More Than A Magazine, A Movement
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?
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.
Donald Trump—who arguably is not likable to a good many people, who is not respected by a percentage of world leaders (or some of his own former generals and advisers), who doesn’t represent everyone (women who want abortion rights, to name one group), who has danced (or, at least, swayed) publicly, who consistently lies, whose cognitive abilities have come into question and whose behavior is notably unpresidential—has to jump through fewer hoops than Kamala Harris.
Being a man will do that for you.
Politicians must articulate their answer out loud and on the record: Does a woman have the authority to abort an unwanted pregnancy? Yes or no.
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.
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: Abortion is the number one election issue for women under 30; a record-breaking 300,000 Georgians cast their ballots on the first day; equal pay trailblazer Lilly Ledbetter died at age 86; X (Twitter) fails to quickly remove revenge porn; less than 1 percent of U.S. abortions happen after 21 weeks; and more.
The infamous 887-page policy manual linked to Donald Trump and JD Vance aims to take Ron DeSantis’ war against liberal arts education nationwide.
Trump’s abortion laws would “leave” the choice of whether to ban abortion “to the states.” An ER doctor and father chimed in on a now-viral thread on Twitter (X) on the need for individual choice.
“[Vance] claimed that the US is a diverse country,” Davidson wrote after sharing that his wife experienced four miscarriages over the course of raising their three children. “I couldn’t agree more—we ARE diverse—but that diversity does not end at state lines.”
Tuesday’s vice presidential debate brought exchanges over the question of asylum and border security, with Sen. JD Vance lying—without real-time fact-checking—about the ease of obtaining asylum. He offered a baseless assertion that people can be “granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.”
Winning asylum is extremely difficult, and the horrific conditions forcing women to seek protection from gender-based violence in Central America and Mexico show no signs of abating.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz faced Sen. JD Vance of Ohio Tuesday night at the vice presidential debate, and day-after results are showing more or less a toss-up on who won among pundits.
Admittedly, Vance sounded coherent and slick. But much of what he said—especially on abortion, IVF and childcare—were lies, engineered for women to let their guards down and to distance himself from his extreme views, most of which are ripped right from Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership. Vance has stood consistently against abortion rights during his two-year political career—despite attempts Tuesday night to embody a congenial and reasonable version of conservatism.