More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Books provide us not only with necessary information but also with the respite we need from the constant labor of securing our rights and humanity in all the ways they are under attack.
I hope of the 33 books here, you’ll find one that inspires, relaxes or distracts you for a little while.
In their dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan systematically refuted the arrogant, cruel and legally unsound majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminating a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. For the first time in American history, the Supreme Court has rescinded a constitutional right and conferred it on the states where it may be regulated, abolished and criminalized.
The dissent blasts the conservative justices for overruling Roe and Casey “for one and only one reason: because [they have] always despised them, and now [have] the votes to discard them.”
The Catholic Bishops’ long history of perpetrating and condoning sexual abuse is consistent with their anti-abortion position. The Catholic Church has been plagued with sexual abuse scandals for decades. Catholic priests and bishops have raped and abused tens of thousands of women and children with impunity, and bishops have covered up for them.
The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.
Just one week after the Dobbs ruling, there’s a flurry of litigation in state courts that assert that state constitutions protect abortion rights.
These cases show the importance of state constitutions, which often protect citizens rights more explicitly than the U.S. Constitution.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grandestarring Emma Thompson as Nancy Stokes and Daryl McCormack as Leo Grande is an exploration of whether women, due to internal and external messaging, are allowed to pursue and attain sexual fulfillment. The fact that Nancy has never had an orgasm answers that question.
In a world where we’ve started discussing the critical importance of sexual consent, and in the wake of MeToo, we must address women’s pleasure—making this film not only entertaining, but necessary.
“Serena’s going back to Maggie’s Farm but not for long. Where, after that, she doesn’t know, but it does not seem to matter. Because she knows now that it is over. Soon she will stop bleeding. She can go on with her life.”
In 2021, writer Julia MacDonnell published a collection, The Topography of Hidden Stories, which included a story particularly relevant at this historical moment. Recently, she described this story, “Red Stain on Yellow Dress,” as a “fictional meditation on what young women may have experienced in the epoch before the passage of Roe v. Wade” and added a warning that the story is “gritty and bloody, the way things used to be. Maybe you’ll weep when you read it, the way I did when I wrote it.”
On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned the longstanding precedents of Roe v. Wade, representing the largest blow to women’s constitutional rights in history. We’re chronicling readers’ experiences of abortion pre- and post-Roe.
“When supported by a partner, pregnancy can be a joyful wonder. When unwanted, it can be absolutely horrible. .. The word ‘freedom’ is hypocrisy when women and girls lose the right and the ability to control their own bodies.”
Alyce Stevens Rohrer is one of the few living Women Air Service Pilots of WWII. Rohrer grew up impoverished with two brothers and two sisters in Provo, Utah, squished into a two-bedroom home on a tiny farm. Everyone worked the farm as soon as they could walk.
“I knew I wanted more,” she told me. “I wanted freedom. As a little girl I would work the fields and watch a plane fly over. The first time I saw one I lit up. I knew I would be a pilot one day, and no one could stop me.”
Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world—with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!
This week: Women leaders reckon with the Dobbs ruling and its catastrophic impact women’s lives and health; political strategies that deliver women real power; the lack of women leaders at the G7; democracy experts share their take on politics and the landscape for reform on the eve of the 246th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; and more.