Matilda Joslyn Gage: The Most Radical Suffragist Written Out of History Is Still Urgently Relevant

PUBLISHED 8/18/2026 by and

Matilda Joslyn Gage was one of the most radical voices of the 19th-century women’s rights movement—and one of the most deliberately forgotten. Alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, she helped build the suffrage movement, but Gage pushed further, challenging not only women’s political exclusion but also patriarchal religion, sexual violence, economic inequality and the erasure of women’s accomplishments from history.

Gage paired those radical ideas with bold action. She protested the 1886 unveiling of the Statue of Liberty because women themselves had no political liberty; refused to pay taxes without representation; and wrote Woman, Church and State, a blistering critique of Christianity’s role in legitimizing women’s subordination. Her willingness to confront institutions other suffragists feared alienating ultimately helped push her out of the movement’s mainstream history.

A century later, Gage’s warnings feel strikingly current. As voting rights, bodily autonomy and the separation of church and state once again come under attack, her insistence that women understand their own history—and see themselves as part of a struggle extending across generations—offers both a warning and a call to action.

The Same People Policing AOC’s Fertility Want to Police Abortion, Too

PUBLISHED 8/17/2026 by

If you’ve seen Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s posts about freezing her eggs on Instagram, you’ve likely heard about the backlash she’s facing from folks who have called her, at turns, hypocritical, insincere, selfish and, at 36, too old to be a mother.

Funny how we didn’t hear such outcry about age when Jon Hamm announced around the same time that he’s becoming a father at 55. Or when Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino—and believe me, I could go on—welcomed new children at 64, 79 and 83. Or when Second Lady Usha Vance, at 40, announced earlier this year that she was expecting.

None of us deserve an explanation from AOC about why she is making the choice she is making. That’s the whole point: It’s her choice, and we have the right to make the choices we want about our bodies and our reproductive lives. Full stop.

And there’s power in talking about it, on our terms. That’s why so many women are feeling seen and reflected in AOC’s posts, and why it’s so empowering to have her make this decision out loud.

As Heat Rises and Wildfires Rage, Gender Inequality Is Turning Deadly

PUBLISHED 8/14/2026 by

As salient as extreme heat and wildfires have been this summer, an important dimension has been mostly absent from discussions of it: gender.

Climate change impacts are not gender-neutral. Heat affects different populations in different ways. Climate vulnerability depends on intersecting factors like age, income, occupation, disability, race, but also gender, which is often overlooked.

Protecting women, especially those with multiple factors of vulnerability, must be central to climate action, not peripheral.

Skye Perryman on How We Turn ‘Anger and Sorrow’ Into ‘Action’

PUBLISHED 8/14/2026 by

“I know how you feel—because I’ve been there there too. On a bad day, and there are many bad days, our nation’s backslide from democracy into autocracy accelerates … Untrained, masked federal agents are running roughshod in our streets, terrorizing communities. Peaceful protesters have been killed. The government has been weaponized, and the Supreme Court feels stacked … It’s almost impossible to keep up; even harder to know what to do.”

So begins Skye Perryman’s sobering but hopeful and practical new book, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times. Though this handbook for hard times is elevated by a we’re-all-in-it-together spirit, Perryman, an attorney and president and CEO of Democracy Forward, doesn’t sugarcoat what we’re all facing.

“We have to acknowledge that there is no cavalry coming to protect us,” she writes. “No knight in shining armor to save us from the situation we are in. It’s up to us. We are the people who decide what happens next.” And while daunting, she says “it can also be empowering to know how essential we are in the fight for freedom and our democracy.”

Perryman fervently believes that action is antidote. By “reclaiming our collective power,” and by using the “tools that ordinary people have used in extraordinary times before us,” she insists that together we can “fight for freedom today, build for a better tomorrow.”

Who Gets Healthcare and Who Gets Handcuffs?

PUBLISHED 8/13/2026 by

A teenage girl and her boyfriend are facing criminal charges in North Carolina after allegedly attempting to self-manage her abortion using pills. She was reportedly 31 weeks pregnant when she took the medication. At that stage of pregnancy, the medication induced labor, and she ultimately delivered a living baby, presumably without medical assistance. The state charged her with “assault with a deadly weapon,” treating the abortion pills as the “deadly weapon.”

I won’t repeat the girl’s name here. It’s already been plastered across headlines and social media, and that exposure is part of her punishment. 

When I first read the details of this case, I felt an immediate rush of empathy—and dread. Our work at Patient Forward focuses on eliminating barriers to abortion care later in pregnancy so no one feels forced into situations like these because they lack clinical options.

I know what it feels like to need an abortion later in pregnancy and fear that time is running out. However when I needed an abortion at 31 weeks, I had the resources and support that made it possible for me to get one safely. Even after learning third trimester abortion care was banned in my state, my obstetrician still referred me to a safe clinic in Colorado. My mother withdrew $10,000 from her retirement savings so I could pay for it. My husband handled flights, hotels and other logistics.

In the end I didn’t just receive safe, supported care. I also received privacy. My story became public only because I decided to tell it.

The teenager in North Carolina received neither. The difference between us wasn’t the complexity of our pregnancies. It was access.

Want to Protect the Vote? Become a Poll Worker

PUBLISHED 8/13/2026 by

For months now, hundreds of active and caring friends and supporters have been writing and calling us with a version of the same question: In addition to sending money, what else can I actually do?

Here’s one suggestion—and it may be the most useful thing you can do between now and Tuesday, Nov. 3: Show up as a poll worker, and get your friends to show up too.

We’ll keep calling out this war on women. But calling it out is not the same as helping to end it. The voter standing in a four-hour line in a shuttered-precinct district does not need our concern. She needs someone at the check-in table who showed up.

Let that someone be you—and your friends.

Keeping Score: Trump Disapproval Hits a New Low; Continued ICE Violence; AOC on Freezing Her Eggs: ‘Don’t Be Weird About This’

PUBLISHED 8/12/2026 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is freezing her eggs and documenting the process on social media to normalize this facet of women’s reproductive healthcare.
—The top brands donating to members of Congress trying to expand ICE’s power include SpaceX, Home Depot, UPS and Walmart. 
—Organizations speak out after Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero were shot and killed by federal agents, and Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva died in ICE custody.
—Epstein survivors warn the Senate not to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General.
—The Trump administration continues its attacks on immigrants, students, disabled people, gun control and more.
—Pete Hesgeth blocked the promotion of women Navy officers.
—Nicole Tung won the IWMF’s Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award.
—Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) has been accused of abusing his ex-wife and their young daughter.
—President Trump finally paid E. Jean Carroll $5.6 million for sexually abusing and defaming her.
—84 percent of women’s organizations working in crisis-affected countries say the need for humanitarian services has increased since January 2025, but almost 90 percent don’t have the funding to meet those needs.
—The United States is unique among similar countries, with single mothers participating in the workforce more often than partnered mothers.

… and more.

Ms. Talks @ Martha’s Vineyard: Michele Goodwin and Dorothy Roberts on America at 250, the Right to Love and Family (Aug. 19)

PUBLISHED 8/12/2026 by

On Wednesday, Aug. 19, Ms. will bring together two of the country’s leading legal scholars and feminist thinkers—Michele Goodwin and Dorothy Roberts—for a special Ms. Talks conversation on Martha’s Vineyard: “America at 250: The Right to Love & Family,” moderated by Nourbese Flint (president of All* Above All) and Mia Herndon (interim executive director of Black Feminist Future). The reception and book talk will take place from 12 to 1:30 p.m. at 9 Craft Kitchen, 9 Main Street in Vineyard Haven, Mass.

Martha’s Vineyard has a documented history in the maritime Underground Railroad, including the 1743 escape of Esther from a ship docked in Edgartown Harbor. Against that historic backdrop, the group will examine what it means to be a citizen, and who is permitted to belong to the American family.

The discussion will also draw on Roberts’ latest book, The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family, which examines race, intimacy and family through both personal history and the broader American story.

The event is part of Ms. Talks and is presented in collaboration with All* Above All, Black Feminist Future, the Black Reproductive Justice Summit and Georgetown Law’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.

Detaining Families, Policing Pregnancy: Trump’s Immigration Crackdown on Women and Children

PUBLISHED 8/12/2026 by

Trump’s latest attacks on birthright citizenship are part of a much broader effort to police American identity, punish migrant women for entering the U.S. and ultimately regulate their reproduction. Immigrant women and children remain particular targets of a hostile immigration system that seeks to control them through detention, family separation and deportation. The administration’s reinstatement of family detention has made it possible to incarcerate whole families while avoiding the political backlash generated by the “zero tolerance” separations of Trump’s first term.

But detaining families together does not make detention humane. Family residential facilities expose mothers and children to interrupted medical care, inadequate health screenings, poor living conditions and lasting physical and psychological harm. Women—particularly those who are pregnant, postpartum or caring for young children—also face heightened vulnerability to neglect and abuse inside a system where government officers and private contractors wield enormous power over their daily lives.

These policies are not simply about immigration enforcement. They are a means of penalizing pregnancy, motherhood and family formation in immigrant communities. From attacks on birthright citizenship to the detention of pregnant women and U.S.-citizen children, the administration is using the immigration system to make migration more painful and precarious—and to enact that punishment on the bodies and families of migrant women.

A Midterm Liability for Republicans: Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Is Deeply Unpopular

PUBLISHED 8/11/2026 by

It’s been over a year since President Donald Trump signed the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill (HR 1) into law—a sweeping 2025 budget-reconciliation package that extends and expands tax cuts, funds defense and immigration enforcement, cuts or restructures major safety-net programs, rolls back some clean-energy spending, and raises the federal debt limit.

Trump and congressional Republicans promised the bill would provide economic relief for American families. New polling suggests the legislation has failed to win over the public, with many voters saying the law has done little to improve their financial situations, while others remain unsure what the bill does at all. 

According to a recent poll, the legislation remains broadly unpopular, despite months of Republican messaging promoting its economic benefits.