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Abstract

The abortion and mental health controversy is driven by two different perspectives regarding how best to interpret accepted facts. When interpreting the data, abortion and mental health proponents are inclined to emphasize risks associated with abortion, whereas abortion and mental health minimalists emphasize pre-existing risk factors as the primary explanation for the correlations with more negative outcomes. Still, both sides agree that (a) abortion is consistently associated with elevated rates of mental illness compared to women without a history of abortion; (b) the abortion experience directly contributes to mental health problems for at least some women; (c) there are risk factors, such as pre-existing mental illness, that identify women at greatest risk of mental health problems after an abortion; and (d) it is impossible to conduct research in this field in a manner that can definitively identify the extent to which any mental illnesses following abortion can be reliably attributed to abortion in and of itself. The areas of disagreement, which are more nuanced, are addressed at length. Obstacles in the way of research and further consensus include (a) multiple pathways for abortion and mental health risks, (b) concurrent positive and negative reactions, (c) indeterminate time frames and degrees of reactions, (d) poorly defined terms, (e) multiple factors of causation, and (f) inherent preconceptions based on ideology and disproportionate exposure to different types of women. Recommendations for collaboration include (a) mixed research teams, (b) co-design of national longitudinal prospective studies accessible to any researcher, (c) better adherence to data sharing and re-analysis standards, and (d) attention to a broader list of research questions.

Keywords: Abortion mental health, abortion, reproductive health, post-abortion trauma, research bias, complicated grief, ambiguous loss, bereavement, post-traumatic stress disorder, pregnancy loss

Introduction

In 1992, the Journal of Social Issues dedicated an entire issue to the psychological effects of induced abortion. In an overview of the contributors' papers, the editor, Dr Gregory Wilmoth, concluded,

There is now virtually no disagreement among researchers that some women experience negative psychological reactions postabortion. Instead the disagreement concerns the following: (1) The prevalence of women who have these experiences ..., (2) The severity of these negative reactions ..., (3) The definition of what severity of negative reactions constitutes a public health or mental health problem ..., [and] (4) The classification of severe reactions ...1

Twenty-six years later, the body of literature has grown. Today, there are many additional areas of agreement, but the areas of disagreement have also grown.

As with most controversies, the abortion and mental health (AMH) controversy is driven by at least two different perspectives regarding how best to interpret accepted facts. A useful parallel is found in the debate over climate change. On the fringes of the climate change controversy are non-experts who hold an extreme position of either total denial or total credulity. But it is far more common for skeptics to acknowledge that fossil fuels make some contribution to global warming while still arguing that these effects are not as extreme global warming proponents contend.2 This group may be described as global warming minimalists. Their normal pattern is to interpret the data in a way that minimizes the potential threat. By contrast, global warming proponents may be more likely to interpret the data in ways that emphasize the potential risks.

Similarly, in regard to the AMH controversy, there are both AMH minimalists and AMH proponents. The experts from both groups can report similar findings from the same data but will do so in ways that seem to either minimize or emphasize the negative outcomes associated with abortion. It should be carefully noted that there is actually a broad spectrum of expert views regarding the AMH link.3 While each researcher and expert has likely developed carefully considered and nuanced opinions, these have not been completely disclosed and cannot be cataloged in regard to every issue discussed herein. Still, broadly speaking, it is evident that both expert reviews and the authors of individual studies appear to generally support either the view that (a) the mental health effects associated with abortion are minimal and within the expected range for the women seeking abortions4-10 or (b) the effects are significant enough to justify more research dollars, and better screening and counseling in order to reduce the number of adverse outcomes.11-19 In addressing this conflict, it is not my intention to pigeonhole any particular expert's viewpoint at any location on the spectrum of views regarding AMH.

In writing this review, I have tried to be as objective and fair as possible. Yet, as discussed later, since my own informed opinion is also influenced by my own experiences and preconceptions, full disclosure requires that I acknowledge at the outset that I fit most closely under the category of an AMH proponent. That said, my goal is not to dismiss or disprove the viewpoint of "the other side," but rather to understand and engage with it in a manner that will contribute to a respectful "transformational dialogue" that will help to "crystalize the areas of agreement and disagreement along with opportunities for collaboration."20 In this regard, it is my great hope that those who disagree with my analysis and conclusions herein will use the publication of this review as an opportunity to publish responses and reviews that address the issues raised with additional depth from their perspectives.

The method I used for this review was to carefully examine previous literature reviews regarding mental health effects associated with legal abortion that have been published since 2005.4-10,12-19,21,22 In that sense, this article may be considered a review of reviews of the literature on AMH. In addition, I studied the references cited in these various reviews in order to further my effort to more completely identify (a) areas of agreement and disagreement, (b) the underlying reasons for disagreements, and (c) opportunities to collaborate in light of the current literature.

This undertaking is intended to advance more than just an academic discussion, however. Research has shown that women considering abortion have a high degree of desire for information on "all possible complications," including rare risks.23 Therefore, an updated and more complete understanding of the literature can and should better prepare physicians and mental healthcare providers with more accurate and helpful information for advising and counseling women before or after an abortion. For example, better screening for risk factors should help to identify women who may benefit from additional pre- or post-abortion counseling24-38 and may also help to prevent cases of women being pressured into unwanted abortions. In addition, more complete insights may help mental health counselors to be more aware and sensitive to providing the counseling services that women want and need.

This review is organized into three sections. The first examines major areas of agreement and offers a synthesis of the findings from major studies. The second section investigates the obstacles to building a consensus between AMH minimalists and AMH proponents, including institutional and ideological biases, research obstacles, poorly defined terms, and similar issues that contribute to the disparity in the conclusions most emphasized by each side. The third section provides recommendations for collaborative research based on the insights gained from the first two sections, addressing such issues as data sharing, mixed research teams, and how to maximize the value of longitudinal prospective studies.

Areas of agreement

Abortion contributes to negative outcomes for at least some women

The 2008 report of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion (TFMHA) concluded that "it is clear that some women do experience sadness, grief, and feelings of loss following termination of a pregnancy, and some experience clinically significant disorders, including depression and anxiety."4 Indeed, task force chair Brenda Major et al.'s39 own research had reported that 2 years after their abortions, 1.5% of the remnant participating in her case series (38% of the 1177 eligible women, after dropouts) had all the symptoms for abortion-specific post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In addition, she found that compared to their 1-month post-abortion assessments, at 2 years the participating remnant had significantly rising rates of depression and negative reactions and lowering rates of positive reactions, relief, and decision satisfaction.39

The fact that some women do have maladjustments is most specifically documented in case studies developed by post-abortion counselors successfully treating women with maladjustments, including counselors working from a pro-choice perspective as well as from those working from a pro-life perspective.

Some groups of women are predictably at greater risk of negative outcomes

There is a strong research-based consensus that there are numerous risk factors that can be used to identify which women are at greatest risk of negative psychological outcomes following one or more abortions. Indeed, the TFMHA concluded that one of the few areas of research which can be most effectively studied is in regard to efforts to "identify those women who might be more or less likely than others to show adverse or positive psychological outcomes following an abortion."4

The TFMHA itself identified at least 15 risk factors for increased risk of negative reactions. While the TFMHA did not report on the percentage of women exhibiting each risk factor, Table 1 provides ranges of the incidence of each TFMHA risk factor as reported in the literature. The incidence rates shown in Table 1 clearly suggest that the majority of women seeking abortion have one or more of the TFMHA identified risk factors. Since exposure to multiple abortions is one of the risk factors, that risk factor alone applies to approximately half of all women having abortions, at least in the United States.64

Table 1.

TFMHA identified risk factors

Percentage of women at risk

Perceived pressure from others to terminate a pregnancy

20%;48 23%;38 32%;49 64%50

Terminating a pregnancy that is wanted or meaningful

30%-63%;48 26%-39%;38 11%-56%;51 25% fetus human, taking life;52 50.7% morally wrong50

Low perceived or anticipated social support for the abortion decision

Percent at risk not reported55,56

Use of avoidance and denial coping strategies

19%-51%;58 17%;59 75%60

Feelings of commitment to the pregnancy

15%-18%;50 30%48

Ambivalence about the abortion decision

38%-54%;50 30%-44%;61 65%; 6222%; 6311%-29%;38 35%48

Low perceived ability to cope with the abortion prior to its occurrence

36%;38 40%51

Notably, the TFMHA list used here is one of the shortest that has been developed. A similar, but longer list is published in the text book on abortion most highly recommended by the National Abortion Federation.66 A more recent systematic search of the literature for risk factors associated with elevated rates of psychological problems after abortion cataloged 119 peer reviewed studies identifying 146 individual risk factors which the author grouped into 12 clusters.35 Yet another major review of risk factors identified risk factors from 63 studies which were grouped into two major categories.25 The first category includes 22 risk factors related to conflicts or defects in the decision-making process, for example, feeling pressured to abort, conflicting maternal desires and moral beliefs, and inadequate pre-abortion counseling. The second category contains 25 risk factors related to psychological or developmental limitations, such as pre-existing mental health issues, lack of social support, and prior pregnancy loss.25

The ability to identify women who are at greater risk of negative reactions has resulted in numerous recommendations for abortion providers to screen for these risk factors in order to provide additional counseling both before an abortion, including decision-making counseling, and after an abortion.

Notably, while there is no dispute regarding the abundance of research identifying risk factors, there is little if any research identifying which women, if any, acquire any mental health benefits from abortion compared to carrying a pregnancy to term, even if the pregnancy was unintended or unwanted.17

All AMH studies have inherent limitations

It is impossible to conduct randomized double-blind studies to investigate abortion-associated outcomes. Such studies would require random selection of women to have abortions.

Notably, the very same fact that would make such a study unethical-forcing a group of women to have abortions-actually occurs in the real world wherein some women feel pressured or even forced into unwanted abortions by their partners, parents, employers, doctors, or other significant persons.25,45 This problem with coerced abortions highlights one of the major difficulties involved in AMH research: any sample based entirely on self-selection (voluntary participation) no longer represents the full population of women actually having abortions. Indeed, since feeling pressured to abort is a major risk factor, the practice of excluding women aborting intended pregnancies from AMH studies39,69 makes the results from such studies less generalizable to the actual population of all women having abortions.

This is just one of many difficulties which makes it truly impossible to conduct any AMH study that does not have significant methodological weaknesses. As a result, the "true prevalence" and intensity of the negative effects associated with abortion can never be known with any great certainty. Noting this problem, the TFMHA review concurred with the view that the complexity of this field "raises the question of whether empirical science is capable of informing understanding of the mental health implications of and public policy related to abortion," admitting that many research "questions cannot be definitively answered through empirical research because they are not pragmatically or ethically possible."4

Despite study limitations, statistically significant risks are regularly identified

While every observational study can be criticized for methodological weaknesses, it is also nonetheless true that is still possible to discover meaningful and actionable results. For example, research demonstrating elevated rates of mental health problems among women who feel pressured to abort contrary to their moral beliefs is generalizable to that specific subset of women. So while it is important to never generalize to all women who have abortions, insights can be gained from nearly any study when the results are properly narrowed to the limits of the population studied.70

Figure 1 shows the odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) for risks associated with abortion in all major studies published since 1995 organized by class of symptoms.

While there are disagreements on how to best interpret these findings (to be discussed later), the findings themselves are not disputed. The results are organized into six sets: all classes of symptoms (segregated by inpatient and outpatient treatments when separately reported); depression and depression-related symptoms such as bipolar disorder; anxiety; substance use disorders (segregated by type of substance use when identified); and other disorders. Each row identifies the study reporting the results; the numeric relative risk (or OR) and CIs (also shown as a range in the forest plot); the participation rate of eligible women (after deducting refusals and dropouts) when identifiable; the group to whom the aborting women are being compared in the study; the forest plot; and an abbreviated description of the specific outcome, symptom, diagnostic scale, and/or time frame to which the statistic applies. Comparison groups include women carrying an unintended pregnancy to term, women delivering a child, women delivering a first pregnancy, women with no known history of abortion, women with any other pregnancy outcome other than abortion, and women not pregnant during the period studied.

What is most notable from Figure 1 is that the trend in results, including those reported by questionnaire and record linkage studies, is consistent. All but three odds ratios are above 1. In most cases, the lower 95% CI is also above 1, signifying statistical significance. Moreover, even among studies showing no significant difference (when the lower 95% CI is less than 1.0), the upper 95% CI is always above 1 and overlaps the statistically significant CIs of other studies.

This overlap is very important. For example, as can be seen in the depression grouping in Figure 1 , the overlap of the 95% CIs in the findings of Schmiege & Russo 2005 and Cougle 2003 (both using different sampling rules for the same data set) demonstrates that there is no actual contradiction in the findings of these two studies. Whenever there is overlap in the CIs, this tells us that the variation in the respective relative risks reported by each study is within the expected range of variation given the limits of each study's statistical power. Since findings only contradict each other when there is no overlap in the CIs, it is clear from Figure 1 that the minority of studies without statistically significant findings do not contradict the findings of studies with statistically significant findings. Claims to the contrary69 ignore the relevance of CIs and also the fact that studies with low statistical power are easily prone to Type II errors resulting in false negatives.

The risk of such false negatives is increased when there is also any risk of sample bias. In regard to abortion research, the risk of sample bias is especially high since questions about abortion are frequently associated with feelings of shame.22,59 The resulting selection bias due to self-censure and the high dropout rates of women at greatest risk of negative reactions also contributes to the misclassification of women concealing a history of abortion as non-aborters. In addition, some researchers choose to exclude groups such as women who abort wanted pregnancies,69 have later term abortions, or have other risk factors for more negative reactions ( Table 1 ) and these methodological choices will also tend to shift results below statistical significance.

Despite these problems, the trend in findings, as shown in Figure 1 , is very clear. Women who abort are at higher risk of many mental health problems.

This conclusion is strengthened by the variety of the study designs that have been conducted. Collectively, these studies examine a wide variety of different comparison groups, explore a diverse set of outcome variables, employ a large variety of control variables, and report on numerous outcomes over different time frames and/or at a variety of cross sections of time. Collectively, they reveal the following:

(a) There are no findings of mental health benefits associated with abortion. (These would be signified by the entire 95% confidence line being below 1.0.)

(b) The association between abortion and higher rates of anxiety, depression, substance use, traumatic symptoms, sleep disorders, and other negative outcomes is statistically significant in most analyses.

(c) The minority of analyses that do not show statistically significant higher rates of negative outcomes do not contradict those that do. (Shown by the upper bound of the 95% confidence overlapping the lower 95% CI of the statistically significant studies.)

A number of recent studies have also reported the population attributable risk (PAR) associated with abortion. This statistic estimates the percentage of an outcome that may be attributed to exposure to an abortion experience after statistically removing the effects associated with the available control variables.

Fergusson was the first to report PARs identified in a prospective longitudinal cohort studied from birth to 30 years of age in New Zealand. He reported that the attributable risk ranged from 1.5% to 5.5%, but did not identify the PAR of specific mental health effects nor provide the CIs.75 Specific outcome PAR risks were also calculated by Coleman15 in her meta-analysis, but these were reported without CIs. These are shown in Figure 2 along with PAR estimates with 95% CIs that have been reported in three other studies.

Of particular interest is a 2016 study by Sullins using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health that provided three models of analyses, including controls for 25 confounding factors. In addition, he conducted a fixed-effects regression analysis controlling for within-person variations to control "for all unobserved or unmeasured variance that may covary with abortion and/or mental health."94 Sullins' lagged models, employed as additional means of examining effects of prior mental illness, confirmed that the risks associated with abortion cannot be fully explained by prior mental disorders. He also identified a dose effect, with each exposure to abortion (up to the four) associated with a 23 percent (95% CI, 1.16-1.30) increased of relative risk of subsequent mental disorders.

Collectively, the findings shown in Figure 2 suggest that substance use disorders appear to be most strongly attributable to abortion. Put another way, assessments of substance use (perhaps indicating self-medicating behavior) may be one of the more sensitive measures of difficulties adjusting to post-abortion.96 Conversely, at least some research has shown that other outcomes, such as variations in self-esteem, may be unaffected, or only weakly associated with abortion.38 Alternatively, some outcomes may appear to be less strongly associated with abortion because women are receiving successful treatment, such as medication for depression or anxiety, that would obviously suppress these associations with abortion.

Prior mental health and co-occurring factors explain at least part of the effects

As shown in Table 1 , a history of mental health problems is a risk factor for higher rates of mental health problems following abortion as compared to women without a history of mental health problems. This association has been known since at least 1973 when a case series identified several pre-existing mental health factors that could be used to identify the women who were most likely to experience subsequent psychopathology.32 The authors of that study recommended that a low-cost computer scored Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory assessment could effectively identify women who could benefit from additional pre- and post-abortion counseling.

Both AMH proponents and AMH minimalists agree that prior health is a major factor in explaining the negative reactions observed post-abortion. There are differences, however, in how proponents and minimalists distinguish, interpret, and emphasize the interactions between prior mental health, the abortion experience, and subsequent mental health.

AMH proponents see poor prior mental health as contributing to the risk that a woman (a) may become pregnant in problematic circumstances; (b) may be more vulnerable to pressure or manipulation to have an abortion contrary to personal preference, maternal desires, or moral ideals; and (c) may have fewer or weakened coping skills with which to process post-abortion stresses. In addition, from the perspective of abortion as a potential stressor, women exposed to prior traumatic experiences may be more predisposed to experiencing abortion as another traumatic experience.

In contrast, AMH minimalists tend to interpret the evidence that a high percentage of women having abortions have prior mental health issues as the primary explanation for higher rates of mental illness observed after abortion. From this perspective, women with mental health problems are more likely to engage in risk-taking behavior and to experience more problematic pregnancies and are more likely to choose abortion. It is also hypothesized that pregnant women with pre-existing mental health problems may be more inclined to choose abortion because they recognize that they are likely to fare worse if they deliver and try to raise an unplanned child.106,107 The higher rates of mental health issues following abortion, therefore, may be mostly explained as just a continuation of pre-existing mental health problems rather than a direct and independent cause of mental illness. While a few minimalists suggest that the underlying cause of mental health problems observed after abortion can be entirely explained by prior mental health defects or co-occurring stressors,30,82 I have been unable to find any researchers who have denied that abortion can contribute to mental health problems.

The differences between AMH minimalists and proponents on these issues will be more thoroughly discussed later. At this point, it is sufficient to note that both sides agree that poor prior mental health is a major predictor of higher rates of mental health problems after an abortion. Moreover, both sides agree that there should be mental health screening of women seeking abortion precisely because the "abortion care setting may be an important intervention point for mental health screening and referrals"30 due to the higher concentration of women with previous and subsequent mental health issues. At the very least, a history of abortion is a useful marker for identifying women at greater risk of mental health problems and a corresponding elevated risk of a variety of related chronic illnesses111 and reduced longevity.112,113

A summary of agreements with difference in emphasis

Table 2 summarizes specific factual propositions to which the vast majority of both AMH minimalists and AMH proponents would agree. As indicated in the table, each side may typically emphasize some points over others and might underemphasize, reluctantly admit, or even evade discussion of some of these propositions. Still, while some may quibble over the exact formulation of any particular proposition in Table 2 , the underlying consensus relative to each proposition is easily discernible in the body of references by both sides cited in this review.

Table 2.

Propositions regarding agreed upon facts

AMH minimalists

AMH proponents

In summary, the consensus of expert opinion, including that of both AMH proponents and minimalists, is that (a) a history of abortion is consistently associated with elevated rates of mental illness compared to women without a history of abortion; (b) the abortion experience can directly contribute to mental health problems in some women; (c) there are risk factors, including pre-existing vulnerability to mental illness, which can be used to identify the women who are at greatest risk of mental health problems following an abortion; and (d) it is impossible to conduct research in this field in a manner that can definitively identify the extent of any mental illnesses following abortion, much less than the proportion of disorders that can be reliably attributed solely to abortion itself.

Obstacles in the way of research, understanding, and consensus

Facts are facts. But there is plenty of room for disagreement regarding which facts are generalizable, much less on how to best synthesize and interpret sets of facts, especially when there are flaws in the research and gaps in what one would want to know. Indeed, the greater the ideological differences between people regarding any question, the easier it is to disagree about what the available evidence really means. As shown in Table 2 , even areas around which there is a fundamental agreement by experts under sworn testimony may appear muddied by shifts of emphasis and the insertion of nuances that may be technically true but misleading to non-experts who imagine there are simple, global answers.

For example, the same APA task force which produced the list of risk factors shown in Table 1 did not highlight these findings in their press releases with a recommendation for screening. Instead, the centerpiece of their press release114 was the report's conclusion that "the relative risk of mental health problems among adult women who have a single, legal, first-trimester abortion of an unwanted pregnancy for nontherapeutic reasons is no greater than the risk among women who deliver an unwanted pregnancy"7 (italics added).

This statement was widely reported as the APA officially concluding that abortion has no mental health risks. But as shown in Table 1 , this reassuring conclusion was actually couched in nuances which make it applicable to only a minority of women undergoing abortions on any given day. It excludes the 48%-52% of women who already have a history of one or more abortions,64 the 18% of abortion patients who are minors,115 the 11% of patients beyond the first trimester,116 the 7% aborting for therapeutic reasons regarding their own health or concerns about the health of the fetus,117 and the 11%-64% whose pregnancies are wanted, were planned, or for which women developed an attachment despite their problematic circumstances.38,50,51

The above example demonstrates that the same set of facts, presented and interpreted by AMH minimalists in a way that suggests that few women face any risk of negative reactions to abortion, could also have been worded by AMH proponents in a way that would have underscored a conclusion that most women having abortions are at greater risk compared to the minority who have no risk factors.

This points to one of the greatest hindrances in the advance of knowledge: the tendency to use nuances to dodge direct engagement with the ideas, evidence, and arguments which threaten one's own preconceptions.

Therefore, one of the purposes of the following discussion is to invite direct engagement and thoughtful responses to the specific obstacles identified below.

Intrinsic biases in the assessment of evidence are nearly impossible to avoid

Everyone, even the most "objective" scholar, has developed shortcuts in their thinking and beliefs. These shortcuts (or biases) help us to (a) be more efficient in drawing conclusions and making decisions and also (b) be more consistent in how we perceive ourselves and reality, or conversely, to avoid the stress of cognitive dissonance which occurs when some fact or experience clashes with our core beliefs and values.

Our biases are not just personal. They also have a communal element. We tend to adopt the biases of our peers for several practical reasons. First, by adopting the opinion of our peers as our own, we are embracing a collective wisdom that frees us from the need to deeply research and consider every idea on our own. Second, the more completely our beliefs are aligned within our community of peers, the less we will face conflict and suspicion. Obviously, there is never perfect alignment or cessation of independent thinking. But the tendency to accept the "conventional truths" of one's peers as "fact" is a very real phenomenon.

The impact of biases among academics on the interpretation of data and suppression of contrary opinions has been well documented. For example, identical studies, for which the results are the only difference, are more likely to be lauded or condemned by peer reviewers when the results confirm or conflict with the reviewer's own biases. In the fields of psychology and psychiatry, such confirmatory bias may contribute to the promotion or suppression of research findings that favor liberal causes. In one study, only one-fourth of reviewers noted a major methodological problem in a fake study that agreed with their preconceptions, while 72% quickly raised an objection about the problem when presented with a nearly identical fake study in which the results challenged their preconceptions.123 The only way to eliminate result-based bias, the author suggests, would be to solicit reviews only on the relevance of a study's methodology, withholding the actual results and discussion of results, since the latter are the actual drivers of confirmatory bias.123

While much of the confirmatory bias observed in peer reviewers may be unconscious,129 at least one survey of 800 research psychologists found high rates of admissions that they or their colleagues would openly and knowingly discriminate against conservative views when providing peer review (34.2%), awarding grants (37.9%), or making hiring decisions (44.1%).130 The authors noted that this admission of conscious ideological bias was likely just the tip of the iceberg compared to confirmatory bias since "[i]t is easier to detect bias in materials that oppose one's beliefs than in material that supports it.124 Work that supports liberal politics may thus seem unremarkable, whereas work that supports conservatism is seen as improperly ideological."130

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, a self-proclaimed liberal specializing in the foundations of morality and ideology, has argued that that the vast majority of psychologists are united by the "sacred values" of a "tribal-moral community" which is politically aligned with the liberal left.134 This shared moral superiority,129 he says, both "binds and blinds" their community.134 The risk of "blindness" occurs because the lack of sufficient political diversity predisposes the community of psychologists to "embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they'll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value."134

An excellent example of this result-based bias was the four rejections reported by David Fergusson, former director of the Christchurch Health and Development Study, which followed 1265 children born in Christchurch, New Zealand, for over 30 years.137 Fergusson, a self-proclaimed pro-choice atheist, believed that his data would help to prove that AMH proponents were wrong.137 But when he ran his analyses, he found that even after controlling for numerous factors, abortion was indeed independently associated with a two-to threefold increased risk of depression, anxiety, suicidal behaviors, and substance abuse disorders.17,138 Though his findings were opposite to his preconceptions, he submitted them for pubication anyway. It was then that he ran into a wall of ideologically driven rejections and was even asked by the New Zealand government's Abortion Supervisory Committee to withhold the results.137

Similarly, Ann Speckhard,139 another pro-choice AMH proponent and an associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School, has complained,

Politics have also stood in the way of good research being conducted to examine psychological responses in a nationally representative sample to all pregnancy outcomes: live birth, miscarriage, induced abortion, and stillbirth (and perhaps even including adoption). I offered in 1987 to our National Center for Health Statistics a simple mechanism for collecting such data via a short interview to be attached to an already existing survey-but fear of the answers-on both sides of the issue staunchly squelched the idea.

The problem is that even trained scientists struggle with being purely objective-especially regarding issues that may touch one's own core beliefs, values, and experiences. What makes Fergusson's experience particularly unique is that he chose to publish his findings even though they contradicted his own worldview. How many other researchers, expecting to prove mental health benefits from abortion but finding the opposite, might be tempted to withhold their findings, or worse, to redesign their study in ways that would obfuscate their results in order to declare that a lack of statistically significant results "proved" that there was no need to look further? This concern is heightened by the refusal of AMH minimalists to allow examination of their data by AMH proponents,140 as will be discussed in more detail later.

There are different rates of exposure to the highest risk and lowest risk archetypes

This leads us to an important and perhaps closely related observation. It is not only political, philosophical, or ideological beliefs that contribute to the AMH controversy. Conflicts in the perceiving AMH controversy are also colored by direct and indirect personal experiences. The fact that pro-choice feminists are more focused on feelings of relief and other liberating aspects of having a right to abortion3 may be accurately representing their own positive personal experiences. Conversely, anti-abortion conservatives, who presume that AMH problems are common, may be accurately representing their own relative rate of exposure to negative experiences.3

It is reasonable to assume that friends and associates of highly educated research psychologists are more likely to be skewed toward the "affiliated" than the "disaffiliated." If so, the personal experience of such AMH skeptics may be dominated by the observation that they and their closest friends have generally coped well with any exposure to abortions.

In short, applying the general rule that people (including scientists) tend to look for and believe data that confirm their preconceptions, and are disproportionately skeptical of data that conflict with their preconceptions, both AMH skeptics and AMH proponents are at risk of preferentially interpreting their personal exposure to abortion's risks and benefits as applicable to the general population.

While women having abortions will fall across the entire spectrum of risk factors, it is useful for this review to consider two hypothetical women at opposite ends of any risk-benefits analysis: (a) "Allie All-Risks," the worst possible candidate for an abortion and (b) "Betsy Best-Case," with no known risk factors:

"Allie All-Risks" is 15 years old. A victim of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse, including three incidents of sexual molestation, she has low self-esteem with bouts of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. While her parents are not regular churchgoers, she attended a Catholic grade school, believes in God, and believes abortion is the killing of a baby. She is not a good student and has no concrete career goals. She has always wanted to be a mother, loves babies, and fantasizes about how she will find fulfillment in giving the love to her children that she never received from her own mother. Given Allie's yearnings for escape, acceptance, and true love, she is vulnerable to the seductions of a 22-year-old womanizer with whom she falls madly in love and aspires to a happy future. When she learns she is pregnant, her initial reaction is excitement. While not planned, the pregnancy is welcomed. She believes she can now start building a family with her lover. But this fantasy is immediately crushed when he tells her that they can't afford it, that neither of them are ready for it, and that if she decides to continue the pregnancy, he will leave her. She feels she has no choice. She can't imagine losing him. In addition, her parents would be furious and insist on an abortion, too. Allie's initial excitement at being pregnant is replaced by despair. Indeed, given her need to please others, she gives in with barely a complaint. Her mild protests about "their choice" go unnoticed. The day of the abortion she whispers: "Good bye. I don't want to do this to you. But I don't have a choice." Immediately after the abortion, Allie feels a mild relief that the dreaded procedure is now behind her and hopes her boyfriend will be content, but alongside that relief are feelings of emptiness and loss that seem to grow stronger with every passing week. She begins to have obsessive thoughts. Her baby is no longer in her body, but it is constantly in her thoughts.

"Betsy Best-Case" is 32 years old. She has no history of mental illness and has a good family life. Her parents were both well-educated secularists. They preach education, hard work, and honest success as the only ethical standards Betsy needs to guide her. Betsy is popular, has many friends, and has always had high career aspirations, toward which, with grit, she has proudly made good progress. Even as a child, Betsy had little or no interest in being a mother. Married to her career, she now has even less interest in maternity. Having successfully used birth control since she was 15, when her mother got her an IUD, Betsy is shocked when she realizes she is pregnant. But contraceptive failures happen. Her decision to abort is immediate and made without any emotional conflict. When she flips through the state mandated informed consent booklet given to her at the abortion clinic, the pictures of developing fetuses have no effect. Betsy has seen similar photos many times in the past. She has a strong philosophical belief, based on years of engagement in minor abortion debates, that the value of being a "person" is not based on biological features but rather on the development of a psychological, purpose-filled, self-actualized human being far beyond anything to which a 9-week-old fetus could yet lay claim. Betsy is not surprised when her abortion is completed without drama or even a tinge of angst. She thinks of it rarely. The only negative feelings ever associated with it come when she hears the right of women to choose abortion attacked by self-righteous busybodies who should know better.

Hopefully, any reader can see and respect that the Allie and Betsy's abortion experiences are very different. One is focused on her loss and the other on how her abortion helped her to avoid any loss. Given these differences, it would be unfair to them try to interpret their abortion experiences from within a single ideological framework. Similarly, the women who reside at different places along the wide spectrum between the extreme poles of Allie and Betsy are also very different and unique.

We will employ Allie and Betsy in our discussion later in this review. But for now, let them simply stand as examples of why AMH skeptics may, from personal experience, presume that Betsy is "typical" of abortion patients, while AMH proponents may presume that Allie is more "typical." This difference in regard to how each side of the AMH controversy views the "typical" abortion patient is likely to impact how they interpret AMH research in their efforts to describe the experience of "most" women.

There are multiple pathways for AMH risks

Despite the convenience of standard diagnostic criteria, mental illnesses do not necessarily fit into neat, single classifications with distinct and exclusive symptoms arising from a single cause for each illness.147 As noted in one review of the psychiatric complications of abortion,

A psychiatric complication is a disturbance that occurs as an outcome that is precipitated or at least favored by a previous event .... Every psychiatric outcome is of a multi-factorial origin. Predisposing factors including polygenic influence and precipitating factors such as stressful events are involved in this outcome; in addition, there are modulating, both risk and protective, factors. The impact of the events depends on how they are perceived, on psychological defense mechanisms put into action (unconscious to a great extent) and on the coping style.18 (Emphasis added)

An abortion does not occur in isolation from interrelated personal, familial, and social conditions that influence the experience of becoming pregnant, the reaction to discovery of the pregnancy, and the abortion decision. These factors will also affect women's post-abortion adjustments, including adjusting to the memory of the abortion itself, potential changes in relationships associated with the abortion, and whether this experience can be shared or must be kept secret. These are all parts of the abortion experience. Therefore, the mental health effects of abortion cannot be properly limited to the day on which the surgical or medical abortion takes place. The entirety of the abortion experience, including the weeks before and after it, must be considered.

Moreover, there is no reason to believe that there is a single model for understanding, much less predicting, all of the psychological reactions to the abortion experience. Miller alone identified and tested six models for interpreting psychological responses to abortion and concluded that

theoretical approaches that emphasize unitary affective responses to abortion, such as feelings of shame or guilt, loss or depression, and relief may be missing an important broader picture. To some extent what appears to happen following abortion involves not so much a unitary as a broad, multidimensional affective response.148

The APA's TFMHA proposed four models: (a) abortion as a traumatic experience, (b) abortion within a stress and coping perspective, (c) abortion within a socio-cultural context, and (d) abortion as associated with co-occurring risk factors.7 Additional models could be built on biological responses,149,150 attachment theory, bereavement, complicated, prolonged or impacted grief,ambiguous loss, or within a paradigm of psychological responses to miscarriage.

The complexity of considering so many models, or pathways, combined with the multiplicity of symptoms women attribute to their abortions,45 contributes to discord in the literature produced by AMH proponents and AMH minimalists.

When there is no agreement on what outcomes are relevant or what theoretical pathways should be investigated, there are countless reasons to disagree about both (a) the adequacy of any specific studies and (b) how any specific set of findings should be best interpreted.

Women may simultaneously experience both positive and negative reactions

The act of undergoing an abortion can be both a stress reliever and a stress inducer.171 It may relieve one's immediate pressures and concerns while also leaving behind issues that may require attention immediately or at a future date. Positive and negative feelings can co-exist and frequently do.

In one study,

Almost one-half also had parallel feelings of guilt, as they regarded the abortion as a violation of their ethical values. The majority of the sample expressed relief while simultaneously experiencing the termination of the pregnancy as a loss coupled with feelings of grief/emptiness.166

Another study found that 56% of women chose both positive and negative words to describe their upcoming abortion, 33% chose only negative words, and only 11% chose only positive words.62 The women at greatest risk of experiencing negative reactions immediately and in the short term following an abortion are those who feel most conflicted about the decision to abort or have other pre-existing risk factors.

Applying this insight to our polar extremes, Annie All-Risks would be more likely to experience strong negative feelings more profoundly than her feelings of relief, whereas Betsy Best-Case would be more likely to focus on her relief than any doubts or reservations. Moreover, because Annie has low expectations for coping well (itself a TFMHA risk factor), she may be less likely to agree to participate in a follow-up study. The faster she can get out of the abortion clinic without talking to anyone, the better. Conversely, Betsy is confident that her decision is right and will improve her life and is therefore much more likely to participate.

What "most women" experience cannot be reliably measured

As will be further discussed later, the fact that positive and negative feelings can co-exist makes it difficult, and potentially misleading, to describe any single reaction to abortion as the "most common," given the fact that (a) it is very rare for women to have a single reaction and (b) typically, over half of women asked to participate surveys regarding their abortion experiences refuse or drop out. Obviously, it is impossible to know what the most common reaction of women is based on surveys of only a minority of self-selected women.

This insight also underscores the difficulty of making any generalizations regarding prevalence rates from any study involving volunteer participation or questionnaires. Broadly speaking, there are three groups of women: (a) those with no regrets or negative feelings, (b) those with deep regrets and profound negative feelings, and (c) those with a mix of feelings, including contradictory feelings. As discussed above, the best evidence indicates that women with the most negative feelings are least likely to agree to participate in studies initiated at abortion clinics. But it also follows that women with no regrets are unlikely to be represented in studies of women seeking post-abortion counseling. Both of these factors underscore that it is impossible to accurately measure how "most" women react to their abortion experience when participation in research is voluntary.

The degree of reactions can widely vary and there is no reasonable cutoff for concern

Not all negative emotions constitute a diagnosable mental illness. Therefore, the fact that only a minority of women have diagnosable mental illnesses following abortion does not preclude the possibility that a majority experience negative emotional reactions.

The opinion that negative reactions are experienced by the majority of abortion patients is also shared by a number of abortion providers, such as Poppemna and Henderson:175

Sorrow, quite apart from the sense of shame, is exhibited in some way by virtually every woman for whom I've performed an abortion, and that's 20,000 as of 1995. The sorrow is revealed by the fact that most women cry at some point during the experience .... The grieving process may last from several days to several years.

Similarly, Julius Fogel, who as both a psychiatrist and OB-GYN and as a pioneer of abortion rights performed tens of thousands of abortion, testified that while abortion may be necessary and generally beneficial, it always exacts a psychological price:

Every woman-whatever her age, background or sexuality-has a trauma at destroying a pregnancy. A level of humanness is touched. This is a part of her own life. When she destroys a pregnancy, she is destroying herself. There is no way it can be innocuous. One is dealing with the life force. It is totally beside the point whether or not you think a life is there. You cannot deny that something is being created and that this creation is physically happening ...

Often the trauma may sink into the unconscious and never surface in the woman's lifetime. But it is not as harmless and casual an event as many in the pro-abortion crowd insist. A psychological price is paid. It may be alienation; it may be a pushing away from human warmth, perhaps a hardening of the maternal instinct. Something happens on the deeper levels of a woman's consciousness when she destroys a pregnancy. I know that as a psychiatrist.176,177

This distinction between negative reactions and diagnosable mental illness is another important reason why AMH proponents and minimalists appear to disagree more than they really do. When AMH proponents make statements about "most women" which imply that negative reactions are common, they are including women who attribute any negative reactions to their abortions even if the reactions fall short of fitting a standard diagnosable illness.45 Conversely, when AMH minimalists insist that "most women" do not experience mental illness due to their abortions, they are excluding the women who have negative feelings, even if unresolved and disturbing, on the grounds that (a) the symptoms do not rise above the threshold necessary to diagnose a clinically significant mental illness and (b) the symptoms cannot be strictly attributed to the abortion experience alone.7

In short, if pressed, both sides would agree that the best evidence indicates that most women do experience at least some negative feelings related to their abortion experiences. Yet at the same time, the majority do not experience mental illnesses (as defined by standard diagnostic criteria) that can be solely attributed to their abortions.

Even if it could be proven that 99% of women who had abortions experienced more benefit than harm, that would still not justify ignoring the 1% who experienced more harm than good. Majorities matter in elections. But in regard to medical ethics and public policy, negative reactions are important among even a minority of patients ... especially when it is possible to screen for risk factors that identify the patients at greatest risk of adverse reactions.

Negative reactions may manifest themselves over a very long time frame

For example, in a study led by TFMHA chair Brenda Major, volunteers interviewed at an abortion clinic reported a significant decline in their Brief Symptom Inventory Depression scores 1-2 h after their abortions (T2, 62% decline) compared to their scores an hour before their abortions (T1, asking women to rate their depression for the month prior to the abortion). But at the 1-month follow-up (T3), depression scores rose 91% above their post-abortion (T2) score and continued to get higher, up to 118% at the 2-year follow-up (T4).39 Notably, this study had a 30% dropout at the 1-month follow-up (T3) and a 50% dropout at the 2-year follow-up (T4). In addition, the self-selection bias of this volunteer sample was further magnified by the study protocol that also excluded women aborting an intended pregnancy or a second trimester pregnancy, two of the risk categories for elevated risk of negative reactions.

It is likely that there are patterns relative to which women are at greater risk of experiencing early negative reactions and those who are likely to experience later reactions. Zimmerman, for example, found that 74% of "disaffiliated" women were struggling with negative thoughts about their abortions, three times the rate reported by "affiliated" women.48 Thus, it is easy to predict that our archetype Annie All-Risks would likely be among those who would have immediate negative reactions. After all, she felt coerced into aborting an unplanned but welcomed pregnancy against her maternal preferences and moral beliefs. In addition, given her history of abuse and psychological problems, her coping skills were already stretched to the limit prior to her abortion.

Similarly, it is also easy to imagine that Betsy Best-Case would cope well in the immediate hours, days, months, and even years after her abortion. She freely chose to abort a pregnancy that was both unintended and unwanted for rational reasons. She also had strong coping skills and could easily compartmentalize any "socially induced" doubts into the "deeper levels" of her consciousness.

Clinical experience indicates, however, that there is no certainty that Betsy will always remain symptom free. Subsequent reproductive events such as miscarriage, infertility, or even a wanted birth may unexpectedly trigger existential crises deeply intertwined with a nearly forgotten abortion experience. Similarly, life events that trigger introspection such as the death of a loved one, or a later religious conversion, may trigger a redefinition of past choices and experiences in a way that may include obsessive guilt and self-condemnation.45 An example of a "perfect decision" being reinterpreted as a woman's worst decision is found in this posting at a post-abortion counseling site:

I had an abortion when I was 22 years old. Now it is haunting me. I think about it every day of my life. I have so much regret. I wish I could turn the clock and undo my mistakes. I am not coping. The guilt is too much. At that time the decision was perfect. But now it kills me day by day. Please help me. I don't trust anyone with this secret.

AMH minimalists might reasonably argue that it is the subsequent trigger, the miscarriage, or religious conversion, that is the "true cause" of later distress. But efforts to apportion blame for the "true cause" of distress over a prior abortion simply disrespects the real experience of women who seek, desire, or need post-abortion counseling. Whatever the trigger, whatever the contributing factors, the internal turmoil over a past abortion is centered on, or at least intertwines with, the abortion and will not be resolved by pretending the abortion is not part of the problem.

Based on reports of clinical experience, we would hypothesize that delayed reactions are most frequently triggered by (a) subsequent reproductive experiences, including reproductive difficulties and (b) experiences that lead to introspection and reevaluation of one's overall life course or moral integrity.45 Conversely, the more risk factors that are present, especially feelings of coercion and attachment combined with weakened coping skills, are predictive of more immediate negative reactions.

In short, questionnaires which lack abortion-specific retrospective questions such as "Did you ever experience significant negative feelings about a past abortion?" followed by questions regarding the timeline for each type of mental health outcome being studied are simply capturing cross-sectional data. Cross-sectional data regarding current symptoms will simply miss symptoms that have ceased, either due to medication, counseling, or by the healing effects of time or a replacement pregnancy. It will also miss symptoms that may be delayed beyond the date of the assessment. As a result, data from general prospective studies like the NLSY simply cannot tell us anything about the "true prevalence rate" of depression associated with abortion.

The weakness of such general purpose prospective studies also explains why AMH proponents and AMH minimalists can look at the same data and come to different conclusions. For example, the first analysis of NLSY CES-D scores relative to women with a history of abortion found that depression was highest among married women with a history of abortion (OR = 1.92; 95% CI = 1.24-2.97) and among women in their first marriage in particular (OR = 2.23; 95% CI = 1.36-3.74).184 Since CES-D scores did not significantly vary among unmarried women, the combined results for all women (OR = 1.39; 95% CI = 1.02-1.90) were barely significant.184 The significance of marital status may indicate that abortion-related depression after an average of 8 years may be triggered by subsequent pregnancies in marriage. In any event, given the weakness of this data set, it was a trivial matter for AMH minimalists69 to use different selection criteria, excluding a subgroup of women at greatest risk of negative reactions to abortion, in order to shift the lower 95% CI for all women below 1 (OR = 1.19; 95% CI: 0.85-1.66) in their reanalysis of the NLSY data. Notably, their analysis also excluded results segregated by marital status, the finding most significant in the earlier study. Based on these weaknesses, it was simply misleading for Schmiege and Russo69 to interpret their reanalysis as conclusive evidence that abortion does not contribute to the risk of depression in some women. Their overreaching conclusions were particularly unjustified in light of the fact that the NLSY data set was also tainted with a 60% concealment rate regarding past abortions185 and the CES-D scale inquired about only depression in the prior week and was administered in only once, an average of 8 years after the abortions.

In summary, the efforts to estimate the prevalence rate of negative reactions to abortion are complicated by (a) the wide variety of reactions, (b) the existence of both early and delayed reactions, (c) a wide variety of triggers for delayed reactions, and (d) the prospect that in any assessment years after the abortion, a number of women who previously had significant reactions may have experienced full or partial recovery by the time of that assessment. Each of these factors would tend to skew the results of any prevalence estimates based on questionnaires toward underestimating the total lifetime risks.

Self-censure and defense mechanisms contribute to underreporting of sequelae

Data collected to investigate reactions to abortion may also be distorted by any number of defense mechanisms. Avoidance, denial, repression, suppression, intellectualization, rationalization, projection, splitting, and reaction formation may all contribute to the conscious or unconscious underreporting of symptoms attributable to unresolved abortion issues.

In case series studies, where women are first contacted while at the abortion provider and asked to participate in a follow-up evaluation, both the initial refusal and subsequent dropouts usually exceed 50%.39,187 In the Turnaway study, for example, only 37.5% of women asked to participate agreed, and of those who agreed 15% immediately dropped out before the first baseline interview, approximately 8 days after the abortion.179 The study continued with phone interviews every 6 months for 5 years. Women were rewarded with a US$50 gift card each time they completed an interview. But despite this motivation, by the end of the 3 years, only 27% of the eligible women were participating, and this dropped to only 18% at the 5-year assessment.188 Given this high rate of self-censure, the researchers' conclusion that "Women experienced decreasing emotional intensity over time, and the overwhelming majority of women felt that termination was the right decision for them over three years"179 clearly overstates what the Turnaway data can actually reveal. Unfortunately, the authors' overgeneralized conclusion inspired many newspaper headlines which definitively proclaimed that the overwhelming majority of women are glad they had their abortions.178,189 But if the researchers' conclusions had been more accurately narrowed to describe their actual pool of respondents, the abstract should have read, "Of the 27% of eligible women participating at a three year assessment, the overwhelming majority felt that termination was the right decision for them." That single clarification would have helped even the most pro-choice reporter to recognize that the views of a self-selected minority of volunteers (27%) simply cannot tell us what the "majority of women" feel and think. What "most women" experience is simply unknown when the majority of women are refusing to share their thoughts and feelings at any given time.

Our understanding of defense mechanisms also suggests there may be cases where the denial of a link between abortion and abortion-specific symptoms is evidence of both avoidant behavior and an elevated risk of mental illness. It seems likely that defense mechanisms may contribute to a significant underreporting of negative reactions, especially in survey responses. Conversely, questionnaire-based reports may also lead to the exaggerated rating of some positive reactions due to splitting or reaction formation. In these cases, women trying to focus on the positive may respond in ways that may anticipate, or even inflate, the positive feelings they want to feel while "rounding down" negative reactions which they want to escape or deny.

The statistical impact of defense mechanisms is also double edged. First, self-censure, dropouts, and concealment of past abortions are all likely to suppress measurements of the prevalence rate of mental illnesses among those volunteers admitting to a past abortion. Second, comparison groups that include women who conceal their history of abortion (who are most likely to have AMH effects) are likely to have inflated prevalence rates for mental illness due to the misclassification of women with a history of abortion into the comparison group of women who, according to the study design, have not been exposed to abortion.184 Both problems suggest that odd ratios and prevalence rates based on studies relying on voluntary self-reporting of abortions will most likely be skewed toward underestimating the true risks associated with abortion.

It is also worth noting that defense mechanisms may also impede the ability of women to receive good follow-up care. In a survey of women reporting that they sought post-abortion counseling from a psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, or other professional counselor, 58% reported that the counseling was not helpful.45 Many reported that their therapists simply refused to seriously consider abortions as significant. This phenomenon may be at least partially due to defense mechanisms employed by healthcare professional professionals themselves. Many therapists may have unresolved issues with their own history with abortions; others may be loath to reconsider the wisdom of their advice to previous patients, reassuring them that abortion was a good; still others may have ideological commitments to abortion rights which conflict with their ability to trust their patient's self-assessments, and some may simply have an uncritical confidence in the widely spread, but exaggerated claim, that "there is no evidence that abortion has any mental health risks." This is yet another reason why better research and training regarding how abortion may contribute to problems for " at least some women" is important to prepare healthcare workers to be more sensitive and open to providing informed care.45

There is no perfect control group; yet all comparison groups provide insights

Comparisons have been made to each of the following: the general population of women,77,195 women who have never been pregnant,94 women with no reported history of abortion,74,84,85,91,92,94,95,100,101 women giving birth, women giving birth to a first pregnancy, women having miscarriages or other involuntary losses,81,88,91,94,195-197 women experiencing both births and pregnancy loss (abortions or miscarriages), women giving birth to unintended pregnancies,69,72,75,76,86,90,92,98 and women denied abortions.179,198 Together, these findings show that women with a history of abortion are statistically more likely to experience significantly more mental health issues relative to every comparison group that has been examined.

Notably, most of these comparisons are based on general-purpose longitudinal cohort studies. As discussed previously, due to the temporal limits, cross-sectional data, self-selection bias, concealment, and the misclassification of women with an abortion history into the comparison groups, the results of these studies most certainly skew toward underestimating the true relative risks between the groups compared. Still, while every choice for a comparison group is imperfect,192,193 below we will argue that there are valid insights that can be gained by every comparison. Acting on that premise, many researchers have chosen to simultaneously compare women who abort to multiple other groups whenever the data allow it.

By contrast, Charles et al.,6 have argued that the only "appropriate" comparison group for AMH studies is to women who have "unwanted deliveries." But this argument is weak for three major reasons.

First, the efforts to define and evaluate what constitutes an "unintended" or "unwanted" pregnancy are themselves imprecise, rendering any study based on such a flawed definition imprecise.15,199 Moreover, not intending to become pregnant at a particular time in one's life is very different than not wanting a child. Indeed, over half of unintended pregnancies are carried to term, accounting for approximately 37% of all births.200 Conversely, among women having abortions, the evidence suggests that between 30% and 63% of aborted pregnancies were intended, wanted, welcomed, or involved significant emotional attachment. In short, both groups (women having abortions and women carrying unintended pregnancies to term) encompass a huge variation in intentionality, wantedness, and attachment to their pregnancies.

Second, as Romans192 has convincingly argued, the differences in women who choose to carry an unintended pregnancy to term and those who abort are simply immeasurable. No conceivable comparison between the two groups can control for all the possible variations between them. Still, as both the TFMHA4 and Fergusson et al.193 have argued, even imperfect comparisons have and can continue to yield valuable insights regarding the differences between the women who cope well and those who cope poorly. While such findings cannot tell us what "most women" experience, they can tell us how different subgroups of women compare to each other. These findings are meaningful and actionable since they should be used to guide pre-abortion screening and counseling and post-abortion care25 and for informed consent procedures.23

Third, the argument for discounting studies that lack information on pregnancy intention appears to have been advanced primarily as an excuse to denigrate the majority of studies on AMH. This charge is supported by the fact the "quality scale" created by Charles et al.6 required deducting two of the five possible quality points from any study using any control group other than women carrying unwanted pregnancies to term.

The highly biased and subjective application of Charles et al.'s quality scale is demonstrated by the fact that they rated studies published by AMH minimalists using exactly the same national longitudinal data sets as AMH proponents consistently higher in quality. Moreover, Charles et al.'s quality scale totally ignored the problem of high concealment, misclassification, and drop-out rates in the very same studies they rated as better. Thus, by ignoring issues related to selection bias, the Charles et al. contrived ranking scale identified just four studies as "very good"-even though three of these had concealment rates of 60% or higher,185 and the fourth had a dropout rate of 65%.76 Meanwhile, their skewed scale allowed them to rank as "poor" or "very poor" literally all record linkage studies, which by their nature have no concealment or selection bias, even though these same studies revealed some of the strongest associations between AMH problems.

In response to Charles et al.'s argument that the only appropriate comparison group is to women carrying unintended pregnancies to term, the following arguments are made in defense of other comparison groups. I argue that, while no comparison is perfect, every option for a comparison group can be a useful tool in developing a multidimensional perspective on the complexity of AMH issues.

First, comparisons to women with a history of abortion and the general population of women provide a useful baseline, especially when combined with comparisons to women who miscarry or carry to term. For example, a record linkage in Finland revealed that the age-adjusted risk of death within a year of pregnancy outcome was 5.5 per 100,000 deliveries, 16.5 per 100,000 miscarriages, and 33.8 per 100,000 abortions, compared to 11.8 per 100,000 age-adjusted women years for the general population of women not pregnant in the prior year.196 A similar record linkage study of the population of Denmark revealed a dose effect, with the risk of death increasing by 45%, 114%, and 191% with exposure to one, two, or three abortions, respectively.112 Yet another record linkage study examining attempted suicide rates before and after pregnancies revealed declining rates of suicide attempts after both delivery and miscarriage, but a sharp increase in attempted suicide following abortion, as seen in Figure 3 .81

Another important comparison is between women who have induced abortions and women who miscarry. Both have experienced the effects of pregnancy, which may produce long-lasting changes to the brain, and maternal attachment. While the physiological processes of natural miscarriage and induced abortion are different, there may be similarities in the recovery process. Moreover, this comparison may allow insights into the psychological differences between intentionally choosing the end of a pregnancy versus an unintended loss, both of which may be experienced as a form of disenfranchised grief.45,161 Arguably, examining the differences between miscarriage and abortion may be the most relevant and important comparison.203

Comparisons to women giving birth are also meaningful. Just as a comparison to a never pregnant woman attempts to estimate how closely induced abortion achieves the goal of "turning back the clock" to the point before the woman became pregnant, a comparison to a delivering woman seeks to estimate how a woman's mental health would fare if she chooses to "move into" the group of women giving birth.

While comparisons of first pregnancy outcomes are valuable, it should be noted that it is a very poor methodological choice to include in the group of women experiencing a "first live birth" women who are known to have had one or more abortions before their first live birth or between the birth and the date of the mental health assessment.69,107 Unfortunately, these flawed studies ignore the extensive evidence showing that a history of pregnancy loss (abortion or miscarriage) is associated with higher rates of mental health problems during subsequent pregnancies. By adulterating the "control" group of women having a "first live birth" with women who also have a history of one or more abortion and/or miscarriages, the resulting analyses clearly confound rather than clarify the differences between abortion, miscarriage, and childbirth, shifting the known negative effects associated with prior pregnancy losses into results associated with a first childbirth. Arguably, this confounding methodology has been specifically employed by AMH minimalists precisely with the intent of producing results that obfuscate the mental health effects associated with abortion while inflating the effects associated with childbirth.141,227

Finally, it has been argued that the differences between women who abort and those who do not are so extreme that the only meaningful comparison is between women who abort and women who sought but were denied an abortion.194 While this comparison might be informative, it is clearly not a perfect comparison since the reasons why women may end up being denied an abortion are also likely to make these women significantly different than the average woman seeking and obtaining an abortion. Moreover, since in most countries where abortion is legal, very few women are denied an abortion undertaking such studies may be impractical. Indeed, the only set data set using this control group is the so-called Turnaway Study. Indeed, the argument that this is the only valid comparison group appears to be made in an attempt to dismiss all other research in favor of this single data set. But there are many problems with the Turnaway Study data set.198 The most damning is the problem of self-censure. Over 70% of women approached to participate in this study refused, even after they were promised payments for participating, plus, nearly half of those who did participate subsequently dropped out.198 This high refusal rate alone renders the Turn-Away Study data meaningless in terms of drawing any conclusions regarding the general population of women seeking or having abortions, and that is just one of many major flaws in the Turnaway Study methodology and execution.198

Poorly defined terms produce misleading conclusions: unwanted, relief, and more

Unfortunately, a great deal of the literature on AMH revolves around poorly defined terms. The resulting lack of precision and nuance contribute to AMH minimalists and AMH proponents talking past each other and contributes to overgeneralizations regarding research findings, especially in the press releases and position papers of pro-choice and anti-abortion activists.

As previously discussed, one common overgeneralization is the assertion that abortions typically involve "unwanted" pregnancies. A closer look, however, reveals that many aborted pregnancies, perhaps the majority, occur for planned, partially wanted, or initially welcomed pregnancies. By "welcomed" pregnancies, I mean pregnancies which were not planned in advance but to which the woman was open or naturally inclined to accept and embrace if only she had received the support of her partner, family, or others.

Attempts to define "unwanted" pregnancies are also complicated by the fact that many women report a divide between their emotional and intellectual responses when they first discover they are pregnant. Emotionally, they may be excited that a new life is growing inside them and may fantasize about having the child. But at the same time, their logical side may be immediately convinced that abortion is their only pragmatic choice.45 The pregnancy may therefore be simultaneously "emotionally wanted" and "logically unwanted."

Based on both clinical experience and case series studies,173 we hypothesize that many delayed reactions to abortion stem from the psychological conflicts that arise when emotions are suppressed in favor of pragmatic choices. In such cases, forward-looking women with strong defense mechanisms are likely to cope well with their choice for many years. But if this coping is achieved by suppressed emotions, this may consume energy and may even fuel maladaptive behaviors, like substance use and sleep disorders. Any connection between these symptoms and underlying abortion associated conflicts may not be recognized until some subsequent event or stress compels a reexamination of unresolved maternal attachments or the woman's moral priorities.

One measure of openness to having a child, seldom addressed in AMH studies, is desire for children at some later date. A high level of desire for future children suggests that an aborted pregnancy was most likely problematic due to specific circumstance or lack of sufficient social support. Among a sample of women seeking counseling for post-abortion distress, 64% felt "forced by outside circumstance" to have an abortion and 83% indicated they would have carried to term if significant others in their lives had encouraged delivery.181 While statistics gathered from women contacting post-abortion recovery programs may be not representative of the general population of women, these findings demonstrate that labeling these aborted pregnancies as "unwanted" does not reflect the experience of the women who subsequently do seek post-abortion help.

Given the wide variation in levels of intention or openness to pregnancy, much more extensive data on intention199,228 and attachment207 are required to draw any conclusions regarding the mental health effects of abortion relative to various levels of women's attachment, intention, and outcome preferences.

A second poorly defined variable is "relief." AMH minimalists have frequently asserted that the most common reaction to abortion is relief.4 But "relief" is a very broad term. A woman reporting "relief" may be referring to (a) relief that she will not have a baby, (b) relief that a dreaded medical procedure is now behind her, (c) relief that her parents will not discover she was pregnant, (d) relief that her partner will finally stop harassing her to have an abortion, or (e) any number of other reasons for feeling a reduction in stress.

Similarly, claims that "the most common reaction" to abortion is relief is also misleading because it falsely suggests that a truly representative sample of all women having abortions have been queried about their most prominent and common reactions. But in fact, all the case series studies assessing "relief" have self-censure and dropout rates exceeding 50%.39,59 When only a minority of women agree to report on their reactions to an abortion, these studies cannot reliably tell us anything about the majority of women. This is especially true if the self-selection bias is toward women who expect to feel more relief because their abortion decision is more consistent with their own desires and preferences, while those who refuse to participate anticipate and do experience more negative reactions.

Another misleading factor is that relief is most often reported as a single variable whereas negative reactions are often averaged together. For example, one of the most frequently cited case-series reporting that women felt "more relief than either positive or negative emotions" was based on comparing the results of a single question regarding relief to an average of six scores ("sad," "disappointed," "guilty," "blue," "low," and "feelings of loss") chosen to represent negative emotions and an average of three scores ("happy," "pleased" and "satisfied") chosen to represent positive emotions (excluding relief).39 This methodology was highly problematic.

While it would be interesting to see score distributions for each reaction separately,45 how can a variety of emotions be "averaged" together in any meaningful way? For example, if a score of 1 (corresponding to "not at all" on the Likert-type scale used) is equivalent to 0% of the relevant emotion and a 5 ("a great deal") is 100% of that emotion, averaging six emotion scores together presumes that a rating of 3 (50%) for "disappointed" is truly equivalent to twice a rating of 2 (25%) for "feelings of loss" and half the value of a rating of 5 for "guilty."

But what makes this averaging process even more suspect is that the least common negative reaction ("disappointed," perhaps) would dilute the entire average of negative reactions, concealing the frequency of the more common reactions ("guilty," perhaps). Most importantly, while the most common negative and positive reactions were diluted by this "averaging" process, the "relief" score was not subject to the dilution by averaging with any of the other positive emotions.

Yet another problem with the authors' conclusion39 was their presumption that the six negative reactions they asked about are actually the most common negative reactions. But three of the six negative reactions ("sad," "blue," "low") appear nearly synonymous. The similarity of these three may have been deliberate in order to boost the reliability score for the authors' scale. One of the remaining choices, "disappointed," is simply odd, rather bland, and perhaps disinviting as it is not a term that has been reported in interviews with women reporting negative reactions to abortion. While the assessments of "guilty" and "feelings of loss" were appropriate, it would have been more illuminating to report these separately rather than in an "average" of negative emotions.

In any event, averaging emotion scores is problematic and in this case the choice of the six negative feelings chosen to be averaged together failed to include many of the negative emotions most commonly reported in surveys of the women who seek post-abortion counseling, including sorrow, shame, remorse, emptiness, anger, loneliness, confusion, feigned happiness, loss of confidence, and despair.45

Despite the many limitations regarding the claim that "relief" is more common than negative reactions, it is notable that the same researchers also found that between the 3-month and 2-year post-abortion assessments, both relief scores and positive emotions decreased significantly while the average for negative emotions increased.39 In other words, even with a self-selected sample of women most likely to have more positive reactions, those positive emotions declined and negative emotions increased within the first 2 years. If that trend continued over 20 years, the finding that the "most common reaction" to abortion was relief may not have held up over a longer period of time.

Similar problems apply to the widely reported claim that most women are satisfied with their decisions to abort.179 In this case, the self-selection bias was profound, with only 27% of the eligible women participating at the date of their first assessment. In addition, this "finding" was based on a binary yes or no response to a single question: "Given your situation, was your decision to have an abortion right for you?" This question clearly invited reaction formation and splitting. Additional questions, such as, "If you had received support from others, would you have preferred to have carried to term?" would have provided deeper insight into the participants' true preferences.

Is abortion the sole cause, a contributing cause, or never a cause of mental health problems? Or is this question just a distraction from helping women?

Evidence-based medicine is centered on the idea that there must be real evidence of benefits that outweigh the risks associated with a medical intervention. But there are no statistically validated medical studies showing that women facing any specific disease or fetal anomaly fare better if they have an abortion compared to similar women who allow the pregnancy to continue to a natural outcome. Nor is there evidence of any mental health benefits.17,25 As a result, in approaching a risk-benefits assessment, there are literally no studies to place in the benefits column of an evidence-based risk-benefits analysis. Conversely, there are literally hundreds of studies with statistically significant risks (both physical and mental) associated with abortion which must be considered in weighing abortion's potential risks against the patient's hoped for benefits. See, for example, the references to Table 1 .

In this regard, induced abortion is an anomaly. It is the only medical treatment for which the principles of evidence-based medicine are routinely ignored, not for medical reasons, but by appeals to abortion being a fundamental civil right135 or a public policy tool for population control.25 From these vantage points, there has arisen an a priori premise that abortion should presumed to be safe and beneficial. Therefore, according to defenders of abortion, the burden of proving the safety and efficacy of abortion is no longer on them. Instead, abortion skeptics must prove that abortion is the sole and direct cause of harm to women-and not just a few unfortunate women, but a large proportion of women.

This appellate court's ruling is consistent with idea that "risk," by definition, includes uncertainty-otherwise, it would not be a "risk" but rather a "certainty." Therefore, the question of whether a statistically significant risk is solely due to abortion, partially due to abortion, or only incidentally associated with abortion is itself just another of the uncertainties about the procedure, and therefore a true risk about which patients should be informed.25

The court's decision favoring disclosure of all risks, even when causality is challenged by proponents of the procedure, is in line with the preferences reported by 95% of women considering elective medical procedures, to be informed of "all possible complications."23 From a feminist perspective, the right of each individual woman to evaluate for herself whether a statistically significant risk is incidental or causal would also appear be central to the protection of each woman's personal liberty. Indeed, the United Nation's Fourth World Conference on Women's Declaration and Platform for Action, which specifically addressed the issue of unsafe abortions, urged every government to

Take all appropriate measures to eliminate harmful, medically unnecessary or coercive medical interventions, as well as inappropriate medication and over-medication of women, and ensure that all women are fully informed of their options, including likely benefits and potential side-effects, by properly trained personnel.235 (Emphasis added)

For the reasons above, the claim that the higher incidence rates of mental health problems associated with abortion are most likely "spurious"105 has no bearing on informed consent. Only after full disclosure can each patient judge the relevance of such information for herself.

These challenges are also irrelevant to the obligation of the treating clinician to screen for the risk factors associated with higher rates of negative outcomes associated with abortion.23,25 After all, even if abortion proponents could prove that 100% of all the negative effects associated with abortion are causally due to common risk factors, the finding that abortion is consistently associated with higher rates of mental health problems is still an actionable marker that can and should be used to identify women who may benefit from referrals for additional counseling.26,27,30,32-34,36-39

It should be noted, however, that the Bradford-Hill criteria were developed to evaluate contributing factors for physiological diseases. Bradford-Hill therefore ignored a type of evidence for causality which is unique to psychological diseases, namely, self-aware attribution of causal pathways. For example, the evidence of a woman who says, "After the death of my child, I drank more heavily to dull the pain," is a conscious identification of cause and effect regarding her own mental state and behaviors.

Even though AMH minimalists and proponents approach their research from different perspectives, the results from both sides consistently show that at least a minority of women experience mental health problems that they attribute, at least in part, to their abortions. While not included in the Bradford-Hill criteria, when it comes to mental health issues, the fact that so many intelligent, self-aware women attribute specific patterns of emotional distress to their history of abortion is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that abortion directly contributes to mental health problems. The same is true with regard to mental health associated with miscarriage. The validity of this evidence is further strengthened by the professional assessment of both pro-choice therapists and pro-life therapists who also attest to the causal connection.

As previously noted, self-attribution is not perfect evidence. Defense mechanisms often operate by obscuring the "true cause" of one's mental distress. But we would argue that the bias of defense mechanisms would be toward underreporting of effects truly associated with an abortion rather than toward false attribution of unrelated effects to past abortions.

That is not to say that pre-existing mental health issues cannot become intermingled with an abortion. To the contrary, clinical experience shows that abortion can become such a significant stressor in a woman's life that other pre-existing issues can become enmeshed in the abortion and its aftermath. Pre-existing substance abuse, for example, may become intensified in the abortion aftermath, but it would be a self-deception to blame the abortion entirely for such substance abuse. On the contrary, once the issues become intermeshed, progress in dealing with underlying issues will be hindered by a failure to address the intermingled abortion issues.

Similarly, even in cases where suicide notes specifically attribute a woman's final act of despair to her recent abortion,241 other pre-existing factors may also contribute to these tragedies. In short, while it would be absurd and insulting to deny that abortion at least contributes to such suicides, it would be a mistake to assume that abortion is the sole cause of suicide or any other specific mental illness.

As stated previously, abortion does not occur in isolation from interrelated personal, familial, and social conditions that influence the experience and mental health of each individual. Moreover, there are likely a multiplicity of different pathways for effects to manifest either in the near or longer term.18 In general then, abortion is most likely a contributing factor to the manifestation of problems rather than the sole factor. It may be trigger latent issues, intensify or complicate existing issues, interact with pre-existing issues to create new issues, or contribute in any number of ways unique to any particular individual's susceptibilities and prior and subsequent life stresses.

In summary, there is incontrovertible evidence that abortion contributes to mental health problems, both directly and indirectly. Based on reports of clinical experience, it would appear that abortion can be the primary cause for mental health issues in some women. But it may also trigger, intensify, prolong, or complicate pre-existing mental health issues. Still, for the sake of argument, assuming AMH minimalists are right in their assumption that abortion itself is never the "sole cause" of mental health problems, there is still no reasonable doubt that abortion contributes to mental health issues in some women.

Finally, it should be emphasized that the difficulties involved in proving causality cut both ways. The burden of proving the efficacy and safety of abortion falls on abortion providers. To date, they have failed to provide any evidence, much less proof, that abortion is the sole and direct cause of any health benefits for women in general, or even for specific subgroups of women.193,232 Nor have they shown that the benefits women hope to obtain through abortion are proportionate to or greater than the significantly elevated rates of negative outcomes associated with abortion. In this regard, abortion continues to be an experimental treatment, one for which they hoped for benefits are unproven. And with no proven benefits, the risks-benefits ratio is unknown even for those women without any known risk factors.

Is it reasonable to attribute all negative effects to pre-existing factors?

In courtrooms, this line of arguments is known as the thin skull, or eggshell skull, defense. It asserts that a defendant should not be held accountable for injuries that would not have been suffered if the plaintiff had not been predisposed to injury due to pre-existing physical or emotional defects. Notably, the thin skull defense has been rejected in most legal jurisdictions. Even if the damages of the "frail" plaintiff are greater than they would be for a healthier person, jurists have ruled, the defendant is still liable for the greater damages because

a defendant who negligently inflicts injury on another takes the injured party as he finds her, which means it is not a defense that some other person of greater strength, constitution, or emotional makeup might have been less injured, or differently injured, or quicker to recover.244 (Emphasis added)

Applying the thin skull legal analysis to abortion, this means that a physician who fails to screen for known risk factors, such as prior mental illness, before recommending or performing an abortion is guilty of negligence if the woman suffers any subsequent mental health problems because it is precisely the obligation of the physician to treat the woman "as he finds her."

In short, the argument that negative effects may be mostly due to pre-existing mental health problems simply strengthens the argument for better pre-abortion screening for this and other risk factors. Conversely, it does not at all support the presumption that abortion is safe or likely beneficial to most women, much less all.

Still another AMH minimalist argument is that women with prior mental illness may instinctively know they are less likely to cope well with an unwanted pregnancy, so the higher rate of abortion among women with mental illness is actually a sign of these women choosing abortion wisely.106,107 Again, this is entirely speculation. It ignores the likelihood that mentally ill women, especially those with a history of being abused, may simply be more susceptible to being pressured into unwanted abortions45 like Allie All-Risks. Moreover, it ignores the ethical obligation of caregivers to discourage, rather than enable, patterns of behavior that may be self-destructive.

Moreover, bearing children may actually contribute to mental health improvements through direct biological effect, by expanding and strengthening interpersonal relationships with the child(ren) and others, or by behavioral adaptations that may replace risk-taking with self-improving behaviors. These benefits may also apply to bearing unplanned children. Indeed, given how common unplanned pregnancies are throughout the millennia, it could be argued that female biology has evolved mechanisms in order to adapt and adjust to unexpected pregnancies.

In short, the argument that higher rates of mental illness following abortion are simply due to mentally ill women being wise enough to choose abortion more often is simply not supported by any statistically validated research. Instead, the opposite argument, that giving birth is more likely to produce mental health benefits, is more plausible and better supported by actual data.

It should also be noted that while we are aware of only one record linkage study examining mental health effects for women without any history of mental health issues, that study (by AMH minimalists) revealed that a history of abortion was associated with a significantly increased risk (risk ratio (RR) = 1.18; 95% CI = 1.03-1.37) of postpartum depression after a first live birth.80

Closely related to the pre-existing mental illness issue is the finding that women with a history of abortion also have higher rates of abuse and violence in their lives. According to this argument, violence106,110 or childhood adversities,106 not abortion, are the most likely cause of higher rates of mental illness among women with a history of abortion. This hypothesis is contradicted, however, by studies which have shown that there are higher rates of mental illness associated with abortion even after controlling for violence.94,109 More importantly, it is a mistake to engage in either/or arguments; a both/and approach is both more likely and more productive. Clearly, a history of abuse contributes to a heightened risk of both pregnancy and abortion, especially abortions to satisfy the demands of others. At the same time, clinical experience reveals that issues related to abuse and abortion can become deeply entangled. Efforts to treat based on an either/or attribution are most likely to be frustrated. Progress is most likely to be made when both the abuse and abortion experiences are holistically addressed.45

While it important to study the interactions between exposure to violence and abortion on mental health, it is also important to consider that there may be two-way interactions. Surveys of women entering into post-abortion counseling reveal high percentages reporting elevated feelings of anger (81%), rage (52%), more easily lost temper (59%), and more violent behavior when angered (47%) following their abortions, which can obviously increase incidence rates of subsequent intimate partner violence.45 Moreover, in the same sample, in which 56% reported suicidal feelings and 28% reported attempting suicide (with over half trying more than once), there are case studies of women "pushing the buttons" of a violent partner because they believed they did not "deserve to live."45 This escalation of violence following abortion may help to explain the elevated rate of homicide among women with a history of abortion. For these reasons, given the multiple pathways for interactions between abortion and violence, studies that fail to distinguish between violence before and following abortion are methodologically flawed.110,247

In response, AMH proponents argue that (a) the burden of proving safety and effectiveness is on the proponents of a medical treatment and (b) given the weight of the evidence, it is far more logical to accept that abortion is at least a contributing factor that may work in concert with any number of other contributing factors.

In addition, denying that abortion directly contributes to mental health problems is illogical given the fact that so many of the risk factors identified by AMH minimalists themselves (see Table 1 ) are specifically part of the abortion experience. These include feeling pressured to abort by others; negative moral views of abortion; low expectation of coping well after an abortion; ambivalence about the abortion decision; and feelings of attachment or commitment to a pregnancy that is meaningful or wanted.

In other words, given what we know of the risk factors associated with mental illness after abortion, many of them are directly enmeshed in the abortion experience; they are not fully independent of the pregnancy and abortion experience. Therefore, even to the degree that mental illnesses can be associated with common risk factors for both unintended pregnancy and abortion, such as a history of sexual abuse, the intermeshing of elevated risk for pregnancy, abortion, and mental health issues precludes the conclusion that abortion does not contribute in any way to the observed problems. The only support for that argument comes from ideology, not from any statistically validated studies. For example, an incest victim may be at greater risk of a high school pregnancy with the first boyfriend that she imagines will be able to free her from an abusive step-father.250 She may also be at greater risk to being pressured into an unwanted abortion. While it would be a mistake to blame the abortion for all of her subsequent mental health problems, even if a subsequent suicide note focuses on the abortion, it is ludicrous to assert that her abortion did not contribute to her problems. Moreover, it is also evident that the failure of healthcare providers to identify the risk factors that made her a poor candidate for abortion missed an opportunity to assist her in using her pregnancy to break a cycle of exploitation and trauma.

Finally, it should be noted that AMH minimalists frequently cite studies showing that women who deliver an unintended pregnancy have more subsequent problems than women who only have intended pregnancies.248 From this base of evidence, they argue that since women who deliver unintended pregnancies have more problems, with mental health and otherwise, it follows that access to abortion helps to reduce the problems associated with unintended pregnancies. But this argument falsely presumes that abortion puts women who have unintended pregnancies back into the category of women who have never had an unintended pregnancy, and that all intended pregnancies are carried to term. But there are not just two groups: (a) women with "perfect" reproductive lives and (b) women with a history of unintended pregnancies. There is a third group, (c) women who have had abortions, who may fare worse than either of the other two groups.

While AMH proponents do not dispute that on average women with unintended pregnancies may face more problems than women who have perfect reproductive lives, it appears likely that they still have fewer problems than women who abort. Indeed, as previously discussed, not a single study has found evidence that the mental health of women who deliver an unintended pregnancy is worse than that of women who have abortions.69,72,75,76,86,90,92,98,188 To the contrary, the only statistically significant findings indicate that women who abort are likely to have more mental health problems than those who deliver their unintended pregnancies.17

The controversy over abortion related PTSD is more political than scientific

First, it is notable that all pregnancy outcomes are associated with some PTSD risk. Both vaginal and cesarean deliveries can be experienced as traumatic with a corresponding risk of PTSD. Miscarriage and other natural pregnancy losses are also consistently associated with increased risk of PTSD. It should therefore come as no surprise that induced abortion is also consistently found to be associated with the onset of PTSD symptoms. Notably, a history of induced abortion is also a risk factor for the onset of PTSD following subsequent pregnancy outcomes, so the effects of abortion may not always be immediate but may be triggered by subsequent deliveries or natural losses, or even subsequent non-pregnancy-related events.271 These findings are consistent with the insight that multiple traumas and related life experiences may contribute to the triggering of PTSD symptoms.

The evidence is clear that some women do experience abortion as a trauma. The prevalence rates and pre-existing risk factors may continue to be disputed, but the fact that abortion contributes to PTSD symptoms in at least a small number of women is a settled issue.

Recommendations for research and collaboration

Good research is essential for both healthcare providers and patients. Better information about the risks and benefits associated with abortion should contribute to better screening, better risk-benefit assessments, and better disclosures to patients,23 that will help to shape the expectations of patients and those who advise them. Better information will also improve the identification of at risk patients who may benefit from referrals to post-abortion counseling.

As previously discussed, while the ideological divides between AMH minimalists and proponents will continue to shape how each side interprets the data, these differing viewpoints actually provide an opportunity for improving the collection of useful data, analyses of the available data, and more thorough interpretations of research findings. Therefore, healthcare providers and patients would be better served by AMH minimalists and AMH proponents both bringing their various perspectives to bear on research efforts in a more cooperative fashion.

Whenever possible, research teams should include both AMH minimalists and AMH proponents. Such cooperation would improve methodologies by better addressing the differing concerns of each perspective at the time of the study design. Collaboration in the writing of introductions and conclusions to such studies would also be improved by bringing balance to both perspectives and by reducing the tendency to overgeneralize results of specific analyses.

More specific opportunities for collaboration and better research are discussed below.

Expanding the research goals

A major problem with abortion research and reviews is a failure to address all of the relevant questions which need to be asked, investigated, and answered. For example, the team from the National Collaborating Center for Mental Health (NCCMH) that wrote a review of AMH issues for the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges in 2011 strictly limited their investigation to only three questions: "(1) How prevalent are mental health problems in women who have an induced abortion? (2) What factors are associated with poor mental health outcomes following an induced abortion? (3) Are mental health problems more common in women who have an induced abortion when compared with women who deliver an unwanted pregnancy?"5 Most notably, the NCCMH team chose to ignore the question specifically posed for it to investigate in the 2008 Royal College of Psychiatrists position statement on abortion, namely, "whether there is evidence for psychiatric indications for abortion"272 (emphasis added). Given the lack of any evidence for psychiatric indications for abortion, it seems likely that the NCCMH decided to ignore this question because it echoed previous allegations that UK law was not being followed in regard to limiting abortion to cases where there are therapeutic benefits.273

The following is a list of some key research questions that should be addressed in future studies and reviews. It was developed, in part, by using the NCCMH consultation report as a starting point:274

1. How prevalent are mental health problems in women who carry unplanned pregnancies to term compared to women who deliver wanted pregnancies, to women who have no children, and to women who have abortions?

2. Given that women may experience a range of reactions in the near term and over a period of many years, what are the cumulative rates of negative reactions over a long period of time (including a minimum of 30 years) and what are the temporal, cross-sectional prevalence rates relative to various risk factors that may contribute to these temporal differences?

3. Among women who do experience negative emotional reactions (not limited to mental illness) which they attribute to their abortions, what reactions are reported?

4. What treatments are most effective?

5. What statistically validated indicators predict when the mental health risks of continuing a pregnancy are greater than if the pregnancies were aborted?

6. What statistically validated risk factors predict negative outcomes following one abortion, two abortions, and three or more abortions compared to each available comparison group?

7. What factors, if any, are associated with improved mental health following abortion compared to similar women who carry a similarly problematic pregnancy to term?

8. Among women with pre-existing mental health issues, what factors predict a likelihood that abortion may contribute to a reduction in mental health problems (intensity, duration, and number of mental health issues), and what factors predict a likelihood that abortion may contribute to an increase in mental health problems?

9. Among women without pre-existing mental health issues, what factors predict a likelihood that abortion may protect good mental health, and what factors predict a likelihood that abortion may contribute to subsequent mental health problems?

10. Is presenting for an abortion, or a history of abortion, a meaningful diagnostic marker for higher rates of mental illness and related problems that can be timely addressed by appropriate offers of care?

11. In evaluating the risk-benefits profile of a specific patient, what criteria should be met in order to reach an evidence-based conclusion that the benefits of abortion are most likely to exceed the risks?

12. In cases of pregnancy following rape or incest, what are the short- and long-term mental health effects associated with each of the following outcomes: (a) abortion, (b) miscarriage or stillbirth, (c) childbirth and adoption, and (d) childbirth and raising the child?

13. Is abortion associated with an increase in rapid repeat pregnancies, that is, "replacement pregnancies?" If so, what portion are delivered, aborted, or miscarried?

14. Does a history of abortion contribute to the strengthening or weakening of the woman's relationships with her partner and/or others?

15. What are the mental health effects of the abortion experience, if any, on men?

16. What are the mental health and developmental effects of the abortion experience, if any, on previously born children and/or subsequently born children?

17. Does a history of abortion contribute to or hinder bonding and parenting of previous and/or subsequently born children?

National prospective longitudinal studies specific to reproductive and mental health

We recommend that the value of such longitudinal studies would be vastly increased by expanding the goal of data collection to encompass not just mental health effects associated with abortion but also with all reproductive health issues from first menses to menopause. This would assist in research related to infertility, miscarriage, assisted reproductive technologies, postpartum reactions, premenstrual syndrome, and more. And given the interactions with multiple pregnancy outcomes already seen in AMH research, comprehensive reproductive health histories are needed in any case.

Most importantly, the design and management of such studies should include both AMH minimalists and AMH proponents. An explicit objective should be ensuring that every line of questioning either side considers important is included. When both sides contribute to the design of such studies and have equal access to the same data, concerns about suppressed findings or incomplete analyses will be dramatically reduced ... at least after re-analyses. When both sides have equal access to better data, it is more likely that the areas of consensus will increase.

The value of longitudinal studies would also be enhanced by seeking the consent of participants to link their medical records to their questionnaires. This would be most helpful given the fact that many women are reluctant to reveal abortion information even in responding to a confidential questionnaire. Since women's willingness to share data may vary over time, this request for record linkage should perhaps be offered multiple times over the course of the longitudinal study. While many will likely refuse this option, the refusal to permit record linkage is itself a data point for analyzing patterns associated with concealment and dropout. Along the same lines, at each wave there should be included a query regarding the level of stress associated with completing the questionnaire.183 This may also help to better understand and estimate the effects of women subsequently dropping out.

Finally, it should be noted that it has already been shown that there may be significant differences in women's experiences relative to different cultures and nationalites.50 Therefore, it is highly recommended that longitudinal studies to comprehensively investigate the intersections between mental and reproductive health should be funded in multiple countries.

Data sharing for re-analyses should be rule rather than the exception

It is precisely because data can be selectively analyzed and interpreted to produce slanted results, that data should be made available for re-analyses by third parties.276 Data sharing also reduces the costs of research and magnifies the contribution volunteers make to science by making their non-identifying information accessible to more scientists, which presumably most volunteers would prefer as their participation is generally intended to help science in general, not specific research teams. Most importantly, data sharing enhances confidence in the reliability of research findings, especially when related to controversial issues. Unfortunately, though many publications and professional organizations encourage or require post-publication sharing of data, in practice many researchers across many disciplines evade data sharing.277

Support for data sharing, at least in theory, is found in the APA's ethics rule 8.14, which states that following publication of their results, research psychologists should share the data for reanalysis by others.278 But this principle has been frequently ignored, especially in regard to abortion research. For example, the chair of the APA's own TFMHA, Brenda Major, has repeatedly refused to allow data she collected on abortion patients to be subject to reanalysis by AMH proponents. She even refused to comply with a request for the data from the US Department of Health and Human Services, even though the study was funded by that agency.140

Such data hoarding undermines confidence not only in the published findings of a specific study but also diminishes the value of syntheses or reviews relying on those unverified findings.

Data sharing is especially important when the process of collecting data may be blocked by ideological litmus tests. For example, abortion providers are naturally unlikely to cooperate with studies initiated by AMH proponents who they perceive as opponents of their work. On the contrary, they have frequently cooperated with AMH minimalists-precisely because of their shared ideology. Implicit in granting that cooperation may be the expectation that pro-choice researchers will not report any findings that may contribute to anti-abortion rhetoric. Conversely, many post-abortion counseling programs may also limit their cooperation to AMH proponents whom they perceive as most accepting and supportive of the issues raised by their clientele.88

In both cases, the ideological alignments required to collect data may create biases in the design, analysis, and reporting of results. This does not mean that meaningful results cannot be obtained. But it does mean that such results should always be presumed to reflect sample and investigator biases until the findings have been confirmed in reanalyses conducted by investigators of all perspectives. It is only through equal access to the data that consensus will grow around results which survive reanalyses. It is also through this process that new research objectives will be better identified in response to these reanalyses.

Responsiveness to requests for additional analyses

In many cases, legal restrictions (government or contractual) may bar the sharing of underlying data. In such cases, reasonable requests for additional information, tables, and reanalyses should be honored through personal communication, publication of a response, or, if a major reanalysis is required, in publication of a subsequent paper. Such cooperation is especially important in regard to data sets that have access restrictions, such as those collected by government agencies.

For example, the centralized medical records of Denmark have provided some of the best record linkage studies in the world. However, when it comes to mental health effects associated with abortion, there is strong evidence that significant findings are being suppressed for ideological reasons. The arguments and evidence for this assertion are given below.

Another methodological problem was the decision to include women who had one or more abortions prior to their first delivery into the delivery group. This decision is especially problematic since a history of abortion is significantly associated with higher rates of mental illness during and after subsequent pregnancies. Notably, when Munk-Olsen was asked to provide a simple count of the number of women in her analyses who had both abortions and deliveries and the percentage of those who had psychiatric contact, she refused this and all other requests for more details.227

Before examining the inconsistencies revealed in subsequent Munk-Olsen et al.82 studies, it is relevant to compare her abortion study to three very similar record linkage studies conducted by AMH proponents conducted a decade earlier. These prior studies examined the differences between abortion and delivery in regard to inpatient psychiatric treatments,89 outpatient psychiatric treatments,97 and sleep disorders.87 The designs of those studies were superior to Munk-Olsen's in several respects: (a) in each case, controls for prior psychiatric inpatient treatment were employed for a longer period of time, a 12- to 18-month period prior to the estimated date of conception for each woman; (b) there was complete segregation of women relative to exposure to abortion; (c) mental health outcomes were reported showing variations relative to different age groups; and (d) results were shown over multiple time periods: 0-90 days, 0-180 days, first year, second year, third year, fourth year, and 0-4 years.

Normally, one would expect Munk-Olsen to have at least replicated, if not improved on, the methodology employed in these prior record linkage studies. Instead, the methodological choices she made severely narrowed the range of her investigation. Studies that are narrowly drawn can only support narrow conclusions. This is especially true since Munk-Olsen also excluded any analyses of the effects of multiple abortions, which are known to be associated with even higher rates of negative reactions94,112 and also make up the majority of all abortions being performed.64

Concerns about selective reporting are heighted by the fact that Munk-Olsen subsequently published numerous studies on mental health associated with childbirth in which, once again, she refused requests to supply data for findings associated with abortion. For example, using the same data set, Munk-Olsen published findings that reported

In each of these cases, her analyses and conclusions were flawed by the failure to address the effects of prior fetal loss, which are known to increase the risk of psychiatric disorders during and after subsequent pregnancies.

While in most cases she simply omitted abortion history from her analyses, in two cases she used abortion history as a control variable217,284 but omitted any statistics showing how this control affected the results. Clearly, the only reason to use abortion history as a control is if it has a significant independent effect on mental health outcomes.

The possibility that Munk-Olsen simply overlooked these opportunities to report on effects associated with abortion is disproven by the fact that in each case Munk-Olsen rejected both published141,227 and unpublished requests for details relative to the effects of abortion on the outcomes studied. Even a request for a simple count of the number of women exposed to abortion in each of Munk-Olsen's comparison groups was refused.141

All of the above factors give credence to the concern that there is a selective withholding of results, by Munk-Olsen and other AMH minimalists. Moreover, given the evidence that abortion and miscarriage impacts mental health during subsequent pregnancies, it is clear that every study examining the intersection between mental and reproductive health may be misleading if it fails to include analyses associated with pregnancy loss. Without such analyses, effects associated with pregnancy loss may be wrongly attributed to childbirth.

The combination of Munk-Olsen's failure to publish these results without being asked, combined with her refusal to respond to requests for reanalysis,141,227 strongly suggests a pattern of selective reporting and obfuscation. If the additional analyses requested actually supported her previous assertion that prior mental health fully explains the higher rates of mental illness seen among women who have aborted82,107 it seems clear that she should be rushing to publish these requested analyses precisely to silence skeptics.

In short, whenever either AMH minimalists or AMH proponents refuse to respond to queries for reanalyses of published findings, they are increasing distrust and weakening the credibility of all conclusions based on their previously published research. This creates real obstacles in the advance of evidence-based medicine, informed consent practices, and ultimately in the medical care of women. The advance of scientific investigations into reproductive mental health can only be enhanced by generously responding to requests for details and re-analyses that clarify the interpretation of published findings.

Recommendations for editors and peer reviewers

As previously discussed, there is strong evidence that individual biases may unfairly bias editors and reviewers against findings that challenge their preconceived notions. Biases against "conservative" viewpoints, which may attach to the AMH controversy, are especially common.

Editors should guard against this bias by seeking a mix of peer reviewers, including both AMH minimalists and AMH proponents. For reasons discussed previously, while recognizing that every study in this area will have methodological weaknesses and that no sample can be perfect, editors should be blind to the results and focus their evaluation of peer review comments on the appropriateness and adequacy of the methodology and study sample. Editors should be alert to criticisms that appear to reflect a reviewer's bias against results which support an undesired conclusion, especially when the methodology employed is comparable to studies that would be accepted for publication in any other field of research.

A good test of bias is to simply imagine that the results were flipped,123 with the ORs showing benefits to abortion compared to delivering an unwanted pregnancy, for example. If the reviewer's or editors reactions to the paper would most likely have been in the opposite direction, that reaction is obviously driven by a bias for preferred results.

Editors and peer reviewers should also strive to ensure that all studies relating to the intersection of mental and reproductive health include, whenever possible, analyses that delineate findings relative to exposure to all prior pregnancy outcomes, including both natural pregnancy losses and induced abortions.141,227 This is important for several reasons. First, there is consensus even among AMH minimalists that better data are needed on the effects of pregnancy loss on mental health.4,274 Second, there is clear and convincing evidence that exposure to pregnancy losses (both natural and induced) may have a significant impact on women's health during and after subsequent pregnancies and at other times in women's lives.80,88,94,99,112,170,212,285

Limitations

The purpose of this review of the medical literature on AMH was to examine the areas of agreement and disagreement, the reasons for disagreement, and the opportunities for improved research and collaboration. The method I used began with a review of reviews published since 20054-10,12-19,21,22 and an examination of the studies cited in these reviews.

Given the difficulties previously discussed in conducting any conclusive studies, the breadth of issues examined in this review, and the range of theories and opinions of the authors of the reviews and studies examined, it is out of the scope of this, or any, review to fully address every view or concern. With that limitation in mind, however, this review does catalog a broader range of relevant issues than any previous reviews. In doing so, this review does not offer the last word on the AMH controversy. Instead, it seeks to expand and continue the conversation, inviting more detailed responses, criticism, and elaboration regarding the issues identified herein.

Conclusion

While there will continue to be differences of opinion between AMH minimalists and AMH proponents, there is sufficient common ground upon which to build future efforts to improve research and meaningful re-analyses. Common ground exists regarding the very basic fact that at least some women do have significant mental health issues that are caused, triggered, aggravated, or complicated by their abortion experience. In many cases, this may be due to feeling pressured into an abortion or choosing an abortion without sufficient attention to maternal desires or moral beliefs that may make it difficult to reconcile one's choice with one's self-identity.

There is also common ground regarding the fact that risk factors identifying women who are at greater risk, including a history of prior mental illness, can be used to identify women who may benefit from more pre-abortion and post-abortion counseling. Additional research regarding risk factors, and indicators identifying when abortion may be most likely to produce the benefits sought by women without negative consequences, can and should be conducted through major longitudinal prospective studies.

Finally, there is common ground on the need for better research. That fact alone is a strong argument for mixed research teams, collaboration in the design of longitudinal studies available for analysis by any researcher (without ideological screenings), data sharing and more responsive cooperation in responding to requests for reanalysis. All of these steps will help to provide healthcare workers with more accurate information for screening, risk-benefits assessments, and for offering better care and information to women both before and after abortion and other reproductive events.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: D.C.R.'s efforts were funded as part of his regular duties as Director of Research with the Elliot Institute.

ORCID iD: David C Reardon https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4478-6231

References

30. Steinberg JR, McCulloch CE, Adler NE. Abortion and mental health: findings from the national comorbidity survey-replication. Obstet Gynecol 2014; 123(2 Pt 1): 263-270. [[ PubMed] PMC free article] [ Google Scholar]

234. 8th Cir. (en banc). Planned Parenthood Minn., N.D., S.D. v. Rounds, 2012. [ Google Scholar]

Articles from SAGE Open Medicine are provided here courtesy of SAGE Publications

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The abortion and mental health controversy: A comprehensive literature review of common ground agreements, disagreements, actionable recommendations, and research opportunities

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The abortion and mental health controversy is driven by two different perspectives regarding how best to interpret accepted facts. When interpreting the data, abortion and mental health proponents are inclined to emphasize risks associated with abortion, ...

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The Long Fight for Pay Equality in Sports (Published 2019)

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The U.S. women’s soccer team has filed a gender discrimination lawsuit. The players are the latest athletes to demand equal treatment.

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The average American woman earns 81% of what an average American man earns, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And this stark disparity has hardly budged for more than a decade: the pay gap between men and women has sat at 80%-83% since 2004.

The gap varies by industry, according to Payscale: the legal profession has the worst discrepancy at 64%, while arts, entertainment and sports comes in well above average at 94%. While this is heartening for advocates of equal pay, there is still progress that needs to be made-especially when it comes to professional sports.

With a new decade ahead, we are taking a look back at how athlete compensation changed over the past ten years, and the obvious trends of wage equality in sports. We compare average salaries of male players vs female players across sports like basketball, soccer and tennis, and highlight some of the major steps forward in the pursuit for equal pay.

The Gender Pay Gap in Sports

Each league and sports organization has its own structure of compensation and benefits. But, while the level of pay varies from sport to sport, a look at five popular American sports shows a common reality: female athletes consistently make less than men.

Whether professional players receive salaries or individual prize money from competitions, male athletes in basketball, golf, soccer, baseball and tennis make anywhere from 15% to nearly 100% more than female athletes. While compensation for women has improved over the past decade, the gap still extends to even the world's highest-paid players.

Top-Paid Female Athletes vs Male Athletes

In 2010, golfer Tiger Woods made 124% more than tennis player Maria Sharapova. In 2019, little had changed: soccer star Lionel Messi made 125% more than tennis star Serena Williams.

While the pay disparity didn't change, there is one aspect of the Forbes top-ten list that did. The top ten highest-paid women in 2019 were all tennis players when a decade ago the top-ten list included NASCAR, ice skating and golf. Tennis has made moves to increase equal pay between their male and female players, and today all four major tennis tournaments offer equal prize money. This is just one of the ways that professional sports are working to improve pay inequality. But as recent lawsuits and even Twitter battles show, we still have a ways to go.

Let's take a closer look at the professional athlete salary statistics for three sports that have made headlines when it comes to the gap in professional pay: basketball, soccer and tennis.

Basketball

Every year since the Women's National Basketball Association's inaugural season in 1997, the highest-paid women's basketball player has earned less than the lowest-paid National Basketball Association player. In the 1997-98 season, NBA rookies made 176% more than WNBA rookies. And while that gap narrowed slightly at the start of the 2010s to 172%, it widened again by the end of the decade to 182%.

The starkest gap remains at the very top. Golden State Warriors player Stephen Curry was on track to make more than $40 million in salary alone during the 2019-20 season. In the same year, DeWanna Bonner, the highest-paid WNBA player, was eligible for a base salary of $127,500, a difference of almost 200%.

However, the past decade has seen some attempts to narrow that gap. In 2009, the WNBA started to allow sponsorship on jerseys in order to boost revenue, a move that the NBA repeated in 2017. In 2016, ESPN doubled their rights fee to show WNBA games, paying $25 million a year. And in 2019, CBS Sports made a deal to pay for additional games. But one of the biggest moves was the WNBA's 2020 community bargaining agreement.

Revenue Sharing and the 2020 Community Bargaining Agreement

For years, another major difference in compensation came in the form of revenue sharing. NBA players receive about 50% of the league's revenues. Up until 2020, the WNBA received 20% of their league's revenues. That changed with a new community bargaining agreement, reached in January of 2020, which agreed to a 50-50 split and brought WNBA players in line with their male counterparts.

The 2020 agreement was also a big step forward in terms of WNBA players' salary potential. For the first time, the average salary reached six figures.

Source: Women's National Basketball Players Association ( 2019, 2020)

While 2020 brought unexpected changes to both the NBA and the WNBA, with both leagues' seasons affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the CBA still remains. Both men's and women's basketball used the unusual circumstances to play with online options and enhance the at-home fan experience, and the WNBA saw its highest draft viewership in 16 years during the 2020 virtual draft.

Soccer

Bloomberg News recently touted soccer as "the future of sports in America," and soccer fandom has clearly grown within the United States. In 2018-19, the federation reported total revenue of $115,128,170, a growth of 160% over the last decade. In 2019, 14 million people watched the U.S. Women's National Soccer team defeat the Netherlands to win the FIFA Women's World Cup-10.5 million more viewers than their 2001 finals appearance.

But, with all this growth, are men's and women's earnings in line?

U.S. Professional Soccer Teams Comparison

Major League Soccer played their first game in 1996, after the United States hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup. The National Women's Soccer League played their first game in 2013, following the end of the Women's Professional Soccer league the previous year. Both teams have a salary cap, meaning each team has a limit on how much they can pay their players and some limits on how they can divide that pot of money.

MLS

Minimum: $46,500
Maximum: $600,000*
Team salary budget: $2,950,000

Minimum: $63,547
Maximum: $612,500*
Team salary budget: $4,900,000

NWSL

Minimum: $6,000
Max: $30,000
Team salary budget: $200,000

Minimum: $20,000
Max: $50,000
Team salary budget: $650,000

Percent difference

MLS rookie players made 87.1% more

MLS rookie players made 64.44% more

Source: MLS 2013; 2020; NWSL 2013, 2020
*Does not include designated players or targeted allocation money.

While both men's and women's soccer players are seeing salary increases alongside the sport's rise in popularity, men still far outearn women. That gap is narrowing slightly, however. In 2020, the league difference in rookie pay decreased by 50% (down from 154%), while the salary budget gap closed by 22%.

There is still quite a ways to go to close this gap, but the NWSL is making changes to offer more competitive compensation.

FIFA World Cup Prize Money

The pay disparity in professional soccer exists at an international level as well. In 2019, the teams in the FIFA Women's World Cup shared a $30 million prize pool. That equaled the prize money for a single winning men's team a decade earlier.

2010 Men's World Cup: $420 million, $30 million winner's share

2011 Women's World Cup: $5.8 million, $1 millions winner's share

2018 Men's World Cup: $400 million, $38 million

2019 Women's World Cup: $30 million, $4 million winner's share

In 2019, FIFA proposed doubling the women's prize pool to $60 million in the 2023 World Cup, and announced that they would spend $1 billion on women's soccer over a period of four years. But many players say this is not enough.

US Women's National Team versus U.S. Soccer

While MLS and the NWSL have only been around for a few decades, the United States has fielded national soccer teams in World Cups since 1930 (US Men's National Team) and 1991 (US Women's National Team). Since then, the women's team has won four FIFA Women's World Cup titles. Until 2018, the men's team qualified for the World Cup every year since 1990, but has not won a championship.

For much of the decade, the US Women's National Team and the U.S. Soccer Federation have clashed over equal pay. Two major moments in this dispute include:

2016: Five USWNT players filed a wage-discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC never publishes a response, but the players received a 30% raise among other benefits in 2017.

2018: Twenty-eight USWNT players joined a wage-discrimiation class-action suit against U.S. Soccer. The suit is still ongoing.

The SBNation site Stars and Stripes compiled a full timeline of the USWNT's negotiations with U.S. Soccer over the years.

Tennis

Tennis is one of the few sports where the United States women, on average, make more than men. However, the men still come out ahead internationally.

Outside the majors, the average earnings of U.S. women ranked by the Women's Tennis Association were higher than the U.S. men in the Association of Tennis Professionals. At both the start and end of the decade, the top female player in the United States made more than the top male player.

ATP

Average of all top-100 men: $677,618

Average of U.S. men in top 100: $788,538

Top U.S. men's player: Andy Roddick, $2,187,719

Average of all top-100 men: $335,946

Average of U.S. men in top 100: $275,860

Top U.S. men's player: John Isner, $411,414

WTA

Average of all top-100 women: $533,091

Average of U.S. women in top 100: $1,484,559

Top U.S. women's player: Serena Williams, $4,266,011

Average of all top-100 women: $283,625

Average of U.S. women in top 100: $307,343

Top U.S. women's player: Sofia Kenin, $3,012,043

Sources: Tennis.com (ATP 2019; WTA 2019)

Gender equity in tennis has been in the spotlight for decades, stretching back beyond Billie Jean King's threat to boycott the 1973 U.S. Open. Over the span of 34 years, the four major tennis tournaments decided to pay their men's and women's winners equally.

1973: U.S. Open

2001: Australian Open

2006: French Open

2007: Wimbledon

Another sign of growth toward pay equality is that tennis players from both the ATP and WTA have come together to campaign for a larger share of tournament revenues. Their hope is that by moving closer to a 50-50 split, common in other pro sports, they can increase salaries for all players, male and female.

You Can Shape the Future of Sport Salaries

If you are interested in equalizing athlete pay, or if you want to push for better compensation for players overall, consider a career in sport management. Managers, owners and other administrators can have direct input in how much players get paid. Agents can be advocates for fairer wages and better benefits. And sport marketers can attract more fans to a league or player, increasing revenue and support.

Adelphi University's MS in Sport Management empowers students to pursue their unique passions and better support the sports they love. Their top-ranked masters is offered online and on campus, and its flexible curriculum allows students to take a general track or choose from specializations in sport marketing or collegiate athletic administration. Students develop wide-ranging leadership skills and learn to conduct the marketing and administrative tasks of sport organizations and business operations.

If you're interested in learning more, you can visit Adelphi's sport management info page and download a free brochure, or call 888.252.4110 to talk with one of their enrollment counselors.

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Male vs Female Professional Sports Salary Comparison

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From the highest-paid athletes to the newest rookies, professional male athletes are still making significantly more money than women. In this article, we compare salaries in sports like soccer, basketball and tennis, and consider some notable changes over the past decade.

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1. USING APPROPRIATE RESTROOMS IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF TRANSITIONING.

The most critical aspect of gender transition, according to the internationally-recognized medical protocol set by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, is to ensure that a transgender person is able to live, be seen and be treated by others in a matter consistent with the person's gender identity. Getting used to using the appropriate restroom is an important part of this process. Moreover, transgender people must take this step well before proceeding-if at all-to medical interventions involving hormones or surgery.

2. "HOLDING IT" MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.

According to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Hazards Administration (OSHA), delaying going to the bathroom when you need to go is unhealthy, and so, workplace policy may not encourage it. This is not to mention the dehydrating effects of trying to avoid using restrooms by limiting intake of liquids, another common strategy for TGNC people navigating uncomfortable bathroom situations in the workplace and at other public accommodations.

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FAQ: Answers to Some Common Questions about Equal Access to Public Restrooms

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1. USING APPROPRIATE RESTROOMS IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF TRANSITIONING. The most critical aspect of gender transition, according to the internationally-recognized medical protocol set by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, is to ensure that a transgender person is able to live, be seen and be treated by others in a matter consistent with the person's gender identity.

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April 2 - Equal Pay Day - marks the day U.S. women have finally earned the same amount of money as the average man did in 2018. Sports have long mirrored society, and the gender pay gap has persisted in athletics just as it has in the professional realm. And in sport, just as in society, women are fighting back, working towards the day when pay equality is achieved.

Here are five athletes, teams and leagues that are leading the charge:

The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (USWNT)

The USWNT has long been associated with leading the way in the fight for gender equity in soccer. Most recently, in advance of the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in France, the United States women's squad took a stand against "institutionalized gender discrimination" against the team. Twenty-eight members of the current national team pool announced in March that they are suing U.S. Soccer, seeking equitable pay and treatment, including damages for back pay.

The women's team has far exceeded the success of their male counterparts, who failed to even qualify for the FIFA Men's World Cup in 2018. Meanwhile, the women have placed in the top three teams in every Women's World Cup since 1991 (when the women's tournament began) and has three titles. In the six Olympic Games that have included women's soccer, the U.S. has captured four golds and a silver.

"It's a heavy responsibility, but it's one that we gladly take on," Becky Sauerbraunn told ESPN following the 2019 SheBelieves Cup. "And it's something we're going to keep trying to push and push and push until we feel that everything is equal. That's far away from here, but that's what we're fighting toward."

At the same time, The Guardian recently reported that in the 2018 fiscal year, USWNT head coach Jill Ellis was paid less than several U.S. Soccer men's coaches, including U-20 coach Tab Ramos.

The U.S. Women's National Ice Hockey Team

Before winning a historic gold medal in the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Games, the U.S. Women's National Ice Hockey Team was battling off the ice for equal pay. In 2017, the team threatened to boycott the 2017 IIHF World Championships if a settlement was not made with USA Hockey for equal treatment to the men's team. Per , the women's players were barely making living wages and were left out of pre-Olympic marketing plans despite their success on the ice.

Ahead of the 2017 IIHF World Championships, after a yearlong battle, USA Hockey conceded to many of the players demands. The team went on to earn the gold at the world championships, then captured its first Olympic gold in 20 years by defeating Team Canada in PyeongChang.

Of her team's fight for equal treatment, star forward Hilary Knight said: "We're passionately pursuing something for the greater good."

WNBA Players

WNBA stars including A'ja Wilson, Brittney Griner, Liz Cambage and Skylar Diggins-Smith have all spoken out about WNBA salaries compared to their NBA counterparts. In order to make a living playing basketball, most WNBA players compete overseas during the offseason to supplement their WNBA income.

It is important to note that the WNBA athletes are not asking for the multimillion dollar contracts that are prevalent in the NBA; they are simply asking for equity. Where the NBA pays its players between 49-51 percent of the league's revenue, WNBA players take home a maximum of 22.8 percent.

"As athletes, we have to fight. As women, we have to fight," Diggins-Smith told Bleacher Report. "And we need more people at our table to fight with us," she told Wealthsimple. "There need to be more women and more people of color hired so we can curate our own sports stories. And we need men speaking out about these things."

Big Wave Surfers

In 2016, six female big wave surfers - Andrea Moller, Bianca Valenti, Keala Kennelly, Paige Alms, Karen Tynan and Sabrina Brennan - founded the Commission for Equity in Women's Surfing (CEWS). The organization exists to increase "the number of events and the number of awards for women, as well as offering equal prize money ... to achieve meaningful equity in competitive surfing."

In 2018, much of CEWS' work paid off, as the World Surf League announced equal prize money for all WSL-controlled events in 2019 and beyond, a huge step for what has been a traditionally male-dominated sport.

""We feel strongly that if it hadn't been for our consistent advocacy, the WSL would not have made that announcement," Brennan told ESPN. "But we are so glad they did, and we're thankful because they could have done less ... But they did the right thing and did it across all of their events."

Venus and Serena Williams

While all four of the major Grand Slam tennis tournaments have awarded men and women equal prize money since 2007 when Wimbledon finally evened its pay gap, the game's biggest female stars have not held back when it comes to speaking out about equal pay.

As with so many other female athletes - and despite being two of the highest paid women athletes in the world - Venus and Serena recognize that they are fighting not only for themselves, but for the generations of women to come.

"We might not get it today, but we want a future better for maybe my daughter, or her daughter, and so that's what we really are fighting for," Serena told CNBC. "I feel like we're getting there."
Photo credit (from L to R): Ethan Miller/Getty Images Bruce Bennett/Getty Images Julian Finney/Getty Images Frederick Breedon/Getty Images Pierre Tostee/Getty Images

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The Fight for Equal Pay in Women's Sports - Women's Sports Foundation

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April 2 - Equal Pay Day - marks the day U.S. women have finally earned the same amount of money as the average man did in 2018. Sports have long mirrored society, and the gender pay gap has persisted in athletics just as it has in the professional realm.

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The ACLU champions transgender people's right to be themselves. We're fighting discrimination in employment, housing, and public places, including restrooms. We're working to make sure trans people get the health care they need and we're challenging obstacles to changing the gender marker on identification documents and obtaining legal name changes.

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The gender pay gap will remain until companies change their ways - CNN

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Women are overrepresented in low-wage jobs, and the greater burden of home and caregiving responsibilities falls on women, which makes it harder for them to advance to senior positions, write Natasha Lamb, managing partner and co-founder of Arjuna Capital, and Jennifer Klein, the chief strategy and policy officer at TIME'S UP.

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Miya Iwataki was a college student in the mid-1960s when she stumbled onto a meeting of the Brown Berets in a South Los Angeles bar that set her on a lifelong mission of activism. She dropped out of school to work for the United Farm Workers and later helped secure reparations for Japanese Americans imprisoned in internment camps during World War II.

She realized Asian Americans shared many of the same struggles as Black and Latino people and could use those activist movements as models to create a powerful one of their own. Even though Asian activism has claimed important victories over the years, it has at times seemed largely episodic, struggling to gain the same critical mass.

Now, a new generation is fighting to blow up the myth of the "model minority," condemn anti-Asian racism and create a sustained movement to end more than a century and a half of bigotry and marginalization.

The Black Lives Matter protests last summer inspired many young Asian Americans to coalesce in this effort, as did a surge of anti-Asian hate fueled by then-President Trump and his supporters calling the coronavirus "the China virus." The shooting deaths of six Asian women in the Atlanta area last week, after which a 21-year-old white man has been charged, hardened their resolve, while bringing fresh, national outrage to this enduring blight.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Iwataki's niece, Ana, is on the front lines now, an organizer for J-Town Action & Solidarity, building upon past movements and working with other groups such as We the Unhoused and Ktown for Black Lives for the broader goal of uprooting a system of white supremacy.

"There are intergenerational organizations we're able to learn from, people like my aunt," said Ana Iwataki, 32. "[Younger generations] also share our perspectives as conversations evolve and we have more language to recognize all aspects of white supremacy we have been fighting against for so long."

Edward Chang, a Korean American professor of ethnic studies at UC Riverside, said that some of the impediments to building a larger movement are linguistic diversity within the community, as well as the "model minority" stereotype, which makes Asian Americans seem like a "problem free group."

But he said the surge of hate incidents and a heightened national awareness of racism, after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd as bystanders begged them to stop, have helped give the current activism momentum.

"We are also victims of racial hatred - we have to make that visible - not only visible but turn that into activism. We have to report cases [of hate incidents] and we have to fight back, and we have to demand representation, as well as justice.

Ellen Wu, the director of the Asian American studies program at Indiana University Bloomington, called the current movement against anti-Asian violence unprecedented.

"It's actually really unexpected to start to see expressions of solidarity from individuals, organizations or groups that are not centered on Asian Americans," she said. "I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined a critical mass of national attention on Asian American history."

The support coming from non-Asian groups, Wu said, reminds her of the George Floyd movement last summer, which mobilized people from all races who had not previously been actively involved in racial justice issues.

Wu said that it's important to recognize that the grass-roots campaign against anti-Asian violence follows other moments in history when Asian American activism made national headlines.

She pointed to how the term "Asian American" emerged out of the Asian American movement, which began in the late 1960s and called for solidarity across Asian nationalitiesand otherminority groups. Wu said it grew out of the Black Power and anti-Vietnam War movement, and many say it began with a strike in 1968 at San Francisco State College, where Asians alongside students from other racial groups pushed for an ethnic studies curriculum.

"Those folks pushed policymakers to begin to recognize Asian Americans as a minority group that deserved new resources and attention being made available to minority groups as a result of the civil rights movement," Wu said.

There were plenty other episodes of Asian American activism.

Filipinos launched the Delano Grape Strike in 1965 to protest the exploitation of farmworkers. Asian Americans mobilized after the 1982 killing of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American beaten to death in Detroit by two white unemployed autoworkers who had misidentified him as Japanese and blamed him for the decline of the U.S. auto industry. The Japanese Americans fought for and won their reparations.

Hong Lee, 35, turned to activism after an incident in August at a restaurant in the Pico-Union area of Los Angeles, when a man approached her and asked her out to lunch. Lee declined, saying she was married. He began screaming at her to "go back to Asia."

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

After posting a video of the encounter, she heard from five other women who said they had been harassed by the same man.

In the months since, she's attended multiple rallies against Asian violence and shared her story at a vigil for the Georgia shootings in the San Gabriel Valley last weekend. An elderly Chinese woman there disclosed to Lee a similar incident she had experienced and asked to stay in touch.

"It brought me a lot of hope that although there is such a horrific incident that occurred, our community is coming together and uniting in a way that I have never ever seen in our lifetime," Lee said.

Young-Jin Yang, a 34-year-old Downey resident, was upset last month that the rise in anti-Asian violence was not getting attention. He uploaded a video on Instagram about Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old Thai American who died after an assailant violently shoved him to the ground in January.

"It really hits hard for me personally just because of the fact that that could have been my grandparent walking down the street," he said in the video. "They're getting attacked merely because of the way they look."

He shared how he hated his name growing up and would get into fights because of the way he looked.

"If you don't stand up, if you don't say anything, you are normalizing the situation," he told viewers. The video got more than 11,600 views.

Since then, Yang has attended anti-Asian hate rallies - flying to one in New York several weeks ago - and volunteers at street patrols in Chinatown and Koreatown to protect Asian American residents from attacks.

While he's grateful that anti-Asian violence has made national headlines, he's frustrated that it took a mass shooting to elevate the issue.

"It's better than before, it's getting more coverage, but we still have a huge problem ahead of us," he said.

Renee Tajima-Peña, a filmmaker whose landmark docuseries "Asian Americans" aired on PBS last year, credits the younger generation for mobilizing online using "the infrastructure already in place from decades and decades and decades of work done by the elders in community building.

"The people before who were student activists in the '70s and '80s carved spaces for Asian civil rights to get to the spotlight and you can see how they inspired the youths to act."

She points to the outrage last week not just of the shooting in Georgia but the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office spokesman attributing it to the shooter having a "really bad day."

"The reaction from the Asian youth voice was just breathtaking and swift," she said. "That kind of activism has been ramping up, based on the path of the trailblazers. More than that, people are really hungry to understand our history so they know better how not to repeat it."

Research has shown that people tend to drop out of movement work when they feel they're not making a difference, activists say, so to sustain modern-day missions, one must have a combination of digital smarts matched to individual talent.

"We're sitting in the middle of a pandemic. People are worried, people are depressed so you have to recognize even the small victories that are made possible by any amount of teamwork," Lacy Lew Nguyen Wright said.

Wright co-planned the "Love Our Communities: Build Collective Power" rally in early March in Little Tokyo, an event that drew as many as 1,500 participants to the steps outside the Japanese American National Museum.

The event was especially symbolic, happening days after a fire and vandalism partially destroyed the nearby Higashi Honganji Buddhist temple. The incident is under investigation.

"Not every win is huge. Not every single win is a legislative win. Not every single win is getting a demand out of the mayor," she added. "Rallies are to show the world your power in numbers. Then you do the work behind the scenes."

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A new generation hopes to turn activism to fight Asian hate into a sustained movement

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Miya Iwataki was a college student in the mid-1960s when she stumbled onto a meeting of the Brown Berets in a South Los Angeles bar that set her on a lifelong mission of activism. She dropped out of school to work for the United Farm Workers and later helped secure reparations for Japanese Americans imprisoned in internment camps during World War II.

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Over the past few years, athletes, coaches and parents have been watching in disbelief as girls are being replaced on the winner's podium by boys who identify as girls at all levels of competition. It's what prompted Idaho to enact a law to protect female athletes from having their dreams of success on the field taken from them by a male competitor, and it's what prompted the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights to conclude that my home state, Connecticut, is in violation of federal law.

I am the mother of an elite track-and-field athlete in Connecticut. Through our attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom, my daughter, Selina Soule, and I filed suit in February with two other female athletes and their mothers to challenge Connecticut's policy of allowing biological boys to compete in girls' sports. Connecticut is one of at least 17 states that allow this.

Selina is among the best in the state. Currently finishing her senior year, she has set five school records so far - including an outdoor long-jump distance that had stood since 1976. Selina has high aspirations for track-and-field competition at the collegiate and professional levels.

Selina's love for competitive track and field started when she was a little girl. By the time she was in 4th grade, Selina was winning events and advancing to state-level meets and races. There's no question that competing for her school team has been the primary highlight of her high school experience, and her goal of earning her way to the next level would make the women behind Title IX of the Civil Rights Act proud.

Yet, Selina's future is at risk because the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference allows athletes to compete based on gender identity rather than biological sex in violation of Title IX, as the Department of Education recognized. And she isn't the only young woman whose ability to compete on a level playing field has been taken away because of this policy.
Trust our kids: High school could have been hell for my transgender son. Don't make it hell for the next kid.
My family and I have been speaking out about the unfairness that is taking place in girls' sports, and we have been shocked by the reaction.

Biology is what matters in sports

At an October 2019 rally co-hosted by radical feminist organization Women's Liberation Front and the conservative Concerned Women for America during arguments in a Supreme Court case involving gender identity and employment, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, I was one of many female speakers who represented an extraordinarily broad cross-section of beliefs.

During a two-hour span, many speakers at our rally, including myself, were loudly shouted down and berated - the hecklers demanding nothing less than our silence and capitulation - all for saying that women deserve fairness in sports.
More: For a trans woman like me, every day in public is risky
Unfortunately, on Monday, the Supreme Court issued a decision conflating sex and gender in employment, but we still have a chance to preserve women's sports.

Whatever you believe about gender identity in general, the simple fact is that biology is what matters in athletics, not a person's identity. Gender identity can be changed. Sex is embedded in our DNA and cannot be changed. It is reflected in realities like lung capacity and bone density. Sex is not gender.

Women's sports were created to give girls a fair chance at competition. That includes fair victories and fair defeats. Girls deserve the same opportunity as boys to excel, to advance to the next level of competition, to win, and to stand on that podium. But allowing boys to compete in girls' sports shatters girls' dreams and denies our daughters equal opportunities.

Boys will always have certain physical advantages over girls. That's the reason we have women's sports in the first place. Boys' bodies are simply different on average: They're bigger, stronger and faster, even if the male athlete receives hormones. Science and common sense tell us this. And so do the times at track events.

Our daughters deserve fairness

Boys with mediocre times can compete in the boys' category and then completely dominate girls' events just a few weeks later. I've already seen this happening in Connecticut. After a series of unremarkable finishes as a boy in the 2018 indoor season, the same athlete began competing - and winning - as a girl in the outdoor season that started just weeks later.

My daughter would have qualified for the New England regionals in the 55-meter dash in Spring 2019, but instead, the top two spots went to biological boys who identify as girls. She lost her chance to compete and instead had to watch from the stands.

High school girls - as well as collegiate, amateur, and professional female athletes all over the world and in many sports - are being dominated by biological males. We must explore other options and find a solution where young women are not denied their rightful place on the podium.
More: Transgender athletes deserve compassion, but not the right to transform
Too many parents, coaches and authority figures are silent on this issue. Worse, young women like my daughter are being bullied and called "sore losers" or "transphobic" for simply seeking fairness in sports.

Imagine it is your girl who is denied a victory she has earned. Imagine your daughter, who works day and night to shave off mere fractions of a second, is denied a win or a college scholarship - all because she has to compete against boys who identify as girls. And imagine your child is marginalized and ridiculed just for raising questions. Could you overlook the injustice?

We are being bullied into silence. We must speak up in order to stop this takeover of women's rights. This isn't fair. Women and girls everywhere deserve a level playing field in sports.
Bianca Stanescu and her daughter, track athlete Selina Soule, filed suit on Feb. 12, 2020, with two other female athletes and their mothers to challenge Connecticut's athletics policy.

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Transgender athletes don't belong in girls' sports. Let my daughter compete fairly.

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Over the past few years, athletes, coaches and parents have been watching in disbelief as girls are being replaced on the winner's podium by boys who identify as girls at all levels of competition.

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subscribe to The NPR Politics Podcast podcast

When the South Dakota state legislature passed HB 1217 in early March, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem tweeted that she was "excited" to sign it.

That bill would have stopped transgender girls and women from playing on sports teams designated for girls and women. These types of bills have been introduced in 25 states nationwide and have become a nationwide cause for social conservatives like Noem.

So it may have surprised some of her supporters when on Friday she sent the bill back to South Dakota's legislature asking for changes. Among those is making sure the bill does not apply to college athletes. On Twitter, she pointed to the NCAA as one reason.

"Competing on the national stage means compliance with the national governing bodies that oversee collegiate athletics," she tweeted, later adding, "While I certainly do not always agree with the actions these sanctioning bodies take, I understand that collegiate athletics requires such a system - a fifty-state patchwork is not workable."

The ongoing fight in South Dakota is indicative not only of the way the issue of transgender girls in sports has become a nationwide phenomenon, but of the way that the NCAA looms over debates over transgender rights, and especially over the fight over transgender sports bans - even when the NCAA doesn't say much.

That was evident when Fox News' Tucker Carlson accused Noem of "caving to the NCAA" when she appeared on his show.

"I'm not going to let anybody from the NCAA, from any big business, I'm not even going to let conservatives on the right bully me," she told the host.

This year, four state legislatures have sent bills restricting transgender girls' sports participation to governors' desks. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed one bill this month, and Tennessee and Arkansas statehouses passed their own bills this week.
Legacy of the "bathroom bill"
The NCAA has come up repeatedly in debates over transgender sports bills in state legislatures this year. In February, Democratic Utah state Rep. Andrew Stoddard brought up a men's college basketball game from more than 40 years ago.

"In 1979, Salt Lake City hosted the NCAA Final Four. Michigan State played Indiana State in the championship - Magic Johnson versus Larry Bird," he said. "This game is important to me because my grandpa was an associate athletic director at the University of Utah and helped organize it. If this bill passes, we won't have any more moments like that."

Stoddard was afraid the NCAA would pull sporting events from Utah, and he pointed to North Carolina as an example.

In 2016, that state passed a bill restricting which bathrooms transgender people could use. Because of that law, the NCAA and other sports organizations pulled events from the state. That included seven NCAA championship events, among them two rounds of men's March Madness basketball games.

In state debates over transgender rights, that makes North Carolina a recurring example of the NCAA's economic power. In 2017, when Texas proposed its own "bathroom bill," a study for San Antonio found that the city could have lost $234 million, were the NCAA to pull men's Final Four games. That study made news even without the NCAA even commenting on the bill.

Thomas Lee knows this well - he worked in bringing sports events to Charlotte, N.C., when its so-called "bathroom bill" passed, and now he holds a similar role in South Dakota, as executive director of the Sioux Falls Sports Authority.

"That really hit the hardest in Charlotte, and who it's going to hit here is the hospitality community - the hotels, the taxis, the restaurants - anything and everything that is associated with visitors," he said.

He's worried now because South Dakota's state legislature has passed a bill restricting transgender women athletes. Lee spoke to NPR before Noem sent the bill back to the legislature, and he listed the NCAA events that he fears the state would lose.

"Two of those are going to be D1 hockey events, which are quite large in impact," he said. "And as well as D2 wrestling and D2 women's volleyball have impact as well."

In other words, it's a variety of NCAA events - well beyond March Madness - that can affect a city's economy, especially a small city like Sioux Falls. For now, people like Lee will be watching closely to see what the South Dakota legislature does next with the bill.
The NCAA's unique role
Proponents believe the laws will keep girls and women's sports free of unfair competition. Opponents point out that overwhelmingly, the bill's backers can't show examples of transgender women's participation creating fairness issues in their own states and that these laws may further marginalize transgender youth.

The NCAA is uniquely situated in this debate in that it is an economic force and a sporting organization - one that already has a policy on transgender athletes. That 2011 policy does allow transgender athletes to participate on their gender's teams.

"The NCAA kind of is one of the places that a lot of sporting organizations look to as far as policies, and that they have backed that up by saying, you know, 'You're opposing our NCAA policies, so we're pulling our tournaments out,' has actually played a role," said Amy Bedient, a board member at transgender advocacy organization the Transformation Project.

Idaho passed the country's first transgender sports ban last year. The NCAA came out against that bill, calling it "harmful to transgender student athletes."

As a result of the law, pro-LGBTQ groups asked the NCAA to move 2021 men's March Madness games from Boise. After a judge blocked the law, the NCAA Board of Governors said it was "premature to act," and said it would "continue to monitor the potential impact of this law," as Outsports reported.

But then, the question of moving those basketball games from the state was ultimately moot after the pandemic caused all games to be moved to Indiana. That leaves many wondering if and how the NCAA might take action in other states now.

More than 500 student athletes have signed onto a letter asking the NCAA not to host events in states with these laws.

Meanwhile, Republican Montana state Rep. John Fuller, who sponsored one transgender sports bill, says he's not worried.

"[Is] a sovereign state of Montana going to kowtow to what I consider the empty threats of a semi-professional athletic association? No," he said. "And with 20 other states passing similar legislation, I don't think the NCAA is going to weigh in."

In a statement to NPR, the NCAA said it, quote, "continues to closely monitor state bills that impact transgender student athlete participation."

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NCAA Looms Large In Debate Over Transgender Sports Restrictions

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subscribe to The NPR Politics Podcast podcast When the South Dakota state legislature passed HB 1217 in early March, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem tweeted that she was "excited" to sign it. That bill would have stopped transgender girls and women from playing on sports teams designated for girls and women.

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Throughout the country, roughly 35 bills have been introduced by state legislators that would limit or prohibit transgender women from competing in women's athletics, according to the LGBTQ rights group Freedom for All Americans. That's up from only two in 2019.

The latest action in this push came last week, when Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed into law the "Mississippi Fairness Act." The law prohibits schools from allowing transgender female students to compete in female sports and cites "inherent differences between men and women" as one of the reasons to block these athletes from competition.

The often heated debates around these bills have centered on whether transgender women and girls have an unfair advantage over cisgender women - a term used for those who identify with the sex assigned to them at birth.

Proponents say the legislation is needed in order to maintain fairness in women's athletics by reducing what they believe is an inherent competitive edge of trans athletes who identify as female. Critics call that a false argument and say the proposals are being used as a way to discriminate against transgender Americans. These proposals, they say, also risk opening the door to humiliating treatment of women and girls who don't fit culturally-accepted notions of femininity.

Often missing from the culture-war aspect of the debate is a focus on the type of questions that Dr. Eric Vilain has spent much of his career researching. Vilain, a pediatrician and geneticist who studies sex differences in athletes, says there are no good faith reasons to limit transgender women's participation in sports, especially at the high school level. Vilain has advised both the International Olympic Committee and the NCAA, and says these laws generally aren't based in scientific evidence, but rather "target women who have either a different biology or ... simply look different."

Vilain joined NPR's Michel Martin earlier this week for a discussion about the science surrounding trans athletes. Below are excerpts from that conversation, edited in parts for clarity and length.

Interview Highlights
Supporters of these bills say they are meant to eliminate any competitive advantage that transgender athletes may have. So I'd like to ask you if there is data on this and what does it show?
We know that men have, on average, an advantage in performance in athletics of about 10% to 12% over women, which the sports authorities have attributed to differences in levels of a male hormone called testosterone. But the question is whether there is in real life, during actual competitions, an advantage of performance linked to this male hormone and whether trans athletes are systematically winning all competitions. The answer to this latter question, are trans athletes winning everything, is simple - that's not the case. And higher levels of the male hormone testosterone are associated with better performance only in a very small number of athletic disciplines: 400 meters, 800 meters, hammer throw, pole vault - and it certainly does not explain the whole 10% difference.

And lastly, I would say that every sport requires different talents and anatomies for success. So I think we should focus on celebrating this diversity, rather than focusing on relative notions of fairness. For example, the body of a marathon runner is extremely different from the body of a shot put champion, and a transwoman athlete may have some advantage on the basketball field because of her height, but would be at a disadvantage in gymnastics. So it's complicated.
In your view, because you have advised the NCAA on this as well as the International Olympic Committee, is there a reason to limit the participation of transgender athletes at the high school level or perhaps even at the collegiate level? Is there any good faith reason to do that?
I don't think so. First, I will say that there is a huge difference between elite sports and sports in schools. Sports in schools are supposed to be primarily about inclusivity, setting individual goals, collective goals and well-being. And it is not supposed to be about crushing the competition. But if we want to make it this way, then the rules still need to be inclusive, or at least not come up with arguments that are not based in science. So one of the major issues in school - and of course in the elite world - is that binary categories make it quite difficult to come up with reasonable eligibility regulations. And they do create a lot of frustrations. So one way out of this could be opening up categories. That would be a way to explore different ways, a path to do sports competitions, especially in schools. However, adding categories needs to be well thought out and done with equal access to benefits, such as scholarships. Otherwise, it would create categories of second class citizens, which is certainly not a good thing.
One of the groups that has come out against these types of laws is the National Women's Law Center. They wrote a brief against a bill in Idaho that seeks to ban transgender girls from participating in youth female sports. And in it, they write, "The law allows anyone for any reason to question whether a student athlete is a woman or girl. And then the student has to verify her gender by undergoing invasive testing, which could include a gynecological exam, blood work or chromosome testing." And one of the plaintiffs was a plaintiff named Jane Doe, who was a cisgender female athlete, but she doesn't normally wear skirts or dresses and has an athletic build. And they're saying that under a law like this, somebody could just ask or insist that this athlete undergo one of these exams to prove her gender, that that's inherently harmful and serves no legitimate purpose. What do you say to that?
You know, it's interesting because in the field of sports, there's a long history of discrimination that targets women that look different. Again, the science of whether testosterone in real life is actually providing an advantage in competition is not clearly established. But more disturbingly is that all these rules at the elite level have affected women - not all women, but women with a Y chromosome. And often, it's triggered by women who look different. So I'm a little disturbed to hear that these issues at the elite level are now reaching the middle and high schools and colleges.
You helped the NCAA shape their guidelines for the inclusion of transgender athletes in 2011. You also advise the International Olympic Committee on similar issues. What do you look at when determining what makes a certain sport fair, especially given an eye to both fairness and inclusivity?
If we want to think about fairness, we should look first at the principles of the Olympic charter. It says every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport without discrimination of any kind. And in the Olympic spirit, what's true for schools should be true for colleges and should be for the elite level. And there is really a long journey of athletes with gender variations that are facing increasing rulings that are often discriminatory and not based on science. And they should inspire us to consider the full complexity of interpretation of data and cherish our more treasured values, which I would say in science is evidence, and of course embrace inclusivity.

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Wave Of Bills To Block Trans Athletes Has No Basis In Science, Researcher Says

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Throughout the country, roughly 35 bills have been introduced by state legislators that would limit or prohibit transgender women from competing in women's athletics, according to the LGBTQ rights group Freedom for All Americans. That's up from only two in 2019.

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Women in sports have come a long way since Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Billie Jean King. Yet the financial distance between today's female pros and their male counterparts, whose earnings have soared into the stratosphere, is probably larger than ever.

What accounts for this? Is it sex discrimination, inexorable market forces or some combination of the two?

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What's Behind the Gender Pay Gap in Sports?

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Women in sports have come a long way since Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Billie Jean King. Yet the financial distance between today's female pros and their male counterparts, whose earnings have soared into the stratosphere, is probably larger than ever. What accounts for this?

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Abstract

In the United States, pro-choice supporters contend that the desire of pro-life supporters to protect the life of the fetus ends at birth and that thereafter they ignore the health and well-being of infants and children. This study examines the question of whether infants and children fare better in U.S. states that have the most restrictive abortion laws. Eighteen indicators of infant/child health, family, economic, and educational status are analyzed. The empirical evidence finds that states with the most antiabortion policies are also the same states that have significantly lower indicators of infant/child well-being. This supports the contention by pro-choice supporters that efforts by pro-life supporters to protect the life of the fetus end at birth.

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national center for biotechnology information

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Pro-Choice Versus Pro-Life: The Relationship Between State Abortion Policy and Child Well-Being in the United States - PubMed

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In the United States, pro-choice supporters contend that the desire of pro-life supporters to protect the life of the fetus ends at birth and that thereafter they ignore the health and well-being of infants and children. This study examines the question of whether infants and children fare better in ...

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Georgetown Environment Initiative for providing support for the workshop that launched this project; the Georgetown Humanities Initiative for fostering dialogue between co-authors at Georgetown University; and R. Hoffmann, J. Luterbacher, J. R. McNeill and S. White for comments and criticism. Audiences at the University of Arizona, Georgetown University, the University of Manitoba and the University of Texas at Austin provided comments that improved this article. K.A. acknowledges support from NSF grants CNH- 0908971 and CNH-1210360; K.K. acknowledges support from the Andrea von Braun Foundation; M.B. acknowledges support from the Volkswagen Foundation's Freigeist Fellowship 'The Dantean Anomaly'; and E.X. acknowledges support from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) projects ClimXtreme/CROP and RegIKlim/NUKLEUS.

Author information

Affiliations

1. Department of History, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

Dagomar Degroot, Jakob Burnham, Kathryn de Luna, Emma Moesswilde & Timothy Newfield

2. School of Geography, Development, and Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

Kevin Anchukaitis

3. Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

Kevin Anchukaitis

4. Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig, Germany

Martin Bauch

5. School of European Languages, Culture and Society, University College London, London, UK

Fred Carnegy

6. Northwest Institute of Historical Environment and Socio-Economic Development, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China

Jianxin Cui

7. Institute of History and Political Sciences, University of Białystok, Białystok, Poland

Piotr Guzowski

8. Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

George Hambrecht

9. Institute of History, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Heli Huhtamaa

10. Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Heli Huhtamaa

11. Paleo-Science and History Independent Research Group, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany

Adam Izdebski

12. Institute of History, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Krakow, Poland

Adam Izdebski

13. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany

Katrin Kleemann

14. Department of History, University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Katrin Kleemann

15. Department of Biology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

Naresh Neupane & Timothy Newfield

16. Department of Social Sciences, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Qing Pei

17. Department of Geography, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany

Elena Xoplaki

18. Center for International Development and Environmental Research, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany

Elena Xoplaki

19. Department of History, California State University Northridge, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Natale Zappia

20. Institute for Sustainability, California State University Northridge, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Natale Zappia

Contributions

D.D. designed the study, organized and attended the planning workshop, revised the case studies, wrote complete paper drafts, and created all tables and diagrams. K.A., M.B., J.B., K.d.L., K.K., T.N., E.X. and Q.P. attended the workshop and revised the study design. K.A. wrote sections on palaeoclimate and created all figures using climate reconstructions. E.M., N.N. K.A. and P.G. interpreted models and statistics. M.B., J.B., F.C., J.C., D.D., K.d.L., G.H., H.H., A.I., K.K., T.N., Q.P., E.X. and N.Z. contributed and revised case studies. K.A., D.D., K.d.L., G.H., H.H., A.I., K.K., T.N. and E.X. revised paper drafts.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dagomar Degroot.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature thanks Manon Bajard, Michael Frachetti, Markus Stoffel and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Cite this article

Degroot, D., Anchukaitis, K., Bauch, M. et al. Towards a rigorous understanding of societal responses to climate change. Nature 591, 539-550 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03190-2
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Towards a rigorous understanding of societal responses to climate change

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A large scholarship currently holds that before the onset of anthropogenic global warming, natural climatic changes long provoked subsistence crises and, occasionally, civilizational collapses among human societies. This scholarship, which we term the 'history of climate and society' (HCS), is pursued by researchers from a wide range of disciplines, including archaeologists, economists, geneticists, geographers, historians, linguists and palaeoclimatologists.

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Learn more and take action to fight for reproductive freedom.

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Some American women see giving up their babies as more emotionally painful than terminating their pregnancies.

Along the highways of states where support for abortion is at its lowest, it's not uncommon to see road signs that say choose adoption and similar messages. The signs capture a preferred anti-abortion retort to outcries over abortion restrictions, like the kind Georgia and Alabama just passed: Women with unwanted pregnancies should find adoptive families.

Adoption is a choice that certain women who don't wish to keep their babies enter into happily. Some women find abortion to be anathema and rule it out among their options for an unwanted pregnancy. And for women considering abortion who ultimately settle on adoption, the process often benefits everyone involved.

Of course, adoption is not a reasonable option for all pregnant women. Some girls and women would imperil their health if they carried a baby to term. Many pro-abortion-rights people believe it is immoral to compel a woman to carry a pregnancy she does not want, especially if that pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. And some studies show that abortion is medically safer than childbirth.

But even among American women for whom carrying a child to term would be safe, adoption is a remarkably unpopular course of action. Though exact estimates for all women are hard to come by, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that among never-married women, about 9 percent chose adoption before 1973, when Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. (The figure was higher for white women: 19 percent.) By the mid-1980s, the figure had dropped to 2 percent, and it was just 1 percent by 2002, the last year the CDC data captured. In 2014, only 18,000 children under the age of 2 were placed with adoption agencies. By comparison, there are about 1 million abortions each year.

The available research on adoption's relative unpopularity is still limited. But the sociological studies that exist suggest that some women who are deciding between adoption and abortion find adoption to be more emotionally painful than abortion. And the reason complicates the narrative around abortion on both sides.
Read: Three children, two abortions
For the most part, women are not choosing abortion instead of adoption. In fact, both adoption and abortion rates have fallen over time, while births to unmarried women have risen over the past few decades. This suggests to some researchers that women are choosing between abortion and parenting, and more and more, unmarried women are choosing parenting. "Women just generally aren't interested in adoption as a reproductive choice," says Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research group of the University of California at San Francisco. "It's an extremely rare pregnancy decision."

The move away from adoption is part of the historical trend toward reduced societal stigma for unwed mothers. Today, women who are inclined to go through with a pregnancy are simply keeping their babies. In a 1992 story about the drop in adoption placements, Debra Kalmuss, a professor at the Columbia University School of Public Health, told The New York Times that in past decades, many unmarried women had been sequestered during their pregnancies. The babies were placed with adoption agencies, and the women returned to their normal life. "Relinquishing a baby for adoption really ceased to be a mainstream choice after abortion became legal," Kalmuss told the paper.

Meanwhile, many pregnant women who don't wish to become mothers seem to have a dim view of the adoption process, according to a study that Sisson and her colleagues published in 2017 in the journal Women's Health Issues. The researchers relied on the Turnaway Study, a five-year, longitudinal look at women who sought abortions at 30 U.S. clinics from 2008 to 2010. The authors interviewed 956 women, 161 of whom went on to give birth, and 15 of whom chose adoption. They also had more in-depth conversations with 31 of those women, 16 of whom received abortions, and the rest who did not.

The authors note that the women seem to consider their options sequentially: They first seek abortion, and if they can't afford or access one, they might then consider adoption. A week after being denied an abortion, 14 percent of the women said they were considering putting the baby up for adoption instead. But ultimately, only 9 percent of the women who were denied an abortion chose adoption. The majority simply went on to parent.

Meanwhile, none of the 16 women who got abortions were at all interested in adoption at any point. Some of their reasons were practical: "Adoption was often ruled out because they felt it was not right for them, because their partner would not be interested, because they had health reasons for not wanting to carry to term, or because they believed there were already enough children in need of homes," the authors write.

The mothers who did choose adoption ultimately reported that they were happy with their decision. But Sisson told me that, at least initially, "adoption can be deeply traumatic. Uniformly, the birth mothers experience grief after placement. It's a very hard choice and one that a lot of women are not interested in making."

In the study, several women expressed an unwillingness to part with a baby they had carried to term and given birth to. "I had too many feelings for her to give [her] to someone I barely knew," one woman said. Some said they would feel guilty placing their children with adoption agencies, and one even imagined the fully grown child coming back one day and interrogating her about her choice. "By the time they are delivering the child, women feel bonded to their pregnancies and their children," Sisson said.

Sisson also performed a small study on mothers who placed their children with adoption agencies from 1962 to 2009. These women, she writes, were also largely choosing between abortion and parenting. "Rarely was adoption the preferred course of action; it emerged as a solution when women felt they had no other options," Sisson wrote. Even among these women, who were not recruited from abortion clinics, a majority of the participants described their adoption experiences as "predominantly negative." Most of the negative experiences involved "closed" adoptions, in which the birth parents have no contact with the child. Today, "open" adoptions are more common, and many experts and families believe that they create healthier situations for parents and children. But arguably every kind of adoption comes with its own complications.

Sisson's findings echo a study published in 2008 of 38 women who were getting abortions. It found that a quarter of the women had considered adoption, but they largely regarded it as too emotionally distressing. "Respondents said that the thought of one's child being out in the world without knowing whether it was being taken care of or who was taking care of it was more guilt inducing than having an abortion," wrote the authors, who are researchers from the abortion-rights think tank the Guttmacher Institute. In another Guttmacher study of women seeking abortions, in 2005, one-third of women considered adoption but "concluded that it was a morally unconscionable option because giving one's child away is wrong."

Like in Sisson's paper, one respondent in the 2008 study referenced the bond she expected to form with the baby as the factor that prevented her from going with adoption. "If I go that far, I'm attached. I cannot just give my baby away to someone," said an unmarried, 24-year-old mother of two.

I reached out to National Right to Life for comment about these studies, and will update this story if I hear back from them. Chuck Johnson, the president of the National Council for Adoption, an adoption-advocacy group, says part of the reason for adoption's unpopularity might be that both anti-abortion and pro-abortion-rights groups fail to counsel pregnant women adequately about adoption. According to the group's statistics, the referral rate to adoption agencies for both kinds of centers is about 1 percent.
Read: Illegal abortion will mean abortion by mail
What's more, many people view adoption as "a difficult decision for the mother," Johnson told me via email. "Although the general public views adoption as a good outcome for the child and the adopting family, the idea that adoption promotes the woman's best interests is not as fully embraced by those that are on [the] front lines [of] options counseling-or by the mother herself or her family."

In the end, this line of research is not especially vindicating for either the defenders or opponents of abortion rights. Rightly or wrongly, very few women who desire abortions actually see adoption as a favorable alternative. In fact, some of these papers end with policy recommendations along these lines: "The ongoing promotion of adoption by the American anti-abortion movement is unlikely to impact women's abortion decisions, because very few women pursuing abortion are interested in adoption," Sisson and her colleagues write.

But the reason the women don't choose adoption is not great for the pro-choice side, either. Some of these women report feeling bonded with their fetuses, or at least too attached to give up the resulting baby. That's an inconvenient point if you feel that a fetus is nothing more than a collection of cells, and that what happens to it before viability is basically immaterial.

Together, the results suggest that if the rate of unintended pregnancies remains constant, but abortion restrictions are tightened, the U.S. won't necessarily see a spike in domestic adoptions. Instead, there are likely be more mothers who initially didn't want to give birth to their babies, but decide to raise them nonetheless.

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columbia university school of public health

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Why So Many Women Choose Abortion Over Adoption

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Some American women see giving up their babies as more emotionally painful than terminating their pregnancies. Along the highways of states where support for abortion is at its lowest, it's not uncommon to see road signs that say choose adoption and similar messages.

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FLUSHING, N.Y.-Before sunset Monday, a few dozen Asian-Americans outfitted in neon vests and jackets combed the streets of this New York City neighborhood.

They weren't police officers. They were students, retail workers and retirees equipped with little more than a cellphone in the event they came across someone being harassed or attacked. Their mission: to stop would-be attackers from hurting other Asians, whether it be by calling the police for help or stepping in themselves.

"It's made me feel sick," said volunteer Wan Chen, 37, of the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes around the country. "So this is the time we need to speak up and try our best to help. If anyone tries to do anything, maybe they'll think twice."

Volunteer groups such as this one have sprung up around the U.S., patrolling the streets of Asian communities from New York City to Oakland, Calif. They have multiple goals: to escort individuals worried about their safety where they need to go, check in on community members, and if needed, intervene if they see someone being harassed.

Cities around the country have seen upticks in hate crimes against Asians since the start of the pandemic. One analysis conducted by researchers at California State University, San Bernardino, found hate crimes targeting Asians in 16 of the largest U.S. cities increased 149% between 2019 and 2020. Over the same period, overall reports of hate crimes declined by 7%, the researchers found.

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Volunteers Take to Streets to Form Patrols After Anti-Asian Attacks

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FLUSHING, N.Y.-Before sunset Monday, a few dozen Asian-Americans outfitted in neon vests and jackets combed the streets of this New York City neighborhood. They weren't police officers. They were students, retail workers and retirees equipped with little more than a cellphone in the event they came across someone being harassed or attacked.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) - A controversial transgender bathroom bill is working its way through the Tennessee General Assembly.

The measure would require businesses to post signs outside any bathrooms considered "inclusive."

The bill is drawing anger from civil rights activists who say this is yet another attack on a group of people already under scrutiny.

Transgender rights advocates celebrated House Bill 1182 being taken off of the House calendar.

The bill requires a notice to be placed in plain view inside public and private businesses letting people know if a bathroom allows for transgender individuals to use them.

"This bill basically is trying to draw attention to transgender people in a negative way and draw attention in a negative way to businesses that allow transgender people to use the bathroom," Chris Sanders, the Executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project said.

But the celebration may have come too soon. House bill sponsor Representative Tim Rudd says the bill is still alive.

"It's coming back," Rudd said. The bill is being amended.

The Murfreesboro lawmaker says the bill will protect against potential sexual predators.

"If we don't do something like this, then sexual predators could take advantage of this new law or this new right that would be granted to transgenders, but in no way is this meant to limit transgender access to a restroom it's simply warning that the opposite sex could be in the restroom," he said.

Opponents say the bill will allow for another avenue to discriminate against transgender individuals.

"Transgender people already face a great deal of discrimination in our society and the last thing they need is their state government coming after them and adding to that," Sanders said.

The amended bill will not include single stall bathrooms and requires the signs be posted in plain view on bathroom doors.

Republican Senator Paul Rose is the primary sponsor of a senate version of the bill.

"I would hate to see Tennessee passing any of these anti-trans bills mainly because of the impact on trans people, but it will affect all of us," Sanders said.

Adding, businesses are taking notice of the anti-trans bills, and that could ultimately hurt the economy.

Rudd says the changes he's making are pro-business.

"I've talked to the business community and matter of fact some changes were made to protect the businesses like the 30-day grace period and not being on the front of the building," Rudd said.

A bill banning transgender athletes from competing in middle in high school sports is expected to considered as soon as Thursday on the house floor.

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Transgender bathroom 'sign' bill being amended, not pulled from consideration

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) - A controversial transgender bathroom bill is working its way through the Tennessee General Assembly. The measure would require businesses to post signs outside any bathrooms considered "inclusive." The bill is drawing anger from civil rights activists who say this is yet another attack on a group of people already under scrutiny.

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Each person has a unique reason to be pro-choice. Here are some of ours.

I am pro-choice because I don't think there is any reason why a woman should have to face all the consequences from something she did not do alone. If a guy can get a woman pregnant and then run away, there is no reason why she should be the one responsible for everything. Having more options puts a woman on more equal footing with men, instead of being someone of whom they can take advantage. In addition, I believe that it is best for a child to not be born at all than to be born hated, to a mother who is forced to have him because she has no choice, and not because she wants the child.
Undergraduate Student in Chemistry

The single most important factor for women's advancement in society is our ability to control our fertility. Without that, we are trapped by the realities of pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing; rather than a privilege and a gift, these aspects of being female become an unbearable burden. Attempts to limit women's reproductive freedom are no more than a gambit to keep women "in their place"-- a gambit in the guise of religious moralism. True, the guise can run deep, and many so-called "pro-lifers" genuinely believe that killing a fetus is equivalent to killing a human being. But such religious feeling has no place in the public policies of a country that claims to separate church and state. In the words of supreme court justices O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." No one wants to plan an abortion. But the best way to prevent abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies: through sex education, improved distribution of birth control, and general empowerment of women to shape our own individual lives.
Graduate Student in Biology

I think one of the biggest problems with the abortion debate is that the two sides aren't in direct opposition. The pro-life movement seeks to force their moral beliefs on others - grounded in their own religion or personal philosophy. The pro-choice movement doesn't make claims on the morality of abortion - we leave that as an individual choice for every woman faced with an unwanted pregnancy. If they feel abortion is wrong and they want to give their child up for adoption, or keep it, we will support their decision. Pro-life people say "Abortion is wrong;" we only say "Abortion is." Making abortion illegal won't stop abortions from happening, it will only stop them from being safe. 43% of abortions worldwide are illegal. Changing laws doesn't solve the problem, making contraception available and affordable does. If we are to maintain the separation of church and state so central to our nation's identity, we cannot have some people forcing their beliefs on us all.
Undergraduate Student in Linguistics and Philosophy

I believe strongly in taking responsibilities for one's actions. I believe that people should practice safe sex or abstinence. And I believe that the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy can be worse than the "benefits" of having irresponsible sex. However, in some cases, I believe that abortion IS taking responsibility. Bringing an unwanted child into the world is irresponsible. I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-choice. I believe that every woman should decide what to do with her own body without restrictions placed on her by a strongly religious government that ironically preaches the 200 year old doctrine of the separation of church and state. On that note, I think religious freedom and education are also a constitutional right of every citizen, but they do not belong in the hospital room. Reproductive freedom is just as sacred and constitutional as religious freedom. And I am not the opposite of "pro-life." I love life and I love babies, but an unwanted life can be worse than no life at all. I think safe sex and abstinence education is needed. Like many pro-choice believers, I want the number of abortions to be limited, or at least I want to limit the overwhelming need for abortions.
Graduate Student in Materials Science and Engineering

I'm pro-choice because it's the only option that isn't poisoned with misogyny. I believe that we are responsible for justifying our beliefs, and just as one cannot claim that a given race is inferior to another because "it's what I believe", I don't think one can argue that old white men can assert control over a woman's uterus -- and future -- because they claim to believe that a fetus is comparable to a human life. That belief is so clearly a result of the fact that only women can get pregnant and only women would ever have to carry an unwanted fetus to term that I find it laughable that anyone claims being anti-choice has anything to do with concern for potential life. Can anyone really believe that abortion would even be an issue if men had to face the possibility of giving birth to and raising a child because of one night of failed contraception?
I think Florynce Kennedy said it best: "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."
Undergraduate Student in Mathematics

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Each person has a unique reason to be pro-choice. Here are some of ours. I am pro-choice because I don't think there is any reason why a woman should have to face all the consequences from something she did not do alone.

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Inside the fight for equal pay for female athletes

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Iconic athletes Billie Jean King, Nneka Ogwumike and Kendall Coyne Schofield discuss the fight for pay equity and the disparity in women's sports.

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Home - Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. Current news and data streams about global warming and climate change from NASA.

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Public transit offers a simple way for cities to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but the pandemic has pushed ridership, and revenue, off a cliff in many big systems.

On the London Underground, Piccadilly Circus station is nearly vacant on a weekday morning, while the Delhi Metro is ferrying fewer than half of the riders it used to. In Rio, unpaid bus drivers have gone on strike. New York City subway traffic is just a third of what it was before the pandemic.

A year into the coronavirus pandemic, public transit is hanging by a thread in many cities around the world. Riders remain at home or they remain fearful of boarding buses and trains. And without their fares, public transit revenues have fallen off a cliff. In some places service has been cut, fares have gone up and transit workers are facing the prospect of layoffs.

That's a disaster for the world's ability to address that other global crisis: climate change. Public transit offers a relatively simple way for cities to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention a way to improve air quality, noise and congestion in the world's busiest cities.

"We are facing maybe the most important crisis in the public transit sector in different parts of the world," said Sérgio Avelleda, the director of urban mobility for the World Resources Institute and a former transport secretary for São Paulo, Brazil. "It's urgent to act."

But act how? Transit agencies that have been bailed out by the government are wondering how long the generosity will last, and almost everywhere, transportation experts are scrambling to figure out how to better adapt public transit to the needs of riders as cities begin to emerge from the pandemic.

There are a few outliers. In Shanghai, for example, public transit numbers took a nosedive in February 2020, but riders have returned as new coronavirus infections remain low and the economy rebounds.

But the picture is grim in many more cities.

On the Paris Métro, ridership was just over half of normal in the first two months of this year. Île-de-France Mobilités, the transport agency for the greater Paris area, said it lost 2.6 billion euros, or over $3 billion, last year. The agency is projecting a shortfall of an additional billion euros this year.

In Amsterdam, ridership numbers on the city's trams and buses are around a third of normal, and the transit agency's website counsels people to "only travel when absolutely necessary." In Rome, Metro ridership remains below half of prepandemic levels.

One of the busiest metro systems in the world, the London Underground, which normally clocks around four million journeys every weekday, is currently operating at around 20 percent of its normal capacity. Buses are a bit more populated, running around 40 percent of normal. The city transit agency, which had once projected a budget surplus for 2020, has instead been relying on government bailouts since the pandemic hit. It expects it will take at least two years to see public transit usage return to prepandemic levels.

"It's been pretty devastating, to be perfectly honest," said Alex Williams, director of city planning for Transport for London. "One of our concerns are substantial declines in public transport and higher levels of car use."

London is one of a handful of cities around the world with a congestion tax designed to reduce car traffic in the city center. Both London and Paris sought to use lockdowns to expand bike lanes.

In the Indian capital, New Delhi, the subway reopened last September after a suspension of many months. Ridership in February 2021 hovered under 2.6 million, compared with more than 5.7 million for the same month the year before, and bus traffic stood at just over half of prepandemic levels.

Lucky are those agencies, as in India and across Europe, that are subsidized by their governments. There's even more distress in cities where people rely in large part on private bus companies.

In Lagos, Nigeria, fares have doubled on private bus lines for rides longer than a kilometer, or a bit more than half a mile.

In Rio de Janeiro, a once-celebrated bus network is in a shambles. The private company that runs the system has cut over a third of its fleet and laid off 800 employees as the number of passengers has shrunk by half since last March, according to the city transportation department. Strikes by bus drivers have made bus travel even slower and more chaotic.

"I have never seen anything like it," said José Carlos Sacramento, 68, a leader of a bus workers union in Rio, who has been working in public transportation for five decades. "I think it might never go back to normal."

City officials said they hope to use the crisis as an opportunity to revamp the system, including by persuading the private bus companies to be more transparent about their operations in exchange for possible financial help from the government.

After all, said Maína Celidonio, the head of the city transportation department, a clean, efficient bus system is critical for Rio to not only reduce its carbon emissions but also to clean its air. "It's not just an environmental issue, but a public health issue," Ms. Celidonio said.

The bigger challenge for all cities is to fix their public transit systems now so that passengers will return, said Mohamed Mezghani, head of the International Association of Public Transport. They could adjust peak hour service as telecommuting from home becomes more commonplace, expand bus only lanes that make commutes more efficient and comfortable or improve ventilation systems to ensure citizens that riding public transit is safe.

"Those cities that were investing, they will get out stronger," Mr. Mezghani said. "People will feel more comfortable traveling in a new modern public transit system. It's about perception in the end."

Shola Lawal and Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

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Riders Are Abandoning Buses and Trains. That's a Problem for Climate Change.

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Public transit offers a simple way for cities to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but the pandemic has pushed ridership, and revenue, off a cliff in many big systems. On the London Underground, Piccadilly Circus station is nearly vacant on a weekday morning, while the Delhi Metro is ferrying fewer than half of the riders it used to.

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I’m Helping My Korean-American Daughter Embrace Her Identity to Counter Racism (Published 2021)

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“I’m not sure Asian-American families can avoid ‘the talk’ any longer,” one expert said.

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By Andrea Januta

(Reuters) - The National Academies of Science on Thursday called for the United States to pursue research into solar geoengineering to cool the Earth's atmosphere but urged caution given that it could have risky, unintended consequences.

There is no international agreement setting standards for geoengineering, large-scale interventions that scientists say could affect precipitation patterns, agricultural productivity and food supplies worldwide.

Commonly proposed solar geoengineering strategies include spraying reflective aerosols into the atmosphere to mimic how ash clouds cool the planet after large volcanic eruptions. Other strategies include thinning high-altitude clouds to allow more heat to escape, and brightening low-altitude marine clouds to reflect additional solar energy.

The report recommends research be conducted in coordination with other nations, under strong governance, and alongside other climate mitigation efforts, such as reducing greenhouse gases.

"We're in the midst of a climate crisis. The impacts of climate change are growing, and the challenge in front of us is to limit those impacts," said Peter Frumhoff, the director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and one of the committee members involved in the report.

The report on solar geoengineering is "an effort to lay the groundwork for more informed decisions about whether or not these approaches should be considered part of the set of tools in our toolkit," he said. "It's important to understand the full suite of responses to climate change, given how close we are to catastrophic risks."

Frumhoff emphasized that primary climate change efforts should remain focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which are the root cause of climate change.

These recommendations follow two years of quickly expanding research in the field, especially in the United States. In December 2019, Congress gave the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration $4 million to study geoengineering techniques.

Last year the U.S.-based nonprofit SilverLining provided $3 million in grants to various organizations to look into solar geoengineering. This June, Harvard scientists plan to fly a balloon above Sweden in a geoengineering experiment. While the researchers will not release particles to block the sun's energy, the experiment will explore the feasibility of doing so.

These methods have promise but also carry risks, given the potential for unknown global consequences on temperature and weather patterns.

Among the concerns are how the science's effects could be distributed unequally around the globe.

"The world is in the place we're in because we've had this concentration of wealth and power. This would actually exacerbate and further concentrate power among a few," said Jennie Stephens, director of Northeastern University's School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. "This is something that a few elites are going to control, and it's going to have impacts on everybody else."

(Reporting by Andrea Januta in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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U.S. should research solar geoengineering to fight climate change but exercise caution, scientists say

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The National Academies of Science on Thursday called for the United States to pursue research into solar geoengineering to cool the Earth's atmosphere but urged caution given that it could have risky, unintended consequences. There is no international agreement setting standards for geoengineering, large-scale interventions that scientists say could affect precipitation patterns, agricultural productivity and food supplies worldwide.

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The oil and gas industry's largest trade group on Thursday endorsed a price on planet-warming carbon emissions, marking a major shift after the group long resisted regulatory action on climate change.

The American Petroleum Institute's move comes as President Joe Biden prepares to unveil a sweeping infrastructure proposal focused on curbing greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning to clean energy.

In a virtual meeting with White House officials on Monday, industry leaders from companies such as ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, along with API, also signaled support for market-based carbon pricing.

The endorsement represents a major shift in the industry's strategy on the issue of climate change and a recognition of the new administration's regulation measures following former President Donald Trump's deregulation efforts aimed at helping U.S. producers.

For instance, Biden in January issued an executive order to halt new oil and gas leasing on federal lands, a move that faced resistance from producers and a slew of Republican-led states.

The API's endorsement also signals that the industry - which emits a great deal of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide - would prefer a quantifiable cost associated with climate policy rather than ongoing regulations.

The industry's plan came together over the last 18 months and includes advocating for federal funding for advanced technologies, further mitigating emissions from operations, advancing cleaner fuels and increasing transparency by expanding the use of ESG reporting guidance.

The API was a staunch opponent of a carbon tax when Congress last debated the issue nearly a decade ago.

"The world has changed since Congress has had this debate," said API President and CEO Mike Sommers.

The industry has faced growing pressure by investors to measure its contribution to climate change. And the Biden administration has vowed to put the U.S. on a path toward net-zero emissions by 2050.

While Democrats are still working on the details of the upcoming infrastructure proposal, it's expected to cost between $2 trillion and $3 trillion and include $400 billion in funding for clean energy and innovation.

A carbon tax could also produce funding to help pay for the infrastructure plan. The Tax Foundation estimates that a tax on carbon emissions at a rate of $50 per metric ton, with an annual growth rate of 5%, could generate $1.87 trillion in additional federal revenue over 10 years.

The API said it would not support a tax that would fund other programs.

"To the extent that a new carbon tax would be put into place to fund X program ... that's not what we're talking about, and that's not what we would support," Sommers said. He added that the industry envisions changes to existing regulations following a carbon price policy endorsement.

Some environmental groups see it as an industry ploy to offer a solution to the carbon problem and stay engaged in the debate.

David Doniger, climate and clean energy program director at the National Resources Defense Council, said the move reminds him of the maxim that it's better to be at the table than on the menu.

"This is an effort to get to the table, rather than be overlooked and run roughshod, but it's not very definite yet. I don't know what they're offering to really support," Doniger said.

The NRDC also said it opposes removing strong pollution or efficiency regulations in exchange for a price on carbon.

"That's like the old Wimpy with the hamburgers: I'll gladly have a hamburger today and pay you back next Tuesday," Doniger said. "We're not interested in trading one or more of the existing tools."

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American Petroleum Institute endorses carbon pricing as industry faces pressure on curbing emissions

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The oil and gas industry's largest trade group on Thursday endorsed a price on planet-warming carbon emissions, marking a major shift after the group long resisted regulatory action on climate change. The American Petroleum Institute's move comes as President Joe Biden prepares to unveil a sweeping infrastructure proposal focused on curbing greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning to clean energy.

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Women in sports have come a long way since Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Billie Jean King. Yet the financial distance between today's female pros and their male counterparts, whose earnings have soared into the stratosphere, is probably larger than ever.

What accounts for this? Is it sex discrimination, inexorable market forces or some combination of the two?

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What's Behind the Gender Pay Gap in Sports?

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Women in sports have come a long way since Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Billie Jean King. Yet the financial distance between today's female pros and their male counterparts, whose earnings have soared into the stratosphere, is probably larger than ever. What accounts for this?

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Is it true that the only arguments against abortion are strictly based on religious ethical standards? Or can a case be made against abortion that does not depend on a belief in God? The pro-life argument is clear for Christians, as we believe that God is the Author of Life and that human beings have dignity and worth because we are made in God's image. But for Christians to be persuasive in a secular world, we must also be equipped with the secular arguments against abortion.

This brochure will equip you with pro-life arguments based in science, the law, and women's rights that will empower you to make a persuasive case to any audience that unborn children have the right to life.

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The Best Pro-Life Arguments for Secular Audiences

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Is it true that the only arguments against abortion are strictly based on religious ethical standards? Or can a case be made against abortion that does not depend on a belief in God? The pro-life argument is clear for Christians, as we believe that God is the Author of Life and that human beings have dignity and worth because we are made in God's image.

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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday called climate change a "crisis multiplier" that will exacerbate "droughts and flooding" and spur global migration, as the military alliance announced efforts to incorporate climate change mitigation into its mission.

In a new interview, Oscar-winning actor and water equity philanthropist Matt Damon said the link between climate change and water scarcity will deepen over the coming years and predominantly impact the world's most impoverished communities.

When asked about the connection between climate change and water scarcity, Damon pointed to low-income people in developing countries. Currently, 2.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water.

"Those are the people that we're dealing with, those are the people that we're trying to reach, and those are the people who are going to feel the effects of [climate change] more than anybody," says Damon, who co-founded the nonprofit organization Water.org in 2009 and WaterEquity in 2017.

"It's always going to fall to the poorest people on Earth to bear the brunt of these things more than anybody," he adds. "That's the connection."

Climate observers expect water scarcity to worsen significantly over the coming decades. In the early to mid-2010s, 1.9 billion people, or 27% of the global population, lived in areas at risk of a severe water shortage, according to a United Nations report released last year. By 2050, that figure will increase to somewhere between 2.7 billion and 3.2 billion people.

"Water is the primary medium through which we will feel the effects of climate change," The United Nations says on its website.

'You've got to move to where the water is'

Water scarcity will also exacerbate global food insecurity, which last year worsened severely and caused "unprecedented" migration, the United Nations said in November. That trend will continue in the coming years as drought diminishes arable land and reduces crop yields, according to a report released two years ago by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"As we look at water stress, as we look at climate change, a lot of those people are going to be driven into poverty because of the tenuous access that they have to water now," says Gary White, CEO and co-founder of both Water.org and WaterEquity.

"If you are not able to get water because of a drought that's caused by climate change, you've got to move," he adds. "You've got to move to where the water is."

Damon and White spoke to Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer in an episode of " Influencers with Andy Serwer," a weekly interview series with leaders in business, politics, and entertainment.

Damon kicked off his water philanthropy with the launch of H2O Africa in 2006, while working on a documentary called "Running the Sahara," which profiled three men who attempted to traverse the Sahara Desert.

At a Clinton Global Initiative meeting two years later, Damon met White, who nearly two decades earlier had founded WaterPartners International, an organization that sought to alleviate the water crisis in Latin America, Barron's reported. The two began to discuss the possibility of a partnership and founded Water.org a year later.

Global climate migration is already underway and will increase dramatically over the rest of this century, according to an investigation released last year by The New York Times. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, more than 140 million people will move within their countries' borders due to climate change by 2050, the World Bank found.

Speaking with Yahoo Finance, White said that water scarcity plays a central role in migration that observers ultimately attribute to climate change.

"Water is the root of so much of what needs to happen for people to maintain their income and their lifestyle and their home," White says.

"When we talk about climate refugees, we are talking about water refugees, most of the time," he adds.
Read more:

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Matt Damon: Climate change will most impact 'the poorest people'

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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday called climate change a "crisis multiplier" that will exacerbate "droughts and flooding" and spur global migration, as the military alliance announced efforts to incorporate climate change mitigation into its mission.

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All The Arguments You Need: to Advocate for Equal Pay in Sports

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In our All The Arguments You Need series, we take on mindsets standing in the way of progress and rebut them with facts and logic. With the final of the FIFA Women's World Cup looming, we thought we'd do a special edition of All The Arguments You Need and explore why female athletes should be paid the same as male athletes.

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climate change could mean summer weather for half the year by the end of the century - cnn

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By the end of the century, summer weather could last half a year (and that's not a good thing)

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Summer weather could grow to half a year in length by the end of this century if no mitigation efforts are done on climate change, according to a new study. In about the past 60 years, summer has increased by 17 days on average across the globe.

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After a year defined by a global struggle against a civilization-altering crisis, it's almost too much to consider that another, even more catastrophic plight is bearing down on us. But it's impossible to overstate the magnitude of the climate crisis, which is set to radically upend the existence of every person and creature on the planet.

The parallels are more than superficial: Like the pandemic, the solutions to climate change are circumscribed by an entanglement of the state and the individual, the structural and the personal. The failures to combat it are even more profound than the ones that allowed COVID-19 to kill millions around the world. After decades of hoping the next generation would figure out how to pay down the climate debt of their parents and grandparents, cataclysm can now only be averted - or, more realistically, ameliorated - by a radical and immediate realignment of priorities at the global level (e.g., dismantling capitalism as we know it). Yet the everyday actions of individuals - every plane ride, every Big Mac, every plastic straw (just kidding, sort of) versus each bicycle trip, each vegan bowl, each reusable cup - also accrete into consequence. And the response to the pandemic from both state and person, particularly in the West, yields depressingly little hope for how we will handle the next existential challenge.

As dramatically as climate change stands to literally remap the planet, no effects will be more profound than those on ecology - which is to say, in large part, our food system. It is reshaping the life that once teemed in our oceans, and that billions of people rely on for sustenance; it's complicating the growing conditions for everything from everyday lettuce to rarefied truffles; and it's making the act of eating beef more indefensible with each passing year. Even if you've had the luxury of paying no mind to climate change, you will eventually taste it.

People get " stuck on" climate change in part because the problem feels too immense to grasp, with each contributing factor complicated by its reaction to countless others. On the surface, some people may even "win" the climate lottery - more wine! from Michigan! more truffles! from everywhere! - and some might suffer more than others - climate change will only amplify already-existing inequities. But in the end, one thing's for certain: Change is coming for all of us.

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Taking the Temperature: How Climate Change Is Reshaping the Way We Eat

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After a year defined by a global struggle against a civilization-altering crisis, it's almost too much to consider that another, even more catastrophic plight is bearing down on us. But it's impossible to overstate the magnitude of the climate crisis, which is set to radically upend the existence of every person and creature on the planet.

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fter four years under an administration that denied the climate crisis, opened public lands to oil and gas drilling and stripped protections from national monuments, the US interior department will look radically different with Deb Haaland at its helm.

Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary in US history and a member of the Laguna Pueblo, was sworn in to her post last week and has vowed to be a "fierce advocate" for public lands. Wildlife, parks and climate advocacy groups have hailed her confirmation as a major win for public lands and say that under Haaland's leadership the interior department will renew its focus on fighting the climate emergency.

"She was one of the first co-sponsors of the Green New Deal and really broadly has a bold agenda for climate justice," said Lily Gardner, a national spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement. "This is a huge and historic moment."

Haaland is charged with managing natural resources and federal lands that comprise one-fifth of the United States and are responsible for a quarter of the country's annual carbon emissions.

"Whoever becomes secretary has an opportunity to combat climate change, to take this 25% carbon that our public lands are emitting right now and eliminate that," Haaland said in an interview with HuffPost before her confirmation.

As a US representative, Haaland backed the Green New Deal and sponsored a bill that aimed to protect 30% of US lands and oceans by 2030, a commitment Biden later made by executive order. In an opening statement at her Senate confirmation hearing, Haaland said she would be an advocate for public lands, harness those lands' "clean energy potential" to create new jobs, and ensure interior department decisions are based on science.

Bringing science back to the forefront is a crucial first step, said Kristen Brengel with the National Parks Conservation Association, pointing to the National Parks Service, an agency within the interior department.

National parks are warming twice as fast as the rest of the country, said Brengel, the NPCA's vice-president of government affairs. "We're seeing the effects, whether it's invasive species, wildfires, sea level rise or wildlife being pushed out of its usual habitat." These spaces must be protected, Brengel said, and there are encouraging signs that doing so is a priority for the new administration.

The Biden administration has pledged to establish a Civilian Climate Corps to work on "conserving and restoring public lands and waters and addressing climate change" and to accelerate "responsible" development of renewable energy on public lands. The corps established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s, by way of comparison, put 3 million jobless Americans to work and helped create national park infrastructure.

In its first two months, the Biden administration has started to reverse some of Donald Trump's most controversial decisions, directing the interior department to review the boundaries of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments - a step toward restoring their protections -and paused the sale of new oil and gas leases on public lands. Biden has also asked the interior department to review that program.

The department announced last week that, as part of the review, it will hold a forum on the oil and gas program, which will allow the public to provide input and include "labor and environmental justice organizations, natural resource advocates and Indigenous organizations".

"I think the encouraging thing is they want to do something and they're being very inclusive," said David Willms, the senior director for western wildlife with the National Wildlife Federation.

The review of the oil and gas program and the development of renewable energy on public lands could help the administration reduce carbon emissions from public lands, Willms said, but that needs to be done responsibly to ensure that frontline energy communities and workers aren't left behind. Haaland has pledged to work on behalf of these workers as well as ranchers and farmers and communities harmed by pollution.

"The devil is in the details," Willms said of the administration and department's climate agenda. "We don't really know exactly what they want to propose yet, but we know they want to do something."

The National Parks Conservation Association hopes to see the department move away from the last administration's energy dominance agenda, enhance water protections, support more wildlife corridors and expand national park land. And Haaland is the right person for the job, Brengel said.

"There's no better person in terms of looking for these opportunities than Secretary Haaland," Brengel said. "We know she is dedicated ... We think there is a hopeful future here for addressing climate change."

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'A bold agenda': hopes rise for US climate change reversal as Deb Haaland sworn in

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fter four years under an administration that denied the climate crisis, opened public lands to oil and gas drilling and stripped protections from national monuments, the US interior department will look radically different with Deb Haaland at its helm.

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North Carolina Republican lawmakers introduced a bill Monday that would bar transgender students in middle and high schools and colleges from competing on sports teams that match their gender identity.

The bill, which legislators introduced in the North Carolina House of Representatives, makes the state the 29th to consider such a measure in 2021, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

One of the bill's sponsors, Republican Rep. Mark Brody, said during a news conference Tuesday that he introduced the bill to prevent cisgender female athletes from being "pushed out of female sports, and all of their records are broken, scholarships lost and benefits of excelling are diminishing before this is addressed," according to the Associated Press, though he acknowledged that he knew of no such incidents in North Carolina.

There have been 84 bills filed this legislative session that target transgender people, according to the ACLU. Most bills have focused on school extracurricular sports teams and preventing doctors from providing gender-affirming medical care to people under the age of 18.

North Carolina's bill comes five years after the state passed HB2, also known as the "bathroom bill," in 2016. That bill required North Carolinians to use restrooms that matched their sex assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity.

Quickly, business groups spoke out against HB2, which had a negative economic impact for the state. The NCAA, which regulates college sports, withdrew championship games from the state, and the NBA stripped Charlotte of hosting its All-Star Game until the law was repealed. Eventually, the legislature repealed the aspects of the law pertaining to use of bathrooms in 2017.

"This anti-transgender bill is an outlier in North Carolina, and it doesn't reflect where we are as a state," Allison Scott, director of impact and innovation at the Campaign for Southern Equality, said. "We have come so far since the days of HB2, and we're better off for it: LGBTQ people feel safer, business leaders are becoming more comfortable investing here and our communities are more inclusive and respectful. It pains me to see some lawmakers, egged on by extreme anti-transgender activists running a coordinated national attack on trans youth, trying to drag us back into an era of discrimination."

The North Carolina High School Athletic Association currently has a policy that allows for transgender students to compete on teams that match their gender identity. Students must submit a Gender Identity Request Form that allows them to be cleared to compete by the NCHSAA.

"The NCHSAA studied the issue for over a year, looking at policies in other states, talking with families, listening to medical professionals and coordinating with the athletics programs of colleges and universities," Craig White, supportive schools coordinator at the Campaign for Southern Equality, said about the policy.

North Carolina's proposal is similar to the Fairness and Women's Sports Act, which was passed in Idaho in 2020. Republican state Rep. Barbara Ehardt, the author of Idaho's bill, confirmed that the Alliance Defending Freedom helped co-write it. Since the bill's passage, a flood of similar bills have emerged, and the ADF has been linked to a group pushing model legislation as part of the Promise to America's Children initiative, which is backed by a coalition of right-wing groups.

Idaho's law has been halted by a district court following a lawsuit by the ACLU. The group has also said it plans to file similar lawsuits in states that pass legislation resembling Idaho's.

So far, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves is the only governor to have signed a trans athlete ban into law in 2021.

On March 4, Reeves said the law would "protect young girls from being forced to compete with biological males for athletic opportunities."

The sponsor of Mississippi's bill, state Sen. Angela Hill, told the Associated Press that she had been approached by "numerous coaches" who felt there was a need for a policy "because they are beginning to have some concerns of having to deal with this."

Neither Hill nor other supporters of the bill presented evidence of transgender athletes competing in Mississippi schools or universities. Reeves and Hill are Republicans.

This week South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem returned a similar bill to the state legislature asking for changes before she could sign it into law. The changes centered around the bill including collegiate athletes, which could trigger a potential challenge by the NCAA.

Noem said during a press conference Monday that South Dakota was unlikely to win any challenge from the NCAA, given that it is a private organization. She then introduced an initiative called Defend Title IX Now, which aims to bring together multiple states to challenge the NCAA's policy.
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N.C. becomes 29th state to consider transgender athlete ban

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North Carolina Republican lawmakers introduced a bill Monday that would bar transgender students in middle and high schools and colleges from competing on sports teams that match their gender identity. The bill, which legislators introduced in the North Carolina House of Representatives, makes the state the 29th to consider such a measure in 2021, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

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Illustration from "We all need the toilet: An all gender access toolkit" from the campaign that says ... [+]
Supplied: blk moody boi / Good Night Out

A new guide launched in the U.K. is hoping to reduce the harassment women and LGBTQ people face in public and office toilets.

Safe nightlife group Good Night Out and Galop, the U.K.'s LGBT anti-violence charity have published the toolkit "We all need the toilet: An all-gender access toolkit" ahead of the results of a U.K. Government consultation on public toilets.

The public consultation, launched on the same day the U.K. went into its second lockdown last year, aimed to address "misconceptions that removing sex-specific toilets are a requirement of equality legislation."

It followed speculation around what the Equalities Minister Liz Truss words about the 'protection of single-sex spaces' meant. LGBTQ groups were expecting measures of this kind to be announced as part of reform of the Gender Recognition Act.

However, following public and business outcry at suggestions at plans to drop Self-ID and other measures could remove trans rights - they did not materialise. Truss always denied there were any plans to "roll back the rights of transgender people in the U.K."

And yet, getting the toilet experience right is something we can all appreciate.

But this especially counts for women and LGBTQ people, and even more disproportionately, transgender people.

Galop's 2020 Transphobia Report found transgender people face disproportionate harassment in toilets. Nearly two-thirds of UK transgender respondents felt unable to use public restrooms due to transphobia. Indeed, as many as one in five directly had experience or were threatened with sexual assault.

"[We have] supported individuals who have either been denied use of, or not felt safe to use, a gendered public bathroom," says Drew, Galop's Transphobic Hate Crime Advocate, who co-created the guide.

"But this can also compromise the safety and dignity of people who are not trans or non-binary."

Indeed, Galop says people who don't look like gender stereotypes. People who are seen to be not 'man' or 'woman' enough - are increasingly facing problems using restrooms.

"As a woman who presents in a masculine way, using public toilets can feel like an everyday struggle," says Rachel, 30, who provided testimony for the toolkit. "This has been made worse since the pandemic with facemasks."

"In spaces where I expect the crowd will be less understanding, I avoid women's toilets and opt for the wheelchair accessible one (though that is not ideal). In venues with mixed toilets or signs, I just don't have to worry about any of that. I can actually just pee in peace."

DURHAM, NC - MAY 11: A gender neutral sign is posted outside a bathrooms at Oval Park Grill on May ... [+]
Getty Images

"Bathroom bills reduce people to their appearance - when its peoples' behaviour that deserves the attention"

"We know sexual harassment and assault are deeply gendered, impacting women and LGTBQ+ people disproportionately," says Good Night Out Campaign's Director Bryony Beynon.

However, Beynon is hoping the guide can get ahead of the U.K. government's response to the consultation that could create another route to 'policing bathrooms.'

Something which the 'Pee in Peace' campaign says can create more violence:

"Enforcing gender norms by policing bathrooms through compulsory segregation or assuming where someone 'should' be, does not prevent violence, and can actually help create a conducive context for harassment."

"Given the atmosphere of fear and disinformation, we wanted to cut through the noise and provide some caring, common sense guidance on this issue."

Indeed when the controversial American North Carolina bill attempted to legislate in this space, it made women more likely to be the victim of harassment:

"Bathroom bills reduce people to their appearance - when its peoples' behaviour that deserves the attention," U.K. Trans Media Watch Helen Belcher told me last summer, when planned UK single sex laws were shelved.

"There are huge difficulties in enforcing them. What happens is that women start to get singled out because of their appearance. North Carolina showed us that cisgender women are at least equally likely to be singled out as trans women. It's ultimately a law enforcing some form of gender conformity or gender stereotypes."

The North Carolina bill, which cost the state billions in lost investments, was repealed three years later.

WASHINGTON DC, UNITED STATES - 2019/10/08: A giant Trans Flag unfurled outside the Supreme Court. ... [+]
LightRocket via Getty Images

How can I make my business' toilets gender inclusive and safe for all users?

The guide has been created using evidence from academic studies to offer practical advice on creating loos, where people can use the toilet without facing harassment.

It includes advice for any business or service that provides toilets on how to comply with existing U.K. regulations while safely and sensitively ensuring facilities are gender-inclusive.

It says the best practice - when possible - is having mixed facilities with cubicles containing hand basins or individual toilet cubicles with a separate all-gender hand washing and drying area.

Noting that this may be a more significant investment for some venues, it says this "covers all bases in terms of safety, inclusion and practicality."

"There is a misconception that gender-inclusive toilets increase queues for the loos, which disproportionately impact women. In reality, when planned correctly, all-gender bathrooms have been found to result in the lowest combined wait time overall," says the guide.

The toolkit also suggests options for different venues depending on the space, facilities and budgets available.

At the lower end of the scale, it includes a 'Pee in Peace' sign to remind customers that gender discrimination has no place on their premises.

It also suggests including signage that encourages people to 'choose and use the loo that feels right for you' and 'respect the privacy and choice of others."
The toolkit is available now. Updated 24/02/2021 2pm - This piece previously said Liz Truss scrapped plans for new laws around single sex spaces - however, these plans though widely expected by LGBTQ groups, were never announced and did not materialise.
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How To Make Your Business' Toilets Safe For Women And LGBTQ People

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A new guide launched in the U.K. is hoping to reduce the harassment women and LGBTQ people face in public and office toilets. Safe nightlife group Good Night Out and Galop, the U.K.'s LGBT anti-violence charity have published the toolkit "We all need the toilet: An all-gender access toolkit" ahead of the results of a U.K.

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See also: " Fact Sheet: The Importance of Sports Participation for Transgender Youth "
This report contains corrections.
Jay's story
Jay is a transgender man who competed in equestrian throughout high school and college, including through his transition during college. Below, he describes his experience navigating his transition and team, excerpted from an interview he participated in with the author of this report. Jay's quotes, and quotes throughout the report, may have been edited for length and/or clarity.
I came out to my equestrian team first. I sent out an email to the entire team, including the coaches, coming out to them. I knew they were going to be supportive because I walked into the barn the next day and my name had already been crossed out on the board and corrected with the name that I had sent them in the email literally 12 hours prior.

I know a lot of other trans athletes have to give up the sport that they love when they start to transition because organizations have a lot of regulations in terms of trans athletes competing on non-coed teams. I'm definitely very fortunate that, at least as far as riding, it's all been coed so my gender identity hasn't been a problem.

But I still decided to transfer [from an all girls' school to a coed school] because I didn't want to be around people who had a preconceived notion of who I was. I wanted to be around people who didn't know me so that they only had one picture of who I was in their mind, and that was Jay as a man. And that's what I got.

My new coach referred to me as one of her boys. I was afraid of nothing because they also accepted me with open arms and really just wanted to make sure that I was comfortable and felt safe, which was incredible because I was worried that I wasn't going to get that.
To read more stories from those affected by transgender sports bans, see Appendix B.
In recent years, opponents of LGBTQ equality have zeroed in on the participation of transgender youth in sports as part of their assault on the equal rights of transgender people. Transgender student-athletes are driven to play sports for the same reasons as all athletes, yet in many states, they are denied the opportunity to do so or can do so only after overcoming numerous invasive and stigmatizing hurdles. These transphobic laws and policies deny transgender athletes access to the numerous well-being, educational, and social benefits sports can confer, while ignoring the reality that transgender women and girls are women and girls, and transgender men and boys are men and boys.

The bills' justifications largely rely on scare tactics, stereotypes, and unwarranted claims that transgender women have a physiological advantage over cisgender women-despite a complete lack of evidence that transgender sports participation has had any measurable impact on the success of cisgender athletes. Transgender athletes have been competing openly for decades, with multiple state high school athletic associations, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and several professional and amateur sports leagues allowing transgender athletes to participate in accordance with their gender identity as early as 2004. In that time, women's-and men's-sports have continued undeterred. Yet while cisgender athletes remain unharmed when transgender athletes participate, policies known as transgender sports bans-which ban transgender students from participating and competing on sports teams in accordance with their gender identity, or make it difficult for them to do so-can do substantial harm to the mental health, well-being, and lives of transgender youth, athletes and nonathletes alike. Across multiple surveys, age groups, and settings, three consistent, troubling trends emerge: 1) Transgender youth and young adults are more likely than their cisgender peers to report worse mental health, including substantially higher risk of depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts; 2) Transgender youth and young adults are substantially more likely than their cisgender peers to experience bullying, victimization, harassment, violence, and rejection from peers, against a backdrop of discriminatory policies such as transgender sports bans that serve to legitimize and foster hostile climates; and 3) Where transgender youth encounter accepting and affirming policies and peers, including transgender-affirming sports policies, their risk of poor mental health and suicidality decreases-and where these supports are lacking, risk is substantially higher.

In spite of the risks transgender sports bans pose, in 2020 alone, 20 states introduced bills to regulate or outright ban transgender athletes from participating in sports in accordance with their gender identity. On his first day in office, President Joe Biden issued an executive order calling on the federal government to fully implement the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, explicitly stating that "children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, locker room, or school sports." Ignoring federal law and the Constitution, multiple states are rushing to beat the clock and implement transgender sports bans of their own, with 11 state legislatures advancing bills banning transgender sports participation in accordance with gender identity in the first month of 2021, along with multiple states introducing more extreme anti-transgender measures, such as bans on health care providers' ability to provide gender-affirming care to transgender minors and restrictions on access to identification documents. Against this legislative backdrop, it is not enough to simply avoid outright bans on transgender inclusion in sports or have no policy at all; states must be proactive in implementing inclusive policies. As presented throughout this report, the latest research on transgender inclusion in sports illustrates that inclusive policies provide significant benefits for transgender young people-and have no proven effect on competitive equity.

The benefits-physiological, social, and emotional-of participating in school sports teams and athletics are wide-ranging. In addition to physiological benefits such as lower rates of obesity, research has found that high school and college student-athletes may be at lower risk for anxiety and depression, suicide attempts, and tobacco and illegal drug use. Sports participation has also been associated with increased self-esteem and self-confidence, improved academic performance, stronger feelings of school connectedness and school-based social support, and broader social capital and community connectedness. Further, it can lead to lifelong friendships with teammates and coaches and promote feelings of comradery, sportsmanship, and the ability to work hard and persevere.

Mental health and discrimination among transgender youth

School-based harassment, victimization, and rejection can have life-threatening consequences for transgender youth. An analysis of data aggregated from the 15 states with publicly available data that assessed gender identity in the 2017 and 2019 Youth Risk Behavior State and Local Survey (YRBS), a representative study of individuals in grades 9 through 12, showed that almost 44 percent of transgender youth, versus 16 percent of cisgender youth, reported considering suicide in the previous year.
Figure 1
Lack of access to affirming spaces and a community that supports transgender youth by affirming their gender identity, name, and pronoun has also specifically been tied to increased suicidality and decreased mental well-being among transgender youth. For example, in The Trevor Project's 2020 mental health survey, transgender and nonbinary youth who reported that no one in their lives affirmed or respected their pronouns were twice as likely to have attempted suicide in the past year as transgender youth whose pronouns were affirmed by all or most people they knew-28 percent versus 12 percent.

Given the well-documented benefits of sports-and disproportionate mental health struggles among transgender youth-transgender sports bans can have disastrous consequences, particularly as they continue to perpetuate and legitimize rejection of gender identity. While inclusion in sports is not a cure-all for the deep-seated discrimination against transgender youth, their exclusion from such activities can potentially put their lives at risk.

Though limits on available data make it difficult to estimate the exact number of transgender athletes, across available datasets, transgender youth and young adults are consistently found to participate in sports at significantly lower rates than their cisgender peers-including cisgender LGBQ peers.

While there are numerous reasons why transgender youth and young adults are less likely to participate in sports, access is one prominent barrier. Stemming from the sex assigned at birth and/or the gender-segregated nature of most sport leagues, whether a transgender athlete can compete in accordance with their gender identity in the United States, versus their sex assigned at birth, currently depends on their age, where they live, what sport they play, and where they go to school.

Federal policies around transgender inclusion in sports

The International Olympic Committee has allowed transgender athletes to participate in the Olympic Games since 2004, and several professional and recreational leagues, including USA Gymnastics, U.S. Soccer, and the National Women's Hockey League, have recently implemented trans-inclusive policies, further expanding access to transgender athletes of all ages. At the college level, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has allowed transgender students to participate in championships in accordance with their gender identity since 2011, though individual schools are able to set their own specific policies.

However, at the high school level, changes between the Obama and Trump administrations' interpretations of Title IX-and specifically whether Title IX sex protections extend to gender identity-have led to a seesawing in federal guidance between recognition and exclusion of transgender youth in school programming, including sports. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination "on the basis of sex" in schools and educational programs and activities, including sports teams, as well as in school facilities such as locker rooms and bathrooms. Under the Obama administration, "sex" under Title IX was interpreted to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity, including discrimination based on transgender status, in guidance issued in 2016 by the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice; this aligned with a growing number of federal courts holding that Title IX prohibited gender identity discrimination. This guidance clarified that Title IX required schools to allow transgender students to participate in school activities, including sports, and have access to sex-segregated facilities, such as locker rooms and bathrooms, in ways consistent with their gender identity.

The U.S. Supreme Court's June 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, held that under Title VII-a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in employment-discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is a form of sex discrimination and therefore prohibited. This landmark decision could significantly affect interpretations of sex discrimination under Title IX. While Title VII focuses on employment, and Title IX on education, courts routinely look to definitions of sex discrimination under Title VII to inform interpretations of sex discrimination under Title IX. In fact, several courts have already applied that reasoning in cases involving Title IX claims. In fact, on his very first day in office, President Biden issued an executive order on "Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation." The order explicitly notes that "children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports" and that under Bostock 's reasoning, Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

State policies around transgender inclusion in sports

In addition to Title IX, transgender sports participation policy is governed by inconsistent regulations and laws that vary throughout the United States. At the high school level, guidance varies widely across states and is largely based on each state's high school athletic association guidelines, absent any state-level targeted legislation, policy, or rulemaking. (see Appendix A for example policies)
Figure 2 Figure 3
An additional three states, Indiana, Kentucky, and Louisiana, have surgery-required guidance** that only allow participation in accordance with gender identity if the athlete has undergone gender confirmation surgery. These policies not only send harmful messages that there is a single, "legitimate" way to transition-namely, through surgery-but they also exclude those for whom surgical transition is not desired, as well as those for whom gender confirmation surgery is unavailable due to factors such as age (gender confirmation surgery is largely not performed on youth under age 18), cost, and/or lack of available providers.

Those outdated and unscientific stereotypes are at the heart of the state athletic guidance held by six states-home to an estimated 24,600 transgender youth-that have the most extreme, and most explicit, transgender-exclusive sports guidance.** Under these policies, participation in sex-segregated sports is based exclusively on one's "biological sex," defined by athletic associations-rather than scientific evidence or individual identification-using criteria such as sex listed on one's birth certificate or in accordance with physical, hormonal, or reproductive/secondary-sex characteristics. Such policies not only set arbitrary guidance around physical characteristics that ignore inherent variability in the bodies of athletes of the same sex, but they also further force transgender athletes to choose between playing a sport and living, and competing, authentically as their gender, as well as create hostile climates that contribute to the negative mental health outcomes detailed earlier in this report.

The number of states with a legislated transgender sports ban is at risk of growing in the upcoming year: During 2020, state legislatures in 20 different states introduced bills to ban transgender high school students from participating in sports. In Idaho, H.B. 500, the Fairness in Women's Sports Act, was signed into law in March 2020, making Idaho the first state to implement such a policy and ban both high school and college transgender athletes from participating in sports. H.B. 500 is currently enjoined following an August 2020 ruling in federal trial court in a suit brought against Idaho by a transgender cross-country college athlete and a 17-year-old transgender high school athlete. The court noted in its injunction "the absence of any empirical evidence" that opportunities for women athletes are "threatened by transgender women athletes in Idaho" and in fact found "compelling evidence that equality in sports is not jeopardized" by Idaho's previous standard that allowed transgender women to compete on women's teams. The court concluded that the law's "categorical bar against transgender women athletes' participation appears unrelated to the interests the Act purportedly advances."

[M]ost supporters of the legislation can't point to a single trans youth athlete in their state, let alone one who has ever displaced a nontransgender athlete, and no one can explain how [these bills] save women's sports. Not one of these lawmakers has introduced legislation to actually invest in women's sports. These bills are just another opportunity to repeat (and, they hope, enact into law) myths about trans women and girls dominating in women's athletics and posing a threat to cisgender women and girls.

Supporters of anti-transgender sports policies often portray them as necessary to protect cisgender women and girls' sports, using names for these bills such as the Save Women's Sports Act (S.B. 172, Louisiana) and the Mississippi Fairness Act (H.B. 1391). These bills cloak transmisogyny in inflammatory language and scare tactics that distract from the policies' discriminatory intent. Notably, many do not lay out restrictions for transgender boys and men, focusing solely on regulating women's bodies.

There is no evidence to support the claim that allowing transgender athletes to participate will reduce or harm participation in girls' sports. Though anti-transgender groups focus on the very few, cherry-picked examples of competitions where a transgender athlete outperformed a cisgender athlete, evidence suggests that inclusion of transgender athletes has had no impact on sports participation or women's athletic achievements.
Figure 4 Figure 5
Evidence from states that already have transgender-inclusive policies suggests that girls' sports participation may even increase alongside inclusive policies. (see Figure 6) In California, where a statewide transgender-inclusive sports policy has allowed transgender youth to participate in sports since 2014, high school girls' sports participation in 2020 was the highest it has ever been, increasing by almost 14 percent since 2014. Meanwhile, participation among boys increased by less than 2 percent in the same period.
Figure 6
In Washington state-the first state to allow transgender athletes to compete in accordance with their gender identity, in 2008-only three transgender athletes had competed in sports as of 2017, none of whom had won a championship. At the Olympic level, transgender athletes have been allowed to compete since 2004, but to date, none have medaled. The only U.S. transgender athlete to ever make a U.S. national team for a World Championship is Chris Mosier, a transgender man, in 2016. Together, the fact remains that even when transgender athletes are included, it is the variability of athletic ability-not transgender status-among students that leads to success.

Supporting women and girls in sports means expanding opportunities to play, not restricting which women and girls get to play. Women's sports advocates such as the Women's Sports Foundation and the University of Minnesota's Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport have extensively explored barriers to sports participation and success among women and girls and note that the most commonly cited barriers are opportunity and costs. Though the number of girls and women playing sports has increased over time, it still lags behind the number of boys. Nationwide, school budget cuts have reduced the number of high school sport opportunities for girls, with schools with majority-female enrollment far more likely than schools with majority-male or gender-balanced enrollment to cut or altogether drop school sports programs. These same budget cuts have contributed to sports opportunities for high school boys consistently growing faster than opportunities for high school girls, with high school-age boys receiving more than 1.1 million more available slots than girls. In the United States, a higher cultural premium is placed on men's than women's sports, with men's sports getting more airtime on television and mentions in print media, male athletes earning higher salaries, and men achieving more positions of leadership than their women counterparts. The cost of playing sports is also higher for girl athletes than boy athletes, reducing participation particularly among girls from socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Additional barriers include gender stereotypes and norms around sports, which both discourage participation for cisgender girls, who may fear being labeled as queer, transgender, or gender nonconforming, and perpetuate the message that being queer, transgender, or gender nonconforming is something negative.

Furthermore, The Trevor Project found that LGBTQ athletes, and transgender/nonbinary athletes specifically, had significantly higher grades than their LGBTQ peers who did not participate in sports, with LGBTQ youth athletes further reporting 20 percent lower rates of depressive symptoms than LGBTQ nonathletes. Similarly, the Human Rights Campaign found that LGBTQ youth athletes were significantly more likely than those who had never played a sport to "always feel safe in [their] classroom," as well as significantly less likely to have felt "depressed" or "worthless" in the past week; those who used to play a sport, but no longer do, were the least likely to feel safe at school, and the most likely to have felt depressed or worthless. In an analysis of the 2017 National School Climate Survey, although transgender youth were less likely to participate in school sports than their cisgender peers, those who did participate had higher rates of self-esteem and feelings of school belonging and lower rates of depression, with the largest improvements seen for transgender nonbinary students. Furthermore, simply the existence of inclusive polices may be enough to protect against adverse mental health for transgender youth, even those who are not athletes. Among 2017-2019 YRBS respondents, transgender students in states with fully inclusive polices (40.6 percent), and that allow participation with restrictions (46.1 percent) were significantly less likely than students in states with no guidance (54.6 percent) to have considered suicide in the past year, with those in fully inclusive states the least likely to have done so.

Among college students surveyed in the National College Health Assessment III during the fall 2019 and spring 2020 semester, approximately 14.7 percent of all transgender students, versus 22 percent of all cisgender students, were student-athletes who competed in either varsity, club, and/or intramural sports. Relative to their transgender peers who did not participate in sports, transgender athletes reported significantly higher levels of psychological well-being and flourishing (see Figure 8), and were significantly less likely to meet the threshold for severe psychological distress, to have suicidal thoughts or to have self-harmed in the prior year, or to screen positive for suicidal behavior. (see Figure 7)
Figure 7 Figure 8
In addition, transgender college athletes reported significantly better school climates than transgender college students who did not participate in sports. Transgender athletes were significantly more likely to feel "very safe" (versus "somewhat safe" or "very"/"somewhat unsafe") on their campus at either day or night and were significantly more likely to feel they belonged at their school and that the campus community "looks out for each other." They were also significantly less likely to have experienced any form of discrimination in the previous year. (see Figure 9)
Figure 9
Jay's story, continued

My first competition where I felt like I was really competing as a man for the first time, because I had had top surgery, my coach sat me down and told me, "You've come this far. You've overcome this much to get here. If you can do all of that, I'm pretty sure you can go into the ring and roll your shoulders back. You're worried about these people looking at you, but they're not judging you. If anything, they're looking at you and admiring how far you have come."

I know my parents' biggest concern when I was coming out was that I was going to change into this completely different person. But the fact that I was able to ride through my transition kept me grounded. I was still able to identify myself as the horse kid. Even though I was changing my name and changing my pronouns, and my body was going through all of these changes, something was consistent for me. I still felt like I was who I had always been because I was able to hold on to something that I had before my transition. Horses saved my life when I was going through my transition, and I'm sure that numerous other trans athletes can say the same for themselves. I truly cannot imagine what it would have been like if I wasn't able to ride while I was going through all of that.

It is well-established that sports benefit all youth, and may have particularly positive effects for transgender youth. By denying transgender youth access to sports, officials deny them access to all the benefits of sports, including lifesaving benefits that transgender young people need. Inclusive policies already in place have had no negative impacts on cisgender students, whereas sports participation has had numerous positive impacts on transgender youth. Given the increased risk of suicidality and poor mental health among transgender youth-risk that the earlier-mentioned studies demonstrate has been repeatedly linked to hostile political and social environments-expanding inclusive policies to all transgender athletes nationwide would not only offer transgender youth access to school belonging, community connectedness, and self-esteem that otherwise would be lacking, but it also has the potential to save transgender youths' lives. Alternatively, policies that only allow participation with restrictions, as is the case for 23.4 percent of transgender youth in 16 states, dictate the ways that transgender bodies must function in order to be considered legitimate, further denying transgender athletes access to bodily autonomy and the ability to define and shape their identity for themselves.

Instead, schools, states, and the federal government should implement the following policy and programmatic changes:

Transgender-inclusive and age-appropriate sports participation policies, which allow transgender athletes to compete in accordance with their gender identity, should be implemented nationwide. For examples of model transgender-inclusive school sports policies for K-12 schools, see GLSEN and National Center for Transgender Equality, "Model Local Education Agency Policy on Transgender and Nonbinary Students" and LGBT Sports Foundation, "'All 50': The Transgender-Inclusive High School Sports and Activities Policy and Education Project." For an example of a model policy for higher education institutions, see Athlete Ally, "Model Policy: Transgender and Nonbinary Athlete Inclusion."

Coaches and athletic staff should receive training on how to navigate existing policy in their school district around transgender sports participation, as well as on how to ensure a transgender-affirming sports environment.

Given the rising number of youth identifying as nonbinary, genderqueer, agender, and other noncisgender gender identities, efforts must be made by all stakeholders, including coaches, athletic directors, administrators, and state organizations, to ensure that sports environments and policies remain welcoming and affirming for youth who don't identify with a male or female gender. Nonbinary youth must also be able to meaningfully participate in sex-segregated athletic programs. Approaches to creating inclusive environments include:

Ensuring athletes are referred to by their correct pronouns and name in all materials such as team websites, rosters, and programs.

Encouraging coaches, teammates, and athletics staff to use gender neutral terms-such as "Go team"-to refer to the team as a whole during internal correspondence, chants, and practices.

Schools should ensure that transgender and nonbinary students can participate in sports according to their gender identity. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia provides a powerful tool for removing barriers for transgender students and creating a safe and affirming school climate for all transgender students-athletes and nonathletes alike. This was further clarified by President Biden's Day 1 executive order that explicitly mentioned protection for transgender students in sports. States should enact trans-inclusive policies in accordance with Bostock that remove bans and barriers to participation.

Congress should pass the Equality Act to clarify that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination is prohibited in key areas of life, including school. The Equality Act was passed by the House in 2019 with bipartisan support, and comprehensive nondiscrimination legislation such as the Equality Act is supported by the majority of Americans across the country and across party lines. However, it has not yet been introduced in the current Congress.

Congress should pass the Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA), which would require school districts to adopt and implement anti-bullying and harassment policies that specifically prohibit bullying on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity-along with other identities. The SSIA has not yet been reintroduced in the current Congress.

Transgender youth are already vulnerable to discrimination, harassment, bullying, and social rejection-and exclusionary policies such as sports bans further legitimize transphobic attitudes by sending the message that transgender youth are not welcome in spaces that are otherwise open to all other youth. It is clear that transgender youth are in need of policies that create an inclusive and supportive learning environment. And with already staggeringly high rates of suicidality among transgender youth, the continued rise of transgender sports bans may have disastrous, life-threatening consequences. Local schools across the nation are already creating policies that protect transgender youth and ensure a level playing field for all students-and these policies work. Transgender youth should have the same opportunity as all youth to be part of a team and feel a sense of belonging. Rather than discriminating against students simply because they're transgender, states should adopt inclusive sports policies that foster welcoming environments for transgender and nonbinary youth and work to remove barriers and improve participation for all youth.

Shoshana K. Goldberg, MPH, Ph.D. (she/her), is an LGBTQ health and policy researcher, with faculty appointments at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and University of Illinois-Chicago Schools of Public Health, where she teaches a graduate level course on LGBTQ public health.

Policies that are fully inclusive of transgender students (16 states, including Washington, D.C.)

Fully inclusive policies are those that allow participation in accordance with one's gender identity, without requiring proof, review, or medical/legal transition. An example of this policy is that held by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC), which notes:

It would be fundamentally unjust and contrary to applicable state and federal law to preclude a student from participation on a gender specific sports team that is consistent with the public gender identity of that student for all other purposes.

... a student's eligibility to participate in a CIAC gender specific sports team [is] based on the gender identification of that student in current school records and daily life activities.

Transgender students' participation allowed with restrictions (16 states)

Under policies where transgender students are allowed to participate with restrictions, transgender athletes can only participate in sports based on medical transition, such as hormone therapy; medical "proof"; approval by a review board; or other invasive disclosure. An example of this policy is that held by the Ohio High School Athletic Association:

A transgender female who is taking medically prescribed hormone treatment related to gender transition may participate on a boys' team at any time. However, before a transgender female can participate in a girl's sport or on a girls' team she must either (1) have completed a minimum of one year of hormone treatment related to gender transition or (2) demonstrate to the Executive Director's Office by way of sound medical evidence that she does not possess physical (bone structure, muscle mass, testosterone, hormonal, etc.) or physiological advantages over genetic females of the same age group.

A transgender male who has not yet begun medically prescribed testosterone treatment for purposes of gender transition may participate on a boys' team. If, however, the transgender male student athlete is taking medically prescribed testosterone treatment, before he can participate on a boys' team, medical evidence must be submitted to the Executive Director's Office that certifies that (1) the muscle mass developed as a result of this testosterone treatment does not exceed the muscle mass that is typical of an adolescent genetic boy; (2) that he has not started any hormone treatment (or that the testosterone treatment does not cause hormone levels to exceed normal levels); and (3) his hormone levels are monitored by a licensed physician every three to six months. In any case where a transgender student athlete is taking hormone treatment related to gender transition, that treatment must be monitored by a physician, and the Executive Director's Office must receive regular reports about the athlete's eligibility according to these guidelines.

Surgery-required guidance** (3 states)

In states with surgery-required guidance**, transgender youth can only participate in athletics in accordance with a gender identity that does not match sex assigned at birth if they have undergone gender confirmation surgery. An example of this policy is found in Indiana:

A student whose birth gender was male and has changed to female can establish the changed gender by the following:

a. First, the MTF student shall declare that the gender has changed from male to female, that the MTF student intends to participate as a female, that the MTF student understands and agrees that after the MTF student participates on a team of the female gender, that the MTF student may never later participate on a team of the male gender, and

b. Second, provide reliable medical evidence that:

i. the MTF student has undergone sex change before puberty, or

ii. the MTF student‐athlete has undergone sex change after puberty, which should include evidence that surgical and anatomical changes have been completed, including genitalia changes and gonadectomy, that all hormonal therapies have been administered in a verifiable manner, that sufficient length of time has occurred such as to minimize gender‐related advantages and all legal recognition of the sex change has been conferred with all proper governmental agencies (A copy of the MTF student's amended birth certificate, a court order or other official state determination showing the MTF student's new gender will suffice).

...

Trans‐Male Student‐Athlete (FTM). A student whose birth gender was female and has changed to male can prove the student's changed gender by the following:

a. First, the FTM student shall declare that the gender has changed from female to male, that the FTM student intends to participate as a male, that the FTM student understands and agrees that after the FTM student participates on a team of the male gender, that the FTM student may never later participate on a team of the female gender, and

b. Second, provide reliable medical evidence that the FTM student is taking or has complete a regime of medically prescribed testosterone for the purposes of gender transition.

Transgender-exclusive guidance** (6 states)

States with transgender-exclusive guidance** are ones where transgender athletes can only participate in teams that align with the sex on their birth certificate and/or their sex assigned at birth. An example of this policy can be found in Alabama:

NOTE: A student participates as the gender identified on the certified birth certificate.

No state guidance (10 states)

In states with no state guidance, transgender athletic participation is left to individual schools and/or school districts. An example of this policy can be found in Alaska:

The Association will rely on a gender determination made by the student's member school where the determination is based upon prior written and objective criteria adopted by the school; ASAA will not make separate gender identity determinations. ... A student attending a member school which does not have a prior written objective policy used to determine gender identity may only participate based upon the gender assigned at birth.

How these stories were collected

The athletes whose stories are included in this report were recruited through networks of advocacy organizations, including Athlete Ally and OutSports, and "snowball" recruitment, whereby people interviewed identified other transgender athletes who might be interested in participating. Calls for participants focused on recruiting transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer, and other transgender-identified athletes who were either in school or recently graduated and whose ability to participate in sports had been directly impacted by existing policies. All interviews were conducted remotely via Skype by the author in November and December 2020, transcribed using an online transcription service (Rev), and are presented here with minor edits for length and clarity. All interviewees consented to recording, transcription, and having their quotes included for this report, and gave their consent for specific stories to be included in this report.

Mika's story
Mika, a nonbinary former collegiate swimmer and current collegiate swim coach:
I still struggled with gender dysphoria a lot with always being called the women's team. I don't think people realize how hard it is to correct others on what your name is. Even though it's something that's very important and very valid and something that I would tell everyone to do, when it came to myself, I can't even get myself to do it.

But it didn't take long. I thought it was going to take months, but it took about two weeks for everybody to get it and use my name and pronouns, and I wasn't even the one correcting. When it came to swimming, my coaches just changed it on the roster. I corrected each of my coaches once. I don't think I even corrected any of my teammates-they corrected each other. When it came to addressing the team, my coach and I compromised that yes, it was still called a women's team, but when he addressed the team, it would either be addressing it as "Hey, bear cats, hey y'all, hey team!"

Now that I'm a coach, and a resource for all athletics at my college, I normally have one or two first years come up to me and come out to me and I can tell them, "You will be okay if you tell the team this. If anybody on the team said something about it, you at least have one person who's going to have your back, and that will be me.

If I could say one thing to somebody trying to implement a sports ban I would say: That's not very team-like of you. If you want a team to work, you have to have everyone committed. You have to have everyone want to be there. You're not going to have a good team if you think that excluding someone is the solution.

JayCee's story
JayCee, a transgender women, is a powerlifter and former collegiate curling and crew player:
In the fall of 2018, I signed up for the state bench press competition and the state full powerlifting competition, but was told by USA Powerlifting that due to the fact that I'm a transgender woman I'm not eligible to compete.

After USA Powerlifting (USAPL) published their anti-trans policy, we decided that we were going to protest the state championships. Cisgender lifters who had signed up to compete that were allies and friends of mine, including teammates in two different gyms, decided that they were going to time out their lifts in solidarity. They walked up to the platform when they were announced for their lifts, and just stood there in silence with their hands behind their back, wearing shirts saying, "Trans lifters belong here. Share the platform." When supporters were timing out, the rest of us were cheering/chanting "Share the platform." When someone would actually take a lift, we would stop and sit down to cheer them on as well.

And then in the crowd, after we had sat down, this visibly gender nonconforming kid turned to me and said, "You all are so brave. Thank you for doing this." It was this really emotional moment where you realize that younger generations are watching this happen, and they finally know that there is a lot of support and love for our community, and that it's worth it to fight for our place in sport.

Sport is a human right. It even says so in the Fundamental Principles of Olympism. To deny someone full access to that human right, and take away a social structure that is otherwise afforded to every child and person across the country, is a form of cruelty that really can't be described by words. It's akin to promoting isolation, dehumanization, and othering on a scale unlike so many other things. When you think about the impact that sport has on a society, you think about the support structure that's afforded through coaches, teachers, discipline, role models, belonging, and community. To deny someone the opportunity to benefit from those things, it goes beyond just policy and rules. It's a complete violation of a person's human rights. What scrutiny and inhumane hoops are you going to put the trans community through to access something that is rightfully everyone's? Trans people belong in sport, and anything less than full access is unjust and degrading.
JayCee has been actively involved in a two-year legal battle against USA Powerlifting (USAPL) and USAPL Minnesota, whose policies prohibit transgender powerlifters from competing in accordance with their gender identity. Alongside Gender Justice, a St. Paul, Minnesota, legal advocacy organization, she has been fighting back against USAPL's policies since 2019, when USAPL allegedly prohibited her from competing in the 2019 Minnesota State Bench Press Championship, even though she disclosed her gender identity and met USAPL eligibility criteria at the time. In January 2021, Gender Justice "formally charged USAPL with violations of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, the first such law in the nation to expressly protect transgender, gender non-conforming and non-binary people from discrimination," with JayCee noting, "I don't want anyone to experience what I and other trans athletes have and continue to experience ... Having our basic human dignity and our opportunities denied because we are trans." USA Powerlifting disputes the allegations. The case has not yet gone to trial.
Emet's story
Emet, a transgender man, former field hockey player, and current field hockey coach:
I didn't start playing field hockey till the end of my freshman year of high school, but it very quickly became a big part of my identity. It was empowering to feel like this is something I'm good at, something I can grow into and do more with it. But suppressing myself just to be able to play sports felt like a piece of me was dying, like I was killing myself at the same time-and that's why I ultimately came out and transitioned. And coaches, the athletics administration, my teammates were really supportive. But when I went on hormones, that made me ineligible to compete on the women's field hockey team, and there's no men's college field hockey in the U.S., so I became team manager. And it was so painful. And it is so painful still watching the team compete and play without me, and without having that opportunity to be on the field with them-as team manager, it just wasn't the same.

It's a dangerous thing to mess with, to force someone into a position where they either hide themselves to be able to have this outlet and this community, or they lose that if they can't participate in sports and live as their authentic selves. Sport is more than just recreation. It impacts mental health and physical health. It's a huge piece of a person's life and provides community. And the physical exercise of it is really important. It's an outlet for so many people. And then when you take away sports as an outlet, and that support system, that's wreaking havoc and honestly, taking people's lives away, either metaphorically or parts of their identity.

Lex's story
Lex, a queer nonbinary transmasculine college squash player:
Athletics, with a focus on squash, are my life. I identify as an athlete, and athleticism is a huge part of how I know myself to be, and a big thing that I am prideful in. No one should have to feel like they are giving up themselves for something that is supposed to be accessible and available to all.

I believe that I could have found some safety and happiness in competing on the women's team as a nonbinary person. Had-this is the big but-had my team, whether the individual members or as a collective, been supportive. And that was missing.

I then did research into NESCAC [the New England Small College Athletic Conference] and [my school's policy] and saw that as an athlete who was assigned female at birth, I could play on the men's team without the team changing to coed. The assistant coach was very supportive of me, and the athletic director [of my entire college] was a godsend. And I was able to switch to the men's team.

I had to sacrifice so much to switch teams-I had to sacrifice my position of leadership [as the captain on the women's team]. But nothing was worth my deteriorating mental health. That's not to say that it was perfect because it absolutely wasn't-I wish that I didn't have to struggle and witness my mental and physical health deteriorate due to the experiences I was having in order to then demand what I deserve. I wish that the athletic director or my coach or any person anywhere could have been like, "Here are the policies. You could change right now."

But in the end, it was the best decision and the best experience of my life, switching teams. I could not be happier. If I hadn't switched teams, I don't think I'd be where I am today-I certainly would not be the optimistic human that I am, who is filled with life and passion and joy.
** Correction, February 9, 2021: This report has been updated to clarify where its discussion centers on existing exclusionary guidance from state athletic associations, not more extreme proposed bans in state legislatures.

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Fair Play - Center for American Progress

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See also: " Fact Sheet: The Importance of Sports Participation for Transgender Youth " This report contains corrections. Jay is a transgender man who competed in equestrian throughout high school and college, including through his transition during college. Below, he describes his experience navigating his transition and team, excerpted from an interview he participated in with the author of this report.

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Learn more and take action to fight for reproductive freedom.

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In an ultrasound room far from home, I discovered more than I was looking for.

Dola Sun

One day about seven months ago, I was standing in a dark room in a hospital not far from Tel Aviv, performing an ultrasound on the taut belly of a woman well into her third trimester. She was 35 weeks pregnant, due in about a month. She and I felt the fetus kick, right under the ultrasound probe. "Strong one!" I said in Hebrew. She smiled. I managed to freeze a sweet picture of the bow-shaped fetal upper lip, and pressed "Print," to give to her later.

Then I measured the fetal head, snug against her pelvic bone. The numbers on-screen suggested that it was too small. I measured it again. Still small. So I measured it again, and again, and again. Everything else in this pregnancy looked healthy: the volume of amniotic fluid, the general size of the fetus, the structure of the heart and brain. According to the woman's chart, everything had been fine, all the way through.

At that point, I needed to tell her about that small head and what it might mean for her future child's development. This is not uncommon; it's a situation I'm used to dealing with easily. But in that room, I was overcome with a strong urge not to tell her what I'd observed, because I feared where that discussion might lead. I am an American ob-gyn. In most states in my native country, third-trimester abortions are illegal or nearly inaccessible. In practice, only a handful of facilities in the entire United States perform abortions after 26 weeks for nonlethal anomalies. But here in Israel, abortion is widely available and can be offered until delivery. A subtle abnormality, such as the one I saw in that ultrasound room outside Tel Aviv, can prompt a discussion of pregnancy termination. Even at 35 weeks.

Within the American abortion debate, I am pro-choice in a concrete way. Giving women information about their pregnancies and helping them assess their options, including termination, is part of my life's work. When state legislatures in Georgia, Louisiana, and a host of other states have taken up bills to limit abortion rights, I have always known which side I am on.

But in that dark room so far from home, I was deeply uncomfortable discussing abortion with a woman 35 weeks into her pregnancy, when that fetus had no clearly lethal or debilitating problem. By then, I'd been living in Israel for about a year, and practicing medicine at a local hospital for about six months. In Israel, everything was different-perhaps including me. In that dark room, I felt lost, as I confronted the outer borders of my pro-choice beliefs.

Within obstetrics, my subspeciality is maternal-fetal medicine, or MFM. Physicians in my field care for women who face complications during their pregnancy or delivery, and we diagnose potential birth defects. I trained and practiced in the United States. A year ago, my family and I moved to Israel temporarily, for my husband's work.

I do not provide abortions, and I haven't for years. But I talk about abortion all the time, because doing so is a crucial part of the MFM job. In the United States, standard obstetric care includes a first-trimester nuchal translucency scan, as well as a second-trimester anatomy scan around 18 to 22 weeks. (In obstetrics, we measure gestational age from the pregnant woman's last menstrual period, about two weeks prior to conception. A typical pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.) Those scans are almost always normal, a cause for pictures and celebration. But ultrasounds in somewhere from 2 to 3 percent of pregnancies show fetal anomalies.

Some anomalies are mild. A short surgery will fix a cleft lip, for instance. Other anomalies are far more worrisome: a heart malformation that will require multiple surgeries in infancy; a severe thickening of the back of the neck that, while signaling no imminent threat to the fetus, hints at a serious genetic disorder. In these cases, an MFM physician will almost always recommend an amniocentesis to get cells from the pregnancy that will give a fuller diagnosis.

Any serious prenatal diagnosis requires a long counseling session, in which one question is central: Do you want to end this pregnancy? The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), which largely defines the standards of practice in the United States, holds that "the option of termination should be discussed when a genetic disorder or major structural abnormality is detected prenatally." In other words, ACOG tells doctors that we have to talk about abortion before we can continue care.
Read: The new abortion bills are a dare
When a doctor objects to abortion, ACOG guidelines say, "there should be a system in place to allow families to receive counseling about their options"-including the termination of a pregnancy-"and access to such care." This is the minimal ethical standard: A doctor who does not believe in abortion must, at the very least, point the way down that road.

I've never been that doctor. I have always discussed termination with my patients. Sometimes a patient immediately says that abortion is not an acceptable option for her, so we move on to other concerns: preparing for delivery, meeting the doctors who will be part of her baby's postnatal team, supporting her pregnancy as best we can.

Usually the discussion of abortion is longer and more wandering. At first, the patient may feel unsure of where she stands. As we talk, she may return to the subject and ask more questions. Conducting this conversation requires as much surgical skill as operating on a pregnant uterus. There is no right answer, only one that is less wrong for each patient. This is an almost impossible conversation-and one that doctors like me must have every day.

When seeing patients in the United States, doctors will initiate this conversation before 23 weeks. That is typically a patient's last opportunity to end her pregnancy-a timetable that helps explain why we generally schedule those diagnostic ultrasounds a few weeks earlier.

Key Supreme Court cases, including Roe v. Wade in 1973 and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, have built the right to abortion around the concept of fetal viability. The legal thinking goes like this: As long as a fetus cannot live independently outside a woman's body, a woman's bodily autonomy and right to privacy are the only relevant interests. Once the fetus reaches a point when it could reasonably live outside the womb-albeit with the help of technology-the state legally has an interest in the developing pregnancy and can constitutionally limit abortion.

As medicine has advanced, viability has steadily moved earlier and earlier in a pregnancy. When I finished medical school, a fetus was deemed viable 24 weeks and zero days into a pregnancy. By the time I finished residency, the point of viability had advanced to somewhere around 23 weeks and four days-23 + 4, in medical shorthand. Today it's 23 + 0 for many institutions and creeping into 22 weeks. This doesn't mean that those babies are healthy. According to the most recent data, only 2 to 3 percent of infants born from 22 + 0 to 22 + 6 survived long enough to be discharged from the hospital, and only 1 percent lived without severe and permanent consequences of extreme prematurity.

But the U.S. legal standard for abortion hinges on reasonable viability, not healthy survival. In the phase of pregnancy before viability, abortion is protected (in theory) as a constitutional right; afterward, it can be limited by states. The future of this standard is uncertain. Anticipating a successful challenge to Roe in the near future, some states have already passed laws limiting abortions at earlier and earlier gestational-age thresholds, and more states are expected to follow.
Michael Wear: The abortion debate is no longer about policy
As long as Roe still holds, though, the sharp line it draws at the point of viability changes everything in an American ultrasound room. Suppose that I find a fetus with enlarged brain ventricles that, in rare cases, can be a sign of debilitating abnormalities. At 20 weeks, the finding would provoke the recommendation for amniocentesis; with the clock ticking, we'd want to identify any severe genetic disorders quickly. In some cases, I would warn the patient, these tests yield diagnoses that lead some women to terminate their pregnancy.

That same finding at 32 weeks would be handled differently. Getting an abortion after viability for a lethal fetal anomaly is still technically legal in parts of the United States. Women who pursue termination under these circumstances-most often after receiving a devastating fetal diagnosis deep into a desired pregnancy-have harrowing stories of navigating the procedure alone, far from home. A patient may borrow money, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, and fly to another state, where she may stay in a hotel for a few days. Such women talk about crossing picket lines of protesters who are screaming at them not to do what they have already spent days or weeks weeping about.

In practice, these situations are incredibly rare, likely a tiny fraction of 1 percent of all abortions in the United States. When evidence of nonlethal fetal anomalies emerges after the point of viability, there's less of a rush to reach a diagnosis, because ending the pregnancy is essentially off the table anyway. The conversation at 32 weeks is thus softer, more relaxed, and less urgent than at 20 weeks. I would discuss potential causes of those dilated ventricles and recommend some blood tests. I would mention amniocentesis. But most patients wouldn't seriously consider it, because at this point in a pregnancy, it could lead to complications, including premature labor.

Without other abnormalities, more than 90 percent of fetuses with mildly enlarged brain ventricles have normal developmental outcomes. At 32 weeks, most patients take refuge in the likelihood that the pregnancy is probably just fine. At 32 weeks, I print out those cute pictures, and that American patient leaves my office, often without tears.

Different societies navigate the landscape of moral choices in different ways. In the United States, courts have recognized a pregnant woman's autonomy over her own body, even as a potent movement led by Christian conservatives lobbies in the opposite direction. These opposing forces produce a strange outcome: Abortion is constitutionally protected as an individual right but, in much of the country, quite difficult to obtain.

Israel has struck nearly the opposite bargain. In this majority-Jewish country with deep socialist roots, abortion law has never been constructed around the idea of a woman's power over her own body, or around the value of fetal life. The basics of abortion law were passed in the 1970s, and were largely built around demographic concerns in a tiny collectivist country that, at the time, was almost continually at war. Though changes have been made, those foundational laws still prevail. In Israel, terminations of pregnancy, regardless of gestational age, must go through a committee, a va'ada. Without its assent, an abortion is officially a criminal offense. But here's the surprise: In the end, more than 97 percent of abortion requests that come before the committee are approved.

The va'ada can approve abortions for specific reasons spelled out by the law: if the woman is over 40, under 18, or unmarried; if the pregnancy is the result of rape, an extramarital affair, or any illegal sexual relationship, such as incest; if the fetus is likely to have a physical or mental defect; if continuing the pregnancy would endanger the woman's life or cause her mental or physical harm. Some of these rationales, such as rape and incest, are familiar from the U.S. abortion debate. Other justifications, such as those involving the woman's age or marital status, bespeak a certain amount of social engineering, and may strike Americans as odd matters for the law to take into account.

On paper, the va'ada system could seem very restrictive. Women still have to jump through bureaucratic hoops, and some have told me that they lied-for instance, by saying a pregnancy was conceived in an extramarital affair-to meet the legal criteria for termination. Some women circumvent the va'ada system entirely, paying significant sums out of pocket to private doctors who perform illegal terminations. (Authorities generally look the other way.) Yet if an abortion is approved by the va'ada, it is almost always covered by the universal health-insurance system and performed in a hospital by expert physicians. In short, a process that begins by making an abortion a committee decision usually ends with a safe, timely abortion covered by public funds.

Post-viability abortions in Israel undergo a weightier approval process. After about 23 weeks of gestational age, a woman must present her case to a va'adat al, a "higher committee" with more members and more senior doctors.
Read: Malta's fledgling movement for abortion rights
Under guidelines from the Israeli Ministry of Health, many of the acceptable rationales for abortion in early pregnancy-age, extramarital affair-are no longer automatically sufficient to justify a post-viability termination. For such an abortion to be approved, a fetal anomaly must have at least a 30 percent chance of causing either moderate disability (in pregnancies of 24 to 28 weeks) or severe disability (after 28 weeks).

If a 30 percent chance strikes you as a low threshold for an abortion at this stage, you're not alone. Almost every American I've asked, whether a physician or layperson, finds that number shocking. After all, a 30 percent chance of an affected child is a 70 percent chance of an unaffected one.

In 2015, 93 percent of patients with post-viability pregnancies who applied to a va'adat al were approved. These late terminations, the overwhelming majority of which are approved for a fetal anomaly, represent 1.7 percent of all abortions performed in Israel; in comparison, they are 0.1 percent of abortions in England and Wales, and exceedingly rare in other European countries and the United States.

In deciding whether to raise the possibility of abortion with a pregnant woman, doctors in Israel may be responding as much to the tort system as to medical reality. While Israel is less litigious than the United States overall, a landmark Israeli Supreme Court ruling in 1986 eased the way for wrongful-life and wrongful-birth lawsuits. In a wrongful-life case, a patient born with a disability seeks damages caused by a doctor's failure to offer an abortion; in wrongful-birth cases, parents are the plaintiffs. The judges who made the ruling had hoped to provide disabled patients with the financial resources necessary to live with dignity. But in the malpractice environment that ensued, the obvious way for doctors to protect themselves against lawsuits was to err on the side of counseling patients about termination.

Such lawsuits are rare elsewhere in the world. In the United States, wrongful-life and wrongful-birth cases have been restricted by legislation in many states. Anti-abortion groups that lobby for these restrictions fear that wrongful-birth lawsuits will lead doctors to recommend more abortions. More recent case law in Israel has created a more stringent legal standard, but recent statistics have shown that the number of suits continues to grow.

When termination of pregnancy is never off the table, it changes the way doctors like me practice. In the ultrasound suite, there's always a chance I'll have to initiate a traumatic conversation with a pregnant woman, no matter how far along she is.

I currently work at an Israeli hospital that doesn't provide abortions. I have many ultra-Orthodox Jewish and observant Muslim patients who don't pursue prenatal diagnosis, and I limit their ultrasounds and counseling as their convictions dictate. But pregnancy termination comes up frequently anyway. Many of the women I see as patients come to me after receiving care from other hospitals, often with thick files in their hands. The papers inside document ultrasound after ultrasound, MRIs of the fetal brain, genetics consultations. Almost always included is the phrase termination of pregnancy discussed.
Read: When abortion is illegal, women rarely die. But they still suffer.
When I trace back to the original ultrasound finding that brought such a patient to me, the potential fetal anomaly it identifies is often something-an increase in amniotic fluid, say, or a mild dilation of the brain ventricles-that would seldom raise the question of abortion late in pregnancy in the United States.

Outside of the hospital, I hear similar stories from Israeli colleagues and friends. After a request on social media, I ended up with a dozen stories of patients who had discussed abortion with their doctor late in their pregnancy. Many of these cases involved clinical findings that, to my American-trained eyes, just didn't warrant it. One friend told me that, at her 37-week visit, when her fetus was measuring very small, with the fetal femur bones appearing shorter than normal, she was offered two options: She could go to the hospital either to have labor induced or to ask for a termination of her pregnancy. Same visit, same hospital, her choice. She laughs about it now, as that sweet baby nurses at her breast. When my friend was 37 weeks pregnant, though, it wasn't funny; it felt both terrifying and cruel.

In Israel, the conversation about ending a pregnancy demands to be conducted, all the time, for almost any small finding-even when it's not in the patient's best interest, even when it's really about protecting the doctor. And that's why I was in that dark room, measuring and remeasuring that 35-week fetal head, trying to avoid what had to come next.

I was almost not brave enough to write this piece. In the United States, there are only two sides to abortion, and there is outrage on both. Anti-abortion activists will say that I'm a murderer, or an accessory to murder, because of the work I do.

I also hesitated for the opposite reason: Any time a pro-abortion-rights provider admits to any doubts, her ambivalence may be used to limit abortion care. One expert I interviewed for this piece said, "If you write how hard it is to counsel about abortions, please know this: Somewhere, someone will use that to stop women from getting the procedures that they need." After that, I couldn't write for weeks.

But there needs to be a way to talk about all the places in the middle of the abortion debate, where most Americans' beliefs actually lie.

Since arriving in Israel, I have learned that I love practicing in a country with ready access to safe abortion. I have learned that I hate the rules forcing a woman to ask a panel of strangers for permission to end her pregnancy. The committee structure is demeaning and unethical, an affront to a patient's autonomy over her own treatment.

Yet I have also learned that, in the absence of a clearly debilitating or lethal fetal abnormality, I am deeply uncomfortable with a termination of pregnancy at 35 weeks, or 32 weeks, or 28 weeks. That, it turns out, is well outside the limits of my personal pro-choice terrain. Indeed, I am uncomfortable even discussing such a termination with patients.

In my career as an obstetrician, I have cared for many pregnant women at risk of giving birth months too soon. I've prayed with women whose water broke much too early. I have fought for the survival of fetuses on their way to being born at 24 weeks. I've delivered a lot of 28-week and 32-week and 35-week babies, and often had their parents return to me with their healthy toddlers, smiling and chubby. I know how hard women will fight for those pregnancies; I know what they are willing to risk. I won't bring up termination of pregnancy at that point-unless the alternative is worse.

Of all the American things I'm homesick for, it turns out the biggest one is Roe v. Wade. I miss U.S. abortion law terribly. In some part, that's because it's familiar. But it's also because the structure of American law, if practiced as constitutionally legislated, works for most patients, most of the time-ethically, emotionally, and medically. The arrangement of U.S. abortion rights means that terminations center on a woman's choice, but also that there's a point in a pregnancy when abortion is off the table, except in the most dire of circumstances. And that means there's a point in the pregnancy when everybody can relax, when we start to comfortably call the fetus a baby, when we can embrace the joy that accompanies a healthy, desired pregnancy.

In Israel, because abortion is never off the table, that relaxed time in a pregnancy never fully arrives. Telling women all their legal options is still part of my job. I am ethically required to have these difficult conversations about late abortion. I can honor that minimal obligation, though I never imagined I'd have so much trouble meeting it. When I return to the United States, what I'll take back with me is this itchy strangeness of having to figure out where I stand.

In that dark ultrasound room in the fall, I asked the patient to wipe the gel off her 35-week belly and gave her a hand to sit up. I told her what I saw: The baby's head was quite small. As the words in Hebrew left my mouth, I could hear that I'd conjugated the verb incorrectly, and I paused. She heard my American accent and softly corrected me.

I told her, then, that I thought the head size was probably not a problem; that measuring a head is difficult, once it has already settled in the maternal pelvis; that our measurements are more unreliable near term. I mentioned gently that anything with the brain can be tricky; that sometimes these things can be serious, even debilitating; that further testing for other problems is available.

"Most people ...," I said. I paused, trying to get the words and the tone exactly right. I started again. "Most people wouldn't consider doing anything further for what I just saw, much less something serious like amniocentesis or terminating the pregnancy. But if you'd like to talk to someone who can tell you about those things, or even just take a second look at the brain, I can send you to someone else."

She was already shaking her head. "No," she said. "No, thank you." And then she asked: "Can I have that picture of the baby's face? I want to show my husband; I think she has his mouth."

I gave it to her. She smoothed the black-and-white film between her fingers, and smiled at it in her hand. And then she walked out the door.

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I Found the Outer Limits of My Pro-choice Beliefs

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In an ultrasound room far from home, I discovered more than I was looking for. One day about seven months ago, I was standing in a dark room in a hospital not far from Tel Aviv, performing an ultrasound on the taut belly of a woman well into her third trimester.

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The woman who wins the 2019 U.S. Open tennis tournament this weekend will take home a record $3.85 million in prize money - exactly the same amount that will be awarded to the men's winner.

After Billie Jean King threatened to boycott the 1973 U.S. Open due to pay inequality, the tournament became the first to award equal money to its male and female champions. The other three Grand Slam tournaments eventually followed suit, and all have paid equal prize money since 2007, a big reason why tennis is - by far - the most lucrative sport for women and the sport with the narrowest gender pay gap.

The winner of the season-ending Women's Tennis Association Finals this winter will earn $4.75 million, the biggest prize in the history of men's or women's tennis. According to Forbes, the 10 highest-paid female athletes in the world in 2019 are all tennis players, led by Serena Williams with $29.2 million earned through prize money ($4.2 million) and a $25 million endorsement portfolio that includes Nike, Gatorade, Pampers, JP Morgan, Beats, and General Mills.

Outside of tennis, the gender pay gap is staggering.

The highest base salary in the WNBA is $117,500. The highest salary in the NBA is $40 million.

Jackie Young, the top pick in the 2019 WNBA Draft, will make $53,537 base salary this season with the Las Vegas Aces. Zion Williamson, the top pick in the NBA Draft, signed a four-year deal with the New Orleans Pelicans worth $44 million.

The lowest NBA salary ($897,158) is $779,658 more than what the WNBA's highest-paid player, DeWanna Bonner, makes.

The highest salary in the National Women's Soccer League is $46,200. The highest salary in Major League Soccer is $7.2 million.

The highest-paid male soccer player in the world, Lionel Messi, makes $127 million, with $92 million coming from FC Barcelona. The highest-paid female soccer player in the world, Alex Morgan, is worth $5.8 million, but only $250,000 of that is combined salary from the Orlando Pride and U.S. national team. The rest comes from her endorsements, which include Nike, Coca-Cola and Secret.

The pay scale in golf is also lopsided. Brooks Koepka tops the PGA prize money list this year with $9.51 million, and Jin Young Ko is the top earner on the LPGA prize money list at $2.28 million.

Dan Levy, vice president of Olympics and women's sports for the Wasserman sports management agency, represents many of the nation's top female athletes, including Morgan, Mia Hamm, Megan Rapinoe and swimmer Katie Ledecky. He began his career representing players on the 1999 Women's World Cup team and has seen great strides in women's sports over the past 20 years. Still, he says, when it comes to equal and fair compensation, women have a long way to go.

"Women have to be 'more than'; they can't just make the kind of money men make playing their sport," Levy said. "They have to be marketable. They have to have a cause, a look, a flamboyant personality, something unique. So, there are ways for them to be really valuable from a marketability standpoint, but they can't just make money playing a sport.

"The tennis example is unique because at their majors, they compete in the same event as the men. You buy a ticket to get into Wimbledon or the U.S. Open, and that gets you an opportunity to watch men or women play. So, they've had an opportunity to grow beside their male counterparts in a way that women of no other sport have. Salaries are getting marginally better, but for women who play sports, particularly team sports, it's still a minor league, so to speak."

Megan Rapinoe, center, is joined by teammates as confetti falls outside of City Hall, after the team's ticker-tape parade celebrating the U.S. women's national soccer team's World Cup victory, in New York on July 10 2019. CALLA KESSLER NYT

The only nontennis players to crack the Top 15 on the Forbes women's list were Morgan, who ranked 12th at $5.8 million with a salary of $250,000 and endorsements totaling $5.5 million; India badminton icon P.V. Sindhu, tied for No. 13 with tennis player Madison Keys at $5.5 million; and Thai golfer Ariya Jutanugarn at No. 15 with $5.3 million.

Williams was the only woman to make the 2019 Forbes' list of World's 100 Highest-Paid Athletes, tied at No. 63 with Detroit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera. She was also the lone woman on the 2017 list. In 2018, there were no women on the list.

Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research of Girls and Women's Sports at the University of Minnesota, said that despite a huge cultural shift in attitudes toward women's sports since Title IX legislation in the early 1970s, pay equity is still a long way away.

"In terms of pay equity, the glass is certainly less than half full," Kane said. "It's not a difference in degree, it's a difference in kind because it's millions and millions and millions of dollars versus hundreds of thousands of dollars. That said, if you look at the long arc of women's sports, the fact that they have professional leagues is something that has moved the needle. But men's sports had an enormous head start culturally, socially and economically. Comparing women's leagues to men's is like comparing a start-up company to Apple or Microsoft. Give us a couple of decades and get back to me."

One explanation for the gender pay gap in sports is pure supply-and-demand economics.

The NBA generates more than $9 billion in revenue, while the WNBA generates about $25 million. Television rights for the NBA dwarf WNBA rights. The NBA season is 82 games, and the WNBA season is 34 games. Most WNBA players also play overseas in order to make more money.

The 2018 men's World Cup in Russia generated $6.1 billion in revenue. The 2019 Women's World Cup in France generated $131 million.

MLS average attendance is 21,053 this season, while the NWSL is averaging 7,093.

"No, I don't think in the WNBA, where you have shorter seasons and you don't have a long history like you do in the NBA, there should be equal pay," Kane said. "That said, I don't think there should be astronomical differences between the obscene amount of money NBA players make and what the women make."

The U.S. women's soccer team got $4 million from FIFA for winning the Women's World Cup earlier this summer; and the French men's team got $38 million from FIFA for winning their World Cup last summer. Although the U.S. women captivated the nation and drew record TV audiences, their equal pay fight is likely headed to federal court after mediation talks with U.S. Soccer broke down in mid-August.

"We won't accept anything less than equal pay," U.S. captain Rapinoe said. "We show up for a game, if we win the game, if we lose the game, if we tie the game, we want to be paid equally, period."

A letter written last month by U.S. Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro and posted on the federation's website said: "It should be a basic principle everywhere in our country - equal work deserves equal pay." He went on to state that the men's and women's national teams negotiated separate collective bargaining agreements and asserted that the organization paid the U.S. Women's National Team more than the men's team over the past decade.

Cordeiro said the federation paid the women's team $34.1 million from 2010 to 2018 compared to $26.4 million for the men's team. The financial analysis, which Cordeiro said was reviewed by an independent accounting firm, includes IRS tax filings and does not include money received by U.S. Soccer from FIFA for World Cup participation or bonuses as those totals are out of the federation's control.

Comparing pay between the men's and women's teams is complicated because each group negotiated different pay structures and benefits.

U.S. Soccer pays the women a guaranteed base salary of $100,000 per year as well as $67,500 to $72,500 as compensation for playing in the National Women's Soccer League. The women also have a benefits package that includes health care, retirement, paid maternity leave, childcare and severance. Players on the men's team are paid based only on training camp invitations, game appearances and bonuses. U.S. Soccer does not pay salaries for men who play in MLS or other professional leagues around the world, nor does it provide the benefits package the women get.

"Progress has been made, but there's still such a long way to go outside of those huge events and moments, the day-in and day-out leagues, whether it be the WNBA or the NWSL or what the women's hockey players are trying to create," Levy said. "Men's sports, both here domestically and globally, the amount of resources and investment that goes into that, and the structures that have been in place for decades naturally give way to much larger salaries."

United States' Megan Rapinoe holds the trophy celebrating at the end of the Women's World Cup final soccer match between the U.S. and The Netherlands at the Stade de Lyon in Decines, outside Lyon, France, Sunday, July 7, 2019. The U.S. defeated the Netherlands 2-0. Francisco Seco AP

The disparity in media coverage between men's and women's sports is also a factor. Fans are fed so much more information and storylines about male athletes and leagues than they are about women's sports; naturally, that makes them more compelled to tune in and buy tickets.

Changing attitudes in corporate America are helping close the pay gap.

Budweiser this summer became the first official beer sponsor of the NWSL, and its #WontStopWatching tagline on social media urged fans not to forget about female soccer players when the World Cup is over.

VISA's new sponsorship deal with U.S. Soccer demands that half the money be devoted to the women's program.

ESPN, on the heels of the Women's World Cup, decided to air 14 NWSL matches this season - eight on ESPNEWS and six, including the semifinals and final, on ESPN2.

And Secret, a week after the World Cup, took out a full-page ad in the New York Times announcing it was helping close the pay gap by donating $529,000 to the U.S. national team - $23,000 for each of the 23 players.

"The argument is always, 'It's market driven, it's market driven,' and women's sports don't put butts in seats or move product," Kane said. "That may have been true, but what the women's soccer victory showed us in the Women's World Cup is that when you invest in women and they're good, they can drive product, but that doesn't result in equal pay. Why would you expect equal pay given how many more resources are devoted to men's sports, how much more media coverage is focused on men's sports? I don't have a crystal ball, but I think it will get better; but not because men who control professional sports wake up one day and say, `Oh, I feel really terrible about the fact that there isn't equal pay.' "

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Levy agrees.

"Culturally, things have changed a lot," Levy said. "There's such a greater appreciation for women on top of their sport, but also girls competing at a high level whether it's club sports, in high school, college.

"Women who were athletes watching Mia and her teammates in the late '90s or early 2000s are now in position of power in companies, so that helps a tremendous amount now that they are decision-makers. Companies invest in properties that matter to people and are broadcasted widely. At the end of the day, brands are trying to reach consumers and they can do that through women competing in a different way than they were able to in the '80s and '90s."

He said female athletes are also taking advantage of social media, where they have been able to attract huge followings. Williams has 11.4 million Instagram followers. Morgan has 9.2 million, and Rapinoe is up to 2.2 million.

Serena and Venus Williams have long been advocates for equal pay for women tennis players, and King continues to push the issue.

"Congratulations to the #USWNT on their 4th World Cup win! These athletes have brought more attention, support, & pride to women's sport than perhaps any other team in history. It is long past time to pay them what they rightly deserve," King tweeted after the 2019 Women's World Cup.

During the 2019 Australian Open, Serena Williams paid tribute to King and pledged to continue battling for pay equity in all sports.

Tennis legends Billie Jean King, left, and Chris Evert address the media during a press conference at the Miami Open tennis tournament in Key Biscayne, Florida, on Wednesday, March 23, 2016. Pedro Portal El Nuevo Herald

"I feel like all of women's sports - not only tennis - really owes everything to Billie Jean King," she said. "Everything she's done for us, demanding equal prize money ... makes me not really want to focus on what I can do on the court but what I do off the court."

King and Chris Evert met with the media at the 2016 Miami Open to address the issue of equal pay. The Miami Open awards equal pay to men and women, but some other tournaments don't.

"Everyone thinks women should be thrilled when we get crumbs, and I want women to have the cake, the icing and the cherry on top, too," King said. "To have equal prize money in the majors sends a message. It's not about the money, it's about the message. We want to make the pie bigger, the marketplace bigger for all... What about when Chris and Martina were playing and their ratings were better than the men? We didn't go, 'Oh, we deserve more than the men.' No. Let's just keep it equal and help each other."

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How big is the gender pay gap in sports? It's much bigger than you think. Here is proof

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The woman who wins the 2019 U.S. Open tennis tournament this weekend will take home a record $3.85 million in prize money - exactly the same amount that will be awarded to the men's winner. After Billie Jean King threatened to boycott the 1973 U.S.

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The rapper's tweet blew up, acheiving well over 1-million views, stoking the ongoing debate of transgender athletes in sports.

A British rapper named "Zuby" garnered worldwide attention in March of 2019 after posting a video of himself declaring he had broken the British Women's deadlift record.

In the tweet Zuby said that he "identified as a woman whilst lifting the weight," ultimately trolling the debate of transgender people competing in athletic events.

He claimed to have broken the women's dead-lift record of 238kg (528 pounds), and he said it was "without even trying".

I keep hearing about how biological men don't have any physical strength advantage over women in 2019...

So watch me DESTROY the British Women's deadlift record without trying.

P.S. I identified as a woman whilst lifting the weight. Don't be a bigot. 😂 pic.twitter.com/dYRraHCB42

- ZUBY: (@ZubyMusic) February 26, 2019

"Just deciding on a whim that Zuby says he's identifying as a woman, that's not how it works," said Dawn Ennis, managing editor of Outsports News, an LGBTQ sports publication.

Ennis said Zuby was trying to make a point, but noted that it's an issue that affects "real people here in our country."

In an interview with conservative commenter Ben Shapiro Zuby said he felt that the video resonated with people because he's not a professional lifter.

"If a recreational lifter, such as myself, can set those kinds of records in the women's division I think it should show people what the difference is and why that might be an idea people want to reconsider," said Zuby.

Different athletic organizations both in the United States and around the world have their own policies in place to include transgender athletes.

The International Olympic Committee, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the NAIA all have rules that say transgender women need to pass certain tests. USA Powerlifting, however, does not allow transgender women to compete as women.

The explanation in their participation policy states:
"Men naturally have a larger bone structure, higher bone density, stronger connective tissue and higher muscle density than women. These traits, even with reduced levels of testosterone do not go away."
JayCee Cooper, a powerlifter who is a transgender woman, was denied access to compete back in 2018, according to a report by Outsports, with the explanation that going through male puberty makes for an increased bone density and muscle mass.

In an interview with Dr. Rachel McKinnon from CompeteNetwork.com, Cooper argued that she hadn't seen any science to back it up.

One study from the National Center for Biotechnology Information found that transgender people had no athletic advantage at any point in their transition.

Another study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine focused on the motivation that athletes might have to compete as another gender, finding transgender people "do not appear to be motivated by personal athletic gain."

There have been several transgender athletes that met controversy based on their gender status.

MMA fighter Fallon Fox was criticized after breaking her opponents skull in a match, according to a report by The Verge. Those against her argue she had biological characteristics of a man. However, Dr. Eric Vilain, a medical geneticist and the director for the Institute of Society and Genetics at UCLA reviewed Fox's medical records and confirmed she "fulfilled all conditions" that required of her competing, according to the New York Times.

Back in June of 2018, ABC News reported that a dispute began at a Connecticut high school, when two transgender students placed at the girls state championships.

One student-athlete said she thought it was unfair for the two to compete, reported ABC.

However, both of the transgender student athletes argued that their competitors should work harder, according to a report by Townhall, a conservative and political opinion website. The athletes cited that any two athletes could have differences, outside of being transgender.

States across the nation have different policies when it comes to high school competition. According to Transathlete.com, Connecticut is considered an inclusive state, where no medical hormones or surgery is required. Iowa and Illinois each require case-by-case review.

"I have nothing against any individual or any group but biological differences are important," said Zuby in his interview with Shapiro, "we've known that they exist for millennia and so I don't think in 2019 we should suddenly forget about that particularly when it comes to sport because there could be some very serious implications for women's sport if that is allowed."

"What Zuby did was disappointing because it mocks the trans experience and I think that Zuby has fans who are LGBT who are not going to want to be his fans," said Ennis, "and he risks losing both LGBT and allies as fans."

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Male rapper identifying as female, declares he broke female deadlift record

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The rapper's tweet blew up, acheiving well over 1-million views, stoking the ongoing debate of transgender athletes in sports. A British rapper named "Zuby" garnered worldwide attention in March of 2019 after posting a video of himself declaring he had broken the British Women's deadlift record.

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Peter Keating, ESPN Senior WriterMay 14, 2020, 08:00 AM ET

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Peter Keating is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine, where he covers investigative and statistical subjects. His column, The Numbers, appears in every issue.

THE CHANTS BEGAN almost as soon as the U.S. women's soccer team won the World Cup last July. The American squad beat the Netherlands 2-0 in the final, capping a month of dominance in which Team USA outscored opponents 26-3. But by the time Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and their mates were celebrating their triumph, the world knew they would earn just $4 million collectively, a fraction of what their male counterparts had taken home a year earlier. Indeed, the $30 million awarded to all of the athletes combined at the 2019 Women's World Cup would not even equal the $38 million the French national team made after winning the 2018 men's World Cup, where prize money totaled $400 million.

So as FIFA president Gianni Infantino strode across the pitch at Stade Lyon to present the American women with their trophy, the crowd of 57,900 began to roar.

"Equal pay! Equal pay!"

It happened again three days later, after a ticker tape parade through New York's Canyon of Heroes honored the four-time Cup winners. When Carlos Cordeiro, then president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, began speaking in front of City Hall, shouts drowned him out:

"USA! Equal pay!"

"We hear you," Cordeiro told the crowd.

At that time, U.S. Soccer was already battling the women's national team in court, after all 28 members sued their national federation in March 2019 for "purposeful gender discrimination." It could have been the moment for USSF officials to declare victory and get out of that war, to find some way to share with the athletes the public triumphs and financial gains of American soccer.

Instead, the federation proceeded to file thousands of pages of documents asserting that, as one motion put it, "WNT and MNT players do not perform equal work requiring equal skill, effort and responsibility under similar working conditions." This past March, the USSF even declared it was entitled to treat men better because of biology: "The overall soccer-playing ability required to compete at the senior men's national team level is materially influenced by the level of certain physical attributes, such as speed and strength."

On May 1, a federal judge sided with U.S. Soccer on most of the key issues at stake in the lawsuit. U.S. District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner held that the women's national team had agreed to the terms of the deal that paid them. He also found that the WNT made more money than the men's team from 2015 to 2019. The athletes are planning to appeal, but at least for the moment, crucial parts of the suit have been dismissed.

In the court of public opinion, however, something snapped after those March filings. WNT members wore their jerseys inside out in protest. Major sponsors, including Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble, released statements supporting the athletes. Cindy Parlow Cone, then U.S. Soccer's vice president, condemned the USSF's legal arguments. So did Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber. Cordeiro resigned three days later, and the federation switched lawyers within a week.

So this much is clear: Whenever and however sports reemerge from the deep freeze of the coronavirus pandemic, women's leagues and federations will face changing expectations as they answer the basic question of how to compensate their players. Spurred by the excellence of the USWNT, the idea of pay equity has taken hold among athletes, fans and sponsors. And now central offices across the sports map are scrambling to catch up. U.S. Soccer is at a crossroads: Whatever happens with the equal pay lawsuit, the USSF has to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with the women's national team by the end of next year, and its long-term relationship with the National Women's Soccer League is up in the air. Meanwhile, the Women's Super League in England has gone fully professional. The WNBA inked a landmark labor deal in January, guaranteeing improved pay and unprecedented health benefits, after its players opted out of their CBA for the first time. And last May, 175 players left the National Women's Hockey League to protest poor wages, and they have been barnstorming as their own group.

ESPN Daily on equal pay

* Mina Kimes talks with two-time World Cup and Olympic soccer champion Julie Foudy for a candid, inside look at the battle over fair pay for female players. Listen

* Peter Keating joins Mina to discuss the U.S. Soccer's court victory and what's next for the U.S. women's national team. Listen

But here's the thing. While equal pay for equal work has emerged as a rallying cry in the ongoing struggles of women athletes, equity doesn't always, or even often, mean literal equality across all sports. Consider a comparison: Anthony Davis was the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft in 2012. Heading into this season, he had made six All-Star teams, and he created 0.247 win shares per 48 minutes in 2018-19. Nneka Ogwumike was the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft in 2012. Also a six-time All-Star, she had a nearly identical 0.248 win shares per 48 minutes in 2019.

This season, Davis made $27.1 million. Last season, Ogwumike earned $115,000.

That is a staggering gap. Yet nobody is suggesting that Ogwumike ought to be paid $27 million a year -- not even the WNBA athletes who have been fighting the longest for better wages. "These are businesses, and none of us are out there saying we want to be paid the exact same as the men," says 17-year WNBA veteran Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm. "When I think of pay equity, I think of the opportunity that the NBA and other male sports leagues have to be successful."

So what's really at stake? As demands for equal pay spark across arenas, boardrooms, TV screens, Twitter feeds and even presidential campaigns, it's time to take a deeper look. To assess the new landscape and figure out just how it's changing, we talked with athletes and their advocates and opponents, and scoured academic research, court papers and financial documents across women's sports. The biggest lesson: Today's athletes are asking for something even bigger than the strict definition of "pay equity." They want a piece of the action.

MALE AND FEMALE athletes are paid on entirely different scales, to the extent that examples can seem literally unbelievable. Just one woman was ranked among the 100 highest-paid athletes in the world in 2019, according to Forbes (Serena Williams, at No. 63). Steph Curry's salary ($40 million) is more than three times as much as what every player in the WNBA earned in 2019 combined ($12.5 million). Last year, Delanie Gourley, a star pitcher in National Pro Fastpitch softball, disclosed that she makes less than a Yankees bat boy.

The disparity is so wide that the money pulls skilled men into a career in sports, while the lack of money makes it impossible for many talented women to earn a living as an athlete. As an example, the Global Sports Salary Survey (GSSS), produced by the U.K.-based research firm Sporting Intelligence, counted 137,021 men who played professional soccer in the world in 2017 and just 1,287 women -- a ratio of 106 to 1.

Even compared with other fields traditionally dominated by men, it's far harder for women to break into the upper ranks of compensation in sports. In the United States, women make up 24% of Congress, 18% of surgeons, 10% of Christian church leaders. Worldwide, 18% of university presidents, 11% of astronauts who have been to space and 6% of major-company CEOs are women. "None of which is laudable," the GSSS report says, "but it makes 1% of professional footballers look more pitiful still."

The salary gap between men and women athletes echoes the huge difference in revenues between men's and women's sports. For instance, NBA teams took in a total of $8.8 billion this year, according to Forbes. Meanwhile, WNBA revenues were probably around $70 million, estimates David Berri, a professor of economics at Southern Utah University and author of numerous studies about women's sports. The raw numbers make it easy to assume that women make less money simply because fans prefer men's games -- that pay follows revenues, and revenues follow popularity. But the truth is more complicated, because a league's financial data also embeds its history, opportunities and labor relations. "We have to consider why the revenue is different, what bias and discrimination are in play," says Lindsay Kagawa Colas, senior vice president for women's sports at Wasserman, whose clients include a bevy of the WNBA's biggest stars, such as Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore, as well as gymnast Katelyn Ohashi and swimmer Simone Manuel. "Have investments been equal? Has commitment been equal? Is the allocation of the best talent to thinking about ways to grow fan engagement, innovation or player experience happening?"

"These are businesses, and none of us are out there saying we want to be paid the exact same as the men. When I think of pay equity, I think of the opportunity that the NBA and other male sports leagues have to be successful." Sue Bird

Any sport needs three kinds of support to grow into a large-scale, sustainable business. And these provisions have tilted strongly, almost exclusively, toward men's sports for decades.

First, investment. A league requires seed money to grow. That includes outlays by committed owners with deep pockets, rather than the unstable financing that has so often plagued franchises in women's sports. (Including the very greatest: From 1997 to 2000, the Houston Comets won four straight WNBA championships with a core of Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson, all top-shelf Hall of Famers. But in 2007, a furniture-store owner named Hilton Koch bought the club for $10 million, then couldn't pay its bills, and the team was disbanded the following year.) It also includes corporate sponsorship. And while companies have shown more interest in backing female athletes recently, men's leagues and teams still captured 93% of the $31 billion that corporations around the globe spent on sports last year, according to a November 2019 report by the German research firm Statista.

Investment includes public money too, usually in the form of taxpayer-financed stadiums. New arenas allow teams to improve their game experience, hike prices and build up adjoining land. And men's leagues have proved adept at getting state and local governments to defray the costs of that development. From 1990 to 2012, for instance, MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL teams got a mammoth $17 billion in public funds for new homes, according to research by economists Robert Baade and Victor Matheson. As Berri puts it: "Men love investing in men's sports."

More recently, men's soccer clubs have kept the gravy train rolling. From 2005 to 2018, municipalities in the U.S. forked over a combined $738 million in subsidies for new Major League Soccer fields. These deals have been great for teams -- and for MLS; its expansion fee has rocketed to $325 million. But while women's clubs are sharing some of the new pitches (and a handful of NBA facilities too), when it comes to securing arenas as primary occupants, the women's game has barely arrived at the table. In 2021, Tacoma and Louisville are scheduled to open the first soccer-specific stadiums with National Women's Soccer League clubs as their highest-level tenants.

"The NWSL has the opportunity to be the best league in the world," says Becca Roux, executive director of the U.S. Women's National Team Players Association. "But we need investors with the mindset that there's tons of value here that hasn't been shown before who will go unlock it. And we need access to better stadiums, facilities and everything that makes a better entertainment product."

"The NWSL has the opportunity to be the best league in the world. But we need investors with the mindset that there's tons of value here that hasn't been shown before who will go unlock it." Becca Roux

Beyond money, a sport needs time to grow into its potential audience. Leagues and clubs are subject to what economists call "network externality," which means the value of something depends on how many consumers use it. Think of cellphones: If you were the only person to have one, your phone would be useless. It's when the number of people with them grows that the devices become valuable. In the same way, if you're the only fan you know of a new sports team, your experience will be extremely limited. Your joys and agonies and memories increase exponentially as your network of friends and family involved with the same team expands.

Successful sports build enough familiarity and loyalty that their followers spread, find one another and reach a critical mass that, like a chain reaction in a nuclear power plant, creates a new energy that feeds on itself over time. And it can take decades for leagues and franchises to develop faith and establish their footing.

The WNBA is scheduled to play its 24th season this year. The NFL was the same age in 1943, a year when it fielded only eight teams, including the Brooklyn Dodgers, and averaged a third of its 2019 per-game attendance. Women's professional soccer was actually banned in Germany until 1970, England until 1971 and Brazil until 1979; the NWSL, its latest and longest-lived incarnation in the U.S., has now been playing for seven years. In 1953, at the same stage in its timeline, the NBA had total revenues of less than $16 million in today's dollars, according to data collected by the House Judiciary Committee in 1957, and drew only 3,583 fans per game.

Of course, the sports world is bigger and more lucrative today. But a generation is still a generation. "No one should expect any women's sports league to have the following we see in men's professional sports today," Berri says. "Right now, WNBA fans are just beginning to pass their fan preferences down to their children."

Finally, sports need media to reach their full potential. And make no mistake, fans today have more access than ever to the games played by female athletes, because a burgeoning number of networks and apps, hungry to acquire and offer new content, are programming all kinds of formerly "niche" sports.

ESPN, for instance, dedicated more than 16,000 hours across all its platforms and partners to the programming of women's sporting events last year, up from 7,500 in 2015 and just 1,500 in 2010. CBS Sports Network struck a deal in 2019 to show 40 WNBA games a year, increasing the number of regular-season contests on national television by more than 60%. NBC and its fleet of cable channels showed a record 631.5 hours of the 2018 Winter Olympics -- and for the first time ever, a majority of prime-time airtime was devoted to women's sports, according to research by Andrew Billings of the University of Alabama and James Angelini of the University of Delaware. And the media surge is lifting smaller sports onto regional, digital and streaming platforms. B/R Live shows the Women's FIH Pro League, where women's national field hockey teams face off; FloSports streams Premier Girls Fastpitch, a top club softball league for high school and younger players.

Sustained exposure has certainly been a boon to college softball, to which ESPN has held the rights for 40 years. Broadcasts have spurred fan interest. And that's led to more viewers (Women's College World Series ratings have increased by nearly 40% since 2000), more revenues (up 360% from 2003 to 2016) and, in turn, more broadcasts (more than 1,600 games, including all of the playoffs, were scheduled for this season before the pandemic struck). In 2017, ESPN stayed with a WCWS game that went to extra innings instead of switching to a previously scheduled MLB broadcast. That's the chain reaction of network externalities.

On the other hand, sports news and highlight segments have historically focused overwhelmingly on men. In 2017, for example, a majority of the most popular sports sites on the Internet didn't dedicate even one page to a women's sport or league, according to research by Berri. For instance, NBC Sports had pages for horse racing and the National Dog Show, but not for the WNBA or NWSL. Earlier studies from 1990 to 2015 drew similar conclusions, whether looking at daily highlights or Olympic coverage, conveyed through print or images, on television or in newspapers or magazines: Men's sports got more coverage -- and more exciting coverage. Viewing stories about men's sports was like "watching that classic 1960s Batman TV show (Bam! Pow!) ... plenty of action," Cheryl Cooky of Purdue and Michael Messner and Michela Musto of USC wrote in a 2015 report that studied SportsCenter and local TV news broadcasts in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, listening to announcers talk about women's sports "was usually like hearing someone deliver a boring afterthought, with an obvious lack of enthusiasm."

News coverage of women's sports seems to have shifted considerably in just the past few years, though there aren't any published studies yet to say by just how much. Most major sites have now joined ESPN, which launched espnW in 2010, in allocating space to women's sports across multiple dedicated pages, particularly for basketball and soccer. The Athletic, for example, expanded its reporting in 2019 to include regular coverage of all 12 WNBA clubs and women's college basketball. But when it comes to getting the kind of daily, comprehensive news, analysis and statistics that multiple media outlets and platforms routinely provide for men's teams, most women's sports still lag.

Putting together all of the factors that affect league revenues -- investment, time and media -- it's apparent that most women's sports have struggled for years with what the Statista report calls a vicious cycle, which reverses the pattern that college softball has experienced. Low investment and media coverage have led to limited viewership, rights deals and sponsorships, which leads to low pay, which hampers the development of new talent and initiatives, which leads to ... low investment and media coverage.

Just maybe, however, that cycle is breaking at this moment, because women athletes are changing the terms of business in two of the world's biggest sports.

"ONE THING I DO KNOW," Sunil Gulati, president of U.S. Soccer from 2006 to 2018, said in a declaration to the equal pay lawsuit. "I never would have authorized offering or accepting, and never would have recommended to the board agreeing to, the same bonuses for Women's World Cup play that were contained in the MNT's agreement for their World Cup play for very simple reasons."

Now, comparing the finances of the U.S women's and men's national soccer teams is complicated. The squads face different adversaries, at different levels of competition, on different schedules, including World Cup cycles in different years. They have different collective bargaining agreements with U.S. Soccer, which pays base salaries, NWSL subsidies and performance bonuses to women while compensating men through much larger bonuses. To secure international friendlies, the men's team pays and sometimes earns appearance fees, which don't exist for women.

But Gulati's first reason for paying them unequal rates was simple indeed: The women were playing better, so they would have earned more. "I believed," he said, "the WNT was much more likely to qualify for and succeed in their tournament than the MNT was."

He certainly was right about that. The U.S. women have been playing so well that they now generate nearly as much money as the men on game days, despite typically lower official ticket prices. For years, the MNT had posted significantly more from events than the WNT -- more than three times as much from 2009 to 2015, according to data from U.S. Soccer. But that gap has virtually disappeared since the women's team won the 2015 World Cup and then maintained its global supremacy: The women's team has brought in $63.4 million since 2016, compared with $66.3 million for the men, according to U.S. Soccer's most recent financial statements. (These numbers include gate receipts but not sponsorship or broadcast-rights money, which account for about half of all USSF revenue but which the federation does not report separately for the MNT and WNT.) Today, grassroots support for the national teams seem to be at parity.

And the equal pay lawsuit has exposed just how out of whack performance and pay have become in American soccer, legally or not. Suppose we take the various rates of compensation for the men's national team -- bonuses for appearances and wins in friendlies, tournaments and World Cups -- and apply them to the members of the women's national team, player by player. That's the approach taken by Finnie Bevin Cook, an economist who compiled a report for the plaintiffs in the equal pay lawsuit. Cook found that under the men's wage scales, members of the women's team would have earned $91.8 million from 2014 to 2019. But they were actually paid just $27.7 million.

Beyond anticipating the savings from that huge gulf, Gulati had a second simple reason for paying men and women differently: U.S. Soccer replicates the compensation practices of FIFA, the organization that is by far the biggest driver of unequal pay in global soccer. Realizing that FIFA awards much bigger prizes in men's events, the federation gave greater incentives and rewards to the men's national team, hoping they would bring home more cash.

As Gulati put it: "I believed that the MNT's participation and success in their tournament would result in the receipt of substantially more prize money from FIFA than the WNT's participation and success in their tournament."

FIFA has a notoriously checkered past with women athletes. "Female players are pretty, if you excuse me saying so," former FIFA president Sepp Blatter opined in 2004. "Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball. They could, for example, have tighter shorts." (Blatter is currently in the midst of a six-year ban from FIFA for ethics violations.) While men have always played on grass, FIFA staged the 2015 Women's World Cup at arenas with artificial turf, which American striker Sydney Leroux, one of dozens of athletes who protested, likened to "running pretty much on cement." Analysts have noted for years that when it comes to television rights, FIFA has treated the Women's World Cup as an afterthought -- at worst a loss leader, at best a chance for media companies to use women's games to prepare for the men's tournaments. "Every time FIFA bundles broadcast rights, it ascribes no value to the Women's World Cup," Roux says. "It centers contracts around the men's World Cup and uses TV coverage of women's games as a dry run for the men."

Until recently, it seemed that, at least from a business perspective, FIFA pursued that strategy because the money it brought in from the men's tournament dwarfed that from the women's game. For instance, FIFA says the 2018 men's World Cup generated $5.4 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, the organization's financial reports projected just $131 million in total revenue from the 2019 Women's World Cup, a number that spread like wildfire among outlets last summer. U.S. Soccer's lobbyists even used it to argue that the American women's national team is paid fairly, simply because there's so much less available to pay them.

But the number was wrong. FIFA did list $131 million under "total revenue" in its financials, but for some reason, that was merely an investment figure -- how much the organization initially budgeted to spend on the 2019 World Cup, as Rachel Bachman of The Wall Street Journal reported last September. There actually isn't any correct number, because income data isn't broken out anywhere for the Women's World Cup. FIFA commingles broadcasting rights and sponsorships for the men's and women's tournaments.

"As many rights for FIFA competitions are sold to commercial affiliates as a package, specific commercial revenues for the FIFA Women's World Cup cannot be distinguished from the overall revenue from FIFA competitions," FIFA said in a statement to ESPN. "FIFA wants to develop a specific commercial strategy for women's football in order to attract additional funds that can be attributed directly to the women's game. This new reality will only be reflected in our future financial results."

FIFA's own audience reports, however, show the value of women's soccer already rising rapidly. Matches across the 2019 Women's World Cup, for example, had an average live viewership of 17.3 million people, a whopping 106% more than the 2015 WWC. The U.S.-Netherlands final reached an average live audience of 82.2 million, up 56%. And overall, viewers consumed 2.49 billion hours of coverage across all platforms, a jump of 93%. As totals, these numbers are considerably smaller than for the men's game, but they are also generally growing much faster. For instance, 994 million people watched at least one minute of the 2019 Women's World Cup on linear television, a 30% increase from 2015, while 3.26 billion watched a minute or more of the men's World Cup in 2018, up just 2% from four years earlier. There are different ways to weight these audience eyeballs and viewing times, and to project future statistics. But there's no clear business reason for FIFA to keep acting like the Women's World Cup is worth less than 10% of the men's game.

Or for the USSF to follow FIFA's lead in allocating prize money. "It's not just FIFA that needs to be clear about the revenue that it's making from the Women's World Cup," says Molly Levinson, spokesperson for the U.S. women's national team. "U.S. Soccer has purposefully withheld and obscured the revenues that it has received through similar marketing deals."

"There is indeed a significant difference in World Cup prize money awarded by FIFA to the men's and women's championship teams," the federation said in a March 7 letter to its members, a copy of which it provided to ESPN. "However, it is not reasonable or fiscally sound for U.S. Soccer to make up the gap. It would seriously impair our ability to support our mission and invest in these other critical developmental areas."

Piece together all of these revelations about how the highest level of women's soccer has been functioning and you'll notice a new horizon is looming for the sport. As important as the equal pay lawsuit is for the players who are seeking back pay and damages, it's essentially about the past. Looking ahead, the women's national team also has a collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer that expires at the end of 2021. And it's in the runup to that deadline that the two sides will collide again over the even bigger issues at hand.

Over the past two years, U.S. Soccer has spent half its budget (which was $131.8 million in 2019) on management expenses and youth programs and devoted less than 30% to athlete pay and benefits. And over the next two, it has plans to spend down its surplus, which swelled to more than $160 million after the Copa America in 2016, to about $50 million. But suddenly the USSF has a new president in Parlow Cone and a new CEO in William Wilson, formerly an executive at Wasserman and MLS. It has lost the support of the men's national team, which has accused U.S. Soccer of "working very hard to sell a false narrative" and called for a sharp increase in women's compensation. And it is also contending with at least four other lawsuits, so its legal bills will total about $9 million this year. These short-term issues could blow up U.S. Soccer's priorities, and new labor negotiations are an even bigger threat.

Meanwhile, the U.S. women want more than a new pay structure. At peak popularity, marketability and leverage, they are also seeking more equitable spending on coaching. (In its most recent fiscal year, ending in March 2019, the USSF paid $304,113 to current men's coach Gregg Berhalter for four months of work, $241,869 to former coach David Sarachan, whom Berhalter replaced in December 2018, and $1.475 million to former coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who was fired in 2016. Meanwhile, over the same span, women's coach Jill Ellis, winner of back-to-back World Cups, earned $390,409.) They're looking for better training and travel budgets. They want more open accounting and less obeisance to FIFA. Critically, they have called on U.S. Soccer to spend more on marketing, in part by investing much more in the NWSL. "The bar is pretty f---ing low," says one executive close to the team, noting that U.S. Soccer contributed less than $850,000 to the NWSL's administrative costs last year.

Essentially, the women want to partner in growing their game. "The good news is that folks outside the federation, from sponsors to broadcasters to partners, are incredibly bullish on the U.S. women's national team and on women's football," Levinson says. "I think they're going to all drag the federation along, hopefully to a place where there's equal pay and beyond."

If there's a way forward, it might be thanks to one more surprise from the past few months: The WNBA's new CBA is fundamentally different from every past labor agreement in women's sports.

AT THE NBA All-Star Game in Charlotte in 2019, where athletes met to discuss their collective bargaining agreement, NBA commissioner Adam Silver ran into Terri Jackson, executive director of the WNBA Players Association. "If players are talking ridiculous salaries ... ," Silver began.

"Let me stop you," Jackson said. "We're not, and I think we should talk."

"If that's the case, then we should talk," Silver agreed.

Of course, compensation has always been a serious issue in the WNBA, which paid its players one-ninety-sixth the NBA's average salary at the time Jackson and Silver chatted. Pay is so low that it has compelled most American athletes to play overseas as well as in the WNBA just to make a living, increasing their wear and tear and their injury risk. As just one brutal example, 2018 league MVP Breanna Stewart ruptured her right Achilles tendon in April 2019 while playing for Dynamo Kursk in the EuroLeague women's championship.

Low pay has also warped the women's game itself. A small number of women players are truly dominant at the college level, which makes the first few picks in the WNBA draft extremely valuable. At the same time, there's very little downside if a player happens to go bust, because even top rookies earn only about $50,000 a year. That risk/reward ratio, combined with restricted-free-agency rules, has created more incentive to tank for teams in the WNBA than for those in any other major sport. From 2011 to 2015, the Phoenix Mercury went 19-15, 7-27, 19-15, 29-5 and 20-14. Can you guess in which season they rested Diana Taurasi and earned the league's No. 1 draft choice, and in which they won the WNBA championship with Brittney Griner, whom they selected with that pick?

Yet as WNBA players came to a crossroads in 2018, nobody told their union leaders to demand million-dollar salaries. The athletes did want a larger share of league revenues. But they were just as concerned about the relentless everyday signals that ownership -- which is split 50-50 between team owners and the NBA -- was running the league on a shoestring. Just five WNBA teams were playing in NBA arenas, with two others at college campuses, two at casinos, two in G League gyms and the New York Liberty shunted to a 5,000-seat facility in Westchester County, 30 miles from Manhattan. Athletes were traveling by cramped coach flights, sometimes by bus, and staying in shared hotel rooms and dormitory-style housing. Maybe most important, while TV ratings were way up, promotion and marketing remained extremely limited.

The players wanted a viable league where they could build careers, not just part-time jobs. Jackson, whose husband and son are both NBA veterans, kept asking, "What motivates you?" They kept telling her, "This is the legacy we want to protect."

In October 2018, the G League announced it would provide new contracts worth $125,000 for elite prospects -- which meant it would pay some 18-year-old men more than any woman had ever earned from the WNBA in a year. Leading WNBA players were stunned, but they took note of the NBA's terminology, which was full of words like "development," "programmatic opportunities," "supporting infrastructure" and "tools for top young players to grow." Jackson posted the phrase "language of investment" on her office wall.

Shortly afterward, the players opted out of their CBA. Union president Ogwumike announced the move in an essay for The Players' Tribune titled "Bet on Women."

In July 2019, the WNBA hired Cathy Engelbert, former CEO of the consulting firm Deloitte -- and a basketball walk-on who became a captain under Muffet McGraw at Lehigh in the 1980s -- as commissioner. Jackson met with Engelbert even before her hiring was official and told her the players were concerned about salary and compensation, player experience, and health and wellness. Engelbert wrote those items down. It was an unprecedented moment for a commissioner of a professional sports league and a head of a union: The labor deal they were about to negotiate could become a major platform for women's empowerment.

Silver was ready to hear about investment and commitment and even empowerment. The NBA commissioner complained publicly that the WNBA was losing more than $10 million a year, but that number said more about how the women's game was still small scale than about any significant damage to the bottom line of NBA teams. To grow the WNBA, he and the owners were prepared to, as he put it, "double down." The two sides channeled that willingness into the areas Engelbert and the league's negotiators discussed with Jackson, Ogwumike and the players, and reached an eight-year agreement in January.

The new CBA raises the WNBA salary cap by 30% and boosts maximum annual salaries from $117,500 to $215,000. Players will also be able to earn up to $250,000 apiece from a $1.6 million pool the league is dedicating to marketing agreements and will gain free agency after five years, down from six. Teams will provide housing with two bedrooms for athletes with children, individual hotel rooms on the road and flight upgrades.

The deal also pioneers a range of provisions important to players who are mothers or potential parents. Under the old CBA, athletes who had children lost pay when they lost work time; now they will have maternity leave with full compensation, plus space set aside in arenas for nursing. They will also be eligible to get reimbursed for the costs of adoption, surrogacy, fertility treatments and preservation of eggs. The new WNBA calendar will make it harder to play overseas and stateside in the same year, which could force athletes earning big money internationally to make some tough decisions. But the league has agreed to prepare and promote players for coaching and other jobs in the offseason.

As important as all these changes are, their total cost is about $1 million per WNBA team per year, which means the proportion of league revenues paid to players will rise only from about 20% to approximately 30%. Since most major sports are at around 50%, you could look at that and say the players are still leaving considerable cash on the table. But once two sides establish good faith in a negotiation, both can see spending -- or sacrifice -- as an investment. "This new CBA is going to dramatically change how this league operates," Bird says. "It's more merit-based, it will make us feel more professional and well-established, and kids are going to be able to see you can have a full-on career in the WNBA."

Essentially, the women and men all around the table decided to partner in growing their game.

IN THE UNITED STATES, we have now spent two generations since Title IX raising women athletes to compete on the same footing as men. That's one kind of equity: equality. Much more than ever before, the women who become professionals are now building the public support, partnerships and organizations they need to get paid what they are fully worth. They're not just bringing their skills to market, they're trying to make sure the market supports their skills.

That's the other kind of equity: ownership.

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Analysis: What equal pay in women's sports really means

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Peter Keating, ESPN Senior WriterMay 14, 2020, 08:00 AM ET Close Peter Keating is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine, where he covers investigative and statistical subjects. His column, The Numbers, appears in every issue. THE CHANTS BEGAN almost as soon as the U.S. women's soccer team won the World Cup last July.

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This is a big week for Mary Gregory.

This week, the transgender powerlifter and referee turns 44, just as another benchmark in this new age of transgender exclusion is expected to be set.

More on that, later. First, let's backup, to the last weekend of April, the biggest weekend in Gregory's life since she came out to her wife as trans in April of 2017, and since their divorce last December. It's the weekend she set several powerlifting records, took home trophies, and shared her success on Instagram.

In a video she posted, people are heard cheering her on: "Come on, Mary!"

As promised here is the full meet recap- what a day yesterday! One my best meets ever, not because of the records but because I was prepared, had a plan and flawlessly executed it! The records were just icing on the cake! - Friday night weighed in super light at 179.3lbs, 81.3kg! Over a kg under the class limit. - Squats, opener 130kg good lift. Opened a bit lighter than planned, was having issues with depth. Wanted to make sure I buried this one. 2nd attempt 138kg good lift. Chipped the VA State masters record here. Based on feels I knew I didn't have much left for thirds. 3rd attempt 142.5kg/ 314.2lbs good lift. Chipped the world masters record here. It felt much harder than it looked, I really don't think much more was there. - Bench, opener 100kg good lift. This was a world masters record. Couldn't get set up right and the pins we're a bit low. This was alot harder than I expected. 2nd attempt 102.5kg good lift. Broke my own record, took a hand off. This one felt the best out all three bench attempts. 3rd 105.5kg/ 232.6lbs good lift. Chipped the world open bench record. Got a fast press command luckily, this one again felt harder than it looked. Was struggling with tightness here, really don't think I had much left here as well. - DL opener 177.5kg good lift and world masters total record. This felt harder than I expected so I took a smaller jump for my 2nd. 2nd attempt 185kg good lift, world masters dl record. This felt really good. Starting to get in the groove. 3rd attempt 192.5kg/ 424.4lbs good lift and a 2.5kg PR! This didn't feel much different than 185kg but I didn't want to get greedy- the plan was 9 for 9 and I had a conservative PR. Felt great to end the strong! - Again, awesome day! Totaled 440.5kg/ 971.1lbs with a 399.5wilks. Thanks again to the all people who supported me, helped me, and cheered me on! 27 white lights, excited to get back too training and prepping for the next meet! - @savvysavit #transisbeautiful#sharetheplatform#powerliftingwomen#upliftandliftheavy#richmondbalance#morefemalestrength#exodusstrength#lgbtqsports#sumoischeating#deadlifts#benching#squats#bemoreawesome

A post shared by Mary Gregory (@75marylifts) on

But four days later, she learned that powerlifting officials had stripped her of everything.

"That day was incredible," Gregory told Outsports in a phone interview, about the 100% Raw Powerlifting Federation Masters National Championships meet at a Best Western Hotel in Zion Crossroads, Virginia. It was Saturday, April 27.

Gregory had weighed-in the day before, 179 pounds and 5'8". She spoke with a meet official who's known her since she began lifting weights in 2016, before beginning her transition. She explained that since the last time they met, she had legally changed her name, that she was taking hormones under a doctor's supervision, and had what's called a therapeutic use exemption form from that doctor. And to her surprise, although the official was at first taken aback, the Virginia native said she was received warmly.

"He seemed really supportive of me and so the rest of the staff there," said Gregory. "They gendered me correctly. They called me 'ma'am' or 'she' and 'her;' they used the correct pronouns."

And it wasn't just the officials.

"The other lifters were fine," Gregory said. "You know, I was a little surprised at first, but once I started talking to them, I was congratulating them, I was helping them, I was getting high fives. They started doing the same thing to me.

Gregory competed uncontested and broke the federation's masters world squat record, open world bench record, masters world deadlift record, and masters world total record. "World record" is a misnomer, she said, in that it only applies to that federation. But still, it was a big deal, and she said everyone let her know it.

"They started cheering me on, everybody seemed really happy when I broke the records," she said. "People in the audience were coming up and slapping me on the back and congratulating me and shaking my hand."

What a day, 9 for 9! Masters world squat record, open world bench record, masters world dl record, and masters world total record! Still processing, full meet recap to come a bit later but I do want to thank a few people! - From our initial consultation I told @savvysavit that I wanted to cut to the 82.5kg class, go 9 for 9, and set some records- we did it!!! I don't think she was happy with me cutting but she was there offering her support. When I needed a pick me up or advice she was there! Thank you coach! - A huge thank you to @raw_powerlifting_federation_ , from the bottom of my heart! As a transgender lifter I was unsure what to expect going into this meet and everyone- all the spotters, loaders, referees, staff, meet director, all made me welcome and treated me as just another female lifter- thank you! And thanks to all the fans in the audience who cheered me on and congratulated me! - Thank @rrrrachele for making the trip out to support me today, video my lifts, and cheer me on! - And thank you to all the peeps on Instagram who reached out to offer your support! - Now for and !!! - #transgenderwoman#sharetheplatform#transrightsarehumanrights#lgbtq#bemoreawesome#upliftandliftheavy#morefemalestrength#richmondbalance#liftlunchlearnrva#squat#bench#deadlift

A post shared by Mary Gregory (@75marylifts) on

Gregory posted her achievement on Instagram, and that did not go unnoticed. Multiple conservative websites blew her achievement out of proportion, she said.

"There were plenty of other lifters that day that broke multiple world records," said Gregory. "Male and female."

But most surprising, she said, was the in-person reaction she received from the meet director, compared to what happened after.

"I shook the director's hand and I told him, 'I want to thank you, because as a transgender lifter, I was unsure of the reaction I was going to get here, and you and your staff have gone above and beyond to make me feel welcome. And I really appreciate that from the bottom of my heart. It means the world to me.' And I told him that to his face."

On May 1, following days of negative press, the federation president Paul Bossi issued a statement calling Gregory "male," announcing plans to revise its policies to create a "transgender category," and erasing her record lifts.

Bossi and the federation declined to comment beyond the statement.

One line in that statement was particularly grating to Gregory: "It was revealed that this female lifter was actually a male in the process of becoming a transgender female."

"It infuriated me," she told Outsports. Gregory has changed her name, her ID, has been on estrogen and spironolactone for 11 months and already seen significant results, including breast development.

So, how did they determine she had been assigned male at birth?

During the meet, following her bench press, Gregory said an official told her they needed to drug test her again, claiming her sample leaked, she said. But this time, the official told her she needed to observe her providing a urine sample.

"I said, 'Well, this is kind of embarrassing for me, because I don't have the correct anatomy.' Still, I did my business while somebody watched me sitting on the toilet. And so that's where that statement comes from, because I'm sure she told them, 'Hey! This girl's got a penis!'"

Gregory is a construction worker, and said she lacks the insurance coverage for bottom surgery. Although she is a lesbian, she said she isn't in any hurry to get it.

"Perfect world, under perfect situations, probably, yes, I would have the surgery," she said, "because I'm not that attached to that part of my anatomy. It doesn't define who I am, but I don't hate it. I don't need it to be gone to be able to live my life and be whole. It's more of a case that it's inconvenient that it's there."

Besides, she said, having a penis or not plays no part in lifting.

"It's very hard to tuck and lift in a singlet, but I figured it out!" Gregory laughed, revealing that instead of tape, she wears up to three pairs of underwear.

Since beginning powerlifting, she's significantly lost weight, from 270 pounds almost four years ago to 179 now. But Gregory notes that while lifting has helped her transition, it's actually hurt her athletic performance.

She posted on her Instagram profile that prior to starting on hormones, she could lift 408 pounds in the squat, 298 in the bench press and 507 in the deadlift. Now, since starting HRT, those numbers are drastically lower: 314, 233, and 424 pounds.

She says that as far as appearance goes, she's like any other woman: "100 percent female. I get my hair styled female. Ears pierced, nails painted. But I don't wear makeup."

All the makeup in the world couldn't cover up the negative press attention Gregory's story has received from the likes of Fox News, Breitbart and others.

"I feel like I'm being tarred and feathered as this person who got in there, competing against 50 women, and just stomping all over them, and won by some magnificent total," Gregory said, "Not to denigrate my own accomplishments or achievements, I'm so very proud of them, but the numbers that I lifted aren't class leading."

With the 100% Raw Federation pulling her records and confiscating her trophies, Gregory has found another path, in spite of the USAPL ban on transgender powerlifters: "I love the sport and I couldn't compete," she said. "So I became a referee. And I did that winter last year and through the winter spring of this year. I think I've ref'd four or five meets with the USAPL."

Executives with the USA Powerlifting Federation will meet in Illinois on Thursday of this week to discuss transgender policies. Also, ahead of that meeting, Women's Committee Chair Priscilla Ribic has emailed a survey to the federation's nearly 5,500 female members, asking them to vote on transgender participation.

No matter the outcome, Gregory will continue to pursue her dream.

"One reason why I decided to continue lifting is because I wanted to give the middle finger to that stigma that you can't be a strong, muscular female. I feel being strong and having muscles actually makes me feel sexy, and makes me feel more comfortable in my own skin."

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Trans powerlifter smashes records and draws backlash

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This is a big week for Mary Gregory. This week, the transgender powerlifter and referee turns 44, just as another benchmark in this new age of transgender exclusion is expected to be set. More on that, later.

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3 myths that shape the transgender bathroom debate | CNN

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The debate over transgender rights in America often gets reduced to bathroom talk. How much of it is true?

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If we're genuinely committed to improving the circumstances of women, we need to get the facts straight

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Each person has a unique reason to be pro-choice. Here are some of ours.

I am pro-choice because I don't think there is any reason why a woman should have to face all the consequences from something she did not do alone. If a guy can get a woman pregnant and then run away, there is no reason why she should be the one responsible for everything. Having more options puts a woman on more equal footing with men, instead of being someone of whom they can take advantage. In addition, I believe that it is best for a child to not be born at all than to be born hated, to a mother who is forced to have him because she has no choice, and not because she wants the child.
Undergraduate Student in Chemistry

The single most important factor for women's advancement in society is our ability to control our fertility. Without that, we are trapped by the realities of pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing; rather than a privilege and a gift, these aspects of being female become an unbearable burden. Attempts to limit women's reproductive freedom are no more than a gambit to keep women "in their place"-- a gambit in the guise of religious moralism. True, the guise can run deep, and many so-called "pro-lifers" genuinely believe that killing a fetus is equivalent to killing a human being. But such religious feeling has no place in the public policies of a country that claims to separate church and state. In the words of supreme court justices O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." No one wants to plan an abortion. But the best way to prevent abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies: through sex education, improved distribution of birth control, and general empowerment of women to shape our own individual lives.
Graduate Student in Biology

I think one of the biggest problems with the abortion debate is that the two sides aren't in direct opposition. The pro-life movement seeks to force their moral beliefs on others - grounded in their own religion or personal philosophy. The pro-choice movement doesn't make claims on the morality of abortion - we leave that as an individual choice for every woman faced with an unwanted pregnancy. If they feel abortion is wrong and they want to give their child up for adoption, or keep it, we will support their decision. Pro-life people say "Abortion is wrong;" we only say "Abortion is." Making abortion illegal won't stop abortions from happening, it will only stop them from being safe. 43% of abortions worldwide are illegal. Changing laws doesn't solve the problem, making contraception available and affordable does. If we are to maintain the separation of church and state so central to our nation's identity, we cannot have some people forcing their beliefs on us all.
Undergraduate Student in Linguistics and Philosophy

I believe strongly in taking responsibilities for one's actions. I believe that people should practice safe sex or abstinence. And I believe that the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy can be worse than the "benefits" of having irresponsible sex. However, in some cases, I believe that abortion IS taking responsibility. Bringing an unwanted child into the world is irresponsible. I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-choice. I believe that every woman should decide what to do with her own body without restrictions placed on her by a strongly religious government that ironically preaches the 200 year old doctrine of the separation of church and state. On that note, I think religious freedom and education are also a constitutional right of every citizen, but they do not belong in the hospital room. Reproductive freedom is just as sacred and constitutional as religious freedom. And I am not the opposite of "pro-life." I love life and I love babies, but an unwanted life can be worse than no life at all. I think safe sex and abstinence education is needed. Like many pro-choice believers, I want the number of abortions to be limited, or at least I want to limit the overwhelming need for abortions.
Graduate Student in Materials Science and Engineering

I'm pro-choice because it's the only option that isn't poisoned with misogyny. I believe that we are responsible for justifying our beliefs, and just as one cannot claim that a given race is inferior to another because "it's what I believe", I don't think one can argue that old white men can assert control over a woman's uterus -- and future -- because they claim to believe that a fetus is comparable to a human life. That belief is so clearly a result of the fact that only women can get pregnant and only women would ever have to carry an unwanted fetus to term that I find it laughable that anyone claims being anti-choice has anything to do with concern for potential life. Can anyone really believe that abortion would even be an issue if men had to face the possibility of giving birth to and raising a child because of one night of failed contraception?
I think Florynce Kennedy said it best: "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."
Undergraduate Student in Mathematics

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Each person has a unique reason to be pro-choice. Here are some of ours. I am pro-choice because I don't think there is any reason why a woman should have to face all the consequences from something she did not do alone.

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A federal court in Florida has ruled that it is unconstitutional for schools to ban transgender students from using the restroom that matches their gender identity. Judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit announced on Friday that they are affirming a lower court's ruling on the matter because "a public school may not punish its students for gender nonconformity."

The case was centered around Drew Adams, a 19-year-old former student of Allen D. Nease High School in Ponte Vedra, Florida. Adams, who is transgender, used the boys' restroom at Nease High School, and did so without any issues until an anonymous report was made, according to Lambda Legal. After the report, he was told by school officials that he would only be allowed to use gender-neutral restrooms.

Adams worked with Lambda Legal to sue the school board in June 2017. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, a federal court in Jacksonville, ruled in Adams favor in 2018, but Adams' school board appealed the decision last year.

Y'all- The 11th circuit court of appeals said trans rights!! https://t.co/5O8wAzXgn2
- Andrew Adams 🏳️‍🌈✨🛡 (@andrewcodyadams) August 7, 2020

"The School Board's bathroom policy, as applied to Mr. Adams, singled him out for different treatment because of his transgender status," the judges ruled on Friday. "A public school may not punish its students for gender nonconformity. Neither may a public school harm transgender students by establishing arbitrary, separate rules for their restroom use. The evidence at trial confirms that Mr. Adams suffered both these indignities."

The judges said that the schools board did not uphold the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal rights, and Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in education.

CBS News reached out to the St. Johns County School District for comment. The district has not yet responded.

According to Lambda Legal, this case was the first in the country to go to trial about a transgender student's right to equal access to restrooms.

Tara Borelli, an attorney at Lambda Legal, said that the court's affirmation sent a clear message "that schools must treat transgender students with the same dignity and respect as any other student."

"The trial court was correct when it ruled that the law requires that Drew Adams be treated like every other boy and be allowed to use the boys' restroom," Borelli said. "We are glad the court saw the school board's policy as unjust and discriminatory, and affirmed the inherent dignity and worth of transgender students."

Adams said he's happy to see justice prevail "after spending almost my entire high school career fighting for equal treatment."

"High school is hard enough without having your school separate you from your peers and mark you as inferior," Adams said. "I hope this decision helps save other transgender students from having to go through that painful and humiliating experience."

In 2016, then-President Obama mandated that public schools allow transgender students to use the restrooms that align with their gender identity. After taking office in 2017, President Trump rescinded those orders.
More

Li Cohen

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Federal court rules that transgender students must be allowed to use bathrooms that match their gender

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A federal court in Florida has ruled that it is unconstitutional for schools to ban transgender students from using the restroom that matches their gender identity. Judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit announced on Friday that they are affirming a lower court's ruling on the matter because "a public school may not punish its students for gender nonconformity."

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The legal landscape for LGBTQ people is constantly evolving. If you think you have been discriminated against and would like our assistance, please visit our Report LGBTQ and HIV Discrimination Page and we can help you figure out whether you are protected under federal or state laws.

Can an employer discriminate against me because of my sexual orientation or gender identity?

Your rights

Employers with 15 or more employees are prohibited by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act from discriminating on the basis of sex. Some courts have ruled that Title VII also bans discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Supreme Court recently announced it will take up this question in three cases. In addition, many states and cities have laws that ban this kind of discrimination.

If you believe that your rights have been violated

If you think that you have experienced discrimination at work, you can file a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which has taken the position that LGBTQ people are protected under Title VII. Try to document everything like emails or HR papers that might be relevant.

We encourage you to contact your local ACLU affiliate or the national ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project for help weighing your options.

Additional resources

If you've been discriminated against based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the ACLU may be able to help. Contact us by filling out an intake form.

Can a landlord refuse to rent to me?

Your rights

The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits sex discrimination by most landlords and, as the Supreme Court held in 2020 ( Bostock v. Clayton County) , discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is sex discrimination. Thus, The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. State and local laws where you live may also bar this discrimination. Housing discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS, or people perceived to have HIV/AIDS, is also illegal under the Fair Housing Act's protections against disability discrimination. Housing providers that receive funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) or have loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), as well as lenders insured by FHA, are subject to HUD's Equal Access Rule, which bans discrimination in HUD programs on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

If you believe your rights have been violated

What you can do depends largely on where the discrimination took place, whether any state or local laws there might apply to your situation, and where things stand under the current administration. It helps immensely if you document every interaction and exchange that could show what happened. We encourage you to contact your local ACLU affiliate or the national ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project for help weighing your options.

Additional resources

If you've been treated unfairly in housing based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the ACLU may be able to help. Contact us by filling out an intake form.

Am I protected from discrimination in public accommodations, like shops and restaurants?

Your rights

There is no federal law that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in public accommodations, like restaurants, theaters and other businesses. However, state and local laws where you live may ban this kind of discrimination.

Additional resources

If you've been discriminated against based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the ACLU may be able to help. Contact us by filling out an intake form.

Are LGBTQ students protected from discrimination in schools?

Your rights

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 bans discrimination on the basis of sex by public schools, and the Supreme Court held in 2020 ( Bostock v. Clayton County) that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is sex discrimination. Thus, Title IX prohibits students from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Federal courts have held that Title IX requires public schools to respond to harassment based on appearance or behavior that doesn't conform to gender stereotypes: boys who wear makeup, girls who wear pants, or students who are transgender or non-binary. The First Amendment right to free expression can also apply to school dress codes, especially when there are different rules for boys than there are for girls. Your constitutional right to privacy makes it illegal for your school to "out" you to anyone without your permission, even if you're out to other people at school. The First Amendment protects your right to express yourself in public schools. That includes bringing a same-sex date to prom or any school event and talking about LGBTQ topics. Your right to be yourself in school includes the right to be transgender or non-binary, and to transition at school. While the law in this area is evolving, a growing number of courts have found that Title IX and the Constitution protect transgender students' right to access sex-separated programs and facilities consistent with their gender identity. Some state and local laws also explicitly protect transgender students from discrimination in schools.

If your rights are violated

Document everything. Take notes and keep copies of any emails with school administrators, relevant school forms, etc.

If anyone at school is harassing or threatening you, it's crucial that you report every incident to a principal or counselor. Usually schools must be put on notice before they can be held legally responsible for protecting you.

If you have reported harassment or any other kind of discrimination to your school officials and they have done little or nothing to stop it, we encourage you to contact your local ACLU affiliate or the national ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project for help weighing your options.

Additional resources

If you've been discriminated against based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the ACLU may be able to help. Contact us at our national office here , or you can find your local ACLU office here .

Here are open letters on a variety of LGBTQ issues that you can use when advocating for your rights with school administrators.

Does the law protect my right to use the restroom consistent with my gender identity?

Your rights

State and local laws that prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or expression should protect transgender people's right to use restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. We believe that laws that ban sex discrimination should also be interpreted by the courts to protect transgender people. While federal law in this area is uncertain, most courts to address this question have found in favor of transgender people being able to access facilities most consistent with their gender identity.

In some places, state and local nondiscrimination laws are much clearer about transgender people's right to use gender identity-appropriate public restrooms. Many businesses, universities, and other public places are converting their restrooms to all-gender spaces.

How the law varies in different states and cities

Some places - for example, states like Colorado, Iowa, Oregon, and Washington, and cities like San Francisco and New York City - specifically grant transgender people the right to use gender identity-appropriate restrooms in public spaces.

Other places, like Chicago, continue to allow businesses to decide whether transgender patron may access men's or women's restrooms based on the gender on their ID, which may or may not reflect accurately the person's gender identity.
Some cities - like Austin, Texas, New York City, Philadelphia, and West Hollywood - require that single-stall public restrooms be labeled as all-gender.

If you believe your rights are violated

What you can do depends largely on where the discrimination took place, whether any state or local laws there might apply to your situation, and where things are with federal lawsuits currently in play. We encourage you to contact your local ACLU affiliate or the national ACLU LGBT & HIV Project for help weighing your options.

Additional resources

If you've been discriminated against based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the ACLU may be able to help. Contact us by filling out an intake form.

What if I have different gender markers on different IDs or records?

Your rights

There is no legal obligation to have consistent gender markers on various documents, and you should obtain the gender marker on each document that is most comfortable for you.

Different gender markers on documents may cause administrative confusion if you show them at the same time, or if there is a discrepancy between the gender marker on your ID and the marker in your record. The confusion may be uncomfortable when interacting with an agent, but can usually be cleared up with a conversation.

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The legal landscape for LGBTQ people is constantly evolving. If you think you have been discriminated against and would like our assistance, please visit our Report LGBTQ and HIV Discrimination Page and we can help you figure out whether you are protected under federal or state laws.

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Advocates are tracking new developments in neonatal research and technology-and transforming one of America's most contentious debates.

Updated at 2:15 p.m. ET on August 25, 2021
The first time Ashley McGuire had a baby, she and her husband had to wait 20 weeks to learn its sex. By her third, they found out at 10 weeks with a blood test. Technology has defined her pregnancies, she told me, from the apps that track weekly development to the ultrasounds that show the growing child. "My generation has grown up under an entirely different world of science and technology than the Roe generation," she said. "We're in a culture that is science-obsessed."

Activists like McGuire believe it makes perfect sense to be pro-science and pro-life. While she opposes abortion on moral grounds, she believes studies of fetal development, improved medical techniques, and other advances anchor the movement's arguments in scientific fact. "The pro-life message has been, for the last 40-something years, that the fetus ... is a life, and it is a human life worthy of all the rights the rest of us have," she said. "That's been more of an abstract concept until the last decade or so." But, she added, "when you're seeing a baby sucking its thumb at 18 weeks, smiling, clapping," it becomes "harder to square the idea that that 20-week-old, that unborn baby or fetus, is discardable."

Scientific progress is remaking the debate around abortion. When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, the case that led the way to legal abortion, it pegged most fetuses' chance of viable life outside the womb at 28 weeks; after that point, it ruled, states could reasonably restrict women's access to the procedure. Now, with new medical techniques, doctors are debating whether that threshold should be closer to 22 weeks. Like McGuire, today's prospective moms and dads can learn more about their baby earlier into a pregnancy than their parents or grandparents. And like McGuire, when they see their fetus on an ultrasound, they may see humanizing qualities like smiles or claps, even if most scientists see random muscle movements.

These advances fundamentally shift the moral intuition around abortion. New technology makes it easier to apprehend the humanity of a growing child and imagine a fetus as a creature with moral status. Over the last several decades, pro-life leaders have increasingly recognized this and rallied the power of scientific evidence to promote their cause. They have built new institutions to produce, track, and distribute scientifically crafted information on abortion. They hungrily follow new research in embryology. They celebrate progress in neonatology as a means to save young lives. New science is "instilling a sense of awe that we never really had before at any point in human history," McGuire said. "We didn't know any of this."

In many ways, this represents a dramatic reversal; pro-choice activists have long claimed science for their own side. The Guttmacher Institute, a research and advocacy organization that defends abortion and reproductive rights, has exercised a near-monopoly over the data of abortion, serving as a source for supporters and opponents alike. And the pro-choice movement's rhetoric has matched its resources: Its proponents often describe themselves as the sole defenders of women's welfare and scientific consensus. The idea that life begins at conception "goes against legal precedent, science, and public opinion," said Ilyse Hogue, the president of the abortion-advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America, in a recent op-ed for CNBC. Members of the pro-life movement are "not really anti-abortion," she wrote in another piece. "They are against [a] world where women can contribute equally and chart our own destiny in ways our grandmothers never thought possible."

In their own way, both movements have made the same play: Pro-life and pro-choice activists have come to see scientific evidence as the ultimate tool in the battle over abortion rights. But in recent years, pro-life activists have been more successful in using that tool to shift the terms of the policy debate. Advocates have introduced research on the question of fetal pain and whether abortion harms women's health to great effect in courtrooms and legislative chambers, even when they cite studies selectively and their findings are fiercely contested by other members of the academy.

Not everyone in the pro-life movement agrees with this strategic shift. Some believe new scientific findings might work against them. Others warn that overreliance on scientific evidence could erode the strong moral logic at the center of their cause. The biggest threat of all, however, is not the potential damage to a particular movement. When scientific research becomes subordinate to political ends, facts are weaponized. Neither side trusts the information produced by their ideological enemies; reality becomes relative.

Abortion has always stood apart from other topics of political debate in American culture. It has remained morally contested in a way that other social issues have not, at least in part because it asks Americans to answer unimaginably serious questions about the nature of human life. But perhaps this ambiguity, this scrambling of traditional left-right politics, was always unsustainable. Perhaps it was inevitable that abortion would go the way of the rest of American politics, with two sides that share nothing lobbing claims of fact across a no-man's-land of moral debate.

When Colleen Malloy, a neonatologist and faculty member at Northwestern University, discusses abortion with her colleagues, she says, "it's kind of like the emperor is not wearing any clothes." Medical teams spend enormous effort, time, and money to deliver babies safely and nurse premature infants back to health. Yet physicians often support abortion, even late into fetal development.

As medical techniques have become increasingly sophisticated, Malloy says, she has felt this tension acutely: A handful of medical centers in major cities can now perform surgeries on fetuses while they're still in the womb. Many are the same age as the small number of fetuses aborted in the second or third trimesters of a mother's pregnancy. "The more I advanced in my field of neonatology, the more it just became the logical choice to recognize the developing fetus for what it is: a fetus, instead of some sort of sub-human form," Malloy says. "It just became so obvious that these were just developing humans."

Malloy is one of many doctors and scientists who have gotten involved in the political debate over abortion. She has testified before legislative bodies about fetal pain-the claim that fetuses can experience physical suffering, perhaps even prior to the point of viability outside the womb-and written letters to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

Her career also shows the tight twine between the science and politics of abortion. In addition to her work at Northwestern, Malloy has produced work for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a relatively new D.C. think tank that seeks to bring "the power of science, medicine, and research to bear in life-related policymaking, media, and debates." The organization, which employs a number of doctors and scholars on its staff, shares an office with Susan B. Anthony List, a prominent pro-life advocacy organization.

"I don't think it compromises my objectivity, or any of our associate scholars," says David Prentice, the institute's vice president and research director. Prentice spent years of his career as a professor at Indiana State University and at the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group founded by James Dobson. "Any time there's an association with an advocacy group, people are going to make assumptions," he says. "What we have to do is make our best effort to show that we're trying to put the objective science out here."

This desire to harness "objective science" is at the heart of the pro-science bent in the pro-life movement: Science is a source of authority that's often treated as unimpeachable fact. "The cultural authority of science has become so totalitarian, so imperial, that everybody has to have science on their side in order to win a debate," says Mark Largent, a historian of science at Michigan State University.

Some pro-life advocates worry about the potential consequences of overemphasizing the authority of science in abortion debates. "The question of whether the embryo or fetus is a person ... is not answerable by science," says Daniel Sulmasy, a professor of biomedical ethics at Georgetown University and former Franciscan friar. "Both sides tend to use scientific information when it is useful towards making a point that is based on ... firmly and sincerely held philosophical and religious convictions."

For all the ways that the pro-life movement might be seen as countering today's en vogue sexual politics, its obsession with science is squarely of the moment. "We've become steeped in a culture in which only the data matter, and that makes us, in some ways, philosophically illiterate," says Sulmasy, who is also a doctor. "We really don't have the tools anymore for thinking and arguing outside of something that can be scientifically verified."

Sometimes, scientific discoveries have worked against the pro-life movement's goals. Jérôme Lejeune, a French scientist and devout Catholic, helped discover the cause of Down syndrome. He was horrified that prenatal diagnosis of the disease often led women to terminate their pregnancies, however, and spent much of his career advocating against abortion. Lejeune eventually became the founding president of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life, established in 1994 to navigate the moral and theological questions raised by scientific advances against a "'culture of death' that threatens to take control."

When scientific evidence seems to undermine pro-life positions on issues such as birth control and in vitro fertilization, pro-lifers' enthusiasm for research sometimes wanes. For example: Some people believe emergency contraception, also known as the morning-after pill or Plan B, is an abortifacient, meaning it may end pregnancies. Because the pill can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman's uterus, advocates argue, it could end a human life.

Sulmasy, who openly identifies as pro-life, has argued against this view of the drug-and found it difficult to reach his peers in the movement. "It's been very difficult to convince folks within the pro-life community that the science seems to be ... suggesting that [Plan B] is not abortifacient," he says. "They are too readily dismissing that work as being motivated by advocacy."

And at a basic level, the argument for abortion is also framed in scientific terms: The procedures are "gynecological services, and they're health-care services," Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, says. This alone is enough to make even gung-ho pro-life advocates wary. "Science for science's sake is not necessarily good," said McGuire, who serves as a senior fellow at the Catholic Association. "If anything, that's what gave us abortion ... When the moral and human ethics are removed from it, it's considered a medical procedure."

Even with all these internal debates and complications, many in the pro-life movement feel optimistic that scientific advances are ultimately on their side. "Science is a practice of using systematic methods to study our world, including what human organisms are in their early states," says Farr Curlin, a physician who holds joint appointments at Duke University's schools of medicine and divinity. "I don't see any way it's not an ally to the pro-life cause."

Pro-lifers' enthusiasm for science isn't always reciprocated by scientists-sometimes, quite the opposite. Last summer, Vincent Reid, a professor of psychology at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, published a paper showing that late-development fetuses prefer to look at face-like images while they're in the womb, just like newborn infants. As Reid told The Atlantic's Ed Yong, the study "tells us that the fetus isn't a passive processor of environmental information. It's an active responder."

After his research was published, Reid suddenly found himself showered with praise from American pro-life advocates. "I had a few people contacting me, congratulating me on my great work, and then giving a kind of religious overtone to it," he told me. "They'd finish off by saying, 'Bless you,' this sort of thing." Pro-life advocates interpreted his findings as evidence that abortion is wrong, even though Reid was studying fetuses in their third trimester, which account for only a tiny fraction of abortions, he said. "It clearly resonated with them because they had a preconceived notion of what that science means."

Reid found the experience perplexing. "I'm very proud of what I did ... because it made genuine advances in our understanding of human development," he said. "It's frustrating that people take something which actually has no relevance to the position of anti-abortion or pro-abortion and try to use it ... in a way that's been pre-ordained." He's not going to stop doing his research on fetal development, he said. But he "will probably be a bit more heavy, perhaps, in my anticipation of how it's going to be misused."

This fate is nearly impossible to avoid in any field that remotely touches on abortion or origin-of-life issues. "There [are] no people who are just sitting in a lab, working on their projects," says O. Carter Snead, a professor of law and political science at Notre Dame who served as general counsel to President George W. Bush's Council of Bioethics. "Everybody is politicized." This is true even of researchers like Reid, who was blindsided by the reaction to his findings. "You can't do this and not get sucked into somebody's orbit," says Largent, the Michigan State professor. "Everyone's going to take your work and use it for their ends. If you're going to do this, you either decide who's going to get to use your work, or it's done to you."

That can have a chilling effect on scientists who work in sensitive areas related to conception or death. Abortion is "the third-rail of research," says Debra Mathews, an associate professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins who also has responsibility for science programs at the university's bioethics institute.* "If you touch it, your research becomes associated with that debate." Although the abortion debate is important, she says, it can be intimidating for researchers: "It tends to envelop whatever it touches."

As often as not, scientists dive into the debate, taking funding from pro-life or pro-choice organizations or openly advancing an ideological position. This, too, has consequences: It casts doubt on the validity and integrity of any researcher in bioethics-related fields. "Anybody with money can get a scientist to say what they want them to say," Largent says. "That's not because scientists are whores. It's because the world is a really complex place, and there are ways that you can craft a scientific investigation to lend credence to one side or another."

This can have a fun-house-mirror effect on the scientific debate, with scholars on both sides constantly criticizing the methodological shortcomings of their opponents and coming to opposite conclusions. For example: Priscilla Coleman is a professor at Bowling Green State University who studies the mental-health effects of abortion. Coleman has testified before Congress, and pro-life advocates cite her as an important scholar working on this issue. At least some of her work, however, has been challenged repeatedly by others in her field: When she published a paper on the connection between abortion and anxiety, mood, and substance-abuse disorders in 2009, for instance, a number of scholars suggested her research design led her to draw false conclusions. She and her co-author claimed they had made only a weighting error and published a corrigendum, or corrected update. But ultimately, the author of the dataset Coleman used concluded that her "analysis does not support ... assertions that abortions led to psychopathology."

"If the results are questionable or not reproducible, then the study gets retracted. That's what happens in science," Coleman said in an interview. "The bottom line was that the pattern of the findings did not change." She expressed frustration at media reports that questioned her work. "I'm so past trying to defend myself in these types of articles," she said. "To me, there isn't anything much worse than distorting science for an agenda, when the ultimate impact falls on these women who spend years and years suffering."

At least in one respect, she is correct: Many of her opponents do have affiliations with the pro-choice movement. In this case, one of the researchers questioning her work was associated with the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion organization. In an email, Lawrence Finer, the co-author who serves as Guttmacher's vice president for research, said that Coleman's results were simply not reproducible. While Guttmacher advocates for abortion rights, the difference, Finer claimed, is that it places a priority on transparency and integrity-which, he implied, the other side does not. "It's actually not difficult to distinguish neutral analysis from advocacy," he wrote in an email. "The way that's done is by making one's analytical methods transparent and by submitting one's analysis-'neutral' or not-to peer review. No researcher-no person, for that matter-is neutral; everyone has an opinion. What matters is whether the researcher's methods are appropriate and reproducible."

"There is a false equivalence between the science and what [Coleman] does," added Julia Steinberg, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Health and Finer's co-author, in an email. "It's not a debate, the way global warming is not a debate. There are people claiming global warming is not occurring, but scientists have compelling evidence that it is occurring. Similarly, there are people like Coleman, claiming abortion harms women's mental health, but the scientists have compelling evidence that this is not occurring."

Yet, even the academy that establishes and promotes transparent methodologies for science research has its own institutional biases. Because support for legal abortion rights is commonly seen as a neutral position in the academy, Sulmasy says, openly pro-life scholars may have a harder time getting their colleagues to take their work seriously. "If an article is written by somebody who ... is affiliated with a pro-life group or has a known pro-life stand on it, that scientific evaluation is typically dismissed as advocacy," he said. "Prevailing prejudices within academia and media" determine "what gets considered to be advocacy and what is considered to be scientifically valid."

Pro-life optimists believe those biases might be changing-or, at least, they hope they've captured the territory of scientific authority. As the former NARAL president Kate Michelman told Newsweek in 2010, "The technology has clearly helped to define how people think about a fetus as a full, breathing human being ... The other side has been able to use the technology to its own end." In recent years, this has been the biggest change in the abortion debate, says Jeanne Mancini, the president of March for Life: Pro-choice advocates have largely given on up on the argument that fetuses are "lifeless blobs of tissue."

"There had been, a long time ago, this mantra from our friends on the other side of this issue that, while a little one is developing in its mother's womb, it's not a baby," she says. "It's really hard to make that argument when you see and hear a heartbeat and watch little hands moving around."

Ultimately, this is the pro-life movement's reason for framing its cause in scientific terms: The best argument for protecting life in the womb is found in the common sense of fetal heartbeats and swelling stomachs. "The pro-life movement has always been a movement aimed at cultivating the moral imagination so people can understand why we should care about human beings in the womb," says Snead, the Notre Dame professor. "Science has been used, for a long time, as a bridge to that moral imagination."

Now, the pro-life movement has successfully brought their scientific rallying cry to Capitol Hill. In a recent promotional video for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, Republican legislators spoke warmly about how data help make the case for limiting abortion. "When we have very difficult topics that we need to talk about, the Charlotte Lozier Institute gives credibility to the testimony and to the information that we're giving others," says Tennessee Representative Diane Black. Representative Claudia Tenney of New York agreed: "We're winning on facts, and we're winning hearts and minds on science."

This, above all, represents the shift in America's abortion debate: An issue that has long been argued in normative claims about the nature of human life and women's autonomy has shifted toward a wobbly empirical debate. As Tenney suggested, it is a move made with an eye toward winning-on policy, on public opinion, and, ultimately, in courtrooms. The side effect of this strategy, however, is ever deeper politicization and entrenchment. A deliberative democracy where even basic facts aren't shared isn't much of a democracy at all. It's more of an exhausting tug-of-war, where the side with the most money and the best credentials is declared the winner.
* This article has been updated to clarify that Mathews helps run science programs at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, rather than the institute itself. This story also originally stated that doctors perform surgeries on genetically abnormal fetuses while they are in utero. Fetuses that are treated this way are not necessarily genetically abnormal, however.

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representative claudia tenney of new york

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Science Is Giving the Pro-life Movement a Boost

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Advocates are tracking new developments in neonatal research and technology-and transforming one of America's most contentious debates. Updated at 2:15 p.m. ET on August 25, 2021 The first time Ashley McGuire had a baby, she and her husband had to wait 20 weeks to learn its sex.

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The National Abortion Federation (NAF) is the professional association of abortion providers in North America. We believe that women should be trusted to make private medical decisions in consultation with their health care providers.

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From Shake Shack to the Sawyer building on our very own campus, gender-neutral bathrooms are being installed around the country. Proponents of the radical shakeup to the way we "do our business" make a pretty appealing and straightforward case: A person who identifies as gender-neutral or transgender that feels uncomfortable entering either the male or female bathroom has a right to their own bathroom where they do feel comfortable.

Although it seems appealing to air on the side of "rights" and "comfort" in this debate, you should say no to gender-neutral bathrooms as they distort scientific reality in order to perpetuate the myth that biologicalsex is amere "social construct." Not only do they distort science to fit an a-scientific narrative, they create more discomfort than they alleviate, open up avenues for sexual abuse that were previously non-existent, and push the dangerous myth that commodities and services of any kind are fundamental human rights.

First, the idea that a subjective feeling of discomfort for one individual necessitates a complete change of cultural norms for everyone in the bathroom is quite a stretch of logic. Bathrooms are not separated by gender as the transgender rights activists would have you believe. Instead, bathrooms are separated based on biological sex. Men go to the bathroom with other men, women go to the bathroom with other women - and for good reason. As much as the transgender activists advocate for the notion that there are no inherent differences between the sexes, anatomy says otherwise.

Activists may respond that there is no need for the separation between the sexes, but this flies in the face of common sense. Would any woman prefer to be in the same bathroom alone with a group of inebriated men at a bar late at night? The sexes are separated because they are biologically, socially and behaviorally different.

The number of both men and women that will feel uncomfortable in a gender-neutral bathroom far exceeds the number of non-binary people that will feel uncomfortable in a normal bathroom. The number of people that could potentially be victimized in a gender-neutral bathroom far exceeds the number of people that could be victimized in a single-sex bathroom.

No, this doesn't mean that transgender or non-binary individuals are predators stalking the bathrooms looking for victims to prey upon, but gender-neutral bathrooms do open up opportunities for would-be pedophiles and sexual abusers that otherwise would not have been there. As reported by the Economist, "In 2012 Christopher Hambrook assaulted women in two homeless shelters in Toronto, gaining access by falsely claiming he was a trans woman. State law had changed earlier that year to recognise self-declared gender identity. In 2014 he was found guilty of sexual assault and criminal harassment." The pernicious act of falsely identifying as transgender or non-binary in order to commit crimes is a real threat, and the previous example is only one of the many avenues of abuse the tearing down of sex-separated bathrooms creates.

If the main motivation behind creating gender-neutral bathrooms is the elimination of discomfort for those that identify as non-binary, why does the potential discomfort of the transgender community, constituting roughly 0.6% of the world's population according to the Williams Institute, outweigh the potential discomfort of 99.4% of the world's population? It shouldn't.

Let's also dispel with the notion that anyone has a "right" to a bathroom. Bathrooms, just as housing, water, food and healthcare, are commodities or services depending on your definition. They certainly aren't things that are we "endowed by our creator" with a right to.

Declaring a commodity a right is as foreign to the Western notion of inalienable rights as a Polar Bear is to the Amazon Rainforest. The Bill of Rights guarantees rights that are immune to any interference from government, these rights are otherwise known as "negative rights."

For instance, the government can never infringe on your right to free speech, imprison you without due process nor strip you of your right to bear arms. However, guaranteeing commodities as rights require something from government, which in this country is the people of the United States. These rights presume that by a person's very existence, they are entitled to goods and services that someone else must provide. Although it may sound compassionate and progressive to say that things like healthcare, food and water are "human rights," codifying commodities as rights actually leads to a violation of human rights.

To illustrate the danger of these "positive rights," consider the following situation. A hungry man walks into a 7-11, takes a Milky Way and a bottle of water, scoffs them down, and then leaves the store without paying for neither the food nor water. The clerk immediately calls the police, the man is arrested and charged with petty theft and a trail ensues. The defense of the sweet-toothed bandit is not that he made a mistake in stealing the candy bar, but instead his defense is that he, having a right to food and water, should not be imprisoned for simply exercising his rights.

The onus is on those that argue for commodities as rights to explain either why he should be imprisoned if he has a right to food and water or why his stealing is justified. Furthermore, if we treat commodities as human rights, why couldn't the man force by government action the store clerk to provide him with the food or water? If the clerk didn't provide the man with the food and water willingly, surely it would be a legitimate role of government to guarantee the rights of the man in this situation as well. The road to hell is most certainly paved with good intentions.

Lastly, we arrive at the crux of the issue. As established in this article earlier, no reasonable person would come to the conclusion that access to a private or public bathroom is a fundamental human right, nor would they conclude that on aggregate less discomfort is caused with gender-neutral bathrooms than with sex-separated bathrooms. So why is there still an insistence on this terrible idea? The true reason why we are even considering the radical transformation of bathrooms across the world is that there has been a recent push among the transgender rights activist community to get rid of biological sex, claiming that biological sex is simply something that we are "assigned" with at birth, not something that is immutable and inherent in human beings.

Take it from Planned Parenthood, which says "Biological or assigned sex does not always tell the complete story." Of course biological sex tells the whole story when it comes to whether someone is a male or female! Regardless of your views on the validity of gender identity and its mutability, biological sex is an undeniable reality. Sex, as defined by the UN's World Health Organization (WHO), as the "biological characteristics that define humans as male or female." A male is of the male sex because he is born with XY chromosomes, a female is a female because she was born with XX chromosomes. One cannot change their chromosomes or their sex because they are immutable factors in a human's DNA.

The transgender lobby argues that the binary of sex is debunked by the existence of intersex people - people that are born with the opposite DNA that they have the physical characteristics of. Again, this is taking genetic outliers, which WHO deems "outside of the typical definition for male or female bodies" and attempting to apply their case to the larger issue at hand. For example, arguing that humans are designed to be born with 11 toes per foot is not true, simply because one person has 11, and not the standard 10.

Say no to gender neutral bathrooms. They not only perpetuate the a-scientific theory that biological sex is a mere social construct, they also cause more discomfort than they alleviate, and push the dangerous notion of positive rights.
Connect with Nick on Twitter @nsamm41.

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From Shake Shack to the Sawyer building on our very own campus, gender-neutral bathrooms are being installed around the country. Proponents of the radical shakeup to the way we "do our business" make a pretty appealing and straightforward case: A person who identifies as gender-neutral or transgender that feels uncomfortable entering either the male or...

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Asian Americans have faced a surge of violent attacks, harassment, and hate crimes since the start of the pandemic. The increase of racism rose to historic levels over the past year, with nearly 4,000 reports of anti-Asian discrimination in 47 states and the District of Columbia, according to reporting database Stop AAPI Hate.

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A thirteen-year-old girl is raped, causing her to become pregnant. She's scared, angry, and confused. She's denied an abortion, with people claiming it's the murder of an unborn child, but she is a child herself - a living, breathing child. Why must she have to suffer the consequences of somebody else's actions?

The pro-choice and pro-life debate has clouded the world for centuries. Should women be allowed the right to an abortion, or should it be left up to the mercy of the law? According to 80.4% of polled students who attended Quince Orchard High School last year, abortion is the woman's choice. Many claim that because it is her body, it should be her choice, with one anonymous student stating, "Pregnancy is a part of the woman's body, it should be up to the woman herself if she wants to keep the baby or not." As a 16-year-old junior student in a mainly Democrat-leaning state, the decision of whether or not I can obtain an abortion should be a choice left for me to decide.

When an 11-year-old girl was raped by a 26-year-old rapist in Ohio on multiple occasions, she became pregnant with her rapist's child. In a bill introduced and passed by Ohio representatives back in 2019, after a fetal heartbeat is found (around 5-6 weeks into the pregnancy, when most women don't even know they are pregnant), they can no longer get an abortion - no exceptions. This means that if Ohio's "heartbeat bill" had already been passed during the 11-year-old girl's pregnancy, she would not be allowed to abort the fetus left by her perpetrator. Although this may not have affected her during her circumstance, it can and would impact hundreds of other women who want to get abortions.

In a New York Times article written by K.K. Rebecca Lai, the reader is informed of the several states moving towards placing harsh restrictions on abortion, with Alabama legislators eariler that month voting (May 2019), " to ban abortions in nearly all cases." When taking a deeper look into what Alabama's legislature is made up of, you can discover that it is almost entirely white, Republican men. Why are a group of men making decisions of what a woman is allowed to do with her body? Since when did the female body lay under the jurisdiction of a man?

Many tend to claim that abortion is murder, which gives reason to why it should be banned. They say anything and everything should be given the chance at life, no matter the means that stand behind it. But would banning and restricting abortion really help this cause, or would it lead to more unsafe and extremely dangerous self-given abortions? According to the US National Library of Medicine, some 68,000 women die of of unsafe abortion annually, making it one of the leading causes maternal morality (13%). These numbers can be expected to rise drastically if the push to restrict abortion increases. Banning abortion altogether doesn't mean it will cease, it only means that women would have to perform it by themselves instead of getting it done by a professional. Now, the woman is in danger of injuring herself due to a law stripping her of a choice.

Abortion isn't a privilege, it is a right. Every woman should be given a choice on what she can do with her body, no matter the circumstances. Abortion can be a terrifying and devastating thing for a woman, which is why they need all the support and love they can receive. If you want to help ensure these women get the best care they need, I urge you to donate to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund , who is committed to protecting abortion rights and the women who need them.

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Abortion Isn't a Privilege, It's a Right: The Pro-Choice and Pro-Life Debate

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A thirteen-year-old girl is raped, causing her to become pregnant. She's scared, angry, and confused. She's denied an abortion, with people claiming it's the murder of an unborn child, but she is a child herself - a living, breathing child. Why must she have to suffer the consequences of somebody else's actions?

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Does the Gender Pay Gap Between Athletes Show Any Signs of Closing?

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Serena Williams is an anomaly. No great surprise there. She's won an Open Era record 23 Grand Slam singles titles and is a four-time Olympic gold medalist. Williams is one of the greatest athletes, male or female, of the modern era. But it's not only William's lofty resume that makes her an anomaly.

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Transgender teens in schools with bathroom restrictions are at higher risk of sexual assault, study says - CNN

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Transgender and gender nonbinary US teens -- those whose sexual identity falls outside the traditional male and female -- are at greater risk of sexual assault at schools that deny them access to bathrooms or locker rooms that match their sexual identity, according to a new study.

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Myth 1. The Earth's climate has always changed

Over the course of the Earth's 4.5-billion-year history, the climate has changed a lot. This is true. But the rapid warming we're seeing now can't be explained by natural cycles of warming and cooling. The kind of changes that would normally happen over hundreds of thousands of years are happening in decades.

Global temperatures are now at their highest since records began. In fact, 17 of the 18 warmest years on record have all taken place since 2001.

This much faster warming corresponds with levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which have been increasing since the industrial revolution. So, when people talk about climate change today, they mean anthropogenic (man-made) climate change. This is the warming of Earth's average temperature as a result of human activity, such as burning coal, oil and gas to produce energy to fuel our homes and transport and cutting down trees to produce the food we eat.

Myth 2. Plants need carbon dioxide

Plants do need carbon dioxide (CO2) to live. Plants and forests remove and store away huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. But the problem is, there's only so much carbon dioxide they can absorb and this amount is getting less, as more and more forests are cut down across the world, largely to produce our food.

Let's be clear, CO2 itself does not cause problems. It's part of the natural global ecosystem. The problem is the quantity of CO2 that's being produced by us as humans; there hasn't been this level of CO2 in the atmosphere for 800,000 years.

Global warming is causing the Earth's average surface temperature to increase. This is not only making heatwaves and droughts more likely but it's also causing changes to our natural climate systems. These changes are making extreme weather events more likely and more severe. For example, hurricanes and storms are becoming more intense, moving slower and taking longer to die down.

Because of where we are, the UK & Ireland are likely to get more rain and wind as a result of climate change while New York will see more snow.

This is no longer an excuse not to act on climate change and push the burden onto future generations. Last year, the world's leading climate scientists warned we only have 12 years to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5C and avoid climate breakdown.

We're already seeing the devastating effects of climate change on global food supplies, increasing migration, conflict, disease and global instability, and this will only get worse if we don't act now. Man-made climate change is the biggest environmental crisis of our time. It threatens the future of the planet that we depend on for our survival and we're the last generation that can do something about it.

It's a commonly-held belief that renewable energy is expensive, but this simply isn't true! Solar power and onshore wind are the cheapest ways of generating electricity; meaning the energy they produce is cheaper than using nuclear, gas and fossil fuels.

The cost of renewables has fallen faster than anyone could have predicted. And yet the government are still backing dirty fossil fuels. Did you know the UK has the biggest fossil fuel subsidies in the EU? That's right, they spend an eye-watering €12bn (£10.5bn) a year supporting dirty fossil fuels.

Myth 6. Polar bear numbers are increasing

This isn't the case. Climate change is the biggest threat faced by polar bears. The Arctic is warming roughly twice as fast as the rest of the world, causing sea ice to melt earlier and form later each year. This makes it more difficult for female polar bears to get onto land in late autumn to build their dens, and more difficult for them to get out onto the sea ice in spring to feed their cubs. Their main source of prey, seals, are also affected by climate change, as they depend on sea ice to raise their young.

This means that in some parts of the Arctic, polar bears are having to survive with less food than they did previously. Polar bear populations are predicted to decline by 30% by the middle of this century.

Myth 7. Renewable energy can only work when it's not cloudy or windy

Industry is developing new techniques for storing electricity and managing demand at peak times meaning that even if the sun isn't shining or it's not blowing a gale, it's still possible to rely on renewable energy sources.

The majority of UK homes get their electricity from the National Grid. When you switch to a clean supplier, they guarantee that for every unit of electricity you take out of the Grid, they'll put the same amount of clean energy back in, helping to clean up our energy supply.

This one isn't a myth, Darwin got the adaptation part right. But let's be clear, some plants and animals will adapt but not all.

To survive, plants, animals and birds confronted with climate change have two options: move or adapt. There are several examples of species that have begun to adapt to climate change already.

But increasingly, it's a different story for many. Given the speed of climate change, it's becoming impossible for many species to adapt quickly enough to keep up with their changing environment. And, as habitats are destroyed by roads, cities and dams, moving becomes increasingly difficult.  For those that can't move or adapt, the future doesn't look so positive.

Myth 9. Getting rid of humans will fix this

This, we firmly believe, is wrong. It's easy to start feeling that we've gone too far already and that the planet won't be able to support the world's growing population.

It's WWF's mission to build a world where people and nature thrive together. The technology and systems we need to move to 100% renewable energy by 2045 and use our planet's resources sustainably are already available. What's now needed is for political and business leaders to take bold and urgent action towards using these solutions to address the climate crisis and restore nature.

Myth 10. China is the only country responsible for climate change

Despite being one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, China is currently one of the largest investors in renewables. The increase in investment has been in response to the rapid growth of green business and the need to clean up air pollution in its major cities.

Climate change is a global issue and we all have a responsibility to step up to the climate crisis. Action on it will need serious investment but has the potential to deliver huge benefits for nature and people. We all need to raise our voices and fight for our world!

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Over the course of the Earth's 4.5-billion-year history, the climate has changed a lot. This is true. But the rapid warming we're seeing now can't be explained by natural cycles of warming and cooling. The kind of changes that would normally happen over hundreds of thousands of years are happening in decades.

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Gender-neutral bathrooms are more than symbolic to kids - Davis Enterprise

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Editor's note: This is the second part in a two-part series on the experiences of transgender and...

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In 2018, women earned 85% of what men earned, based on a Pew Research Center analysis of the gender pay gap in the United States. But what about in sports?

When it comes to compensation, the sports world offers a lot of fascinating trends - huge, multi-year contracts, endorsement deals, and constant media attention amplifying athletes' brands. Unfortunately, we associate these things almost exclusively with men. Even just 50 years ago, women playing sports recreationally was not widely accepted in American culture.

Three Statements Often Used to Explain the Sports Pay Gap

We see frequent explanations of why the gender pay gap in sports exists, and why it is so large:

Men's sports receive vastly more media coverage, television licenses, and sponsorship deals, which contribute to higher revenue.

Men's sports generate higher revenue, so male athletes are paid higher salaries.

Male athletes receive more money through endorsements and personal branding initiatives, further widening the sports pay gap.

It's prudent to acknowledge that male athletes make more money because they play in more lucrative leagues. But even adjusting for revenue, we find that female athletes are still being short-changed - and it's within our control to fix it.

Let's examine inconsistent business models in tennis and basketball, the history and tradition of Title IX, and subtle biases that still permeate sports media coverage.

What is the Gender Pay Gap in Sports?

There's no exact metric for the gender pay gap in sports overall, as it differs greatly depending on the sport, and the level at which athletes are competing within each sport. Every year, Forbes publishes a list of the top 100 paid athletes in the world. For the first time in eight years, a female athlete did not make the list, which gives a pretty good snapshot of how male athletes dominate the biggest salaries.

The ATF and WTA in tennis, and the NBA and WNBA in basketball, offer two different instances of pay inequality in sports with regards to prize money and payouts of total revenue.

Gender Pay Gap in Tennis

Tennis boasts the most narrow pay gap of any major sport. Since 2007, all four Grand Slams - The Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and U.S. Open - pay out equal prize money to their male and female winners. It's not a coincidence that tennis legends Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, and Li Na are among the only female athletes to have ever cracked the Forbes list.

Prize money at tournaments - which is tied to sponsors, television deals, and ticket prices - has increased in recent years due to superstars like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. At equal-pay events like the Grand Slams, these increases have benefited women. But outside top tournaments, women are rarely paid fairly. In a study of the top 100 players on the ATP and WTA tennis circuits, the New York Times calculated that female tennis players make 80 cents to every dollar their male counterparts make, which mirrored the U.S. gender pay gap at large in 2017.

It would be easy to carve the pay gap in tennis down to men's tournaments generating more revenue, but there is not a uniform, international scale for prize money across minor and major tournaments. For instance, at the 2015 China Open, the men's champion earned 67% of what the women's championship earned. But at a tournament in Rio de Janeiro five months later, the female champion earned 14% of the male winner's payout.

Even when women are paid fairly in tennis, a larger question remains: what system should be adopted to ensure men and women are paid fairly consistently, no matter the level or location of the tournament?

Gender Pay Gap in Basketball

Basketball is often used as one of the worst examples of pay inequality in professional sports. To set the stage, last year's first pick in the WNBA draft, A'ja Wilson, earned a salary of $52,564 for her rookie season. DeAndre Ayton, her NBA counterpart, earned $5,091,500 for his rookie season. For its older stars, the WNBA has a max salary cap of $117,500, whereas some of the NBA's best players earn close to 300 times more, such as Stephen Curry at $34.7 million or Lebron James at $33.3 million. In short, the WNBA's best veterans are making a fraction of what the NBA's worst players make. Here are the projected minimum and maximum salary figures for full-time players in the 2019-2020 seasons:

As we've noted, male leagues often generate significantly more revenue than female leagues, and that's certainly true in professional basketball. However, Forbes estimates that the WNBA teams pay out only 23% of the league's total revenue ($51.5 million) to their players, whereas the NBA teams pays out roughly 50% of the league's total revenue ($5.9 billion) to their players. Within this incongruent business model, WNBA stars are losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars.

WNBA Signs Multiyear TV Deal

In April 2019, the CBS Sports Network signed a multiyear deal with the WNBA to broadcast 40 games, doubling the prior season's arrangement. ESPN will show an additional 16 games, and NBATV also broadcasts several games through local feeds.

Last year, the combined average viewership across ESPN2 and NBA TV was up 31% over in the 2018 season. We can expect this figure to grow significantly with national broadcasts. In the coming years, how will licensing deals impact revenue overall, or the model the WNBA uses to pay out players?

Why are Men Paid More Than Women in Sports?

It's difficult to calculate how gender norms have contributed to the gender pay gap in sports over time, but men have enjoyed hundreds of more years to build interest in and place men's sports into mainstream culture. It's not just that female athletes are underpaid, it's that women have spent most of history not permitted or encouraged to play sports.

Pierre de Coutbertin, a French educator who established the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, infamously remarked that the inclusion of women would be "impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic, and incorrect." The 1900 Games were the first to officially accept female athletes, and every four years since then, women have gradually found more representation at the Olympics.

The Olympics don't tell the whole story of each individual sport, but Courtbertin's sentiments reflect the drought of female athletes, at least in the U.S., until the passage of Title IX in 1972.

Title IX

Title IX stipulates that students must have equal access to educational programs and activities that receive federal funding, which includes sports at public schools. Since Title IX's passage, there has been a 545% increase in the pool of women playing college sports and a 990% increase in the pool of women playing high school sports, according to the Women's Sports Foundation (WSF).

Title IX provided legal precedent by which women participating in sports became more common, and over time, socially accepted. Unfortunately, it can't solve the issue of fair exposure.

Media Disparity Contributes to the Sports Pay Gap

If you click through sports coverage on television, listen to radio or podcasts, or read news online, you've probably noticed that vast majority of our media is dedicated to men's sports - and there is no law forcing outlets to give equal coverage.

Television is often cited the main culprit. A 2015 study found that, over 118 hours of sports news broadcast programming from ESPN's "SportsCenter" and Fox Sports 1's "Fox Sports Live", women's sports were featured less than 1% of the time.

But coverage of women's sports is not just sparse - it may also be more boring. Another decades-long study found that while media on women's sports is no longer overtly sexist, it still tends to be dull and obligatory, without the jokes and compliments used to frame segments on men's sports. Of course, this creates a vicious cycle: if coverage of women's sports is boring, those interested in women's sports may be less inclined to read or watch content, and the outlet will continue to believe there is "no interest." In this way, an imbalance in media coverage has also contributed to the gender pay gap in sports.

Pay Inequity Goes Beyond the Sports Pay Gap

The gender pay gap in sports presents a unique set of variables impacting compensation, and hopefully sheds light on how we can work towards creating a fairer environment for athletes. In any profession, employers should ask how can they can ensure men and women are paid equitably to the best of their ability.

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Examining the Gender Pay Gap in Sports | Salary.com

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In 2018, women earned 85% of what men earned, based on a Pew Research Center analysis of the gender pay gap in the United States. But what about in sports? When it comes to compensation, the sports world offers a lot of fascinating trends - huge, multi-year contracts, endorsement deals, and constant media attention amplifying athletes' brands.

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The rise in anti-Asian hate incidents over the past year has resurfaced the need for many to have deep, often uncomfortable conversations about racism and discrimination with their loved ones. Those conversations are particularly fraught - and particularly necessary - between parents and children.

To learn more about how to approach those conversations, All Things Considered host Audie Cornish talked to Nicole Chung, an author and advice columnist for Slate, and Christine Koh, a neuroscientist and co-author of a book on parenting. They gave concrete tips for starting age-appropriate conversations with children, tackling dialogues about race with adoptees or adoptive parents, and dealing with discomfort around sensitive topics. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
AC: Nicole, your advice column earlier this month featured a question from a parent whose child had been suspended for bullying an Asian classmate. Can you talk about how you tried to answer their question? It can be hard enough to talk with kids after things like mass shootings. When an event like this is intertwined with racism, how do you start that conversation?
Chung: What immediately stood out to me was the parents main focus seemed to be, how do I punish this? Like, literally, what is the appropriate punishment for racism? And I wanted to point out to them that, in fact, their student had already been suspended and might be expelled for this. And the more important conversation I thought would be, how are you actually going to talk with them? Because it's really the child's biased thinking that you want to change. It's this lack of compassion for their Asian classmate that they not only bullied, but tried to get other kids to join in bullying.

No amount of punishment is really going to make a child or anyone less prejudiced. What you actually have to do is that hard work: having those conversations with them, explaining why anti-Asian racism is wrong and coronavirus scapegoating in particular. Give them as much historical context as you can, and make them understand this makes them part of a legacy they don't want to be part of.

Koh: A basic parenting thing that people have to keep in mind is to keep the conversations age appropriate. I have a 10-year-old and a 16-year-old. The conversations I can have within that six year difference are very different.

I'm getting a lot of questions from parents about talking to young kids. I always tell parents to start with the really basic values, like empathy. We need to teach kids about common empathy and understanding; there are lots of similarities between kids and also lots of differences that should be celebrated.

I also think we can't shield our kids. They're seeing things. In the case of Nicole's column, the parents who asked the question had said they don't communicate racist ideas at home, but we know those ideas are everywhere.

Christine, you're Asian American and raising two mixed-race children. Your husband is white. How do you go about talking about these kinds of events?
Nicole, you're ethnically Korean and were adopted by white parents. What advice can you give to families who are in this situation? To someone who has a child is an Asian-American adoptee, or the child in that kind of family who's trying to explain things to family members who don't get it?
CK: The really complicated thing for me has been feeling like a liability to my kids when I'm out with them. I mean, that is a horrendous feeling that no parent really wants to face. My kids, when they're with their dad, they could pass as white. And when they're with me, then people might look at them and think, oh, okay, you know, maybe they could be part Asian. So I know that at the beginning of the pandemic, I felt very self-conscious, especially as all sorts of terrible things were being said by the administration, and all of the scapegoating was happening.

But it's always been about talking to my kids about being aware of their surroundings. It's not about scaring them, but I think it's a reality that kids need to know about being safe and keeping their eyes up in the world. [We tell them], you always have to keep your eyes up and aware of what's going around, because you will be threatened because of your ethnicity, possibly, and also for general safety.

NC: I think it's difficult. I was thinking about this while Christine was speaking just about how she talks about this with her kids. And [those conversations have to go] both ways. My adoptive parents passed, but when they were alive, I often found myself in this position of either trying to explain or sort of translate how I experience this country as a Korean American. And they did kind of always struggle to see me as a Korean, as an Asian-American woman. At the time they adopted me, the standard line was just basically, assimilate her. That's literally what the adoption judge told them. There was no recommended reading, no recommended classes.

Growing up, I had no language for talking about race and racism. And I often found myself trying to protect my adoptive family from that, too. I didn't want to shatter this illusion they had of a world in which their love for me and my adoption was all that really mattered- that it would be enough for them and for the world. But of course, I started experiencing racism from a very young age. I grew up in a really white community and heard my first slur at the age of seven. So I always knew from a young age that my race was in fact relevant to my lived experience and would be throughout my life.
I have been reading a lot of Asian writers and activists who have been talking about the idea of being more politically aware. In some families, there's a kind of approach of keeping your head down, or a heavy emphasis on assimilation. Is this another moment for Asian-American families to talk about these issues in a way that they weren't in the past?
I think my advice for adoptive parents has not really changed with the rise in anti-Asian racism. There's a tendency in adoption nowadays to lean into the really fun parts, like cultural exploration and acknowledgement. And I think that's all great. I think it is a lot harder, right, to have these conversations with our kids about racism in this country, about white privilege. Those are the discussions that adoptive families also have to be willing to have. We know statistically a lot of white families aren't having these discussions. But when you are raising Asian-American kids right now, or kids of color at all, you have to really be prepared to be your kids' first and best ally in these situations.

CK: I just received some outreach about talking to a parent group. And they were saying, we don't understand how to have these uncomfortable conversations. And my response is that it's high time to get uncomfortable. If you're a white parent and feeling like the conversation is uncomfortable for you, tap into your empathy and think about how uncomfortable it is to be a person of color and feeling like you have a target on your back, or reliving racial aggressions or having very real safety concerns.
The radio version of this story was edited by Sarah Handel.
NC: Speaking as a parent myself, I've always tried to have these conversations about race and privilege-not only what my kids and I might experience as Korean Americans, but also what solidarity can look like. How can we be better allies to other marginalized people? I really wanted to make this a conscious part of their upbringing, and I'm sure I mess up all the time. But partly because there was all this silence around it in my family growing up, I really felt a very strong need and responsibility to do this for my kids- partly to equip them, but partly so they would know for themselves what our family values are.

And you know, these conversations are meant to be ongoing. They're meant to evolve and be sustained throughout our kids' lives. And as an Asian American parent, I also have the need to sit and really listen to how my kids are feeling, and to think about what their questions are. As parents, one of the most important things we can do is hold space for that for our kids.

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How To Start Conversations About Anti-Asian Racism With Your Family

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast subscribe to Code Switch podcast The rise in anti-Asian hate incidents over the past year has resurfaced the need for many to have deep, often uncomfortable conversations about racism and discrimination with their loved ones. Those conversations are particularly fraught - and particularly necessary - between parents and children.

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We recently had the unenviable job of trawling through social media after the Matildas equal-pay decision to compile a 'best of' collation of the glowing reaction around the world to Australian football's decision.

But for every two or three congratulatory posts by Billie Jean-King or The New York Times, there was an outraged comment from someone, questioning 'How this is fair?'

Now some of these people are stupid pricks, but others make a genuine point:

No one is saying you don't work as hard. You don't get paid for hard work though, you get paid by revenue. An NBL player works just as hard as an NBA player so wheres their equal pay? Socceroos are subsidising Matildas. And anyone who challenges this new deal is "sexist" now?
- karl (@yaboypilkington) November 5, 2019

The problem with social media is it's not the place for a considerate, educational conversation. Yet unfortunately, this is where society now has discussions about serious issues. So we can't just ignore these concerns.

If you try to see it from their perspective, it's easy to understand why many people would have a problem with the Matildas earning an equal 24% split in match revenue when they create far less than the Socceroos.

But their questions and statements rarely get responses and when they do, they're often decries of sexism or ignorance.

Many of these people are our fathers, brothers, husbands, sons and boyfriends...and there are many women who don't believe in equal pay as well. Troublingly, we never hear from most of the people who hold these opinions. They are too afraid to speak up, because they know they'll get shut down.

But if we don't encourage them into an informed discussion now, we'll force them into a position where they feel unable to voice their concerns. They then become the silent majority and this is exactly how Brexit, Trump and who knows how many other 'surprising' election results happen.

If we want sustainable change, we have to engage.

So with this in mind, we've prepared the following 10 quick reasons why female athletes actually do deserve equal pay, so everyone reading this can arm themselves with fact-based, rational and inclusive arguments for when you come across somebody who just can't fathom why women would be paid the same for the same job...

BUT FIRST, YOU HAVE TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT EQUAL PAY MEANS

Let's be really clear. Equal pay means equal pay for the same amount of work under the same boss.

Nobody's claiming that W-League players should be paid the same for a 14 round season as A-League players are paid for 29, just like we're not claiming that a Caitlin Foord should earn the same as Carli Lloyd.

The argument is that female and male sporting teams, who have the same basic workload, responsibilities and amount of matches, be paid the same basic wage by their sport's governing body.

But here's the kicker: this should be the case even though male sporting teams generate more revenue than female. Here's why...

Copyright ©The Women's Game All rights reserved.

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australian national womens football team

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10 ways to explain (to a sexist mate) that women's sport deserves equal pay

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Whether you're AFL, football, union, league, tennis, golf, surfing or professional curling, the recent Matildas equal pay decision is a landmark moment for pay equality in sport. But to a lot of people, it seems completely unjustified. Here's what you should tell them.

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July 12, 2020

Revision of a piece by Andrea Casper

Today, the gender pay gap in sports is still extremely pronounced. Many leagues have acknowledged the disparity, but the issue still persists. In the past two years, equal pay in sports has progressed from simple awareness to being addressed with legal action. Now, with games being cancelled due to coronavirus, the effects of the pay gap are even more apparent. Women, who earn less than men, are hit even harder from the lost income.

Basketball

A recent agreement pushed for by WNBA players increases players' pay, provides paid maternity leave, and includes even more benefits, while NBA players have agreed to a 25% pay cut in response to COVID-19. Even with these changes, a significant pay gap still exists. Coronavirus concerns threaten the pay of both the WNBA and NBA, with a shortened season expected to begin July 24th and July 30 respectively. For the NBA players who normally make millions, the threat of lost wages is insignificant. For new, "inexperienced" players of the WNBA who make a minimum of $57,000 in typical seasons, losing income from cancelled games means losing a major chunk of their salaries.

It is no secret that players in the NBA make significantly more than players in the WNBA. Zion Williamson is guaranteed a minimum of $8,131,200 with the opportunity to earn more as this season's first pick, compared to Sabrina Ionescu, whose contract stipulates $68,000. A large part of the pay gap is due to the lack of recognition from fans, media, and sponsors.

Women have been playing basketball since shortly after its creation in 1892, but it is the all male NBA that has captured the United States' attention. The first pick of the WNBA, Sabrina Ionescu, also has a deal with Nike and interest from Under Armour and Puma. Compare this, though, to the NBA, where multiple NBA players regularly secure lucrative deals with brands like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Gatorade, Nike, Adidas, and others. Unlike the NBA, WNBA tournaments are also not televised as frequently. A 2019 deal increased the number of WNBA games that were nationally televised, though they were televised on the smaller CBS Sports Network instead of CBS.

Before the WNBA reached a collective bargaining agreement, it also paid "about 20 percent of its revenue to its players, while the NBA paid 50 percent to its players." With a 53% pay raise in the January agreement, that's an estimated 31% of revenue paid out to players for future seasons. That revenue comes from financial success rooted in the interest of fans, TV deals, and sponsorships.

Tennis

Since 2007, when the four Grand Slam tournaments agreed to equal prize money for men and women, tennis has been treated as a template for achieving equal pay in other sports. Both Roger Federer and Serena Williams, for instance, received $4 million for winning the 2018 Australian Open while Rafael Nadal and Bianca Andreescu both took home $3.85 million as 2019 U.S. Open champions. Matches leading up to these high-profile events and the events themselves, however, have been rescheduled or cancelled this year.

Achieving equal pay in tennis is primarily a concern outside of major competitions. The New York Times reports female tennis players earn 80 cents for each dollar earned by male players, and this discrepancy "matches the general pay gap in American workplaces." This gap translates to a difference of roughly $120,624 in total earnings.

This difference means the 15th ranked male player in the world, on average, makes $120,624 more compared to a female player with the same ranking. Just like other professional sports, a considerable pay gap is still apparent in tennis. Thankfully for female tennis players, the discrepancy is not as glaring as in the case of the WNBA and the NBA, or United States (and global) soccer.

Soccer

Some of the highest-earning sports stars are in fact male soccer players, as outlined in a May 2020 Forbes article. Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Neymar take up three of the top five slots for players with the highest earnings. This season, they will each make $105 million, $104 million, and $95.5 million respectively from a combination of high salaries and endorsements, even with games being cancelled due to Coronavirus. The three men are arguably some of the best players in soccer -- Neymar specifically is infamous in the soccer world -- yet he is still one of the top paid players despite his negative reputation.

If we use that pay-for-performance argument, it is clear that the United States Women's National Team is grossly underpaid. They have far outperformed their male counterparts and have the hardware to prove it (four Olympic Gold medals and three World Cups). They even generate more revenue than the men's U.S. soccer team. Despite this, in non-tournament games, they still only earn 38% of what men would have earned.

Male soccer players earn as much as six times more than women in bonuses from participating in the World Cup. While FIFA has communicated its intent to raise the price of awards for the Women's World Cup, there is still a $370 million gap between the two competitions.

Fans, sponsors, and even the men's U.S soccer team have vocalized their support for raising pay for women. A lawsuit addressing many of the above issues was filed by the women's U.S. soccer team in March of 2019. Key parts of it were dismissed in May. The fight for pay equality in soccer continues, and we are currently in the thick of it. The NWSL 2020 season began on June 27th with a modified tournament plan and regular coronavirus testing.

American Football

Unlike many sports which have separate teams for men and women, the National Football League (NFL) allowed Lauren Silberman to try out in 2012 and has since hired eight female coaches. Despite these exceptions, players and coaches in the NFL are exclusively male. Women who want to play professionally typically join the Women's Football Alliance (WFA).

While the Superbowl garners millions of viewers every season and is the excuse for parties nationwide, the WFA has completed its seasons with little attention. Women's American football suffers from the same lack of recognition as women's basketball. Besides the lack of notoriety, the pay gap is jarring. An average NFL player makes a yearly salary of $2.4 million while an WFA member actually pays a fee, usually between $250 and $800, and must purchase her own equipment to play. On top of the costs of playing, members are often tasked with hosting fundraisers and drawing sponsors.

Women today are leading the transition from American football to flag football after researchers uncovered links between American football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Even before finding this connection, youth and high school participation in traditional tackle football was declining. As tackle football becomes less popular, the NFL has partnered with 15 colleges to establish flag football programs with potential scholarships.

The length of this year's NFL season has been cut in half due to coronavirus. With the declining popularity of tackle football, its health risks, and a shortened season, the sport of American football will likely make some significant changes. Moving forward, it will be a priority to keep the gender pay gap closed between male and female teams.

Future

Before the pandemic, the gender pay gap in sports was already a major issue. Game cancellations, lost revenue from fans, and reduced endorsement budgets have only widened that gap. For someone making millions, such as most male players or a handful of female players (most of whom are tennis players), a little bit of lost income does not have a huge impact. For a woman who might make around $55,000 yearly, however, the lost income from games, prizes, and endorsements could be the difference between pursuing sports and focusing on a higher paying career.

With children out of school and daycares being potential breeding grounds for coronavirus, parents must also make difficult, and sometimes financially costly, decisions about childcare. Staying home may be the only option for a parent, further reducing income.

As coronavirus continues to exacerbate the gender pay gap in sports, it is important that we remember to keep pushing for change. Serena Williams reminded us in her 2017 essay that the pay gap "hits women of color the hardest." With the CDC reporting up to five times the rate of COVID-19 in non-white populations, lower pay for women, particularly women of color, is an even more immediate concern than usual. Her essay also advocates for equal pay in all areas of work -- not just in sports. Even when women have equal qualifications to men, they are still paid less. The trend of pay in professional sports is following a national one.

A controversy still forthcoming in professional sports is one which students are experiencing today. Legal battles have swept the nation attempting to bar transgender athletes from competing on girls' sports teams in schools, with the argument that transgender girls are not girls, based solely on their chromosomes. Experts agree that sex cannot simply be reduced to an individual's chromosomes, however, and is determined by a number of factors. Young adults encompass the largest demographic of transgender people, the same demographic professional sports recruit. As gender-affirming surgeries are on the rise after Medicare lifted its ban on them, professional sports will confront a new perspective in the fight for pay equality.

In sports, changing the attitudes of the players (both men and women), the fans, the media, the sponsors, and the governing organizations are a few of the steps towards achieving pay equality. In general, speaking out about pay inequality and being transparent about one's salary are effective methods of closing the wage gap. While we wait to see how coronavirus affects athlete's wages in the long-term, the struggles female players face will only be amplified.

Are you interested in boosting your career, personal development, networking, and giving back? If so, WITI is the place for you! Become a WITI Member and receive exclusive access to attend our WITI members-only events, webinars, online coaching circles, find mentorship opportunities (become a mentor; find a mentor), and more!

Founded in 1989, WITI (Women in Technology International) is committed to empowering innovators, inspiring future generations and building inclusive cultures, worldwide. WITI is redefining the way women and men collaborate to drive innovation and business growth and is helping corporate partners create and foster gender inclusive cultures. A leading authority of women in technology and business, WITI has been advocating and recognizing women's contributions in the industry for more than 30 years.

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Examining the Gender Pay Gap in Elite Sports - Updated 2020 - WITI

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July 12, 2020 Revision of a piece by Andrea Casper Today, the gender pay gap in sports is still extremely pronounced. Many leagues have acknowledged the disparity, but the issue still persists. In the past two years, equal pay in sports has progressed from simple awareness to being addressed with legal action.

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Arkansas' Republican governor has signed a law banning transgender women and girls from competing in school sports teams consistent with their gender identity

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Thursday signed a law banning transgender women and girls from competing in school sports teams consistent with their gender identity, making the state the second to approve such a restriction so far this year.

The Republican governor approved the measure despite objections from medical and child-welfare groups that it would have devastating impacts on transgender youth. Hundreds of college athletes have also urged the NCAA to refuse to hold championships in states that enact such bans.

"This law simply says that female athletes should not have to compete in a sport against a student of the male sex when the sport is designed for women's competition," Hutchinson said in a statement released by his office. "As I have stated previously, I agree with the intention of this law. This will help promote and maintain fairness in women's sporting events."

Republicans in at least 20 state legislatures have been pushing for similar bans this year. Mississippi's governor signed a prohibition into law earlier this month. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem had initially said she would sign similar legislation sent to her but has since pushed for changing it to exclude college sports. Arkansas' law covers K-12 as well as collegiate sports.

The head of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ rights groups, called Hutchinson's decision "an affront not just to the transgender kids it is bound to hurt but to all Arkansans who will be impacted by its consequences."

"Hutchinson is ignoring the ugly history of states that have dared to pass anti-transgender legislation in years past, and by doing so he is exposing Arkansas to economic harm, expensive taxpayer-funded legal battles, and a tarnished reputation," Alphonso David, the group's president, said in a statement.

Only one state, Idaho, has enacted a law curtailing transgender students' sports participation, and that 2020 measure is blocked by a court ruling as a lawsuit plays out. Opponents have not said whether they plan legal action to block Arkansas' ban.

"This law is a discriminatory and shameful attempt by politicians to stigmatize and exclude transgender teens," American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas Executive Director Holly Dickson said in a statement.

Arkansas' law, if it isn't blocked by a legal challenge, would take effect this summer. Under the new law, a student or school who suffers "direct or indirect harm" could take a school to court for violating the ban.

The measure is among several targeting transgender people advancing through the majority-Republican Legislature this year. Another bill on Hutchinson's desk would allow doctors to refuse to treat someone for moral or religious reasons, a measure opponents says would allow LGBT patients to be turned away.

A final vote is also expected next week on legislation that would ban gender confirmation surgery or treatment for minors.

The measures have won support as a hate crimes bill backed by Hutchinson has stalled, facing conservative resistance. The current version of the bill would impose additional penalties for committing a crime against someone because several characteristics, including gender identity or sexual orientation.

Arkansas is one of three states without a hate crimes law.

When asked earlier this week about the message the measures targeting transgender people send to the LGBT community, Hutchinson said he hoped to send a welcoming message by enacting a hate crimes law.

"I want the message to be that we want to make sure that everyone is protected, that everyone has equal treatment under the laws," Hutchinson told reporters Tuesday. "That is very, very important, whether it's transgender or whether it is some other characteristic."

Hutchinson also signed the bill four years after opposing legislation that would have prohibited people from using restrooms in government buildings that do not match their gender at birth. That measure, which never advanced out of committee, had drawn opposition from tourism groups who said it would harm the state's economy.

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Arkansas governor signs transgender sports ban into law

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Arkansas' Republican governor has signed a law banning transgender women and girls from competing in school sports teams consistent with their gender identity LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Thursday signed a law banning transgender women and girls from competing in school sports teams consistent with their gender identity, making the state the second to approve such a restriction so far this year.

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On Thursday, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed Senate Bill 354, which bans transgender women and girls from participating in school sports. The decision comes two weeks after Mississippi governor Tate Reeves signed a similar bill, which will go in effect July 1.

The Arkansas bill was introduced in late February by attorney general Leslie Rutledge, who described it as a preemptive effort after President Joe Biden signed an executive order that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity in school sports.

"We don't want common sense to be overshadowed by so-called political correctness, and this bill will ensure the integrity of girls and women in sports," Rutledge said, per the Associated Press, while acknowledging that she was unaware of any instances of transgender athletes playing on school sports teams in Arkansas.
KLIEGMAN: The Next Cultural Battle: States Take Aim at Trans Athletes
The bill asserts that transgender girls and women athletes competing would create an unfair playing field, as they would have a biological advantage over their cisgender competitors. Critics of the bill, meanwhile, accuse the proposal of being discriminatory against transgender Americans.

In a statement released Thursday, Hutchinson called his decision to sign the bill as a way to "promote and maintain fairness in women's sporting events."

"Today, I have signed into law SB354 called the 'Fairness in Women's Sports Act.' I have studied the law and heard from hundreds of constituents on this issue. I signed the law as a fan of women's sports from basketball to soccer and including many others in which women compete successfully," Hutchinson wrote. "This law simply says that female athletes should not have to compete in a sport against a student of the male sex when the sport is designed for women's competition. As I have stated previously, I agree with the intention of this law."

Arkansas is the second state this year to incorporate a ban after Mississippi. Idaho had a similar law passed in 2020, but a U.S. district judge granted an injunction against it in August.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, declined to sign a similar bill last week, saying she thought the ban should not be extended to college athletes.

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Arkansas Bans Transgender Girls From Playing School Sports

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On Thursday, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed Senate Bill 354, which bans transgender women and girls from participating in school sports. The decision comes two weeks after Mississippi governor Tate Reeves signed a similar bill, which will go in effect July 1.

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SOURCE: 40/29 News

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed a bill Thursday that bans transgender students from joining teams consistent with their gender identity.Instead, the bill requires students to compete on teams based on what's written on their birth certificate.Hutchinson released a statement to the press after signing the bill, saying has heard from hundreds of Arkansans about the issue."This will help promote and maintain fairness in women's sporting events," Hutchinson wrote.Follow this link to read SB 354, titled the Fairness in Women's Sports Act.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed a bill Thursday that bans transgender students from joining teams consistent with their gender identity.

Instead, the bill requires students to compete on teams based on what's written on their birth certificate.

Hutchinson released a statement to the press after signing the bill, saying has heard from hundreds of Arkansans about the issue.

"This will help promote and maintain fairness in women's sporting events," Hutchinson wrote.
Follow this link to read SB 354, titled the Fairness in Women's Sports Act.

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Arkansas governor signs bill regulating transgender student-athletes

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SOURCE: 40/29 News Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed a bill Thursday that bans transgender students from joining teams consistent with their gender identity.Instead, the bill requires students to compete on teams based on what's written on their birth certificate.Hutchinson released a statement to the press after signing the bill, saying has heard from hundreds of Arkansans about the issue."This will help promote and maintain fairness in women's sporting events," Hutchinson wrote.Follow this link to read SB 354, titled the Fairness in Women's Sports Act.

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Criminalising abortion does not stop abortions, it just makes abortion less safe.

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One of the big MAGA heroes of the COVID-19 era was South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, who for many months more or less ignored the pandemic. Then, when her state's caseload rose catastrophically after the Sturgis biker rally she avidly promoted, Noem kept arguing that COVID-19 didn't justify business closures or mandatory public-health steps like mask-wearing and social distancing.

More generally, Noem was very Trump-y, welcoming the 45th president to South Dakota for the July 4th fireworks commemoration he had chosen and presenting him with a bust of Mount Rushmore with his face added to the presidential edifice. It's precisely the sort of sycophancy Trump loves, and soon in MAGA circles talk emerged of Noem succeeding him as the next Republican presidential nominee or replacing Mike Pence as his running mate if he attempts a comeback. Her appearance at CPAC in February was a lib-owning triumph, as Politico reported:

Noem is staking herself firmly to the staunch pro-Trump lane among potential 2024 GOP contenders, many of whom have spoken at CPAC. She is meeting with donors in March at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, a fundraiser for her reelection bid and the first fundraising event of this cycle hosted by Donald Trump Jr.

But then Noem suddenly stumbled in her path along the far-right side of the political highway. After saying she was "excited" to sign a bill banning the participation of transgender girls and women in female sports leagues - a favorite right-wing cause this year - she changed her mind, issuing a "style and form" veto that allowed her to rewrite the legislation to exclude college sports and change some of the enforcement provisions. She was immediately accused of caving to pressure from the NCAA, which opposes such bans under its inclusion policies, and Amazon, which has its own LGBTQ policies and had a major new facility planned for South Dakota. As Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen noted, it then got worse for Noem:

Her attempts at damage control have thus far not worked. Noem announced her own effort to defend women's sports at a news conference on Monday. She also appeared on Tucker Carlson's Fox News program Monday night and faced withering questioning from the populist host. Neither effort seems to have turned her image around, and her statement that the original bill she vetoed would have only established a "participation trophy," as she argued it would only get caught up in court, is sure to inflame those she has already angered.

At this point Noem is flailing around and trying to change the subject to a broader defense of women's sports as MAGA-world pundits pillory her as a sellout. Being generally transphobic is no longer enough. Her communications director (the excellently named Ian Fury) is lashing out at the governor's critics with a tortured, defensive effort to identify with right-wing culture warriors even as he accuses them of hypocrisy, as the Washington Examiner reports:

Unfortunately, conservatives have been sold down the river by politicians all too many times. And the immediate assumption was that this was just more of the same. But why would the Governor who stood strong during COVID cave on such a fundamental issue? Answer: she wouldn't, and she didn't. If conservative media would take 5 seconds to read past the knee-jerk headlines and actually understand Governor Noem's position, they'd come to a very different realization.

That dog won't hunt, Ian. The pol who was so recently a heroine for her defiance of all that public-health nonsense is now being denounced by Terry Schilling, the cultural right commissar who heads the American Principles Project: "If Noem thinks this gambit will save her political career, she is sadly mistaken." It will take many more trips to Mar-a-Lago to regain her MAGA mojo.

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Kristi Noem Angers Her Base With Transgender Sports-Ban Veto

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South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was a MAGA star thanks to her refusal to follow COVID-19 public health guidance, even being touted as a presidential candidate. But she crossed the Cultural Right by refusing to sign a ban on transgender athletes.

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Several North Carolina Republican legislators have filed a bill that would block transgender women and girls from joining women's high school and college athletic teams, joining the culture-war tussle that has swept several states. Their bill, which would apply to middle and high schools and colleges, both public and private, comes as legislators in nearly 30 other states have proposed similar prohibitions.Bills in Idaho and Mississippi have become law, while others are being debated in several more state legislatures.A bill sponsor acknowledged he knew of no controversies in North Carolina when a transgender girl or woman had joined a team or competed in a sport designated for women.But it was important to be proactive in addressing the issue in North Carolina, said Rep. Mark Brody, a Union County Republican.It's unclear if any transgender athlete is currently competing in the state, because that information is confidential. But this bill would change that. "I do not want to wait until biological females are pushed out of female sports, and all of their records are broken, scholarships lost and benefits of excelling are diminishing before this is addressed," Brody said on Tuesday at a Legislative Building news conference.The North Carolina bill, filed on Monday, would require intramural and interscholastic teams to be designated as male or for men, female or for women, or co-ed.Teams and sports designated as female or women's activities wouldn't be open to the male students, and a person's sex would be defined as based "solely on a person's reproductive biology and genetics at birth."The "Save Women's Sports Act" also creates a legal cause of action for a "biological female student" to sue if she alleges suffering from a school violating the policy or retaliation from the school for reporting a violation.LGBT groups and Democratic allies have blasted such legislation. They say the measures discriminate against transgender people who are already vulnerable to bigotry and just want to compete in sports like anyone else. President Joe Biden signed an executive order that bans discrimination based on gender identity in school sports and elsewhere.Equality North Carolina said in a news release that the bill is rooted in "outdated generalizations about male and female bodies.""Young people all across this state, regardless of gender identity, deserve the opportunity to experience the benefits of being part of a sporting community -- especially when trans youth already face disproportionate barriers to success in learning environments," Equality NC education policy director Rebby Kern said.But the bill's supporters said physical differences between men and women are clear and women face little chance to succeed if they are forced to compete with transgender women or girls. The North Carolina High School Athletic Association does have a policy that allows transgender students to participate in athletics, but Brody argues the policy's details lack transparency.In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem issued last week a partial veto of a transgender sports bill and recommending to lawmakers that collegiate sports be excluded from the measure. Noem faced pressure from business interests to back off the legislation and social conservatives to embrace it.Tuesday's news conference took place exactly five years after the General Assembly passed a law that in part required transgender people to use restrooms in many public buildings that corresponded to their sex at birth.The law, known as House Bill 2, drew national condemnation and prompted several large corporations and sports teams to relocate events to other states or reconsider expanding in North Carolina. That measure was partially repealed in 2017.This article contains information from The Associated Press.

Several North Carolina Republican legislators have filed a bill that would block transgender women and girls from joining women's high school and college athletic teams, joining the culture-war tussle that has swept several states.

Their bill, which would apply to middle and high schools and colleges, both public and private, comes as legislators in nearly 30 other states have proposed similar prohibitions.

Bills in Idaho and Mississippi have become law, while others are being debated in several more state legislatures.

A bill sponsor acknowledged he knew of no controversies in North Carolina when a transgender girl or woman had joined a team or competed in a sport designated for women.But it was important to be proactive in addressing the issue in North Carolina, said Rep. Mark Brody, a Union County Republican.

It's unclear if any transgender athlete is currently competing in the state, because that information is confidential. But this bill would change that.

"I do not want to wait until biological females are pushed out of female sports, and all of their records are broken, scholarships lost and benefits of excelling are diminishing before this is addressed," Brody said on Tuesday at a Legislative Building news conference.

The North Carolina bill, filed on Monday, would require intramural and interscholastic teams to be designated as male or for men, female or for women, or co-ed.

Teams and sports designated as female or women's activities wouldn't be open to the male students, and a person's sex would be defined as based "solely on a person's reproductive biology and genetics at birth."

The "Save Women's Sports Act" also creates a legal cause of action for a "biological female student" to sue if she alleges suffering from a school violating the policy or retaliation from the school for reporting a violation.

LGBT groups and Democratic allies have blasted such legislation. They say the measures discriminate against transgender people who are already vulnerable to bigotry and just want to compete in sports like anyone else.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order that bans discrimination based on gender identity in school sports and elsewhere.

Equality North Carolina said in a news release that the bill is rooted in "outdated generalizations about male and female bodies."

"Young people all across this state, regardless of gender identity, deserve the opportunity to experience the benefits of being part of a sporting community -- especially when trans youth already face disproportionate barriers to success in learning environments," Equality NC education policy director Rebby Kern said.

But the bill's supporters said physical differences between men and women are clear and women face little chance to succeed if they are forced to compete with transgender women or girls. The North Carolina High School Athletic Association does have a policy that allows transgender students to participate in athletics, but Brody argues the policy's details lack transparency.

In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem issued last week a partial veto of a transgender sports bill and recommending to lawmakers that collegiate sports be excluded from the measure. Noem faced pressure from business interests to back off the legislation and social conservatives to embrace it.

Tuesday's news conference took place exactly five years after the General Assembly passed a law that in part required transgender people to use restrooms in many public buildings that corresponded to their sex at birth.

The law, known as House Bill 2, drew national condemnation and prompted several large corporations and sports teams to relocate events to other states or reconsider expanding in North Carolina. That measure was partially repealed in 2017.
This article contains information from The Associated Press.

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New NC bill would block female transgender students from joining school sports teams

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Several North Carolina Republican legislators have filed a bill that would block transgender women and girls from joining women's high school and college athletic teams, joining the culture-war tussle that has swept several states.

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) - A new bill could prevent transgender female athletes from competing on female sports teams.

The Arkansas House and Senate have passed a bill that says transgender women cannot compete in women's sports because they are not identified as "female" on their birth certificate.

Chris Atting is the father of a transgender son who spoke out about his concerns on the bill Wednesday in a Human Rights Campaign meeting.

"I do not think there is a father in this state who thinks the Arkansas legislature or Arkansas Governor should have a voice in making their families private medical decisions- deciding which of their kids cannot play sports."

But for Becky Rangel- a mom of two female athletes at Bentonville High School- there are some concerns if Governor Asa Hutchinson refuses to sign the bill.

"Allowing a transgender youth athlete to play on a girls team you're going to pretty much make all the work that girls have done become obsolete."

Rangel said the issue is more a problem of inclusion within the sports teams.

"My issue is not transgender," Rangel said. "My issue is where can we let transgender athletes have a home so that they're competing at the right physical level and they're treated well."

While Atting leaves the transgender community with a message- regardless of if the bill passes or not.

No matter what the state of Arkansas does to you, you are loved," he said. "I want you here in Arkansas- we want you here in Arkansas."

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Parents speak out on Arkansas transgender sports bill

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) - A new bill could prevent transgender female athletes from competing on female sports teams. The Arkansas House and Senate have passed a bill that says transgender women cannot compete in women's sports because they are not identified as "female" on their birth certificate.

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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has said she would sign similar legislation sent to her but has since pushed for changing it to exclude college sports. On Monday night, Noem got into a verbal duel with Fox News ' Tucker Carlson, who accused the GOP governor - widely rumored as a potential White House nominee in 2024 - of abandoning her commitment to the measure.

"This bill would only allow the NCAA to bully South Dakota," she said. "And it would actually prevent women from being able to participate in collegiate sports. So what I have done is I have asked the legislature ... to change the bill."

"Wait," Carlson interjected. "So you are saying the NCAA threatened you ... they said 'If you sign this, we won't allow girls in South Dakota to play' and you don't think you can win in court - even though the public overwhelmingly supports you nationally - and so you are caving to the NCAA?"

Noem dismissed Carlson's insinuation as "completely wrong" and reiterated her commitment to protecting women's sports.

Idaho has enacted a law curtailing trans students' sports participation, and that 2020 measure is blocked by a court ruling as a lawsuit plays out.

National advocacy groups, including those representing pediatricians and social workers, have said the ban and other measures targeting trans youth risk further marginalizing a group already at high risk for bullying, depression and suicide.

"It's extremely hard to be a kid, and if you're a transgender kid, your life's even harder," Rep. Tippi McCullough, the top Democrat in the Arkansas House and the only openly gay member of the Legislature, said before the vote. "Sports gives kids a place to belong, a place to be included, a place to succeed or learn to deal with setbacks and work to overcome them."

Arkansas' proposal applies to K-12 and collegiate sports teams.

Rep. Sonia Barker, the bill's sponsor, told the lawmakers the measure "creates fairness in women's sports by establishing a level playing field for girls and women in our Arkansas schools."

Under the bill, a student or school that suffers "direct or indirect harm" could take a school to court for violating the ban.

Hutchinson has five days, not counting Sunday, after the legislation reaches his desk to take action before it becomes law without his signature. If he vetoes the measure, it would take only a simple majority of the Legislature to override.

Hutchinson in 2017 opposed a "bathroom bill" that would have prohibited people from using restrooms in government buildings that do not match their gender at birth. That measure, which never advanced out of committee, had drawn opposition from tourism groups who said it would harm the state's economy.

According to Tennessee's bill, student-athletes would be required to prove that their sex matches that listed on the student's "original" birth certificate in order to participate in public school sports in middle and high schools. If a birth certificate is unavailable, then the parents must provide another form of evidence "indicating the student's sex at the time of birth."

"Words do mean things. They are very important. This bill that I'm sponsoring maintains the competitive balance, the safety and the opportunity for scholarships and advancement for our female athletes," said GOP Rep. Scott Cepicky, who refused to stray from that response when questioned by Democrats.

None of the supporters of the Tennessee measure could cite a single instance of transgender girls or boys having caused problems. A review by The Associated Press found only a few instances in which it has been an issue among the hundreds of thousands of American teenagers who play high school sports.

Backers of the bill argue that transgender girls, because they were identified as male at birth, naturally are stronger, faster and bigger than those identified as female at birth and therefore have an unfair advantage in sports.

Opponents counter that such proposals violate Title IX of federal education law prohibiting sex discrimination, as well as rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Furthermore, others point to an executive order signed by Democratic President Joe Biden that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity in school sports and elsewhere.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee swiftly decried the bill as "shameful" after House passage, arguing that transgender girls do not threaten women's sports.

"We urge Gov. Lee to reverse course and veto this bill or - should any transgender student be excluded because of this new law - we will see him in court," Executive Director Hedy Weinberg said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Transgender school sports bans making their way across U.S.

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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has said she would sign similar legislation sent to her but has since pushed for changing it to exclude college sports. On Monday night, Noem got into a verbal duel with Fox News ' Tucker Carlson, who accused the GOP governor - widely rumored as a potential White House nominee in 2024 - of abandoning her commitment to the measure.

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Tennis Rob Goldberg Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press @TheRobGoldberg Featured Columnist
Martina Navratilova does not believe transgender women should be able to compete against ciswomen.

The former tennis star wrote an op-ed in the Sunday Times detailing why she feels the practice is unfair.

"It's insane and it's cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair," Navratilova wrote (h/t Frances Perraudin of the Guardian).

The 62-year-old came out in 1981 and has been a gay rights activist after her playing career, but she thinks men would force their way into women's competitions if transgender women are allowed to compete.

"To put the argument at its most basic: a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires," she wrote.

Different organizations have different rules for eligibility, but the International Olympic Committee does require testosterone to be below a certain level in order for transgender women to compete.

This essay comes a few months after Navratilova first created controversy with a tweet in December.

"You can't just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women," the 18-time Grand Slam champion wrote. "There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard."

Her comment received backlash at the time and her latest article has brought on further criticism from the LGBT community.

"It's a wild fantasy worry that is an irrational fear of something that doesn't happen," world track cycling champion and transgender athlete Rachel McKinnon tweeted Monday. "An irrational fear of trans people? Transphobia."

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Martina Navratilova: Transgender Athletes in Women's Sport Is Insane, Cheating

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Tennis Rob Goldberg Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press @TheRobGoldberg Twitter Logo Featured Columnist Martina Navratilova does not believe transgender women should be able to compete against ciswomen. The former tennis star wrote an op-ed in the Sunday Times detailing why she feels the practice is unfair. "It's insane and it's cheating.

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In the early 1980s, Japanese American Citizens League national director Ron Wakabayashi asked members of the civil rights group to send him any newspaper clippings of anti-Asian hate crimes they might find.

His collection quickly numbered in the hundreds.

Vietnamese fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico who had their boats burned by white competitors. College students beaten. Immigrants murdered. Cross burnings. Slashed tires. Slurs flung with impunity.

"Hate crimes were just surfacing as a concept," said Wakabayashi, the former head of the L.A. County Human Relations Committee who's now 78 and retired.

"It was an epidemic," remembered Dale Minami, 74, an attorney most famous for representing Japanese American civil rights icon Fred Korematsu. "The torrent of racism just overflowed."

Wakabayashi, Minami, and others decided to publicize the problem. Congressman Norman Mineta (D-San Jose) distributed copies of the hate clippings across Capitol Hill. Coalitions formed to demonstrate and plead with law enforcement and elected officials to believe that anti-Asian crimes were on the rise and to do something about it.

When nothing happened, the activists then went to California Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp. They persuaded him to create and fund a commission to study the rise in anti-Asian sentiments in California that had always existed but were now exacerbated by a growing population and economic competition from the Pacific Rim.

With Minami as chair, Wakabayashi used his deep Rolodex to build the Asian and Pacific Islander's Advisory Commission in 1988 with voices across ethnic, occupational, and generational lines. They held four public forums and met as a group to discuss their findings. A year after the commission formed, they released a 129-page report at a press conference with Van de Kamp that laid out the painful history of anti-Asian hate in the state, along with recommendations to remedy it.

The press and political establishment largely ignored the commission's findings. Two weeks later, a gunman stormed an elementary school in Stockton and killed five children, all of them of Southeast Asian descent.

"There was a sense of urgency to educate the public as soon as possible," Minami said. "We needed to stop this stuff. And sure enough, it happened again."

The reportremains such an unknown part of California Asian American history that State Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), chair of the California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, asked me for a copy so he could read it when we talked about the matter. When I explained its contents, I heard the weariness in his voice.

"Clearly, that document is another piece of evidence that the problems that we're dealing with now is certainly nothing new," Pan said. "The fact that there's so many things in this document that we're looking at now, that says 'Geez, that sounds very familiar' - not because of what happened in the '80s but because what's happening now. We can't forget again."

(Courtesy of Barbara Takei)

A rereading of the advisory committee's report in the wake of the March 16 killing of eight people in Atlanta-area spas - six of them Korean and Chinese women - reminds me of that old cliché: the more things change, the more they remain the same.

It detailed the struggles of Asians and Pacific Islanders in California from Gold Rush-era lynchings up to problems that the Monterey Park police department had with reaching a then-ascendant Chinese community. There were anecdotes, statistics, explainers and even photos and comics to back up its assertions.

"The danger is that we will relive the racial conflict and anti-Asian violence which has been California's historical legacy to us," Minami wrote in an introductory letter to Van de Kamp. "The challenge is to create a model of tolerance in diversity: a new California."

Minami joked to me that he thought dealing with all 29 members of the commission "would be like wrangling cats because it was so many, but people were very much on the same page." He praised Van de Kamp for giving them "a blank check, an open ticket, for a total view of the situation."

"Most of the group was privately skeptical" anything would happen, Wakabayashi said. "But there wasn't much choice. We had to do something. To be an Asian-Pacific Islander was to be invisible."

The report concluded with 38 recommendations to state leaders that they felt would address anti-Asian violence.

Some - the tracking of hate crime statistics by law enforcement agencies, a push for better counting of Asian Americans during the census - were quickly adopted. Others - like support of bilingual education and affirmative action programs - were banned by California voters in the 1990s via propositions. Still others, like a suggestion that high schools "encourage" ethnic studies in K-12 schools to properly place Asians and Pacific Islanders within the California story, are being debated to this day.

But the vast majority of recommendations went nowhere after the Stockton massacre. Van de Kamp focused on lobbying against the manufacture and sale of assault weapons. Commission members soon pressed him to study whether that tragedy was motivated by hate, which Van de Kamp's office concluded it did in the fall of 1989.

By then, he was about to launch an unsuccessful run for the California governor's office. Asian activists then focused their attention on opposing his eventual successor as attorney general, Dan Lungren, because he had opposed financial reparations to Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II.

The advisory commission report went into the proverbial dustbin of the past.

"I have to put that on us," Minami admitted. "We could've done more. We could've lobbied for a follow-up report. But Lungren had no interest in that, and we had no interest in working with him."

Barbara Takei, the report's lead writer and researcher, is more forgiving.

"The work of social change, the foundation of the report's message, requires persistence and tenacity - a lifetime of incremental work that does not necessarily provide the drama that attracts media attention," she said. "While the committee's existence was brief, members continued a lifetime of work, many as 'shadow warriors,' not seeking notoriety or publicity in pressing for social change."

Both Minami and Wakabayashi are upset that their findings from a generation ago remain relevant.

"The situation is worse," said Minami. "It's appalling to me that we have not made more progress. I'm just saddened by this moment."

"The lesson of the report is you gotta seize the moment, before the news cycle ends, or it will be forgotten about," Wakabayashi said.

But he also points out that this current moment of anti-Asian hate also is happening in an era far different from the 1980s. Now, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up a bigger portion of California's population, and exist across positions of power from government to the grassroots like never before.

"This generation has the horsepower to push back more than we ever did," Wakabayashi said. "I'm hopeful."

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Column: They warned about rising anti-Asian hate 32 years ago. Californians ignored them

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In the early 1980s, Japanese American Citizens League national director Ron Wakabayashi asked members of the civil rights group to send him any newspaper clippings of anti-Asian hate crimes they might find. His collection quickly numbered in the hundreds. Vietnamese fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico who had their boats burned by white competitors.

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Tennis Rob Goldberg Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press @TheRobGoldberg Featured Columnist
Martina Navratilova does not believe transgender women should be able to compete against ciswomen.

The former tennis star wrote an op-ed in the Sunday Times detailing why she feels the practice is unfair.

"It's insane and it's cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair," Navratilova wrote (h/t Frances Perraudin of the Guardian).

The 62-year-old came out in 1981 and has been a gay rights activist after her playing career, but she thinks men would force their way into women's competitions if transgender women are allowed to compete.

"To put the argument at its most basic: a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires," she wrote.

Different organizations have different rules for eligibility, but the International Olympic Committee does require testosterone to be below a certain level in order for transgender women to compete.

This essay comes a few months after Navratilova first created controversy with a tweet in December.

"You can't just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women," the 18-time Grand Slam champion wrote. "There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard."

Her comment received backlash at the time and her latest article has brought on further criticism from the LGBT community.

"It's a wild fantasy worry that is an irrational fear of something that doesn't happen," world track cycling champion and transgender athlete Rachel McKinnon tweeted Monday. "An irrational fear of trans people? Transphobia."

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Martina Navratilova: Transgender Athletes in Women's Sport Is Insane, Cheating

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Tennis Rob Goldberg Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press @TheRobGoldberg Twitter Logo Featured Columnist Martina Navratilova does not believe transgender women should be able to compete against ciswomen. The former tennis star wrote an op-ed in the Sunday Times detailing why she feels the practice is unfair. "It's insane and it's cheating.

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Leslie Ishii is the artistic director at Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska. (Rashah McChesney/KTOO)

Last week, a string of murders targeting spas in the Atlanta area left eight people dead, including six Asian women. The tragedy amplified the conversation around anti-Asian hate, racism and violence in the United States, heightened in the last year by COVID-19 misinformation and stereotyping.

Reports of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans have increased dramatically over the last year. Stop AAPI Hate, which tracks anti-Asian harassment and violence, reported 3,800 incidents in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic through last month.

But the shooting in Atlanta was an inflection point for many Asian Americans already struggling to feel safe within their communities over fears of gender and race-based violence.

"This wasn't the first time for me. Throughout my entire life, I've experienced this," said Leslie Ishii, a theater artist and a fourth-generation Japanese American woman based in Juneau. Ishii said anti-Asian stereotypes, particularly of Asian women, have made her feel like an outsider her whole life.

"I've had people walk up to me and touch my hair and say, 'Oh, your hair is so smooth and black,'" she said. "We're not seen as fully human in that moment, we're seen as something very exotic."

COVID-19 brought another layer of stereotyping. Last week at a grocery store, a shopper accosted her, blaming her for the spread of the coronavirus. The same thing happened a year ago in Minneapolis.

"I was walking down the street to go to the theater, and someone yelled across the street and just kept yelling at me: 'It's the Chinese flu. It's your fault.'"

Now, Ishii said, she thinks twice about what time of day she shops, keeps an eye out for store exits and tries not to be alone in a grocery aisle.

In the wake of last week's killings, Ishii, who serves as artistic director for Perseverance Theater, has been holding spaces to grieve with her theater community and drafting statements calling on theater and film industries to stop perpetuating stereotypes.

She said she hasn't gotten a lot of sleep.

"I grieve off and on. I think of artists that I know who have been accosted or abused," she said. "I think about, of course, the victims and the families."

Chris Stuive is a counseling professor in Kenai. She is a Korean American adoptee, raised by white parents in Michigan.

In the years she's lived in Alaska, Stuive said it's sometimes difficult to parse out what's racism and what isn't. Sometimes it's overt, such as a kid at daycare calling her son a "g**k" - a derogatory term for Asian people that may have originated during the Korean War.

But there are also subtle things, like being stared at in the grocery store during the pandemic. Last week, a man started barking at her at the gas station. Processing all of it, wondering if she's being singled out for her race, is exhausting, she said.

"It takes a lot of emotional energy," she said. "You're kind of left with this emotional residue that you have to sit with and wonder. And then you feel guilty, like, 'Am I overreacting?' ... and then you beat yourself up for giving negative thoughts space. It takes attention away from other things that I'd rather be doing, or that would make the world a better place."

Having grown up in a white family, Stuive grappled a lot with her identity. Internally, she said, she feels white - but every once in a while she's reminded that's not how she's perceived.

"It really hurt my heart to think just based on what I look like, I could be accosted," Stuive said. "I know that based on what I look like, I've been dismissed [or] paid less money than I should be. But the idea that I could just lose my life walking down the street, in the United States, that's pretty unreal, right? But it's happening."

Stuive said the last few years have made her more alert and cautious, knowing she or her family might be a target. And having witnessed racism in Alaska - and seeing people ignore it - she doesn't think Alaska is immune to the rising tide of hate crimes in the Lower 48, she said.

"In the past, I would have thought, 'Oh no, this is just like an isolated event.' But there's just been so many things that are just straight up hateful. It's really hard to dismiss them all."

Tom Li (left) and a person who didn't want to be identified hold signs saying "Hate is a virus" and "Stop Asian hate" at the corner of Dimond Boulevard and Old Seward Highway Saturday, in response to increased anti-Asian racism and violence. (Jeff Chen/Alaska Public Media)

That diminished feeling of safety is something many Asian Alaskans are grappling with. Tom Li is a software engineer who moved to Alaska from Fuzhou, China ten years ago to attend college and be with his father.

Li fell in love with the state and its people. An Anchorage resident, he calls himself Alaskan first, then American. But on more than one occasion, Li said he's endured racist threats and harassment, even found himself cornered by white men larger than him, hurling insults or trying to pick fights.

"'You look ugly.' 'Go back to your country,'" Li recalled some saying.

Every time something like that happens, Li said he feels upset for a few weeks. After one particularly confrontational incident - two men stopped Li and his then-girlfriend to harass them on the sidewalk - Li decided to start carrying a gun. And he doesn't go to bars alone because it doesn't feel safe.

"I don't want to get into fights, I don't want to risk my life when there is so much good things out there," he said.

Last Saturday, Li and a friend waved signs denouncing the Atlanta shootings on an Anchorage street corner. A lot of people honked or gave thumbs up, one yelled "All lives matter," and some just ignored them, he said.

Li said Asian communities don't always feel visible beyond restaurants in Anchorage, and he wanted to bring awareness to the fact that anti-Asian hate exists up here, too.

"One of the women who died in Atlanta, she had two boys," he said, referencing Hyun Jung Grant, a single mother who worked at one of the targeted spas. "My mom raised two boys. I almost see my mom in the pictures."

Racist rhetoric around the coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China, may have amplified anti-Asian hate in the last year, but Asian Americans and scholars contend that it's not new. E.J. David grew up in the Philippines, moved to Utqiaġvik as a teenager and now studies the psychological effects of historical oppression at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.

"The Filipino and Chinese cannery workers in the early 1900s - they were segregated, and the separation was not equal," he said. In addition to poorer living and working conditions, Asian cannery workers were paid less than their white counterparts.

In a study a few years ago, David and his colleagues found more than half of Asian Alaskans experience harassment, violence and other forms of racism in their daily lives. Nationally, Stop AAPI Hate found Asian women report hate incidents more than twice as often as Asian men.

David said that trend of gendered racism is also familiar in Alaska, with the high number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and the high rates of violence against Native women.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up the third largest demographic group in Alaska, after white and Alaska Native people. But like Li, David thinks they're not always visible.

In Anchorage, he said "we tout our diversity a lot, but we don't harness it, we don't let it influence our leadership, we don't let it influence the direction of where our city should go."

Processing the Atlanta shootings over the last week, David - who has experienced his own share of profiling and race-based harassment - said he felt saddened and enraged, but not surprised.

"I've seen it coming, not just because of the past year. I've seen it coming because of my entire life. And because I study history, I've seen this coming because of 200 years of history," he said.

David said there's a throughline between centuries of discrimination and stereotyping and the violence seen last week.

"What they do is they paint people as less than whole. It distorts what people really are, which is a full, complex human being. And once you start distorting your regard for people, once you see them as less human, then you're more likely to commit violence against them."

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Kavitha George, Alaska Public Media - Anchorage

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Asian Alaskans grapple with anti-Asian hate and feeling unsafe after the Atlanta shootings - Alaska Public Media

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Last week, a string of murders targeting spas in the Atlanta area left eight people dead, including six Asian women. The tragedy amplified the conversation around anti-Asian hate, racism and violence in the United States, heightened in the last year by COVID-19 misinformation and stereotyping.

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Chrissy Teigen is speaking up about the recent rise in anti-Asian attacks.

During an appearance on " The Kelly Clarkson Show" airing Friday, the model and mom of two, 35, said it's been "incredible" to see the protests taking place to bring awareness to the issue.

"I think we just came out of a long line of politicians that put a target on Asian people's backs by calling it 'the China virus,'" she told Clarkson. "I automatically think of when my mom's without me, 'How do people look at her? How do people treat her?' A lot of mothers and fathers are being targeted around the country."

Last week, eight people - most of them women of Asian descent - were killed in three shootings at Atlanta-area spas before police arrested a 21-year-old man suspected of being the gunman.

Teigen added that "it's so obvious" to her what the motive is in these types of attacks.

"It doesn't seem to be obvious to the politicians out there that are saying, 'We're not quite sure of the motive,' but I think we know what it is," she added.
I'm 'afraid to leave my house':Asian women are living in fear
She also encouraged others to take action, but not through "performative activism."

"If people can just reach out in any way to support the Asian-American community, AAPI in general," Teigen said. "There's Stop AAPI Hate, which is a wonderful organization to donate to, and an organization called 18 Million Rising is really incredible."

She also encouraged people to support Asian-owned businesses in their communities.

At the beginning of the pandemic, businesses especially struggled amid fears of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, including restaurants in Chinatown neighborhoods across the country.
Chrissy Teigen abruptly quits Twitter. 6 signs you need to unplug and ditch social media
"These things are disappearing quicker than we know it and soon they're going to be gone and it's heartbreaking to me," she said.
More: There's been a rise in anti-Asian attacks. Here's how to be an ally to the community.
Teigen has long been vocal on issues that matter to her, but one place her voice will no longer be heard is Twitter.

The star made headlines recently for walking away from social media site. The platform earned her the title Queen of Clapbacks for her clever take downs and snarky zings, but she said the constant criticism took a toll on her mental health.

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Chrissy Teigen on 'heartbreaking' rise in anti-Asian attacks: 'Reach out in any way to support'

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Chrissy Teigen is speaking up about the recent rise in anti-Asian attacks. During an appearance on " The Kelly Clarkson Show" airing Friday, the model and mom of two, 35, said it's been "incredible" to see the protests taking place to bring awareness to the issue.

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Mike Nguyen looks at racist slurs written on the windows of his San Antonio restaurant. (Tyler Prince)

To San Antonio restaurateur Mike Nguyen, the threat was clear. Alongside the racist graffiti covering the windows of his ramen shop - "Kung flu," "Commie," "Ramen noodle flu" - were these words, spray-painted in red: "Hope u die."

Shock and hurt turned to rage, then fear. After Nguyen reported the vandalism to local law enforcement and the FBI,police agreed to step up drive-by patrols. But he and his employees would be left largely on their own.

Since the March 14 incident, the threats to Nguyen's life and business have escalated. Last week, someone wrote "hope it burns down" on the Instagram account for his restaurant, Noodle Tree.An anonymous manphoned the restaurant, reciting Nguyen's home address with a warning: "We're coming for you."

"The threats are getting more violent, more extreme," said Nguyen, 33.

The United States is no stranger to anti-Asian racism. As early as 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act banned Chinese immigration for 10 years. (Monica Rodman, Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)

Asian American entrepreneurs across the country are combating a sharp rise in racist threats and attacks on their businesses that many feel authorities are not taking seriously, even after last week's shooting rampage targeting three Asian spas in Atlanta left eight people dead.

Perspective | Grief, anger and fear envelops Atlanta's Asian American community

Amid heightened fears, business owners have begun hiring their own security, buying guns and cutting their hours of operation as well as advertising, among other costly safety measures that limit their profits - and profile - at a time when businesses are already struggling, according to Asian American chambers of commerce and other business organizations.

Asian-owned restaurants, salons and shops rapidly lost business at the start of the pandemic because of racial stigma, fueled by President Donald Trump's repeated references to the coronavirus as the "Chinese virus" and "Kung flu."Now, community leaders warn that the racism targeting these businesses could hamper the country's economic recovery from the coronavirus-induced recession.

"What happened in Atlanta is a very extreme example of the threat to human life, and folks have got to understand that as we try to emerge from covid-19 and try to conduct business, there are other threats to contend with," said Lamar Heystek, president of the San Francisco-based ASIAN Inc., a nonprofit that works with the U.S. Department of Commerce to develop economic opportunity for Asian Americans and other minorities. "It doesn't take an economist to see how that could really dampen business activity and an economic recovery in which Asian American Pacific Islander-owned businesses take part."

Asian Americans owned more than 10 percent of all U.S. businesses in 2018. These firms earned $863 billion in receipts and employed 5.1 million people, Census Bureau data shows.

"How is that contribution muted by hate, discrimination and violence?" Heystek said. "We need to appreciate the systemic effect of these incidents that range from graffiti all the way up to death."

It's not only businesses in urban centers like Chinatowns in San Francisco and New York that have become targets of racial harassment. So have Asian-owned businesses in suburban strip malls and rural America, Heystek said.

Businesses have been vandalized, robbed, attacked online in racist Yelp reviews. Employees, regardless of their ethnicity, have been blamed for the spread of the coronavirus.

At Nguyen's two-year-old ramen restaurant, graffiti scrawled on a patio table admonished him to "Go back 2 China." He is of Vietnamese and French descent.

The racist abuse began after he criticized the decision in early March by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to rescind a statewide mask mandate that was in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

With the perpetrators still at large, Nguyen, who is undergoing cancer treatment, said he has never feared more for his life. The threats come daily now, making him so "paranoid" that he does not allow people to get within 10 feet.

He had delayed fully reopening indoor dining because of the lack of police presence - and now must budget $5,700 a month on private security for the four days a week his restaurant is open. He temporarily left town. And he reluctantly bought a gun.

"I am personally against guns, but we had to get one just to protect ourselves now," Nguyen said. "I can understand why a lot of Asian Americans don't want to report these things because of retaliation and lack of protection. Will it take for me to get seriously hurt or die for someone to take these threats seriously?"

The San Antonio Police Department issued a written statement saying "officers continue to provide drive-bys to the business. We have additionally contacted others in the area to report any suspicious activity and we will respond accordingly. This case remains actively under investigation and anyone with information is urged to contact police."

Asian American doctors and nurses are fighting racism and the coronavirus

A small business owner describes the anti-Asian harassment she's faced at her butcher shop in Sacramento. (James Cornsilk, Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)

Among the most vulnerable are retail businesses, restaurants and salons whose storefronts open to public sidewalks. Many store owners have kept their doors wide-open to improve ventilation during the pandemic. Not only have they recently begun shutting their doors, they're locking them and removing cultural signage and decor that could make them easy targets for people looking to terrorize Asian businesses, according to business owners and community leaders.

"Right now, the key word is alert," said Kevin Chan, 51, owner of Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory in San Francisco's Chinatown, who said he has received threatening phone calls after he intervened when a customer was attacked in front of his store. He now locks the gate to his shop at 5 p.m., even though the store is open until 9.

"To me, we don't have much freedom at all," Chan said. "We have to watch our backs. That's how I feel right now as an old immigrant, as an American."

Employees newly wary of taking public transportation to work are shifting their hours, asking not to come in early or work late - fearful of what they may encounter along their commute in light of viral videos of Asian pedestrians being violently assaulted.

"We have to start quantifying the economic effect of hate," Heystek said. "We cannot ignore this grave threat to our economy."

Resentment against Asian Americans has long existed in this country. They've been a frequent scapegoat during economic woes and disease outbreaks, and in wartime propaganda. Racist incidents today are more easily recorded on smartphones and shared over social media, contributing to increased fear.

There is no comprehensive data measuring anti-Asian hate crimes during the coronavirus pandemic. One in three female Asian American business owners reported experiencing anti-Asian sentiment, according to a 2020 survey by minority business organizations.

A recent analysis of self-reported incidents by Russell Jeung, chairman of the Asian American studies department at San Francisco State University, who is studying racism and xenophobia during the pandemic, shows at least 3,800 cases of harassment and assault against Asians since March 2020, with more than twice as many women as men saying they have been mistreated. Most incidents, experts say, are never reportedto law enforcement.

Immigrant business owners whose instinct is not to report racial harassment to police are instead seeking help from culturally aligned organizations like ASIAN, Inc.

"What they are saying is, 'I'm fearful of opening my doors to the public. I don't want to put my workers in harm's way. If they can hurt a shop in Atlanta, what prevents them from hurting a shop in San Francisco?'" Heystek said. "Folks have got to feel empowered to do business in this climate."

In response, Asian American organizations are helping small business owners secure funding to install security cameras that record video and audio, distribute personal security alarms to employees that can be programmed to call 911, and connect them with self-defense training.

The National Asian/Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurship held an emergency Zoom meeting last week to discuss anti-Asian hate and the Atlanta shootings that drew more than four dozen business leaders.

"There are two illnesses attacking AAPI small businesses: One is covid. The other is hate," said Chiling Tong, president and chief executive of the national chamber, who has been fielding calls and emails from around the country from businesses seeking guidance. "They are just very scared to operate, especially after the attacks in Atlanta."

Geri Guidote Hernandez, the Filipina American owner of Savory Crust, an empanada carryout in a Chicago-area ethnic strip mall, said the attacks compelled her this week to draw up an emergency active-shooter plan for her employees, who include her two daughters.

"Growing up, anytime we felt racism, what do our parents say? 'Just ignore that.' So we do it over our whole lifetime," she said. "It's a different environment now."

In Southern California, the Orange County Human Relations Commission, which has tracked hate incidents since 1995, recorded a tenfold increase of incidents targeting Asian Americans in 2020 from prior years.

On Tuesday, a Vietnamese American owned beauty school in Orange County, where a fifth of the population is Asian, hosted a self-defense workshop for salon and spa workers. Tam Nguyen, president of Advance Beauty College, started 34 years ago by his parents, said he plans to also offer workshopson de-escalation, safe confrontation and the use of Mace. He and other nail-care industry leaders are distributing cards and fliers listing newly created police hotlines for reporting hate crimes in Vietnamese and Korean. And businesses are chipping in for private security guards to patrol Asian shopping plazas.

The coronavirus recession could wipe out minority-owned businesses, fueling displacement from historic ethnic neighborhoods

In Sacramento, Kelly Shum, owner of Mad Butcher Meat Co., said she started spending $5,000 a month for a security guard after a customer last spring tried to attack her younger sister, who was enforcing the mask policy at the door. Shum said she had called police, but she said they never responded. So she stepped in with a baseball bat to get the man to leave.

The Sacramento Police Department said it has no record of a call from Shum's business at the time of the incident.

The 28-year-old entrepreneur said she felt she had little choice but to incur the extra expense to protect her employees, nearly all of whom are Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant women. Three of them have quit out of fear.

"Having a security guard is extreme just to fight off racists," Shum said. But "so many customers are calling us 'coronavirus,' 'China virus' and saying, 'Why should I be wearing a mask if you people are the dirty ones?'

"No one feels safe. No one wants to come to work," she said. The security guard "is literally only here so we can do our job."

But that did not stop a car from waiting in the parking lot for her father to leave the shop and tailing him, according to footage from a security camera. Her sister, who was also driving home in a separate car, told Shum that the car tried to run their father off the road.

In February, a customer left a mutilated cat in their parking lot,invoking a racist stereotype of Asians. Shum said her lone White employee volunteered to dispose of the carcass, aware of the implications of an Asian American being seen discarding the animal.

"All of us knew what it meant and understood the gravity of the situation. This was a very obvious hate crime," Shum said.

When she posted about the incident on social media, Shum was aghast that some users defended the man who left the cat. "People were like, 'Don't you guys do that? Don't you guys butcher up cats and dogs? Maybe he was on to something?'" she said.

Shum said that even when police arrived to take a report of the incident, one officer questioned why she considered it a hate crime. The perpetrator was not arrested, but Shum said he called the shop to apologize after seeing surveillance video of himself on the news and said he was "having a bad day."

"It's domestic terrorism," she said.

Karl Chan, a Sacramento police spokesman, said the case remains open and detectives are investigating it as a hate crime.

"In order for a crime to fall under the definition of a bias or hate related incident a distinction must be made that the crime/incident was motivated by bias," Chan said in a written statement. "One of the ways that officers can make this distinction during the preliminary investigation is by asking questions that would identify how the victim perceived the crime or incident."

Atlanta spa killings lead to questions about sex work and exploitation

Shum, a former Los Angeles television producer and marketing manager, had returned to Sacramento in late 2019 to take over the butcher shop from her parents, immigrants who camefrom China in the 1980s. She had grand promotion plans for the store, which serves a predominantly low-income community. She built a website and started online orders and deliveries, to make the shop more accessible.

"We're now hiding and not promoting in a way that we want to or used to," Shum said. "That is so detrimental to us, but we're scared of people finding out who we are."

Shum has removed most of her mother's Chinese brush paintings and other cultural decor to make the business appear "less Asian." She stopped marketing the business on social media with photos of a cat figurine waving one paw, a common symbol that Asian-owned businesses display to bring good luck.

"You have to minimize yourself in hopes that nobody notices you and attacks you," she said. "It's such a miserable half-existence."

Last weekend, in the wake of the Atlanta attacks, Shum thought about hiring extra security to check for weapons at the door. But she could not afford it.

Andrew Van Dam contributed to this report.

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Asian American businesses are defending themselves against rise in anti-Asian violence

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To San Antonio restaurateur Mike Nguyen, the threat was clear. Alongside the racist graffiti covering the windows of his ramen shop - "Kung flu," "Commie," "Ramen noodle flu" - were these words, spray-painted in red: "Hope u die." Shock and hurt turned to rage, then fear.

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The man yelled racial epithets as he rammed his car.

Los Angeles authorities are investigating a possible hate crime after a man recklessly drove through a red light into a crosswalk where protesters were marching in a "Stop Asian Hate" rally.

The man yelled racial epithets as he rammed his car through the pedestrian route where the scheduled rally was taking place on Sunday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's office confirmed to ABC News on Tuesday.

"Based on what we have learned, this is being investigated as a hate crime," Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said in a tweet.

Parts of the incident, which occurred in the Diamond Bar area, were captured on videos posted to social media. In the videos, the man in the car is seen exiting his vehicle and yelling "F--- China" at the demonstrators.

No injuries were reported in the incident.

The sheriff's office identified the suspect as a white male in his 50s, and said that his license plate was captured on video footage from the rally.

Rallies condemning anti-Asian racism occurred at cities across the country over the weekend, following the murders of six Asian women in Atlanta, Georgia. Reports of anti-Asian hate incidents have skyrocketed over the past year, with many linking them to biases related to the pandemic and the Trump administration's incendiary language.

"The brazenness of doing this at an Anti-Hate rally speaks to the level that people will go to harass and bully communities of color," County Supervisor Janice Hahn said in a statement to ABC News' Los Angeles station KABC.

Multiple car-ramming incidents occurred this past summer during the separate nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd, resulting in the death of one demonstrator in Seattle, Washington.

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Car ramming at rally protesting anti-Asian hate being investigated as hate crime

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The man yelled racial epithets as he rammed his car. Los Angeles authorities are investigating a possible hate crime after a man recklessly drove through a red light into a crosswalk where protesters were marching in a "Stop Asian Hate" rally.

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In the wake of the Atlanta-area shootings and the significant rise in violence toward Asian Americans, a bipartisan group of 26 governors released a letter Friday morning in solidarity and support for the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

All 23 Democratic governors have signed on, as well as the governor of the territory of Guam. Govs. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Larry Hogan of Maryland are the two Republicans who joined the effort. The letter was released the same day as the Stop AAPI Hate virtual day of action.

"Today, and every day, we stand in solidarity, in support, and in shared resolve with the Asian American community," the letter states. "Hate will not divide our states, territories, and communities. We condemn all expressions of racism, xenophobia, scapegoating, and anti-Asian sentiment."

The governors who signed go on to acknowledge the long history of anti-Asian racism in the U.S., going back to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the imprisonment of Japanese American citizens during World War II and the discrimination against Muslims and Sikhs after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"What is happening to Asian Americans is simply un-American," the letter says. "We condemn racism, violence, and hatred against our AAPI communities, and we must do more to protect, lift up, and support the Asian American community."

Since the shootings on March 16, several of those who signed, including Nevada's Democratic governor, Steve Sisolak, have been holding roundtables with people in the AAPI community and encouraging Asian Americans to continue to speak out about and report hate incidents.

According to Stop AAPI Hate, nearly 3,800 hate incidents against Asians and Asian Americans have been recorded in the past year of the pandemic. A majority of those reported attacks were targeting women.

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All 23 Democratic governors sign letter condemning anti-Asian hate, violence

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In the wake of the Atlanta-area shootings and the significant rise in violence toward Asian Americans, a bipartisan group of 26 governors released a letter Friday morning in solidarity and support for the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. All 23 Democratic governors have signed on, as well as the governor of the territory of Guam.

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Empathy is a collaborative effort. Asian Americans can no longer afford to be silent.

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People participate in a peace vigil to honor victims of attacks on Asians, on March 19, 2021, in Union Square Park in New York City. On March 16, eight people, six of whom were Asian women, were killed at three Atlanta-area spas in an attack that sent terror through the Asian community. Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

This op-ed was written for Medical News Today by Dr. Yenting Chen, who is a board certified emergency medicine physician.

I was a young child when I first saw snow. My parents, who were quite poor at the time, saved up for more than a year to bring their young family to a simple motel in the Southern California mountains.

After a day of playing in the fine powder, my little sisters and I were freezing.

My parents brought us to a roaring fireplace at a nearby public lodge to warm up. Within a few minutes, we were surrounded by a group of adults dressed in fashionable skiwear.

They told us quite plainly that we were not welcome, that this place was not meant for "people like you."

I caught a final glimpse of that warm hearth as we retreated into the cold night, and I heard my mother bitterly stating the obvious: This happened because we are Asian.

Our ugly experience of racism is, unfortunately, universally common among people of color in the United States. What may be more unique is that we never spoke of it afterward.
Even to this day, I have never discussed this incident or the many others that followed. Not even with my closest friends.
The reluctance of Asian Americans to speak about anti-Asian racism must be considered within a broader cultural context. Stoicism is a highly prized characteristic in many Asian cultures.

Among Sinocentric cultures, there exists the concept of 吃苦 (chīkǔ). This principle - which, according to Iris Chen, the author of the blog "Untigering," translates as " to eat bitterness " - values the ability to accept suffering as a virtue.

Studies have suggested that Asians are more reluctant to complain and rarely seek third-party remediation. Asian Americans are also less likely to utilize mental health resources than non-Asians.
More strikingly, in a 2014 study of cancer patients, Asians were found to be particularly hesitant to complain about physical pain, resulting in inadequate medication treatment.
Within my own field of emergency medicine, there is a well-known adage that if an elderly Asian patient is sick enough to be in the emergency department, they must have something that might be truly fatal.

In addition to this cultural predilection for silent suffering, Asians have been reluctant to speak out against anti-Asian racism because of the insidious model minority myth.

They fear that giving voice to their experiences will be met with derisive suggestions to "stop being so sensitive" or comparisons to the very real traumatic effects of systemic racism on other communities of color.

The problem with eating bitterness is that it runs counter to the long and storied American tradition of using activism as a vehicle for change. This has undermined the dogged efforts of multiple generations of Asian American activists to humanize the Asian American experience.
In fact, to this day, cultural depictions of Asian Americans continue to serve to dehumanize our community as a whole, to turn our suffering and even deaths into a punchline.
Unfortunately, the dehumanization of Asian Americans is more than just about jokes. It has also led to the violent scapegoating of Asians throughout our country's history.

A direct lineage of hate can be drawn from the anti-Chinese purges and lynchings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, to the murder of Vincent Chin, to the 2012 mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and now to the recent mass murder of predominantly Asian women at Atlanta-area Asian-owned spas.
As our Black, Latinx, Muslim, Jewish, and LGBTQIA+ communities know all too well, the slow burn of intolerance can be easily brought to a violent boil when fueled by hateful rhetoric.
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans are once again the scapegoats of convenience. There has been a direct correlation between anti-Asian bias and racist rhetoric, such as the "China virus" or "Kung-flu," used by media outlets and government leaders.

What followed was more than 1 year of a continuous stream of videos and news stories of Asians being verbally terrorized, physically assaulted, and sometimes murdered.
The burden of this rising tide of anti-Asian violence has fallen most heavily on the most vulnerable in the community: the elderly, the poor, the linguistically isolated, and women.
Like a gathering storm, the wind has been sown in the distance, and now we are reaping the whirlwind close to home.

During my latest shift as an emergency medicine physician, I have taken care of a young Asian man in critical condition who was shot in the chest. A few hours later, I treated a middle-aged Asian woman who was pushed to the ground and sprayed with a chemical.

I have had conversations with my own parents, who are afraid to go for walks outside after an elderly Asian man was assaulted near where I grew up.

As a practitioner of evidence-based medicine, I must first examine my experiences as anecdotal observations. However, these personal observations are correlated with data showing an alarming spike in anti-Asian violence both nationally and globally.

Data compiled by California State University's Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism reveals that anti-Asian hate crimes surged by 149%, while overall hate crime dropped by 7%.

Stop AAPI Hate, a reporting center launched by San Francisco State University, received 3,795 reports of anti-Asian hate incidents between March 19, 2020, and February 28, 2021. Sadly, our national statistics are mirrored by rising numbers of anti-Asian hate crimes worldwide.

To truly stop anti-Asian hate, we must reverse the long-standing dehumanization of Asian people and put an end to the apathy with which our society views the Asian American experience.
Fortunately, the opposite of apathy is an ability well within our capabilities as human beings: empathy.
Although we are all born with the capacity for empathy, it does take work to renew and replenish our empathetic well.

More importantly, empathy is not just an individual practice. It is a critically collaborative process. All parties involved must partner with each other toward reciprocating true empathetic communication.

True collaborative empathy draws from our diversity of experiences, a focus on building trust, and an investment in the success of others. Most importantly, however, it begins with not only listening but also speaking honestly for oneself.

This type of empathy is possible only if Asian Americans are able to enter the cultural narrative as people deserving of our full humanity.

Empathy leads to compassion. Compassion leads to action.

In light of this, Asian Americans must no longer suffer in stoic silence. We must first offer our own voices so that others may amplify them.

I applaud the chorus of Asian voices that have recently risen to meet our current crisis. As difficult as it may have been initially, I now offer my own perspective as well.

We need to feel comfortable sharing our own painful personal stories. This is how communication begins. Otherwise, we will continue to be banished into the cold snowy night, far from the warmth of the communal fire of humanity.

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Anti-Asian hate: 'Eating bitterness' and empathy

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Empathy is a collaborative effort. Asian Americans can no longer afford to be silent. This op-ed was written for Medical News Today by Dr. Yenting Chen, who is a board certified emergency medicine physician. I was a young child when I first saw snow.

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Byong Choi's widow, Yong, received this handwritten, anti-Asian letter the day after her husband's funeral. (Seal Beach Police Department)

Mourning has been especially painful for the family Byong Choi left behind.

The 83-year-old retired accountant and restaurateur died of tuberculosis in his bone marrow on Feb. 24 in Orange County, Calif., but his wife and four daughters couldn't hold a funeral Mass in his honor until March 19 because of coronavirus restrictions.

That date will now leave an indelible mark on a family coping with loss but is also a bleak reminder of how insidious anti-Asian racism can be.

The following Monday, Byong Choi's wife, Yong, 82, received a handwritten, cursive letter at her Leisure World Seal Beach retirement community home postmarked the same date as the funeral. It read, "Now that Byong is gone makes it one less Asian to put up with in Leisure World. You fricken Asians are taking over our American community!"

The letter arrived just days after a 21-year-old White man killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women, which raised fears among Asian American communities nationwide.

Claudia Choi, one of the daughters, was annoyed and unsurprised when she received a picture of the letter via text, the 46-year old told The Washington Post.

"They used my dad's death to celebrate, sent it on the day of his funeral to my mother," she said. "But to put a stamp on it felt particularly cruel and the fact that they said 'watch out.' "

The Seal Beach Police Department in the county has launched an investigation into what it calls an anti-Asian hate crime.

The letter, which was sent from a post office in Los Angeles, is a top priority for the department, especially since hate crimes have risen in the county over the last five years and because Asian Americans have seen an uptick in overt racism and harassment over the last year,Seal Beach Chief of Police Philip L. Gonshak said in a statement.

Leisure World said in a statement that it condemns the "hateful bias crime" by the anonymous person and that the incident is being fully investigated.

Claudia Choi believes the letter is from another resident within the mostly White retirement community her parents called home for nearly a decade, she said. Her father's obituary was only published in the Leisure World newspaper and website.

Seal Beach City is about 11 percent Asian compared with nearly 22 percent Asian in Orange County, according to census data.

The senior Chois mostly felt welcomed at the retirement community, where Byong was a well-known member of the Holy Family Church Choir, the Men's Golf Club, Line Dance Club and Karaoke Club.

Claudia Choi said she could see a shift in attitude toward Asian Americans during the pandemic, especially with how former president Donald Trump handled the coronavirus crisis and his use of phrases such as "China virus" and "kung flu." In Leisure World, Choi said pro-Trump flags sprang up in front of residents' homes.

The United States is no stranger to anti-Asian racism. As early as 1882, the Chinese exclusion act banned Chinese immigration for 10 years. (Monica Rodman, Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)

Words from the former president sounded eerily similar to what Choi said she often heard growing up in Indiana.

"We've heard 'go back to your country' before," she said. "Every racist thinks it's their most clever insult."

Her parents have been able to adapt in unfamiliar environments ever since her father received a scholarship to leave his job working in the Ministry of Finance in Korea to study accounting at Ohio's Central State University, a historically Black institution.

Like many immigrant families, the Chois would have multiple jobs that included her dad working in hospital accounting while her mom sold tofu to restaurants. The young couple moved to Indiana in hopes of expanding their soybean work, but a contract fell through, forcing them to become inventive again.

Choi said she can remember peeling shrimp while her mom sold egg rolls and chop suey from a stand in a strip mall as her dad started teaching Chinese cooking classes.

The popularity of their side hustles brought forth their Chinese restaurant in Indiana, named Choy's Wok, that was its own small world of diversity, Choi said.

"My dad loved to sing," she said, a passion that inspired him to add a piano bar in the restaurant. "I grew up in a Chinese restaurant with Peruvian cooks and a gay bar."

One of the best stories Byong told his daughterwas about his courtship with her mother. The tall, charismatic charmer - who was very late on the first date - hadplanned a difficult hike for the second date just so he could hold Yong's hands and help her over challenging paths.

"He was helping her just as he had on their date," Choi said.

His death came as a shock to the family because he was the more sprightly one of the pair. Her mother, whom she said is in poor health, has been swallowed up with grief and predicting her own death, Choi said.

Her daughters don't want to add to her sorrow by reading or showing the letter to her, but speaking up about it is another way to honor their father, Choi said.

"My dad was a big figure and big personality," she said. "This kind of awareness about the general discrimination that Asians face, he's been part of the conversations even in death. I think it would've pleased him to no end."

The long, ugly history of anti-Asian racism and violence in the U.S.

Racist anti-Asian hashtags spiked after Trump first tweeted 'Chinese virus,' study finds

The long history of violence against Asian Americans that led up to Atlanta

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After their father's death came a handwritten note: 'One less Asian to put up with'

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Mourning has been especially painful for the family Byong Choi left behind. The 83-year-old retired accountant and restaurateur died of tuberculosis in his bone marrow on Feb. 24 in Orange County, Calif., but his wife and four daughters couldn't hold a funeral Mass in his honor until March 19 because of coronavirus restrictions.

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Sahan Journal publishes deep, reported news about immigrants and communities of color-the kind of stories you won't find anywhere else. We don't hide our community-centered reporting behind a paywall: We want it to be free for everyone. But this kind of journalism is expensive to produce. That is why we rely on the generosity of readers like you to support our nonprofit newsroom. Would you join us and become a Sahan Sustainer now ?

The first beams of orange and yellow sunlight are just starting to shine over the light rail station on University Avenue and Dale Street in Saint Paul, when the MN Asian Safety Squad gathers for its first-ever community patrol.

Jonathan Sry, a 37-year-old patent attorney, stands outside the Rondo Library as he waits for others to join him. Sry started the group in February in response to a nationwide spike in hate crimes against Asian Americans. Online, the group started discussing a plan to muster volunteers for community patrols through the Frogtown neighborhood, home to many of the city's Hmong residents.

Then, on March 16, a man killed eight people-six of them Asian women-in a spree of mass shootings around Atlanta, Georgia.The mass shooting sparked nationwide protests in anger and frustration over the rise of anti-Asian violence.

Now, on Saturday, March 20, from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., Sry and the online organization he started are mobilizing a presence on the street, with a plan to protect vulnerable Asian people around the busy shopping boulevard.

"It's been a year of just anti-Asian attacks, and no one's started anything yet for this type of service in Minnesota," Spry says. "So it falls on somebody. The first person to do it is the person who's now responsible for it."

During the week, Sry, 37, works on intellectual property assets at 3M and lives in St. Paul's Union Park neighborhood. Today, Sry wears a yellow vest and holds a bag with additional yellow vests, flyers, and a small first-aid kit.

Even as he waits for more people to show up, the neighborhood is lively. Music blares from cars, bells chime from the nearby Green Line light rail station, and people bustle across the crosswalk on the way to here or there.

The early morning is chilly. By the time three more members arrive, it is around 7:30 a.m. Sry hands out yellow vests and gathers the patrol in a circle to assign roles. Next to the Dale Street light rail station and the Rondo Community library, the members start walking down University Avenue.

'Protecting Asians where they are'

The day after the Atlanta-area spa shootings, Sry says he spoke on the phone with Joshua Lego, senior commander at the Saint Paul police department in the Western District, searching for high crime areas to do community patrols.

"We always have neighborhood watches, but that's a bit different. This one is more focused on protecting Asians where they are," Sry says.

Sry says he learned two surprising and helpful insights from Lego.

First, the hours between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. are usually "hot-spot times" for car theft and crime. Second, Sry says Lego told him the area of Dale Street, Western Avenue, Minnehaha Avenue, and University Avenue have registered a high number of quality-of-life crimes, including vandalism, graffiti, and excessive noise.

"The purpose of community patrols, at least this one, is trying to protect the most amount of Asians, in the least amount of volunteer time," Sry says. "And the only way you can really do that is trying to target the hot-spot times, the times when crimes are most likely to occur."

The group's first stop is at Sun Foods, a grocer, to post a first flyer. This sheet includes information in different languages offering to provide volunteers who will safely escort vulnerable Asian people. In the parking lot, there are only a few cars.

The MN Asian Safety Squad walks east on University Avenue during a morning patrol on Saturday, March 20, 2021. Credit: Ben Hovland | Sahan Journal

Next, the group travels down the street and stops at the Western Avenue light rail station, while monitoring the area.

Joey Sivilay says he met Sry in a martial arts class two years ago and that the two go to the same gym in Union Park. He walks side-by-side with Sry, carrying a cup of coffee in his mittens. In a couple of months, he plans to move out-of-state but said he hopes that the group continues to thrive.

"I found that incredibly disturbing," Sivilay says of the Atlanta-area spa shootings. "The fact that anyone would do that, in general, to anyone, and let alone the Asian community-I feel like that hit particularly close to home."

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Most of the 70 current members in the MN Asian Safety Squad's Facebook group are Asian; the hope is to empower Asian individuals, Sry says. The group draws from a wide range of Asian backgrounds. Sry's father, for instance, immigrated from Thailand-Sry identifies himself as Thai American-and he cites a violent assault against a Thai elder as the prompt for his recent activism.

On the morning of January 28, Vichar Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old immigrant from Thailand, was walking in the *Anza Vista neighborhood of San Francisco, having just received the coronavirus vaccine. A stranger violently shoved him to the ground. After the attack, Ratanapakdee never regained consciousness and died from his wounds. The family called the attack a hate crime.

Alex Kim, says he found out about the MN Asian Safety Squad from staying in touch with Sry, whom he has known for around six years. A lawyer in his professional life, Kim is the founder of the Korean American Bar Association of Minnesota. He's also the president of the International Association of Korean Lawyers, an organization to promote friendship and communications between lawyers of Korean heritage around the world.

"I think in Minnesota, the hatred issue is becoming more known now, but in various cities, like New York, San Francisco, and other larger cities, this has been a major problem," Kim says. "I knew eventually, it was going to come here."

The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism released an analysis this month that examined hate crimes in 16 of the largest cities in the nation. The report reveals that overall hate crimes decreased 7 percent in 2020. Yet hate incidents targeting Asian increased by nearly 150 percent.

When Kim heard from Sry through Facebook that he was starting the MN Asian Safety Squad, he wanted to join.

"There's a lot of people talking, and prayers and hopes," Kim says. "That has its place. But for people living in those communities that are affected day-to-day, it doesn't really help them directly. So I hope organizations like this start growing. We have to protect our communities and find allies."

During the patrol, the MN Asian Safety Squad left information sheets at local Asian businesses to spread awareness about their mission. Credit: Ben Hovland | Sahan Journal

Outside of Marc Heu Pâtisserie Paris, a pastry shop next to the Western Avenue light rail station, the group posts another flyer on the door.

Sry doesn't necessarily expect to encounter anyone committing an assault-though members have been warned beforehand about varying risk levels. (In the days just before the patrol met, a 66-year-old Hmong grandfather described an incident of harassment while dropping his 5-year-old preschooler at a bus stop in St. Paul.) The MN Asian Safety Squad members stay together in a group, wear bright yellow vests, carry flashlights, and plan ahead to de-escalate situations.

Some of the MN Asian Safety Squad members have experience in competitive fighting; Sry is an Iraq War veteran who served from 2009 to 2010.

"The people who victimize elders, they're the bullies. And when they have the numbers on their side, and they see an alone, vulnerable person, that's who they're picking on," Kim says. "So if we're organized, and unified and in a certain number of groups, I think we have nothing to really fear."

Another member of this morning's MN Asian Safety Squad, Jennifer Amatya, brought pepper spray. She started her own community patrol for the city of Plymouth, in the western suburbs where she lives. But having met Sry on Facebook, she says that group has now merged with the MN Asian Safety Squad to create a larger group of volunteers.

"I've been reading for the last month and a half, every single day things are happening in California and everywhere," Amatya says. "And you figure, it's happening here, but not to the extent that it was. Or you just don't know, because people aren't reporting for numerous reasons."

The MN Asian Safety Squad will host community patrols on a weekly basis and continues to grow. But the group is still looking for new members to join, and Sry says he hopes to expand community patrols to the East Side of Saint Paul.

At 9 a.m., this first community patrol walk ends across the street from the starting point at Rondo Community Library. Sry says he counted some eight Asian people in the area. The group splits up, Amatya leaves, and the rest of the members circle back to the pastry shop they stopped at earlier to grab some croissants.

* Clarification: This story has been updated to note the city where the attack on Vichar Ratanapakdee took place.

Sahan Journal publishes deep, reported news about immigrants and new Americans-the kind of stories you won't find anywhere else. We don't hide our community-centered reporting behind a paywall: We want it to be free for everyone. But this kind of journalism is expensive to produce. That is why we rely on the generosity of readers like you to support our nonprofit newsroom. Would you join us and become a Sahan Sustainer now?

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New Minnesota safety patrol aims to stop anti-Asian hate in the streets

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Sahan Journal publishes deep, reported news about immigrants and communities of color-the kind of stories you won't find anywhere else. We don't hide our community-centered reporting behind a paywall: We want it to be free for everyone. But this kind of journalism is expensive to produce.

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The Irvine Police Department released footage this week of a young man allegedly assaulting a 69-year-old Asian man following a skirmish between their dogs.

The department released the footage of the alleged crime, which occurred last Friday at Sierra Vista Middle School, with the hopes the public will be able to identify the young man.

The alleged assault comes amid an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes and racism throughout the country. Last week, eight people were gunned down in Atlanta, including six Asian women. The suspect cited sex addiction as his motive.

Some have linked the racializing of the coronavirus with the increase in hate incidents. Former President Donald Trump referred to it as the "China virus" because of its origin.

Irvine police said the motive for the alleged assault at the school isn't clear yet, but they have not ruled out the possibility of it being a hate crime.

It wouldn't be the first alleged hate incident aimed at the Asian community reported this month in Orange County. Neighbors of an Asian family in Ladera Ranch started taking night-watch shifts after teenagers repeatedly harassed the family at night, ringing their doorbell, yelling racial insults and pounding on the door.

The Seal Beach police this week are also investigating a racist letter sent to a Korean American woman.

Orange County has the third-largest Asian American population in the country, and Irvine has the county's largest Asian American population.

Just days following the mass shooting in Atlanta, Irvine announced it's launching a new multilingual hate crime reporting portal through the police department.

The effort is part of the city's aim to encourage diversity and discourage racism. In late January, the council voted to reaffirm its commitment to diversity and equity with a "We Are Irvine" campaign.

Irvine police spokeswoman Karie Davies said Wednesday the portal provides an option, or "safe space," for people who don't feel comfortable speaking with an officer or if there's a language barrier issue.

The portal is currently in English, but will eventually be available in Farsi, Korean, Mandarin and Spanish. The department hopes to add other languages in the near future.

Davies said the department is working on adding the other languages to the portal, but a glitch has set that back.

Davies said there were seven hate crimes reported in Irvine in both 2020 and 2019, and two hate crimes reported in 2018. There was one Asian-targeted hate crime reported in 2020, one in 2019 and none reported in 2018.

Davies said there were 18 hate incidents reported in 2020 and 11 in 2019. There were three Asian-targeted hate incidents reported in 2020 and none in 2019.

Hate crimes and incidents could be occurring at higher rates than those numbers reflect, as victims of hate crimes can be reluctant to report them to the police.

A 2018 national investigation produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 initiative at Arizona State University found that Latinos may not report hate crimes for fear of deportation. It also found that the LGBTQ community was hesitant to report hate crimes due to a distrust of police.

Irvine's hate crime reporting portal is meant to provide a comfortable option for people who may be hesitant to contact the police.

"The reason for the portal is, you see a lot of the comments online that suggest that there's a rise in hate crime and Irvine's not mentioned specifically, but it certainly gives the impression that there may be some underreported information," Davies said. "So that was part of the reason for creating a reporting system online, so that they can go directly to the online reporting system and put the information in there, in the event that they don't feel comfortable talking to an officer or are afraid for whatever the reason."

Those who use the portal have the option to remain anonymous, though Davies said this makes it difficult for police to find the perpetrator of the crime.

When asked whether there's an increasing amount of hate crimes and incidents in Irvine, Davies said there is a "perception" that there's an increase.

"And while that may be true in the county, we aren't seeing the data to support that in Irvine," Davies said.

Mayor Farrah Khan, who has taken a vocal stance against hate crimes and racism in the community, wrote on Twitter last week in support of the portal. She also circulated the news of the assault on her Twitter account this week.

"To our API community members, please know that you are not alone," Khan said on Twitter. "I understand that in these challenging times you may not feel safe or protected, please know that you have friends and supporters here that are ready to help. Do not be afraid to speak up or report incidents."

At a City Council meeting this week, a few residents spoke out in favor of the portal.

"I'm proud that the city of Irvine is taking a proactive stance," said Jenn Cho. "It is critical that our community has an easy, clear way to report and see the data of hate crimes and incidents, and it is so critical that the voices and stories from the AAPI community are heard. For far too long we have been made invisible, treated as forever foreigners and overlooked in conversations about race. These actions by the City Council get us one step closer and helping the Asian American community feel safe, seen and valued."

"I'm very heartened to see that, Irvine has gone beyond mere tolerance to inclusion, the public commitment to stand up for our minority residents and make sure that they are fully included and have access to the city website is super important," said Melisa Masri. "... It has been disheartening to see the increase in hate crimes and demagoguery nationwide in recent years. Hopefully, with these changes by the City Council it will be clear to residents that hate crimes will not be tolerated here."
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As Irvine police investigate assault of 69-year-old Asian man, a new hate crime reporting portal is released

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The Irvine Police Department released footage this week of a young man allegedly assaulting a 69-year-old Asian man following a skirmish between their dogs. The department released the footage of the alleged crime, which occurred last Friday at Sierra Vista Middle School, with the hopes the public will be able to identify the young man.