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2 weeks ago | 
msmagazine.com | Livia Follet
In May, Cassie Ventura finished testifying in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking trial, exposing the years of physical and sexual abuse Combs subjected her to. Ventura first came forward against Combs in a civil suit, made possible by New York State’s Adult Survivors Act that opened up a lookback window for survivors to seek justice for offenses regardless of when the abuse occurred. With the lookback window now past, survivors are left with few options.
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1 month ago | 
msmagazine.com | Livia Follet |Ava Slocum
In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the longstanding precedents of Roe v. Wade, representing the largest blow to women’s constitutional rights in history. A series from Ms., Our Abortion Stories chronicles readers’ experiences of abortion pre- and post-Roe. Abortions are sought by a wide range of people for many different reasons. There is no single story. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls.
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1 month ago | 
msmagazine.com | Livia Follet
During the 2024 elections, 10 statewide abortion ballot measures aimed at expanding abortion rights in their respective states were certified for the general election ballot, marking the most in a single year. Seven of them passed: Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York. (Florida fell just 3 percent short of the 60 percent threshold required.) This high success rate solidified what abortion advocates already knew: Abortion is popular.
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2 months ago | 
msmagazine.com | Livia Follet
As Darlene Rodriguez was in the early stages of her now 25-year career as an anchor at NBC New York she was pregnant with her first child and was told: “I hope you’re going to get a live-in nanny.”“First of all, my grandmother would kill me,” said Rodriguez. “That’s exactly what I didn’t want.
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Mar 21, 2025 | 
msmagazine.com | Livia Follet
Before state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky (D) held a seat in Michigan’s House of Representatives, she was a microbiologist paying close attention to the lack of evidence-based approach in her state government. In 2017, Pohutsky decided to run for office in Michigan, largely in response to the 2016 election. Today, she’s an advocate for reproductive freedoms in the state.
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Mar 10, 2025 | 
msmagazine.com | Livia Follet
March 10 is Abortion Provider Appreciation Day. With increasing attacks on abortion and the people who provide them, we talked to abortion providers across the U.S. about what they want their communities to know and what keeps them motivated to continue the work.
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Feb 21, 2025 | 
msmagazine.com | Livia Follet
After speaking at an English teachers’ conference, New York Times bestselling author and former English teacher Samira Ahmed was asked by one of the attendees, “How can I be brave?”The question highlights a growing fear for many teachers across the U.S. ensuring their students have access to diverse titles in the classroom. Last school year, over 10,000 book bans were issued, targeting 4,240 titles—more than double the number of bans in the previous year, according to PEN America research.
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Feb 5, 2025 | 
msmagazine.com | Livia Follet
In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the longstanding precedents of Roe v. Wade, representing the largest blow to women’s constitutional rights in history. A series from Ms., Our Abortion Stories chronicles readers’ experiences of abortion pre- and post-Roe. Abortions are sought by a wide range of people for many different reasons. There is no single story. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls.
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Jan 23, 2025 | 
msmagazine.com | Livia Follet
On Feb. 28, 2025, the lookback window under New York City’s Gender-Motivated Violence Act (GMVA) will expire, erasing an essential opportunity for survivors of gender-based offenses, sex trafficking, sexual assault, workplace harassment, reproductive coercion and other forms of violence to seek justice. The GMVA applies to any incident that occurred at any time during the victim’s life in any one of New York City’s five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx or Staten Island.
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Dec 19, 2024 | 
msmagazine.com | Livia Follet
As 2024 comes to a close, we look back on the feminists we lost this year. Alta Gerrey, award-winning poet and founder of Shameless Hussy Press died in March at 81. Shameless Hussy, started in 1969 in Alta’s garage, was America’s first feminist press. Including the works of Pat Parker and Mitsuye Yamada, Alta also published much of her own poetry around feminism and sexuality. Reflecting on it later she said, “My own poetry was only shocking because it hadn’t been said a million times.
