“It’s a huge revolution of who actually gets to decide when, how and with the support of whom they can have an abortion and until when," said Women Help Women coexecutive director Kinga Jelinska. "It centers the needs of users rather than institutions or markets. The underlying notion is that abortion can be friendly, and abortion can be easy.” 

Self-managed abortion is disruptive. We were told that abortion is a difficult decision; that it has to be difficult to access, and that only doctors control it. Self-managed abortion subverts that," said Lucía Berro Pizzarossa, fellow coexecutive founder.

The post A Global Telehealth First: Women Help Women Begins Producing Abortion Pill Combipack appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

If his intentions were unclear, Trump’s budget proposed ending all CDC HIV prevention programs this past June, and Congress continues to negotiate next year’s budget, proposing massive cuts to HIV programs. 

For many young people who never lost friends or family, there may be the misconception that the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s was localized and small, but nearly 300,000 men who have sex with men have died from AIDS-related complications, with over 6,000 deaths in 2019 alone. To put this in perspective, this would be as if over half of Wyoming’s population disappeared, or if everyone in Pittsburgh, Penn., vanished overnight. 

Even Madonna criticized Trump’s move, posting on Instagram, “It’s one thing to order federal agents to refrain from commemorating this day, but to ask the general public to pretend it never happened is ridiculous, it’s absurd, it’s unthinkable. I bet he’s never watched his best friend die of AIDS, held their hand, and watched the blood drain from their face as they took their last breath at the age of 23.” 

The post Trump’s Silence on World AIDS Day Revives a New Lavender Scare appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

A new documentary from ProPublica, Before a Breath—based on the outlet's Pulitzer Prize finalist reporting—follows three mothers who turn their grief from stillbirth into advocacy for safer pregnancies and better outcomes for expecting parents.

The post Twenty Thousand Stillbirths a Year, and No Federal Plan to Prevent Them appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

The administration’s disinformation campaign extends far beyond Tylenol. Officials are questioning the safety of mifepristone despite decades of evidence to the contrary and spreading the falsehood that birth control causes abortion—all while defunding Planned Parenthood and funneling taxpayer dollars to crisis pregnancy centers that mislead and manipulate patients. Together, these actions threaten to upend decades of progress in reproductive health and put millions of women at risk.

It’s time for a coordinated response. Just as states have joined forces to counter anti-vaccine propaganda, public health leaders must now unite to defend reproductive healthcare. State and local governments can share strategies, strengthen protections for evidence-based medicine, and push back—loudly and collectively—against the Trump administration’s dangerous campaign of medical disinformation.

The post Fighting MAGA Medical Disinformation: States Must Confront Trump’s War on Science and Reproductive Health appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

As a 47-year-old male who’s never been married and has little to no interest in dating, you’d better believe I’ve been asked questions like, “When are you gonna settle down?” and “why are you still single?” But this isn’t about me venting. It’s about what’s behind these questions: the core assumption that not having a partner is lacking.

The post Would Charlie Kirk Be Mourned the Same if He Were Single and Childless? appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

Over the next decade, more than 11 million Americans—mostly women and children—are expected to lose health coverage, while deep food assistance cuts and work requirements will push even more families into crisis. Advocates call the bill a massive transfer of wealth to the rich at the expense of the poor, a policy that will shutter rural hospitals, deny essential care and worsen maternal mortality.

As Sen. Raphael Warnock puts it plainly: “If you cut $900 billion out of Medicaid, people are going to die.”

The post One Megabill for the Megarich appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

As justices question Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors, decades of research show the practice causes lasting harm and drives suicide risk among LGBTQ+ youth.

The post As the Supreme Court Appears Ready to End State Bans on Conversion Therapy, a Reminder: The Practice Is Harmful and Discredited appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

The post Pregnant Women Deserve Relief From Pain and Fever—Without Judgment appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

We must train more Black midwives and re-educate the public about midwifery practice. We also need funding, mentorship pipelines and community investment. We need our stories told, our legacy restored and our futures protected.

To become a Black midwife in America today is to resist and reclaim what was stolen. It is to plant seeds in soil that tried to bury us and watch them bloom anyway.

Every Black mother deserves someone who sees her. And every Black baby deserves to be welcomed into the world by someone who believes in their right to thrive.

(This essay is part of a collection presented by Ms. and the Groundswell Fund highlighting the work of Groundswell partners advancing inclusive democracy.)

The post The Blueprint Reclaimed: Why America Needs More Black Midwives appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

The truth is, there was no epidemic of “biologically inferior” babies. Rigorous scientific research—largely disregarded by mainstream media—showed that cocaine exposure did not cause the catastrophic outcomes predicted by pundits. Yet the racialized panic over “crack babies” justified criminalizing pregnancy, targeting Black mothers, and fueling the broader war on drugs. These myths, and the policies they spawned, continue to shape how our legal and healthcare systems treat women—especially women of color—today.

[An excerpt from Michele Goodwin's book Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.]

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The road to recovery—and the right to recovery—is essential to a free and fair democracy. This essay is part of a new multimedia collection exploring the intersections of addiction, recovery and gender justice. The Right to Recovery Is Essential to Democracy is a collaboration between Ms. and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health at Georgetown Law, in honor of National Recovery Month.

The post The War on Drugs Was a War on Black Mothers appeared first on Ms. Magazine.