More Than A Magazine, A Movement
All women should have the right to choose if or when to be mothers, and to have the economic and social support to do so. This choice has been restricted across time and place due to discriminatory legislation against mothers and pregnant people, lackluster social safety nets and anti-abortion/anti-birth control movements.
Parenting is stressful—so stressful, in fact, that earlier this month Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an official advisory on the mental health and well-being of parents.
Single parents represent 30 percent of households in the United States—and 4 out of 5 of these single parents are single moms, who tend to be more stressed, lonelier and feel less supported than other parents.
Operation Restoration (OR) is working to change this for women and girls in the Pelican State. The group was founded in 2016 by formerly incarcerated women to provide peer and social service support, referrals, and counseling to women caught up in the criminal justice system. A related project, Operation Girls (OG), was founded in late 2018 to help female-identified children between the ages of 10 and 17 who have at least one parent in prison.
If there had been a 15-week abortion ban in place at the time that U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) was 14 weeks pregnant, she would have never been given the freedom, space and time to make the choice not to have an abortion.
“It made me recognize how incredibly grateful I was that I was able to make those choices free from government interference, free from the overreach of people who just wanted to score political points, and how I was free to make the best decision for me and my family, which in my case was to choose not to have an abortion and to give our daughter every chance at life that we possibly could,” Scholten told Ms.
Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins was jailed for objecting to court ordered “reunification therapy” that sought to mend the relationship between her children and their father, a man charged with sexually assaulting three of their daughters and physically abusing their son.
As a divorce coach and coercive control expert, who are both domestic abuse survivors, we see these mind boggling, trauma-inducing decisions by family courts every day. This Colorado mom could be any mom. That’s why it’s time that America deals with our family court crisis head on.
Tasked with examining pregnancy-related deaths to improve maternal health, a panel of experts, including 10 doctors, deemed Amber Nicole Thurman’s death “preventable” and said the hospital’s delay in performing the critical procedure had a “large” impact on her fatal outcome.
Thurman’s case marks the first time an abortion-related death, officially deemed “preventable,” is coming to public light.
Their reviews of individual patient cases are not made public. But ProPublica obtained reports that confirm that at least two women have already died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state. There are almost certainly others. Though Republican lawmakers who voted for state bans on abortion say the laws have exceptions to protect the “life of the mother,” medical experts cautioned that the language is not rooted in science and ignores the fast-moving realities of medicine.
Front & Center began as first-person accounts of Black mothers living in Jackson, Miss., receiving a guaranteed income. Moving into the fourth year and next phase of this series, we’re expanding our focus beyond a single policy intervention to include a broader examination of systemic issues impacting Black women experiencing poverty. This means diving deeper into the interconnected challenges they face—including navigating the existing safety net; healthcare, childcare and elder care; and the importance of mental, physical and spiritual well-being.
Shomari is a mom of four who is struggling to find work because she doesn’t have reliable childcare. “My ideal future includes working a career I like, my kids doing well in school and extracurricular activities, and living in a house with a yard where my kids feel comfortable. I dream of going on vacations and providing a safe, stable environment for my family.”
Any road to the White House runs through moms. But new polling from Demand Justice shows that on the issues moms care most about—women’s rights, gun safety and healthcare—former president Donald Trump has a problem: his stacking of the U.S. Supreme Court with extremist justices.
Part one of a three-part series about the 900-plus-page right-wing “misogynistic manifesto”:
Project 2025 promotes traditional heterosexual marriage, stigmatizing single parenthood and same-sex spouses, and cutting programs to support single mothers and their children.
(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!)
Sen. JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, has faced backlash for his controversial comments about Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats, as well as his extremist pro-natalist beliefs. Vance’s ideology is part of a broader conservative movement concerned with declining marriage rates and changing family patterns. This movement seeks to incentivize marriage, punish single parenthood, and weaken policies that enhance women’s economic autonomy. Vance and his allies oppose public investments in child care and family leave, fearing these would empower women to make independent family decisions. Their efforts echo a broader conservative agenda to reinforce traditional family structures and gender roles.
Front & Center is a groundbreaking Ms. series that offers first-person accounts of Black mothers living in Jackson, Miss., receiving a guaranteed income. Moving into the fourth year and next phase of this series, the aim is to expand our focus beyond individual stories to include a broader examination of systemic issues impacting Black women in poverty. This means diving deeper into the interconnected challenges they face, including healthcare, childcare and elder care, and the importance of mental, physical and spiritual well-being.
“When we started our Front & Center series three years ago, our goal was to give Black women living in extreme poverty—too often ignored in our politics and press—a platform to share their lived experience. … Instead of the narrow spotlight we’ve held to the singular program of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust guaranteed income pilot, we recognize that we must illuminate the full range of systems that harm our most vulnerable communities.”