On September 9, 1971, in response to brutal living conditions and oppressive policies, prisoners rose up and took control of New York's Attica prison. The prisoners held more than 30 prison staff hostage, taking care to protect them from additional harm, while prisoner representatives sought to negotiate with state leaders. They protested the horrific conditions in which the prisoners were forced to live. They protested the lack of educational programs and basic medical care. And they demanded change.
By Brigitte Amiri, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project at 11:27am
On Monday, a federal district court in Massachusetts ruled that an ACLU challenge to the government's use of taxpayer dollars to impose religious doctrine on victims of human trafficking may go forward. The decision is a victory for women's health and for the basic constitutional principle that federal dollars cannot be used to favor one religious perspective over all others.
In commemoration of World AIDS Day, ACLU attorney Rose Saxe agreed to sit down for a quick interview to discuss the AIDS Project’s litigation and advocacy work.
Founded in 1986, the AIDS Project at the ACLU has worked to fight discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS. In the first video of our two-part conversation, Rose discusses the focus of the ACLU’s current HIV/AIDS discrimination casework, and how our advocacy for HIV positive TSA baggage screening applicant Michael Lamarre fits into these larger trends.
Forget chocolate and cheesy Hallmark cards. Valentine’s Day is a day to remind us to tell the people we love most how much we care about them. And if you have a teen in your life, Valentine’s Day may offer be a perfect opportunity to have “the talk.” Never an easy topic to broach, but the producers of the documentary, Let’s Talk About Sex, are making it a little bit easier. This Valentine’s Day, the documentary will become available on Hulu free of charge.
The National LGBT Bar Association recently announced the recipients of its inaugural Best LGBT Lawyers under 40 Award, and we're happy to note that two ACLU attorneys are among that select group. Christine Sun, senior counsel for the ACLU LGBT & AIDS Project since 2005, has many gay rights accomplishments under her belt in her short career. She was lead attorney in Nguon v. Wolf, the Southern California case that led to the federal court ruling that a high school student cannot be "outed" to her parents without her consent. Christine was also counsel on Chandler v. Barker which recently struck down a Tennessee family court practice in divorce cases of prohibiting the same-sex partner of a parent from staying the night when the children are present in their home. Most recently, Christine represented Constance McMillen in her successful litigation against the rural Mississippi school district that refused to let her bring her girlfriend to the prom and then cancelled the prom when told they had to.
By Jon O'Brien, President, Catholics for Choice at 1:35pm
Victims of human trafficking must be ensured access to the reproductive health care they need. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act funds organizations that provide direct services to trafficking victims. However, the organization that administers these funds, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), prohibits the direct service organizations it supports with these dollars from providing the full spectrum of reproductive health services.
Today the Associated Press reported on an issue that our National Prison Project has been working on since late last year. Alabama is the only state in the nation that continues to discriminate against HIV-positive prisoners, including, as this story points out, preventing them from participating in work-release programs that would reintegrate inmates back into society. While prison officials claim such discrimination is necessary for the prisoners' health, we disagree:
You can’t catch HIV from everyday contact with the people around you.
Old news, right? In fact, all of those points were made in Understanding AIDS, the health information pamphlet mailed to every American household by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in 1988. But apparently the message was lost on folks at the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC).
Today is World AIDS Day. At the beginning of this year, three states — Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina — continued to segregate its prisoners with HIV from the rest of the prison population.
A: Why do you think it is important for human trafficking victims to have access to reproductive healthcare?
B: Most women who have been trafficked have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of their traffickers. As the government itself has recognized, denying reproductive health care services to women who have been trafficked further victimizes these women. For example, some traffickers prohibit women from accessing contraception, including condoms, and force trafficked women to carry a pregnancy to term or to have an abortion. Allowing these women to make their own decisions about reproductive health care is important so that they can become self sufficient. Also, people who are trafficked and forced to work in the sex trade have higher incidence of HIV. It is therefore crucial that they are provided information about, and have access to, condoms.
