Reproductive Justice

Reproductive justice is a framework created by Black women and women of color in the 1990s. It refers to the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy and have children, not have children, and/or parent children in safe and sustainable environments.

‘Progressive Pronatalism’ Is an Oxymoron: How Arguments Buying Into the Low-Fertility Panic Fail Women

It’s ironic that the U.S. federal budget was signed on the cusp of World Population Day, which is meant to raise awareness of population growth and reproductive rights. The budget reflects Trump administration priorities, including its aggressive pronatalism agenda, which attempts to cajole or coerce women into having more babies. It’s catnip for the GOP conservative base, and as a result, Trump’s symbolic $1,000 “baby bonus” got to remain in the budget bill, while other social spending like Medicaid and food assistance got cut.

But it’s not just conservatives anymore. Now, many progressives are also panicking over an alleged fertility “crisis.”

Hundreds of millions of girls and women worldwide are still unable to control basic aspects of their lives. Dangling pronatalist incentives like a “baby bonus” in front of them, encouraging them to pawn their reproductive choice for favors from pronatalist governments, is grossly misguided.

Attacks on Abortion Access Are as Old as White Supremacist Patriarchy Itself. Here’s How We Fight Back.

What really underlies attacks on our bodily autonomy isn’t a devotion to “life,” but a desire for dominance. “In the history of abortion, every single time there is a wave of criminalization of abortion, it’s at the same time that the people in power, the forces that be, are concerned about losing power,” says Renee Bracey Sherman.

In the second episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, advocates, lawmakers and experts explore the real roots of abortion criminalization throughout U.S. history — and lay out visions for where the fight for reproductive freedom must go next.

Listen to the second episode Ms. podcast, Looking Back, Moving Forward—”Inside the Feminist Fight to Reclaim Our Reproductive Freedom (with Renee Bracey Sherman, Michele Goodwin, Angie Jean-Marie and Amy Merrill, Susan Frietsche, and Gov. Maura Healey)”—on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

‘They’re Not Following the Law—They’re Imposing Conservative Values’: Key Takeaways From the Ms. 2025 Supreme Court Term in Review

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Friday, June 27, marked the final day of the ’24-’25 Supreme Court term. This year brought a series of stunning, high-stakes decisions that delivered major setbacks for reproductive rights and civil liberties—from a landmark case threatening judiciary checks and birthright citizenship and a ruling that expands parental opt-outs in public schools, to the Court’s decision to uphold both South Carolina’s ban on Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood and Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming healthcare for trans teens.

On July 2, the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University hosted its annual Supreme Court Term in Review, co-hosted by Ms. magazine, Ms. Studios, the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Constitution Society. The event brought together legal scholars, litigators, journalists and activists to reflect on the most consequential rulings of the 2024-’25 term.

“We should not have to have seances with slave owners to know what our rights are today.”
—Lourdes A. Rivera

“The president can, with the stroke of a pen, revoke your constitutional right to citizenship.”
—Jamelle Bouie

“The Supreme Court and Congress are basically enabling this. Not just being feckless, but enabling it.”
—Lourdes A. Rivera

“I thought Justice Barrett was extraordinarily disrespectful toward Justice Jackson in that opinion.”
—Mark Joseph Stern

“We get hope from our clients and the communities that are stepping up when many elite institutions are not.”
—Skye Perryman

America’s Healthcare Crisis Is Coming for All Women

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Less access to healthcare—either by cutting Medicaid benefits or discouraging doctors from practicing in restrictive states—will affect antiabortion and pro-abortion women equally.

This is about far more than abortion. There will be more maternal deaths. There will be more deaths from cervical and breast cancer. More women will die from complications of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. There will be more suffering from infertility, endometriosis and fibroids.

Does anyone in power care? We certainly do. And we better make sure our voices are heard. All of our lives depend on it.

Men Are Impersonating ICE to Attack Immigrant Women. MAGA Emboldened Them.

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Multiple men have been arrested in at least three states since President Donald Trump’s inauguration for allegedly posing as immigration enforcement officers to perpetrate sexual violence against immigrant women.

The Trump administration is emboldening and reinvigorating such violence by providing more tools to harm women of color, including both systemic tools (mass detention and deportation) and a cover for any man looking to kidnap immigrant women in broad daylight.

Inside Liberty University’s Secret Maternity Home

Imagine you’re a pregnant teenager in 1972. Abortion isn’t an option, and you’re not ready to get married… so you might turn to a maternity home for unwed mothers. You’ll live there until the baby is born, then give it up for adoption to redeem yourself from the so-called sin of premarital sex.

On June 23, podcast studio Wondery released the new series Liberty Lost, which investigates the well-kept secret of Liberty University’s Godparent Home, which opened in the 1980s and is still operating today. In the podcast, reproductive rights journalist T. J. Raphael explores the history of the maternity home on the campus of Liberty University, a private evangelical college in Lynchburg, Va. There, staff members coerce young girls into surrendering their babies for adoption by affluent Christian parents in exchange for a full-ride scholarship at Liberty. 

“Maternity homes are on the rise,” Raphael told me. “There might be one near where you live, and maternity homes play a larger role within the wider antiabortion movement.”

Biotech CEOs to FDA: Don’t Let Politics Override Science on Abortion Pill

Fifty-three biotechnology industry leaders and investors representing dozens of companies and organizations issued a letter late last month advising the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Follow the science on mifepristone, not political ideology.

The Biotech CEO Sisterhood initiated the letter, with Grace Colón as lead author and dozens of senior biotechnology leaders signed on in support. “We are urging the agency and the department to continue to follow the science,” said Colón, who warned that political interference in drug regulation undermines both public trust and the FDA’s authority.

The U.N. Should Condemn the U.S.’ Human Rights Record on Abortion

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The periodic United Nations review of the United States’ human rights record is coming up in November. With the Trump administration’s far-reaching, intensifying attacks, the timing could not be more opportune. Never have U.S. institutions, funding and initiatives that promote the rule of law, faced such an abject threat. This is a moment to shine a light on U.S. abuses on the global stage.

The Minnesota Shooting Wasn’t Random—It Was a Predictable Resurgence of Violence

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Minnesota experienced an act of devastating political violence last month: Former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, were killed in their home. State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette are recovering from life-saving surgeries after shielding their adult daughter from the gunman.

In recent years, we’ve seen attacks escalate against elected officials across the political spectrum. However, we must recognize that Hortman, Hoffman and the other targets on the gunman’s list are uniquely vulnerable because of the way that we treat abortion: We isolate abortion from mainstream care, in law and practice; and we exclude it from insurance coverage, hospital systems and routine medical training.

By treating abortion as unsafe and morally suspect, rather than as legitimate medicine, we further normalize hostility towards it, its providers, and the policymakers who uphold access to it.

War on Women Report: MAGA Republicans Hope to Turn Miscarriage Into a Crime and Gut Planned Parenthood

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MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide—the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.” We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—On June 14, between 4 and 13 million people attended No Kings rallies nationwide to protest President Trump’s immigration and economic policies.
—Four states—California, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey—have petitioned the FDA to undo restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone.
—Some good news out of Montana: This month, the state supreme court struck down three abortion restrictions that Republican lawmakers passed in 2021.

… and more.