Speaking of Women's Rights: Your Voice, Your Choice, Your Vote

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Your Voice, Your Choice, Your Vote

On August 26, 1920, when the 19th Amendment secured American women the fundamental right to vote, women's lives were greatly changed. The women who came before us rallied behind a shared understanding that women are equal citizens, and stopped at nothing to secure our right to vote.

So today, we ask you to use that right that women fought so hard to give us. The easiest way to ensure your values are prioritized by your local and national government is by voting into office legislators who stand with you on important issues.

Ask legislators and candidates, Where do you stand on ensuring...

...women have paycheck fairness? Do you support legislative improvements, including:

  • requiring employers to demonstrate that wage disparities are based on factors other than sex? 
  • prohibiting retaliation against workers who inquire about their employers' wage practices or disclose their own wages? 
  • strengthening penalties for equal pay violations? 
...providers and patients together decide what is best care, without interference from restrictive hospital system policies controlled by religious directives?
  • If your local hospital system and your providers are contemplating a transaction with a religious-based health system, what limitations will the legislator or candidate agree to? Are they committed to providing access to a full range of comprehensive reproductive health care and counseling, nondiscrimination against LGBT patients, and—for Oregon and Washington—counseling and referrals for requests for information about the Death with Dignity Act? How are they demonstrating that commitment? 
...businesses don't have license to discriminate based on their own beliefs and to deprive patients of access to insurance coverage to comprehensive health care services? Are you looking for ways to guarantee:
  • employers do not follow Hobby Lobby's example and deprive women of access to basic contraceptive health care? 
  • employees' access to other needed services (e.g. HIV treatment, vaccination, infertility treatment) are not subject to the religious beliefs of individual employers? 
  • LGBT people will not be discriminated against in access to healthcare services, employment in health care, and other public accommodations? 
...survivors of sexual assault receive justice? Will you work to protect women from:
  • the family laws that allow perpetrators to assert parental rights to children who are conceived through rape?
  • the school system, which routinely overlooks its obligation under Title IX to address sexual harassment and assault, and to take immediate action to ensure equal educational opportunity? 
  • the criminal justice system, which consistently refrains from testing rape kits and allows rapes to go uninvestigated if alcohol is involved?
The issues that matter most to you should also matter to whoever you vote for. For more information about the candidates on your ballot—as well as logistical voting information specific to your area—type your address in the box below. Remember, it's your voice, your choice, your vote. Use it!