American Civil Liberties Union

Access to birth control, forced ultrasounds – lately there’s been a lot of news about efforts to roll women’s rights back by decades. Less attention has been paid to the way in which pregnant women and nursing mothers have been stuck in the 1970s, or worse, when it comes to workplace equality.

Yesterday, the ACLU submitted comments to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – the body that enforces federal civil rights employment law – explaining how courts have been ignoring the basic premise of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and leaving women in the lurch.

I am so excited I am beside myself. I'm a long-time reproductive health advocate looking at politicians around the country lining up to make it harder for a woman to get birth control, to defund Planned Parenthood, and to set up demeaning and obstructive roadblocks for women seeking abortions. And yet I am positively giddy. Why?

I am giddy because I can see that change is a coming. Those who would turn back the clock to the days of the aspirin-between-the-knees method of birth control have gone too far. And women across the country have had enough.

Yesterday's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the new HHS rule that requires insurance plans to include birth control with no co-pay (except for those held by churches or religiously affiliated nonprofits like universities) has caused quite a stir. A few observations:

In the past several weeks, as a nation, we’ve been hit by an endless barrage of commentary on the new rule requiring insurance companies to cover contraception with no co-pay. Who would have thought that in 2012, contraception — something 98 percent of women use at some point in their lives — could set off such a firestorm?

Last week, the Obama administration offered a solution that we hope calms the embers.