More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: 2022 midterms will be a status quo election for women in Congress; federal candidates and political committees are projected to spend $8.9 billion this election cycle; Ruwa Romman, 29, makes history as the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia House; Los Angeles, the second largest city in the U.S., has elected Representative Karen Bass to be its first-ever woman mayor; and more.
This week: state officials condemn election misinformation and voter intimidation; Massachusetts and N.Y. elect women governors; Maxwell Alejandro Frost will be the first Gen Z congress member; abortions permitted to resume in Arizona; Florida bans gender-affirming care for transgender minors; University of California workers go on largest academic strike; and more.
Concern about future access to contraceptives has spiked since Roe was overturned. Concerns about access are understandable, given state legislators have strategically perpetuated misinformation as part of efforts targeting access to contraception.
In response, we must call on elected officials to support urgently-needed legislation, such as the Right to Contraception Act, which seeks to protect the right of individuals to use birth control and the right of physicians and other healthcare professionals to provide this basic essential care.
Most pundits insisted abortion wouldn’t drive many votes, but inflation would. How wrong they were.
If you put together the sheer size of the women’s vote, the intensity of the issue and the fact that, unlike inflation or the economy, the two parties have stark differences on the issue, you get a powerful driver of the vote.
I’m 19 years old, and I just voted in my first midterm election to defend reproductive rights.
Voting remains one of the best ways to advocate for ourselves and make our voices heard. As it turns out, voters across the country believe just as strongly in abortion access and reproductive freedom as I do.
Running for office while pregnant or parenting can be a major challenge.
I discovered I was pregnant the week the Dobbs decision was announced. I briefly considered suspending my campaign because I knew how hard it was going to be for my family and me. But at the end of the day, the reason I ran for public office hadn’t changed or become less significant to me, and so I decided to stand up for what I believe in.
Across the board, Democratic candidates and progressive ballot measures far outperformed expectations set by the pundits, who had all but declared that abortion no longer was the driving factor in voters’ decisions.
“It was abortion that made a huge difference in race after race,” said Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners. “In well over half the races, it was the issue of abortion that increased turnout of Democrats and younger voters.”
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: a roundup of promising midterm results for ranked-choice voting and women candidates in local and national races
Apparently, women aren’t likely to forget their loss of control over their own fertility; not during the midterms and not anytime soon. In fact, voter turnout and voter rage around abortion could pave the way forward in the effort to hold onto democracy itself in the future.
The estimated U.S. maternal mortality rate in 2018 was 17.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, putting the United States dead last compared to similarly wealthy countries.
Protecting and expanding access to abortion care and taking steps to support pregnant women and families such as through child tax credits will help reduce the maternal mortality rate and catch the U.S. up to the standards of other countries.
