The Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted to cut all of the city’s ties with the Boy Scouts of America, citing the Scout’s discrimination against gays. LA city law prohibits affiliation with any group that practices discrimination. This law will require all LA city offices to end their affiliations with the Scouts, despite the US […]
According to a recent Guttmacher Report on Public Policy, 77 percent of middle and high school-based health centers cannot legally distribute contraceptives to patients. School-based health centers, which typically serve lower income students and community members, offer a wide range of services, including preventative education on tobacco, drug and alcohol use, STD transmission, and pregnancy. […]
Until March 2000, Tammy Johnson was a community organizer in Milwaukee, the national center of the school voucher movement, where she saw what she calls the “devastating” impact of vouchers. “The demand for better facilities, more qualified teachers, and relevant curriculum fell on deaf ears at the school board, which spent millions on vouchers,” Johnson […]
Today, he heads up the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI), a national group that works on similar efforts in other states. Many of today’s new-right legal activists met up in the Reagan and Bush administrations: Bill Bennett, Linda Chavez, and IJ’s Clint Bolick, to name but three. In 1981, Bennett was Reagan’s pick to head […]
IJ’s caseload is full of suits brought on behalf of low-income clients facing unfair evictions and small business owners shackled by absurd-sounding federal rules. In San Diego, IJ represented African American hair-braiders who challenged a federal law that required them to take 1,600 hours of classes at personal cost to get a license. In New […]
Despite the Taliban’s military conquests throughout Afghanistan, the terrorist regime’s continual violations of the human rights of Afghanistan women and girls are among the factors that will continue to prevent the militia from achieving official international recognition. UN special envoy on Afghanistan Francesc Vendrell said, “I think the Security Council continues to believe and to […]
Medical Students for Choice (MSFC) are demanding abortion training be a part of every medical school student’s curriculum. As a result of MSFC’s efforts, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has recommend that abortion training be a standard component in medical education, and several medical schools have adopted this standard. In 1995, the Accreditation […]
The Leadership Alliance at Brown, Connecticut College, and the University of Maryland, College Park organized very successful Pay Equity Bake Sale fundraisers on their campus to not only raise money for their group but also raise awareness about discrimination and the Wage Gap against women. The average working woman in the United States now earns […]
Last summer, at the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Feminist Leadership Institute, several key students leaders from universities nationwide participated in an intensive 4-day leadership and reproductive rights conference in Washington D.C. Inspired by their weekend in D.C., several of these leaders are now organizing a conference of their own where feminist activists can share ideas, network […]
Launched on Valentine’s Day in 1998 with a benefit performance of The Vagina Monologues, the Obie-award winning play by Eve Ensler, V-Day is a movement to stop violence against women. In early October, the V-Day Movement to end violence against women announced the launch of the STOP RAPE Contest, a worldwide initiative to stop rape. […]
Pakistan refuses to reopen its border with Afghanistan, which it closed on November 10, 2000. The Taliban’s military advances, policies of gender apartheid and genocide and one of the worst drought in the regions history have caused ten of thousands of refugees to flee to Pakistan in recent weeks. Minister for Kashmir Affairs, Abbas Sarfraz […]
Congratulations to all the Leadership Alliances that participated in this year’s National Young Women’s Day of Action (NYWDA), a nationwide grassroots campaign organized for and by young women to activate a reproductive rights agenda that places reproductive and sexual freedom in the context of larger goals of racial justice, economic justice, LGBT rights, freedom from […]
On November 23, pro-choice Democrat Maria Cantwell was declared the winner in the Washington state Senate race over anti-choice incumbent Slade Gorton (R). An automatic recount will be conducted this week, but both political analysts and Cantwell’s campaign manager are confident that the recount will mirror last week’s count. With all counties reporting, Cantwell had […]
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case against a North Carolina election district where 46 percent of registered voters are black. The case is a followup to a 1993 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed white voters to challenge districts drawn to help minority voters. The case centers on North Carolina’s 12th […]
Abortion provider Dr. LeRoy Carhart, the sole plaintiff in the recent US Supreme Court case Stenberg vs. Carhart which found that Nebraska’s so-called “partial-birth” abortion law was unconstitutional, is being forced to fight yet another eviction lawsuit to keep his clinic in business. Several months ago, a group of anti-choice individuals purchased the building that […]
Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony if a few votes determined the rights of women? These words came from Eleanor Smeal the day after Election Day, at the beginning of the long drawn-out recount drama that has mesmerized the nation. “Whoever wins, we have to remember—women’s voices were clear. And the majority of voters voted […]
Massachusetts State Attorney General Thomas Reilly plans to appeal US District Judge Edward Harrington’s injunction against enforcement of MA’s law establishing “buffer zones” around abortion clinics. Similar laws intended to protect clinics, reproductive health service providers, and women from anti-choice violence and blockades exist in 14 states and the District of Columbia. Judge Harrington ruled […]
A recent study at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston linked anorexia to loss of bone density in young women. Published in The Annals of Internal Medicine, the study suggests that even estrogen cannot counteract the damage to bones caused by anorexia. In the 130 anorexic women studied, 92 percent showed enough bone loss to double […]
California’s Medicaid-funded Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment Program (Family PACT) has successfully expanded access to reproductive health services for a significant number of the state’s low-income residents, according to the Guttmacher Report on Public Policy. A study by the Institute for Health Policy Studies and University of California-San Francisco Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and […]
A new Massachusetts buffer zone law that prevents anti-choice protestors from approaching within 6 feet women who are entering abortion clinics and are within 18 feet of that clinic has been temporarily barred by US District Judge Edward F. Harrington. Judge Harrington ruled Monday that the law is unconstitutional and unfairly discriminates against people protesting […]
