Death

He Called Me ‘Doc.’ I Called Him ‘Rev.’ Remembering Jesse Jackson’s Moral Leadership

PUBLISHED 2/17/2026 by

I knew Rev. Jackson beyond the conventions. He married me and my husband, Gregory Shaffer, almost 25 years ago. He always showed up and gave graciously of himself when I called—whether it was to host a convening on HIV/AIDS at Rainbow PUSH in the early 2000s, or to bring together hundreds of working-class residents from the South Side of Chicago to engage on matters of national healthcare, or to meet with (mostly women) academics coming together to figure out the intersections of law, family and reproductive rights at the University of Chicago Club 20 years ago. 

He called me “Doc” or “Doctor Michele.” I called him “Rev.”

A week ago, by his father’s bedside, Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) and I spoke by phone. He had just delivered a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast calling the president to account—to be more humane and just, and to “do what is right.” It was clear that Rev. Jackson’s legacy is already living on.

In Serbia, Women Journalists Say Death Threats Have Become Routine

PUBLISHED 2/12/2026 by

In 2019, Jovana Gligorijević wrote a damning profile of a Serbian influencer who had connections to political power players and alleged criminal networks. 

Gligorijević works at Vreme, an independent news magazine founded in 1990 by intellectuals and activists fighting state censorship. Aside from her political reportage, she’s covered stories on sexual violence and, specifically, how Serbia’s judiciary treats rape victims. She notes wryly that in her experience, “when you report on politics and human rights, sooner or later you come across the far right as the root cause of the problem.” 

Other independent women journalists like Gligorijević that are critical of the Serbian government face sexual insults, threats of lawsuits, surveillance, smear campaigns and online rage.

ICE’s Violence Isn’t a Flaw in the System—It’s the Bedrock

PUBLISHED 1/12/2026 by

It’s a heavy time in the U.S.

Early in the month, we learned of the death of Dr. Janell Green Smith, a certified nurse-midwife and doctor of nursing practice (DNP) in South Carolina. A Black maternal health advocate, Smith became a midwife to confront the Black maternal mortality crisis. That she died in childbirth is a devastating reminder of the urgency of her work. Black women are three times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the CDC—a crisis compounded by abortion bans after Dobbs. Black women are disproportionately represented on Ms.’ running list of preventable deaths linked to those bans.

Then, late last week, videos emerged from Minneapolis showing heavily armed ICE agents killing a community volunteer and legal observer, Renee Nicole Good—an outcome of the misogyny and violence embedded within ICE.

RFK Jr. has also altered the childhood vaccine schedule, reducing recommended vaccines. Children will die or suffer lifelong harm. Older people will die. Nobody is safe. This, too, is violence. We may never know whose lives will be lost or permanently altered, but we mourn those harmed by this administration—and commit to fighting like hell for the rest of us.

Seven Ways the Trump Administration Has Made Pregnancy More Dangerous

PUBLISHED 1/8/2026 by

Trump has been in office for less than a year. The Supreme Court killed Roe v. Wade less than three years ago. And today, if you are a woman in the United States, your rights change when you cross state lines—men’s rights do not. 

It’s easy to lose sight of just how debilitating this administration has been for reproductive rights, because they are doing so much else so loudly. (Apologies to Greenland.) But this administration has quietly attacked abortion rights from just about every angle. A new report from the Center for Reproductive Rights makes clear just how aggressive they’ve been. 

Here are seven quiet moves from the Trump administration that are costing women and girls their lives.

What the ‘Wicked’ Weight-Loss Discourse Gets Wrong

PUBLISHED 12/17/2025 by

We can’t afford to look away from changing beauty norms in our society, and how they are fueling eating disorders. 

Jennifer Rollin, an eating disorder therapist based in Maryland, says, “What I hear from a lot of clients is that when they are trying to recover from their eating disorder in this society, it almost feels wrong, because ‘everyone around me is talking about Ozempic,’ and ‘all the celebrities are talking about their big amount of weight loss.’”

But while it can feel cathartic to criticize or distance ourselves from prominent women who seem to be conforming to dangerous beauty standards, that criticism is harmful and does not bring us any closer to addressing the problem.

Trump’s Silence on World AIDS Day Revives a New Lavender Scare

PUBLISHED 12/3/2025 by

Last month, the State Department warned employees not to commemorate World AIDS Day through official work accounts, including social media, nor should they use government funds to mark Tuesday, Dec. 2, as World AIDS Day. The day came and went in a quiet, cold Washington, D.C., without the president marking what it represented—the more than 700,000 Americans who died from HIV/AIDS-related causes in the United States since 1981. 

If his intentions were unclear, Trump’s budget proposed ending all CDC HIV prevention programs this past June, and Congress continues to negotiate next year’s budget, proposing massive cuts to HIV programs. 

For many young people who never lost friends or family, there may be the misconception that the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s was localized and small, but nearly 300,000 men who have sex with men have died from AIDS-related complications, with over 6,000 deaths in 2019 alone. To put this in perspective, this would be as if over half of Wyoming’s population disappeared, or if everyone in Pittsburgh, Penn., vanished overnight. 

Even Madonna criticized Trump’s move, posting on Instagram, “It’s one thing to order federal agents to refrain from commemorating this day, but to ask the general public to pretend it never happened is ridiculous, it’s absurd, it’s unthinkable. I bet he’s never watched his best friend die of AIDS, held their hand, and watched the blood drain from their face as they took their last breath at the age of 23.” 

Dying to Be Men: American Masculinity as Death Cult

PUBLISHED 9/11/2025 by

Much as owing guns at home is most likely to injure or kill the people living with those guns than the supposed threats posed by home invaders, the violent discourse espoused by Charlie Kirk and many others has resulted in his murder in front of a crowd of thousands of students.

Kirk built his career on racism and misogyny, encouraging young Americans to the side of a fully radicalized and extremist Republican party that has abandoned any pretense of caring for Americans and instead has become a propaganda machine pathetically flaying to prove that they are all men.

I’m sorry for Charlie Kirk and all the other men like him that have been raised in this America and with these ideals of masculinity. I’m sorry that he decided to adopt this hateful ideology and to profit from it. And as the mother to a boy and a girl, my heart breaks for the America these children are growing up in. Here’s hoping we can save ourselves.

In the Fall Issue of Ms. Magazine: Abortion’s Foes Turn Deadly

PUBLISHED 8/19/2025 by | UPDATED 9/2/2025 at 2:55 P.M. PT

The work of advocating for abortion rights has always been dangerous. But under the second Trump administration, which has enabled antiabortion lawmakers and vigilantes through policies and rhetoric, that danger has escalated dramatically, as state Rep. Melissa Hortman’s murder proves.

In our Fall issue, we delve into the motivations behind the shootings, and talk to the people who are trying to prevent further violence.

Here’s what else you’ll find in the Fall issue:

—a deep dive into how the Trump administration’s immigration policies are impacting families across the country—and advocates’ visions for a more just future.
—a visit to Syria’s “village of women,” which offers Kurdish women a refuge—one they’ll fight to protect.
—investigating how the Medicaid and SNAP cuts in the Republican budget bill will impact women and children.

You Must Have Your Baby, But Sorry, You Have No Insurance

PUBLISHED 7/21/2025 by | UPDATED 8/21/2025 at 9:08 A.M. PT

Medicaid is a cornerstone of maternal healthcare, providing coverage for nearly two-thirds of women of reproductive age and financing 42 percent of all births in the United States, according to an analysis by KFF. That means almost half of all new parents—disproportionately low-income—depend on it for prenatal care, safe delivery and postpartum support.

Unfortunately, pregnant and postpartum people are at the center of the crisis created by the One Big Beautiful Bill—recently passed by both the House and Senate and signed into law by Donald Trump—which guts Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.

If clinics are shuttered, hospitals are closed and providers are stripped from Medicaid, what happens to people forced to carry pregnancies without care? They will face unmanaged labor, untreated postpartum depression, and dangerous complications alone.

In a nation that mandates childbirth but slashes access to care, the question isn’t whether outcomes will worsen. It’s how many will suffer—and how many won’t survive.

America’s Healthcare Crisis Is Coming for All Women

PUBLISHED 7/11/2025 by and | UPDATED 8/21/2025 at 9:09 A.M. PT

Less access to healthcare—either by cutting Medicaid benefits or discouraging doctors from practicing in restrictive states—will affect antiabortion and pro-abortion women equally.

This is about far more than abortion. There will be more maternal deaths. There will be more deaths from cervical and breast cancer. More women will die from complications of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. There will be more suffering from infertility, endometriosis and fibroids.

Does anyone in power care? We certainly do. And we better make sure our voices are heard. All of our lives depend on it.