Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is the second most common type of cancer in women. Eight in 10 cases are found in women aged 50 or older, but it also affects younger women and can be found in men.

My Hysterectomy Was a Gift. Dr. Kemi Doll Shows Why Women Need to Share Our ‘Womb Stories’

PUBLISHED 8/8/2026 by

Determined to prevent uterine cancer deaths, Dr. Doll published A Terrible Strength: The Hidden Crisis of the Black Womb and Your Survival Guide to Healing in May. Both comprehensive and compassionate, the book focuses on individuals of African descent, showing how everyone will benefit.

Upon finishing A Terrible Strength, I took its message to heart: One need not have a womb to prioritize womb health. We can all join Kemi Doll’s Womb Sisterhood through the “deliberate telling and sharing” of “womb stories” with “our true friends.” 

Fortunately, women have already started talking. Personal testimonies changed health outcomes in the 1970s and ’80s—and they’re doing the same now. Earlier generations suffered through perimenopause in silence, but today, women in their 20s, 30s and 40s hear about not only hot flashes but also itchy ears and frozen shoulders. And, as a woman in my early 50s, I’m not completely in the dark about hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Nevertheless, deadly silence remains.

I am childfree by choice, so pregnancy never fueled my concerns, but I became preoccupied with gynecology in 2017. Fibroids were wreaking havoc in my life, and I pursued a hysterectomy to end my suffering. As Doll puts it, this “definitive treatment” is “welcomed by some and mourned by others.” Though I very much welcomed a hysterectomy, I couldn’t secure one until May 2021, despite my best efforts. 

From now on, I will participate in the “deliberate telling and sharing” of “womb stories.” Doing so is difficult but necessary. As Doll explains, sharing our experience requires us to “shift away from a strength that withstands suffering, silence and pain.” It requires, in her words, “a strength that embraces our vulnerability and can demand better care from the larger world.”

War on Women Report: Hegseth Blocks Promotions of Women in Navy; Trump Finally Pays E. Jean Carroll; Colorado Police Pray With Abortion Clinic Harassers

PUBLISHED 7/31/2026 by and

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide: the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.”

We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—Celebrity women are 3.5 times more likely than men to be deepfaked.
—The Department of Health and Human Services abruptly canceled $68 million in federal grants under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.
—Planned Parenthood clinics regained access to millions of dollars in essential federal funding. The temporary ban was originally approved in July 2025 as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The denial of federal funding over the past year forced Planned Parenthood to close nearly 30 health centers nationwide, impacting roughly 40,000 patients. Despite regaining an estimated $800 million in annual federal funding, ongoing financial uncertainty at both the state and federal levels means the shuttered clinics will not reopen.
—Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner has suspended his campaign after a former girlfriend accused him of raping her nearly five years ago.
—For the first time in a decade, no active-duty women naval officers will be promoted to admiral this year.
—Police officers in Boulder, Colo., were photographed pausing to pray with antiabortion protestors harassing the RISE Collective, an all-trimester abortion clinic, after concerned RISE Collective staff alerted the police of the protestors’ presence.
—Abortion-rights organizers in Idaho have been working to collect signatures for a proposed ballot measure that would restore abortion rights in the state, revoking Idaho’s total ban. On July 2, volunteers gathered in Boise to turn in over 110,000 signatures they collected for the initiative (called the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act). About one-quarter are from registered Republicans, demonstrating support for abortion rights is widespread even in deep red states.

… and more.

Mifepristone Could Treat Endometriosis, Some Cancers, Depression and Chronic Illness—If Politics Didn’t Interfere

PUBLISHED 1/21/2026 by

Across a range of conditions that disproportionately affect women, research into mifepristone’s potential has been slowed, defunded or blocked altogether. Nowhere is that clearer than in the treatment of endometriosis and other serious illnesses that leave millions of women in chronic pain.

Endometriosis—when endometrium cells grow outside the uterus—afflicts an estimated 10 percent of reproductive-age women. It can lead to chronic pelvic and back pain, heavy or abnormal bleeding, pain during sex or bowel movements, fatigue, bloating, digestive issues, infertility, anxiety and depression.

Mifepristone can help—it blocks the progesterone causing the cellular growth and decreases the size of existing endometrial lesions, thereby relieving painful symptoms. But antiabortion politics have obstructed the development of the medication for these uses in the U.S.

Researchers have also produced studies showing mifepristone is effective for treating ovarian and breast cancer, chronic inflammatory diseases, and several psychiatric disorders, including major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and psychotic depression.

This is Part 2 of 3 in a new series, “The Moral Property of Women: How Antiabortion Politics Are Withholding Medical Care,” a serialized version of the Winter 2026 print feature article.

Dobbs Has Triggered Widespread Discrimination in Non-Reproductive Healthcare

PUBLISHED 11/18/2025 by

In the years since Roe was overturned, physicians across a wide range of medical specialties have described how abortion bans are undermining their ability to follow evidence-based standards of care. Dermatologists, oncologists, neurologists, cardiologists and others told Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) that they are regularly forced to alter treatment plans, delay urgent care or avoid prescribing the most effective medications simply because those treatments could harm a pregnancy. These constraints are creating a chilling effect that reaches far beyond reproductive health and into the everyday practice of medicine.

As PHR’s Michele Heisler and Payal Shah explained, abortion bans are also fueling discriminatory care. Reproductive-age women are routinely denied the best available treatments, while men with the same conditions face no such barriers. Even within the group of reproductive-age women, clinicians are making decisions based on subjective judgments about a patient’s “contraceptive reliability”—a practice that opens the door to bias and disproportionately harms marginalized patients.

This two-tiered system of care is not hypothetical: It is already shaping medical decision-making in ban states, with dangerous consequences for patients’ health and lives.

FDA Rewrites the Story on Estrogen: A Win for Women

PUBLISHED 11/10/2025 by

Estrogen, the hormone long cast as a public health threat, has been unfairly maligned.

The FDA has finally announced it will remove the incorrect “boxed warning” from vaginal estrogen products and issue corrected labeling for other estrogen therapies—a much needed course correction for one of modern medicine’s most damaging missteps.

Hitting Where It Hurts: Expiring Healthcare Tax Credit Means Price Hikes for Americans with Cancer

PUBLISHED 9/23/2025 by and

For more than 18 million Americans living with cancer, access to healthcare and health coverage is more than just financial security. It connects them to life-saving care that maintains and improves their quality of life.

However, federal action—and inaction—may sever that connection for people with cancer.

Without congressional action, current marketplace premium tax credits will plummet on Jan. 1, 2026—by an average of 93 percent in HealthCare.gov states. Among people with cancer receiving these tax credits, 86 percent report they will have difficulty affording and getting necessary health care services.

Keeping Score: Charlie Kirk’s ‘Professor Watchlist’ Put Educators at Risk; Epstein Survivors on Capitol Hill; Lawmakers Condemn RFK’s ‘War on Science’

PUBLISHED 9/15/2025 by | UPDATED 9/16/2025 at 9:11 A.M. PT

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:.
—Karen Attiah, a Washington Post columnist, said she was fired over social media posts she made following the killing of Charlie Kirk. “I did my journalistic duty, reminding people that despite President Trump’s partisan rushes to judgement, no suspect or motive had been identified in the killing…”
—Epstein survivors spoke out in support of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
—Missouri state lawmakers held a sit-in to protest redistricting.
—Texas banned trans people from using public bathrooms.
—Senators pushed back against RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine views.
—Colleges and universities experience a chilling effect of Trump’s war on DEI.
—Being stalked increases the risk of heart disease.
—Tea Party Patriots co-founder said they plan to pressure Senate Republicans to attach the SAVE Act to must-pass funding legislation in September.

… and more.

As Support for Abortion Grows, the Court Doubles Down on Restricting Care

PUBLISHED 6/30/2025 by

In its Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic ruling last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a devastating blow to reproductive health clinics across the nation. A substantial slate of decisions issued by the Court Friday dealt several more severe blows to the rule of law and our constitutional rights—though a silver lining was the Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act’s preventive-care mandate.

Trump Is Gutting Healthcare—But Women’s Health Was Already Disastrously Underfunded

PUBLISHED 6/10/2025 by

For the past few decades, women’s healthcare has been under increasing attack across the country. Even states like New York, often perceived as a beacon of women’s healthcare, are backsliding, increasingly unable to address women’s health challenges adequately. Indeed, the lack of funding and legislative support isn’t limited to rural areas or red states; it is everywhere.

As the Trump administration threatens to accelerate this decline even further, we must come to terms with how little our cities, states and federal government have valued and prioritized women’s health for more than 30 years and begin fighting back against this renewed assault.