News & Commentary

Like the Internet the way it is now?  Then you're a supporter of net neutrality and you should sign this petition to protect Internet freedom.

Texas senator Wendy Davis’ new memoir, Forgetting To Be Afraid, was released to the general public this past Tuesday. In the book, the now famous senator reveals that she’s had two abortions in her lifetime. Davis and her then-husband decided to terminate one pregnancy 17 years ago after learning that, if the baby survived, she would most likely be in a permanent vegetative state. The baby, named Tate, was developing with a severe brain abnormality. Davis characterized the decision as "the most loving thing that [they] could do for [their] daughter" because they believed that the baby was suffering. In the memoir, Davis also provides details about a second abortion, one that she’s previously talked about in public. This abortion, unlike her 1997 abortion, was medically necessary – the pregnancy was ectopic and could not be carried to term. 

Next week we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Constitution Day in honor of the day in 1787 when our founding document was signed in Philadelphia.

This week the Obama administration announced that, yet again, desperately needed immigration reform will be delayed. This is truly terrible news for the thousands of families currently unable to reunite with their loved ones, and the millions of people across our country that have been forced to live in the shadows. In addition to this disappointing news, the New York Times published an editorial this week detailing the failure of the "Secure Communities" program and the deeply harmful impact it has had on communities across the United States.

Two major wins were scored for abortion access last week. On Friday, a federal judge in Austin blocked the portion of Texas’s HB2 that would require all abortion clinics to meet the building, equipment, and staffing standards of a hospital surgery center. And on Sunday, a federal judge temporarily blocked a new abortion law in Louisiana that would require doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic. This good news rounds off a month of good news in the world of reproductive rights. For a quick reminder about other wins in the past month, see my blog posts about Mississippi and Alabama. 

Last week, in the wake of the tragic killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the renewed national debate about racialized policing, the Bangor Daily News editorialized on the discriminatory nature or our criminal justice system.

In 2007, Maine became the first state in the country to formally reject the proposed national ID card program, REAL ID. The ACLU of Maine played a key role in organizing the opposition to REAL ID here in Maine (and across the country)--from civil rights advocates, libertarians, privacy activists, and people of every kind of political view who don't want this country to be one where authorities are able to constantly demand, "Show me your papers!"  

Last month, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont introduced a new version of the USA Freedom Act, an important first step toward reining in government surveillance powers and reclaiming your privacy.

A new study led by Dr. Danielle Bessett, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati, has found that many in the U.S. are ignorant about basic facts related to abortion. Out of the 569 people Bessett polled, only 13 percent were able to correctly answer four or five of the survey questions, out of six total. Bessett conducted the survey to investigate the hypothesis that a person’s knowledge about abortion and reproductive health can be shaped by where the state fits on the political spectrum, i.e., the red-versus-blue divide.