Death

Honoring Gloria Steinem’s Legacy and the Black Feminists Who Shaped It

PUBLISHED 9/15/2026 by

Gloria Steinem was a person with integrity who used her celebrity to promote feminism and women’s issues—keeping them front in the public’s mind through appearances on talk shows, speaking engagements, her memoir My Life on the Road and the biographical film derived from it, The Glorias.

One moment in particular has stayed with me: Steinem’s pronouncement in a 2016 article by Zeba Blay, titled “I Learned Feminism From Black Women.” (I was so thrilled to see such a public announcement, that I used this quote in the first brochure published about the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive, which I founded in 2016 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.)

I wonder how comfortable she would be with all the hoopla that focuses attention only on her, while ignoring the countless Black, Brown, Indigenous and other white women who struggled for equal rights before her—including the Black women from whom she said she learned her feminism. Those women continued the struggle during Steinem’s lifetime, and they will continue it after her death.

I did not know Gloria well, but well enough to ask my African ancestors to welcome her soul as a kindred spirit. Asè.

Robin Morgan’s ‘Fighting Words’ for the Work Ahead

PUBLISHED 9/8/2026 by

For more than half a century, Robin Morgan helped shape feminist thought and activism in the United States and around the world. She also designed the now-iconic symbol of the women’s movement: the female symbol combined with a raised fist.

In her own unforgettable words, the pioneering feminist writer, poet and longtime Ms. editor reflects on power, progress, women’s leadership and the fight ahead.

What Did Gloria Steinem Mean to You? Share Your Story With Ms.

PUBLISHED 9/8/2026 by

Ms. has created a new digital tribute to Gloria Steinem, bringing together memories and reflections from friends, colleagues, fellow activists and readers around the world.

We invite you to add your voice by answering one question: What did Gloria mean to you?

Gloria was the people’s feminist. She made people feel seen, heard and capable of changing the world. She famously reminded us, “The Constitution does not begin with ‘I, the president.’ It begins with ‘We, the people.’”

So we invite you—the people—to help tell the story of her extraordinary feminist legacy.

Perhaps you met Gloria at a march, lecture or organizing meeting. Perhaps you grew up reading Ms. or discovered her writing decades later. Maybe her words helped you recognize an injustice, leave a harmful situation, find your voice, raise a feminist child, begin organizing or imagine a life beyond the limits prescribed for you.

Your tribute does not need to capture the whole of Gloria’s life or legacy. It only needs to tell your part of the story.

Share your memory, reflection or story about Gloria Steinem.

Rest in Power, Robin Morgan—Ms. Editor, Poet, Feminist and Architect of the Women’s Movement

PUBLISHED 9/5/2026 by

Longtime Ms. editor and “architect of the contemporary women’s movement,” Robin Morgan died peacefully in her sleep on Sept. 5, 2026, just days after her friend and feminist partner Gloria Steinem.

Morgan called Ms. “a real family,” citing the depth and longevity of the relationships many people established through it. She would go on to found the Women’s Media Center alongside Ms. cofounder Gloria Steinem and actor and activist Jane Fonda in 2005.

“Robin Morgan was one of the architects of the contemporary women’s movement,” said Julie Burton, president and CEO of the Women’s Media Center. “Her global leadership for justice and equality, her work as a pioneering journalist who gave voice and visibility to women, and her fierce artistry as an internationally recognized poet and author of more than 20 books—these all constitute the legacy she has forged over decades of creative, cultural, and political work. 

Talking Back to Dobbs: Federal Judge Says Idaho Can’t Force Pregnant Women to ‘Endure All Harm Short of Death’

PUBLISHED 8/26/2026 by | UPDATED 8/28/2026 at 7:17 A.M. PT

A federal district court issued the first post-Dobbs decision recognizing the U.S. Constitution still protects the right to abortion in specific circumstances.

And while legal opinions rarely move me to tears—as even the most progressive outcomes are typically cloaked in legal jargon that does not communicate the often urgent or tragic human experience underlying the case—Judge B. Lynn Winmill’s deeply attentive opinion in Seyb did just that.

Idaho has one of the nation’s strictest abortion regimes: Abortion is generally criminalized at every stage of pregnancy, with narrow exceptions. As Winmill writes, as a direct consequence of this ban, “a woman’s body itself is conscripted into service and forced to bear permanent damage in service of the potential life she carries.”

Winmill ruled Idaho’s abortion ban was unconstitutional on two grounds.

1. It violated the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause by denying pregnant patients a fundamental right to medically indicated abortion care.

2. By excluding self-harming behavior from the law’s life-saving exception, it denied patients with mental-health conditions equal protection under the 14th Amendment.

In their initial complaint, the plaintiff Dr. Seyb and his legal team that the requested relief “will address only a fraction of the harm that Idaho’s Abortion Bans are causing.” While meaningful, they wrote, such relief alone cannot secure justice for all Idaho residents; that would require repeal of the abortion bans through legislation or direct democracy—or the Supreme Court’s reversal of Dobbs.

Voters may soon have an opportunity to pursue that broader relief: In the upcoming midterms, Idahoans can cast a vote in favor of the Idaho Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act, a ballot initiative to restore abortion access in the state.

What the Lindsay Clancy Trial Reveals About America’s Failure to Support Mothers in Crisis

PUBLISHED 8/21/2026 by

News of Lindsay Clancy’s triple-murder trial is flooding the Internet, and with it, conversations about postpartum depression. In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy killed her 5-year-old, 3-year-old and 8-month-old children before attempting suicide, which left her paralyzed from the waist down. The facts of their deaths are not up for debate in this Plymouth trial, but whether or not the severe postpartum psychosis, clinical depression and bipolar disorder Clancy was experiencing meant she was criminally insane. 

Clancy’s mother-in-law explained Clancy was “begging for help” right before she killed her children. In December, just weeks before, she told her mother and then-husband Patrick (the couple are now divorced) that “she had thoughts of harming the children.”

The case has laid bare the failures of a U.S. mental healthcare system that did not protect Clancy or her children, and still leaves countless new mothers without adequate care.

While Clancy stands trial, people are mourning the loss of Hayden Panettiere, a child star who had long struggled with postpartum depression following the 2014 birth of her daughter, Kaya, and experienced domestic violence from her ex-boyfriend Brian Hickerson. This week, news outlets revisited Panettiere’s allegation that Neutrogena (one of her long-time partners) attempted to end her contract after she spoke honestly about her postpartum depression.

‘It’s Killing the Women You Represent’: Texas Widower’s Plea to Lawmakers to End Abortion Ban

PUBLISHED 8/21/2026 by

After his 35-year-old wife bled to death from a miscarriage in a Houston-area hospital, a Texas father is suing—and taking her story to Capitol Hill.

“Choosing to bring new life into the world shouldn’t be a death sentence,” insisted Michelle Maloney, the San Antonio attorney working to bring justice to Texas widower Hope Ngumezi and his two young sons.

Three years ago, in June 2023, Hope’s beloved wife Porsha was happily expecting the couple’s third child until she began to miscarry at 11 weeks pregnant. The healthy 35-year-old finance manager for a charter school went to the emergency room at Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital, just 10 minutes from her home in suburban Houston.

Both she and Hope were certain that she would receive the safe and critical medical care that she needed as she passed fetal tissue and blood clots the size of grapefruits at the hospital. An ultrasound confirmed that she had partially miscarried and that her fetus no longer had a heartbeat. But the heavy bleeding didn’t stop.

Still, the hospital’s OB-GYN, who examined her just once, moved Porsha from the ER—where staff were equipped to respond to emergencies—to a regular floor, where she received less monitoring. Porsha arrived at the hospital at 3:37 p.m. By 2 a.m., she began gasping for air and within minutes, she had died of hemorrhage.

A dozen doctors who reviewed her medical records for ProPublica, which broke the story about her death, said that Porsha should have urgently received a very simple and standard procedure for a miscarriage—a D&C (dilation and curettage). The 10-15 minute D&C would have removed all remaining fetal tissue in her womb, which her uterus was trying to expel with heavy contractions and bleeding. The procedure would have stopped the bleeding.

“The poor thing bled to death for lack of a D&C. It’s atrocious,” Austin OB-GYN Nancy Binford told Courier Texas.

Hope Ngumezi Took His Wife Porsha to a Texas Hospital for a Miscarriage. She Left in a Body Bag.

PUBLISHED 8/18/2026 by

When Hope Negumezi took his pregnant wife, Porsha, to a Texas hospital for a miscarriage, he expected routine emergency care. Ten hours later, she bled to death.

Hope Ngumezi shares with journalist Bonnie Fuller how his pregnant wife, Porsha, bled to death while waiting in agony for hours for medical care. In this harrowing personal account, Hope recounts Porsha’s final hours—and the dangerous legal “gray area” that kept doctors from saving her life.

“Why did this nightmare happen?

“Our first meeting was at my 21st birthday party. … As soon as I saw her, it was like in the movies, when everything stops. There seemed to be an aura around her. I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face to sober up and to figure out how I was going to talk to her.

“She was a great mother. She just loved her boys so much and they loved her, too. They were both mama’s boys and were always hanging around her, which I loved.”

What Happens When a Dancer Is Forced to Become a Refugee? ‘Born to Dance, Forced to Run’ Captures Life Under the Shadow of Deportation

PUBLISHED 7/22/2026 by

Born to Dance, Forced to Run is a powerful new documentary that follows Steeven Labady, a queer Haitian dancer whose relentless pursuit of his artistic dreams is continually upended by displacement, asylum battles and the constant threat of deportation. Through his extraordinary journey, filmmaker and Haitian feminist activist Pascale Solages reveals the human cost of migration policies, transforming an abstract political debate into an intimate story of resilience, survival and hope.

At a moment when the Trump administration is dismantling Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and escalating immigration enforcement, the film’s message could not be more urgent. It’s a deeply human portrait of what it means to live undocumented under the shadow of deportation.

Born to Dance, Forced to Run premieres in New York on Saturday, July 25, at 6 p.m. at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, where audiences will have an opportunity to experience this moving documentary on the big screen, followed by a Q&A.

‘I Don’t Want To Die’: Texas Patients Are Afraid to Get Pregnant

PUBLISHED 7/15/2026 by

The fear of losing their lives is precisely what many pregnant Texas residents say they’ve experienced after four young women died in the state when they were unable to access medically necessary abortions.

Three died while doctors delayed their care for hours as they miscarried. Another, Tierra Walker, was 20 weeks pregnant and suffered from soaring blood pressure that had required multiple hospitalizations, yet was given no option for what would have been a lifesaving abortion by any of the 90 doctors who examined her.

She died in bed of preeclampsia, a serious, persistent high blood pressure disorder, and was found by her son on his 14th birthday.

Two of the dead women were also already moms, while another, Nevaeh Crain, was just 18 and expecting her first baby when she died of an infection while miscarrying. Crain had been sent home by two hospitals in the hours before her death, and a third delayed care while they waited to confirm that her fetus had no heartbeat.

These deaths and near-deaths have created an atmosphere where “100% of my patients are afraid” of experiencing complications in their pregnancies, said Dallas OB-GYN Dr. Austin Dennard. “It’s an extra stress to every stage of pregnancy. These laws are stealing the joy out of pregnancy.”

“Women are afraid to get pregnant in Texas. There is a pervasive unease with pregnancy. Women in their 40s with high-risk pregnancies are very afraid. Those pregnancies are fraught with difficulties,” she said.