We are the experts on our bodies, lives and needs—not politicians. Enshrining birth control in law would be a huge step toward recognizing our reproductive rights.
Florida Just Banned Sex Ed in Public Schools. Project 2025 Calls for the Same Ban *Nationwide.*
If you don’t live in Florida, you may be inclined to distance yourself from the news that they just banned public school districts from teaching sex education—including lessons on consent, HIV transmission, abuse prevention, and the existence of LGBTQ+ people.
But this is not a “Florida problem”—it’s a national preview. Because Project 2025 calls for a federal ban on sex education too. It’s just hidden, snuck in as part of their ban on pornography.
Almost 100 Percent of U.S. Women Use Contraception—So Why Doesn’t Birth Control Have More Republican Support?
As if the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the ensuing introduction of total abortion bans in 14 states, isn’t dystopian enough, the United States has become a country where there isn’t enough congressional support for contraception in order to pass a bill protecting the right of patients to use it and the right of providers to prescribe it. This should horrify everyone.
Abortion Opponents Use Deaths of Two Georgia Women to Push Dangerous Lies About Abortion Pills
After reports emerged that two women died as a result of Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, abortion opponents are callously using these tragic deaths to fuel false claims that abortion pills are dangerous and to push for FDA removal of mifepristone from the market.
Rather than calling on legislators to clarify life-saving exceptions, abortion opponents are doubling down on misinformation they’ve been peddling for years about the safety of abortion pills.
Crossing State Lines to Get an Abortion Is a New Legal Minefield, With Courts to Decide if There’s a Right to Travel
Almost half of the states in the country have made it harder to get an abortion since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the federal right to get an abortion. Fourteen states ban abortions in almost all circumstances, and another eight in almost all cases after 6 to 18 weeks of pregnancy.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the 2022 Dobbs decision that states cannot legally prevent their residents from going to another state to get an abortion, because he believes there is a “constitutional right to interstate travel.”
The U.S. Constitution does not, however, explicitly recognize a “right to interstate travel.” But the Supreme Court has issued decisions as far back as 1867 that can be interpreted to protect this right—and some scholars are confident that such a right exists.
What’s It Like to Have a Parent in Prison? The Ms. Q&A With Montrell Carmouche on How Operation Restoration Is Supporting Girls
Operation Restoration (OR) is working to change this for women and girls in the Pelican State. The group was founded in 2016 by formerly incarcerated women to provide peer and social service support, referrals, and counseling to women caught up in the criminal justice system. A related project, Operation Girls (OG), was founded in late 2018 to help female-identified children between the ages of 10 and 17 who have at least one parent in prison.
Will Young Women Be Her Superpower? Harris Energizes Young Voters, Who Support National Abortion Rights
During her short campaign for the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris has reinvigorated the nation’s youngest voters—particularly women under 30, who support her by a massive 3:1 margin, according to a new national poll released Tuesday by the Institute of Politics at Harvard.
A longtime advocate for abortion rights, Harris appears to be benefiting from Americans’ overwhelming support for restoring the protections lost after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Abortion has been a motivating factor in elections the past two years and is likely to be so again, especially in states where abortion initiatives are on the ballot. The key issue already has been at the center of the presidential campaign, with Trump taking credit for the Court’s ruling and Harris laying blame for the resulting abortion bans at his feet.
Erased From Public Life: Women Under the Taliban Regime
Afghanistan has plummeted to last in global rankings of gender equity and women’s security since the withdrawal of international forces in 2021. A second Taliban regime has issued increasingly harsh decrees entrapping millions of women and girls in a system of repression that violates their basic human rights, segregates them from broader society and keeps opportunities and independence out of reach.
But even as the situation for Afghan women grows more dire, the international community is inching closer to recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate leaders in Afghanistan, leaving Afghan women with diminishing hopes that their oppression will end.
(This article originally appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox!)
‘Artificial Timelines Put Parents on a Constrained Roadmap to Make Decisions About Their Life’: Rep. Hillary Scholten on Faith and Preserving Choice
If there had been a 15-week abortion ban in place at the time that U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) was 14 weeks pregnant, she would have never been given the freedom, space and time to make the choice not to have an abortion.
“It made me recognize how incredibly grateful I was that I was able to make those choices free from government interference, free from the overreach of people who just wanted to score political points, and how I was free to make the best decision for me and my family, which in my case was to choose not to have an abortion and to give our daughter every chance at life that we possibly could,” Scholten told Ms.
Documentary ‘Preconceived’ Exposes Horrors of Crisis Pregnancy Center Industry: ‘I Came to You for Help. Why Did You Lie?’
Since the fall of Roe, anti-choice politicians have rushed to champion “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) as a legitimate alternative to qualified reproductive healthcare. As they funnel millions of taxpayer dollars into these unregulated clinics, abortion ban states suffer high rates of maternal and infant mortality and widespread maternal care deserts.
A new documentary, Preconceived (now available to stream), shines a clear light on this evasive industry, deftly navigating a complex landscape of deception, privacy, finances and faith.