Category: Health

Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.

Tasked with examining pregnancy-related deaths to improve maternal health, a panel of experts, including 10 doctors, deemed Amber Nicole Thurman’s death “preventable” and said the hospital’s delay in performing the critical procedure had a “large” impact on her fatal outcome.

Thurman’s case marks the first time an abortion-related death, officially deemed “preventable,” is coming to public light.

Their reviews of individual patient cases are not made public. But ProPublica obtained reports that confirm that at least two women have already died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state. There are almost certainly others. Though Republican lawmakers who voted for state bans on abortion say the laws have exceptions to protect the “life of the mother,” medical experts cautioned that the language is not rooted in science and ignores the fast-moving realities of medicine.

Keeping Score: Liz Cheney Calls Trump and Vance ‘Misogynistic Pigs’; Women Break Barriers at Paralympics and Emmys; Taylor Swift Endorses Harris

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week: Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose admits anti-abortion groups helped him write abortion rights ballot language; Kamala Harris and Donald Trump spar over abortion, Project 2025 and immigration at the presidential debate; Paralympics athletes and Emmy winners break records; Taylor Swift endorses Harris and Walz; Montana Supreme Court protects minors seeking abortion care; attacks on women journalists and LGBTQ people; new pay gap data is worse than last year; and more.

1969, a Pre-Roe Experience: An Excerpt From New Memoir, ‘A Termination’

In her new memoir, A Termination, writer and actor Honor Moore recounts her decision to have an abortion in 1969: “I didn’t think about I’m having an abortion, I just did it. Blasted through fear; I want this life, not that life. … I made the decision by myself. But also with the remote-control help of my mother: ‘Don’t come home pregnant.'”

Abortions are sought by a wide range of people for many different reasons. There is no single story. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls. (Share your abortion story by emailing myabortionstory@msmagazine.com.)

Community Providers Have Given Abortion Pills to Over 70,000 People in Restrictive States Since Dobbs

In response to the Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022 and many states banning and restricting abortion access, abortion advocates have created volunteer-run, donor-supported, community-based mutual aid groups around the country to provide free abortion pills to people living in states restricting abortion. These groups serve people of all ages and gestational stages, using different protocols for people in later pregnancy. As they start their third year of operations, they have mailed abortion medications to over 70,000 people in total.

Do Parents Have the Right to Control Their Daughters’ Sexuality?

Title X, the federally funded family planning program that provides confidential family planning services to teens has once again come under attack. In separate lawsuits, two Texas parents have alleged that by allowing their daughters to obtain contraceptives in the absence of their consent, the program has effectively divested them of their “God-given right to ensure their daughters remain virgins until marriage.”

This attack is on Title X is nothing new. The rights of parents to control the upbringing of their children has long been a rallying cry of Christian conservatives as they battle against the ostensible indoctrination of their children “with a secular worldview that amount[s] to a godless religion.” As they see it, a particularly pernicious aspect of this “godless religion” is the belief that  “’teen promiscuity is … normal and acceptable conduct.”

Over the course of four decades, courts have consistently held that although Title X encourages parental involvement, it does not require it based on the recognition that “confidentiality [is] a crucial factor in attracting teenagers to Title X clinics and reducing incidence of teenage pregnancies.”

Misogynist Manifesto: Fighting Project 2025’s Plans to Dismantle Democracy as We Know It

The final installment of a three-part series about the 900-plus-page right-wing “misogynistic manifesto”:

Project 2025 is a sinister plan to replace nonpartisan civil servants who enforce laws guaranteeing women’s rights, with trained ideologues determined to undermine these rights.

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

New Yorkers Can Vote ‘to Protect Abortion and Reproductive Freedom’ Through an ERA Ballot Measure

This November, voters in New York state will have the chance to weigh in on Proposal 1, the first U.S. constitutional amendment of its kind, which will establish comprehensive safeguards against discrimination and explicitly protect reproductive rights, including the right to abortion for state residents. According to New Yorkers for Equal Rights (NYER), a broad coalition of more than 300 diverse groups that support the initiative, the effort is different from other equal rights amendments because it includes protections for reproductive rights.

NYER campaign director Sasha N. Ahuja spoke to Ms. two months before Election Day: “We have to set the path for other states to pursue equality and provide the strongest possible protections in their constitutions.”