Jessica Arons is the Director of the Women's Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress and the Center for American Progress Action Fund, as well as a member of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative. Prior to joining American Progress, she worked at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, the labor and employment law firm of James & Hoffman, the Supreme Court of Virginia, the White House, and the 1996 Pennsylvania Democratic Coordinated Campaign. She currently serves on the boards of the DC Abortion Fund and the Virginia ACLU.
Jessica is an honors graduate of Brown University and William and Mary School of Law. At William and Mary, Jessica was an associate editor of the William and Mary Law Review, managing editor of the William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law, and a board member of the William and Mary Public Service Fund. She has been seen on MSNBC, Fox News, and ABC News; heard on Clear Channel radio; and featured in The Nation, Politico, HuffingtonPost ScienceProgress, and RHRealityCheck. Her publications include "More Than a Choice: A Progressive Vision for Reproductive Health and Rights" and "Future Choices: Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Law."
On the anniversary of a crucial Supreme Court ruling on contraception, a woman’s right to use birth control is once again under attack.
All moms deserve the kind of quality, affordable care that I was lucky enough to receive while pregnant and postpartum, and Obamacare is working to make that dream a reality.
It is incredibly frustrating that the very women the federal Medicaid law is intended to protect are the ones who are hurt the most, but those sanctions are the only tool HHS has at its disposal to enforce the law.
Women of color experience much higher unintended pregnancy rates than their white counterparts. As a group they also suffer higher rates of chronic diseases, including pregnancy-related conditions, which can be prevented with consistent use of contraceptives. The new regulation guaranteeing access to contraception without a co-pay will help greatly with these and other health issues.
Many people seem to think birth control is affordable, but high costs are one of the primary barriers to contraceptive access.
Bait-and-switch tactics by conservative politicians threaten to further undermine the protections of the Supreme Court’s seminal abortion rights case.
What should have been a routine decision based on sound scientific and medical evidence just got hijacked by politics – again.
The Shaheen Amendment currently has 12 cosponsors. It should have all 100. This amendment should be entirely non-controversial and should appeal even to those who generally oppose abortion but are sympathetic to its need in cases of rape or incest. Even the Hyde Amendment — the original ban on government coverage for abortion — allows for abortion in those circumstances.
A broad religious exemption for contraceptive coverage would go too far, depriving millions of women of an important health benefit. Instead of expanding exemptions, we should be expanding access to affordable care.
Mississippi voters yesterday soundly defeated Initiative 26, the so-called Personhood Amendment, by a margin of 58 percent to 42 percent. The vague proposition, which would have defined a fertilized egg as a person, threatened a multitude of untold consequences.
