Through three Marys across centuries, Katie Cappiello’s play uses sharp humor and heartbreak to ask who gets to decide what happens to a woman’s body.
The Body of Mary runs Sept. 8-Oct. 8 at The Gym at Judson in Greenwich Village, New York City.
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church is a religious organization with power extending into U.S. and global politics and culture, including influencing ideas and legislation surrounding sex education, abortion, contraception and marriage equality.
‘To Be Forgotten Is to Die Twice’: The Fight to Protect the Graves at Ireland’s Bessborough Mother and Baby Home
Survivors and advocates in Ireland are fighting to stop the construction of luxury apartments on the grounds of the former Bessborough Mother and Baby Institute, where hundreds of infants who died in state- and church-run custody are believed to remain buried in unmarked graves.
At a national rally on July 18 outside the Cork City Library—the site of the former Bessborough Mother and Baby Institute—survivors and their families warned building over the site would erase one of Ireland’s darkest chapters. There, survivors and their families spoke about their experiences. Advocates held a banner with the names of infants who died at Bessborough and others marched with signs reading “to be forgotten is to die twice.”
Bessborough is part of a system of containment institutes first founded back in the 1760s as places to help sex workers pursue more “moral” forms of employment.
By the 1800s, these institutions—called the Magdalene laundries, or mother and baby homes—effectively became prisons for “fallen” or “immoral” women who deviated from strict social norms. Run by Christian religious orders and institutions, mother and baby institutes kept unmarried pregnant women hidden from public view in a Catholic country where unmarried pregnant women and girls were and are deeply stigmatized.
Inside mother and baby institutes—which received public funding and were run by religious orders—unmarried pregnant women and girls were hidden away and faced intense violence. According to the Irish Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, 11.4 percent of the people incarcerated in these institutions were minors. After their children were born and babies at least partially weaned, these women were forcibly separated from their children who would be taken for adoption. But many children died in these institutes because of systemic neglect and abuse.
Sinead O’Connor Was Right: It’s Time to Revisit Some of Pop Culture’s Most Maligned Women
An excerpt from Allison T. Butler’s The Judgment of Gender: How Women Are Centered and Silenced in Pop Culture, published March 8, 2026:
While Sinead O’Connor was roundly criticized for ripping up the picture of the pope, the passage of time has revealed: She was right.
O’Connor was labeled a pop star, but she never saw herself that way. From Rememberings: “Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I’m a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame.”
If No One Is Held Accountable, What Are the Epstein Files For?
Releasing the Epstein files without real consequences risks turning a long fight for truth into yet another moment of exposure that leaves survivors without justice and systems of abuse intact.
Teens Avoid Coercive Parental Involvement Laws by Using Telehealth Abortion Services
The majority of U.S. teenagers live in states that require parental involvement in abortion healthcare decision-making. If parents are unavailable or teens under 18 do not want to involve their parents, they must go to court and convince a judge that they are mature enough to decide on their own or that the abortion is in their best interest.
To avoid this invasive and burdensome process, resourceful teens are now turning to abortion care from telehealth providers located outside their restrictive states.
Under the Reagan administration, parental involvement laws proliferated as an attempt to restrict minors’ access to reproductive healthcare.
One of the most well-known, devastating consequences of these laws was the 1988 death of Becky Bell in Indiana. When Bell became pregnant as a teenager, Indiana had a parental consent law. Bell was afraid to tell her parents about the pregnancy for fear of disappointing them, but she was also afraid to go before a local judge she heard was reluctant to grant waivers. Believing she had no other option, she turned to an unsafe, likely self-induced abortion. Several days later, Bell was rushed to the hospital with a massive infection and died. Her death became a poignant symbol of the lethal effects of restricting young people’s access to safe abortion.
‘This Is Our Country Too!’: The Enduring Legacy of Spanish-Speaking Women in Early America
Centuries before the American Revolution, Spanish-speaking women crossed oceans and deserts to build communities whose legacies still shape the United States.
As anti-Latino sentiment coincides with the 250th anniversary of the United States, we must remember that long before the American Revolution, Spanish-speaking women inhabited territory that would become the United States.
Like their English Protestant counterparts in New England, Spanish-speaking women were founding mothers of our nation. Their legacies live on through their descendants and the many other Latinas who immigrated to the U.S. over the past 250 years. Faced with the widespread detention of Spanish-speaking women, it is crucial to remember that it has long been their country too.
(This essay is part of the FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists series, marking the 250th anniversary of America by reclaiming the revolution through the women and gender-expansive people whose ideas, labor and resistance shaped U.S. democracy.)
After Decades of Institutional Silence, Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse Deserve More Than the Catholic Church’s PR
When the archdiocese of New York announced plans to raise at least $300 million toward a potential global settlement with childhood sexual abuse survivors, headlines framed it as progress. For those living with the trauma, it landed as a mix of relief, anger, exhaustion and deep skepticism shaped by decades of abuse of power, institutional denial and calculated delay.
The story isn’t the dollar amount; it’s the decades survivors have waited for justice. They had to fight just to be heard by the very institution that failed to protect them and now must watch that same institution frame overdue negotiations as moral penance.
Any willingness by the church to engage in meaningful talks is better than silence, but this moment should not be mistaken for accountability. It signals the start of a process survivors should never have had to force through legislation, litigation and relentless public pressure.
The Sound of Silence After Minneapolis: America’s Masculinity Blind Spot
A trans shooter in Minneapolis does not change the pattern: Most mass murderers are cisgender men. Change begins with acknowledging that truth. And then acting on it.
Men, let’s answer the call. Let’s urge Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison to use their platforms to spark a movement of men to lead the way. Enough is enough. The time is now—before the guns ring out again.
Trump’s IVF Walkback Opens the Door to a Catholic ‘Alternative’
When Donald Trump anointed himself the “father of IVF” on the campaign trail, he promised to expand insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization—a move that was more pronatalist than pro-choice. In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order to explore reducing insurance-plan and out-of-pocket costs for IVF without a national insurance mandate. Now, reports indicate that the “father of IVF” is walking back his campaign promise just as a religiously motivated “alternative” threatens to enter mainstream medicine and be codified into law.
Why Is the Vice President Sitting Like That?
That awkward posture isn’t accidental. When Vance spreads his legs and plops down for an interview, he is directly addressing young men. He wants to prove that he’s just one of the guys, while also issuing a dire warning. “The boys,” he asserts, are under attack.
Advancements in women’s rights have always been followed by countermovements, each one lamenting, “But what about the boys?”
In reality, the cure for loneliness can’t be found in calling your friends the f-word or finding a “trad wife” who will stay in her place. It requires genuine relationships. It’s about having your feelings valued but with the equal expectation of emotional reciprocity. Behold and be held. That’s the deal.
Guys: You all, like all people, deserve to be loved. The problem is, the messengers who claim to be your friends are lying. Those guys don’t love you. They love their power over you.