Womenstake, NWLC's Blog

Good news! The Ninth Circuit has struck down Arizona's law [PDF] that would ban abortions after 20 weeks gestation. The court said what we have been saying all along: this law is unconstitutional. "Because [the law] deprives the women to whom it applies of the ultimate decision to terminate their pregnancies prior to fetal viability, it is unconstitutional under a long line of invariant Supreme Court precedents." (Emphasis my own.) 

This decision overturned a lower court's decision upholding Arizona's law. In doing so, the court rejected Arizona's argument that the law did not actually prohibit abortion because it allowed abortions in cases of medical emergencies. Seeing through this argument, the Court had this pointed response: "Allowing a physician to decide if abortion is medically necessary is not the same as allowing a woman to decide whether to carry her own pregnancy to term." Enough said. 

While we take a moment to sigh relief that a court has stopped this type of unconstitutional legislation pushed by extreme politicians seeking to interfere with women's decisionmaking, the fight isn't over yet.

On Thursday, U.S. Senators Robert Menendez, Frank R. Lautenberg, Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Representative Carolyn Maloney introduced a bill aimed at curbing deceptive and misleading advertising practices by Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs). The "Stop Deceptive Advertising For Women's Services Act" would require the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to issue and enforce rules prohibiting CPCs from advertising with the intent to create the impression that they provide abortion services. If passed, this bill would be a major step forward in protecting women and their health. As Representative Maloney said, "those [centers] that practice bait-and-switch should be held accountable so that pregnant women are not deceived at an extremely vulnerable time in their lives." 

CPCs often advertise under "abortion services" leading women to believe that they will be seeing an abortion provider when they visit the CPC, or, at the very least, will be seeing someone who will provide accurate information on, and referrals for, abortion care. CPCs set up shop near abortion providers and select names similar to full service clinics. CPCs frequently provide misleading information, telling women, for example, that an abortion is unlikely to be necessary because most pregnancies are not viable. The goal is to delay women until it is too late or too costly to obtain an abortion. 

Although the overall wage gap stands at 23 cents when salaries of fulltime male and female workers are compared, it varies by key factors such as industry and occupation. In fact, the wage gap is relatively tiny in some occupations and in others it is startling large. But no matter the industry and no matter the occupation, the gender wage gap persists.  

Here's an interesting fact — in the federal government, the wage gap is much smaller than in the private sector. A GAO report [PDF] has estimated that the gap in wage is about 11 percent. I expect in the coming months that there will be a lot more attention on the wage gap among federal workers. Why? Because the President has a new memorandum ordering the Office of Personnel Management to submit "a Government-wide strategy to address any gender pay gap in the Federal workforce." The order states that the government-wide strategy should include analysis of the ways in which alterations to the federal government's pay scales could reduce the wage gap and directs agencies to consider ways to promote greater transparency.