Author: Michele Goodwin

Michele Bratcher Goodwin is a prolific thoughtleader, author, advocate and public commentator. Her research, scholarship and public commentary span constitutional law, women's rights, domestic and international health policy and biotechnology. She is the executive producer of Ms. Studios and host of the first and flagship Ms. podcast, On the Issues. In addition to Ms. magazine, Dr. Goodwin's commentary can be read in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Nation, CNN and the Los Angeles Times, among others. She holds the Linda D. & Timothy J. O'Neill chair in constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown Law and serves as the faculty director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Her academic publications appear in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Cornell Law Review and NYU Law Review, among others. She is the author of the award-winning book Policing The Womb: Invisible Women and The Criminalization of Motherhood.

Gloria Steinem Lit a Revolution. The Torch Is Ours Now.

This week, Gloria Steinem died at the age of 92, peacefully at her home in New York City and surrounded by people who loved her.

We will miss her at Ms. I will miss her personally.

There were parts of Gloria’s childhood that mirrored my own. For a period of time, Gloria did not attend school because she was tending to her mother. She later said that she chose not to have children because she had already had a mother to take care of.

We do not talk enough about stories like that: the sensitivity that came from her own childhood. Pronatalism in the United States still insists that all women should want children, care for those children, stay home and find satisfaction within the narrow boundaries others have drawn for them. Even education has historically been framed not as a path toward women’s intellectual or economic freedom, but as a place to find a husband.

To want something more—and to care about something larger than the life prescribed for you—has always carried challenging consequences for women. Gloria understood that deeply. She also understood that the freedom to shape one’s life begins with the ability to govern one’s own body.

In 2017, standing before the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., Gloria called for “a deep democracy” in which people would refuse to be quiet or controlled. “We are at one with each other,” she said. “We are looking at each other, not up. No more asking Daddy.”

Those words carry a special weight today. Democracy has never been a gift delivered from above. Equality has never arrived because people in power suddenly found it convenient. Both are built by people who recognize one another, tell the truth about their lives and refuse to accept that injustice is inevitable.

Rest in Power, Dolly Parton: Feminist Country Icon, Advocate for Women and Children, Philanthropist and Gifted Songwriter

Dolly Parton understood the power of being underestimated. Beneath the rhinestones, towering blond hair and self-deprecating jokes was a gifted songwriter, a shrewd businesswoman and a philanthropist whose work transformed the lives of millions of children and families.

Parton left behind a body of work that stretches far beyond the songs and films that made her one of the most beloved performers in American life. She sang about the dignity of working women. She placed hundreds of millions of books in the hands of children. She supported healthcare, disaster relief and lifesaving medical research. And she repeatedly used her enormous cultural influence to affirm the humanity of people who were too often marginalized, including Black and LGBTQ+ Americans.

Parton’s concern for women and children was expressed not only through her art, but in what she did with the wealth and influence her art created. We heard her legacy in the songs that made working women feel seen. We saw it in the books delivered to children, the families supported after disaster and the medical research that saved lives.

May Dolly Parton rest in power. May her legacy live on in every child who discovers a new world inside a book, every woman who demands dignity in the workplace and every person who chooses compassion when indifference would be easier.

Holding Dr. Fauci In Contempt Is a New Low For the Rule of Law

Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted Aug. 6 to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt, for invoking his constitutional right to invoke the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution during a highly contentious and jarring hearing, which lasted nearly three hours. 

The hearing marked a chilling day for health, science and medical memory—one more concerned about retribution and retaliation than truth and the deaths and devastation brought about by the global pandemic. Despite the decorum expected of the nation’s highest government officers, the hearing devolved into a type of vile theatrics unfitting members of the Senate.

Much of the news coverage of the hearing primarily focused on Fauci, the former White House chief medical adviser, invoking the Fifth Amendment 111 times.

Little ink was spilled on what should have been the most important point of a hearing: keeping people in the United States and around the world safe from past, present and future domestic and global health threats. 

Instead, COVID-19 was reduced to science fiction, making a mockery not only of the deaths brought about by the pandemic, but also the devastating, lingering harms.

That Fauci remains a focus of Republican scrutiny while Congress faces urgent healthcare challenges to Americans, ensuring clean air and water, reducing the cost of medical bills, addressing the affordability of medications, addressing environmental impact and focusing on staggering maternal and infant mortality, says much about the grave state of affairs in U.S. healthcare. 

Who’s Paying the Price for Trump’s Medicaid Cuts? Communities of Color and People Living With HIV.

President Trump and his Republican backers have been determined to gut the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and expanded Medicaid coverage ever since his first term in office. This year he is finally getting his way, putting the health of tens of millions of Americans at risk.

It is racial minorities and the chronically ill who will be the most harmed.

A year ago, Congress passed the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, putting in place onerous new eligibility requirements for Medicaid coverage, including work requirements. Medicaid enrollees ages 19 to 64 must complete at least 80 hours a month of work, community service, job training or education to maintain coverage, unless they qualify for an exemption. All states must comply with the new rule by Jan. 1, 2027.

The combination of ACA cuts and new barriers to Medicaid enrollment will likely cause historic coverage losses across the United States for years to come, according to new research: Nearly 16 million people stand to lose coverage by 2034.

Making Americans Smokers Again: Trump Administration Cuts Anti-Tobacco Programs

In May, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported one of the greatest public health victories of the past 50 years. A government survey found that cigarette smoking among U.S. adults dropped to an all-time low of 9 percent in 2025, the first time the smoking rate hit single digits. In the 1970s some 40 percent of U.S. adults smoked daily, as well as 16 percent of teenagers, but a culmination of tobacco taxes, smoking bans and remarkably successful public education campaigns turned around what is still the nation’s largest cause of preventable death. 

Which is why it is so astounding that the Trump administration, despite its stated goal to “make America healthy again,” is rolling back its smoking cessation efforts.

Who Gets to Be a Citizen Today?

In a highly anticipated decision, the Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, reaffirming that children born in the United States are citizens under the 14th Amendment, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. The ruling preserves one of the Constitution’s clearest guarantees, and averts what would have been one of the most sweeping assaults on American citizenship since Reconstruction.

The ruling was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson; Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch dissented in full, and Brett Kavanaugh in part.

The Court reached the correct result. But no constitutional democracy should take comfort in the fact that four justices were prepared to strip citizenship from children born on American soil, embracing Trump’s effort to narrow the Citizenship Clause and erase a constitutional promise that has defined U.S. democracy for more than 150 years. Their willingness to do so exposes just how vulnerable even our most fundamental constitutional commitments have become.

Public Health Under Fire: Military Flu Outbreak Illustrates the Danger of Politicizing Vaccine Policy

Few medical advances have saved more lives than vaccines. Yet the Trump administration continues to undermine that success by politicizing public health and discrediting decades of scientific evidence. The recent flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base—which sickened nearly 300 service members after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ended the military’s longstanding flu vaccine requirement—offers a stark reminder of what happens when ideology replaces evidence.

This is not an isolated incident. From weakening federal vaccine recommendations under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to fueling distrust in routine immunizations, the administration’s anti-science agenda is already contributing to preventable outbreaks and declining vaccination rates.

Public health should never be a partisan project, and the costs of treating it as one are measured in illness, lost readiness and lives put at unnecessary risk.

To the Men Who Send Women Hate Mail

I am not alone in receiving unsolicited emails—especially as a professor, public writer and thinker, and woman who dares to speak her mind. Often, the emails are thoughtful, engaging and sometimes deeply moving expressions of gratitude that warm the heart. However, from time to time, there are the crude, crass and obtuse intruders, thrusting insults and even threats into our inboxes. These expressions of masculine fragility and anger—whether intended to or not—chill the receiver’s speech and cause women to silence themselves.  

Here, then, is my response to Mr. Sawyer—but also, in many ways, a response to the countless men who insert themselves into women’s inboxes with condescension, hostility and misplaced certainty. Women in public life know these messages well: the unsolicited lectures, the attempts at intimidation, the casual cruelty masquerading as critique. Consider this every woman’s letter to the crass and crude male intruder in her inbox. I hope you enjoy.

The White House’s Medical Misinformation Is Harming American Children

Amid a war in Iran, the Epstein files, Americans gunned down in the Twin Cities, the gutting of the Department of Justice and more, domestic health policy might not be at the top of mind. Yet, American children are being harmed.

Vaccine mandates are being lifted across the United States, and the consequences are immediate and measurable.

In 2000, U.S. healthcare officials declared measles eradicated nationwide—a major public health achievement now under threat. As politicians weaponize science and elevate misinformation, measles cases are rapidly rising, driven overwhelmingly by low vaccination rates among children.

How did we get here? Disinformation, conspiracy theories and debunked claims about childhood vaccines have been transformed into political talking points and, in some cases, policy guidance. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—once globally respected—has been hollowed out, with key experts pushed out or resigning in protest.

Under the Trump administration, measles has not only returned but surged to record levels, following actions like the dismissal of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, long considered the gold standard for vaccine guidance.

The consequences are not abstract. Before the measles vaccine, millions of Americans were infected each year, with thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of hospitalizations. Children suffered encephalitis, pneumonia and lifelong complications; pregnant women faced miscarriage and death. That history is not distant—it is a warning.

Today, as vaccination rates decline and exemptions rise, the United States risks repeating it. Protecting children requires rejecting political distortions of science and recommitting to evidence-based public health—before more preventable harm is done.