Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images The United States continues to have the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. A new report presenting the most recent data on maternal mortality found that in 2021, there were on average 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births across […]
Justice for Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa as two men charged for firebombing
Photo from Flickr.com On Wednesday, two men were charged with firebombing a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa, California last March 2022. The individuals are Chance Brannon, 23, and Tibet Ergul, 21. Brannon and Ergul threw a Molotov cocktail at the entrance of the Planned Parenthood clinic prior to its opening on March 13, 2022, […]
Female pastors ousted from the Southern Baptist Convention
RNS photo by Emily Kask A controversial movement within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to remove women from leadership positions has resulted in the expulsion of five female-led churches from the denomination. Among them is the Saddleback Church of California — one of the largest megachurches in the country, with about 30,000 people attending church […]
Supreme Court rules to protect the Voting Rights Act
Photo from Aurora Samperio/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press In a surprising win for voting rights and racial justice, the Supreme Court voted last week to reaffirm a decades old precedent prohibiting racial gerrymandering. The decision centered around Alabama’s legislative districts, where a Republican led redistricting plan would result in White voters becoming the majority in six […]
Education Denied, Violence Endures: The Troubled Path Ahead for Afghan Girls
Photo from Bulent Kilic AFP/Getty Images On Saturday morning, nearly 90 schoolgirls in Afghanistan’s northern Sari-i-Pul Province were reported falling ill by poisoning. 63 students and staff members at Kabod Aab School, along with 26 more students and staff members at the nearby Faiz Abad Girls’ School, suffered from shortness of breath, nausea, neurological and […]
Oklahoma approves nation’s first religious charter school
Photo from Richard G Smith / Shutterstock.com This week, Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board voted to approve the country’s first ever religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville. Since charter schools are a type of publicly funded school that are independently managed, this Catholic school will be funded entirely by taxpayer dollars. The establishment […]
The Continued Need for Affirmative Action
Photo by Adam Szuscik on Unsplash The Supreme Court is expected to release a highly anticipated decision on the affirmative action cases, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. UNC Chapel Hill, by the end of June. Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) is a conservative, anti-affirmative action organization that has […]
Maryland and New York to put abortion on the ballot for 2024
Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash Abortion rights advocates are continuing to pursue the strategy of leaving abortion issues up to the voters. Both Maryland and New York have certified statewide measures related to abortion policies to include on the ballot in their 2024 elections. This has proven to be an effective strategy based on […]
The “Sister Senators” in South Carolina fight back against abortion bans
EDIT: On May 23rd, the South Carolina State Senate passed a 6 week abortion ban. The bill is now headed to the governor who is expected to sign it into law. All five women in South Carolina’s state senate have united to form a fierce pro-choice coalition, successfully blocking a near-total abortion ban. Republicans Katrina […]
North Carolina bans abortion after 12 weeks
North Carolina has become the latest state to pass legislation restricting abortion access. The state’s Republican-controlled house and senate voted along party lines to override Democratic governor Roy Cooper’s veto of SB 20. The bill will replace the current law that allows abortions up to 20 weeks of pregnancy and will narrow this window to […]