News & Commentary

Research shows that nearly one in three women will have an abortion by the time she turns 45. Yet, far too often, we still think of abortion as a dirty word, not fit for polite company.

This originally appeared in the Summer 2014 issue of STAND, the ACLU magazine.

When you get off a train, do you get off ahead of passengers? Or do you get off behind passengers? When you're going on a trip, do you come off as nervous? Or are you an unusually calm traveler? How about if you make a phone call at a station, do you look around? Or do you stare straight ahead?

This year, when a large number of families and children arrived in the United States seeking protection, the U.S. government's primary response has been to expand family detention and accelerate deportations.

You bet. More than two centuries since the Bill of Rights was drafted, we continue to see a fundamental lack of understanding on government's part of just what freedom of speech means. Nowhere was that more apparent recently than in a Missouri suburb reeling from a terrible tragedy.

Kilee Lowe was sitting in a park when cops picked her up and booked her into jail overnight.

On the outskirts of Florida's Miami-Dade County, dozens of individuals formerly convicted of sexual offenses live as exiles on an abandoned strip of land near a railroad track. The area has no shelter from the elements, no running water, and no bathrooms. The most fortunate inhabitants of this makeshift encampment sleep in cars or in tents. Others make due with a tarp or anything else that passes as cover. Each night brings new threats of violence, malnutrition, and disease.

Each week, in immigration courts across the United States, hundreds of children, some as young as a few months old, come before immigration judges and are called upon to defend themselves against deportation. Among them is Arturo,* a three-year-old who arrived at the United States border in April 2014 because family members feared for his life in El Salvador. Although he is only a toddler, the government has put Arturo into deportation proceedings on his own. He has no attorney to help him explain to the court why he should not be deported.

In honor of Free Speech Week, let's take a moment to acknowledge the obvious. Free speech is incredibly, almost unbelievably important, especially in a democracy.