Womenstake, NWLC's Blog

All too often, pay discrimination goes undetected because employers maintain policies that punish employees who dare try to inquire about their salary. These punitive pay secrecy policies mean that employees could be fired, demoted, or otherwise penalized simply for trying to inquire about wages. Unfortunately, research has shown that nearly half of private sector employees believe they will be punished if they dare talk about their wages. 

This week Congresswomen DeLauro tried to do something about these unfair policies. She offered an amendment that would have meant that defense contractors could not retaliate against workers who try to share or inquire about salary information. Who would disagree with that? Well, apparently the House Rules Committee did.

Yesterday, two different Congressional committees voted against protections for sexual assault victims:

• The House Judiciary Committee, while considering a 20 week abortion ban, voted AGAINST including an exception for victims of rape and incest. During the Committee meeting, Representative Trent Franks joined the long list of abortion opponents who have claimed that the chance of “rape resulting in pregnancy is very low.”
• The Senate Armed Services Committee, in considering a set of new protections for victims of sexual assault, voted AGAINST a provision to give the responsibility for addressing these crimes to independent prosecutors and away from the chain of command. As you may recall, there have been several very public stories in the last few months of commanders failing to pursue claims of sexual assault and overturning sexual assault convictions. And, even reports that the officers charged with enforcing these laws accused of sexual assault themselves.

It is important to note that these two votes took place in very different contexts – the House vote took place during consideration of a bill designed to limit women’s rights while the Senate vote took place during consideration of a bill that will otherwise strengthen the military’s prevention of and response to sexual assault.

There’s a lot going on in Congress. Immigration reform, hearings on sexual assault in the military, investigations of alleged IRS wrongdoings, etc. So what else should be added to the list? Oh, of course, BANNING ABORTIONS. Because nothing says Congress is at work than marking up a terrible bill that would hurt women and their families.

It’s hard not to get upset while attending the House Judiciary Committee mark-up of a bill that would ban almost all abortions after twenty weeks. It’s just saddening to watch amendments that would marginally improve this otherwise-horrendous bill get voted down, one by one.

You see, the bill as it stands now, only has a very narrow exception that allows an abortion when necessary to save a woman “whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, but not including psychological or emotional conditions.” What does this mean? It means that Rep. Trent Franks (who is pushing this bill) and his cosponsors don’t really think mental illness can be life threatening. That’s right, suicide – it’s all in your mind, just that pesky “emotional condition” that can end in death.