After the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs, I was part of a legal team that challenged Ohio’s ban on abortion in court. A few months later, we had an initial victory: The restriction ...

As a historian, I appreciated Craig Fehrman’s reminding readers of the impact of women during the American Revolution (“The war for independence carved out space for women’s liberty,” Ideas, April 6), ...

Cheryl Simon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

“The law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.” When at the end of Oliver Twist, Mr. Bumble the Beadle is informed of what was formerly known as the Principle of Coverture under English ...

Coverture was supposed to operate in the United States in the same way it operated in the rest of the common law world. Generally speaking, a married woman was incapable of owning property or making a ...

Last week, I received an email from a reader highlighting situations where married women could not make decisions without their husbands, and asking whether a woman becomes the charge of her husband ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

The recent controversy surrounding Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond’s claims of being Indigenous has once again shone a spotlight on the issue of “pretendians” — people who have obtained privileged positions ...