Progressive Voter Guide to Reproductive Justice and Gender

Find out how the candidates compare on the 10 most important reproductive justice and gender issues, from abortion to equal pay.

In 1916, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States. Just 10 days later, the clinic closed and Sanger was arrested. It took seven years of court battles before she was able to open another clinic, 20 years before the United States stopped classifying information about birth control as obscene, and another 36 years before the Supreme Court extended the right of privacy to include the use of contraceptives outside of marriage. Today, virtually every woman (98 percent) who has ever had sexual intercourse has relied on some form of contraception. Yet that right, along with so many other hard-fought gains (reproductive choice, equal pay for equal work, gender equity in education), is under assault.

The list of setbacks is as depressing as it is long: A growing number of pharmacists is refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, the Department of Health and Human Services is trying covertly to redefine contraception as abortion, Roe v. Wade is on the brink of being reversed, equal pay for equal work has never been fully realized, women's sports continue to be underfunded, domestic violence is routinely ignored, and on and on.

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Following last weeks overview of drug issues in the U.S. (see menu in sidebar) here is a nice overview of gender justice issues in the U.S. election. Tom