More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court in which the Court held that the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.
Two 50-something women, mothers and friends wonder: What will this next Trump era hold for our daughters and sons, our future grandchildren? Will the lessons and values we have imparted to our children enable them now, as young adults, to rise to meet the moment our nation faces?
This piece, based on three funds in the Northeast, is the fourth in a series of articles spotlighting interviews with fund representatives across the U.S.
We interviewed representatives from the New York Abortion Access Fund (NYAAF), New Jersey Abortion Access Fund (NJAAF) and Abortion Liberation Fund of Pennsylvania (ALF-PA). Activists at each of these funds noted the delicate balance between supporting abortion seekers from their home states and helping the influx of folks traveling to “blue states” for abortion care.
Survivor Justice Action, alongside survivors and allies across the country, is taking the conversation about domestic violence beyond individual homes, ensuring it’s heard loudly throughout the halls of Congress.
We refuse to settle for a world that enables, perpetuates and ignores the root causes of domestic violence. We will always make survivors voices a priority, and we won’t stop until domestic violence ends.
Americans are picking their first president after the Supreme Court overturned their constitutional right to an abortion.
Now, two-and-a-half years later, with near-full abortion bans in 13 states, deaths confirmed because of them, and a smattering of states that have enacted protections via the direct democracy of ballot initiatives, the country has a choice: to reelect Republican Donald Trump, whose pledge to undo Roe helped fuel his first ascent to the White House; or to elect Democrat Kamala Harris, who is running on resurrecting abortion rights as she aims to be the first woman to win the presidency.
Tony Hinchcliffe’s categorically unfunny appearance at Donald Trump’s recent rally in Madison Square Garden leaves me wishing that whoever discovered him left him sleeping in his car behind The Comedy Store in Los Angeles. (It’s how he opens the 12-minute set.)
Most of the ensuing backlash targeted Hinchcliffe’s puerile reliance on racism as humor. But another underreported moment that caught my attention was Hinchcliffe’s “joke” about Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce becoming “the next O.J. Simpson,” referencing Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder, widely believed to be the responsibility of her known abuser.
The joke hinges on the idea that Kelce might murder his girlfriend, Taylor Swift. Hinchcliffe referenced Swift’s political endorsement of Kamala Harris immediately after this joke. His punchline: If a woman voices her opinion, intimate partner violence is a hilarious solution. It’s an interesting stance for the so-called pro-life party to broadcast publicly.
The number of abortions in the first half of 2024 was significantly higher than the same period for the previous two years—according to the Society of Family Planning’s eighth #WeCount report, released last week, which measures the number of abortions in the U.S. each month from April 2022 through June 2024.
There has been a 20.4 percent increase in just three years, despite abortion bans in 14 states and severe restrictions in many others. (And these numbers only include clinician-provided abortions—there are many more self-managed abortions occurring outside of the formal healthcare system.)
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision,
abortion bans have made pregnant individuals more vulnerable to abuse and, in some cases, deadly violence.
Abortion bans are not just about reproductive rights—they threaten the safety and well-being of pregnant women and their children.
Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision gave states the authority to decide whether women can access legal abortions, state supreme courts are emerging as vital arenas in the battle over bodily autonomy. This November, 82 supreme court seats are up for an election or retention vote, across 33 states. This number includes judges who voted to uphold abortion bans in Florida and Arizona.
(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!)
In Pennsylvania, Republican Ryan Mackenzie touted his “100 percent pro-life voting record” as recently as May before removing it from his website.
In Michigan, where Rep. Hillary Scholten is the only Democrat to win the seat since the early 1990s, her Republican opponent, Paul Hudson, has said he does not support a federal abortion ban—yet is endorsed by Citizens for Traditional Values, a conservative group that wants to overturn the will of the voters and restore a 1931 abortion ban.
In competitive U.S. House races from coast to coast, Republicans are distancing themselves—rhetorically—from their party’s hardline anti-abortion stances. In most cases, the policies they say they support or oppose now are undercut by their records and past stances.
There is much that a potential Harris administration and Congress could do to offset the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs ruling.
Congress could amend existing federal laws—starting with repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal money from being used to fund abortions, or the Comstock Act, a Victorian law which some judges have interpreted as prohibiting the mailing of abortion pills. Congress could also enact legislation that protects the right to interstate abortion travel. Or Harris could ask Congress to pass a law that would guarantee the same kind of access to mifepristone that the FDA currently allows.