Josie Sustaire, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Oregon School of Law)

I am a law student at the University of Oregon but this weekend I ventured out of the northwest and attended LSRJ’s northeast regional conference at Harvard Law, hosted by the Harvard Law Students for Reproductive Justice.  At the conference, one of the panels was entitled RJ and Religion: Whose Conscience Matters?  The speakers all did a wonderful job of unraveling the complexities of reproductive justice issues through a religious lens. 

The first speaker from Mergerwatch Project enlightened me on the issues that arise from a hospital’s merger with a religious affiliated organization.  Her talk was great!  But I most identified with the last two speakers from Catholics for Choice and a Unitarian Universalist minister.  Due to my Catholic upbringing I have both the blessing and the curse of the religion’s teachings.  A baptized and confirmed Catholic, I have an understanding of the Bible that many others don’t have and less useful perhaps, I know the words to a number of hymnals and know when to kneel and make the sign of the holy trinity during mass.  One of the “curses” of being a Catholic, for me, was being brought up to believe that a woman who exercises her right not to have children (by way of an abortion or use of EC like Plan B) is killing a life and must be excommunicated.  Additionally, the Catholic teachings taught me that sex was a dirty word and that the only intercourse should be between a husband (a man) and his wife (a woman) in their marital bed…for the sole purpose of procreating.  This all got complicated for me during my teen years.  You see, I began to feel as though the religion was incompatible with my personal beliefs.  I embraced my sexuality and felt that it was something that didn’t belong solely to the married hetero man and woman.  I struggled, trying out different churches, searching for one that I better identified with.  I didn’t find the elusive church that I longed for but I did find fellowship.  First, it was among my theater friends in high school and then with my fellow nerdy English majors, and finally, alongside other LSRJ warriors.

What I have discovered and what the speakers at the LSRJ conference highlighted is that reproductive justice doesn’t have to conflict with your religion.  Rather, RJ can exist in harmony with your faith.  The speakers reiterated something that most folks already acknowledge – religious leaders, even though they may say they are, are not always speaking for their constituents.  This is particularly true for Catholic bishops (Only 7% of Catholic voters believe strongly that Catholics have an obligation to vote only for candidates who are recommended by the Catholic bishops).

I am no longer a practicing Catholic but I don’t see this as a sad ending to the story of my religious quest.  I see this as a moment of personal recognition.  I recognized as a young adult that Catholicism did not align with my personal needs or beliefs.  It was later in adulthood that I came to realized that organized religion in general did not agree with my faith.  My story is personal and my story is a happy story.  I feel blessed to have been raised in a Catholic environment; there are so many good things that came from it.  However, I also feel blessed to have realized at a fairly young age what did and did not work for me when it came to religion and faith.  Having engaged in self-discovery, I feel better prepared to speak to others about RJ issues through a religious/faith-based lens and understand the struggles that some folks feel when navigating the worlds of RJ and religion.  I hope that along with the speakers that I met today, I can help others to understand that they don’t have to choose religion or RJ but can embrace both comfortably knowing they are not alone. 

Elisabeth Smith, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Washington School of Law)

On Saturday, February 2nd, my LSRJ chapter hosted a conference titled “Reproductive Justice: Meta Rights and Milestones.” In the process of organizing the conference, I’ve thought a lot about RJ’s meta rights: the right to have a child; the right not to have a child; and the right to parent the children you have with dignity, free from violence and oppression. Two recent news stories demonstrated how some people with privilege have attempted to limit those rights by ridiculously redefining them.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the New Mexico GOP state representative, Cathrynn Brown, who introduced a bill last week that would bar abortions for rape victims. How you ask? Well, by making it a felony for women who become pregnant as the result of rape to have an abortion because an abortion is, by the bill’s definition, evidence tampering.

Yep.

When this story went viral, the esteemed representative released a mind-twister of a statement:“House Bill 206 was never intended to punish or criminalize rape victims. It’s intent was solely to deter rape and cases of incest. The rapist–not the victim– would be charged with tampering of evidence.”

So, the rapist whose assault “created” the evidence would also be charged with tampering with that evidence if his victim chose not to have a child? Hmmm. Try substituting another crime into this scenario if you want to really see how ridiculous it is.

Just over the border in Colorado, another story emerged. As a defense to a medical malpractice suit, lawyers for St. Thomas More hospital, a Catholic hospital in Cañon City, Colorado, argued that a fetus is not a person.  The hospital is run by Catholic Health Initiatives, a national chain that follows the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church authored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Part IV of the directives state “The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn and the care of women and their children during and after pregnancy. [at p23] Many people have crowed about the hypocrisy of championing the legal argument that a fetus is not a person while at the same time prohibiting abortion and contraception on the theory that life begins at conception.

In New Mexico, a fetus becomes evidence and at Catholic hospitals following the bishops’ directives, a fetus is a fetus in cases of medical malpractice, but not when someone would like access to contraceptives or abortion. In such cases, your ability to decide how and when to have a child or how to grieve for lives that you anticipated welcoming is interpreted through the prism of someone else’s ideology and whether its convenient for them to demonstrate some consistency.

Those who oppose the right to have an abortion need to demonstrate integrity to their position. Abortion is not felony “evidence tampering” and if life begins at conception, it does so even when money is at stake.

Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

A week or so ago, my classmates and I were arguing one of the most pressing questions of our nostalgia-obsessed generation: What is ultimate high school movie – Clueless or Mean Girls? (Answer: Neither, it’s obviously Heathers.) Amid the heady discussion and subsequent teen movie marathon planning, I started thinking about how high school movies have portrayed teen sexuality, contraception, and pregnancy over the years. In so many of the teen movies I grew up watching, sex was something that characters are obsessed with and defined by, and pregnancy is the ultimate horror. But is this moralizing cast on teen movies a modern thing? Maybe so.

One of my favorite teen movies is the cult classic, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (FTaRH). For a film that came out in 1982 – smack dab between two landslide election wins for Reagan – it’s shockingly open-minded. One of the main characters, Stacy, is a 15 year old freshman. She has sex for the first time with a 26 year old man and then initiates an encounter with a classmate, Mike Damone, from which she gets pregnant. She decides to get an abortion and tells Damone that he owes her half of the fee and a ride to the clinic. When Damone turns out to be a flake, Stacy’s brother deduces what has happened. He picks her up from the clinic, agrees to keep it a secret from their parents, and takes her out for lunch. Her best friend get revenge by vandalizing Damone’s car and locker in a classic act of high school public humiliation. Stacy, rather than being ostracized or shamed, is shown as being supported by her social circle and loved ones. It is Damone who is ridiculed for shirking his responsibilities, not Stacy for being sexually active. Stacy shows no signs of trauma and the abortion is never brought up again. Instead her narrative becomes one of her blossoming romance with Rat, a boy who has long harbored a crush on her. Rat angrily brushes aside Damone’s veiled insult that Stacy is “a very aggressive girl” (undertones of slut-shaming fully in force). Stacy continues to be assertive by giving Rat a picture of herself with her phone number on it and kissing him. Her reputation, as well as her confidence in herself and her sexuality is unshaken and unpunished.

I can only imagine the outcry such a story line would cause now. It’s a testament to how much we’ve gone backwards to imagine the complaints that would hound FTaRH for giving teens license to have wild, unprotected sex because the movies told them there’d be no penalties! The climate we live in today even mistakenly accused Juno, a movie in which the young woman chooses adoption rather than abortion, of glamorizing teen sex without consequences. In reality, teen pregnancy and teen moms face a great deal of stigma that is racially charged and makes it difficult to continue their education.

Turning to a classic of the aughts, Mean Girls is a film that has people endlessly quoting and referencing it eight years later. It was written by Tina Fey who promisingly said last week, “If I have to listen to one more gray-faced man with a two-dollar haircut explain to me what rape is, I’m going lose my mind.” And Mean Girls does have some golden reproductive justice moments. For example, it makes fun of a health curriculum that tells students that they’ll die if they have sex (taught by a teacher later revealed to be in a relationship with an underage student no less). And yet it leaves some things to be desired. When arch-Mean Girl Regina is in her bedroom with her boyfriend, her mother pops in and asks, “You guys need anything? Some snacks? A condom? Let me know!” It’s part of a larger characterization of Regina’s cold personality resulting from a dysfunctional family in which her mother sets no boundaries because she wants to be a “cool mom.” But is it really being a bad mother to make sure your daughter is equipped to deal with her sexual decisions rather than trying to control her sexuality? Not according to the way many families treat teen sexuality in the Netherlands. Apparently acknowledging that teens have sex, having open communication about contraceptives, and allowing sleepovers actually encourages trust and responsibility rather than the opposite.

Even if Hollywood is unlikely to portray teen sexuality in this way anytime soon (because of both conservative backlash and the lack of narrative drama), hopefully the actual experiences of American teenagers can begin to approach it.

Josie Sustaire, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Oregon School of Law)

Scrolling down the news feed of my Facebook account, I stumbled upon a headline that caught my eye.  The headline warned, “New York Schools Enable Sexually Active Teenagers.”  Interesting, I thought, that someone thinks teens need enabling in this department.  I thought that hormones took care of that (but what do I know).  Curious, I read on.  The article discussed New York City’s CATCH program.  CATCH stands for Connecting Adolescents To Comprehensive Healthcare.  The program aims at providing students with free comprehensive contraception.  What struck me wasn’t the fact that savvy NY schools were providing comprehensive contraceptive services to their students but the spin that the media was putting on it by attempting to incite fear in their readers.  To be fair, no all the headlines I encountered were bad.  Here is a compilation of various headlines from a variety of news organizations:

1. New York City Gives Plan B contraceptive to Teens in School
2. New York schools enable sexually active teenagers
3. New York City Pilot Program Offers Contraceptives to High School Students
4. More Access to Contraceptives in City Schools  (The New York Times)
5. Girls age 14 can get birth control at New York City schools
6. Plan B Contraception pills now available at 13 New York City high schools
7. Morning-after pills offered to NYC high school students
8. Sensible Plan to Prevent Teen Pregnancy Sure to Be Met With Outrage

What stood out to me were articles #2 and #5.  My reaction to them was a mixture of disgust and sadness.  I thought, “Oh no.  Here we go again.”

Now, I wasn’t around during the sexual revolution of the 60’s, but rumor has it that things got kind of heated when sex education was first adopted into public schools.  The media back then also used incendiary headlines and fear-inducing language to spin stories with the hopes of inciting readers (parents) to action (getting rid of sex education).  Life magazine ran an article in its September 19, 1969 issue addressing just this issue.  On the cover are the innocent faces of grade-schoolers under the headline: Sex Education for our Little Children.  The article discussed, among other things, how parent groups had distributed pamphlets with outrageous stories of other schools around the country.  They claimed that one schoolteacher had taken her clothes off in front of students and that another school had shown sex films, neither of which really occurred.  As silly as these claims may seem, the reaction in the 1960’s to sex education in public schools seems to be repeated each time public schools bulk up their comprehensiveness in regards to sex education or sexual health services.  It happened in the 80’s (or in early 90’s if you lived in rural Oregon like me) in reaction to the AIDS crisis and it will likely happen again.

The bottom line is this: articles focused mainly on inducing fear aren’t helpful.  If anything, articles like #s 2 and 5 are simply knee-jerk reactions to changes that some folks just can’t understand or simply refuse to accept.  And although I may not know exactly what enables sexual activity among teens, I do know this, inciting fear in the hearts and minds of parents is wrong and as a mother of two school-aged kids the last thing that I need is more to worry about.

Elisabeth Smith, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Washington School of Law)

On Saturday night, Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart debated each other in “The Rumble 2012.”  Bill’s opening statement concluded as follows: “The poster person for the entitlement society is Sandra Fluke.  Do you know Sandra? I left two tickets for Sandra plus a month’s supply of birth control pills at will call. Is she here tonight? Sandra, buy your own. Coupon. We shouldn’t be paying for this or a lot of other stuff.”  He also held up a sign reading “Buy.  Your.  Own.”

This talking point is old. Rush Limbaugh first called Ms. Fluke a slut on February 29, 2012. Since then, she’s graduated from Georgetown Law (where she was the GULC LSRJ President), spoken at the DNC, and campaigned for President Obama.

Let’s remember what she said to Congress though.  Sandra Fluke testified about the need for her insurance plan to cover contraceptives. Not once did she ask for you, or me, or anyone else to pay for birth control.  In fact, she didn’t even talk about her own need for contraceptives, but rather her friends who couldn’t afford it, including one with polycystic ovarian syndrome who needs to take birth control to stops cysts from growing on her ovaries.

How did these women’s medical decisions morph into a stubborn story of insatiable sexual appetite and demands for free birth control? AND, p.s., who cares if someone has an insatiable sexual appetite?! Frankly, sex-shaming is obvious and tired. Why won’t this story die? Why can’t Bill O’Reilly get his facts right? Why does he keep retelling his version of Ms. Fluke’s testimony?

I don’t know. I really don’t. But the image of Bill O’Reilly, deliberately, patronizingly, slowly scolding Ms. Fluke from afar “Buy. Your. Own” while holding a three word sign makes me apoplectic. She spoke honestly and compassionately about the religiously-imposed limitations of her health insurance plan and the resulting effects on specific individuals.

So, Bill, stop talking about Ms. Fluke. Stop using her name as an applause line. Stop with the authoritative, demeaning tone. And, while you’re at it, check out this study.  It turns out free birth control is actually a pretty great thing.

This post originally appeared on the National Center for Lesbian Rights blog on September 28. It was written by one of LSRJ’s 12-13 RJ Fellows, Laura Nixon.

On Friday September 21, the National Center for Lesbian Rights attended a symposium at the Georgetown University Law Center on “Contraception and Conscience: A Symposium on Religious Liberty, Women’s Health, and the HHS Rule on Provision of Birth Control Coverage for Employees.”

Anti-choice politicians and groups have tried to generate controversy around the contraception provisions in the preventative care regulations related to the Affordable Care Act. The regulations required that employers offering group health plans must provide certain preventative care to employees without cost-sharing. For women, the required preventative care services were based on a report by the Institute of Medicine, which, among other services, included the following important preventative services: well-woman visits; breastfeeding support; domestic violence screening; and Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved contraceptive methods. These contraceptive methods include, among others: prescription contraception, emergency contraception, and intrauterine devices (IUDs).

Subsequently, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an additional regulation providing that certain purely religious institutions (such as churches), were exempt from the requirement that their group health insurance plan(s) cover FDA approved contraceptive methods.  This type of accommodation for a religious institution is common to strike the appropriate balance between ensuring access to comprehensive care and respecting that some purely religious institutions see such provision as a violation of their faith tenets.  Nonetheless, in what some commentators saw as a political ploy to generate criticism of President Obama, more than 40 religiously-affiliated organizations filed lawsuits against HHS, claiming that the exemption for religious groups is too narrow and violates their religious freedom. The symposium explored this legal battle.

This debate has a huge impact on the LGBT community. Access to contraception, emergency contraception, and abortion care are important healthcare issues for lesbians, trans people, and bisexual and queer women.  It is crucial for the LGBT community that comprehensive healthcare and contraception remain fully accessible and affordable for all who need it. This is particularly important for those living in poverty or with low-incomes – who are disproportionately women of color – and are especially vulnerable to these efforts that make care prohibitively expensive.  Affordable reproductive healthcare is especially important for queer youth, for reasons that law professor Ruthann Robson points out in this op-ed:

[Q]ueer youth are especially vulnerable. They may have engaged in heterosexual sex for a variety of reasons, including coercion, intimidation, camouflage, sexual abuse, or survival/commercial sex. They may also be less likely to use birth control and several studies have documented that lesbian youth are two to ten times more likely to become pregnant than their heterosexual counterparts . . .

NCLR was proud to have been involved in advocacy efforts around the HHS regulation making contraception affordable, as part of a society where all people have the resources they need to make meaningful decisions about the trajectory of their lives. We stand with reproductive justice advocates in supporting affordable contraception as an important part of reproductive healthcare.

Media Contact: NCLR Communications Director Erik Olvera | Office: 415.365.1324 | EOlvera@NCLRights.org

Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

What do you get when you combine two cucumbers, five bananas, chocolate chip cookies, and over 50 condoms? Apparently a good deal of awkwardness.

Let’s back up. It was the day of my law school’s student organization fair and dozens of tables had been set up, laden with activities and treats to lure 1Ls to listen to our pitches. With beautiful sunny September weather, free beer abounding, and high spirits, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to relax and have fun. Arranged on our LSRJ table were goodie bags filled with homemade cookies, lip balm, condoms, lube, stickers, and cards with trivia on reproductive justice. For our activity, we had a simple competition: a race to see who could put a condom on a phallic piece of produce, correctly, and with the greatest speed. We thought it would be eye-catching and hilarious, and we indeed got many emails for our membership list and witnessed some truly impressive feats of speed. But we also encountered some unexpected reactions. I’m not talking about declining to race, preferring just to chat, or walking by with skeptical glances.

What was surprising was hearing multiple variations on the theme of “No thanks, what if someone puts the condom on really fast? You’d know they had a lot of practice!” This was always voiced with a tone of misgiving, as it was apparently a badge of disgrace to reveal you were experienced, rather than a neutral fact or even point of pride that you knew how to practice safe sex. Sure, it’s understandable that one might be concerned with what others would glean from your private life simply by witnessing how you handle a cucumber. People have different comfort levels, and the whole point of reproductive justice is that everyone’s own sexual expression is their own choice. However, when it comes to creating an association of slut shaming, I have to wonder at the strange society we live in where sex as an idea is omnipresent, glorified, and commodified, and yet to a significant extent, people shy away from admitting they have it or talking about the important logistics of it.

However, open dialogue is crucial because the statistics are sobering. Fifty-five million dollars of federal funding will go towards abstinence-only education in 2012. Half of the 18.9 million new cases of STIs each year are made up of 15 to 24 year olds although they only represent a quarter of the sexually active population. Thirty-one percent of new HIV infections each year are made up of 13 to 29 year olds. And 39.8% of high school students did not use a condom the last time they had intercourse. If law students can’t shed the associations of sex and shame, how can we shape society to make it safer for young people who don’t have the benefit of our education, years, and experience?

This post originally appeared at RH Reality Check on Wed., September 26th and was updated on Mon., October 1. It was written by LSRJ alumna Bridgette Dunlap (’12, Fordham Law School). She and fellow chapter leader Emily Wolf created and implemented the first-ever Prescribe Fordham!, a sexual health fair clinic for Fordham students. Read more about their campus activism here.

UPDATE TO CONTRACEPTIVE COVERAGE LAWSUITS:

Shortly after the original article on this issue was published, a district court in Missouri made the first ruling on the merits in any of the contraceptive mandate challenges, dismissing all claims in O’Brien v. HHS. The court held, among other things, that providing contraceptive coverage is not a “substantial burden” on religious exercise barred by the Religious Freedom Information Act and that the religious employer exemption does not excessively entangle government with religion in violation of the First Amendment.

The case involves a secular for-profit employer, but the arguments rejected by the court are representative of those found in the complaints filed by religiously-affiliated plaintiffs. The decision is a fairly readable primer on the controlling law in these cases. It illustrates that beyond these cases being premature in the case of the religiously-affiliated plaintiffs, the substantive claims are extremely weak. For this reason, the religiously-affiliated plaintiffs might not see any benefit in waiting until they have standing in cases that are likely to fail. The weakness of these cases may also explain their quantity. In addition to making a big pre-election statement, filing numerous cases increases the likelihood of finding one judge willing to depart from settled law or expand the reach of a statute, in an act of so-called “judicial activism.”

Original article follows below.

Thirty lawsuits have been filed by corporations challenging the Health and Human Services regulationrequiring that most health plans cover contraceptives. The plaintiffs are primarily Christian-affiliated institutions, but include some secular for-profit companies as well. A survey of these cases yields some useful information as to what the “religious freedom” debate is all about.

The strangest thing about these cases is that the plaintiffs, with the exception of the secular for-profits, have not yet been required to provide contraceptive coverage and may never be. The Obama administration has exempted objecting religiously-affiliated organizations from the regulation for one year while the accommodation is negotiated and finalized. The administration has been extremely generous in allowing objecting institutions to take advantage of this “safe harbor,” even amending the eligibility requirements to include institutions that have provided contraceptive coverage in the past but recently discovered they were violating their religious beliefs by doing so.

Thus, the claim of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, quoted in a number of the complaints, that the safe harbor gives religiously-affiliated institutions “a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” does not comport with the facts, to put it nicely. The safe harbor is not merely a delay. It is a period intended for continued dialogue. At this point, the religiously-affiliated plaintiffs do not know if they will ever have to provide insurance with contraceptive coverage, which is why the three cases decided so far have been dismissed.

Opponents of the regulation have claimed repeatedly that the problem isn’t that it will make contraception more accessible, but that its exception for religious organizations is too narrow. But, oddly, rather than arguing they meet the criteria for an exception or should, the plaintiffs in these cases argue that that they are not exempt. Why do this? Why not ask and argue for an exemption and sue only if the government does require that plaintiffs provide coverage for contraception? These cases are premature and courts are likely to continue to throw them out without reaching the merits.

It takes a lot of time and money to bring so many bad cases before the government has made you do anything you don’t want to. What’s the big rush?

I suspect there’s a looming deadline at play here that has nothing to do with litigation strategy: the election. Bringing these cases now, allows opponents of the Obama administration to say essentially, “Look, thirty lawsuits! What an unprecedented violation of religious freedom! Stop this man who has forced your humble bishop to sue.” These cases are politically useful because the fact that the administration let these institutions have their way for the time being and may forever isn’t what gets reported. And should the courts ever reach the merits of these highly dubious claims, it will be after November 6^th.

Beyond what the timing suggests about the political objectives, these cases reveal the nature of the objection to the policy. Plaintiffs are going to court claiming not to be exempt instead of arguing they should be because they don’t actually want an exemption. They want the whole law struck down. In many of the complaints, plaintiffs are not just asking the courts to bar enforcement of the regulation against their particular institutions for religious reasons, but explicitly seeking that the mandate be vacated in its entirety.

That the exception isn’t the problem is also evident in the support of religious contraception opponents for the challenges brought by secular, for-profit corporations. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops cheered when a judge temporarily barred enforcement of the regulation in the case of a manufacturing company that was clearly not a religious organization eligible for an exemption. Cardinal Dolan has described the change to the regulation he would find acceptable: “All Washington has to do is say, ‘Any entity that finds these mandates morally objectionable is not coerced to do them,’ and leave it there.” The issue with this proposal, however, is that when you get to decide whether or not to do what the government says that is not what we call a law. In demanding that providing coverage be optional, Cardinal Dolan is claiming the government cannot regulate any health plan in a way that conflicts with his beliefs, no matter how secular the employer.

Many of the complaints in these cases contain a further bizarre argument that the inquiry into whether or not an institution qualifies for a religious exemption is so intrusive as to entangle the government in religion in violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Now, as a matter of well-settled constitutional law, the government is not required to grant any accommodation whatsoever to those whose religious expression is burdened by a generally applicable law. However, the general consensus is that it should do so in some circumstances and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act requires this. But we can’t have any exemptions without a determination of who is exempt. This commonsense principle has been noted by courts upholding state contraceptive coverage mandates that contain religious accommodations identical to the one in issue. If the argument that granting an exception amounts to entanglement were adopted, it would harm the interests of a religious person who has a genuine need for an exemption from a law that burdens her religious expression, rather than a policy disagreement as seems to be the case here.

The potential unintended consequence of the intrusiveness argument is not the only reason it is striking. As currently written, the criteria for the exemption includes factors such as an institution’s corporate form, primary purpose, and who it hires and serves. This inquiry is relevant to whether insured persons have notice of and have consented to having their health plans governed by religious precepts.

The plaintiff institutions, on the other hand, are effectively demanding a less reasonable and more intrusive inquiry into the circumstances of individual plan participants. As Notre Dame notes in its complaint, Catholic doctrine does not prohibit the use of contraceptives to treat medical conditions. Therefore, the University is not purporting to have a sincere religious belief that bars providing coverage for contraceptives, but demanding the right to investigate why a woman has been prescribed contraception and the authority to adjudicate whether that prescription was justified by a medical condition of a type and severity deemed worthy of treatment by some unidentified arbiter.

Ultimately, the picture that emerges from these cases is not of religious adherents trying to alter the difficult balance between laws enacted for the general welfare and respect for individuals whose religious exercise stands to be limited. These cases reject the opportunity to compromise or even negotiate. They are an assertion of institutional religious power that appears to be aimed at influencing American politics and undoing policy put in place by officials obligated to represent Americans of all faiths.

Follow Bridgette Dunlap on Twitter, @bridgettedunlap

Catrina Otonoga, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

The question, “when are they going to come up with something for men?” rings through my head countless times a month — as I take my birth control each day and wonder what it does to my body, as I stand in line at the pharmacist and charge another $60 to my credit card each month, and as I do another at home breast-exam and wonder if, maybe, years of birth control had anything to do with that lump in my breast.

Just late last month, Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute announced a breakthrough in birth-control options for men, a hormonal gel that lowers sperm count with few side effects. No evidence of causing breast tenderness, nausea, mood changes or increased risks like blood clots or stroke. So far, just acne and slight increases in cholesterol.

This could do wonders for gender equity in hetero-normative relationships. Rather than women bearing the burden of balancing perceptions,(such as being sexy enough to need birth control, yet virginal enough to not have children), all the while paying for, regularly taking, and constantly worrying about birth control, men might be able to step into the fold of being concerned about the potential outcomes of having sex. Women continue to fight for autonomy over our bodies and our reproductive choices, including when and with whom we choose to get pregnant, or not. Access to the pill is a huge platform to effectively make that choice. Despite the times we are frustrated about weight gain or cost, we know that each time we take that pill we are exerting some control over what happens to us, and when.

In 2011, The National Domestic Violence Hotline released a study indicating that 1 in 4 women who agreed to answer questions after calling in to the hotline had experienced pressure to become pregnant, were told not to use birth control, or had experienced men hiding or throwing away birth control.

Every day, women of all backgrounds experience reproductive coercion, from long term efforts to undermine autonomy to one-night stands that refuse to wear a condom. For some women, reproductive decision making is not a dual decision, let alone a singular one. They don’t have a say in those “decisions” at all. So, while breakthroughs in contraceptive options for men are an important instep for many men and women to consider reproductive choice with their partner and with themselves, many women are struggling to own their reproductive choice.

Adding men to the conversation on reproductive rights, choice, and contraceptive decisions is an important move. Amplifying all women’s voices to be strong enough to make choices about their relationships and their reproductive futures is imperative.

In the state with the highest infant mortality rates in the country, a star OB/GYN loses his position on the Mississippi state board of health because he is pro-choice.

Another double standard in support of Viagra by anti-choice legislators, and they’ve even got a catchphrase lined up: “Viagra, that wonderful drug that helps create life.”

In Texas, there is a legislative struggle to keep Planned Parenthood in the state’s Women’s Health Program, more on the current developments here.

A trans-gender woman of color is charged with second degree manslaughter after her attacker died in the physical altercation.

Blogger Shark-Fu weighs in on Missouri’s Don’t Say Gay house bill that could bar schools from discussing lgbt issues and also keep student orgs like the  Gay-Straight Alliance from being recognized.

“Have you heard of Chen Guangcheng?” a Chinese Human Rights attorney escapes from house arrest when imprisoned for his activism against forced abortions and sterilizations.