Religion

The world has hundreds of religions, and each impacts the culture and politics of certain regions differently. In the U.S., common Christian or Catholic understandings of religion have immensely impacted American culture and politics, though the Constitution attempts to keep separate the ideas of church and state.

The Growing Acceptance of a Movement That Wants to Punish Women for Abortion

PUBLISHED 6/4/2026 by

When South Carolina’s abortion abolitionist bill, the Unborn Child Protection Act (S. 1095), was voted out of committee and onto the full Senate floor in late April—“an unprecedented move toward locking up women who have an abortion,” according to Dana Sussman in Slate—it raised a question: How much influence have abortion abolitionists gained within the broader antiabortion movement?

Abortion abolitionists, who seek to criminalize abortion without exceptions and punish women who obtain abortions as murderers, have long been considered the outer fringe of the antiabortion movement. Their roots can be traced to what Colleen Scerpella described in The Prospect as “a new generation of mostly white, male, conservative Baptists, Presbyterians and Christian Reconstructionists”—or what she calls “extreme Christian patriarchy.”

As I wrote in Ms. a little more than a year ago, the dramatic increase in abortion abolitionist bills filed by state lawmakers after Roe v. Wade fell, signaled the growing influence of this movement.

That extremism has not gone unnoticed: In 2024, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified four abolitionist organizations as “male supremacist hate groups.” Recent research has likewise found that the strongest supporters of arresting women who have abortions are Americans who endorse Christian nationalism, believe “true Americans are white,” and look to the state to enforce a particular ethnocultural social order.

The South Carolina bill, which makes the pregnant woman herself subject to misdemeanor liability, prompted me to revisit the question of whether abortion abolitionists have made more inroads into the mainstream antiabortion movement.

The evidence suggests they have.

How Punjabi Sikh Advocates Reimagined Domestic Violence Risk Assessment

PUBLISHED 5/29/2026 by and

As another domestic violence homicide-by-strangulation in the Punjabi Sikh community went largely unreported outside the community itself, we are reminded of how often opportunities for intervention are missed. Those misses stem not only from systemic biases, but also from a lack of community-specific knowledge and cultural humility among service providers. When domestic violence research and prevention efforts rely on broad assumptions or one-size-fits-all frameworks, they risk overlooking the complex realities of survivors whose experiences are shaped by family, community and systemic pressures.

At Sikh Family Center, we encountered these limitations firsthand while working with the widely used Danger Assessment tool and its later adaptation for immigrant women. Questions about who qualifies as an “immigrant,” differing scoring systems and the omission of key risk factors often created confusion rather than clarity. When a risk-assessment tool does not reflect survivors’ lived realities—or appears to make assumptions about their identities—it becomes less persuasive and less effective in helping them make life-changing decisions.

That experience led us to develop the Danger Assessment for Sikh Women, a tool created alongside Punjabi Sikh survivors and their families. By incorporating community-specific vulnerabilities, protective factors and culturally relevant questions, the assessment aims to improve safety planning while helping survivors recognize both the risks they face and the support systems available to them.

The lesson extends far beyond one community: Domestic violence prevention strategies must remain flexible, humble and responsive if they are to reach survivors whose experiences fall outside conventional assumptions.

Trump’s Budget Plunders Birth Control and Reproductive Health Programs—With Open Derision for Americans Who Need Them

PUBLISHED 4/30/2026 by

Title X is the federal program that funds family planning and reproductive health services nationwide—and under President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for 2027, it would be effectively eliminated, reshaping access to care for women across the country.

What is perhaps most jarring, on close reading, is not only what the budget proposes, but how it speaks. The language throughout the administration’s budget and HHS documents departs from traditional bureaucratic norms, adopting a tone that is at times openly mocking and vilifying. Programs serving women, LGBTQ people and marginalized communities are described in terms that signal not just opposition, but disdain. It is a stark reminder that federal budgets do more than allocate resources—they reflect who this government is for, and who it is not.

(This essay is part of an ongoing Ms. series examining the real-world impact of President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget. Across sectors—from healthcare and childcare to immigration enforcement and food assistance—the series explores what the administration’s funding priorities reveal about who government serves, and who it leaves behind.)

We Need a Word for What’s Happening to Jewish Women

PUBLISHED 3/27/2026 by

Ever since I’ve been writing about slut-shaming, I’ve been called a slut and a whore.

In the 1990s, the age of doorstopper phone books (the kind with white pages and yellow pages), I received alarming letters delivered to my mailbox. In the early 2000s, the letters morphed into emails. And when I began posting on Instagram, the insults followed me there, too.

Over three decades, the insults were consistent: I was called various synonyms for prostitute and vagina, and an ugly pedophile for good measure. The hatred was misogyny—targeted, specific and designed to put me back in my place.

Then Hamas brutally attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel retaliated in a devastating war in Gaza. The insults changed. I am no longer a regular slut and a whore; I am a “Jewish whore,” a “chosenite supporting the porn industry,” and a “whore” whom everyone could agree was bad apart from “tribes who hate Jesus.” 

I call it “misogynam” (mih-SAH-jih-NAHM)—the intertwined violence of anti-Semitism and misogyny directed at Jewish women.

Queer Possibilities in Revolutionary America

PUBLISHED 3/23/2026 by

The revolutionary era was one of surprising possibilities to express same-sex attraction and gender nonconformity.

At the time, gender was widely understood not as an inner truth but as a social practice: something one did, not something one was. That understanding made gender surprisingly flexible.

In a moment when LGBTQ+ people are again being told that they do not belong in the nation’s story, Revolutionary America offers a different lesson.

(This essay is part of the FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists series, marking the 250th anniversary of America by reclaiming the revolution through the women and gender-expansive people whose ideas, labor and resistance shaped U.S. democracy.)

The Heritage Foundation’s New Policy Guidebook Wants to Push Women Out of Public Life

PUBLISHED 3/13/2026 by

In honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the right-wing Heritage Foundation—developers of Project 2025, the policy guidebook written to influence the Trump administration’s legislative priorities—has issued a 168-page position paper, “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.”

The document is intended to “restore the family,” by elevating a male-led, heterosexual model of social relations. 

The report is both absurd and terrifying—which is why the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) is sounding an alarm about it. Emily Martin, the NWLC’s chief program officer and Amy Matsui, its vice president of childcare and income security, spoke to Ms. reporter Eleanor J. Bader about “Saving America by Saving the Family” in late February.

Teens Avoid Coercive Parental Involvement Laws by Using Telehealth Abortion Services 

PUBLISHED 3/10/2026 by and

The majority of U.S. teenagers live in states that require parental involvement in abortion healthcare decision-making. If parents are unavailable or teens under 18 do not want to involve their parents, they must go to court and convince a judge that they are mature enough to decide on their own or that the abortion is in their best interest.

To avoid this invasive and burdensome process, resourceful teens are now turning to abortion care from telehealth providers located outside their restrictive states.

Under the Reagan administration, parental involvement laws proliferated as an attempt to restrict minors’ access to reproductive healthcare.

One of the most well-known, devastating consequences of these laws was the 1988 death of Becky Bell in Indiana. When Bell became pregnant as a teenager, Indiana had a parental consent law. Bell was afraid to tell her parents about the pregnancy for fear of disappointing them, but she was also afraid to go before a local judge she heard was reluctant to grant waivers. Believing she had no other option, she turned to an unsafe, likely self-induced abortion. Several days later, Bell was rushed to the hospital with a massive infection and died. Her death became a poignant symbol of the lethal effects of restricting young people’s access to safe abortion.

Oscar-Nominated Documentary ‘The Devil Is Busy’ Shows What It Takes to Keep an Abortion Clinic Safe

PUBLISHED 3/9/2026 by

Tracii’s day begins early—before dawn. She arrives at work, turns on the lights and thoroughly searches the building for intruders. Then she checks outside, where it’s still dark, making sure no one is hiding in the woods or behind a dumpster.

Tracii is the head of security at an abortion clinic in Atlanta, and is also the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary short, The Devil Is Busy. Directed by Christalyn Hampton and Geeta Gandbhir, the film follows Tracii over the course of a long, stressful day at the clinic, as she works tirelessly to ensure not just the safety but the comfort of the women seeking care. (Neither her last name, nor the name of the clinic, gets mentioned in the film.)

Available to stream on HBO Max, The Devil Is Busy is a compelling portrait of a deeply compassionate woman on the frontlines of the abortion war. It packs a lot into 31 minutes, exploring not just the precarious status of abortion care post-Roe v. Wade, but also the fraught intersection of race, religion and women’s health.

The film arrives just as advocates mark Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, observed each year on March 10. The date honors Dr. David Gunn, an abortion provider murdered by a white supremacist anti-abortion extremist in 1993. Since 1996, supporters have used the day to recognize the courage and compassion of abortion providers—people like Tracii—whose work continues despite harassment, threats and political attacks.

There Is Power in the Word ‘Patriarchy.’ We Need to Start Using It.

PUBLISHED 3/1/2026 by

News commentators still overlook the obvious when they speculate about why the majority of white female voters in the last three presidential elections cast their ballots for a dishonest, fraudulent, racist, misogynistic sexual predator or why people who call themselves Christians support someone who embodies in virtually every way the opposite of “what would Jesus do?”

I’m tired of snapping at the talking heads on the TV or computer screen, “Come on, say the P word! It’s the patriarchy, stupid!”

We can trace harmful sex binaries, reproductive control and white Christian nationalism back to the same root system: patriarchy. Naming it is the first step toward dismantling its power. 

The Heritage Foundation’s Plan to Keep Women Uneducated, Pregnant and Subservient

PUBLISHED 2/20/2026 by

Since Trump’s re-ascendance to the White House, the reactionary conservative movement has become the most aggressive and unfettered it has been in my lifetime. And they are getting very, very clear on what they think an acceptable life looks like for women:

—Settle for any man who decides he wants you.
—Don’t go to college.
—Marry early.
—Have as many babies as possible.
—Quit your job (or don’t pursue one in the first place) to stay home full time and depend financially on your husband.
—Shoulder the blame if you wind up married to a jerk.
—Wind up impoverished if you divorce.
—Face social condemnation if you fail to follow the tradwife script.
—Contraception should be illegal or at least hard to get; same for IVF and other fertility treatments.

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s a plan they wrote down and published: Last month, the Heritage Foundation published “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.” Think of it as Project 2275, a detailed plan that is mostly about how America can spend the next two and a half centuries undoing the feminist progress we’ve made.