The Reproductive Health Beat

Carter Sherman ’16 is no stranger to polarizing debates. As a reproductive health and justice reporter for The Guardian, a British daily newspaper, she covers topics that are often controversial, such as sex education and birth control access. Because of her beat, she says, she is sometimes mistaken for an advocate — a label she firmly rejects. 

“Advocacy is carrying water for a particular cause and leaning into one’s biases,” Sherman explains. “As journalists, we must be aware of our biases, interrogate them and explore where they come from, and then go around them in order to convey what is accurate and truthful.” 

When Sherman published a 2019 story in Vice documenting an anti-abortion summer training camp run by Texas Right to Life in Houston, for example, she received a wide range of reactions. Some readers thanked her for raising the visibility of anti-abortion messaging, while “others claimed that the article was exposing ‘firebrand conservatives,’” she says. 

“People bring so many different perspectives to a story when they encounter it, and that can totally change how they interpret it,” Sherman adds. “My job is making sure I’m conveying the facts. The cure for narrow-minded advocacy is talking to as many people as possible.” 

Sherman majored in both journalism and international studies. After interning at Ms. and Elle magazines, she moved to Houston in 2016 to join the Houston Press, an alt-weekly, covering news, politics and culture in Texas. In 2017 she moved to New York City, where she worked for Vice as a news correspondent covering gender, sexual violence and LGBTQ+ rights. And in 2023, she started her current role on The Guardian’s U.S. staff. 

Last June, Sherman published her first book, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future. The book is both an investigative report and a cultural critique of the sex lives of young adults in a post-Roe, post-#MeToo country, she says.  

“LGBTQ+ rights and sex education and birth control access and abortion, but also sexual assault — all these things are connected. The repeal of Roe v. Wade affects all these other issues,” Sherman says. “With the book, I wanted to lay out the ways changes in abortion legislation could affect young people even more.” 

Sherman says it can be tempting to shy away from controversial topics as a journalist. But the way she sees it, these things are controversial precisely because they are important.  

“Why stay away from things that seem too niche or taboo?” she asks. “The fact of the matter is, a lot of the things that seem niche or heavy are the things that affect many people’s lives.”