Each Friday, we’ll bring you updates on the latest civil liberties news from Maine and the nation.
Abortion Rights
Yesterday, the state legislature’s Judiciary Committee held public hearings on three anti-choice bills. The bills seem designed to chip away at abortion rights. Wisely, the committee voted “ought not to pass” on all three bills today. Read more here.
Other states, like Arkansas, have not had the same amount of success in preventing erosion of abortion rights. Arkansas doctors have asked the court to to block the state’s new abortion rules which would ban most abortions at the 12th week of pregnancy - far earlier than any measure of viability.
Freedom of the Press
Law enforcement officials secretly seized two months of phone records for more than 20 phone lines of journalists at the Associated Press. According to this New York Times story, “Justice Department regulations call for subpoenas for journalists’ phone records to be undertaken as a last resort and narrowly focused, subject to the attorney general’s personal signoff.” Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office, commented, “The media's purpose is to keep the public informed and it should be free to do so without the threat of unwarranted surveillance.”
Gene Patents
Angelina Jolie contributed a widely circulated op-ed about her double mastectomy to the New York Times this week. She notes in the Op-Ed that, “the cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3,000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.”
Why does the test cost so much? The company Myriad Genetics discovered that mutations on BRCA1 and BRCA2 indicate higher likelihood of breast and ovarian cancers. After the research, they patented the gene—they patented a part of your body. Now, no other company is allowed to do research on those genes. Without competition, the price of testing remains high. Patents reward and encourage human ingenuity, but genes are naturally-occurring parts of our bodies, not inventions. Recently the ACLU, along with scientists and cancer patient advocates, argued a challenge to the patent at the Supreme Court.
Read more here, and check out this engaging video from the ACLU:
May 17, 2013 - 4:14pm
