More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Ms. offers stories about the abuse of children related to feminist issues and the pursuit of human rights for all. Abortion, adoption, sexual abuse, criminalization of women, drug criminalization and harmful legislation all intersect with the issue of child abuse.
Child marriage is a persistent, evolving, global problem, and the United States is far from immune: Between 2000 and 2018, nearly 300,000 children were married in America—most of them girls wed to adult men.
Lack of a strong legal framework to prevent child marriage in the U.S. contributes to its prevalence. Banning child marriage is still in the best interest of America’s children and teens.
Tamura Lomax, a trailblazing Black feminist religious scholar, is on a mission to deliver a “Black feminist Bible on racism and revolutionary mother” with two companion books. The first, Freeing Black Girls, was published this year (2025); the second, Loving Black Boys, comes out next year.
Ms. contributing editor Janell Hobson spoke with Dr. Lomax about her latest works and the radical vision of “revolutionary mothering” that guides them.
“Black feminist mothering becomes this experiment. If people can teach sexism and hatred and racism, can we teach Black feminist politics? Is that possible? If we just do it from birth, and it’s just normal everyday talk it’s not this lesson that happens once at the dinner table but it’s just part of our everyday living. Can we do that the same way that we teach hatred?
“Revolutionary mothering is teaching those Black feminist politics everywhere—in the car, on the couch, during movie night, after the basketball game, in the football stands. It’s teaching a radical politics of our rights, our collective right to bodily autonomy first and foremost.”
When Tammy was being stalked by her ex, she didn’t know what to do or where to go. Tammy said it was the roughest part of her life, mentally and physically. Soon after, Human Options, a nonprofit based on Orange County, Calif., became her outlet and a safe haven for her to receive legal counseling and housing.
Tammy’s case is not isolated. In a recent study out of Harvard, 66,270 women were studied over a nearly 20-year period to determine the health effects of stalking: Women become more susceptible to heart disease.
From daily violence to decisions over their bodies, women’s suffering is ignored and their losses go largely ungrieved—a reflection of a culture that shapes which rights are protected and whose lives are mourned.
The newly released Beijing report warns that progress is not guaranteed, and regression is already underway. This anniversary must be more than a commemoration; it must be a recommitment. As Hillary Clinton cautions: “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for women across the world who have benefited from the changes in the laws, regulations, and norms over the last 30 years to realize that there are strong forces at work to try and turn the clocks back.”
The clock will not be turned back—not if we raise our voices, grieve loudly for women and refuse silence.
The Trump administration’s latest immigration scheme offers unaccompanied children $2,500 to “voluntarily” give up their legal rights and return to the very countries they fled. Officials are calling it a resettlement stipend, but in reality, it’s a disingenuous and dangerous form of coercion. Children in federal custody—many without attorneys—are being asked to make life-altering decisions under duress, with money dangled as an incentive to abandon their claims. Far from empowering them with choice, this program undermines the legal protections Congress established to keep children safe.
It’s one more example of the administration’s incremental intimidation of children—this time, with a price tag attached.
Imagine you’re a teen in foster care, and you’re pregnant. The father is your abusive foster parent. Nevada’s newly enforced parental notification law means you can’t get an abortion without telling him.
“The assumption that a parent is always the safest and most trusted person in an adolescent’s life is a falsehood,” said Dr. Laura Dalton. “Sometimes parents are abusive. Sometimes the parent is the perpetrator of sexual assault. For these patients, requiring parental involvement can be dangerous.”
Earlier this summer, I sat with Liz Stein at a kitchen table in Brooklyn. A survivor of abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, she was exhausted, and she was angry. A storm of media coverage of the Department of Justice’s interview of Maxwell left her surrounded by photos of her abusers, who had been enabled by the system so many times. When news came that Maxwell had been transferred to a minimum-security facility, Liz hit her breaking point. Once again, survivors were being talked about—not heard.
It was around that kitchen table that an idea was born: What if we could shift the narrative? What if we could bring Liz, and numerous Epstein survivors, together to reclaim the microphone? Rather than magnifying the voice of a convicted perjurer and abuser, we could instead amplify the voices of survivors who had been silenced. Fast-forward to Sept. 3, when over 20 Epstein-Maxwell survivors descended on Washington, D.C.
As I stood there watching survivor after survivor speak out, I was struck by the surrounding community of survivors who came to D.C. to show their support. And then something amazing happened—we were approached by several women we had not met before, who disclosed that they too were Epstein survivors. They told us, “I needed to be here today. I needed to listen to my survivor sisters. This gave me strength and empowered me for the very first time.” One woman told me it was the first time she’d said out loud that Epstein had abused her. Courage is contagious.
The Departments of Homeland Security, as well as Health and Human Services, hit a new low over Labor Day weekend: Government officials ordered the deportation of over 600 Guatemalan children in the middle of the night.
Fortunately, a federal judge quickly acted to block the removals, at least for now—but the events that unfolded between Aug. 29 and Aug. 31 are a sobering indictment of all that is wrong with Trump’s campaign against immigrants. In a single night, the Trump administration may have permanently scarred children who were just beginning to feel like they had found a safe place, far away from the danger and threats they had fled.
Their terror and confusion is captured in the affidavits children and witnesses filed with the court over the next few days. One boy described how shelter staff woke him at 2 in the morning, telling him he would be leaving in a few hours; he had no time to wash his face or brush his teeth but had to gather his things and go. For a minute, he just sat there, staring into space, unable to fathom what going back to Guatemala might mean. Another child became so scared that she vomited.
Many worried whether their parents or relatives could even answer the phone at such an hour or be ready to receive them. Some asked in trembling voices, “¿Me van a mandar a otro albergue en Guatemala?” “Are they going to send me to another shelter in Guatemala?”
The Woman grew up in a small Christian town in northeastern Tennessee. Community values—kindness, compassion, love—are deeply cherished. She’s never moved; why would she? She enjoys the simplicity of her little community.
But the tide turns with a growing political movement seemingly predicated on bigotry and punitive, hypocritical morality. The news cycle churns frenetically, each day bearing more distressing confusion.
Her state representatives are unresponsive to your concerns, and she has a serious one: She’s pregnant and unmarried in post-Roe America, and cannot get care in her state. Legally, a doctor can decline to provide care for you.
She’s not trying to cause problems. But she’s terrified and she wants answers. How did we get here as a nation? And can we ever go back?
A grave truth transcends: Christian fundamentalism has insidiously inserted itself into American policy, perverting its own values to legalize discrimination.
Bigotry doesn’t always present as a Unite the Right rally or violence in our nation’s capital. Sometimes, it comes with a demure smile and a sweet, “It’s just my personal belief.” It’s still bigotry.
Growing up in an Orlando suburb, D remembers being stripped naked, bent over his parents’ laps and spanked with a plastic spatula that had “tough love” written on it in black Sharpie. This punishment persisted through D’s childhood, at times making it uncomfortable for him to sit the next day.
“Spanking evolved into things like grounding and taking things away, taking meals away, replacing meals with bread and water, kneeling on rice in a corner facing the wall,” says D, who asked to remain anonymous because he is afraid of retaliation from his mother for speaking out. Now 29 years old, D has permanent nerve damage and walks with a cane.
And while this abuse was emotionally and physically devastating, it was legal. This is because corporal punishment is legal nationwide inside the home and in public schools in 17 states. According to the World Health Organization, corporal punishment includes hitting, smacking, slapping and spanking children with a hand or an object such as a whip, stick, belt, shoe or wooden spoon. But it can also involve kicking, shaking, throwing, scratching, pinching, biting, burning or scalding children, as well as pulling hair, forcing children to stay in uncomfortable positions or forced ingestion.
Corporal punishment is illegal in 68 countries, with Thailand being the most recent to ban it. And since 1989, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has advocated for the end of the practice. But on American soil, it is estimated that over 160,000 children are subjected to these punishments at school every year.
Multiple studies suggest LGBTQ kids experience violence and emotional abuse from parents at a higher rate than their counterparts. “[Many parents] have this perspective that they don’t want their child to be LGBTQ, and that somehow this violence will help prevent them from becoming gay or trans.”