More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Lizz Winstead, comedian and founder of Abortion Access Front, teamed up with director Ruth Leitman to create the hilarious, heart-filled documentary No One Asked You.
“There’s nothing shameful about needing to have an abortion,” Winstead told Ms.
“It’s a medical procedure that people need to help them achieve their life goals, and to help them have the life that they want to have,” said Leitman.
Two days after Alia Louise Stenback survived the Aug. 8 wildfire in Lāhainā, Maui—the deadliest wildfire the United States has seen in over 100 years—she parked herself at a medical tent. One month later, with no ambulances around to provide transport to a hospital, her grandson was born. With a donated birthing kit and the support of traditional midwives, Stenback “caught [her] grandson.”
Stenback grants herself “outlaw” status because she provided care during labor without a midwifery license in assumed violation of Hawaii’s HRS §457J, otherwise known as the Midwifery Restriction Law. Originally passed in the name of maternal and infant safety, the law is the subject of impassioned protests, new legislative proposals and a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation.
We live in a society obsessed with fatness. Or, perhaps more accurately, obsessed with fighting it. Fatness has been rendered a disease, and we are inundated with “cures,” which particularly haunt women’s bodies—and their wallets.
Questioning the devotion to anti-fatness usually prompts a “well, being fat is unhealthy!” But according to Kate Manne, feminist philosopher and author of the recently released Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia, the connection between weight and health is not so clear cut. What is clear, Manne brilliantly reveals, is that fatphobia, not fatness, is the problem.
Reproductive healthcare experts say the post-Dobbs period will feature tens of thousands of forced births purely because of clinic closures—many abortion seekers will be too far away from the ones that remain open. Access is further interrupted, they said, by court decisions so confusing that providers do not know if and when they can legally dispense abortion medication or intervene with abortion care to save lives.
This Monday, Jan. 8, Ms. Studios dropped the first episode of United Bodies, a new podcast about the lived experience of health. Hosted and co-produced by Kendall Ciesemier, an acclaimed health and disability advocate and writer, United Bodies will examine how physical, mental, spiritual and social health impacts how we understand ourselves, how we interact with the world and how we may fight for a better one.
2023 marked three years of On the Issues With Michele Goodwin, a fiercely feminist podcast about the most compelling issues of our time. This year, Goodwin brought us lawmakers, scholars and founders of movements and organizations that have defined how we think about fields like reproductive justice, care work and gun violence.
We selected some of the most powerful words heard on the podcast this year to propel us into 2024.
The government might shut down this week (again). At the same time, House Republicans are trying to abolish the Women’s Bureau; cut the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; slash maternal and child health support from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA); eliminate funding for Title X family planning; *and* reverse the FDA decision on the abortion pill mifepristone.
When analyzing Tuesday’s election results, one point becomes glaringly apparent: Abortion. Wins.
Abortion won (big) in Ohio. Abortion won in Virginia, where Democratic lawmakers pledged to voters to keep Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s anti-abortion and anti-education policies at bay—and voters delivered. Abortion helped keep Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) in office, who has made his pro-abortion-rights position clear.
Ms. breaks down the results from the elections we were watching—plus a few other notable ones.
In the face of a referendum that could add a right to reproductive freedom to the Ohio constitution, state Republicans have organized a campaign to confuse voters and undermine the democratic process.
As Ohioans United started collecting signatures to make sure the Reproductive Freedom Amendment would be on the ballot in November, state Republicans started plotting. They first tried to make it more difficult to pass referenda. Thankfully, Ohio voters showed up during an August special election to defeat the amendment—by a 14-point margin. Unfazed by the loss, state Republicans embarked on a crusade to push voters away from the Reproductive Freedom Amendment.
This November, Ohioans will decide whether to add to the state’s constitution the right for individuals to make their own reproductive healthcare decisions, including abortion. Early voting in the election has already begun.
A coalition of reproductive, women’s and civil rights organizations, Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, is urging voters to vote YES on Issue 1 to protect reproductive freedom.
Ohioans, here’s all you need to know about how to vote in this election.
