine who will have the power to shape the courts that will interpret all of it.

That isn't theoretical anymore.

We are watching states attempt to extend their abortion bans beyond their own borders. Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge shield laws protecting abortion providers in California, Massachusetts, and New York.

Those lawsuits didn't materialize from nowhere.

Elections built the governments bringing them.

The Vote Before the Vote

We tend to pay attention when abortion finally appears explicitly before voters.

And this November, it will.

Voters in Idaho, Nevada, Virginia, and Missouri will directly consider measures capable of changing abortion rights or protections in their states.

Those votes matter enormously.

But there were hundreds of votes before them that mattered too.

Someone was elected to the legislature.

Someone introduced the bill.

Someone controlled the committee.

Someone decided whether it received a vote.

Someone signed it.

Someone challenged it.

Someone defended it.

Someone appointed judges.

Someone confirmed them.

And eventually, years later, a woman discovers what all those elections meant when she is pregnant and needs care.

That is when politics stops being abstract.

Roe Should Have Taught Us This

Roe v. Wade did not disappear on the day Donald Trump was elected.

It disappeared years later.

Between those two events came judicial nominations, Senate confirmations, litigation, elections, state trigger laws, advocacy campaigns and an enormous political infrastructure built patiently over decades.

Then one morning, Americans woke up and a constitutional protection that had existed for nearly half a century was gone.

That should have taught us something:

The election that changes your rights may happen years before you realize your rights were on the ballot.

Political power compounds.

One election determines who writes the law.

Another determines who enforces it.

Another determines who appoints the judge.

Another determines who confirms that judge.

Then the case arrives.

And suddenly everyone pays attention.

By then, much of the machinery is already in place.

Look Down the Ballot

This is why presidential elections cannot be the beginning and end of our political attention.

In 2026, more than 6,100 state legislative seats and 36 governorships are being contested. State control is particularly consequential because abortion policy after Dobbs is being fought intensely in state legislatures, governors' offices, attorneys general's offices and state courts.

Those races may not dominate cable news.

Some candidates may barely appear in your social media feed.

Learn their names anyway.

Learn who is running for your state legislature.

Learn who wants to be your governor.

Learn who wants to be your attorney general.

Pay attention to judicial elections and retention votes where they exist.

Look at what candidates have actually done—not merely what carefully tested campaign language they use now.

Because the politician campaigning on taxes today may be voting on abortion next year.

Your Rights Don't Only Appear on the Ballot When Someone Prints Them There

This is the part we cannot afford to forget.

A ballot initiative asks you what the law should be.

An election often decides who gets to write the next one.

That may be even more consequential.

The anti-abortion movement understands this extraordinarily well.

It has spent decades building political power at every level—statehouses, governors' mansions, attorneys general's offices, Congress, federal agencies and courts.

Those victories accumulate.

So must ours.

We cannot become politically engaged only when abortion is printed in bold letters on the ballot.

We cannot wait until another ban is introduced.

We cannot wait until another clinic closes.

We cannot wait until another attorney general announces another prosecution.

We cannot wait until another case reaches the Supreme Court.

And we certainly cannot wait until another frightened woman calls us because the politicians elected years earlier have suddenly become very real in her life.

November Is About More Than November

At Her Safe Harbor, we hear what public policy sounds like when it reaches an actual woman.

It sounds like fear.

Can I get in trouble?

Can anyone find out?

Is it still legal?

Can you help me?

Behind those questions are laws.

Behind those laws are politicians.

And behind those politicians are elections.

That is the chain.

So when you look at your ballot this November, don't ask only:

“Is abortion on my ballot?”

Ask:

“Could this person ever have power over a woman's pregnancy?”

Could they write the law?

Sign it?

Enforce it?

Challenge it?

Defend it?

Shape the court that decides whether it survives?

If the answer is yes, then abortion is on your ballot.

It always was.

Vote accordingly.

And don't stop at the top of the ticket.

Read the entire ballot.

Learn the candidates.

Learn what power each office actually holds.

Talk to your friends.

Talk to your daughters.

Talk to your sons.

Talk to women who think this election has nothing to do with abortion because they don't see the word printed anywhere.

Tell them:

You don't have to see the word “abortion” on your ballot for your vote to determine what happens to a woman who needs one.

By the time the word finally appears, the people who will decide its meaning may already have been elected.

Her Safe Harbor

Pregnant and need someone you can talk to privately?

You call. A real person answers.

24/7. Just a phone call away.
302-660-1273 | HerSafeHarbor.com

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Here we go again: abortion advocacy dressed up in a lab coat.
A “new peer-reviewed study” is being promoted as evidence that the FDA lacked justification for removing mifepristone’s in-person dispensing requirement.
Here’s the context missing from the headline:
The authors are affiliated with the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute, and Issues in Law & Medicine has published scholarship advancing anti-abortion positions.
More importantly, the paper does not uncover a new safety problem with mifepristone. It does not demonstrate that telehealth prescribing is unsafe. It argues that the FDA should have kept a restriction in place.
That’s a critique of FDA policy—not a newly discovered medical danger.
“Peer-reviewed” doesn’t erase ideology, conflicts, or context.
If remote dispensing is harming women, show the data.
Otherwise, stop presenting another argument for restricting abortion access as a new scientific discovery.