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Under fetal personhood laws, miscarriages—which occur in 10 to 20 percent of pregnancies—could become heavily scrutinized. (Antenna Archives / Getty Images)

BY DARA E. PURVIS | The Alabama Supreme Court recently shocked the nation when it held that the word “child” includes frozen embryos. Treating an embryo as the equivalent of a child upends the fertility industry, as it threatens to end in vitro fertilization (IVF) services and puts the status of embryos already in storage in serious question.

While these implications are important to untangle, the brunt of the effects of fetal personhood will fall not upon families with the resources to undergo IVF, but rather on poor and non-white women. Every decision made by a pregnant person could be second-guessed by the government. Every step outside of the most risk-averse approach to pregnancy puts the pregnant person under the microscope of the state.

(Click here to read more)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) with Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt outside the U.S. Supreme Court. Paxton argued the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act puts an undue burden on the state government to accommodate its pregnant employees. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

BY MATTHEW CHOI | Texas AG Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration last year over a government funding package that passed largely by proxy votes because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding package, passed in December 2022, included the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which protects accommodations for pregnant employees and allows workers to sue employers for failing to do so.

Paxton argued the Constitution requires a physical majority of members to pass legislation. Since a majority voted on the funding package by proxy, Paxton said it was unenforceable. Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas agreed with Paxton’s understanding of a quorum—ruling the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act unenforceable against the state government and its agencies.

(Click here to read more) 

Carol Jenkins, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, Lauren-Brooke Eisen and Janet Dewart Bell celebrate the releases of Blackbirds Singing (New Press, January 2024) and 50 Years of Ms. (Knopf, September 2023).

BY HADLEY LEVENSON | Friends of Ms. gathered last month to discuss two extraordinary anthologies, Blackbirds Singing: Inspiring Black Women’s Speeches from the Civil War to the Twenty-First Century by Janet Deward Bell and 50 Years of Ms.: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution. Both give voice to extraordinary women throughout history who fought to define and demand equality.

(Click here to read more) 

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

For many of us, spiritual health is a facet of our health that we consider less, perhaps even give less weight to or spend less time cultivating. Editor, journalist and Harvard Divinity School graduate Philip Picardi joins to discuss how acknowledging and engaging in our individual spirituality, however you label that, or in whatever way that may look, can ground us, give us purpose, and guide us, even if it doesn’t come easy.

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

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