More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Across the U.S., indie clinics are often the last line of defense. In 2022 alone, at least 42 independent abortion clinics have been forced to close or stop providing abortion care.
Despite ongoing challenges, we’ve seen the resilience of independent clinics and providers and heard the voices of voters and the public like never before. We need everyone in this fight to keep our clinics open.
U.S. District Judge David Counts, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, ruled last week that banning those under a protective order from possessing a gun infringes on their Second Amendment rights. A domestic violence victim’s risk of death is five times higher if their abuser has access to a firearm.
(This story was originally published by the Texas Tribune.)
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: Feminist icon Dorothy Pitman Hughes was a critical voice for issues of race, class and motherhood; Georgia could save voters and taxpayers time, energy and money with ranked-choice voting, rather than runoffs; South Korea’s new president is trying to end the Gender Equality Ministry; remembering feminist icon Dorothy Pitman Hughes; and more.
Millions of troops and their families stationed on contaminated military installations were exposed to a deadly combination of toxins responsible for triggering fatal illnesses. North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune is perhaps the most notorious example of widespread contamination affecting U.S. army bases.
Congress passed the Honoring Our PACT Act in August to facilitate veterans’ access to improved benefits through the V.A. for service-connected toxic exposure. The bill recognizes 23 new diseases as presumptive conditions—but breast cancer still isn’t one of them.
“I’m pregnant,” I lied, sitting across from a staffer at a Crisis Pregnancy Center. “We’ll do everything we can to help,” she lied back.
For every one abortion clinic in the U.S., there are three crisis pregnancy centers. In the face of their anti-abortion disinformation, we must fight back—because lives depend on it.
When the Ending Forced Arbitration for Sexual Assault and Harassment Act became law, it was a huge step forward for sexual assault and harassment survivors, restoring their right to pursue their best legal path. And now with the signing of the Speak Out Act, we’ve removed another obstacle for survivors, making it even harder for employers to cover up workplace harassment and assault.
One in three women—disproportionately women of color—have suffered sexual harassment or assault in the workplace. Coupled together, these new laws are a one-two punch that will help survivors tell their stories.
Pioneering feminist Dorothy Pitman Hughes died on Dec. 1, 2022, at the age of 84. Hughes became an icon of the women’s movement when Esquire published an image of her and Gloria Steinem in 1971 standing side by side with fists raised. That image has since been recreated, reinterpreted and reproduced on everything from mugs to T-shirts. A copy even hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Dorothy Pitman Hughes’ life of activism, however, transcended this image.
It’s no surprise that access to abortion and reproductive rights are top of mind for young feminist activists. What’s unique is how these leaders, and others profiled in this year’s The Future is Ms. series, leverage the tools available to them to make change.
Check out our roundup of articles written by teen girl journalists.
The overwhelming focus on whether bans have exceptions and whether people can get abortions in extreme situations distorts our perception of what is actually happening in states that ban abortion—which is that abortion bans are extreme and harmful because they ban abortion, period.
As the focus shifts to the 2023 state legislative sessions, where we expect lawmakers to further restrict abortion care, correcting public narratives about abortion bans is an urgent priority. To do that, we need to reframe how we discuss exceptions in three critical ways: Exceptions are designed to be unworkable. Focusing on exceptions ignores the vast majority of people harmed by abortion bans. And the focus on exceptions creates a false hierarchy of who is deserving of care.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act takes effect today, requiring employers to make “reasonable accommodations” for pregnant and postpartum workers.
“It will no longer be the case that pregnant workers can be ousted from their jobs for simply requesting basic accommodations like permission to sit on a stool, carry a bottle of water, or take additional bathroom breaks,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center.