By Vania Leveille, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Lenora M. Lapidus, ACLU Women’s Rights Project Women make up almost half the workforce today, and, if they become pregnant, most will work throughout their pregnancy. Given this reality, you probably think the stories below are works of a bygone era. Well, you’d be wrong: A woman was 16 [...]

By Vania Leveille, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Lenora M. Lapidus, ACLU Women’s Rights Project Women make up almost half the workforce today, and, if they become pregnant, most will work throughout their pregnancy. Given this reality, you probably think the stories below are works of a bygone era. Well, you’d be wrong. A woman was 16 [...]

By Lenora Lapidus, Director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project 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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

By Phyllida Burlingame, ACLU of Northern California California state law mandates that sexual health education in public schools be comprehensive, medically accurate, science-based, and bias-free. So why are Clovis Unified High Schools teaching teens from a book that makes no mention of condoms, even in chapters about HIV/AIDS and on preventing STDs and unintended pregnancy? Recent events, such [...]

By Elissa Berger, ACLU Advocacy and Policy Counsel As you may have heard, Mississippi passed a law earlier this year, which was explicitly designed to shut down the only health care center in the entire state where a woman can get a safe, legal abortion.  In passing the law, some politicians made quite clear that they knew [...]

By Elissa Berger, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU The Kansas legislature is not known for being friendly to women’s health. Just last year, the Kansas legislature took away family planning and reproductive health services in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood and prohibited women from purchasing comprehensive health care coverage. This year, legislators were poised to [...]

By Sarah Lipton-Lubet, ACLU Washington Legislative Office Every few weeks, opponents of birth control manage to garner some media attention by objecting – again – to the federal contraceptive coverage rule, which ensures that millions of women will have affordable insurance coverage for contraception without extra out-of-pocket costs. But time after time, it’s just more of [...]

By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women’s Rights Project & Elayne Weiss, ACLU Washington Legislative Office Earlier this week Huffington Post reported, "American women have served in the military since there has been an America to serve." And while it is widely acknowledged that women are already engaging in combat, American servicewomen continue to be officially excluded from being "assigned" to [...]

By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women’s Rights Project & Elayne Weiss, ACLU Washington Legislative Office Earlier this week Huffington Post reported, "American women have served in the military since there has been an America to serve." And while it is widely acknowledged that women are already engaging in combat, American servicewomen continue to be officially excluded from being "assigned" to [...]

By Ariela Migdal, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Women’s Rights Project & Vania Leveille, Senior Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office Less than three months after the Pentagon announced that it was loosening the rules that bar women from being assigned to ground combat units, the Marine Corps followed suit, taking important steps to open up previously restricted opportunities [...]

By Deborah J. Vagins, Senior Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office Would you know if the person sitting next to you at work was being paid significantly more than you to do the same job? If you suspected that might be the case, would you know what to do about it? You might start by simply asking [...]

By Shantelle Hicks, ACLU client When I walked into the school gymnasium, every kid in my entire middle school was staring right at me — all 400 of them. It was like a bad dream. I was confused why the middle school department head had called me into the junior high assembly in the first place. Students who [...]

By Ariela Migdal, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Women’s Rights Project Peggy Young delivered letters and packages sent by air for UPS. When she got pregnant after struggling with infertility and IVF, her doctor recommended that she not lift more than 20 pounds. She asked UPS, where she had worked since 1999, for a "light duty" assignment, so [...]

There is something fundamentally wrong with allowing companies to own the rights to pieces of the human genome. Today the ACLU is launching a campaign to illustrate the personal harms of gene patenting by showcasing those who have been or may be directly impacted by this practice. Today we are ” Taking Back Our Genes .” Stand with [...]

There is something fundamentally wrong with allowing companies to own the rights to pieces of the human genome. Today the ACLU is launching a campaign to illustrate the personal harms of gene patenting by showcasing those who have been or may be directly impacted by this practice. Today we are " Taking Back Our Genes ." Stand with us. [...]

By Ariela Migdal, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Women’s Rights Project & Vania Leveille, Senior Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office Last week, Pentagon officials got a few steps closer to recognizing what those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have known for years : servicewomen fight on the battlefield alongside their male counterparts , despite a longstanding rule barring them [...]

By “Dara” Lately the water cooler conversations at my religiously affiliated nonprofit social service agency have been focused on trying to understand the new HHS contraceptive mandate . My younger, female coworkers and enlightened male coworkers are giddy with anticipation. For as long as any of us have been working here, we haven’t been able to get coverage for [...]