Just three days into Black Maternal Health Week, the Biden administration initiated a roll-back of the Trump-era domestic gag rule—a policy which strips Title X funding from any provider who offers abortion care or provides referrals for these resources.
Category: Politics
Feminists Call on Senate to Finally Confirm Kristen Clarke
Kristen Clarke, Biden’s nominee to be Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, is tied up in a needlessly long confirmation process.
Feminist organizations have united to call for Senate confirmation of Kristen Clarke for DOJ, saying her “nomination comes at a crucial time.”
Keeping Score: Gun Violence an “International Embarrassment”; Honoring Black Maternal Health Week; Biden Explores Court Expansion
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 in this biweekly round-up.
This week: Delta, MLB and more condemn voter suppression bills; Secretary Haaland launches commission to investigate missing Indigenous people; Biden appoints diverse group of appeals court judges; military establishes protections for trans soldiers; Arkansas outlaws gender-affirming health care; and more!
Table for 12, Please: Shalanda Young, Acting Director of Office of Management and Budget
On March 22, the Senate voted 63-37 to confirm Shalanda Young as the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. She is currently acting director of the department.
If Young is made director of the OMB, she would be the first Black woman in charge of the agency.
A Mother’s Lament: The Care Gap and Motherlode Is Heavy
Over the last year, our country has lost almost 550,000 people to COVID-19. America lost countless citizens to racism and experienced one of the largest spikes in hate crimes.
We changed the way we loved, shopped, worked and lived. But the expectations for mothers did not change.
Women’s Representation: The Case for Expanding the U.S. House
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: the role of gender equality in the promotion of democracy; the benefits of Latin America’s use of gender quotas and proportional voting; the state of women’s representation in the U.S.; debunking common misconceptions about quotas; expanding the size of the House of Representatives; Tishaura Jones becomes the first Black woman mayor of St. Louis; the challenges and opportunities for LGBTQ women running for office; and more!
Financial Education Won’t Fix Poverty. We Need Structural Change.
Financial education won’t undo systemic inequity and exclusion. Until we forge the products, practices and policies that advance an equitable economy, we can’t ask the individual to overcome the structural.
April is Financial Literacy Month. Here’s hoping it’s the last.
The American Rescue Plan Act Reveals the Importance of Investing in Reproductive Health Care
Last month, Congress passed President Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. On top of direct stimulus checks, the Plan also includes funding for schools and childcare, increased child tax credits and rental assistance. But another—frequently overlooked—priority of this bill is expanding access to sexual and reproductive health care across the country.
What Tishaura Jones’s Mayoral Win Says About the Political Power Of Black Women
Tishaura Jones was elected Tuesday as the first Black woman mayor of St. Louis, the latest in a recent surge of Black women running for and being voted into positions of power in major U.S. cities.
“The phenomenon of Black women winning mayoral seats isn’t happening in a vacuum. There’s this real surge of Black women and women of color more broadly in city-level elected offices across the country.”
A Mother’s Plea: How Many More Dominican Women Must Die Under Draconian Abortion Bans?
“For nearly nine years, I’ve been without my daughter because the laws in my country put the value of her pregnancy above the value of her life.”
Right now, the Congress of the Dominican Republic—one of the few nations in the world where abortion is illegal in all circumstances—is weighing whether to update the country’s penal code to decriminalize abortion in certain instances.
No more debate; Dominican women need action. Now.