Idaho Women Are Temporarily Safer—But This Is Not a Victory for Abortion Rights

On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued the official ruling in its final major abortion case of 2024, dismissing the consolidated cases of Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States. The Court’s dismissal temporarily upholds a lower court ruling that sided with the Biden administration in requiring that hospitals perform life and health-saving abortions where needed.

This is good news for obvious reasons—chief among them that “women don’t deserve to die or become disabled because they got pregnant in an anti-abortion state” really should not be up for debate. With this decision, Idaho individuals still won’t have basic abortion rights, but they will at least have the same rights as everyone else to be medically stabilized if they find themselves pregnant and in an emergency medical situation.

But this Court wouldn’t answer a vital question: Do pregnant women deserve the same medical treatment to save their lives and preserve their health as everyone else? It may not be the worst-case scenario, but it’s also not any sort of win.

Two Years Post-Dobbs: The Ones Who Don’t Make It

Since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the number of out-of-state patients I’ve seen as an abortion provider in Maryland has skyrocketed. Many of the individuals who were able to get the abortion they sought had to navigate costly barriers. However, the patients I see are the ones who have overcome all of these obstacles to get the basic healthcare they need.

It pains me to think about all the patients who do not make it to the health center, the ones who cannot navigate the myriad barriers to get the abortion care they need out-of-state.

‘Not a Victory,’ But ‘a Delay’: With the Supreme Court’s EMTALA Ruling, U.S. Women Are Still at Risk

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In an opinion published Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed its final major abortion case of the term. The opinion was a narrow ruling that Idaho cannot prohibit doctors from performing emergency abortions for women with life-threatening pregnancy complications while the case is appealed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Make no mistake: The ruling in Moyle and Idaho is barely a win for abortion supporters. The Court refused to rule on the underlying issue: Must state abortion bans provide an exemption when a woman’s health is at risk, not only her life? 

The Case for a Guaranteed Income for Single Moms: ‘Everybody Needs a Little Extra Cushion, Especially When You Have Kids’

Front and Center offers first-person accounts of Black mothers living in Jackson, Miss., receiving a guaranteed income. First launched in 2018, the Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT) is about to enter its fifth cohort, bringing the number of moms served to more than 400 and making it the longest-running guaranteed income program in the country. Across the country, guaranteed income pilots like MMT are finding that recipients are overwhelmingly using their payments for basic needs like groceries, housing and transportation.

“My main goals during this year of receiving funds is to find regular schools for my kids that offer them opportunities. And next year, or the year after, I’d like to find a house with a yard so they can feel comfortable. Something that’s ours.

“I’m so happy to be a part of this program. … I think it should be a standard all across the world. Mothers do so much every single day. Everybody needs a little extra cushion, especially when you have kids.”

A Second Trump Term Would Double Down on Erasing Trans Rights. Here’s How Advocates Are Preparing.

If former president Donald Trump is reelected, advocacy groups expect him to enact anti-LGBTQ+ policies that are more far-reaching and extreme than those he put in place during his first term—based on his campaign promises and policies suggested by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has shaped the GOP’s agenda for decades. 

Title IX Says Universities Must Accommodate Students Who Have Had Abortions. Texas Is Suing.

The state of Texas does not believe its arsenal of antiabortion laws has done enough to strip pregnant people of control over their bodies.

Represented by antiabortion warrior Attorney General Ken Paxton, Texas is suing the Biden administration in a challenge to the Title IX claim that abortion-related discrimination is prohibited sex discrimination. Two professors from the University of Texas-Austin—John Hatfield, a professor of finance, and Daniel Bonevac, a philosophy professor—subsequently joined the suit as named plaintiffs.

At its core, this case is about the surveillance and control of the sexual and reproductive lives of students, and the chillingly privileged view that professors are somehow entitled to this measure of control over students’ lives based upon their own views about abortion.

The Upcoming Presidential Debate Is Really a Masculinity Contest

The GOP and its mouthpieces in conservative media repeat constantly that Trump and MAGA are the natural home of “real men,” who are the only ones that have what it takes to protect and defend this country.

By contrast, Biden embodies a wonkish, managerial masculinity that is calm, measured and empathetic. But that matters very little in terms of how he will be judged on his debate performance. What will matter is his energy level. His assertiveness and aggressiveness. The way he responds to Trump’s verbal aggression and bullying behavior. Whether or not he “scores points” in verbal repartee. In other words, the way he performs his “manhood.”

Flipping the Script on True Crime: The Ms. Q&A With Author Kristine S. Ervin

Kristine S. Ervin was 8 when her mother was abducted from a mall parking lot, murdered and abandoned in an Oklahoma oil field. In her debut memoir Rabbit Heart, Ervin resists the true crime trope of exploiting and glorifying femicide and instead delves into the emotional toll her mother’s death took on her and her family. We sat down recently to talk about her book, growing up motherless, how this informed her life’s gender power dynamics and her evolution from being a feminist-skeptic to writing what is undeniably a deeply feminist memoir.

“I see this as a grief memoir, a motherless daughter memoir, a memoir that is meant to show what 25 years of unrelenting, brutal grief looks like when you are the loved one of a victim and you don’t have answers.”