Women continue to face workplace challenges and discrimination

African-American and Latina women, who now make up an important part of the U.S. workforce, face higher rates of poverty and unemployment than white and Asian working women.

The U.S. Department of Labor wrote Thursday: “On the same day last week that she announced that the economy created another 121,000 jobs in March, and that the unemployment rate ticked down, Secretary [Hilda] Solis joined President Obama at a White House event focused on ‘Women and the Economy.’”

Colorado ‘religious freedom’ initiative moves step closer to 2012 ballot

The Colorado Secretary of State’s title board on Wednesday approved language for a “religious freedom” ballot initiative submitted last month by Colorado Springs-based evangelical organization Focus on the Family. Supporters of the initiative can now begin collecting the roughly 86,000 valid voter signatures it will take to land the proposal on election ballots this November.

An Obama campaign top priority: Chasing Colorado youth vote

BOULDER– National leaders of the Obama reelection campaign recently told students gathered on the University of Colorado campus here that winning swing-state Colorado is among the highest priorities for the campaign and that youth voters are the linchpin in this year’s victory strategy.

Personhood gaining steam in Oklahoma

State lawmakers in Oklahoma this week took up a piece of legislation that would grant “personhood” status to human embryos. The measure, which was passed by the state Senate, advanced through the House Public Health Committee, despite warnings that it could endanger the lives of women.

Documents tie NOM to anti-gay marriage PAC

Phyllis Gardiner, an attorney for the Maine ethics commission who works in Maine’s attorney general’s office, told TAI that the Maine ethics commission’s long-stalled investigation into NOM is scheduled to get back into gear next month. What that investigation reveals is likely to shed even more light on NOM’s involvement in the anti-gay-marriage campaign and why the group has tried so vigorously to conceal its donors.

Obama wins contraception battle

This past Friday, a judge ruled in favor of the Obama administration in a legal challenge filed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops over the religious group’s loss of federal funding.

FDA urged to allow over-the-counter sales of birth control

Last week, doctors and reproductive rights advocates announced that they will lobby the FDA to include birth control in a list of drugs that can be offered without prescriptions.

Arizona joins states banning wrongful birth litigation

Earlier this month, a jury awarded nearly $3 million in damages to a Portland, Ore., couple who said they would have aborted their daughter had they known she was going to be born with Down syndrome.

Sebelius highlights progress made under Affordable Care Act

U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in Miami today said the health care reform law, signed two years ago this week, has led to tremendous strides in women’s access to health care.

Abortion rights under attack coast to coast

A new report from the Guttmacher Institute shows that, in the past decade, a substantial number of states have shifted from having only a moderate number of abortion restrictions to becoming “overtly hostile” to abortion rights.