From Ginsburg's dissent on why the Supreme Court's majority opinion and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals were not faithful to precedent:

Ledbetter’s petition presents a question important to the sound application of Title VII: What activity qualifies as an unlawful employment practice in cases of discrimination with respect to compensation. One answer identifies the pay-setting decision, and that decision alone, as the unlawful practice. Under this view, each particular salary-setting decision is discrete from prior and subsequent decisions, and must be challenged within 180 days on pain of forfeiture. Another response counts both the pay-setting decision and the actual payment of a discriminatory wage as unlawful practices. Under this approach, each payment of a wage or salary infected by sex-based discrimination constitutes an unlawful employment practice; prior decisions, outside the 180-day charge-filing period, are not themselves actionable, but they are relevant in determining the lawfulness of conduct within the period. The Court adopts the first view, see ante, at 1, 4, 9, but the second is more faithful to precedent, more in tune with the realities of the workplace, and more respectful of Title VII’s remedial purpose.

Elephantman, I appreciate your including relevent sources. A question: do you believe the dissenting justices are "trying to spin this decision for their political use?"

I love it.

These women probably haven't even seen their "laps" in months!

John Boehner's final words to his fellow Republicans: "I will hold you accountable to the team."

That's a little ominous.

Sort of like, "I know where you live."

However, FMLA generally benefits parents far more than it does non-parents because they need it more.

Maybe, but I wonder how this may change with an aging population and more people taking care of their elderly parents for perhaps a decade.

In any event, I understand what you're saying about non-parents subsidizing the choices of parents. It would be more pronounced in the U.S. where the difference would be "parent who gets time off" versus "non-parent working crazy U.S. hours." The difference would likely matter less to you in countries that offer more vacation and "enrichment" time.

And taking time off to parent isn't directly comparable to taking time off for personal enrichment. Taking time off to parent is taking time off to do another taxing job. If taking parenting leave is 6 months off, enrichment leave would be, say 2 months off.

And you could use similar formulae for re-entering the workforce. If two people start wotk at the same time and level and one person takes a year off, the person who took a year off shouldn't come back to work at the exact same level as someone who never left. There should be a difference. And a progressively smaller difference if the person only took partial leave and worked from home or kept up their skill set through classes.

The point is, there are ways to works these things out to be fair to people whatever choices they make. It requires some flexibility, creative thinking and a basic working structure where so many workers aren't feeling screwed-over and overwhelmed to begin with.

Notice: It is against the law for anyone, regardless of his or her relationship to you, to force you to have the abortion.

True, there's nothing wrong with that notice in and of itself. But it does fit in with the growing use of the tactic of "protecting women from abortion."

Protecting women from scientifically unproven mental and physical damage (see Missouri's "Initiative for the Prevention of Coerced and Unsafe Abortions," which would require extensive psychological screening of the woman before performing an abortion or else the provider can be sued). And in the recent Gonzales v Carhart, the Supreme Court actually said in its majority opinion that they should protect women from decisions they might regret!

So what bothers supporters of reproductive freedom and personal choice is how all of these seemingly innocuous bills and rulings fit into a broader pattern.

On another note, I find the sign "Notice: It is against the law for anyone, regardless of his or her relationship to you, to force you to have the abortion" highly ironic.

They should have another sign next to it that reads, "Notice Two: It is totally okay for the State to force you to carry your pregnancy to term through the manipulation of emotions, faulty science and making it so difficult for you to even reach a provider that you are effectively forced to continue your pregnancy."

is there any evidence to support that this is happening in large numbers or even at all?

An excellent point. When someone passes a law to combat a problem that may or may not even exist, it's a red flag that other motivations are at work.

That means that the procedure referred to in an above article takes place nearly 12000 times per year. Seems like a lot to me.

The CDC article does not detail which procedures are used by gestation, thus there's no evidence that "the procedure referred to in an above article takes place nearly 12000 times per year."

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5609a1.htm