A New Tennessee Law Claims to Protect Parental Rights, Leaving Teens Without Routine Healthcare

In addition to enacting a strict abortion ban and trafficking law to punish those who assist minors with abortion access, Tennessee has also taken Justice Thomas’ injunction to heart that the time has come to reassess constitutional protections for birth control. Towards this end, on July 1, the state’s newly enacted Family Rights and Responsibilities Act aimed at bolstering parental authority went into effect with minmal fanfare.

Public healthcare providers may no longer provide teens with routine sexual and reproductive healthcare, including birth control, pregnancy testing and treatment of STIs, in the absence of parental consent.

Front & Center’s Next Phase: How We Fix Systems Designed to Fail Black Women

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Front & Center is a groundbreaking Ms. series that offers first-person accounts of Black mothers living in Jackson, Miss., receiving a guaranteed income. Moving into the fourth year and next phase of this series, the aim is to expand our focus beyond individual stories to include a broader examination of systemic issues impacting Black women in poverty. This means diving deeper into the interconnected challenges they face, including healthcare, childcare and elder care, and the importance of mental, physical and spiritual well-being.

“When we started our Front & Center series three years ago, our goal was to give Black women living in extreme poverty—too often ignored in our politics and press—a platform to share their lived experience. … Instead of the narrow spotlight we’ve held to the singular program of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust guaranteed income pilot, we recognize that we must illuminate the full range of systems that harm our most vulnerable communities.”

Abortions Up Over 20 Percent Since Dobbs, Driven by Telehealth

A new report revealed the number of abortions in the first three months of 2024 was significantly higher than abortions in the first three months of 2023 and 2022. 

Before telehealth abortion became available, patients had to travel hundreds of miles to brick-and-mortar clinics, walk a gauntlet of protesters and pay on average $560 for medication abortion. Now they can obtain abortion pills by telehealth from the privacy of their own homes and have them mailed directly to all 50 states with prompt delivery.

Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos

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Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy on behalf of a future Trump administration remains on track.

Dozens of never-before-published videos coach future appointees on everything from the nuts and bolts of governing, to how to outwit bureaucrats. There are strategies for avoiding embarrassing Freedom of Information Act disclosures and ensuring that conservative policies aren’t struck down by “left-wing judges.” Some of the content is routine advice that any incoming political appointee might be told. Other segments of the training offer guidance on radically changing how the federal government works and what it does.

Chromosome Count: Who Gets to Decide Which Athletes Are ‘Feminine Enough’ to Compete?

At the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, a right-wing media firestorm spread disinformation that Imane Khelif of Algeria was transgender. As this article from the October 1988 issue of Ms. reminds us, sex testing in women’s sports is nothing new—and its origins are blatantly unscientific.

“Sports are not democratic. They’re elitist. The tallest play basketball. The shortest are jockeys. The ultimate would be to break the Olympics into biological classes and run them like the Westminster Dog Show.”

Unregulated Pregnancy Clinics Collect Health Information From Pregnant People—With No Privacy Protection

This summer, the antiabortion movement is mounting an offensive against bipartisan bills to establish federal data privacy protections for Americans and long-overdue online protections for children.

While many unregulated pregnancy clinics, or crisis pregnancy centers, claim HIPAA compliance, they operate under no legal requirement to protect client confidentiality. Thus, they are free to share sensitive information they are collecting from pregnant people as they wish.

“No one should have to worry about their personal health information falling into the hands of anyone who might seek to use that information against them.”

Two More Texas Women Say Delayed Care Due to Abortion Laws Endangered Their Fertility

Two women have filed federal complaints against Texas hospitals they say refused to treat their ectopic pregnancies, leading both women to lose their fallopian tubes and endanger their future fertility.

Texas law allows doctors to terminate ectopic pregnancies, a condition in which the fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tubes, instead of the uterus. Ectopic pregnancies are always non-viable and can quickly become life-threatening if left untreated. Despite these protections, these women say they were turned away from two separate hospitals that refused to treat them. The complaint alleges that the doctors and hospitals are so fearful of the state’s abortion laws, which carry penalties of up to life in prison when violated, that they are hesitating to perform even protected abortions.

“Texas officials have put doctors in an impossible situation. It is clear that these exceptions are a farce, and that these laws are putting countless lives in jeopardy.”

Reforming the Supreme Court Should Be Commonplace

The Biden-Harris administration’s proposed Supreme Court reforms are an opportunity to move forward discussions on how to check the third branch of government.

The courts had long served as a pillar of our democracy until conservative forces waged a decades-long campaign to twist the judiciary to its antidemocratic liking. The need for reform is clear—and something that voters across the political spectrum want.

In ‘One Way Back,’ Christine Blasey Ford Describes Life in the Aftermath

On Sept. 27, 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in 1982. In a beautifully-written and searing new memoir, One Way Back, Blasey Ford recounts her life before, during and after the 1982 sexual assault and her 2018 testimony.

Blasey Ford’s memoir corrects the record, and explains what happened after her testimony.

Stop the Presses: Mainstream Media Cannot Normalize Outrageous Attacks

The confirmation of Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States, and her choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as running mate, represent an unprecedented moment in American history. At the Democratic National Convention later this month in Chicago, the pair will make headlines around the world, as will the reaction from the opposing candidate, Donald Trump.

The role of the press is critical in Harris’s candidacy as news and information—or disinformation—is tremendously influential in shaping voter opinion and action. But, many media outlets fail to label extremely negative counter-narratives to this historic move as the racist outrages that they are.