Author: Belle Taylor-McGhee

Belle Taylor-McGhee is a writer, media and public policy professional, and former member of the national steering committee that successfully worked to advance the first-ever over-the-counter birth control pill in the U.S.

One Megabill for the Megarich

The Trump administration is calling its new budget “the most pro-family legislation ever crafted.” But for women like Bre’Jaynae Joiner, a single mother of two in Oakland, the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP threaten her family’s very survival.

Over the next decade, more than 11 million Americans—mostly women and children—are expected to lose health coverage, while deep food assistance cuts and work requirements will push even more families into crisis. Advocates call the bill a massive transfer of wealth to the rich at the expense of the poor, a policy that will shutter rural hospitals, deny essential care and worsen maternal mortality.

As Sen. Raphael Warnock puts it plainly: “If you cut $900 billion out of Medicaid, people are going to die.”

‘Critical as We Move Forward’: Reproductive Rights and Voter Advocacy Leaders Reckon With 2024 Election

Dr. Lauren Beene was still processing the election outcome when she spoke with Ms. magazine the morning after Donald Trump had been declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election. Dr. Beene, co-founder and Vice President of Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, had successfully led the fight a year ago to pass an amendment that enshrined the right to abortion in the state’s constitution. Yet Dr. Beene now worried that under Trump, a national abortion ban may be in the not-so-distant future, and Ohio’s win to protect abortion rights could be in jeopardy.

Meet the Coalition of Governors Determined to Protect Abortion Rights for All Americans

The Reproductive Freedom Alliance is a nonpartisan coalition of 23 governors determined to protect abortion rights and reproductive health.

“It shows the alignment of Democratic governors who are very clear about women’s health, public health and the fact that the Dobbs decision is a complete violation of long-held constitutional rights—fundamental rights for women and their families,” said New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

(This article originally appears in the Summer 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox!)

All Eyes on Ohio: The Next Abortion Battleground State

Proponents of the ballot measure to amend Ohio’s state constitution to protect the right to abortion always knew they faced an uphill battle. Challenged to both gather enough signatures to make the ballot and defeat a Republican-led measure that would make it more difficult to amend the state constitution—aimed at derailing the amendment—advocates in the Buckeye state are rising to the task.

(This article originally appears in the Fall 2023 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get the issue delivered straight to your mailbox!)

Reproductive Rights Supporters See a Path to Victory: Letting the Voters Decide

There is great reason to look at direct democracy as an opportunity to address the disconnect where the elected leadership does not reflect the needs and the will of the voters—and there is a reason conservative lawmakers want to close that window, as they are attempting to do in Ohio.

(This article originally appears in the Spring 2023 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get the issue delivered straight to your mailbox!)

Doctors on Dobbs: Abortion Providers Bear Witness to the Devastating Effects of Roe’s Overturn

Abortion providers bear witness to the immediate and devastating effects of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe.

“It has become devastating to practice medicine,” said Dr. Ellie Ragsdale, an ob-gyn who specializes in high-risk obstetrics and fetal therapy at an academic medical center in Cleveland. “You come to work every day and hope that the decisions you make are the best decisions for your patients, and that those decisions don’t land you in jail.”

Special Delivery

Inside the maternity ward at the Kagera Health Center in northwestern section of Tanzania are more than a dozen young women—some with infants in their arms, lying on tattered cots too worn for repair; others still waiting to give birth. Most of the women have been here for two to three weeks; all came hoping […]

The Right of Every Woman

Driving through Uganda, one is struck by the beauty of its vast hills and green valleys, where banana plantations are bountiful and the fruit—one of the country’s staples—is sold alongside the road. But outside the capital of Kampala, one also notices how narrow and bumpy those roads can be, and how hard it would be […]