[[link removed]] Ms. Memo: This Week in Women's Rights
December 17, 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.
Project 2026 Declares Open War on Women’s Rights [[link removed]]
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(Dominic Gwinn / Middle East Images via AFP)
By Kathy Spillar | When The Heritage Foundation released its new policy blueprint for 2026 this week—an extension of the now-infamous Project 2025—it did so with the calm confidence of an institution convinced no one will stop it. The document is shorter than last year’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership,” but no less dangerous. It is, in fact, more candid.
Project 2026 lays out a government redesigned to control women’s bodies, erase LGBTQ+ lives, dismantle civil rights protections and roll back decades of hard-won progress. Wrapped in the language of “family,” “sovereignty” and “restoring America,” it is a direct attempt to impose a narrow, rigid ideology on an entire nation.
Make no mistake: This is a plan for forced motherhood, government-policed gender and the end of women’s equality as we know it.
Project 2026 picks up where Project 2025 left off: banning abortion pills, weaponizing the 150-year-old Comstock Act to criminalize medication by mail, embedding fetal personhood across federal agencies, and stripping every federal safeguard protecting reproductive freedom. As the Women’s March’s analysis notes bluntly, this blueprint is “designed to rebuild a country where women, queer people, trans people, and anyone outside their ‘ideal family’ have fewer rights.”
Heritage puts this in softer words—saying that “every child conceived deserves to be born to a married mother and father” and pledging to reduce “the supply and demand for abortion at all stages.”
But we know exactly what this means. A country where a woman’s future is no longer her own.
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Police Officer Domestic Violence Is A Crisis. It’s Time for States to Take Action. [[link removed]] Keeping Score: 137 Women Are Killed by Partners or Family Per Day; Bipartisan Push for Epstein Files; Trans Day of Remembrance and Native Women’s Equal Pay Day [[link removed]]
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The Ms. Q&A With Democracy Defenders Norm Eisen, Skye Perryman and Jennifer Rubin [[link removed]] Where ACA Premiums Could Spike Most in 2026 if Congress Lets Enhanced Tax Credits Expire [[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:
* "Watching ‘Liberation’ With a Women’s Movement Pioneer, My Mom" — The New York Times [[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]] .
Over the past several months, the Epstein files have been extensively covered by the media. But too often, the voices of actual survivors are missing. In this episode, we’re filling that gap and shifting the focus to where it belongs: to the survivors and what justice means to them. Dr. Michele Goodwin is joined by Jessica Michaels, a sexual assault awareness advocate and Epstein survivor.
We hope you'll listen, subscribe, rate and review today!
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