Texas

Pressure Mounts for Companies to Stand Against Texas’ Near-Total Abortion Ban: ‘Time to Get on Board,’ Says Cecile Richards

Cecile Richards: Business World Silence After Texas Abortion Ban Is “Unthinkable. ... It’s Time to Get on Board”

Texas’s S.B. 8. has laid bare the precarious nature of abortion rights. Even still, it’s hard not to notice a relative silence from corporate America. Cecile Ricards, former president of Planned Parenthood from 2006 to 2018 and daughter of former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, calls this silence “unthinkable.” 

“This was the moment for corporations, businesses and employers, to stand up on behalf off the people that they employ, the people that they sell products to, and the places where they do business, on an issue like abortion rights, which has been a constitutional right in this country for [nearly] 50 years,” Richards told Ms. “Now in one state, Texas, essentially, that constitutional right effectively no longer exists.”

Danger in the Shadows: Supreme Court Uses Shadow Docket to Threaten Abortion Rights

'Danger in the Shadows': Supreme Court Uses Shadow Docket to Threaten Abortion Rights

Reproductive rights—once perceived to be a hallmark of late 20th-century American democracy—may soon give way to conservative states enacting unconstitutional anti-abortion provisions with procedural barriers so thickly and cleverly intertwined that the ability to challenge them may be unattainable, including at the Supreme Court.

The result of the Court’s shadow docket opinion is not just an end, essentially, to the legal right to an abortion in Texas—it sets in motion a workable blueprint for all other conservative state legislatures bent on stripping away abortion rights.

The U.S. Still Hasn’t “Forgiven Haiti for Being Black”—And Modern Immigrants Are Paying the Price

The U.S. Still Hasn't "Forgiven Haiti for Being Black"—And Modern Immigrants Are Paying the Price

In an 1893 speech examining the U.S. relationship with Haiti, Frederick Douglass said: “A deeper reason for coolness between the countries is this: Haiti is [B]lack, and we have not yet forgiven Haiti for being [B]lack or forgiven the Almighty for making her [B]lack.”

U.S. Border Patrol agents rounding up asylum seekers with whips while thousands more languish under a bridge in the unrelenting Texas heat make it clear: 128 years after Frederick Douglass’s speech, his words still ring true.

Corporate Backlash Builds Against Texas’s Abortion Ban: “Policies That Restrict Reproductive Health Are Bad for Business”

Corporate Backlash Builds Against Texas's Abortion Ban: "Policies That Restrict Reproductive Health Are Bad for Business"

On Tuesday, over 50 companies signed a letter titled “Don’t Ban Equality,” which argues that abortion restrictions are bad for business.

“Economic losses from existing abortion restrictions, including labor force impact and earnings, already cost the State of Texas an estimated $14.5 billion annually. Nationally, state-level restrictions cost state economies $105 billion dollars per year.”

U.S. Health and Human Services to Protect Texas Abortion Patients and Providers: “We Have Your Back,” Says Secretary Xavier Becerra

U.S. Health and Human Services to Protect Texas Abortion Patients and Providers: "We Have Your Back," Says Secretary Xavier Becerra

On Friday, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra announced new resources and actions to protect reproductive health care for Texans after the state banned abortion at six weeks and the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the ban to go into effect on September 1.

“Every American deserves access to health care no matter where they live—including access to safe and legal abortions,” said Becerra.

Texas’s Abortion Ban Is Already Causing a Brain Drain in the State. Will Companies Speak Out?

Texas’s Abortion Ban Is Already Causing a Brain Drain in the State. Will Companies Speak Out?

For many, Texas has a lot to offer. It’s no wonder then that more than half a million people relocated to Texas from other states over the last few years.

Then along came Senate Bill 8—one of the nation’s most extreme abortion bans that criminalizes abortions after just six weeks and deputizes private citizens to enforce the law. The brain drain has already begun, and is likely to continue, as a result.

“When you’re looking at the accumulation of anti-constitutional rights legislation being passed over and over again here, it’s got to have a chilling effect on people’s willingness to consider Texas as a place to come,” Texas state Rep. Donna Howard told Ms.

Keeping Score: Breonna Taylor Portrait Unveiled at Smithsonian; Texas’s Unprecedented Abortion Ban; Half the World’s Children at “Extremely High Risk” from Climate Change

Unprecedented Abortion Ban Takes Effect in Texas; U.S. Commemorates 20th Anniversary of 9/11

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 in this biweekly round-up.

This week: Texas implements unprecedented pre-viability abortion ban; Biden’s Education Department forgives $5.8 billion in student loan debt for disabled borrowers; Supreme Court order maintain’s Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy; North Carolina bans child marriage under age 16; and more.