Vox clamantis in deserto
‘How we tell our stories’
From the show “Together, Apart, Away: Snapshots from the Peter J. Cohen Collection,’’ at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H., starting May 7.
The museum explains:
“Family road trips. Budding friendships. Sibling rivalries. These are just some of the human moments captured by everyday photographers in snapshots from the collection of Peter J. Cohen. Individually, each snapshot welcomes you into a recognizable world. As a whole, they tell a story about how we tell our stories. Get ready for a moving, nostalgic, and hopeful exhibition.’’
A simple and honest achievement
In the northern section of the Presidential Range in New Hampshire's White Mountains. Viewed from the northwest side of Mount Washington. From left to right are Mount Clay, Mount Jefferson, Mount Adams, and Mount Madison.
— Photo by Fredlyfish4
“Mountains are different and unique from anything else you will face in life in that they are the truest, cleanest representative of life’s challenges in physical form. There is no mistaking the end goal, and there is no mistaking who got you there. You have to count on you, and your arrival at the summit is the simplest and most honest achievement for your soul that you can experience.”
— From 4000s by 40: Tackling Middle Age in the Mountains of New Hampshire, by Matt Larson
We ask that Trump apologize for insulting the Catholic Church
Seal of the Ancient Order of Hibernians
Irish Famine Memorial in Boston
— Original work: Robert Shure Depiction: Phillip Capper
Statement by The Ancient Order of Hibernians, which based in New York.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians, the nation’s oldest and largest Irish Catholic lay organization, with chapters in all fifty states, has issued the following statement in response to President Trump’s public attack on His Holiness Pope Leo XIV and the posting of an AI-generated image depicting the President in the likeness of Christ:
People of good faith may disagree on matters of public policy. No Catholic should be asked to accept language that treats the Holy Father as though he were a partisan figure whose duty is to please the political expediency of the moment, or defer to a secular ruler. To Catholics, the Pope is the successor of Saint Peter; he does not hold his office at the pleasure of any leader of this world.
President Trump’s remarks went well beyond reasonable disagreement. To call the Holy Father “weak,” to suggest that his election was engineered as a political response to an American president, and to speak of the papacy as though it should be aligned with a secular agenda is an insult not only to Pope Leo, but to the dignity and independence of the Catholic Church.
President Trump amplified the offense of his remarks by posting an image presenting himself in unmistakably quasi-religious terms, as a radiant healer laying hands on the afflicted, in the style of classical depictions of Christ. To attack the Holy Father and then cast oneself in the role of Christ is not political commentary; it is sacrilege and a defamation of the faith of millions of Christians. When a president mocks the Vicar of Christ and then cloaks himself in Christ’s image, he has left the realm of politics entirely. He has committed an act of desecration against a faith held sacred by over a billion souls.
Americans do not worship presidents. Our Constitution prohibits religious test acts and the establishment of a state religion. Americans do not bend the knee to political messianism from any quarter. American Catholics have always faithfully followed Christ’s teaching to render unto Caesar what is justly Caesar’s, while reserving that which belongs to God alone.
Founded to protect the Church and defend the faith, the Ancient Order of Hibernians speaks without hesitation when either is attacked. The Holy Father has both the right and the duty to speak on moral questions touching war, peace, justice, human dignity, and the conduct of nations. In doing so, he speaks as the successor of Peter, not as an instrument of any political faction. People may discuss and disagree on how those principles are applied in public life, but such disagreement should be civil and dignified.
The AOH calls on President Trump to withdraw these remarks, offer a sincere and unambiguous apology, and show the respect due to the papacy and to Catholics throughout the world. The Chair of Peter is not an instrument of politics, and no president of the United States should ever mistake it for one.
SOUTH DARTMOUTH, Mass.
We’d drifted into The Old Landmark, first bar on Bowery, for my big brother’s bachelor
party. There was no plan, just the assurance of youth. Two brown lookers in leotards of
multi-colored, glittering spangles heaving voluptuously above great lengths of fishnet stockings
tended bar while I wondered why I had never so much as peeked inside the place previously.
The bar was on the southeast corner of East Fourth Street and Bowery, in Lower Manhattan. We lived a half-block away in a fifth-floor, one-bedroom walkup, where about a dozen close friends were to spend the night
before the wedding. Tomorrow would be the luckiest day of brother Chip’s life. He was then a week short of
his 23rd birthday and about to marry Ellen Dee, 20, out on Long Island. Young Rascals’ “Good Loving’’ was en route to Number 1 on the hit parade.
Whether the two Puerto Rican men who hosted that evening had, with or without their
ladies, bought or leased the premises is unknown to me, but memory tries to insist that it was their opening
night. What’s clear as a bell is that Terry Dooley, from East Aurora, N.Y., about 20 miles
southeast of Buffalo, pulled in alone, shouting encouraging words and slapping a wad of cash
on the bar barely a month after losing his dad to an airplane crash against Mt. Fuji.
Within hours perhaps, 20 young men from upstate New York, as well as Michigan, Ohio, Connecticut, New Jersey
and elsewhere, had crammed the place partying hard. I think that the new proprietors thought
it would be like this every night, as if they had stumbled onto a gold mine.
There was maybe an inch of beer and possibly a tilt on the Old Landmark’s floor because
some specifically recalled Dooley shout “Watch this!” and then throw himself chest down across
that shallow lake, bodysurfing nearly the length of the bar. New York leisure spots were
dangerously free of restrictions back then, with a drinking age of 18 and generally a 4 a.m. closing time.
Chip and Ellen had recently leased an apartment on West 92nd Street, where the
groom and I, the best man, were to stay overnight with groomsmen Ralph and Paul, because
that’s where the rental tuxedos hung to change into. In the morning, we were to get into
Ralph’s 1956 DeSoto – acquired from a former girlfriend’s mother—before going down to St.
Francis Xavier Church, on 16th Street, to pick up the priest and then drive about 30 miles to the church in
Merrick, the suburban town where Chip and I had grown up, arriving by 11 a.m. for Mass outside the rail (Ellen
wasn’t Catholic.)
When the party was over, there was a problem: Paul was gone, and no one knew to where. Chip and
I and Ralph got in the car and began to drive through the West Village on our way uptown. Paul
would show up somewhere. It was a warm night, and our front windows were down. Ralph
drove, I sat shotgun and Chip was in the back seat. We stopped at a red light. There were four
or five guys standing on the sidewalk. It was late to be just hanging on a corner, but we didn’t
think much of it until Ralph asked me: “Who they beating on?” I shook my head and looked out
to see the group flailing on somebody. Idly, I turned to Chip in the back seat. He wasn’t there.
How or why he silently left the car remains a mystery.
Ralph and I jumped out simultaneously. We waded into the group and started pulling
strangers off of Chip. We got him back into the car and locked his door. I jumped back in,
pushed my lock button down and slid away from a head and hands reaching for me through my
open window. I made as if I was trying to slide onto Ralph’s lap while he started the car, then
raised my right leg to slam a booted foot into the attacker’s face. He dropped like a branch in
the forest about the time Ralph gunned it.
We made it to 92nd Street, parked, then went inside. Still no sign of Paul.
I felt as if I had set an alarm as I woke up on the living room couch with a droning noise
in my head and could not immediately find where to shut it off. Chip was sleeping soundly on
the floor. I crawled over and shook him gently, saying “Get up, Chip. It’s your wedding day.” His
left eye opened briefly and his right fist caught my jaw. “Tomorrow,” he grunted. I was plenty
hung over, but now my jaw hurt more than my head. I got a quick glass of water from the
kitchen faucet, took a sip, and then – leaving some distance between us-- poured the rest onto my
brother’s face. I’d like to say we shaved, showered and dressed quickly, but I wouldn’t swear to
all of it. I do not recall the time, but we were running late already. There was still no word of
Paul as we headed out.
We were on at least the second floor; I think the third. There was a little trouble opening the
front door because a pile of somebody was sleeping it off in the front foyer hugging the
threshold. It was Paul. I suddenly connected the droning in my head to his curved nail scissors
jammed between the apartment’s buzzer button and its housing. It must’ve been blaring all
night. We roused the panic within him, pushing Paul back upstairs then into his tux and shiny
shoes.
You ought to hear a bit about my brother. He was as good as they come, usually. He was
always four grades ahead of me since he skipped a half-year once. The evolution of his thinking
is the evolution of mine. Mom provided much love and incredibly good food, while Dad mostly provided
discipline, softened slightly by stories of Ireland. Dad was a police officer who’d never seen the
inside of a high school, but he’d gotten his GED and attended Columbia University nights. We
kids would leave our homework out on the dining room table and he’d check it over when he
got home after we’d gone to bed. If he objected to what he saw he would come upstairs to wake the
offender and bring him downstairs to review. Without exception, I think, the “him” was me.
On weekends and in summers I was pretty much assigned to shadow Chip. The
best part was that if Chip minded the assignment he never really let on. We shared a room from
the get-go. Don’t get the wrong idea. There were plenty of nights he was so annoyed that he
told me if I fell asleep first, he would get out of bed to get a clear shot at punching me in the
stomach. This made me sit up, back to the headboard, and struggle to stay awake while he
secretly slept. He built a crystal radio from scratch. He got much better grades and was very
popular, particularly with girls. As young kids we’d scour the apartment houses for bottles and
newspapers to haul to the junkman. The money from that usually bought us Saturday
double-feature movies with cartoon, newsreels and popcorn.
After freshman year at college, Chip came home with the family’s first record player since an
early gramophone that only played 78’s. He acquired the stereo with a pawn ticket bought from
a classmate for five bucks, redeemed it and then bought an album of Maurice Ravel’s music.
With our younger sisters we’d open the doors and windows and play Bolero with the volume
as loud as possible. Until the day I retired from practicing law if I had a trial or serious motion to
argue I still played Bolero full blast all the way to court just to gin me up to fighting mode.
On Chip’s first college Christmas he gave me a subscription to the National Review in his
conservative phase. Next Christmas my gift subscription changed to The Catholic Worker,
edited by socialist Dorothy Day. Chip attended meetings of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee in New York and came home talking about Stokely Carmichael. Then
he nursed me through Jack Keroauc’s On the Road, The Dharma Bums and Maggie Cassidy as well as Beat
poetry. At the time he got married he was a junior high English teacher in The Bronx, but that soon
morphed into fire spotter, wheat farmer and newspaper sports columnist from a log cabin in
northern Alberta, Canada. He and Ellen went on to raise four kids and a couple of First Nation
foster children, starting with learning to build that oil lamp-lit log cabin by the White Mud River
where you could meet a bear while waiting for the school bus.
Chip was the kind of brother who invited me up to visit for a week when he worked two full-
time summer jobs at Lake George, N.Y. I never asked him why he did that, but he knew that since I was 15 I’d jump at such a furlough.
Our dad was off in World War II when Chip was born. They didn’t meet until after Chip turned two. That may have affected their relationship.
I don’t recall that Chip ever flunked a course in school whereas I could bring home a quarterly report
with five of six grades writ bright red. If it weren’t for the New York State Regents exams –you passed
the test, you passed the course—I would still be in high school. Yet my brother took Dad’s
displeasure more to heart than did I. I assume that Chip must have been hit by Dad
occasionally, but I don’t remember one such instance. I, however, progressed to the full leather-
belt treatment twice.
Back to Chip’s wedding day. With less than an hour to go, we picked up the Rev. Eamon Taylor, the curate from St. Francis Xavier, and headed out to Long Island. By coincidence or otherwise, Ellen had endured the pre-
Marriage-at-Cana conference scrutiny and the commitment of unborn children to Holy Mother Church at
the very same Manhattan parish in which my mother had been married more than 25 years before. Unlike mom, who converted, Ellen chose to stick with Martin Luther. Father Taylor did not seem to mind, and Ellen liked him very much.
We had not yet found the exit off the Southern State Parkway as the radio announced the
upcoming 11 a.m. news. I was not eager to be late but given that our car contained the priest,
the groom, his best man and two ushers I was willing to bet that the bridal party would wait a
few minutes.
The four guys in our car besides the driver focused out loud on getting off the parkway as the
Merrick exit came into view. Nevertheless, Ralph missed it. I think that’s the reason we were
20 minutes late to the church. We had to go to the next exit and drive back to Merrick.
The Mass was long, yes, but I spent most of it kneeling next to Chip while using my shoulder
to help him to keep looking vertical. Before the reception at The Thatched Cottage, in
Centerport, Chip gave Father Taylor a bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey. After the reception the
only guy sufficiently sober to drive the couple to the rather cheap Times Square Hotel for their
wedding night was Ellen’s younger brother, Charlie, who wasn’t yet old enough to have a
license.
Chip and Ellen each flew to Miami impersonating friends. Chip went with an ID supplied by
Ralph to qualify as young enough to fly standby student rate. Ellen got hers from former
roommate Mary Lynne Warren to use in Florida to meet the older drinking age.
Their marriage lasted 38 years until my brother passed away.
Gerald FitzGerald, who lives on the Massachusetts South Coast, is a writer and lawyer. He has served as a state prosecutor, defense lawyer, newspaper reporter and editor.
Fun for a while
“Pool Slide”(oil on board), by Bruce Ackerson, at Rice Polak Gallery, Provincetown, Mass.
R.I. eyes creating a state medical school to boost primary care
URI’s main campus, in semi-rural southern Rhode Island.
— Photo by Quintin Soloviev
Edited and excerpted from a report by The New England Council
“The University of Rhode Island is set to receive an initial $5 million in state funding to establish a medical school {on the university’s main campus, in Kingston} as part of a sweeping 17-bill legislative package unveiled by Rhode Island Senate leaders on March 12 aimed at addressing the state’s strained health-care system.
“The funding, sponsored by Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski, would be used to hire a founding dean and senior leadership, recruit core faculty and administrative staff, begin the accreditation process, and develop curriculum. The legislation outlines a funding trajectory of $7 million in fiscal year 2028 and $9 million in fiscal year 2029, totaling $21 million in state investment over three years. The proposal follows a unanimous January recommendation from a state legislative commission that establishing a medical school at URI is a critical step toward addressing Rhode Island’s shortage of primary-care doctors. URI will be required to report to the governor and General Assembly by January 1, 2028, on fund usage, accreditation progress, and a projected development timeline.
“‘As the state’s flagship public research university, we are committed every day to advancing our state and enhancing the quality of life for Rhode Islanders,’ said URI President Marc Parlange. ‘Through our health-focused colleges, we are improving health outcomes across the state. We remain dedicated to working with state leaders, health care providers, and community members to address primary care challenges. I am deeply grateful to the commission members for their ongoing, important work on this issue that touches the lives of every Rhode Islander.”’
‘An inner logic’
“Blue Note’’ (work on paper), by Mary Bablitch, in her show “Spirited Geometries,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, May 1-June 1.
The gallery says that the Lexington, Mass.-based artist’s “painted paper works inhabit the charged space between painting and collage, construction and composition.” She says: "My work always emerges from color, I paint flat hues onto large sheets of paper, pairing shapes and forms according to an inner logic.’’
The gallery notes that “Sheets are cut and assembled into layered constellations of form that assert a physical presence while remaining resolutely two-dimensional. Warm earth tones, sienna, ochre, deep burgundy — collide with cool slates and unexpected passages of acid green, creating chromatic tensions that animate the overlapping planes.’’
Chris Powell: Coming — a new golden age for governmental unaccountability in Connecticut
What is believed to be the first newspaper classified ad in America, in The Boston News-Letter of April 24, 1704.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut is nearly the highest-taxed and most expensive state in the country, and though state legislators are prattling about making the state more "affordable," most of this year's session of the General Assembly has been a scramble to spend more money. Indeed, the legislature long has been most remarkable for its inability to audit government for actual results and to discover any substantial spending that can be reduced.
But not anymore. The other week the state House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill that would repeal the old state law requiring municipal governments to give formal notice of their plans and actions by purchasing legal notices in newspapers.
The legislation's rationale is that posting the notices on municipal Internet sites will alert the public sufficiently to what local government is doing and that it will be free, saving municipal governments altogether maybe $2 million or $3 million every year.
The money is real but the claim that sufficient notice can be achieved by municipal government Internet sites is laughable. For the audience of municipal government Internet sites is tiny. By contrast, even as newspaper readership declines, newspapers still have a substantial audience. More important, legal notices alert news organizations to what government is doing, and in turn news organizations alert the public both in print and on their Internet sites.
Since newspapers charge for legal-notice advertising, the notice requirement can be viewed as a subsidy to newspapers. But that is not how the advertising requirement originated. The requirement buys a service of value -- and not just notice to the public about the particular item being advertised but also local news reporting generally, which is in serious decline because the Internet and social media are drawing the audience away from local news and because civic engagement is declining along with literacy generally.
If the advertising requirement is repealed, then for everyone who reads legal notices on his municipality's Internet site there may be hundreds or even thousands of people who lose access to local news as newspapers adjust to their loss of income by reducing their news coverage and frequency of publication.
Municipal officials have been advocating repeal of the legal notice advertising requirement for many years, and saving money is not the only reason for their enthusiasm.
The advertising requirement is a relic of the era of limited government, which is long gone. The current era is one of virtually unlimited government with many more people drawing their livelihood from government.
As the primary mechanisms of accountability to the public, news organizations annoy government officials. Government is so much easier without journalism -- which is not to say that government without journalism would be more efficient but rather that government's inefficiencies, mistakes, and crimes would be disclosed less often.
That's why while the legislature finds it almost impossible to reduce or eliminate government spending anywhere else, it seems about to proclaim that journalism about government is readily expendable.
The state Senate's approval of the House-passed legislation and Gov. Ned Lamont's signature on it may inaugurate a golden age of unaccountability in government in Connecticut, a more expensive and mysterious age.
GAMBLING'S DAMAGE: According to a report other week in Connecticut's Hearst newspapers, some state legislators are having doubts about state government's expansion of legal gambling in recent years, particularly about sports betting, which has compounded with casinos, Internet casino gambling, and what now may seem like the deadly first step back in 1972, the state lottery.
Gambling addiction has exploded in the state, damaging thousands of lives, ruining families, helping to corrupt national sports, and recently snaring even New Haven's police chief, all while making a very few people rich in the guise of reparations for ancient wrongs to Indian tribes that no one alive today suffered from. Gullible Connecticut is supposed to believe that casino gambling is social justice.
Legislators and governors have thought that getting money through gambling -- indirect rather than direct taxation -- is worth the awful consequences to society. It isn't and remains a matter of political cowardice.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Lot of life in that ooze
“Slow Move Through the Creek” (acrylic on canvas), by Douglas H. Caves Sr., at Portland (Maine) Art Gallery.
Nick Collins: To protect Seaport District, pass the Mass Ready Act
Former warehouse repurposed as housing and a restaurant, on Commercial Wharf, Boston.
— Photo by Ingfbr
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, in the Seaport District
— Photo by Generaltso
From The Boston Guardian, except for images above)
(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor, is also chairman on The Boston Guardian.)
Few neighborhoods in Boston have changed as quickly as the Seaport. What was once wide open is now one of the city’s most sought after places to live and visit, a transformation I’ve seen firsthand over more than a decade representing this neighborhood.
With that growth comes a new responsibility. The Seaport now has a clear identity, shaped by residents working to define its character. But that effort will fall short if we do not address rising sea levels and the growing impacts of climate change.
These discussions are thoughtful and detailed but planning without action is not enough.
One of the biggest challenges is not identifying what needs to be done, but how long it takes to do it.
Climate-resilience projects in dense coastal areas often face a maze of permitting requirements that can delay progress for years. These efforts cross property lines, jurisdictions and agencies. Yet our system was not built to move them forward quickly or at scale.
That is why, in the State Senate, we advanced the Mass Ready Act, a $3.64 billion environmental bond bill that protects infrastructure from climate change and severe weather, safeguards drinking water, and advances environmental protection, including limits on single-use plastics.
As part of that effort, I filed an amendment to establish a commission on resilient urban coasts to identify barriers that delay climate resilience projects and streamline permitting so communities can act more quickly.
That includes large-scale solutions that protect entire neighborhoods, not just individual properties, and projects that cross municipal boundaries and public and private land.
Just as importantly, the commission brings together state officials, environmental experts, and local stakeholders to align priorities and cut through the fragmentation that often delays progress.
This is about turning plans into action on a timeline that matches the risks we face.
At the same time, the bill makes targeted investments in coastal communities across Boston.
That includes funding for nature-based solutions and real time monitoring along our waterfront and harbor, helping us better understand and respond to changing conditions.
It also supports major capital improvements to the Boston Harbor Islands, protecting one of our region’s most important natural and recreational resources.
Closer to home, the bill invests in resilience upgrades at the Boston Children’s Museum and along the Fort Point Channel, safeguarding key cultural and economic assets in the Seaport.
It also advances critical planning and engineering work in Dorchester, from Davenport Creek to the Dorchester Bay Basin and nearby parks.
Together, these investments strengthen flood protection and reflect a more comprehensive approach to climate resilience.
This is not about one project or one neighborhood, but about protecting our city’s entire coastline.
Passing the Mass Ready Act moves us beyond planning and ensures we build the infrastructure it takes to be a resilient Boston.
Nick Collins represents the Seaport/South Boston, South End and parts of Dorchester.
Celine Gounder: Trump regime’s response to falling birth rate may make pregnancies more dangerous
From Kaiser Family Foundation Health News (except picture above)
“Efforts to reverse those patterns {of a lower birth rate} would be more successful if they can make childbearing more desirable, not make it harder to prevent a pregnancy.’’
— Phillip Levine, economist at Wellesley College
The number of babies born in the United States fell again last year.
According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 3.6 million births in 2025, a 1% decline from 2024. The fertility rate dropped to 53.1 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, down 23% since 2007.
The Trump administration has said it wants to reverse this trend. President Donald Trump has called for “a new baby boom,” and aides have solicited proposals from outside advocates and policy groups ranging from baby bonuses to expanded fertility planning. The administration is also proposing to reshape the federal government’s only dedicated family planning program: Title X.
For more than five decades, Title X has been geared — with bipartisan support — toward giving low-income women access to contraception, screening for sexually transmitted infections, and reproductive health care regardless of ability to pay. At its peak, the safety net program served more than 5 million patients a year. Six in 10 Title X clients have reported the program as their sole source of health care in a given year.
In early April, the Department of Health and Human Services invited nonprofit organizations to apply for Title X grants for fiscal year 2027, which begins in October. The 67-page Notice of Funding Opportunity included only one mention of contraception — describing it as overprescribed, associated with negative side effects, and part of a broader “overreliance on pharmaceutical and surgical treatments.”
The grant notification reshapes the program from its traditional public health intervention efforts to focus on fertility, family formation, and reproductive health conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis, low testosterone, and erectile dysfunction.
While Title X will continue to help women “achieve healthy pregnancies,” the grant document does not explicitly reference preventing unintended pregnancies — a long-standing goal of the program.
Jessica Marcella, who oversaw the Title X program as a senior official in the Biden administration, said the new funding notice amounts to a wholesale redefinition of family planning.
“What we’re seeing is trying to use our nation’s family planning as a Trojan horse for an entirely different agenda,” Marcella said, noting that Trump has proposed eliminating Title X altogether.
Birth Rates and Fertility Trends
The administration is overhauling Title X in the context of declining birth rates. But researchers who study fertility trends say the decline is driven by forces that have little to do with contraception access and that restricting it is unlikely to produce more births.
The most important factors, according to demographer Alison Gemmill of UCLA, are timing-related. “Childbearing is increasingly delayed as part of a broader shift toward later adult milestones, including stable employment, leaving the parental home, and marriage,” she said.
Most American women, she said, still complete their childbearing years with an average of two children, suggesting a shift toward smaller families rather than an increase in childlessness.
“Having children has become more contingent and more planned,” she said.
Much of the decline since 2007 reflects women postponing births rather than forgoing them.
“The average number of babies women are having in their whole lives has not fallen. It’s still more than 2.0 for women aged 45,” said Philip Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland.
Phillip Levine, an economist at Wellesley College, said the birth rate has declined due to shifts in how women approach work, leisure, and parenting. “Efforts to reverse those patterns would be more successful if they can make childbearing more desirable, not make it harder to prevent a pregnancy,” he said.
Asked about the role of contraception in reducing maternal mortality and how the new funding notice advances that goal, HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard said in a statement: “Applicants for the 2027 Title X funding cycle will be expected to align with the administration’s stated priorities in the released Notice of Funding Opportunity. HHS, under the leadership of Secretary Kennedy and President Trump, will continue to support policies that support life, family well-being, maternal health, and address the chronic disease epidemic. HHS remains focused on improving maternal outcomes and ensuring programs are administered consistent with applicable law.”
Marcella said the new funding notice is the product of two converging forces: the Make America Healthy Again movement, with its skepticism of conventional medicine and emphasis on lifestyle and behavioral interventions, and a pronatalist agenda that seeks to boost birth rates by steering policy toward family formation.
The document’s language reflects both: It repeatedly invokes “optimal health” and “chronic disease” while sidelining the contraceptive services that have defined Title X for half a century.
Clare Coleman, president and CEO of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, which represents health professionals focused on family planning, said tying Title X to birth-rate goals replaces individual decision-making with a government objective. The program “is designed to facilitate access to family planning services, including services to achieve and prevent pregnancy,” she said.
Title X’s New Focus
The administration’s changes have been welcomed on the right.
Emma Waters, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who has advocated for what she calls “restorative reproductive medicine,” said the new funding notice reflects overdue attention to neglected aspects of women’s health.
“I was particularly encouraged to see language that spoke to the delays in diagnosis for conditions like endometriosis, the need for women to practically understand how their cycle and fertility works, and to ensure that real root-cause was promoted through Title X,” Waters said.
She described the notice as an expansion, not a narrowing, of the program’s mission: “I see this iteration of Title X as the fulfillment of its purpose. The goal was never just ‘more contraception’ but a wholesale empowerment of women to govern their own fertility.”
Waters also argued that untreated reproductive health problems may contribute to lower birth rates.
“One of the interesting aspects of this debate, and one that is often overlooked, is the degree to which painful and unaddressed reproductive health problems may suppress or create ambivalence around a woman’s desire to have kids,” she said, pointing to endometriosis.
An estimated 5% to 10% of women of reproductive age have endometriosis, and of those, 30%-50% experience infertility. Scientifically speaking, the relationship is an association, not a proven cause. Women aren’t screened for endometriosis if they don’t have symptoms, and the condition may be more prevalent than is recognized. Researchers still do not fully understand why some women with endometriosis struggle to conceive while others do not, and treating the disease does not reliably restore fertility.
Infertility rates in the U.S., meanwhile, have not risen. An analysis of federal survey data found them essentially flat between 1995 and 2019, even as the national birth rate fell sharply — a divergence that points away from untreated reproductive disease as an explanation.
Meanwhile, in February, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued new clinical guidelines enabling earlier diagnosis of endometriosis without surgery, a step toward addressing the delays Waters described. But the first-line treatment ACOG recommends is hormonal therapy, part of the same category of care the funding notice dismisses as part of an “overreliance on pharmaceutical and surgical treatments.” The effect, reproductive health experts say, is a contradiction: Title X is now prioritizing diagnosis of endometriosis while deemphasizing the drugs clinicians use to treat it.
Treatments that have been shown to improve fertility in women with endometriosis, such as laparoscopic surgery and in vitro fertilization, are not covered by Title X. When President Richard Nixon signed Title X into law in 1970, he described it as a way to expand access to family planning services — helping women determine the number and spacing of their children by making contraception and related preventive care more widely available, particularly for those who could not afford it. Medicaid, not Title X, is the primary government health insurance program covering health care for low-income women, but, like many commercial insurance plans, it does not cover IVF.
Many of the conditions prioritized in the funding notice deserve attention, said Liz Romer, a former chief clinical adviser for the HHS Office of Population Affairs who helped write updated guidelines for the family planning program. But they fall outside the scope of what Title X can realistically provide.
“There’s not even enough funding to support the core premise of contraception,” Romer said. “And so, if you want to expand Title X funding, you can expand the scope, but you can’t move away from the foundation.”
The emergence of an anticontraception ideology within federal health policy is striking, she said, given how broadly the public supports access to birth control. Eight in 10 women of childbearing age surveyed by KFF in 2024 reported having used some form of contraception in the previous 12 months.
Laura Lindberg, director of the Concentration in Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice at Rutgers School of Public Health, said, “If contraception is sidelined in Title X, it won’t just change language on paper but will show up as fewer options and more barriers for patients.” Funding could move away from providers who offer a full range of contraceptive care, she added, “toward organizations that are ideologically opposed to contraception and don’t deliver the same standard of health care services.”
The Stakes Are High
The United States already has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among wealthy nations — 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births as of 2024. According to the CDC, 4 in 5 pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. may be preventable. Medical research shows that pregnancy carries substantially higher risks of blood clots, stroke, and cardiovascular complications than hormonal contraception.
And since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade, access to abortion has been significantly curtailed across much of the country. While national abortion numbers have risen, driven largely by telehealth and interstate access, research shows births have increased in states with bans, with an estimated 32,000 additional births annually, disproportionately among young women and women of color.
Dr. Christine Dehlendorf, who directs the Person-Centered Reproductive Health Program at the University of California-San Francisco, said “there is absolutely no evidence for any positive outcome of restricting access to contraception.” Restrictions would instead increase demand for abortion care and make it harder for women to prevent high-risk pregnancies.
Since Trump returned to office, more than a dozen Title X grantees have had their grants frozen, forcing some health centers to stop delivering services, lay off staff, or close. During the first Trump administration, regulatory changes led to a decline in Title X participation from more than 4 million patients to 1.5 million. The program grew slowly under the Biden administration, reaching about 3 million clients, before the current round of disruptions began.
The second Trump administration’s overhaul of the program, Marcella said, “directly undermines the public health intent of our nation’s family planning program and will potentially exclude millions of individuals from getting the care they have relied on for decades. It’s bad policy.”
Céline Gounder (cgounder@kff.org), M.D., an internist and epidemiologist, is also a medical journalist.
New England patriotic warmth
“Bicentennial Quilt’’ (cotton and dacron), by Sylvia Harding, Mary Connors, Josephine Brown, Ann Traver, Johanna Kooij, Winifred Laubach, Mary Gordon, Ruby McClernon, Margaret Smith, Dorothy Smith, and Joy Malloy, at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Conn.
A convict’s complex art
“The Church of the Angels” (acrylic and floor wax on soap, paper, card stock, toilet paper, abrasive cleaning pads, deodorant roller balls, sticks, and grass), by James D.E. Scott, in his show “Creative Connecticut: James D.E. Scott,’’ at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford.
— Image courtesy of the artist and the Community Partners in Action Prison Arts Program
The museum says:
“In collaboration with the Community Partners in Action Prison Arts Program, The Wadsworth presents the visionary work of incarcerated artist James D.E. Scott. Made from soap, floor wax, and other materials that are accessible within the prison system, Scott’s elaborate sculptures explore fantasy, architecture, and religious themes.’’
Design solutions to address increased N.E. flooding
Flooding in downtown Montpelier, Vt., on July 11, 2023.
Excerpted from an essay by Nate Kelly in ecoRI News
In New England, many of us recall a time when our relationship with water felt predictable and peaceful. Spring brought rain, gradually giving way to drier summer and fall months. Thunderstorms and nor’easters swept through without much concern, and winter snowfalls brought only occasional delays or school cancellations. Rain and snowmelt came and went, quietly managed by storm drains to which most of us never gave a second thought. We cleaned gutters, raked leaves, and shoveled snow, living comfortably with water’s rhythms.
Recently, however, our relationship with water has changed. Rising temperatures driven by climate change are at the root of this shift. Each of our seasons is now warmer, and that warmth affects every part of our environment. Streams, ponds, forests, backyards, ballfields, and beaches — all are warmer than they used to be. This warming accelerates evaporation, allowing the atmosphere to hold more water and more energy. The result? Bigger, more frequent, and more intense storms. This is climate change in motion — altering how, when, and where precipitation falls across New England…
Fortunately, experts in policy, design, and construction are developing solutions. Construction standards in flood-prone areas are beginning to take projected flood levels into account. Communities are adopting long-term hazard mitigation plans that identify vulnerable infrastructure, evacuation routes, and solutions to reduce risk. Funding sources for replacing undersized culverts are available, addressing “choke points” where floodwaters cause significant damage. Parks in flood-prone areas are being redesigned to safely flood during storms, providing much-needed flood storage while serving as community amenities in dry times.
The shame of ‘going on the town’
The Town Farm, now the Easthampton Lodging House, is a historic “poor farm’’ in Easthampton, Mass. It was established in 1890 as an inexpensive way to provide for the town's indigent population, and is the only locally run facility of its type to survive in the state.
“In a society still under the sway of Calvinist attitudes, as were the rural communities of New England, a degree of disgrace would attach to the condition of being poor….Thus, to “go on the town’’ would be viewed as an ignominy to be avoided if at all possible - and of course it would be a public ignominy, for everyone knew who the poor were and often would he be discussed by name in town meeting.’’
— Perry Westbrook, in The New England Town in Fact and Fiction (1982)
Painting has sold, but its star still lurks
“Shadow Cat” (encaustic with toner transfer), by Heather Douglas, a partly Vermont-based painter and a member of New England Wax.
She says:
“I was working on a series of pieces with the theme of ‘shadows.’ My cat just happened to be standing in front of a French door, with the sunshine pouring in, creating her shadow. I took a photo, which was then turned into a high-contrast black and white image. I painted the encaustic board and transferred the toner image from a laser print, to create the piece. I was kind of sad when it sold because it was one of my favorites but since I have the living cat I cannot complain!’’
She currently has work at the Synchonicity Art Gallery, Wurtzboro, N.Y.
Arts and sciences together and everything in its place
“Xylotheque’s Nocturne’’ (birch, maple, cherry, mahogany, walnut, red oak and white oak veneer on plywood), by Kate Conlon and Boyang Hou, at the Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, Mass., through May 28.
—Photo by Cat Lent
The curator explains that this work spans the length of the gallery's Henricks Art Wall. Tufts faculty members Kate Conlon and Boyang Hou created "Xylotheque's Nocturne’’ using laser-cut wood inlay to depict modern-day cabinets of curiosities with laboratory images. The intricate panels show beakers, test tubes, spray bottles, lab coats, lots of sticky notes and much more. "Together these panels create a portrait of the [building's] spaces for learning and research through a merger of ancient and contemporary techniques, harkening to a time when the arts and sciences were a single, shared discipline of human achievement.’’
UMass at Amherst program aims to stop birds from crashing into its buildings
Windows with glass that’s dotted to discourage birds from crashing into them.
Edited from a report by The New England Council
The state has awarded The University of Massachusetts at Amherst a $173,404 biodiversity grant to expand its efforts to prevent bird-building collisions on campus. The funding will complete installation of bird-friendly window coverings at six high-risk campus buildings and support broader monitoring and environmental- education efforts across the campus and surrounding communities.
The grant is part of a $1.1 million statewide package announced by Gov. Maura Healey supporting 12 biodiversity projects across Massachusetts. The broader initiative is designed to restore habitats, strengthen climate resilience, pilot biodiversity-friendly building practices, create new pollinator gardens and urban forests, and expand environmental education programming.
State officials framed the investment as essential to the state’s long-term climate preparedness . Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper noted that supporting biodiversity delivers tangible public health and safety benefits, describing nature as the state’s ‘‘first line of defense” against worsening climate impacts.
