By Christina Brandt-Young, Attorney, ACLU Women's Rights Project & Jenny Lee, Staff Attorney, American Civil Liberties Union at 5:49pm
Across the country teachers at religiously affiliated schools are being fired for their reproductive choices. What’s worse, the schools are unapologetic, claiming they have the right to discriminate because of their religious beliefs.
Emily Herx, a former Language Arts and Literature teacher at St. Vincent de Paul, a Catholic School in Indiana, was fired after she requested time off to receive in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment. She is suing the school for sex and disability discrimination in federal court, and today we filed a friend-of-the court brief to support her legal arguments. A few states over, Jane Doe (a pseudonym), an employee at a Catholic school in Missouri, was fired for becoming pregnant outside of wedlock. Today the ACLU of Kansas & Western Missouri filed a complaint on Jane’s behalf with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for sex discrimination.
By Talcott Camp, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project at 6:20pm
Today, Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli strong-armed the VA Board of Health into reversing previous decisions based on medical evidence and patient safety in favor of unprecedented regulations on doctors and facilities that provide abortion care. This political move will endanger women by shutting down good, safe providers of abortion care. In a year when we have seen numerous politicians show utter disregard for women’s health, the story of today’s vote illustrates just how far some politicians will go to interfere in a woman’s personal, private decision making.
By Elissa Berger, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 2:35pm
Do we need another reminder about how state legislatures are a key battleground for women's health? Or about how so many politicians are out of touch? We do not. But we got one anyway.
Yesterday, the Missouri legislature voted to override Governor Jay Nixon's veto of SB 749, a bill that aims to undermine a woman's access to comprehensive health care. SB 749 attempts to allow employers to refuse to provide contraception coverage to their employees, despite the new federal rule that prevents such discrimination against women and the health care benefits they need.
By Merissa Kovach, Field Organizer, ACLU of Michigan & Maggie McGuire, Communications Associate, ACLU of Michigan at 5:22pm
As Michigan legislators observed states quickly upping the ante with extreme war on women policies like the personhood amendments and mandatory vaginal probe laws, they must have grown tired of our state merely being a face in the crowd; so they decided to dole out their own special brand of bat-crackers crazy in the form of an outrageous, monster War on Women Mega Bill.
We’ve written about the War on Women Mega Bill before, which combines every attack on women's health into the greatest assault on reproductive rights in our state’s history.
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is a popular definition of insanity. Those of us across the country trying repeatedly to pass bills that would prohibit the shackling of pregnant women in jails and prisons are hardly insane. Dedicated? Yes. Stubborn? Possibly. Unwilling to accept women suffering? Absolutely.
This year marks the third attempt to get a signature on a bipartisan, unanimously supported bill in California (AB 2530) that would ban the practice of putting incarcerated pregnant women in dangerous shackles. Similar bills have passed two previous legislative sessions with overwhelming support from both political parties, only to be vetoed. Opposition from the powerful law enforcement lobby surely played a role in these vetoes. But we have persevered, and this year we’ve been successful in keeping law enforcement neutral. While we’re happy with this progress, we still need the Governor to sign the bill.
By Amy L. Katz, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 3:56pm
The Van Devender Middle School in Wood County, West Virginia, will return to coeducation next week, thanks to the efforts of a courageous mother who refused to allow her daughters to be assigned to discriminatory single-sex classes for another year. Girls and boys were separated at Van Devender for all core curriculum classes and were being taught using different methods based on dangerous sex stereotypes.
Another private company – this one sells lawn and snow removal equipment in Michigan – is challenging the federal rule that requires employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception without a co-pay. As we’ve writtenbefore, these cases are meritless and harken back to a time that we should not repeat. For example, in 1966, the Piggie Park restaurant in South Carolina refused to serve African-Americans because integration was against the owners’ religious beliefs. The same argument was used to try to get around equal pay and labor protections. The courts did not allow religion to justify discrimination then, and they should not do so now.
By Rachel Marshall, Washington Legislative Office at 12:55pm
Hi, my name is Rachel and I’m a rape victim. This is not typically how I would introduce myself, but with the current national discourse, I can’t stand by silently anymore. You see, before my freshman year of college I was at a party where I made the mistake of leaving my drink unattended. Just an hour later, I remember stumbling into a bedroom and passing out. The next thing I knew, I was waking up with a man on top of me with several other men in the room. I was instantly paralyzed in shock and fear, but I was able to stop the next man. I think it took a full 24 hours for what had happened to me to set in: I had been raped.
By Denicia Cadena & Micaela Cadena. According to recent data, New Mexico has the 2nd highest teen pregnancy rate in the country; it follows that New Mexico has high numbers of parents who had their first children as teenagers. As a young mama recently shared,
So much has been said about Rep. ToddAkin in the past few days and yet there’s so much more I still want to say. But I won’t (except for a little bit at the end) because, Todd Akin is just a piece of the story
