More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Women everywhere deserve accessible, affordable and comprehensive healthcare. This includes reproductive healthcare like contraception, abortion, sex and relationship education, STI prevention and treatment, cancer screenings and counseling. However, lawmakers have long attempted to restrict or reduce this care in ways that harm women.
Abortion is a critical component of reproductive healthcare, and young Louisianans will continue to need it.
As Louisianans, we must ask ourselves: How can our legislators claim teens are not mature enough to learn about how their reproductive bodies work, while presuming they can cope with forced parenthood? Abortion is a critical component of reproductive healthcare, and young Louisianans will continue to need it.
One intersectional, global and radical approach to championing reproductive rights and overturning patriarchy: Increase rural and Indigenous women’s control of land and natural resources.
The communities that disproportionately lack abortion and reproductive healthcare services are also the ones uniquely affected by environmental injustices. Decades of public health impacts have shown us that communities who struggled to access reproductive healthcare, even before Roe v. Wade‘s repeal, are the same ones who have faced decades of environmental racism and injustice.
I am one face of the millions of people on the frontlines of urban oil extraction who endured serious health affects as a result.
Men’s bodies and women’s bodies behave differently in collisions due to differences in size, muscle structure and bone density. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which issues five-star safety ratings, does not crash test cars with dummies that accurately represent women. The tests strictly prioritize men’s safety and offer only hope that women may stand a chance. Too often, we don’t.
Crash test dummies that accurately represent women are available today, and other countries are already planning to require them in crash tests. The U.S. should do the same.
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: Massachusetts bill will strengthen reproductive rights for college students; Justice Alito defends his ruling in the name of “religious liberty”; Rep. Cori Bush introduces legislation for reproductive health services; WNBA star Brittney Griner sentenced to nine years in prison; Hong Kong guarantees space for women on company boards; and more.
Climate change continues to cause fatal flooding and heatwaves that are devastating the U.S. while the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022—legislation that would put $369 billion towards climate action and clean energy—is still on a tenuous path to passage. This bill would reduce carbon emissions roughly 40 percent by 2030 and mitigate the most devastating impacts of the climate crisis, such as life-threatening illnesses and housing and job instability—all of which affect the health of pregnant people.
Nada Stotland, a psychiatrist and past president of the American Psychiatric Association, has written extensively about the mental health effects of abortion denial. “The reasons women decide to abort are all mental health factors,” she wrote in a journal article. “These include poverty, lack of social supports, domestic violence, rape, incest, heavy ongoing responsibilities, lack of education, and preexisting mental illness.”
On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned the longstanding precedents of Roe v. Wade, representing the largest blow to women’s constitutional rights in history. We’re chronicling readers’ experiences of abortion pre- and post-Roe. “There is no room for inaction. If not for yourself, speak out for others.”
“Eliminating women’s reproductive healthcare rights doesn’t eliminate unplanned fetuses. It gives birth to unwanted children. Forcing women to give birth to unwanted children creates dependence on others. Both mother and child have little chance of climbing out of poverty on their own.”
“We felt it our responsibility to depict the war on Black women’s bodies raging in this conservative state,” said Katori Hall, creator of Starz’s P-Valley.
As we look to the future of abortion in the U.S., we can learn from the experiences of people in countries with restrictive abortion laws who have managed to find safe, effective ways to have abortions by using the original abortion pill: misoprostol.
While mifepristone is expensive and unnecessarily restricted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, misoprostol is inexpensive and widely available by prescription for different indications in pharmacies across the country.
