Say Their Names: The Women Who Died After Being Denied Emergency Abortion Care
We know the names of nine women who have died after doctors denied them life-saving care because of fears they would be criminally prosecuted under abortion bans: Josseli Barnica, Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, Amber Nicole Thurman, Candi Miller, Porsha Ngumezi, Taysha Wilkinson-Sobieski, Nevaeh Crain, Tierra Walker and Ciji Graham.
At least three least three more women—all unnamed at this time—died between October 2022 and July 2024 as a result of denied or delayed emergency abortion care, according to a March 2025 study released in academic journal CHEST.
In all, public health experts estimate that abortion bans have led to the deaths of at least 59 women—but we may never know their names.
In a lawsuit involving denial of emergency care to pregnant women, the National Women’s Law Center filed a brief documenting more than 100 cases of women almost dying when hospitals denied emergency medical care because of abortion bans—though “the true number [of cases] is likely significantly higher,” according to the brief.
Congress should move to pass two critical protections: The Women’s Health Protection Act, which would establish a statutory right for healthcare providers to offer abortion services and for patients to receive them; and the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH) Act, which would ensure that every person who receives healthcare or insurance through the federal government will have coverage for abortion services.
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Symptoms, Hormones and the Fight for Better Care: What Every Woman Should Know About Menopause and Perimenopause
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The Curious Case of Afong Moy: Asian Womanhood and National Belonging In the U.S.
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Trump Considers Blocking Abortion Access for Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors in Federal Custody (Again)
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Trump’s Attack on Birthright Citizenship Echoes a Confederate Playbook
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April 2026 Reads for the Rest of Us
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How Cyberattacks on Essential Services Hit Women Harder
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Founding Feminists: 250 Years of an Unfinished Revolution (With Janell Hobson)
Two hundred and fifty years ago, a small group of men declared that “all men are created equal,” casting a vision of liberty that has shaped the American imagination ever since. But even as they debated freedom in Philadelphia, women were writing, organizing, governing, resisting and insisting on their place within the nation taking form.
As Ms. launches a new series on our country’s Founding Feminists this month, Dr. Michele Goodwin is joined by the series’ editor, Professor Janell Hobson, to discuss what America’s 250th anniversary means for women and the feminist agenda.
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Cover Reveal and Spring 2026 Issue Sneak Peek: ICE Is ‘the Army of the Patriarchy’
In early February, while the nation was still reeling from the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, Loretta Ross and Jackson Katz—two feminist academics with decidedly different backgrounds and identities—discussed how U.S. federal agents became the enforcement arm of the nation’s racism and misogyny.
You’ll find this, and more, in the Spring 2026 issue of Ms.
The Abolitionist Origins of American Feminism
From Mary Wollstonecraft to Sojourner Truth, the fight for women’s rights emerged alongside—and was fundamentally shaped by—the struggle to abolish slavery and secure universal human rights.
On the 250th anniversary of the founding of the republic, it is timely to trace the history of American feminism, whose roots lie in the revolutionary era and are inextricably bound with the movement to abolish slavery.
(This essay is part of the FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists series, marking the 250th anniversary of America by reclaiming the revolution through the women and gender-expansive people whose ideas, labor and resistance shaped U.S. democracy.)
