War on Women

The "War on Women" describes the legislative and rhetorical attacks on women and women’s rights taking place across the nation. In includes a wide-range of policy efforts designed to place restrictions on women's health care and erode protections for women and their families. Examples at the state and federal level have included restricting contraception; cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood; state-mandated, medically unnecessary ultrasounds; abortion taxes; abortion waiting periods; forcing women to tell their employers why they want birth control, and prohibiting insurance companies from including abortion coverage in their policies.

03/12/2012
Abortion Legislation

Kansas to Pregnant Women: "A Little Lie from Your Doctor Won't Hurt You"

By Jennifer Dalven, Reproductive Freedom Project at 12:54pm

If a Kansas bill passes, a doctor who opposes abortion could lie about prenatal test results so a woman won't have information that might lead her to decide to end her pregnancy.

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03/26/2013
Abortion Legislation

North Dakota Today. What's Next Tomorrow?

By Elissa Berger, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 5:10pm

Today, North Dakota achieved the shameful distinction of enacting the most restrictive law on abortion in any state. In addition to passing a bill that would ban abortions after only six weeks of pregnancy, Gov. Jack Dalrymple also signed into law a separate bill that targets women with medically complicated pregnancies and a bill designed to shut down the one abortion clinic in the state.

We need to make sure our elected officials know they work for us. We didn't hire them to play doctor and to pass laws that withhold medical care. And yet, some are laser focused on banning a woman's access to abortion care under any circumstances. We need to tell them to #StopTheBans.

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05/17/2013
Abortion Legislation

A Duty to Protect Lives

By Carol Petraitis, ACLU of Pennsylvania & Arno Vosk at 3:11pm

This post was originally featured on philly.com.

In 1929, Clara Bell Duvall died in Pittsburgh from complications of an illegal abortion. She left behind a grieving household - five young children, an overwhelmed husband, and her own parents were devastated by their loss. The family barely survived.

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04/26/2013
Women in the Military

MARCH Onward for our Military Women!

By Vania Leveille, Washington Legislative Office & Elayne Weiss, Washington Legislative Office at 3:01pm

Enactment of last year's National Defense Authorization Act brought about a long overdue and welcome change on the military health care front by allowing military women and dependents to receive insurance coverage for abortion in cases of rape or incest. But the work to ensure that servicewomen's reproductive health needs are met is not nearly complete.

That's why we applaud the introduction in the Senate of the Military Access to Reproductive Care and Health (MARCH) for Military Women Act. Sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and 14 other stalwart supporters of our military women and families, the bill would allow servicewomen to use their own private funds to access abortion care on military treatment facilities. Earlier in the month, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) introduced a House companion bill, cosponsored by 40 representatives.

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03/08/2013
Women's History Month

Bring Women's Human Rights Home

By Lenora M. Lapidus, Women's Rights Project at 10:13am

On this International Women's Day, March 8, we call on the United States government to apply the same human rights principles it preaches for women elsewhere around the world, to women here at home. We are currently in the middle of the two-week United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). This year's 57th CSW focuses on elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls. On Tuesday, the ACLU was invited to take part in an interactive discussion with a panel of world experts. The United States participated in the discussion as well.

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03/06/2013
Abortion Legislation

Arkansas Passes Most Extreme Abortion Ban in the Nation

By Elissa Berger, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 4:24pm

Today the most severe abortion ban in the country passed in Arkansas. This is a sad day, not only for the women and families of Arkansas, but for women across the country.

This afternoon, the Arkansas House voted to override Gov. Mike Beebe's veto of a bill that would ban most abortions after 12 weeks, just days after the state Senate also voted to do so, making the bill law.

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11/15/2012
Birth Control Court Cases

More Challenges to the Contraception Rule, More Misguided Arguments

By Brigitte Amiri, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project at 9:45am

There are now close to 40 challenges to the federal birth control rule, which ensures that employees have insurance coverage for contraception.  Why so many lawsuits, you ask?  The answer is not entirely clear, but one thing is certain: each case repeats the same misguided argument that an employer’s religious beliefs can be used as a license to discriminate against its female employees.  As we have explained in greater detail their legal claims are unsupported by a long history of cases.  We’ve filed friend-of-the-court briefs in several contraception suits discussing those cases, all of which rejected other attempts to use religious beliefs as a basis for discrimination.  In the last week alone, we’ve filed three briefs: one in a case in Michigan with the ACLU of Michigan, and two others with the ACLU of Illinois.

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10/01/2012
Contraception

A Victory for Women: Employer Can't Use Its Religion to Deny Birth Control Coverage for Its Employees

By Brigitte Amiri, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project & Sarah Lipton-Lubet, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Anthony Rothert, Legal Director, ACLU of Eastern Missouri at 2:32pm

On Friday, a district court in Missouri rejected a case brought by a mining company challenging the federal birth control rule that requires employer health plans to cover contraception without a co-pay.  The Missouri case is one of 30 pending, and it is the first case to be dismissed on the merits.  It’s a tremendous victory for women, particularly those employed by the mining company. 

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09/11/2012
War on Women

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Dance!

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.

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05/17/2012
Abortion Legislation

Bubba And His Poor, Pitiful Women

By Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project at 12:10pm

Yesterday, a video leaked of Mississippi Representative Lester "Bubba" Carpenter (pictured above) gloating that he and his anti-choice cronies had passed a bill that could effectively put an end to safe, legal abortion in the state of Mississippi. The money quote:

It's going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to — Roe vs. Wade. So we've done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They're like, 'Well, the poor pitiful women that can't afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger. That's what we've learned over and over and over.'

But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere."

And now everybody's reaching for their smelling salts because, oh my, a politician trying to outlaw abortion doesn't care if women die. You know what I say? Finally. Finally, someone willing to speak the truth. Finally, someone is willing to drop the bullshit about health, safety, and a "culture of life" and admit that he'd rather women die than abortion remain legal.

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