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. In addition to Ms. magazine, Dr. Goodwin's commentary can be read in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Nation, CNN and the LA 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.

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.

Trump’s Attack on Birthright Citizenship Echoes a Confederate Playbook

The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, a landmark case that seeks to fundamentally rewrite the substance and meaning of one of the most important provisions of the Constitution—birthright citizenship—by presidential fiat. 

For over 150 years, birthright citizenship has been protected by the 14th Amendment and widely recognized as one of the most important, fundamental rights found in the Constitution. 

At the core of this case is not only a challenge to birthright citizenship, but an attack on a nation that fought back against the villainy and evils of slavery and Chinese exclusion laws. It is an affront to the civil rights movement’s victory over “separate but equal” policies of the Jim Crow era—policies that sought to fasten Black people to segregationist second-class citizenship.   

Trump is writing the modern-day version of a Confederate playbook. 

He Called Me ‘Doc.’ I Called Him ‘Rev.’ Remembering Jesse Jackson’s Moral Leadership

I knew Rev. Jackson beyond the conventions. He married me and my husband, Gregory Shaffer, almost 25 years ago. He always showed up and gave graciously of himself when I called—whether it was to host a convening on HIV/AIDS at Rainbow PUSH in the early 2000s, or to bring together hundreds of working-class residents from the South Side of Chicago to engage on matters of national healthcare, or to meet with (mostly women) academics coming together to figure out the intersections of law, family and reproductive rights at the University of Chicago Club 20 years ago. 

He called me “Doc” or “Doctor Michele.” I called him “Rev.”

A week ago, by his father’s bedside, Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) and I spoke by phone. He had just delivered a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast calling the president to account—to be more humane and just, and to “do what is right.” It was clear that Rev. Jackson’s legacy is already living on.

In a Scorching Order, Federal Judge Rejects Trump’s Attempt to Trample the First Amendment and Rewrite America’s Antebellum Past

In a sharply worded order, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe instructed the Trump administration on Monday—George Washington’s birthday—to reverse course and restore exhibits that depicted and paid homage to the enslaved people who labored at Washington’s home in Philadelphia. Citing George Orwell’s novel, 1984, Judge Rufe (first appointed by President George W. Bush) chastised the administration for operating as if the U.S. has a “Ministry of Truth” whose motto is “Ignorance is Strength.” 

The panels in question were installed at the President’s House in the early 2000s, after years of advocacy by local Black leaders and activists, to commemorate the nine men, women and children enslaved by Washington there: Ona (Oney) Judge, Hercules Posey, Richmond Posey, Christopher Sheels, Joe Richardson, Austin, Giles, Moll and Paris.

However, last month—a week before the start of the United States’ 100th anniversary of Black History Month—NPS workers arrived unannounced at the historical site in Philadelphia and removed these panels and video exhibits.

This case is not just about the erasure of slavery—which on its own is historically important. It’s also about the separation of powers and the First Amendment, which the Trump administration repeatedly violates.

The Cruel and Unusual Killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti

Barely two weeks apart, two American citizens have been slain in Minnesota by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the Twin Cities. Their deaths raise important questions—not just about the violation of First Amendment freedoms, but also the trampling of Eighth Amendment protections that bar the government from inflicting “cruel and unusual punishment.” 

The War on Drugs Was a War on Black Mothers

In the late 20th century, the so-called “crack baby epidemic” became a media obsession. Politicians, prosecutors and even physicians bought into a false narrative: that poor Black women who used cocaine during pregnancy were dooming their children to lives of permanent brain damage, misery and crime. The stories were sensational—and wrong. What these accounts ignored were the actual conditions of women’s lives: poverty, lack of healthcare, untreated trauma and mental illness. Instead of compassion, women like Regina McKnight—raped, grieving, depressed and self-medicating—were met with prosecution, prison sentences and public shaming.

The truth is, there was no epidemic of “biologically inferior” babies. Rigorous scientific research—largely disregarded by mainstream media—showed that cocaine exposure did not cause the catastrophic outcomes predicted by pundits. Yet the racialized panic over “crack babies” justified criminalizing pregnancy, targeting Black mothers, and fueling the broader war on drugs. These myths, and the policies they spawned, continue to shape how our legal and healthcare systems treat women—especially women of color—today.

[An excerpt from Michele Goodwin’s book Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.]

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The road to recovery—and the right to recovery—is essential to a free and fair democracy. This essay is part of a new multimedia collection exploring the intersections of addiction, recovery and gender justice. The Right to Recovery Is Essential to Democracy is a collaboration between Ms. and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health at Georgetown Law, in honor of National Recovery Month.

The Supreme Court Doesn’t Really Care About Originalism. ‘Medina v. Planned Parenthood’ Just Proved It.

By upholding a South Carolina order that strips Medicaid funding from abortion providers, the Supreme Court abandoned both patient choice and the original civil rights vision behind Medicaid.

Medicaid funding is crucial for low-income Americans—it’s the vital thread that connects them with healthcare in a society where universal healthcare does not exist. 

Sixty Years After Bloody Sunday, the Fight for Justice Continues

Sixty years after the Selma to Montgomery marches, the lessons of Bloody Sunday remain urgent. The brutal attack on marchers fighting for voting rights in 1965 exposed how laws can be weaponized to uphold inequality—a reality that persists today. From efforts to suppress voting rights to attacks on academic freedom, the struggle for justice continues. As history warns, democracy and the rule of law must be actively defended, not just written on paper.

Reflecting on Trump’s Immunity Win Before the Supreme Court as He Strips Security Details From Former Government Officials Under Threat

Mere years after the Civil War, in United States v. Lee, the Court recognized that “[n]o man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it.” 

One week into the Trump administration, this wisdom rings hollow.