Justice & Law

The War on Women Report: New Texas Law Targets Abortion Pills; More Planned Parenthoods Close Amid Federal Funding Cuts

PUBLISHED 9/30/2025 by and

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide—the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.” We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—A judge in Missouri is currently deciding whether a proposed amendment that would ban abortion in the state’s constitution can appear on the 2026 ballot … even though Missourians voted just last fall to keep abortion legal in the state.
—The Trump administration announced in August that it would remove gender-affirming care from the health services offered to federal workers.
—Mississippi declared a public health emergency as the state’s infant mortality rate soars to a rate nearly double the national average.

… and more.

‘We Need Equal Rights in the Constitution’: NOW’s New Leaders Kim Villanueva and Rose Brunache See ‘a Lot of Energy for Advocacy’

PUBLISHED 9/30/2025 by

Almost 60 years ago, in 1966, Pauli Murray, a queer Episcopal priest and legal scholar, approached noted feminist Betty Friedan about the need for an organization to push the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce the Civil Rights Act. Although the Act had passed in 1964 and banned discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, and religion, Murray understood that the law’s promise would remain unfulfilled without vigilance and pressure from activists. Friedan agreed, and later that year, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was created.

Newly-installed president Kim Villanueva—the former president of NOW’s Illinois chapter, cofounder of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus and chair of the National Election Committee—and vice president Rose Brunache, former president of the DC chapter, spoke to Ms. reporter Eleanor J. Bader one month after taking office.

Five Ways We Can Support Women in Recovery Without Punishing Them

PUBLISHED 9/29/2025 by

Recovery is not just a personal journey—it is a struggle shaped by policies that too often punish women rather than support them. From losing custody of their children to facing barriers in treatment and the criminal legal system, women with substance use disorder encounter hurdles that men rarely experience. Trauma, stigma and inadequate access to care create a landscape where seeking help can feel like choosing between survival and motherhood.

My sister’s story—years of overdose, illness and family separation—mirrors countless others who live at the intersection of addiction, gender and policy neglect.

The solutions are clear but rarely implemented. Women need access to care that recognizes their lived realities, programs that allow them to keep their families together, and protections that prevent survival strategies from being criminalized. Trauma-informed, women-specific treatment, expanded childcare, extended postpartum coverage, and decriminalization of behaviors tied to survival are not optional—they are essential. Until our systems prioritize dignity, equity and healing, the numbers will keep rising and the stories will keep repeating. Recovery must be recognized as a right, not a risk.

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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 War on Drugs Was a War on Black Mothers

PUBLISHED 9/29/2025 by

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 Abortion Pill That Transformed Medicine Is Under Attack

PUBLISHED 9/26/2025 by | UPDATED 9/30/2025 at 11:10 A.M. PT

By approving mifepristone (the first pill in the two-step medication abortion regimen), the Food and Drug Administration gave people access to one of the safest, most effective and most studied medications in modern medicine.

Yet despite overwhelming evidence and broad public support, there are relentless attempts to restrict access to mifepristone. In 2023, a coalition led by extremist antiabortion groups filed a lawsuit seeking to roll back the FDA’s approval of the drug (which the Supreme Court ultimately dismissed). But the attacks have continued, fueled by a dangerous belief that science is optional.

We’ve seen it with COVID vaccines. We’ve seen it with birth control. We’ve seen it in lawsuits claiming Tylenol causes autism. We’ve even seen people question milk pasteurization and folic acid in prenatal vitamins—two of the most basic public health measures we have. The through line is the same: Ignore the evidence, stir up doubt and leave patients to bear the consequences.

From Berlin to Beijing to U.S. Congress, Women’s Courage to Convene Propels Us Forward

PUBLISHED 9/26/2025 by

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, sports and entertainment, judicial offices and the private sector—with a little gardening mixed in!

This week:
—We mark 60 years since former President Lyndon Johnson advanced equal opportunity in employment.
—When women come together, share our strength, and lift one another up, the impossible becomes possible. 
—In a landslide victory, Adelita Grigalva becomes Arizona’s first Latina to Congress.
—Of the four Republican House members signing the petition about the actions and allies of sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, three are women.
—A record number of U.S. legislators won’t run for reelection next year.
—Hillary Clinton “sees a dangerous moment for women’s rights and democracy.”
—Akshi Chawla, who writes the #WomenLead Substack and is a valuable resource on international women’s representation, on the great question: “How do I get started?”
—The Marshall Islands, a rapidly vanishing Oceania nation, is led by the region’s first-ever woman president, Hilda Heine.
—Who was the first American woman to have an airport named in her honor?

… and more.

Texas’ Newest Abortion Restriction Tells Us What We Already Knew: It Was Never About States’ Rights

PUBLISHED 9/25/2025 by

In a move that surprised no one, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed HB 7 into law, allowing private citizens to sue anyone who manufactures, distributes or mails abortion medication to Texas residents. But this law is more than just another restriction—it signals that Texas isn’t content to enforce its near-total abortion ban within state lines. With HB 7, the state is now targeting out-of-state actors, making clear that antiabortion lawmakers are determined to export their bans beyond Texas and reshape abortion access nationwide.

This tactic exposes the lie at the heart of the “states’ rights” argument that fueled the fight to overturn Roe v. Wade. The goal was never to return abortion policy to individual states; it was always to prevent access wherever abortion is legal. Post-Dobbs, patients have continued to travel or use telehealth to obtain care, and states like Texas are responding with aggressive measures—state “trafficking” laws and multi-state lawsuits—to block access across borders. HB 7 is just the latest example of how far antiabortion states will go to control abortion nationally.

South Carolina Is Trying to Apply Racketeering Laws to Criminalize Abortion Providers

PUBLISHED 9/25/2025 by

In an unprecedented move toward a total abortion ban, SB 323 seeks to apply federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) laws to abortion providers to criminalize the procedure and further restrict birth control. 

The bill, introduced in February and drafted by National Right to Life, the oldest antiabortion organization in the country, outlines legislation that would impose a near-total ban in South Carolina—where a strict six-week ban has already been in place since May of 2023.

A hearing before the Senate Medical Affairs Subcommittee is scheduled for Oct. 1.

Jessica Valenti and Kylie Cheung in Abortion, Every Day called the bill “a shocking attack on free speech. Referring someone for an abortion would be a felony, as would sharing information about how to get an abortion. Pro-choice websites would be illegal … even giving someone gas money to get an out-of-state abortion could land you in prison for 30 years.”

The Part of the Epstein Story We Keep Ignoring? Survivors.

PUBLISHED 9/25/2025 by

Virginia Giuffre fought Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell for decades. As a survivor of their trafficking, she spoke truth to power and endured public scrutiny as she became one of their most vocal and transparent accusers. On April 24, she died by suicide. 

Her death should have marked a devastating failure of our systems to support trafficking survivors. Instead, it became another footnote in a political circus focused on conspiracy theories and file releases.

The Return of the Tradwife Gospel

PUBLISHED 9/24/2025 by

When Erika Kirk took the stage at her husband’s memorial, dressed in white and preaching about virtue, guardianship and motherhood as women’s highest calling, it was not just a moment of personal grief. It was also a sermon drawn directly from the playbook of the 19th-century Cult of Domesticity, which elevated piety, purity, domesticity and submission as the cornerstones of “true womanhood.” While Kirk framed these ideals as a source of women’s strength, history shows that they have long functioned as tools of confinement and control.

The irony, of course, is that Kirk is now CEO of Turning Point USA—a position she could never hold without the very feminist progress she disavows. Tradwife rhetoric may promise dignity and purpose, but as the Cult of Domesticity and later social purity movements revealed, these ideals have always come at women’s expense. They strip away autonomy, enshrine patriarchal power and ultimately sacrifice women—even those who embrace the gospel themselves.