More Than A Magazine, A Movement
In early August, the Utah Supreme Court ruled to place a near-total abortion ban on hold, effectively blocking the law until a lower court can assess its constitutionality. For now, abortion will remain legal in the state until 18 weeks.
“This is an individual choice, and it should be between that individual and their healthcare provider, and their healthcare providers should not be afraid that they’re going to be put in prison,” Utah House Minority Leader Angela Romero told Ms.
No one—not even New Yorkers—can count on having a right to an abortion. This is why, New Yorkers must vote yes on Prop 1 to “protect abortion permanently.”
Proposal 1, however, does far more than establish constitutional protection for abortion. New York’s Prop 1 explicitly protects women who experience miscarriages and stillbirths, as well as those who carry their pregnancies to term and give birth. Prop 1 will also ensure equality for all those who want to travel—even if they happen to be pregnant. Proposal 1 will, for the first time, close the pregnancy loophole that has been used to deny pregnant patients equal rights to follow their religious beliefs.
Advocacy groups are mobilizing to safeguard access to the ballot as states implement laws that could deter trans people from voting in November.
Title X, the federally funded family planning program that provides confidential family planning services to teens has once again come under attack. In separate lawsuits, two Texas parents have alleged that by allowing their daughters to obtain contraceptives in the absence of their consent, the program has effectively divested them of their “God-given right to ensure their daughters remain virgins until marriage.”
This attack is on Title X is nothing new. The rights of parents to control the upbringing of their children has long been a rallying cry of Christian conservatives as they battle against the ostensible indoctrination of their children “with a secular worldview that amount[s] to a godless religion.” As they see it, a particularly pernicious aspect of this “godless religion” is the belief that “’teen promiscuity is … normal and acceptable conduct.”
Over the course of four decades, courts have consistently held that although Title X encourages parental involvement, it does not require it based on the recognition that “confidentiality [is] a crucial factor in attracting teenagers to Title X clinics and reducing incidence of teenage pregnancies.”
Any road to the White House runs through moms. But new polling from Demand Justice shows that on the issues moms care most about—women’s rights, gun safety and healthcare—former president Donald Trump has a problem: his stacking of the U.S. Supreme Court with extremist justices.
The Supreme Court’s latest term—with blockbuster decisions on abortion, the Second Amendment, presidential immunity and more—highlights a looming crisis of legitimacy.
(This article originally appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox!)
As abortion access is increasingly being decided by state and federal courts, two reproductive rights attorneys make sense of past rulings and the ongoing fight for reproductive healthcare.
The Supreme Court of Montana used state constitutional grounds to strike down the Consent Act, which required minors to obtain parental consent for an abortion. The court’s analysis of these justifications determined that they were clearly intended to obfuscate the antiabortion animus behind the Consent Law.
Having revealed the baselessness of the underlying justifications for discriminating against teens who choose abortion over childbirth, it becomes readily apparent that these are antiabortion laws—plain and simple—that aim to divest teens of control over this reproductive choice.
I was thrilled to hear DNC speakers say the word “abortion,” speaking up on behalf of reproductive freedom. But I tensed up whenever someone spoke in terms of protecting women’s “decisions” about pregnancy.
There is a lot about pregnancy that happens in the absence of any decision at all, or in spite of the decisions people make—like an ectopic pregnancy, or a spontaneous miscarriage, or pregnancy as a result of sexual abuse. That’s why we must ensure that the law, something we can control, does not cruelly add to families’ experiences of powerlessness, pain and loss.
Amanda Zurawski, Kaitlyn Joshua and Hadley Duvall have emerged as key surrogates for the Democratic Party, campaigning in support of Vice President Kamala Harris.