Supreme Court

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.

Letter From the Editor: Welcome to 2026! Women Are Shaping What Comes Next.

PUBLISHED 1/1/2026 by

Welcome to 2026!

Here at Ms., we’re looking forward to the new year, and are prepared for the battles that are in store for us, from Capitol Hill and the Supreme Court to statehouses and ballot boxes, workplaces and classrooms and in our day-to-day lives.

And if 2025 taught us anything, it’s that women will play a decisive role in the outcomes of these decisions—whether in their roles as lawmakers on Capitol Hill, in statehouses and mayors’ offices across the country; in media and in newsrooms; or as a powerful voting block.

As we enter this new year, with so much at stake, know that you can depend on Ms. to keep providing the thoughtful feminist reporting and analysis you count on to stay informed—and ready to fight back.

Here’s to another year of reporting, rebelling and truth-telling. We’re so glad you’re with us!

The Supreme Court Case That Could Shield Unregulated Pregnancy Clinics From Oversight

PUBLISHED 12/18/2025 by

On Dec. 2, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin, an unregulated pregnancy clinic’s constitutional challenge to the New Jersey attorney general’s subpoena for information about its operations, including donor records. 

Despite being awash in revenue, and serial reports of fraud, waste and illegal use of taxpayer funds, these antiabortion clinics are positioning to realize a long-term goal: to “replace” Planned Parenthood and Title X programs and secure federal taxpayer funds to advance an agenda that promotes childbirth and undermines evidence-based healthcare. 

As right-wing politicians decimate the reproductive health delivery system for low-income and uninsured Americans, the UPC industry is ramping up the narrative that their unregulated pregnancy clinics are the answer to the maternal healthcare deserts their policies have created. 

Most media observers are predicting the Court will rule for the crisis pregnancy center, First Choice. If it does, unregulated pregnancy clinics nationwide will be further emboldened to resist any state oversight, including of their medical services. A bold, innovative, multi-front action by reproductive justice advocates, public health professionals and pro-choice officials is the only way we ensure they can’t succeed. 

Texas and Florida Sue FDA in New Bid to Block Abortion Pill Access

PUBLISHED 12/17/2025 by

Texas launched a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week over the agency’s approval of mifepristone, marking the state’s latest effort to crack down on access to abortion pills.

Joined by Florida, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the case on Dec. 9 in federal court in Wichita Falls. The two states argued in a 120-page complaint that the FDA did not properly evaluate mifepristone’s safety and effectiveness when approving the drug in 2000 and its subsequent generic versions. They also challenged the agency’s moves that expanded access to the pills, including the ability to dispense them by mail.

Abortion access advocates have blasted the lawsuit.

“If they succeed in restricting access to mifepristone, abortion access will be devastated across the country, even in states where abortion remains legal,” Shellie Hayes-McMahon, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Texas. “This lawsuit is not about safety or healthcare; it is about control. And nothing short of full control over our bodies will satisfy them.”

What 200 Gen Z Women Told Me About Birth Control Should Alarm Every Woman in America

PUBLISHED 12/17/2025 by

Birth control is the single most powerful tool for women’s economic mobility and autonomy in modern history. It changed everything: When women could plan if, when and with whom they wanted to have children, college enrollment soared, dropout rates fell and poverty rates declined. The ability to access contraception has been directly tied to women’s ability to stay in school, build careers and make decisions about their own futures.

So why, in 2025, are we finding ourselves in a messaging war on birth control?

Keeping Score: 137 Women Are Killed by Partners or Family Per Day; Bipartisan Push for Epstein Files; Trans Day of Remembrance and Native Women’s Equal Pay Day

PUBLISHED 12/9/2025 by

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 this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—137 women and girls are killed by intimate partners or family members every day.
—Congress votes overhwlemingly to force the Justice Department to release their Epstein files.
—Donald Trump snaps at women journalists: “Quiet, piggy” and “you are an obnoxious—a terrible, actually a terrible reporter.”
—Violence against trans women remains high.
—DACA recipients are being targeted and detained under the Trump administration.
—Higher-income college students often receive more financial support than they need, while low-income students struggle.
—Tierra Walker died from preeclampsia in Texas after being repeatedly denied an abortion.
—Viola Ford Fletcher died at age 111. She was the oldest living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. 
—North Dakota’s total abortion ban was reinstated after the state’s Supreme Court reversed a temporary injunction from a lower court. There are now 13 states with total bans.

… and more.

International Telehealth Provider ‘Abortion Pills in Private’ Ready to Ramp Up if FDA Restricts Mifepristone

PUBLISHED 12/8/2025 by

As Trump’s FDA threatens to block U.S.-based medical providers from offering telehealth abortion, one international telehealth provider—Abortion Pills in Private—has vowed to continue providing mifepristone and misoprostol to U.S.-based patients, no matter what.

Their commitment is clear: “We will continue to send mifepristone, even if the FDA takes it off the market inside the U.S.. … We want to make this service easy, the best experience that it can be, with dignity. You can just go online, and it’s easy, and there’s no judgment. If you need this, we are here for you. Here are your pills. Here’s the support service that you need. You can do this from home. Whatever the reason is, we want to have that service there for you to be able to do that, no matter where you live.”

Their service and determination grew directly out of the post-Roe crisis. People find Abortion Pills in Private through the Plan C website. Since March 2024, they have served almost 3,500 patients in the U.S., most of them living in the hardest-hit states—those with abortion bans and severe restrictions. “They are from all over, but they are very much from banned states. Texas is always number one. Then Florida, Georgia. Even Ohio and Pennsylvania. There are some blue states too.”

The Ms. Q&A With Democracy Defenders Norm Eisen, Skye Perryman and Jennifer Rubin

PUBLISHED 12/6/2025 by

In the middle of an accelerating democratic crisis, and a year defined by sweeping attacks on women’s rights, the Feminist Majority Foundation, publisher of Ms. magazine, gathered in Los Angeles to honor some of the most formidable leaders on the front lines of resistance. At the Nov. 18 Global Women’s Rights Awards, journalists, lawyers, artists, organizers, litigators, community activists and movement strategists came together to celebrate what I call the “essential trifecta” for defeating authoritarianism: the law, the press and culture.

We recognized The Contrarian’s Jennifer Rubin and Norm Eisen for building an independent media platform willing to call out authoritarianism plainly; Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman for her organization’s record-breaking wave of legal challenges against the Trump administration; and the creative team behind the Broadway hit Liberation—playwright Bess Wohl, director Whitney White, and former Ms. writer and editor Lisa Cronin Wohl—for reminding audiences that storytelling is itself a democratic act.

“The number one tool that autocratic actors use to try to consolidate power and take away power from the people, is to convince people that they have no power,” said Perryman. “Their toolbox is one of isolation. They want you to feel alone.”

“I grew up miles from here, family hamburger stand,” said Eisen, “and now to be here, to have this opportunity with my colleagues to fight for this democracy that took my country, and my parents. … When my mother was living, she loved to say the Nazis took us out of Czechoslovakia on cattle cars, and my son flew back on Air Force One. So, how can I not be hopeful?”

War on Women Report: Antiabortion Extremist Charged in S.C. Shooting; Army OB-GYN Accused of Abusing Over 85 Women Patients

PUBLISHED 12/1/2025 by and | UPDATED 12/4/2025 at 9:06 A.M. PT

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:
—North Dakota’s Supreme Court reinstated a total abortion ban, making it the 13th state with a near-total ban on abortion.
—Trump ordered Catherine Lucey, a woman reporter for Bloomberg, to be “quiet, piggy.”
—The U.S. moved to categorize countries with state-sponsored abortion and DEI policies as violators of human rights.
—Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has sued Planned Parenthood over allegedly “misrepresenting the safety” of abortion pills.
—On Thursday, Dec. 4, an unprecedented law banning doctors from shipping abortion pills takes effect in Texas.
—”The country’s most respected newspaper hosted a conversation about whether women’s equality and freedom was a mistake.”
—Doctor Maj. Blaine McGraw, an OB-GYN at Fort Hood military base in Texas, the third-largest base in the country, is under investigation for sexual abuse against patients. As of Monday, 85 victims have come forward.
—With Jeffrey Epstein survivors watching from the gallery above, the House agreed in a near-unanimous vote to force the release of all files related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender.

… and more.