Abortion is a moral issue, just not in the way we’ve been taught, argues Rebecca Todd Peters, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church and professor of religious studies at Elon University. She is also the author of the new book Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice. Rather than an abstract moral question, she argues, abortion is a morally valid option to a concrete question women face on a regular basis: “What should I do when faced with an unplanned, unwanted, or medically compromised pregnancy?” I recently spoke with Peters about the book and her vision for the role of progressive, feminist Christian theology in contemporary abortion debates.

Male supremacy is also too often chalked up to the acts of individuals, when these dangerous ideologies, which have not only tolerated but encouraged violence, stem from gender and culture norms that affect everyone. “One of the things that happens when we focus on extreme examples of hate groups online is that we forget the hate groups are just examples of hate that exists broadly,” said Adrienne Shaw, an assistant professor in Temple University whose research focuses on gender and online culture. “When we just point at them and say those groups are bad, we forget that those groups came out of the same society we’re critiquing them from.”

It’s been just over six years since the military ended its Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, allowing gay, lesbian and bisexual service members to serve without needing to hide their sexual orientation for the first time. For some new recruits, the policy is already a relic, but for veterans who served before it ended, the discrimination they endured still feels fresh. Some of them were discharged because of the policy, while others merely suffered in silence until it ended. Many have shunned the label “veteran” altogether.

Earlier this year, Terry Heaton published a book about his time running production at The 700 Club in the 1980s. It’s called The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP. He has been sober for just over 19 years, and he considers the memoir-turned-political exposé to be part of the 9th step of his 12-step program: making amends. Heaton feels responsible for helping create the conservative news bubble that reshaped the American religious right and ushered President Donald Trump into office.

As the military faces scrutiny over sexual assault in its ranks, less attention has been focused on the wide array of behaviors that reinforce a culture in which assault is allowed to occur. The Department of Defense has identified a number of factors that contribute to a “continuum of harm” in which a profusion of seemingly lesser offenses such as sexist jokes and bullying create an environment in which assault not only takes place but is tolerated. These include high levels of workplace hostility, the underrepresentation of females in the workplace, and “an unhealthy enlisted and officer climate with respect to sexual assault.”

According to new research by the Columbia Law School Public Rights/Private Conscience Project, women of color are even more likely to be treated at Catholic hospitals where religious doctrines dictate medical practices. It’s not news that women of color—and black women in particular—face greater barriers to health care across a wide range of services. This so-called health care gap stems from a number of factors, including economic inequality and structural discrimination, which often work in tandem. The impact of Catholic ethics restrictions on women of color should be examined alongside these trends.

When the news of Harvey Weinstein’s serial sexual predation broke in early October, part of what was so shocking was that many of the women harassed by Weinstein had privately come forward with their claims, only to be paid off by his company in exchange for their silence. To address the harms that confidentiality requirements impose, lawmakers in a handful of states have floated bills to bar nondisclosure provisions in employment contracts and in settlements relating to claims of discrimination, retaliation, and harassment. But some advocates warn that barring confidentiality provisions may hurt victims in the process.

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons is on a mission to reclaim religion from political conservatives who so often use it as a cover for their restrictive laws. Over the summer, the 27-year-old divinity school graduate launched a newsletter inspired by Mike Allen's Politico Playbook, but for the religious left. Each installment of The Resistance Prays includes news of the day, related scripture, interpretation, prayer, and an action item. For example: Are you enraged over President Trump’s recent decision to rescind DACA? Remember that “There are no deserving or undeserving migrants just as there are no deserving or undeserving children of God.” Then, get involved with the Interfaith Immigration Coalition’s Neighbor to Neighbor meetings.

What began in October with reports about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged serial sexual predation has sparked a viral engagement with the #metoo social media movement, a national conversation about sexual misconduct, and a wave of high-profile workplace sexual harassment allegations in entertainment, media and politics that shows no sign of letting up. On Monday, Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski announced via his lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart that he will retire immediately following allegations of sexual misconduct from more than a dozen women. The cultural phenomenon has created work for lawyers, from creating new internal policies at corporations, to advising them on upcoming legislation that could fundamentally change how sexual harassment allegations are settled.

Cases like Masterpiece are a symptom of white conservative Christians feeling like they have become outsiders in what they believe is their country. Jack Phillips’s lawyers at the Alliance Defending Freedom have framed his and other similar cases as efforts to protect Americans who have been caught in the crosshairs of Kennedy’s Obergefell decision and LGBTQ rights advocates. They’re trying to protect themselves against what they perceive to be the new dominant cultural norm.

Many Big Law firms promote generous paid parental leave policies in order to woo young lawyers hoping to start a family, but those benefits often don’t apply at the same levels to staff providing support work, an analysis by Big Law Business has found. The numbers show that law firm staff do better than their counterparts in similarly paid jobs, but that law firm paid leave policies still lag behind some of the biggest U.S. companies.

A new book argues that algorithmic biases are the result of an insular, mostly-white, tech industry that has built its own biases into the foundations of the technology we use and depend on. I interviewed the author, web consultant Sara Wachter-Boettcher.

When Sheila Hobson and three co-workers together sued their company for lost wages, they were told they had signed away that right when they started their jobs. Hobson’s job contract included a provision that any lawsuit brought over her employment needed to go through arbitration, and individually. The Supreme Court is poised to make that legal.

Peggy McCausland was tired of her firm’s networking events.The potential clientele she wanted to woo — business women — weren’t showing up, she said. So McCausland conceived her own networking event that would draw them — golf lessons, catered meals and shop talk — and asked for the necessary marketing funds. She was a partner at the firm, Blank Rome, after all. “The response I got from [a senior partner] was, ‘Where are you going to find a golf course that’s gonna let a bunch of amateur women come hack it to bits?’” McCausland recalled ten years later.

Liesel Kershul fiercely opposed the war in Iraq. She’s been a Bernie Sanders acolyte since the early aughts, and she spent her high school years organizing on-campus protests against police brutality. Then she married a Marine. While her views didn’t change, her expression of them did. “I felt like, oh, I need to keep my mouth shut because I love this man and I don’t want to interfere with his career,” Kershul says in an interview.

Ask a woman in litigation if she’s ever been mistaken for a court reporter, and there’s a good chance she’ll say yes. Teri Drew, who specializes in the defense of commercial liability claims, said it happened to her just a few months ago. “I went to a plaintiffs’ firm for a deposition, and the receptionist said, ‘OK you’re going to be in the conference room. You can go in because I know you need to set up.’” Drew recounted to Big Law Business.

Justin Williams has long been working to combine his interests in storytelling with activism for social justice. At the production company Kartemquin Films, for example, he coached emerging filmmakers of color through their first full-length documentaries. So when he was offered the chance to work as a facilitator for StoryCorps, the nonprofit media and cultural-heritage company dedicated to “preserving people’s stories,” Williams jumped at it. He was drawn to StoryCorps because of its simplicity (stories are recorded as 40-minute conversations between two people who know each other), its wide audience (stories are regularly broadcast via NPR), and its commitment to the representation of marginalized populations who would not otherwise have access to public media. And yet, when a group of employees told management of their intention to unionize in late May, the organization declined to voluntarily recognize the union.

If a state denies public funding to a religious group, the chief justice said, it has to have a compelling reason for doing so beyond mere “policy preference.” It seems that the guiding principles of the Establishment Clause, which established the church-state divide, were not enough.

There’s a silent scourge creeping around newsrooms, one with origins in trade publications and tech-led new media: non-compete agreements. In their most typical form, these agreements bar reporters and editorial staff members from working at competing publications for a period of six months to a year after they leave. Publications that use them argue they need non-competes to cover the cost of the training they provide employees. Some even argue their reporters are privy to trade secrets.

For OB-GYN Sara Imershein, the decision to exclusively provide abortions after her retirement from private practice wasn't just about women's rights—it was about her Jewish faith.