gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights

Abortion is the voluntary termination of a pregnancy.

See: Alternative Reproductive Technology (ART). 

[Last reviewed in November of 2024 by the Wex Definitions Team]

Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986) is a U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court considered whether a person had a constitutional right to engage in consensual homosexual sex acts.

Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000) is a U.S.

Cisgender (abbreviated as cis) is a type of gender identity in which the gender that the person identifies matches the gender assigned at birth. The prefix “cis” means “on the side of” in Latin. 

Compare: transgender

See also: gender identity

Deadname is the name that a transperson was given at birth and no longer identifies with. The act of deadnaming a transperson, or calling someone by a birth name no longer associated with, can be highly offensive and even traumatizing to that person. Some states have implemented anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQIA+ people that are intended to prevent deadnaming. For example, California public colleges are required to update student’s records to reflect student’s legal name changes.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the 2022 Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v.

Overview:

Employment discrimination laws seek to prevent discrimination based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, physical disability, and age by employers.

Sterilization eliminates a person's ability to procreate, typically through surgical procedures. Enforced sterilization, also known as compulsory sterilization, refers to forcibly sterilizing an ethnic group as part of a systematic attack against that particular group. Widespread or systematic enforced sterilization is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to prevent unequal pay based on gender in jobs that require “equal skill, effort, and responsibility and which are performed under similar working conditions.” The Act fundamentally changed the nature of pay for women, which on average earned less than two-thirds of their male counterparts in 1963.