ACLU challenges US on reproductive health rights for immigrant minors News
ACLU challenges US on reproductive health rights for immigrant minors

[JURIST] The American Civil Liberties of Northern California [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] Friday against the Department of Health and Human Services [official website] (HHS) for allowing religious agencies taking in refugees to refuse female immigrant minors access to reproductive health services, including abortions and birth control. The ACLU contends that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), through HHS, has approved grants to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and other groups with similarly held religious or pro-life beliefs, and allowed these organizations “to refuse on religious grounds to provide information about, access to, or referrals for contraception and abortion, even if the young person in their care has been raped.” These organizations have also be allowed to remove young women seeking these services from their current shelter. This infringement upon the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment [materials], the ACLU contends, serves to deny these young women their constitutionally guaranteed right to health and reproductive health services, and relocation of those seeking these services to other facilities only serves to “unfairly stigmatize [these women] for choosing to terminate the pregnancy, and uproot [them] from the support network” at their original facility. The complaint provides several examples of young migrant women who faced difficulties in obtaining these services. The ACLU requests a permanent injunction on the ORR to make sure that HSA and TVPRA grants given for providing refugee relocation services are not provided to organizations imposing religious-based restrictions.

Religious objection to reproductive health care [JURIST backgrounder] has been a highly-contested issue in the US. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), insurance companies and employers have been forced to cover the cost of contraceptives and reproductive health care. Passage of the ACA was followed by a series of lawsuits by religious groups, including a Supreme Court decision [JURIST report] that closely held for-profit corporations can deny coverage of contraception costs because of their religious beliefs. Abortion [JURIST backgrounder] has also been a contentious issue, leading to a slew of state-government restrictions [JURIST report] on access to abortions.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.

Former communist countries admitted for EU accession

On April 16, 2003, the 2003 Treaty of Accession was signed by 10 countries, admitting them for European Union (EU) ascension. After Malta and Cyprus, eight of the ten new EU nations (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were former communist countries. The signing of the treaty in Athens marked the first time that former members of the Soviet Bloc joined the EU.

Learn more about EU expansion from the organization's website.

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