On Feb. 24, the world lost a bright light whose fiery passion matched her signature red hair: my friend, Sue Ellen Allen.
Indefatigable. Courageous breast cancer survivor. Former inmate. Humble. Gracious. Generous. Vulnerable.
Author: Michele Goodwin
Michele Bratcher Goodwin is a prolific thoughtleader on matters of constitutional law and health policy. In addition to Ms. magazine, Dr. Goodwin's commentary can be read in The Atlantic, The New York Times, the Nation, CNN and The L.A. Times, among others. She holds the Linda D. & Timothy J. O'Neill chair in constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown Law School and serves as the co-faculty director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. She is the executive producer of Ms. Studios.
The Forgotten Reproductive Justice Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King
Dr. King described family planning as “a special and urgent concern.”
The contrasts between the conversations taking place in the public sphere now versus then are striking. Dr. King would likely be horrified by the state’s oversized role in determining how and when women can control their reproductive health.
Removing Trump from The White House Will Not Fix What’s Broken in America
This anti-democratic virus is more than a passing phase; it infects the soul of our democracy and reaches well beyond Trump. The president is only a symptom of a larger, endemic problem.
A defeat of Donald Trump at the ballot box will not undo the growing mistrust of the Supreme Court and concerns about its commitment to protecting fundamental civil liberties, including voting rights.
Women’s Inequality Has Been Maintained by Force of Law. Ruth Bader Ginsburg Knew This.
Justice Ginsburg took seriously the human dignity of women and girls and her jurisprudence represented that. She understood the myriad ways in which state violence: physical, economic and psychological undercuts women’s potential and undermines their safety, liberty, equality, autonomy and privacy.
Why We Need a Reproductive Justice Bill of Rights
The biases of poverty, sex and race have always motivated reproductive policing.
The U.S. needs a reproductive justice bill of rights—because without it, we continue to risk the gravest atrocities carried out with the official endorsement of the state on women and girls in the United States.
It’s Time to Confront Senator Helms’s Sexist, Racist and Homophobic Legacy
The Helms Amendment—named for the late, self-proclaimed bigot, Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.)—prohibits U.S. aid for pregnancy terminations. It’s time to repeal the Helms Amendment and replace it with sound policy that supports full reproductive healthcare access. That is what women abroad deserve: our respect.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—Meet Ms. Mary Hamilton
The special venom and bigotry behind such slurs lobbed at women of color are unmistakable as history teaches us.
For me, that’s why Ms. Mary Hamilton’s story comes to mind.
Madame Speaker, It’s Not Just Confederate Statues That Should Go. Start with Justice Taney.
This week, Nancy Pelosi called on Congressional leadership to shed its halls of statues bearing likenesses to and honoring Confederates. Yet, for me, as a constitutional law scholar, the most troubling of the busts and statues at the Capitol is that of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney—who wrote that Blacks were “of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race.”
Addressing Racism’s Toll: My Minneapolis Experience
Living as a Black woman in Minneapolis and dealing with constant racist episodes, “I often felt as if I were in a strange sociological experiment,” writes Michele Goodwin—so much so that her biracial daughter did not feel comfortable returning to the city. “But this needn’t have been my family’s story. So how do we fix this?”
Injecting Bleach Is Not An Elixir For What Ails The United States
The briefing was stunning—not only for what the president conjectured to senior medical officials and media in attendance, but also for what it reveals about another crisis in the United States, namely a crisis in education in America. As comedians spoofed and memes mocked the president, the real tragedy resided not simply in his bizarre conjectures, but in a devaluing of education and science.