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.
Catherine Kassenoff made it crystal clear. She resorted to an assisted suicide in Switzerland because she endured the most heart-wrenching agony a mother can face: losing her children.
Catherine was a smart, tenacious attorney, whose story has gone viral on social media—where many have asked: What will happen to her three daughters now?
The Taliban has introduced a cloak of fear and violence that threatens the rights, freedoms and livelihoods of the women and girls fighting to survive under looming security threats, humanitarian crises and gender apartheid in Afghanistan.
Idaho’s anti-abortion legislature and governor created a new crime this year: “abortion trafficking,” a fallacious and deliberate attempt to spread misinformation on abortion. Laws like this will likely begin to appear in another anti-abortion states and state legislatures.
Equating abortion-seeking to ‘trafficking’ undermines the brutal and inhumane realities that youth trafficking survivors endure. Ultimately, for vulnerable children, so-called anti-‘abortion trafficking’ laws codify the human rights and bodily autonomy abuses that true anti-trafficking laws aim to reduce. Adolescent health professionals and advocates must remain vigilant and continue to mobilize a multi-strategy response to ensure adolescents’ reproductive rights amid current assaults.
A new campaign from Safe In Harm’s Way, DomesticShelters.org and Neon is exposing domestic violence abusers as master manipulators. Since domestic violence perpetrators don’t always fit the “wife-beater” mold, “Hidden Horrors” is calling attention to how most people have likely been deceived by an abuser at some point in their lives—especially if they haven’t experienced the abuse first-hand.
Ms. spoke with Caroline Markel Hammond, CEO of Safe In Harm’s Way, and Sam Lauro, group art supervisor at Neon, to discuss the campaign’s creative process, how to expose the real monsters hiding in plain sight, how to support survivors and how to navigate healing.
Why would a brilliant attorney and mother of three take her own life? Because the dysfunctional U.S. family court system took her kids and drove her—like so many others—over the edge.
If a superwoman like Catherine Kassenoff—who had grit, plus training as an elite legal mind—was defeated by our American family court system, what does that say for the rest of women terrorized and victimized?
The 18-year-old escaped sex trafficking; now, she faces a prison term. Her case isn’t an anomaly for Black women and girls, and many aren’t seen as victims, advocates say.
In her newest book, Girls and Their Monsters, Audrey Clare Farley addresses the Morlok quadruplets’ earliest years as a singing-and-dancing sensation and zeroes in on their coming of age and eventual descent into schizophrenia.
“I want to stress that I don’t view the quadruplets only as victims. They looked for and found joy. The book is about people living under fascism, but it’s also about bravery and defiance.”
In the richest nation in the world, it shouldn’t be this difficult to make ends meet for yourself and your family.
As a society, we can choose to prioritize parents and their families. And that starts by implementing a guaranteed income program that will empower Black families and women everywhere. The fight for guaranteed income has deep roots in the civil rights movement—and it’s long overdue.
A study from the CDC revealed alarming statistics about the rapidly declining mental health of teenage girls. Nearly three in five U.S. teen girls felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021—almost a 60 percent increase from 2011. Teen girls are also experiencing record high levels of rape, sexual violence, depression and suicidal ideation.
Parents and caregivers, can support them by identifying potential signs of depression or anxiety and getting them the help that they need as soon as possible. With more support and attention from their immediate community, they may begin to realize they aren’t as alone as they think.
Judy Blume is most at home surrounded by books. That’s the predominant impression of a new documentary on the author’s life directed by Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok, Judy Blume Forever, which premiered at Sundance last month and will begin streaming globally on Prime Video in April.
The film relies heavily on interviews with Blume herself, a wonderfully charming presence throughout the documentary. (“I could be fearless in my writing the way I couldn’t in my life,” Blume explains in the film, referring to the complexities of her own personal life, where she chafed against the confines of her early marriages.) But one of its best components is its emphasis on the readers and how they were and still are affected by her novels.
