Congressional Leaders and Advocates Call on Senate to Clear the Way for the ERA

As the end of the year and the end of Congress’s lame duck session approaches, congressional leaders and women’s rights advocates are calling on the Senate to vote to list the time limit in the preamble of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), thus officially recognizing the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.

“[The ERA] would empower Congress to better enforce laws protecting women,” said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY). “And as we see the constant effort to whittle away at rights for women, everything from choice, they are bulldozing our rights into the ground. [The ERA] would place gender equality in the Constitution, like [many other] countries of the world.”

The War on Women Report: Republicans Blame Unmarried Women for Midterm Results; 80% of Pregnancy-Related Deaths Can Be Prevented

U.S. patriarchal authoritarianism is on the rise, and democracy is on the decline. But day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. The fight is far from over. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

This month: Brittney Griner is released from a racist and homophobic penal colony; abortion access is still in shambles despite midterm victories; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to step down; three high-profile mass shootings in a matter of weeks; and more.

Keeping Score: Brittney Griner Is Freed; Iranian Women Actors Arrested for Supporting Protests; Oregon Pardons Thousands for Marijuana Charges

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: Associated Press tells writers not to use harmful term “later-term abortion,” instead “abortion later in pregnancy”; advocates condemn the announcement of Trump’s 2024 presidential bid; Georgia’s six-week abortion ban is back; Iranian security arrested two women actors for supporting national protests; Oregon governor pardons 45,000 convicted on marijuana charges; VP Kamala Harris to swear in Los Angeles mayor-elect Karen Bass; and more.

Foster Care Reimagined: How Two Sisters Are Changing the Lives of L.A. Youth

Having Coco, 2, join their family inspired sisters Layla, 16, and Delara, 17, to start Coco’s Angels. The organization helps kids in foster care across L.A., through tutoring services, education funding and donation drives.

Layla and Delara began their first fundraiser with GoFundMe in 2020 raising over $60,000 and allowing them to order over 600 personalized holiday gifts for foster care kids. Since December 2020, the girls have raised over $125,000.

Midterms and ‘Mid-Cycle Spotting’: Getting Real About Women’s Health

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We have been left all alone, our bodies overlooked by the law and undermined by the courts. We’re left, quite literally, to save our own lives. But perhaps one silver lining of the overturning of Roe v. Wade has been creating space for women to openly and deliberately trace the arc of their reproductive lives—in public—from menstruation to menopause.

As advocates, scholars and providers now work to reimagine and rebuild what meaningful reproductive care looks like in this country, we have an opportunity to be more holistic in addressing the full continuum of women’s reproductive lives. Private sector interventions and public policy solutions must reflect those intersections. Period. Full stop. 

December 2022 Reads for the Rest of Us

Each month, we provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.

I want to do my part in the disruption of the “norm” in the book world for far too long—white, cis, heterosexual, male—and to amplify indie publishers and amazing works by writers who are women, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, APIA/AAPI, international, queer, trans, nonbinary, disabled, fat, immigrant, Muslim, neurodivergent, sex-positive or of other historically marginalized identities. You know … the rest of us.