Behind the curtain
If there’s one thing I appreciate, it’s a good look at how organizations are (or aren’t) changing over time: A War Over Sex Work is Raging Inside The Nation’s Biggest Feminist Group. And yes, I’ll admit to a little rubbernecking, but there’s a valuable conversation to be had here—not just about NOW or sex work but—about how organizations express their values internally and externally.
Say it again: June Medical Services v. Gee is so much more than an abortion case. How the Supreme Court could gut reproductive rights without ruling on a single abortion restriction. The conventional wisdom is that Roberts is an institutionalist, didn’t want to be the guy who overturned the ACA, etc. This would be a very clever way for him not to be the guy who overturned Roe.
I missed this over the weekend: February 8, 1964, “in a stunning, but welcome, development, ‘sex’ was added as a category of unlawful discrimination in Title VII of the proposed Civil Rights Bill today.” The Civil Rights Act would be signed on July 7.
I didn’t miss that today is Oatmeal Monday. You can’t go wrong with a regular rolled oats on the stove, but I’ve always been fond of this overnight oats recipe from the original Good Eats. Especially this time of year, it is so, so nice to wake up a warm, filling breakfast.
Workplace
Employment gaps cause career trouble, especially for former stay-at-home parents
Kate Weisshaar, The Conversation
Understanding how employment gaps can affect careers is especially relevant given the recent policy discussions around paid family leave and childcare access in the U.S. I am a sociologist whose research examines what happens to people’s careers after they take time out of work. I find that gaps in employment can negatively affect future career prospects in multiple ways, particularly for those who left work for childcare responsibilities.
Opinion | No one should have to worry about getting paid when they’re caring for a loved one
Magy Viveros, Statesman Journal
Four years ago, when I was 14, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness and was in and out of the hospital for a year. Two years after my diagnosis, I had a stroke that paralyzed my left side. Recovery was brutal. I had a hard time remembering and articulating what I felt, and still just a teenager, I needed my mother there with me while I recovered.
Inside Female Directors’ Push for Better Parental Leave in the DGA and Across Hollywood
Laura Bradley, The Daily Beast
When Flint Town director Jessica Dimmock first decided to urge the Directors Guild of America to change its parental leave policies, one dim worry crept into the back of her mind: What if she was starting this battle only for herself? What if she was the only person who had lost health insurance because having a baby made it impossible for her to meet the minimum income requirement to stay on the plan?
South Carolina senator pushes for 12-week paid family leave for state employees
Jacob Reynolds, WLTX-TV (Columbia, SC)
Richland County Democratic Senator Darrell Jackson is introducing Senate bill 997 to create 12-weeks paid family leave for state employees who have a newborn, adopt, or take custody of foster children.
LGBTQ
Transgender Youth Are Being Targeted with State Laws in South Dakota and Several Other States
Lucy Diavolo, Teen Vogue
Right now in South Dakota, trans teens are afraid of what lawmakers might decide on their behalf. They could potentially be impacted by a bill passed in South Dakota’s House of Representatives late last month that would criminalize providing medical transition services to young people like them. That bill, HB 1057, would make it a felony to give people under 16 puberty blockers, a reversible medical intervention that can temporarily suppress puberty.
In South Dakota, trans youth just want health care and peace. Politicians are making that difficult.
Ben Kesslen, NBC News
Dylan Daniels, 25, lives in Vermillion, South Dakota, where he is finishing a nursing degree and raising two kids with his partner. He’s busy, to say the least, and though he wanted to get involved in state politics this session, he wasn’t sure if he had the time. That was until state Republican lawmakers introduced HB 1057 on Jan. 15, which would imprison doctors who provide trans health care, including puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, to minors.
Opinion | What South Dakota Doesn’t Get About Transgender Children
Jack Turban, New York Times
Early in my medical training, I read a landmark case study about a 12-year-old boy who wrote a suicide note to his mother saying he would rather die than go through puberty. I later met teenagers who tightly bound their chests — knowing that it could result in fractured ribs — because the emotional pain of seeing their breasts was much worse than any imaginable physical pain. These children are transgender,and they account for almost 2 percent of youth in the United States.
Virginia Lawmakers Pass Protections for LGBTQ People
Sarah Rankin, U.S. News & World Report
Virginia lawmakers passed comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation Thursday that advocates said makes the state the first in the South to enact such protections for LGBTQ people. The measures advanced on bipartisan votes, 59-35 in the House and 30-9 in the Senate as newly empowered Democrats continued to advance bills that Republicans blocked for years.
Opinion | The dangers of criminalizing medical care for trans youth
Nadia Dowshen, The Hill
In the past month, at least six states have introduced bills to charge doctors with a felony for providing medical and surgical treatment to transgender youth. The bills’ titles appear to suggest they will protect vulnerable children, when in fact, they may accomplish the opposite.
Monthly jobs report has new addition: Same-sex spouses
Brooke Sopelsa, NBC News
History was quietly made Friday in the monthly jobs report. While the unemployment rate ticked slightly higher to 3.6%, there was a big symbolic change in the Labor Department’s highly anticipated release: Same-sex couples were included for the first time. The data does not separate same-sex couples from opposite-sex couples, so the report falls short of providing any new information about the LGBTQ economic picture.
Abortion
How the Supreme Court Could Gut Reproductive Rights Without Ruling on a Single Abortion Restriction
Jordan Smith, The Intercept
Without saying much at all on the issue of admitting privileges or the underlying right to abortion, the court could nonetheless do devastating and lasting damage to reproductive rights in the way that it decides the second Louisiana case: a counter-petition filed by the state, Gee v. June Medical Services LLC et al., which attacks a longstanding legal doctrine that allows plaintiffs to assert the rights of a third party that would otherwise face an impediment to vindicating their own rights.
Democratic Candidates Say They Won’t Compromise On Abortion
Sarah Jones, New York Magazine
On Friday evening, when the Democratic Party’s primary candidates convened for another interminable showdown. Once moderators got the usual questions about socialism and Medicare for All out of the way they decided, bravely, to breach new ground. They asked former vice president Joe Biden if he’d apply a basic litmus test to potential Supreme Court nominees, focused narrowly on their support for abortion rights.
The facts on abortion from an OBGYN
Dr. Brenda Pereda, Las Cruces Sun-News
I am going to provide a few examples of the danger of politicians exerting their moral views on reproductive health that impact the lives of women, particularly in the US with the highest rates of maternal mortality of any high resource country.
If pregnant people and a medical procedure are going to be used as fodder for politics, we must get the medical science and facts right. That means relying on medical professionals for their expertise, not on politicians who use stigma, shame and inflammatory language to prevent women from getting the care they need. Medical care decisions must be between the patient and their provider.
Kansas Anti-Abortion Measure Fails; Medicaid Plan Targeted
Associated Press
Republican lawmakers in Kansas failed to get a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the state constitution on the ballot Friday, and abortion opponents responded by moving aggressively to block a Medicaid expansion plan backed by Democrats and GOP moderates.
As Kansas lawmakers battle over abortion, Medicaid expansion could be casualty
Jonathan Shorman, Kansas City Star
Minutes after an anti-abortion amendment to the Kansas Constitution failed in the House, Senate President Susan Wagle made clear the consequences. In a nearly empty Senate chamber Friday afternoon, the Wichita Republican sent more than a dozen bills that could be used as legislative vehicles for Medicaid expansion back to committee, ensuring they won’t be passed anytime soon.
A Utah lawmaker wants to try a different kind of anti-abortion bill — expanding access to birth control
Zoi Walker, Salt Lake Tribune
Sen. Derek Kitchen, D-Salt Lake City, is trying to get enough Republican votes to advance his bill in the Legislature that would give more women Medicaid coverage for contraceptives.
Kitchen said his bill is a response to a plan, still in the drafting stage, by Republican Sen. Dan McCay, of Riverton, to ban most elective abortions in the state. The measure would carry a trigger, so that it would take effect only if the U.S., Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.
Parenting & Caregiving
Opinion | Moms should be able to have sex — and express their sexuality — without shame
Danielle Campoamor, NBC News
In 2020, moms are doing it all (or as much as possible). More of us are working outside the home, there are more moms in Congress than at any point in our nation’s history, moms are increasingly becoming the breadwinners of their families, and we’re still handling more of the parenting responsibilities than our male counterparts. But one thing we moms can’t do yet is be openly, unapologetically sexy.
Birth Control
Bill intends to change teen access to birth control in Utah, also bring back federal funding
Wendy Leonard, Deseret News
A Utah lawmaker wants to bring back $2.5 million in federal funding that was once used to give low-income or uninsured women access to birth control. “Of all medical care, looking at the most clear-cut economical benefits, contraception is at the top of that list,” said Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful.
Reproductive Health & Justice
Opinion | American Mothers Are Dying Because of the U.S. Health Care System
Faye Flam, Bloomberg Opinion
The U.S. has a weirdly high maternal death rate. It’s a symptom of a sick health care system. The number of women dying of complications of pregnancy and childbirth is going down in all developed countries except the United States. New statistics released last week show that the U.S. maternal death rate has continued to climb, and is now four to six times higher than in many European countries.