Many legislators are in hot pursuit of tweaking, if not fully rescinding, ballot initiative processes because they want to stop the people from enshrining the right to abortion back into law.
Tag: Medicare and Medicaid
Abortion Restrictions Are Racist. Freedom Means Full Access for All, Full Stop.
A Texas case could soon force the FDA to revoke its approval of the abortion pill, mifepristone—a critical lifeline post-Roe and one of two drugs commonly used in a medication abortion, the procedure that currently accounts for more than half of all abortions in the country.
This abortion restriction would impact people of color the hardest. Why? Because abortion restrictions and bans are inherently racist.
Keeping Score: Women’s Grammy Wins (and Losses); NYC Clinics to Provide Free Abortion Pills; Navajo Nation Elects First Woman Speaker
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: The Grammys saw wins (and losses) for women performers and feminist causes; Republicans in Congress call for a nationwide abortion ban; Iowa state rep compares women to cattle; Florida educators reject ban on books in classrooms; NYC city-run clinics to provide free abortion medication; Lisa Marie Presley dies at 54; Biden administration releases plan for renter’s bill of rights; Utah Governor Spencer Cox approves ban on youth gender-affirming care; and more.
Front and Center: With a Guaranteed Income, ‘I Don’t Have to Worry or Stress Anymore,’ Says Mississippi Mom
Front and Center highlights the success of Springboard to Opportunities’ Magnolia Mother’s Trust, which this year will give $1,000 per month for 12 months to 100 families headed by Black women living in federally subsidized housing.
“Before the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, I was living check to check. I was working part time because we had no babysitter, and my work check was usually only $300 to $400 a month. I’m a single parent so I had to manage $400 a month for me and my two kids. It’s very hard being a single mother with no help. … I had times where I’d miss days of work because of no babysitter. But now I can go to work every day. I’ve got a full schedule of work now. It’s helped a lot.”
Biden’s Budget Is an Opportunity to Promote and Protect Abortion Access
Now is the time for President Biden to act—to do everything in this administration’s power in increase access to abortion at home and abroad. That starts today with the President Bidens’s 2024 budget being free of all abortion funding and coverage restrictions, including the Hyde, Helms and Weldon Amendments.
Without Roe v. Wade, Women in My Shoes Could Be Jailed for Their Miscarriage
In Texas, a six-week abortion ban means women experiencing miscarriage are denied care until they develop sepsis or forced to carry a dead fetus for weeks. In Wisconsin, one expecting mother bled for 10 days from an incomplete miscarriage doctors were barred from removing. Earlier this month, a Missouri woman suffering a life-threatening miscarriage couldn’t receive care under the state ban. These accounts—once mere warnings of what could happen in a post-Roe America—are now reality for millions of people across the country.
‘The Future Is Disabled’: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha on Creating a More Humane Social Order
Writer, disability-justice activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha knows that it’s possible for society to become more equitable. Piepzna-Samarasinha’s latest book, The Future Is Disabled: Prophesies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs, lays out a bare-bones agenda for what is needed to make the U.S. more socially just.
Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms. contributor Eleanor J. Bader communicated about the book, the disability justice movement and the ways that activists can support each other in the fight for a more ecologically sustainable and humane social order.
Alopecia Isn’t a ‘Cosmetic Issue’—It’s a Serious Autoimmune Disease
It took bravery for Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Jada Pinkett Smith to reveal their alopecia and rock a shaved head. The two revived the national conversation around alopecia—an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks its healthy hair follicles.
“To be bald as a woman really does disrupt conventional and societal norms of what is appropriate, what is professional, what is attractive, what is feminine,” said Pressley.
A Nation Without the Hyde Amendment Will Be Safer and More Humane for All of Us
On Sept. 30, 1976, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Hyde Amendment, which barred federal funds from covering abortions with the narrowest exceptions for rape, incest or threats to a patient’s life. As soon as Hyde went into effect, the number of Medicaid-covered abortions in the United States dropped from 300,000 to just a few thousand.
Abortion, like all healthcare, should be a human right—not merely a benefit of select insurance plans.
The Case for Over-the-Counter Birth Control Pills
Over-the-counter birth control pills, especially if covered by insurance, would be a game-changer for millions of U.S. women who experience barriers to contraception access.