More Than A Magazine, A Movement
On a long list of issues in the newly released survey, women identified domestic and sexual violence as the third most important one facing U.S. women collectively, behind abortion access and cost of living.
As we mark the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act today, it’s worth remembering one lesson that law teaches: Progress is possible.
A New York ballot measure to create constitutional protections for abortion and create explicit protections for people who experience discrimination, passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday.
Proposal 1, the first U.S. constitutional amendment of its kind, 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.”
The tragic shooting of Sonya Massey underscored profound systemic issues within law enforcement—especially police conduct and excessive force when it comes to Black women.
Massey, a Black woman with a known mental health condition, was shot and killed by a deputy from the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office in Springfield, Ill. This incident has intensified scrutiny of racial bias, inadequate mental health crisis responses and the erosion of trust between marginalized communities and police.
Post-Dobbs, “the anti-abortion movement is regrouping around a new goal: using the federal government to ban abortion in the rest of the country,” warns Vox’s Adam Freelander.
This thorough explainer video also features Ms. contributing editor Carrie Baker, Ms. contributor Mary Ziegler, Ian Millhiser, Anna North and Rachel Cohen.
Any road to the White House runs through moms. But new polling from Demand Justice shows that on the issues moms care most about—women’s rights, gun safety and healthcare—former president Donald Trump has a problem: his stacking of the U.S. Supreme Court with extremist justices.
The Supreme Court’s latest term—with blockbuster decisions on abortion, the Second Amendment, presidential immunity and more—highlights a looming crisis of legitimacy.
(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!)
The following is Madysyn Anderson’s personal story, as told to Courier Dallas:
“SB 8 became Texas law on Sept. 1, and I found out about my pregnancy just a couple of weeks later. I didn’t want an unwanted pregnancy to prevent me from completing the biggest achievement in my life thus far. I decided that I wanted to share my experience with abortion and be an educational resource.
“Unless our country gets a reality check about who we elect to office and we educate ourselves on their positions, we women have no hope of deciding whether we want to start a family or not—or if we want to carry a rapist’s child. We stand no chance unless we fight for what we believe in.”
As abortion access is increasingly being decided by state and federal courts, two reproductive rights attorneys make sense of past rulings and the ongoing fight for reproductive healthcare.
Laura Campbell chose to have an abortion after suffering devastating complications during her pregnancy.
Campbell’s traumatizing experience is one of the reasons that she knew that she would be 100 percent on board with helping the effort by the organization Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom to place an abortion rights ballot measure on the November ballot.
After the Supreme Court’s unprecedented 2022 decision to revoke a constitutional right, abortion changed the course of elections for two years running. As the nation approaches the first presidential election of the post-Roe era, Democrats—who are fielding a woman presidential candidate who champions abortion rights—are banking on the issue to bolster them again.
Many public polls predict it won’t. But are these polls right? Not so much, say numerous polling experts.
(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!)