For Your Favorite Feminist… Gift Ideas!
For avid readers, check out Ms. bookmarks for recommended new fiction. more ...

Film buff to buy for? Take a look at the reviews of Persepolis and other stimulating films now available on DVD. more ...

Don’t forget to visit the Ms. online store for great feminist T-shirts, Ms. memberships, art, music and books.

Like a Natural Woman
New period-suppressing contraceptives such as Seasonale have been embraced by women thrilled at the idea of only having four periods a year. Ms. explores the claims that such pills pathologize menstruation and asks whether critics who call these pills unnatural are conforming to an anti-choice agenda. more ... 

The Scandal of Military Rape
Women in the military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq, but the Department of Defense remains reluctant to tackle the issue head-on. Ms. investigates the military's shocking indifference towards rape and sexual assault. more ...

 *WIRE UPDATE: Rape and Sexual Assault Causing PTSD in Women Veterans

Toni Morrison's A Mercy Reviewed Hot Off the Press
Marilyn Sanders Mobley compares Morrison’s new novel to her bestseller Beloved, which won praise for its portrayal of the brutality of slavery. A Mercy, says Mobley, "peers beneath the surface" of the murky deals and debts of history. more ...

Fake Medical Centers Fool College Students
A new Ms. investigation found that a startling 48% of college health centers refer students to so-called "pregnancy resource centers"--fake clinics that harangue women about the "dangers" of abortion. And these centers are taking in millions of government dollars. more...

*READ UPDATE: Bush’s lame-duck rule change could funnel millions more to CPCs*

Global Gag Rule Revisited
For many years, Ms. has been sounding the alarm about the harm caused by the global gag rule—a Reagan-instituted policy that forbids international family-planning organizations receiving U.S. money from speaking of abortion.

Our Summer 2003 article “Global Sex Rules” is an exhaustive study of how the Bush administration’s escalating war against reproductive rights was harming—even killing—hundreds of thousands of women around the world. more …

In “Dying in the Backstreets” (Winter 2008), Ms. sent a reporter to a last-chance Nairobi hospital where Kenyan women victimized by unsafe abortions end up—if they’re lucky. Blame the global gag rule, not just local law and culture. more …

*READ UPDATE: Under Obama, the global gag rule may soon be lifted*