Us in the U.S. is Women’s eNews’ weekly update summarizing all of the past week’s actions, policies and legislation that are being proposed, as well as passed, impacting women’s rights in the USA. Since our audience spans the globe, Women’s eNews wants to ensure that our readers are provided with all of the facts since we have always, and will forever, publish only the TRUTH.
- On Thursday, July 27th, the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) condemned the Trump administration’s failure to meet the second court-mandated deadline for family reunification. Reports have indicated that hundreds of separated parents and children still have not been reunified after having been separated for weeks or months. The government admits to separating nearly 3,000 children from their parents since the Trump administration instituted a “zero tolerance” policy for those apprehended between official ports of entry, while additional children were separated prior to the implementation of the policy and despite presenting at ports of entry. On June 26, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the reunifications, giving the government 14 days to reunite children under five and 30 days to reunite all other children. The government has deported hundreds of parents without their children. The government remains responsible for locating and reunifying all of those families and the hundreds of others that remain separated here in the United States as a result of this border separation policy.
- Also on Thursday, CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins was barred from covering a Donald Trump event after the White House reportedly told her she asked an “inappropriate” question. She had recently asked about an audio recording where Trump discussed with his former attorney Michael Cohen about a payoff over an alleged affair with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, Ms. McDougal has said she began a year-long affair with Mr Trump in 2006 soon after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son Barron.
- Earlier this week, a federal court ruled against the State of New York in a suit brought on behalf of patients and staff of Choices Women’s Medical Center in Jamaica, Queens, who for years have endured a campaign of harassment, intimidation, and obstruction aimed at preventing women from obtaining healthcare services, including constitutionally protected abortion services. The suit, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, sought primarily to enforce the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, the state New York Clinic Access Act, and the New York City Clinic Access Act, which together essentially prohibit the actual or threatened use of force, obstruction, or harassment to injure, intimidate, or interfere with a person accessing reproductive health services. The court explicitly disregarded documents and the testimony of patients, staff, and volunteer escorts detailing an unrelenting campaign of threats, harassment, and obstruction as women attempted to enter the clinic on Saturday mornings, and bent over backwards to credit the testimony of harassers, and to interpret video evidence in their favor, without regard to the atmosphere of harassment and intimidation created by anti-choice zealots. But given the current attacks on the right of women to access legal abortion services and the nomination of a virulently anti-abortion judge to the Supreme Court, this verdict is not surprising.
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In solidarity,
Lori Sokol, Executive Director
