Explore the 30 most popular articles published this year on MsMagazine.com—the articles feminists most clicked, shared, studied, bookmarked and passed out at marches.
PUBLISHED 1/7/2025 by Carrie N. Baker
For decades, research has indicated that mifepristone may be a safe and effective contraceptive, but no one has conducted a large clinical trial to produce the evidence required to form the basis for government approval of the drug for this use—until now.
Pioneering reproductive health advocate Dr. Rebecca Gomperts announced on Dec. 24 preliminary results of a large clinical trial in Moldova showing that a 50 mg dose of mifepristone is very effective as a weekly contraceptive pill.
“The outcome so far is beyond expectations,” said Gomperts. “Of the 2,000 cycles with unprotected intercourse, there was only one pregnancy—and that participant was already pregnant before she started using the medication.”
PUBLISHED 4/23/2025 by Jill Filipovic
The Trump administration wants to juice the birthrate. This isn’t surprising: Vice President JD Vance is an ardent pronatalist, as is shadow president Elon Musk, who seems to be working on populating Mars with his own progeny. Abortion opponents, who make up a solid chunk of Trump’s base, want to see women have more babies whether we like it or not. Republicans and the Christian conservatives who elect them have generally been on the “be fruitful and multiply” side of things.
What’s different this time around, though, is that the Trump team is looking at carrots, not just sticks, in their baby-boom strategy. … One of these ideas is a good one: a cash bonus for kids. Kids are expensive; societies should support families. Handing over $5,000 to new moms sounds like a great idea to me.
But note that what isn’t on the list are the basic things that actually enable parents (and especially mothers) to parent and also have lives and jobs: paid leave and affordable childcare. Also not on the list are the basic things that would help underprivileged women survive pregnancy and early motherhood, and would help their babies survive infancy and childhood: Investments in rural maternal health, Native maternal health and Black maternal health.
PUBLISHED 4/22/2025 by Jill Elaine Hasday
Only two women have ever appeared on America’s paper currency:
- Martha Washington, the first president’s wife, graced the front of a $1 silver certificate the United States first issued in 1886.
- Pocahontas, a Native American woman who was kidnapped and imprisoned by Jamestown colonists before converting to Christianity and marrying a colonist, knelt for baptism on the back of a $20 bill first issued in 1863.
Many Americans have noticed women’s absence. In 2014, President Barack Obama spoke about receiving a letter from “a young girl” who provided “a long list of possible women” to depict on America’s currency. The next year, a grassroots “Women on 20s” campaign ran online polls proposing women to depict on the front of the $20 bill. The campaign inspired Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, who introduced an April 2015 bill spotlighting the issue and followed up with a June 2015 letter to President Obama urging him to place a woman’s image on the 20.
PUBLISHED 1/3/2025 by Jenifer McKenna
With a staggering $1.7 billion in annual revenue, an estimated 3,000 locations and 100,000 staff and volunteers, the CPC industry is the grassroots backbone of the anti-choice movement. Radical groups including Heartbeat International, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Students for Life, Turning Point USA and others—many involved in Project 2025—leverage this 50-state network to influence state policy and, under the guise of providing healthcare, siphon escalating taxpayer dollars into the antiabortion movement.
While CPCs have had some access to federal funding since the 1990s, Republican-led states have piloted a dramatic infusion of taxpayer funding into the CPC industry, especially since the 2022 Dobbs ruling. Now, as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans take power, they are certain to also ramp up federal funding for CPCs, making American taxpayers in every state underwrite these unregulated pregnancy clinics. They will justify doing so claiming CPCs “provide medical care that is driving down maternal mortality.” There is no evidence this is true.
PUBLISHED 2/28/2025 by Jennifer Weiss-Wolf
As last week’s inaugural gender and democracy round up went to press … the White House issued an executive order entitled “Expanding Access To In Vitro Fertilization.” The language it employs, and the sheer folly of what it promises, mark it as a double affront to democracy.
Starting with why Trump purports to care about IVF at all. Not long after the Supreme Court’s newly-installed supermajority overturned Roe v. Wade—for which Trump (rightly) claims and deserves all credit—attacks on IVF began to garner media attention. In 2024, Alabama’s highest court ruled that IVF embryos are considered children for purposes of wrongful death lawsuits. The stakes went beyond the impact on IVF (despite ensuing legislative attempts to course correct); the Alabama Supreme Court’s overt embrace of “fetal personhood” also implicates a central legal strategy that could eventually support a federal abortion ban.
PUBLISHED 9/3/2025 by Carmen Rios
“If you were breathing and you read any newspaper anywhere, you knew there was a big battle around ERA across the country, and I feel privileged to have been part of it—but at the same time, it was a very heartbreaking situation. We all thought it was going to pass. It was like, ‘How could it not pass?’ I was very crestfallen when it didn’t work out,” said Carol Moseley Braun in the fifth and final episode of the Ms. Studios podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward.
PUBLISHED 7/24/2025 by Jennifer Weiss-Wolf
This is the first reported case of a woman being denied prenatal care for being unmarried in the state of Tennessee and the country. And it is the direct result of the state’s 2025 Medical Ethics Defense Act, which went into effect in April. The law enables physicians, nurses, hospitals and insurers to invoke religious, moral or ethical objections to the provision of care and treatment, with no legal requirement to provide patients with a referral or alternative.
Tennessee is the 12th state to pass such a law, putting it in the company of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi and South Carolina, among others. With conscience carveouts for health services, including abortion, gender-affirming care, contraception or any other procedure that conflicts with a provider’s “sincerely held” beliefs, patients are not even required to be notified in advance. This means they might become aware of a refusal only in real time, in the waiting room or on the examination table. For those who live in rural or underserved areas, the consequences are devastating. The woman at the town hall said she is now traveling out of state to receive prenatal care.
PUBLISHED 10/3/2025 by Bonnie Fuller
Women have already died because of these abortion bans. And what would have happened to me if I had gone to term with these babies?
I could have lost all my reproductive organs and not be pregnant right now. But we did what was right for me, and I’m here today fighting for this little miracle.
My husband tells me all the time how proud he is of me, and so do my parents.
I have a lot of friends who are strong Republicans and didn’t believe in abortion, but hearing my story made them think about these laws. Some of them still had no idea about the abortion ban laws.
They’ve said, “Oh God, you should have been able to get the care you needed in your home state with your own trusted doctor.” Some of them have even told me that they have changed the way they vote, now.
PUBLISHED 6/27/2025 by Roxanne Szal | UPDATED 7/2/2025 at 9:16 A.M. PT
In recent weeks, a wave of rumors has surfaced online suggesting the 2024 election may have been “stolen” or, more specifically, tampered with due to faulty machines. While many of these claims remain vague or speculative, some are beginning to gain traction across social media platforms and alternative news sites.
In the interest of democracy, transparency and election security, I reached out to a group of leading experts—many of whom work at the intersection of voting rights, cybersecurity and public trust—to share two examples of the kinds of articles I’ve seen on this topic, and ask for their take.
PUBLISHED 5/5/2025 by Sheree L. Williams and Eleanor Wesley
For over 30 years, Michelle King dedicated her career to safeguarding one of America’s most vital institutions—the Social Security Administration (SSA).
As acting commissioner, she oversaw the distribution of benefits to more than 72 million Americans, ensuring that retirees, disabled individuals and low-income beneficiaries received the financial support they had earned. But beyond her administrative expertise, King’s leadership was defined by integrity, accountability and an unwavering commitment to protecting the rights and privacy of the American people.
That commitment ultimately cost her position.
In 2025, Michelle King resigned—or, as many suspect, was forced out—after refusing to grant the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to sensitive recipient data.
PUBLISHED 3/10/2025 by Chris Geidner
Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue same-sex couples marriage licenses, lost her appeal on Thursday of a lawsuit she previously lost at trial that was brought by same-sex couples whose constitutional right to marry she violated.
All three judges on the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit—which included one Trump appointee—agreed that Davis should lose her appeal.
Judge Helene White wrote the court’s opinion in the unending case, upholding the liability determination against Davis and damages awarded below.
PUBLISHED 10/21/2025 by Simone Jacques
Trey Reed’s death, and the hasty labeling of it as a suicide, echoes the same patterns of disregard for Black life that investigative journalist and anti-lynching abolitionist leader Ida B. Wells fought to expose. His story must not be forgotten or dismissed as yesterday’s news, because it reflects the same haunting narrative this country has yet to confront.
Wells wrote about how lynchings were often disguised as suicides—among countless other senseless claims. She not only documented the rates of these murders, but also testified against them when those in power tried to mask their crimes. In her January 1900 essay, “Lynch Law in America,” she warned, “They write reports which justify lynching… and those reports are accepted by press associations and the world without question or investigation.”
PUBLISHED 7/10/2025 by Ava Slocum
Imagine you’re a pregnant teenager in 1972. Abortion isn’t an option, and you’re not ready to get married … so you might turn to a maternity home for unwed mothers. You’ll live there until the baby is born, then give it up for adoption to redeem yourself from the so-called sin of premarital sex.
While they’re not well-known today in modern America, some people remember maternity homes from the 1950s through 1970s as places where mostly white, middle-class teenage girls gave birth in secret, then were forced to surrender their babies for adoption.
What even fewer people know is that these homes are not just a part of America’s Christian conservative past: They’re alive and well today.
PUBLISHED 8/13/2025 by Emma Cieslik
A few weeks after the 2024 election, and a few months before the start of Trump 2.0, I warned Ms. readers that Pastor Joel Webbon, a Christian nationalist and president of the Right Response Ministry, stated on a podcast that he believes part of his vote was stolen from him as a result of the 19th Amendment, which cements women’s right to vote.
Similar to Wilson, Webbon “allows” his wife to vote to reclaim that part of his vote, believing instead that families should vote as whole units, with men leading this decision-making and voting process.
Wilson agrees, arguing that the country should follow his church’s example where only heads of households—male patriarchs—vote in church elections.
PUBLISHED 6/16/2025 by Roxana Behdad and Ava Blando | UPDATED 7/23/2025 at 7:03 A.M. PT
Thousands of No Kings protests swept across the United States on Saturday, June 14. The protests intentionally coincided with a lavish, Trump-ordered U.S. Army 250th anniversary parade, Flag Day and the president’s 79th birthday.
From big cities, to small rural towns, representing every corner of the country, between 4 and 6 million people in more than 2,000 locations attended No Kings protests across the country, making it one of the largest national protests in U.S. history.
PUBLISHED 3/14/2025 by Emma Cieslik
President Trump shared an article on his Truth Social platform celebrating his elimination of trans and queer people from military advertising. The opinion piece published by reporter Jeremy Hunt of The Washington Times, featured a crossed out upside down pink triangle. The inverted pink triangle was a symbol used by Nazis to identify LGBTQ+ prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.
In response, LGBTQ+ Americans and allies are expressing fear surrounding the post—marking the third time that someone within or associated with the Trump administration has used Nazi symbolism.
PUBLISHED 9/11/2025 by Emily Taylor
Much as owning guns at home is most likely to injure or kill the people living with those guns than the supposed threats posed by home invaders, the violent discourse espoused by Charlie Kirk and many others has resulted in his murder in front of a crowd of thousands of students.
Kirk built his career on racism and misogyny, encouraging young Americans to the side of a fully radicalized and extremist Republican party that has abandoned any pretense of caring for Americans and instead has become a propaganda machine pathetically flaying to prove that they are all men. White male insecurity from the losers currently governing has fueled attacks on Black federal workers, girls and women, immigrants, children and the elderly.
I’m sorry for Charlie Kirk and all the other men like him that have been raised in this America and with these ideals of masculinity. I’m sorry that he decided to adopt this hateful ideology and to profit from it. And as the mother to a boy and a girl, my heart breaks for the America these children are growing up in. Here’s hoping we can save ourselves.
PUBLISHED 10/21/2025 by Ava Slocum, Emersen Panigrahi and Maya Olson | UPDATED 10/23/2025 at 1:13 P.M. PT
Marchers carried “We the People” signs and references to the U.S. Constitution, including: “The Constitution is not optional,” “Democracy not monarchy” and “No kings since 1776.” Signs and chants varied by region: In New York City, protesters dressed up as the Statue of Liberty; in Florida, signs said the Florida heat would melt ICE; in Texas, marchers called for Gov. Abbott and Sen. Cruz to stand up to the Trump administration’s abuses of power.
This protest’s turnout was even larger than that of the first No Kings protest on June 14 (incidentally Trump’s birthday), which drew crowds of about 5 million, according to No Kings organizers. Both were among the largest single-day protests in American history.
PUBLISHED 4/11/2025 by Bonnie Fuller
If you thought that antiabortion Republican lawmakers in red states like Texas, Idaho, South Carolina and Georgia would be satisfied now that they have passed extreme abortion bans in their states, think again—just doling out legal threats to the citizens in their states who they believe are aiding and abetting abortions was not enough. Now, they want to punish women themselves for getting abortions.
It’s only April, and at least 10 Republican-dominated state legislatures have already introduced bills in 2025 that would charge women who get abortions with homicide—meaning pregnant people who obtain an abortion considered illegal in these states could be charged with murder. Most of these states also allow for the death penalty to be imposed on convicted murderers.
Got that? Zealous antiabortion Republican lawmakers now are OK with deliberately killing women who defy their bans.
Ongoing by Roxanne Szal
At least 11 women are already known to have died because of abortion bans—an undeniable undercount, with more cases still unnamed or not yet public.
Antiabortion lawmakers and judges in these abortion-ban states are failing women and their families, causing preventable deaths and irreparable pain and heartbreak for their families—leaving children without mothers, parents without their daughters, and spouses without their partners.
Ms. is marking these women’s stories. This article will be updated to mark every single name made public.
These women should be alive today. And these are likely not the only cases, as there has been a significant increase in maternal mortality rates in states that implement strict abortion bans.
Rest in power. And may their deaths not be in vain.
PUBLISHED 5/19/2025 by Ava Slocum and Roxanne Szal | UPDATED 6/23/2025 at 7:58 A.M. PT
Adriana Smith was declared brain-dead in February. But a hospital in Georgia is keeping her “alive” on life support as a result of the state’s strict abortion ban.
Smith, a registered nurse in metro Atlanta, was nine weeks pregnant in early February when she started suffering from intense headaches. Smith initially sought treatment at Northside Hospital but was released that same day after being given medication. According to Adriana Smith’s mother April Newkirk, “They didn’t do any tests. No CT scan. If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented.”
PUBLISHED 2/20/2025 by Amy Polacko
They were the “Insta-perfect” couple that captivated a nation.
But a new Netflix documentary American Murder: Gabby Petito includes text messages never seen before, journal entries, social media footage, family interviews and body cam video that give a foreboding picture of exactly what led to the 22-year-old’s death at the hands of Brian Laundrie.
It’s called coercive control—and this deeper dive into Petito’s story serves as a five-alarm warning to everyone, and their loved ones, about red flags to look for in relationships.
Gabby Petito’s stepdad Jim Schmidt collapsed on the ground when investigators found her body in Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest on Sept. 19, 2021, after a nearly month-long search. He had the task of identifying Gabby, remembering her in the fetal position “laying on the ground for weeks, in the wild just left there like she was a piece of trash by somebody who was supposed to love her.”
PUBLISHED 2/11/2025 by Stella Adams | UPDATED 7/10/2025 at 9:57 A.M. PT
The SAVE Act is not about election security; it is about restricting access to the ballot to maintain political power. By imposing unnecessary documentation requirements, it erects barriers that disproportionately affect communities that have historically been excluded from full democratic participation. The right to vote is fundamental to a functioning democracy.
PUBLISHED 2/15/2025 by Ava Slocum
In the new campaign, whenever House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) or another political figure spreads misinformation or anti-contraception rhetoric, Cadence OTC donates emergency contraception to U.S. women—including in Johnson’s home state of Louisiana—in his name.
Besides having some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, Louisiana was the first state to reclassify abortion medication as a controlled substance, forcing hospitals to keep it under lock and key and harder for doctors to access, even in emergencies such as when a woman is hemorrhaging after giving birth. Johnson was an attorney at the Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal force behind dozens of ultra-restrictive antiabortion laws in the U.S., which also challenged the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.
PUBLISHED 7/10/2025 by Ava Blando and Simone Jacques | UPDATED 9/2/2025 at 6:11 P.M. PT
Multiple men are facing arrest in at least three states since President Donald Trump’s inauguration for allegedly posing as immigration enforcement officers to perpetrate sexual violence against immigrant women.
Across the country, so-called “ICE impersonators” are on the rise as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) itself has been violently arresting people without warrants, sometimes in plain clothes using unmarked vehicles. Nearly impossible to distinguish between real and fake agents, men have allegedly lied about their identities to intimidate, kidnap and rape women with precarious immigration statuses, according to survivors’ accounts.
PUBLISHED 12/13/2025 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.
PUBLISHED 11/8/2025 by Jodi Bondi Norgaard | UPDATED 11/13/2025 at 9:49 A.M. PT
When I saw the headline “Did Women Ruin the Workplace? And if so, can conservative feminism fix it?” in The New York Times Opinion section, my heart sank. It felt like a headline torn from another era—a provocation that had no place in 2025.
After predictable backlash online, the headline was softened to “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” and then “Have ‘Feminine Vices’ Taken Over the Workplace?” The wording changed, but the message didn’t.
Curious—and frustrated—I listened to the accompanying podcast, Interesting Times. What I heard wasn’t analysis; it was a polished repackaging of old patriarchal ideas dressed up as intellectual debate.
The podcast opens with the statement, “Men and women are different,” calling this “the core premise of conservatism in the age of Trump.” The host goes on to say that liberalism and feminism “have come to grief by pretending that the sexes are the same.”
PUBLISHED 5/13/2025 by Leora Tanenbaum
To people with conservative views, only some women—those who look and act like “real women”—get the privilege of being sexy.
In our realignment of sexy, the political motivations on the right and left are in opposition, yet a bikini selfie is a bikini selfie. Regardless of whether the woman depicted has used the morning-after pill or taken a virginity pledge, she’s not a sexual object.
This is why it’s especially important for those alarmed by the conservative rights grab to vote, march, donate, volunteer and call and email lawmakers to tell them to support legislation holding tech companies accountable for image-based sexual abuse and protecting LGBTQ rights.
Now more than ever, we can’t let our bodies or clothes speak for us.
PUBLISHED 3/10/2025 by Amy Shearn
While America’s blamer-in-chief foments a culture of finding fault—blaming Democrats for the LA fires, “DEI” for plane crashes and immigrants for high housing prices—those of us who care about women’s and children’s rights are justly concerned about the future of no-fault divorce.
Although no-fault divorce hasn’t gotten to President Donald Trump’s chopping block yet, rumors have proliferated, and people are justifiably anxious. As Amanda Montei wrote in her newsletter Mad Woman, “No-fault divorce was one of many internet searches that surged in the days following the election. On TikTok, divorce coaches and influencers urged women to get divorced while they still could. Some divorce lawyers offered anecdotal evidence that divorce filings were already on the rise.”
I feel a cold chill reading about these things. My divorce five years ago was painful, but, because New York state has no-fault divorce laws (the last state to adopt this, phew), at least we didn’t have to codify our private struggles within a punitive framework. As of 2010, every state in the U.S. has instituted no-fault divorce, which does not require proof of wrongdoing.
PUBLISHED 7/15/2025 by Virginia Kase Solomón
In 2024, over 150 million people voted in the presidential election. A plurality of these voters were women, thousands of them voting for the first time.
Barely six months into the new administration, President Trump and his allies are advancing a bill that will fundamentally change our elections and make it harder for millions of women to register, vote and participate in our democracy. The deceptively named SAVE Act represents the latest and most dangerous threat of election denialism to date.
If passed, it will create new and deliberate barriers for rural communities, senior citizens and women everywhere.
Senators must reject this bill when it faces a vote, and they must resist the political pressures and coordinated misinformation campaigns from the White House to pass it or, worse, sneak it through by stealth.
After all, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act is completely redundant of existing laws. What supporters of this legislation will not tell you is that it is already illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote in presidential and congressional elections. In fact, it is a serious federal crime, and has been since 1996, with punishment by jail.