“It’s clear that these are not about protecting conscience,” Gretchen Borchelt, Senior Counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, says of the new opt-out clauses. “They’re about protecting a certain view of conscience.”
According to the National Women’s Law Center, women lost 366,000 jobs between July 2009 and January 2011, while men gained 438,000, a difference of 804,000.
Although Spriggs said women were less likely to be hurt by the practice, Fatima Goss Graves, the vice president for education and employment at the National Women's Law Center, suggested otherwise. She said women—who disproportionately leave the work force to give birth or provide care to sick loved ones—could well face the problem.
“The use of an individual’s current or recent unemployment status as a hiring selection device is a troubling development in the labor market,” said Fatima Goss Graves, vice president for education and employment at the National Women’s Law Center.
“The argument that it doesn’t apply is old and tired and has been rejected by the courts and by the department,” said Neena Chaudhry, senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center.
The National Women's Law Center filed complaints in November alleging that the dozen districts across the USA — including New York, Houston and Chicago — fail to give equal opportunities to girls and boys.
It speaks to a distinction between rape where there must be some element of force in order to rise to the standard, and rape where there is not," said Steph Sterling, director of government relations for the National Women's Law Center. "The concern here is that it takes us back to a time where just saying no was not enough."
The National Women’s Law Center has just issued a report quoting doctors at Catholic-affiliated hospitals as saying that sometimes they are forced by church doctrine to provide substandard care to women with miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies in ways that can leave the women infertile or even endanger their lives.
"The fact that this happens is simply outrageous and inexcusable," said Jill Morrison of the National Women's Law Center, which is releasing a 30-page report documenting the impact of the directives through interviews with 25 physicians and administrators at 16 hospitals in 10 states.
