More Than A Magazine, A Movement
As Americans prep for the holidays and the time off from paid work that comes with them, I suspect many working moms are steeling ourselves for a season that feels anything but restful.
The weight of society’s expectations of working moms on a normal day is crushing. As the mother of two young children, an attorney fighting for due process for immigrants in the second Trump administration and a clinical law professor, I know this firsthand.
Months before the lives of West Virginia National Guard Specialist Sarah Berkstrom and Afghan asylee Rahmanullah Lakanwal collided, the Trump administration planned to bring immigration to a halt from countries like Afghanistan, Somalia, and other nations that supposedly threaten American values. When Lakanwal was charged with first-degree murder in Berkstrom’s Nov. 26 death, the administration seized on this tragedy to redouble its rhetoric against Afghans and others and to usher in the next round of immigration restrictions.
As Spojmie Nasiri, an Afghan American immigration attorney points out, “They are using the tragedy to enact the agenda that they already had.”
You’ve read the other “Best of” lists—now read this one. You know, the one for the rest of us.
Here are Ms. magazine’s top feminist books of 2025.
On Dec. 14, 2025, two tragedies unfolded on opposite sides of the world—each marked by gun violence and grief, yet met with starkly different national responses.
On the first night of Hanukkah, a gathering on Bondi Beach in Sydney, turned into horror when a father and son opened fire during a “Hanukkah by the Sea” celebration, killing 15 people and wounding 40 in what Australian authorities called an antisemitic terrorist attack.
The day before in Providence, R.I., a shooter opened fire at Brown University during finals, killing two students and wounding nine.
These shootings—one at a beloved public beach, the other on an Ivy League campus—expose not only shared grief but radically different understandings of responsibility.
Despite many states imposing sweeping abortion bans after Dobbs, more Americans are having abortions, not fewer, according to the Society of Family Planning’s latest #WeCount report.
“Abortion bans don’t stop people from needing and pursuing essential abortion care,” said Alison Norris, M.D., Ph.D., professor at The Ohio State University’s College of Public Health and #WeCount co-chair.
Despite these increases, Ushma Upadhyay, professor and fellow #WeCount co-chair, warned that unwarranted attacks on telehealth abortion may restrict access in the future. “This care is under assault by abortion opponents’ relentless attacks on mifepristone and telehealth—even though medication abortion is backed by a 25-year track record of safety and gold-standard science, and research shows that telehealth abortion is just as safe and effective as in-person care.”
Women make the holidays happen, even as policymakers undermine the programs meant to support families—including SNAP and Affordable Care Act subsidies to make healthcare more affordable.
On Dec. 2, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin, an unregulated pregnancy clinic’s constitutional challenge to the New Jersey attorney general’s subpoena for information about its operations, including donor records.
Despite being awash in revenue, and serial reports of fraud, waste and illegal use of taxpayer funds, these antiabortion clinics are positioning to realize a long-term goal: to “replace” Planned Parenthood and Title X programs and secure federal taxpayer funds to advance an agenda that promotes childbirth and undermines evidence-based healthcare.
As right-wing politicians decimate the reproductive health delivery system for low-income and uninsured Americans, the UPC industry is ramping up the narrative that their unregulated pregnancy clinics are the answer to the maternal healthcare deserts their policies have created.
Most media observers are predicting the Court will rule for the crisis pregnancy center, First Choice. If it does, unregulated pregnancy clinics nationwide will be further emboldened to resist any state oversight, including of their medical services. A bold, innovative, multi-front action by reproductive justice advocates, public health professionals and pro-choice officials is the only way we ensure they can’t succeed.
Texas launched a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week over the agency’s approval of mifepristone, marking the state’s latest effort to crack down on access to abortion pills.
Joined by Florida, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the case on Dec. 9 in federal court in Wichita Falls. The two states argued in a 120-page complaint that the FDA did not properly evaluate mifepristone’s safety and effectiveness when approving the drug in 2000 and its subsequent generic versions. They also challenged the agency’s moves that expanded access to the pills, including the ability to dispense them by mail.
Abortion access advocates have blasted the lawsuit.
“If they succeed in restricting access to mifepristone, abortion access will be devastated across the country, even in states where abortion remains legal,” Shellie Hayes-McMahon, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Texas. “This lawsuit is not about safety or healthcare; it is about control. And nothing short of full control over our bodies will satisfy them.”
Birth control is the single most powerful tool for women’s economic mobility and autonomy in modern history. It changed everything: When women could plan if, when and with whom they wanted to have children, college enrollment soared, dropout rates fell and poverty rates declined. The ability to access contraception has been directly tied to women’s ability to stay in school, build careers and make decisions about their own futures.
So why, in 2025, are we finding ourselves in a messaging war on birth control?
The latest episodes of the Ms. Studios podcast On the Issues with Michele Goodwin reclaim the Epstein files from the men who dominate the narrative.
This two-part series includes a conversation with Jess Michaels, a 1991 Epstein survivor, and Moira Donegan, a feminist writer and journalist with The Guardian.