From the ongoing fight for abortion rights and access, to elections, to the drive for the Equal Rights Amendment, there are a multitude of battles to keep up with. In this weekly roundup, find the absolute need-to-know news for feminists.

ERA activists marched from the White House to the Capitol on Dec. 13, 2023, the 100-year anniversary of the national ERA’s introduction in the House of Representatives. (Courtesy of Madelyn Amos)

BY CARRIE N. BAKER | Abortion providers can challenge the Pennsylvania ban on Medicaid coverage for abortion as sex discrimination under the state’s Equal Rights Amendment and Equal Protection provisions of the Pennsylvania Constitution—the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in a 219-page opinion in Allegheny Reproductive Health Center v. Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.

The decision overturned a 1985 case that said the ERA did not apply to abortion. The ban on Medicaid funding will now be reviewed as sex discrimination, according to Drexel University constitutional law professor and co-counsel David Cohen.

“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in our favor on almost all of our claims. This is a BIG VICTORY!” tweeted Cohen.

The case was filed in January of 2019 by the Women’s Law Project, Planned Parenthood, and the law firm of Troutman Pepper and Cohen. It claimed Pennsylvania’s ban on Medicaid funding for abortion was unconstitutional under the state ERA.

“We are still determining next steps, but we are confident the Medicaid abortion ban will be consigned to the scrapheap of history very soon,” said Women’s Law Project co-executive director Susan J. Frietsche, who argued the case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court with Cohen and WLP attorney Christine Castro.

(Click here to read more)

Because it's hard to keep up with everything going on in the world right now. Here's what we're reading this week: 

• "What About Our Right to Life?” — The Nation

Listen to United Bodies—a new podcast about the lived experience of health, from Ms. Studios, on Apple Podcasts+ Spotify. 

Over the past several years, we’ve made significant progress in destigmatizing mental health care. However, this de-stigmatization hasn’t reached all kinds of mental illness or all kinds of people who struggle with their mental health. Writer, researcher, and poet, Krista L.R. Cezair, and writer, activist and educator, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, join us to discuss the criminalization of mental illness on the latest UNITED BODIES. 

We hope you'll listen, subscribe, rate and review today!

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