More Than A Magazine, A Movement
The U.S. Supreme Court is made up of nine justices who were each appointed by a sitting president and usually serve life terms. They take cases unsettled between lower state courts in order to provide a ruling on important decisions for the entire country, having immense political and social impacts on people and legislation for decades to come.
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris had their first and only debate on Tuesday night in Philadelphia. According to CNN, Trump spoke for about 42 minutes and 52 seconds, while Harris spoke for 37 minutes and 36 seconds. Trump spoke 39 times to Harris’ 23 times.
Here’s what each candidate said on some of the issues feminists care about—including access to abortion and other reproductive healthcare, the Affordable Care Act, childcare, immigration, racial unity and the economy.
A New York ballot measure to create constitutional protections for abortion and create explicit protections for people who experience discrimination, passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday.
Proposal 1, the first U.S. constitutional amendment of its kind, will establish comprehensive safeguards against discrimination and explicitly protect reproductive rights, including the right to abortion for state residents. According to New Yorkers for Equal Rights (NYER), a broad coalition of more than 300 diverse groups that support the initiative, the effort is different from other equal rights amendments because it includes protections for reproductive rights.
NYER campaign director Sasha N. Ahuja spoke to Ms. two months before Election Day: “We have to set the path for other states to pursue equality and provide the strongest possible protections in their constitutions.”
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.
The Supreme Court’s latest term—with blockbuster decisions on abortion, the Second Amendment, presidential immunity and more—highlights a looming crisis of legitimacy.
(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!)
As abortion access is increasingly being decided by state and federal courts, two reproductive rights attorneys make sense of past rulings and the ongoing fight for reproductive healthcare.
The Supreme Court of Montana used state constitutional grounds to strike down the Consent Act, which required minors to obtain parental consent for an abortion. The court’s analysis of these justifications determined that they were clearly intended to obfuscate the antiabortion animus behind the Consent Law.
Having revealed the baselessness of the underlying justifications for discriminating against teens who choose abortion over childbirth, it becomes readily apparent that these are antiabortion laws—plain and simple—that aim to divest teens of control over this reproductive choice.
Monday, Aug. 26, marks Women’s Equality Day 2024. This annual celebration commemorates the certification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. It’s a reminder that the founding promise of equality in our Constitution was not always available to everyone—and that women have had to fight to be treated as equals to men. That is particularly true for women of color, many of whom could not vote even for decades following passage of the 19th Amendment due to racial restrictions in voting laws.
Eight years ago, Hillary Clinton made history as the first woman to be nominated for president by a major party. A proud feminist, she embraced the trailblazing nature of her campaign, portraying it as a quest to break the “highest, hardest glass ceiling.” But winning the popular vote still didn’t enable her to shatter the glass. A greater equality, the dream of generations of women, remained just that—a dream. Another woman would have to make it come true.
This week, in what might have been the waning days of her second term, Clinton declared in a full-throated speech at the Democratic National Convention, that “the future is here.” It is Kamala Harris, she said, who can smash that centuries-old ceiling once and for all.
Freeda Womb, a 20-foot inflatable IUD, is on a mission to raise awareness about the threat to birth control rights in the U.S.
Touring the country, Freeda highlights how Republican politicians are blocking and vetoing bills that would protect access to contraception.
Amanda Zurawski, Kaitlyn Joshua and Hadley Duvall have emerged as key surrogates for the Democratic Party, campaigning in support of Vice President Kamala Harris.