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Celebrating Women Who Aren’t Afraid to Take the Lead

Just days after Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic party’s official nomination, Gloria Feldt—former Planned Parenthood president and longtime women’s rights activist—convened the 10th annual Take the Lead Conference in Washington, D.C., on Women’s Equality Day.

Hopes are high and determination steeled that 2025 will see the first woman president and the ratification of the ERA. For the hundreds of women and dozens of presenters and organizers who took part in the Take the Lead conference, promoting women’s power at every level and in every field has always been essential to the formula for that success. 

New Taliban Law Mandates Afghan Women Be Silent and Completely Covered in Public. It’s Time to Codify Gender Apartheid.

Afghan women’s voices and bodies are deemed ‘intimate’ by the Taliban and banned from public.

While the international community condemns these brutal and oppressive restrictions, it now faces a critical challenge: how to effectively respond to the Taliban’s gender apartheid policies and increasing human rights abuses. The need for the international community to codify gender apartheid as a crime against humanity grows more urgent.

LIVE UPDATES From Ms. @ DNC: Harris Makes a Compelling Case for Her Presidency and for America’s Future

For those seeking an inside look at the intersection of politics and feminism, Ms. writers and editors are on the ground in Chicago, delivering real-time insights and reflections from the heart of the DNC, capturing the narratives and voices shaping the future of U.S. politics.

Explore: a roundtable with Democratic women governors and Julia Louis-Dreyfus; freedom-themed evening programing includes appearances from reproductive rights leaders, Oprah, Jan. 6 survivors and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz; what’s driving women voters; and more.

Equal Rights Amendment Is Valid and Should Be Implemented, Says American Bar Association

At the annual meeting of the American Bar Association in Chicago on Aug. 6, the association’s House of Delegates adopted a resolution declaring the Equal Rights Amendment fully ratified as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The ABA resolution urged full implementation of the ERA by the legal community and all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments. The ABA has a membership of 400,000 lawyers.

Antiabortion Extremist Sentenced to Prison for Harassing NYC Planned Parenthood Staff and Patients

“This is going to be a wonderful day. We are going to terrorize this place. And I want the manager to hear me say that. … More people are coming … and we’re going to make sure we terrorize you guys so good.”

These words were shared on a Facebook livestream by antiabortion extremist Bevelyn Beatty Williams as she prepared to invade and harass a Planned Parenthood clinic in lower Manhattan in June of 2020. On Wednesday, July 24, Williams was sentenced to 41 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act—a 1994 federal law that “prohibits violent, threatening, damaging and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain or provide reproductive health services.”

First Four Antiabortion Extremists Sentenced in Nashville for Blockading Tennessee Clinic

Four antiabortion extremists, Dennis Green, Paul Vaughn, Coleman Boyd and Cal Zastrow, were sentenced last week following their convictions for felony conspiracy and violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. These charges stemmed from their involvement in a 2021 blockade of the carafem Health Center in Nashville, a reproductive health clinic that offered abortion care.

On March 5, 2021, the four defendants and the seven other indicted individuals blockaded the entrance to the Carafem Nashville Health Center. Patients were unable to enter the clinic, and staff members were unable to leave. In Coleman Boyd’s live stream of the blockade, he can be heard harassing and intimidating a patient, calling her a “mom coming to kill her baby.” Boyd also encouraged one of his children—a minor—to do the same. A patient and employee of the clinic testified at the trial, saying they felt fear and anxiety during the clinic blockade. Court documents described the blockade as “borne out of the defendant’s lack of respect for the law,” meant to “train and encourage others to carry out additional unlawful blockades.”

Ms. Global: Increasing Access to Contraceptives in Sub-Saharan Africa, Taliban Demands Afghan Women Be Left Out of U.N. Conference, and More

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.

This week: News from Afghanistan, South Korea, Bulgaria, Serbia and more.

Keeping Score: States Threaten Church-State Separation; Doctors Avoid States With Abortion Bans; N.Y. ERA Will Be on November Ballot

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: the Supreme Court ruled on the EMTALA abortion case, presidential immunity and criminalizing homelessness; Louisiana requires public classrooms to display the 10 Commandments; medical residents are avoiding states with abortion bans; Gen Z swing voters care about the cost of living, healthcare and housing; college-educated women now outnumber college-educated men in the workforce, but women’s wages still lag behind; and more.

The Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban Survives Yet Another Attack

The Feminist Majority—the advocacy arm of the Feminist Majority Foundation, which publishes Ms.—together with the National Network to End Domestic Violence and its then director, Donna Edwards, played a pivotal role in passing the original Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban at the heart of the Rahimi case, often referred to as “the Lautenberg Amendment,” after its sponsor, the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), in 1996. After passage, feminists stood firmly against all attempts to gut the law, like the 1997 and 1999 attempts to exempt police officers and military service personnel from its coverage (which both failed). 

“The law prevented countless tragedies,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority. “It has saved the lives and harm of countless domestic violence survivors, most of whom are women.” Here’s to the feminist allies and advocates ensuring those days stay behind us.

‘The Other Roe’: Abortion Documentary Spotlights Atlanta Attorney Margie Pitts Hames

Most people are unaware that Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton were both argued on the same day before the Supreme Court and upheld in the 1973 decision that legalized abortion. Roe legalized the right to abortion, while Doe ensured its availability and accessibility.

After nearly 50 years, both decisions were overturned in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case in June 2022, leading to a fragmented legalization of abortion across the country. Ironically, the Jackson clinic that brought the suit was started by Susan Hill and me in 1995.

I was puzzled that the Doe decision and the lawyer who argued it, Margie Pitts Hames, did not have a more prominent place in the history of abortion rights. So I’m making a documentary about her and the case, called The Other Roe.