News & Commentary

We did it. After years of work from the ACLU of California and our allies, dangerous shackles and restraints can no longer be used on pregnant women in our state's prisons and jails. Last week Governor Brown signed AB 2530, authored by Assemblymember Atkins, after it passed the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is a popular definition of insanity. Those of us across the country trying repeatedly to pass bills that would prohibit the shackling of pregnant women in jails and prisons are hardly insane. Dedicated? Yes. Stubborn? Possibly. Unwilling to accept women suffering? Absolutely.

California state law mandates that sexual health education in public schools be comprehensive, medically accurate, science-based, and bias-free. So why are Clovis Unified High Schools teaching teens from a book that makes no mention of condoms, even in chapters about HIV/AIDS and on preventing STDs and unintended pregnancy?

Until December 2008, California required that women reside here for six months before they were eligible to receive essential health services through the state's Access for Infants and Mothers program. The ACLU of Northern California joined with other public interest organizations to challenge the rule on behalf of Maternal and Child Health Access, a non-profit organization.

For more than a decade, the ACLU of Northern California has been working to ensure that sex education in public schools is science-based, free of bias, medically accurate and age-appropriate. The law we co-sponsored with Planned Parenthood in 2004 has become a model for other states and for the national REAL (Responsible Education About Life) Act. After years of Bush Administration support for ineffective, biased and harmful abstinence-only education, the nation is poised to take a new direction, and many are looking to California as a leader.

Across the country we're seeing ongoing attacks on access to reproductive health care. Massive attacks. The Guttmacher Institute released data today detailing that, just a few months into 2012, hundreds of provisions to restrict abortion access have been introduced in state legislatures around the country. Several have already been enacted. Now, more than ever, it's vitally important that California move in the opposite direction and continue its role as a national leader in ensuring that women have access to reproductive health care.

The newest iPhone features Siri – which Apple bills as "the intelligent personal assistant that helps you get things done just by asking." Or not, depending on what you're asking for. Need movie tickets, takeout food, or even Viagra, Siri can help. But should you need say, basic reproductive health care like emergency contraception or an abortion, Siri is clueless.

According to numerous

I was raped by a fellow soldier when I was stationed in Korea. I found out I was pregnant as a result of the rape when my commander called me into his office one day to charge me with adultery. A doctor at the medical center had told my commander – but not me – that I was pregnant. I hadn't reported the rape because I was trying to "soldier on" and I didn't trust my chain of command. As it turns out I was not charged, not because I was raped, but because I was divorced.

In California, we shackle pregnant women in prison.