Don't miss WBEZ’s morning news program Eight Forty-Eight this Monday, March 7, at 9:00am. ACLU of Illinois Executive Director, Colleen Connell, will talk about how the current budget cuts and pending federal and state legislation would impede women’s health services in Illinois. Some restrictions are proposed as fiscal reform; others are more direct attempts to restrict access to reproductive health care. The ACLU has opposed all bills that impose drastic and dangerous restrictions on reproductive health care.

If you are unable to tune in live at 9am, Eight Forty-Eight is rebroadcast in the evening at 9pm, and also is available online at http://www.wbez.org/eight-forty-eight.

Two more attacks on women's health care in the House Agriculture Committee:

• House Bill 2093 imposes on private and government employers burdensome training and compliance obligations regarding abuse and neglect reporting, even for staff that have no contact with patients seeking birth control, birth control counseling, sex education, gynecological care and services, abortions, abortion referrals or abortion counseling. Current law already contains rigorous reporting requirements for licensed health care providers, including doctors, nurses and social workers. Imposing these obligations on office staff and secretaries is nothing but an effort to burden these service providers. Download the fact sheet.

• House Bill 3156 seeks to upend the current evident-based regulatory system created and enforced by the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) under which abortion facilities have been safely regulated for two decades. The measure will not advance patient health and safety, but will significantly increase costs and decrease access to abortion services in Illinois. 92% of Illinois counties already have no abortion provider. These costly and unnecessary regulations will force many remaining facilities to close – leaving more women without access to essential health care. Download the fact sheet.

Urge members of the House Agriculture Committee to vote NO on House Bill 2093 and House Bill 3156. The committee is next scheduled to meet on Tuesday, March 8th.

From ACLU national's Blog of Rights:

Some schools have improperly configured their web-filtering software to illegally censor LGBT-related websites such as the GSA Network and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. At the same time that they block access to websites for positive LGBT rights organizations, those schools still allow access to anti-LGBT sites that condemn LGBT people or urge us to try to change our sexual orientation. This is called viewpoint discrimination, and it’s illegal.

Beyond being illegal, when schools block access to positive LGBT information, they block information that could be vital for troubled LGBT youth who either don’t have access to the Internet at home or don’t feel safe accessing such information on their home computers.

If you’re a public high school student and would like to know more about your school’s web filter, read the full blog post and check out the video showing how to test whether your school is illegally filtering content and how to report censorship.

Students who want to report unconstitutional web filtering at their schools can take action and fill out a form on the ACLU National webpage. Learn more about the ACLU’s work on LGBT school issues.