American Civil Liberties Union

Last week, four servicewomen who served our country in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the Service Women’s Action Network, sued the Secretary of Defense in federal court to challenge the combat exclusion policy.  This policy prevents women from being assigned to most units that engage in direct ground combat.

Today, the Supreme Court granted our petition seeking review of an appellate court’s 2-1 ruling upholding patents on two human genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.  We represent 20 plaintiffs, including geneticists, patients, and scientific organizations representing over 150,000 pathologists and laboratory professionals.   The case is the first challenging whether human genes can be patented.

Last Sunday, November 25, the international community observed the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Women's rights activists have marked this as a day against violence since 1981, in memory of the Mirabal sisters, political activists who were brutally assassinated in 1960 on orders of Dominican ruler Rafael Trujillo. Many advances have been made in the fight for gender equality since the first International Day, but many more challenges persist.

As a visiting student at Barnard College years ago, I attended the transfer students’ orientation where each student was asked to explain why she had chosen Barnard.  I’ll never forget one woman’s response: Well, I went to an all-girls elementary school and an all-girls middle school and an all-girls high school, and when I got to my co-ed college, I didn’t know how to function around the boys, so I decided to transfer to Barnard.  Well, that’s one solution.  I think I laughed at the time.