ACS National Convention
June 13 - 15, 2013
Washington D.C.
Register Now!

Login:

Reproductive freedom

March 8, 2013
Obsessive Efforts to Trample Reproductive Rights
by Jeremy Leaming

Advocates of privacy rights, especially reproductive rights, have had one challenge after another mostly from state lawmakers bent on destroying those rights.

As reported earlier this week, religious groups were successful in lobbying the Arkansas legislature to adopt what The New York Times called the “country’s most restrictive ban on abortion – at 12 weeks” of pregnancy.

The landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade, found that the Constitution provides women “the right of personal privacy,” which “includes the abortion decision ….” Like many rights protected in the Constitution it’s not an unlimited one. And the Roe Court found that states have a compelling interest to regulate abortion at the point of viability, usually around 24 weeks, as The Times notes.

The law’s sponsor, according to The Times, “compared the more than 50 million abortions in the United States since Roe” to the “Holocaust ….”

That overwrought language is unfortunately typical of too many state lawmakers from coast to coast who for over the past several years have strived to create more laws to make it much more difficult for women to obtain abortions. As former U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger has noted, it’s annoyingly ironic that conservative lawmakers who blasted the Affordable Care Act as attempting to strip liberty from Americans are the ones pushing laws depriving women of their liberties. Women have the ability to make health care decisions for themselves, but right-wing lawmakers are more concerned about embryos, which do not have constitutional rights.

Because the Arkansas law so blatantly violates Roe, it is likely to be quickly challenged, as it should be.

Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice American, blasted the law, saying “This is another example of how anti-choice politicians are obsessed with rolling back reproductive rights guaranteed by the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision more than 40 years ago. This law robs women of control over their own lives and puts that control in the hands of politicians in Little Rock. This intrusive, extreme agenda is out of touch with our nation’s values and priorities – and we stand firmly in opposition.”

Too many state lawmakers have been obsessed with restricting the rights of women. Their priorities are regressive and obnoxious in the face of budget difficulties and people who need jobs or government services to help them become trained for new jobs. Instead of harassing women, state lawmakers should focus on issues that will bolster, not harm their communities.

Tags:
Supreme Court, Individual liberties, Privacy rights, Reproductive freedom, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Women's rights, Equality and Liberty, abortion ban, Arkansas, NARAL, Roe v. Wade
February 22, 2013
The Dream Shall Never Die
by John Schachter

While most Americans know that today, February 22, was George Washington’s birthday, not enough know that he shares this day with another late great American. Former Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) would have turned 81 today had he not tragically succumbed to brain cancer in August 2009. Fortunately his legacy lives on.

On so many of the issues dominating the public debate today -- voting rights, educational opportunity, marriage equality and equal rights for all Americans – Kennedy was a leader and a force to be reckoned with. As the Supreme Court grapples with these issues and more, let us hope that Kennedy’s work will be neither forgotten nor for naught.

In honor of Kennedy’s life and legacy, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate was founded in Massachusetts following his death. The Institute “is dedicated to educating the public about our government, invigorating public discourse, encouraging participatory democracy, and inspiring the next generation of citizens and leaders to engage in the public square.” To commemorate his birthday, the Institute has posted a tribute video first shared at a celebration of Kennedy’s 77th birthday. It’s well worth a watch.

Kennedy was a leading advocate of progressive ideals and also a friend to ACS. He was a major draw at a 2002 ACS national event and also authored an article for the summer 2008 volume of the Harvard Law & Policy Review (HLPR), the official journal of ACS, on the work of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

Ted Kennedy will be remembered for many things, for better or for worse. But his nearly five decades in the Senate left a record in many ways unparalleled in the history of the institution. And while he is no longer around to keep the work going, that doesn’t mean the work is done. As was often the case, no one could put it better than Kennedy himself: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Tags:
Civil rights, Supreme Court, Voting rights, LGBT issues, Racial justice, Reproductive freedom, Women's rights, Democracy and Voting, Equality and Liberty, edward kennedy, kennedy, ted kennedy
February 8, 2013
Did Obama Ignore Religious Freedom of Millions of Americans? Yes and No
Guest Post
by Leslie C. Griffin, William S. Boyd Professor of Law, UNLV Boyd School of Law

The Obama administration recently offered more accommodations to the religious employers who oppose women’s reproductive freedom and seek exemption from the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employee insurance coverage extend to contraception and sterilization. The employers won two big victories. First, the definition of religious employer was expanded to include not only organizations where everyone shares one faith but also those that employ or provide services to individuals who are not members of the same religious community. Second, the employers will not have to provide the coverage. Instead, the insurance companies will independently contact employees and make separate contraceptive policies available to them at no charge. The insurance companies will cover the costs of this new arrangement and, presumably, pass them on to other consumers.

The new rules are responsive to repeated and vociferous complaints about the president’s war on religion. As soon as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, first announced that religious employers would be expected to provide contraceptive and sterilization coverage at no cost to employees, the nation’s Catholic bishops attacked the president for his unprecedented assault on religious freedom. Those critics ignored the fact that the idea of requiring employers to protect women’s equality by providing insurance was not new or unprecedented. Twenty-six states have similar laws, and the highest courts of New York and California upheld their women’s contraceptive equity statutes against First Amendment claims.

With the federal act currently under challenge in 45 lawsuits, however, the administration chose to compromise rather than to press the legality of its actions on behalf of women’s equality. The strategy of compromise has been unsuccessful. Even the new accommodations have not satisfied the administration’s critics. The Catholic bishops still believethat the president should compromise even more by extending the exemption to secular, for-profit corporations run by religious individuals. And Kyle Duncan, the general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has sponsored much of the litigation against the mandate, stated that the new rules do “nothing to protect the religious freedom of millions of Americans.”

More
Tags:
Religion clauses, Individual liberties, Reproductive freedom, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Women's rights, Equality and Liberty, Affordable Care Act, Catholic bishops, contraception coverage, Guest Post, health care, Leslie C. Griffin, Religious liberty, reproductive freedom, The Becket Fund
January 24, 2013
Reproductive Rights – 40 Years after Roe
by E. Sebastian Arduengo

Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated on constitutional grounds a state law banning abortion, large swaths of the public may be more supportive of a woman’s right to make decisions regarding health, but state and federal lawmakers remain obsessed with limiting reproductive rights. The ongoing challenges to protect liberty of women were the focus of a recent ACS panel discussion at Georgetown University Law Center.

The Jan. 23 panel discussion kicked off with opening remarks by ACS President Caroline Fredrickson, who talked about how Roe v. Wade sadly marked the high-water point of reproductive rights, because ever since then federal and state lawmakers have been chipping away at it. One of the first efforts to erode liberty started with passage of the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which prevents the federal government from funding abortions through Medicaid – the primary source of health insurance for millions of low income women, and continue to fall with the myriad restrictions on abortion that serve no purpose but to harass women. (See video of panel discussion here.)

Former Acting U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger followed Fredrickson, and maintained that Roe was not about choice -- it was about the right to an abortion. He also criticized the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, noting that if the government really wanted to curb late-term abortions, it should stop obstructing abortion early in pregnancy. Dellinger was followed by Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, who discussed the mounting legislative attacks on abortion. In the last two years, she said, there have been 162 new abortion restrictions passed by the states. Things have gotten so onerous that in some states, like Mississippi, there’s only a single abortion provider left in the entire state. That clinic is under continuing threat, as the state is requiring doctors at the clinic to have admitting privileges at local hospitals – a burden that makes running a clinic financially impossible.

More
Tags:
Supreme Court, Individual liberties, Reproductive freedom, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Women's rights, Equality and Liberty, Caroline Fredrickson, Helene Krasnoff, Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, Marcia Greenberger, reproductive rights, Roe at 40, Walter Dellinger
January 22, 2013
In Celebration of Roe, Remembering the Importance of Young Progressive Lawyers
Guest Post
by Jacob Remes, Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and History, State University of New York, Empire State College. Prossor Remes is also David Carliner’s grandson.

The problem I see for younger activists is that today it’s harder to get a good job. It’s harder to make the money you need. I mean, we lived so simply. I watch my students and the tuition is so much higher and they’re working two or three jobs trying to support themselves. I think it is harder for people to have the time to be able to do the kinds of work we did, just because we didn’t have as many other demands on us as people who are of college age and a little bit older do. – Sarah Weddington to Time magazine, January, 2013

In June 1969, when Norma McCorvey needed a lawyer to demand her constitutional right to an abortion, she eventually found her way to two very young lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. Weddington had graduated from law school in 1967; Coffee received her law degree in February 1968. When the Supreme Court handed them their victory in Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973, Weddington and Coffee were only six and five years out of law school.

As progressive lawyers, reproductive rights activists, and others celebrate the 40th anniversary of Roe, it’s worth listening to Weddington’s concern about whether the work she did in her early 20s would be possible today. Both undergraduate and law school tuition have skyrocketed since the 1960s, and progressive lawyers faced increased pressure to enter higher-paying jobs instead of work for the movement.

Progressive lawyering is difficult and poorly rewarded. ACS’s David Carliner Public Interest Award seeks to make it somewhat better rewarded. Each year, the Carliner Award’s all-star panel of judges gives a $10,000 prize to a rising star in civil rights, civil liberties, international human rights, or immigration law. Winners are between seven and twelve years out of law school (this year, that means having graduated between May 2001 and May 2006) -- long enough that they have racked up some victories and other accomplishments, but young enough that they are beginning to worry about buying a house and affording their children’s tuition all while still paying off their own student loans. The $10,000 prize isn’t enough to solve all their financial problems, but it can provide a much-needed help, and it gives recognition to lawyers who receive all too little of it.

More
Tags:
Supreme Court, Reproductive freedom, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Women's rights, Equality and Liberty, David Carliner, David Carliner Public Interest Award, Guest Post, Jacob Remes, Naim v. Naim, Roe v. Wade, Sarah Weddington