More Than A Magazine, A Movement
For The Weekly Pulse, we’ve scoured the most trusted journalistic sources—and, of course, our Twitter feeds—to bring you this week’s most important news stories related to health and wellness.
In this edition: Pandemic updates as Trump’s unseemly politicking continues, what you should know about wildfires and the air, the repro rundown, and glimmer of hope with pandemic positivity.
The right to reproductive choice and medical privacy is the single biggest issue at stake for women’s lives and health in the 2020 election and beyond. It is not only relevant to young women who may be faced with the abortion decision, but to all women who value their autonomy and privacy.
This week, the administration announced that it is proposing to expand the dangerous and harmful “global gag rule” even further than it already has.
The proposed expansion of the policy would, for the first time, cover all contracts that organizations have with the United States for global health work, not only grant funding.
Ms. recently spoke with Rabbi Hara Person—chief executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and self-proclaimed “reader, writer, feminist and challah-baker” —about politics, women’s rights, and the role of faith-based leaders in 2020.
“We need to make sure people hear that there is no such thing as the one religious perspective or the one faith perspective on reproductive rights—we need to say loudly and clearly that there is a progressive religious voice on these issues as well as the right wing religious voice that they regularly hear. “
The War on Women is in full force under the Trump administration. We refuse to go back, and we refuse to let the administration quietly dismantle the progress we’ve made. We are watching.
This week: Ted Cruz leads a group of 20 Republicans to ban the abortion pill; the U.S. will not partake in a collective effort by the World Health Organization to develop a coronavirus vaccine; Trump advocates for his supporters to attempt voter fraud; AG Barr is completely out of touch with the reality of racism; Trump blocked from trying to withhold federal family planning funds; Trump tries to make #ButHerHaircut a thing; and Pence is triggered by “Mulan.”
Based on the book by Jenni Hendriks, Unpregnant tells the story of Ivy League-bound Veronica who realizes she’s pregnant and wants an abortion. So, Veronica and her former best friend Bailey embark on a road trip to the closest clinic where she can consent to her own abortion—over 1,400 miles away.
Sen. Ted Cruz lead 20 Republican senators to file a letter with the FDA claiming— factually incorrectly— that the abortion pill is an “imminent hazard to the public health.”
On Friday, 12 anti-abortion extremists in Sterling Heights, Mich., formed an unyielding blockade in front of a Michigan abortion clinic. Those involved were in direct violation of the Freedom of Access Clinic Entrances (F.A.C.E.) Act.
Yet when (maskless) police arrived on the scene, they allowed the (maskless) anti-choice protesters to continue to sit in front of the clinic doors and sympathized openly with the blockade.
This week, the Republican National Convention has featured graphic and deceptive rails against abortion—and bold lies. However this kind of inflammatory rhetoric is not new—it’s been years in the making.
Abortion is largely defined by the politics that surround it. Mainstream art and media overwhelmingly reduce abortion to a topic of political and religious controversy, of culture wars and red-state legislation. Rarely is it treated as what it is: a highly personal health care decision.
But “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” a new movie written and directed by Eliza Hittman, does just that.
