The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee has produced a spending bill that would eliminate funding for Title X, a program that provides family-planning services to millions of low-income women and preventive care to women and men.
Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court issued the landmark Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which struck down a Connecticut law that criminalized the encouragement or use of contraception. Women’s access to effective contraception has improved a lot since then — but we still have a long way to go.
Family-friendly workplace policies can have unintended consequences for women; building owner charged with murder in collapse of garment factory in Bangladesh; new standing recommendations proposed for office workers; and a famous food journalist calls for improved working conditions for food workers.
Education
Chicago organizers take on domestic worker health and safety: ‘We start with the idea that everyone deserves dignity and respect’
After 18 years as a professional house cleaner in the suburbs of Chicago, Magdalena Zylinska says she feels very lucky. Unlike many of her fellow domestic workers, she hasn’t sustained any serious injuries.
Affordable Care Act
HPV vaccine study highlights how health reform is driving patients toward prevention
In a perfect example of how the Affordable Care Act is broadening access to relatively low-cost and potentially life-saving interventions, a new study finds that the health reform law likely led more than 1 million young women to seek out the human papillomavirus vaccine and protect themselves against cervical cancer.
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research has released a new Status of Women in the States report that show how women’s health has improved, or not, on a variety of different measures. It’s no surprise that they found disparities both between states and between racial and ethnic groups.
Women's Health
The Post and Courier wins Pulitzer for series on “a state where the deck is stacked against women trapped in the cycle of abuse”
The 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner for Public Service went to South Carolina’s Post and Courier for the chillingly effective series “Till Death Do Us Part,” about the state’s inadequate response to domestic violence.
Cancer
Labor group outlines significant flaws in chemical reform bill, joins growing list of opponents
The AFL-CIO joins a growing list of organizations which have raised serious concerns—or outright oppose—the Vitter/Udall bill to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Young v. UPS leaves it up to lower courts to decide whether UPS discriminated against Peggy Young by not giving her light duty while she was pregnant. In the meantime, new guidance from researchers can help physicians advise pregnant patients whose jobs involve lifting.
When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first vaccine to protect against cancers caused by certain strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, public health advocates cheered its life-saving potential. Unfortunately, the new vaccine quickly became embroiled in a debate over whether immunizing young girls against HPV, a sexually transmitted disease, would lead to risky sexual behavior.