Happy Tuesday, sir.
Today…
is Equal Pay Day for AAPI women (#AAPIEqualPay).
is the International Day of Women & Girls in Science (#WomenInScience).
the Minnesota legislature returns from recess to finish its two-year session. It’s the first state in more than century to have a split legislature, so will be interesting to see what can get done.
in 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison. (In an unintentional nod to Sen. Sanders, it took me a moment to realize that was thirty years ago. I get it.)
in 1916, Emma Goldman was arrested for distributing information about birth control.
is National Peppermint Patty Day. (Big fan of the Peanuts character, not so much the candy.)
Equal Rights Amendment
Ruth Bader Ginsburg says deadline to ratify Equal Rights Amendment has expired: 'I'd like it to start over'
Ariane de Vogue, CNN
"I would like to see a new beginning," Ginsburg told an audience at Georgetown University Law Center. "I'd like it to start over," she added. Ginsburg was responding to a question from the moderator of the event, Judge M. Margaret McKeown of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, who asked whether there would ever be an Equal Rights Amendment on the federal level.
How the debate over the ERA became a fight over abortion
Eleanor Mueller & Alice Miranda Ollstein, Politico
Conservative activists waged a successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment decades ago by warning it would force women into combat, legalize gay marriage and erode gender roles.
But in 2020, opponents are zeroing in on one line of attack: a claim that ERA would require taxpayer-funded abortions.
Abortion
The FBI Makes a Bizarre Claim About Pro-Choice Terrorism
Spencer Ackerman & Emily Shugerman, The Daily Beast
The FBI is expanding its focus on domestic terrorism, and that includes pro-choice violence — even though such violence is so vanishingly rare, it’s all but nonexistent.
The Argument for Abortion as a Religious Right
Leila Ettachfini, VICE
When evangelical professor Bruce Waltke shared a standard biblical interpretation in favor of abortion in 1968, his words were hardly controversial. “God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed,” he wrote in a 1968 Christianity Today article. “Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.” More than five decades later, a lot has changed.
West Virginia Senate passes ‘born alive’ abortion bill
Anthony Izaguirre, Associated Press
After acknowledging that murder is already a crime*, the West Virginia Senate on Monday passed a bill to penalize physicians who don’t provide medical care to a baby born after an abortion attempt. Senators unanimously approved the measure following lone testimony from a Democrat who said lawmakers have wasted time angling for political points on a bill that has no impact instead of working on the state’s more serious problems.
*I appreciate this slight side-eye, Anthony.
Oklahoma Senate leader: Abortion bill is 'fatally flawed'
Carmen Forman, The Oklahoman
A bill to criminalize abortion in Oklahoma faces unlikely odds in the state Legislature. Despite a change of leadership on a key committee, Sen. Joseph Silk’s "Abolition of Abortion in Oklahoma Act" could stall again this year because of opposition from Senate leadership.
LGBTQ
South Dakota's trans health bill is effectively dead, opponents say
Tim Fitzsimons, NBC News
The South Dakota Legislature on Monday effectively killed House Bill 1057, which sought to block physicians in the state from providing puberty blockers and gender confirmation surgery to transgender children under 16. By a 5-2 vote, the state Senate Health and Human Services Committee sent the bill “to the 41st day,” which means a bill has been effectively killed because the state’s part-time Legislature has only 40 working days.
South Dakota’s HB1057 Bill Target Trans Youth Effectively Dies in Senate Committee Vote
Lucy Diavolo, Teen Vogue
A bill in the South Dakota legislature that originally sought to criminalize providing medical services to transgender youth died in a state senate committee on February 10, as reported by local ABC News affiliate KOTA TV. According to the local news station, a 5-2 vote sent the bill to its 41st day, and because the legislature only meets for 40 days, that means the bill is dead.
Fairness WV unveils online health guide for transgender West Virginians (video)
WOWK-TV
Fairness West Virginia is working to make competent and compassionate health care possible for everyone with the first phase of a new statewide transgender health initiative.
A decade of change 2010-2020: LGBTQ equality report shows leaps forward amid a backlash
Susan Miller, USA Today
In 2010, no states outlawed conversion therapy for LGBTQ minors, forbid health insurers from excluding transgender-related coverage or offered gender neutral options on licenses and birth certificates. Ten years later at the dawn of a new decade, roughly 20 states have these protections in place. Breakthroughs? Or evidence of a plodding pace on the road to LGBTQ equality?
Parenting & Caregiving
Why America needs to consider paying stay-at-home parents
Heather Marcoux, Motherly
When we talk about childcare we're usually talking about how expensive it is—the cost of childcare has risen faster than incomes, faster than the costs of other goods and services and in 2020, the #yearofthemother, parents are demanding politicians address this affordability crisis.
This Is What It Is Like To Give Birth In Prison
Anna Misurelli, BabyGaga.com
Few things can make one's prison experience even more miserable. That is unless you are an incarcerated pregnant woman. Most pregnant women experience a sense of joy as they comb through books of baby names, carefully fold their freshly washed newborn onesies, and lovingly decorate the nursery. Incarcerated women face a horrifying reality... they will give birth (hopefully in a hospital), meet their children, then return to prison... alone.
Work & Workplaces
Young Men Embrace Gender Equality, but They Still Don’t Vacuum
Claire Cain Miller, The New York Times
New studies show traditional views persist about who does what at home, and it’s holding women back. Surprisingly, young couples today are not that much more egalitarian in dividing household chores than they were three-quarters of a century ago. Young people today have become much more open-minded about gender roles — it shows up in their attitudes about pronouns, politics and sports. But in one area, change has been minimal. They are holding on to traditional views about who does what at home.
College Major Related to Gender Wage Gap
Marjorie Valbrun, Inside Higher Ed
A new working paper provides new insight into why women are paid less than men. The professors connected college students’ choice of undergraduate major with labor market outcomes and found that even as the gender gap in certain majors previously dominated by male students has declined over time, a large gap still exists. They note, for example, that engineering is still a largely male-dominated major and field.
Three Ways Governments Can Reduce Unpaid Care Work Burdens for Women and Girls Worldwide
Jemimah Njuki, Ms. Magazine
A recent World Health Organization report found that the poorest women in the world subsidize health care with their unpaid work to the tune of $1 trillion—a figure larger than the economies of over 150 countries. The burden of unpaid work by women has negative consequences for their lives and their families.
Gender-Based Violence
Evelyn Yang, Robert Hadden and how the health care system silences sexual assault survivors
Dr. Esther Choo & Dr. Reshma Jagsi, NBC Think
The health care system generally offers plenty of blind spots for potential abusers; its traditional structures overlap with the impulse of most organizations to preserve their public reputation. In the case of sexual assault, these factors relegate patient and employee safety to a secondary consideration.
Embedded in this otherwise good piece is this poll:
So if societal change isn’t happening, it’s because “the movement was mostly talk,” and not because centuries of gender discrimination is taking a minute to undo. Even better that this is included in essay about shaming and silencing sexual assault survivors.
New Campus Sexual Misconduct Rules Will Tackle Dating Violence
Erica Green, New York Times
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s pending rules on sexual misconduct at the nation’s schools and colleges will include provisions to shore up protections for victims of stalking and dating violence, a response to lethal attacks that have underscored the weakness of current policies
Why Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault Survivors Need Paid Family Leave Now
Alejandra Y. Castillo, Refinery29
FMLA’s important protections are out of reach for some of the most vulnerable workers, and in particular do not extend to survivors of gender-based violence — a spectrum of violence that overwhelmingly impacts women and includes intimate partner violence, sexual assault, trafficking, and harassment. A comprehensive national paid family and medical leave program, which is nearly universally supported by women and is broadly supported by voters across party lines, would fill this gap in the law.