[[link removed]] Ms. Memo: This Week in Women's Rights
June 18, 2025
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.
As Antiabortion Violence Surges, Republicans Vote to Strip Federal Protections for Providers [[link removed]]
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(Steven Garcia / Getty Images)
By Ava Slocum and Kathy Spillar | Early Saturday morning, news broke of the assassination of Melissa Hortman, a Democratic Minnesota state legislator and former speaker, along with her husband Mark, at their home. State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette were also shot multiple times at their home; both survived and are fighting for their lives following emergency surgery.
Vance Luther Boelter—the suspect in the shootings, who posed as a police officer to gain entry to both residences—was apprehended on Sunday night after what police chief Mark Bruley called “the largest manhunt in state history.” Boelter also went to the homes of two other lawmakers between the two shootings, trying to enter four houses in total. According to law enforcement sources, Boelter had a list of more than 50 additional “targets”; the list was recovered from his vehicle abandoned at the scene of the second shooting after police confronted him in an exchange of gunfire. The list included other Democratic officials, some from outside Minnesota, as well as abortion facilities and leading abortion rights advocates in the state.
Although we don’t yet know if his extremist views on abortion (he gave “sermons” at evangelical churches in the U.S. and in the Congo, where he criticized American churches for not doing more to oppose abortion) were the driving cause in his murderous rampage, it is proof of the ongoing threats to abortion providers in this climate of escalating political violence.
Yet, just weeks after the suicide bombing of a Palm Springs fertility clinic, and despite rising rates of threats and violence against abortion clinics after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to advance HR 589, the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025. The bill would repeal the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a statute protecting clinicians’ and patients’ right to safely provide and access reproductive healthcare. All Democrats on the committee voted against the proposed bill.
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Michigan Got Rid of Most Abortion Restrictions. Now AG Dana Nessel is Challenging the Final One. [[link removed]] The Ugliest of Bills: How Republicans’ Reconciliation Bill Endangers All Children [[link removed]]
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Trump Is Gutting Healthcare—But Women’s Health Was Already Disastrously Underfunded [[link removed]] Keeping Score: Trump Administration Targets Immigrants and Emergency Abortion Care; Newsom Pushes Back [[link removed]]
What we're reading:
Because it's hard to keep up with everything going on in the world right now. Here's what we're reading this week:
* "The fertility fallacy: Five things you didn’t know about global fertility rates" — UNFPA [[link removed]]
[link removed] [[link removed]] Tune in for a new episode of Ms. magazine's podcast, On the Issues with Michele Goodwin on
Apple Podcasts [[link removed]] + Spotify [[link removed]] .
In this episode, we commemorate Juneteenth with a special focus on Henrietta Lacks, and an exclusive interview with her grandson Alfred Lacks Carter, Jr. From the polio vaccine to IVF and COVID-19 vaccines, we owe so many of our medical developments from the past 50 years to one woman—a woman whose cells were taken and used without her permission, let alone compensation. In this riveting episode, Lacks Carter shares an intimate family portrait of his grandmother, turning pain into purpose.
We hope you'll listen, subscribe, rate and review today!
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