EMTALA

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires hospitals with emergency departments to provide a medical screening examination to any individual who comes to the emergency department and requests such an examination, and prohibits hospitals with emergency departments from refusing to examine or treat individuals with an emergency medical condition.

Keeping Score: Women Stockpile Plan B Post-Election; Feminists React to Trump’s Cabinet Picks; Harriet Tubman Finally Recognized for Military Service

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week: Women stockpile emergency contraception and medication abortion after the election; one in five Americans gets news from social media influencers; House Republicans Nancy Mace and Speaker Mike Johnson harass incoming trans Representative Sarah McBride; Michelle Obama explains the double standards Kamala Harris faced; childcare costs more than rent for many families; Trump’s Cabinet picks spread sexist messages; Rep. Erica Lee Carter (D-Texas) became the 95th member of the Democratic Women’s Caucus after winning a special election to replace her late mother Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee; acknowledging Native Women’s Equal Pay Day; Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman was finally recognized for her military service; Trump’s margin over Harris will be about 1.5 points, the fifth-smallest gap since 1900; and more.

Here’s What the Biden Administration Can Do About Abortion Before Trump Takes Office

Though President-elect Donald Trump has waffled on how his administration might handle abortion policy, antiabortion activists are already exerting a pressure campaign for the incoming Trump administration to take a hardline approach and undo many of the policies set in place by the Biden administration.

Still, with two months left before Biden leaves office, there are some areas where legal scholars and attorneys suggest the outgoing administration could still take action, even if the impact may be narrow or short-lived.

War on Women Report: 27 Women Accuse Trump of Sexual Assault; Louisiana’s Controlled Substances Law Criminalizing Abortion Medication Takes Effect

and

U.S. patriarchal authoritarianism is on the rise, and democracy is on the decline. But day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. The fight is far from over. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the city of Austin over its abortion travel fund.
—The number of women who have accused Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of sexual assault is now up to 27.
—Louisiana’s law reclassifying the abortion medications mifepristone and misoprostol as “controlled dangerous substances” took effect on Oct. 1.
—In Manhattan, a 20-year-old woman is facing criminal charges for miscarrying in a restaurant bathroom.

Project 2025 Would Establish an Unborn Uber Class

and

Mostly without using the term “person,” Project 2025 lays out a plan for the next conservative president to use the federal government’s executive powers to enact nationwide policies that treat fertilized eggs as persons without needing to rely on courts or legislatures to achieve their goal—overriding the majority of Americans who oppose these measures.

Project 2025 would undermine public health, destroy and degrade women’s lives and inevitably lead to their criminalization.

We must understand Project 2025 as the culmination of the radical personhood agenda, launched in the 1970s, significantly advanced in 2022 by the Supreme Court decision overturning of Roe v. Wade and now poised to be fully achieved if Donald Trump is elected.  

How Project 2025 Seeks to Obliterate Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

, and

Project 2025 promotes a presidential agenda that rolls back civil and human rights and implements extremist conservative policies across every federal department and agency. Its sweeping far-right policy framework, by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, includes numerous attacks on sexual and reproductive health and rights. 

This fact sheet enumerates some of the agenda’s most serious threats to sexual and reproductive health and describes potential effects.

‘Women Are Afraid to Get Pregnant’: How the Texas Abortion Ban Denies Life-Saving Care

Kyleigh Thurman and Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz are the latest Texan women to file complaints or lawsuits after suffering harm to their reproductive health after the state enacted a near-total abortion ban.

“These women are examples of how scared, terrified and confused providers are even with the Texas law redefining that it’s legal that an ectopic pregnancy is a medical exception,” said Austin Dennard, a Dallas OB-GYN. Abortion bans in states like Texas are making doctors hesitate to provide life-saving care and “stealing the joy out of pregnancy,” she said.

As President, Harris Could Not Easily Make Roe v. Wade Federal Law—But She Could Still Make It Easier to Get an Abortion

, and

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.

What Does the ‘Pro-Life’ Movement Care About?

When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and overturned Roe v. Wade, there was a lot of talk, mostly from “compassionate conservative” abortion opponents, about what was next. It would be necessary, these abortion opponents argued, for the pro-life movement and perhaps even the Republican Party to finally turn its focus to actually helping women and babies. The country would be remade into one reflecting a broader “culture of life.” We were going to get a bipartisan pro-family agenda. Abortion wouldn’t just become illegal; the nation would be so welcoming to pregnant women that abortion would simply be unthinkable.

None of that has happened.

Keeping Score: Court Blocks Student Loan Relief Plan; Former N.Y. Cop Sentenced 10 Weekends in Jail After Child Rape; Trump’s ‘Tampon Tim’ Jab Backfires

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week: Kamala Harris reaffirmed her candidacy for president at the DNC; Republican-appointed judges strike down Biden’s student loan relief plan; a new law bans women from speaking in public in Afghanistan; working moms earn just 71 cents per dollar earned by dads; understanding the orgasm gap; gold-medalist boxer Imane Khelif fights back against racist and sexist abuse; new reproductive rights bills signed into law in Illinois; and more.