More Than A Magazine, A Movement
From the Summer 2010 issue of Ms.: “In 10 years, we will look back and consider it ludicrous that we ever prosecuted children for prostitution.”
(For more ground-breaking stories like this, order 50 YEARS OF Ms.: THE BEST OF THE PATHFINDING MAGAZINE THAT IGNITED A REVOLUTION, Alfred A. Knopf—a collection of the most audacious, norm-breaking coverage Ms. has published.)
The anti-feminist Independent Women’s Voice/Forum (IWF/V), backed by billionaires and anti-abortion zealots, is poised to use its leaders’ identities as women to convince voters that the GOP will protect Americans’ rights and freedoms, like access to birth control and the ability to choose if and when to have children. IWF/V’s past positions, the known agendas of their funders and their membership to Project 2025 belie their true intentions.
The Texas Supreme Court is considering whether to take up a case that could have Alabama-esque impacts on in vitro fertilization in Texas.
What began as a Denton divorce has grown into a larger battle over whether a frozen embryo can be defined as a person. The court has not yet said whether it will take up the case, which centers on three frozen embryos created by Caroline and Gaby Antoun.
Earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos qualify as people under the state’s wrongful death statute, leading fertility clinics to halt their work until the legislature stepped in and granted temporary protections. While the details are different, legal experts and fertility doctors say the results of this Texas case could be similar.
Because of women, care has become a top concern among voters and a unifier across gender, race and party identification. And care issues are most powerful as a motivator for civic engagement when linked with other top priorities for voters—including reproductive rights, tax equity and kitchen table economics.
It is no coincidence that at the same moment U.S. democracy is facing existential threats, we are also witnessing profound assaults not only on the body politic but on our bodily autonomy.
One of the biggest threats to the consolidation of power is an empowered and engaged populace—particularly women, the LGBTQ community and people of color. Which is why anti-democratic leaders are doing all they can to limit and curtail the power of these communities. This moment requires progressive and pro-democracy funders to understand the attacks to reproductive freedom, LGBTQ liberation, and racial justice not as distinct or disparate—but as central to the attacks to our democracy itself, and to fund accordingly.
From the boardrooms of philanthropy to the halls of government, democracy and gender are often treated as separate issues.
I’ve been working to sound the alarm. Because while our side has been slow to connect the dots, the authoritarian right has been acting on these connections for decades. The consequences are deadly—and mounting.
This Mother’s Day—like the countless that have come before it—conservative politicians who fancy themselves members of the party that upholds “family values” will send out social media posts praising the moms among us. They’ll wax poetic about the “decision” to become a mother and how it’s the “most selfless, most important job in the world.” Some may even go so far as to task their speech writers with crafting some moving message about how vital mothers are; how we’re raising the next generation of prolific thinkers and world leaders; how we should be revered “not just today, but every day.”
And in the post-Roe world they created with their anti-abortion policies that have forced people into motherhood, attacked IVF and fertility treatments, and left doctors terrified to treat pregnant patients to the point that women are slipping into comas, miscarrying in hospital lobby bathrooms and enduring unnecessary C-sections instead of receiving common abortion care, it will all be one big, giant pile of bullshit.
Being a working mom of children doing virtual school during the pandemic, also in the middle of a graduate degree, and suddenly caring for a delusional and aggressive senior parent, while being forced to educate every single business on what guardianship legally appointed me to do was overwhelming.
Why do businesses expect a senior citizen diagnosed with an irreversible disease of the mind to make financial or health decisions? Why wasn’t the court order enough? Because a woman with legal power isn’t enough.
Working mothers and adult daughters who make up the majority of the sandwich generation need the ability to also care for their own mental and physical well-being to avoid burnout.
In this three-part American Autocracy series, we track Trump’s comments on feminist issues.
This installment: Trump’s previous comments on gay and trans rights make him a clear threat to the LGBTQ+ community.
Black women in the U.S. face a unique double-bind when it comes to maternal mortality and femicide.
Black maternal health isn’t just about perinatal care; it intersects with racial and reproductive justice, and it’s part of the nexus of gun violence and domestic violence. Focusing on this intersection should drive overwhelming support from both reproductive and racial justice communities working toward solutions.
