America Has a Rape Kit Crisis
What can sexual-assault survivors do when so many hospitals are unequipped to perform tests, and police stations and crime labs are stockpiling neglected kits?
Crime
Why Do We Criminalize Black Schoolgirls?
Two-week-long suspensions for minor dress-code violations have set Black girls up for a life of punishment. Why don't we hear more about this in school-to-prison pipeline debates?
There’s No Eating at the Morgue
The author’s lifelong fascination with death leads her to tour the L.A. coroner’s office soon after she nearly dies herself. And she discovers it’s not exactly as pristine as the ones on TV.
GOPers Don’t Want to Jail Women for Abortions—Except When They Do
A Georgia mother has been charged with murder for allegedly inducing her own abortion. With clinics closing every day, welcome to our harrowing future.
What Would Make a Mother Poison Her Child To Death?
Lacey Spears lost her five-year-old in January, after battling a series of strange illnesses since he was an infant. But as it turns out, he wasn’t the one who was sick.
Is a Joke Just a Joke When the Pain it Causes Is Real?
One writer mines the suffering of her own captivity to understand the true abhorrence of Joan Rivers’s jokes about Ariel Castro’s victims.
Why the Kermit Gosnell Case is About Murder, Not Abortion
The trial of the Philadelphia abortion doctor accused of eight counts of murder has reopened debate around abortion and health care for poor women.