[[link removed]] Ms. Memo: This Week in Women's Rights
August 20, 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.
How Rising Prices and Policy Cuts Are Squeezing Moms and Families [[link removed]]
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(Jeremy Drey / MediaNews Group / Reading Eagle via Getty Images)
By Tegan Lecheler | Stephanie lives in Kentucky with her husband and three—soon to be four—kids. While grocery shopping has always been part of her weekly responsibilities, lately it’s become an exercise in carefully considered compromises, with no room for error. What used to feed her family for the week now covers just a few days because of sharp cost increases in things like eggs and produce. (She’s not alone—the latest inflation figures show prices rose in July at their fastest pace in five months.)
Coupled with her husband’s precarious employment—he works in manufacturing and has seen colleagues laid off due to rising prices of steel and aluminum—along with Stephanie’s fear that recent legislative changes may cost her family their health insurance, it’s no wonder she’s among the average Americans fed up and desperate for change.
Any media you consume today will be dominated by think pieces and reporting on tariffs, the labor market and economic growth or decline. Lawmakers and pundits alike will let you know how our country’s economic policies are affecting the nation broadly—but they often neglect to report how these policies are affecting real people’s ability to keep a roof over their head or put food on the table for their families each night.
For Stephanie and millions of other people across the country, these legislative decisions are not just an abstract connection to GDP—they’re a very real daily crisis of affordability, which is why this conversation must shift away from sterile metaphors toward the lived experience of the families bearing the brunt of these realities.
This gap between macroeconomic policy and everyday survival is precisely why direct cash assistance programs for pregnant people and new parents—such as monthly maternal and infant cash supplements now piloted in multiple states—are crucial. These programs help families manage rising costs and financial stress, directly addressing affordability in a moment when every penny counts.
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Trump’s Republican Trifecta Sets Up Massive Transfer of Tax Dollars from Reproductive Health Clinics to Unregulated Crisis Pregnancy Clinics [[link removed]] Why Is the U.S. Paying to Burn Birth Control? [[link removed]]
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From Alligator Alcatraz to National Guard Patrols: What Is the Cost of the Trump Administration’s Cruelty? [[link removed]] RFK Jr.’s HHS Slashes Healthcare Access and Safety Net, Putting Both Citizens *and* Immigrants at Risk [[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:
* "How bent BLS data could fuel conservatives’ war on working women" — MSNBC [[link removed]]
[link removed] [[link removed]] Listen to the latest podcast from Ms. Studios! The latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward is out now on Apple Podcasts [[link removed]] + Spotify [[link removed]] .
This episode traces 50-plus years of feminist writing and advocacy focused on naming, confronting, and preventing sexual harassment, rape culture and intimate partner violence—and the urgency of acknowledging the violence of patriarchy, white supremacy and other social forces in our everyday lives and building a future without fear.
We hope you'll listen, subscribe, rate and review today!
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