More Than A Magazine, A Movement
While some countries move towards the decriminalization of homosexuality and try to eliminate LGBTQ+ discrimination, some countries have passed harsher legislation harming LGBTQ+ communities, especially targeting the queer youth in those countries. Ms. is highlighting some cases and reflecting on what this means for queer rights in America and globally.
Peg Yorkin—leading U.S. feminist, philanthropist and strategist, as well as theater producer—died on Sunday, June 25, 2023, at the age of 96. In the midst of our collective grief, we honor and pay tribute to a co-founder as well as the one and only chair of the board of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF), publisher of Ms. Since the day FMF started in 1987, Peg Yorkin was important in conceptualizing the organization’s mission and potential significance in the struggle for equality and women’s rights.
“Peg was impatient. She wanted to see change now,” said Kathy Spillar, executive editor of Ms. and executive director of FMF. “She would constantly remind us of her age and wanted to see the changes in her lifetime. She thought big and had total confidence we could make a difference.”
Recent movement towards the meaningful incorporation of racial justice and transgender rights within the broader LGBTQ rights movement has helped shift Pride back to its liberating roots. While the fair-weather allyship of corporations undoubtedly stung some, it shouldn’t unmoor us. Our current democratic crisis demands an authentic, inclusive, radical response. No amount of rainbow-wrapped commodified queerness can do this work.
The Biden administration’s Office on Violence Against Women (a division of the Justice Department) last month issued clinical guidance on how health professionals can provide comprehensive, trauma-sensitive care to patients experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV)—part of a coordinated, comprehensive, whole-of-government approach to preventing and addressing IPV, sexual violence, stalking and other forms of gender-based violence. Nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States—totaling more than 10 million people annually.
“This means better diagnosis and treatment for the physical and mental injuries inflicted by an abuser, better support for survivors’ efforts to seek safety and better collection of evidence that can help survivors pursue protection and justice.”
In You or Someone You Love: Reflections from an Abortion Doula, Hannah Matthews reminds us that there is so much more to abortion access than just the law. An abortion doula and clinic worker, Matthews shifts our attention to the importance of care work and networks of support for expanding abortion access. weaving in real abortion stories with resources for accessing reproductive healthcare, along with occasional affirmations and acts of kindness.
A year after Dobbs, it would be easy to say that things have gotten worse, that the future looks bleak. But it doesn’t have to be.
Dark money groups, far from standing down after they succeeded in abolishing Americans’ constitutional right to decide if and when to have children, have ramped up their efforts to further limit reproductive rights since the right-wing faction on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade a year ago.
Behind this attack on our rights is a web of groups funded by ultra-rich donors and coordinated by far-right lawyer and longtime Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo.
Since the fall of Roe, at least 66 clinics have stopped providing abortion care. Many people have found essential care by purchasing abortion pills online and having them delivered by mail.
As we continue into the post-Roe future, we must address the inequalities that limit these innovations in states where telehealth is legal, but also in states where it is illegal.
Abortion opponents are now targeting states where abortion remains legal, such as Massachusetts, by pumping resources into a spider web of anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) that work to entrap people searching for reproductive healthcare. And Google made $10.2 million over the last two years running deceptive advertisements for these fake clinics.
“Google … is more than willing to allow advertisers to lie, deceive, limit users’ rights to good information and to healthcare, as long as they get paid in the process.”
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: Ranked-choice voting helps reassure voters they can vote for the candidate they want rather than who they think will win; the Supreme Court has two cases on its docket that will determine the future of affirmative action; Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) could become the third Black woman to ever serve in the U.S. Senate; and more.