As we pause to reflect on 2021, we think of course of the lives of the people we exist to serve, people whose access to healthcare, abortion, a livable wage, workplace justice, and/or physical safety has been pushed out of reach due to sexism, racism, and anti-LGBTQ+ bias and discrimination.
But we are also thinking about how grateful we are to be in the fight with you, our supporters, as well as our colleagues and allies across the state and country. We hope you take time to rest during the holidays because we have a big year ahead. The biggest, most immediate threat, of course, is that the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to either overrule or further undermine Roe.
But as we just noted yesterday, Pennsylvania is uniquely positioned in the fight for reproductive rights, and the future is up to you.
We hope this highlight reel of our accomplishments this year will inspire you to support us as we move into the future at this critical time. And we hope that you get to rest, and stay safe, during the holidays!
Major Accomplishments
On behalf of 95% of abortion providers in Pennsylvania, we filed our opening briefs to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to challenge the biggest obstacle to abortion access in Pennsylvania: the state’s Medicaid ban on abortion coverage.
Under Pennsylvania law, minors have the right to abortion without parental consent. We built a judicial bypass program and have represented undocumented migrants who cannot obtain a parental signature, minors who cannot safely confide in a parent, and minors who live with relatives such as grandparents, who are not legally able to provide consent. We have also invested resources into assessing county court systems for their preparedness in hearing these urgent abortion access cases.
We have worked to keep abortion providers, staff, and patients safe from anti-abortion harassment and violence for many years. In December, we celebrated when the 3rd Circuit of Appeals upheld Harrisburg’s buffer zone. We also filed a brief in a successful Georgia case that threatened to establish a precedent that would have made victims of harassment financially liable for property damage incurred by their harassers. In partnership with allies, we beat back a slew of state-level abortion restrictions.
We expanded our direct representation of low-income individuals experiencing pregnancy discrimination, lactation discrimination, sexual harassment, and unequal pay in the workplace and school.
We worked on behalf of clients experiencing intersectional discrimination based on sex, familial status, disability, and race. In our pre-litigation strategies, either through negotiation or administrative complaints, we have secured monetary settlements, job-protected leave, pregnancy and lactation accommodations, and sometimes a return to work. We’re working to expand this work in 2022 to include providing legal assistance to pregnant or soon-to-be-pregnant individuals at an earlier juncture to prevent the harm from occurring and to help preserve employment while maintaining a healthy pregnancy.
We submitted testimony opposing legislation targeting transgender student-athletes and, if passed, would violate Title IX.
We co-authored a major national report documenting the harms of crisis pregnancy center industry. Our report revealed that Pennsylvania is directly funding CPCs that target low-income pregnant people for “abortion pill reversal,” a fraudulent claim and experimental, unproven treatment. The Women’s Health Caucus of the Pennsylvania Legislature called to defund Real Alternatives, the state-funded chain of CPCs dogged by allegations of waste and misuse of funds, in response to the report’s findings. The report was highlighted in an expose revealing that anti-abortion activists in Pennsylvania siphon money intended for low-income children to oversee CPCs.
We defended sex workers in a case that attempted to weaken Pennsylvania’s rape shield law to allow evidence of a victim’s prior engagement with prostitution to be submitted as a defense against rape. In another case, we argued that educational institutions violate Title IX if they fail to respond to a report of dating violence, and therefore can be held liable for the consequences of their inaction.
We continued our work to hold police accountable for investigating sexual assault and conducted the advocate-led review of rape case files at the Special Victims Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department for the 20th year.
In addition to high-impact litigation, direct representation in courts, filing briefs, authoring and submitting testimony, and developing and advocating for policies to improve the lives of those we serve, WLP works to educate and mobilize the public on these critical issues by writing op-eds, sending action alerts, live-tweeting and providing critical context for hearings and debates in the Legislature and at the U.S. Supreme Court, and of course—always—strategizing for what’s to come.
Please join us. Sign up for updates here.
Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing and defending the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond. As a non-profit organization, we can not do this work without you. Please consider supporting our work.
Sign up for WLP’s Action Alerts. Stay up to date by following us on twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
December 2021: Our physical offices are still closed but we are OPEN and working to serve your needs. Contact us here.
