In the News - 2019

The Hill There’s a war on your birth control

August in Washington: The weather is hot and muggy; Congress is in on recess; and people are away and traffic is lighter. Mimicking the Global Gag Rule that prevents overseas health-care providers from presenting their patients a full set of reproductive health options, the administration has enacted what amounts to a domestic gag rule that restricts free […]

Jon O'Brien

NEW REPUBLIC The Man Behind the State Department’s New “Natural Law” Focus

The State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, a body of some 15 academics, legal scholars, and nonprofit leaders advising Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about human rights, was announced in late May without input from human rights groups or even the department’s existing Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Its purpose is to “provide fresh […]

Kathryn Joyce

Huffington PostRoll Call Kirsten Gillibrand Claims Anti-Abortion Laws Are Not Christian

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is arguing that recent Republicans attempts to curtail abortion access around the country actually contradict key tenets of Christianity. The presidential candidate’s comments at the Georgia State Capitol on Thursday challenged the moral monopoly that conservative religious voices have long claimed to have on the abortion debate. Gillibrand, who identifies as […]

Carol Kuruvilla

Roll Call LGBTQ Equality Act passes House, pushing back on Trump’s religious freedom policies

Growing tensions over the Trump administration’s policies that aim to strengthen religious freedom protections for health care workers have led to a partisan tug-of-war playing out in the House. The Trump administration has tried to strengthen religious liberty protections through numerous policies over the past several months. Those include providing federal funds to religiously affiliated […]

Sandhya Raman

MEA Worldwide ‘Fetal heartbeat’ laws divide America as fears grow that Roe v. Wade could be challenged in the Supreme Court

The year 2019 saw women’s rights take quite the beating across the US. Besides Alabama’s Republican-controlled state senate passing what is undoubtedly the most restrictive abortion law in the US earlier this week, four other states — Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio — have passed bills making abortions illegal after a certain timeframe. These bills […]

Akshay Pai

USA TODAY 25 men voted to ban abortion in Alabama. Do they reflect the rest of America?

On Tuesday, 25 white male Republicans in Alabama voted to ban abortion in the state at every stage of pregnancy, unless the mother’s physical or mental health is in jeopardy. Gov. Kay Ivey signed the bill Wednesday, putting in place one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws. A dozen states in 2019 have either […]

Alisa Dasturgir

USA TODAY Activists shifting abortion debate to focus on human rights

WASHINGTON — With the future of abortion rights on the verge of changing like no time since before Roe v. Wade, advocates are presenting new arguments to plead their cases. Both sides have amped up messaging in an effort to intertwine human rights and abortion since the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and […]

Beverly Banks

Politico Politico: Illinois Playbook

CHICAGO – Catholics for Choice opposes any city plan to subsidize Presence Health downtown headquarters given the hospital rejects abortion and contraception. In a letter to aldermen and obtained by POLITICO, Catholics for Choice says Catholic bishops are allowing women “to be treated as second-class citizens in facilities supported by public dollars.” This piece was originally […]

Shia Kapos

Ms. Magazine Called to Account: Inside the Feminist Fight to End Clergy Sex Abuse

Ms. was part of the early days of breaking the silence on clergy sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. In 1992, I reported on the abuse of Rita Milla, which began when she was a teenager in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and evolved over time to her being taken by a ring of priests […]

Angela Bonavoglia

Albuquerque Journal Clergy Assert Support for Abortion in Letter

NEW MEXICO – A group of 90 clergy and members of religious organizations signed off on a letter supporting women’s right to access abortion. That letter was sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based Catholics for Choice and the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. It appeared as a full-page advertisement in the Journal on Tuesday […]

Rick Nathanson

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