A recent study reveals that hospitals around the country interpret a rule set down by the Violence Against Women Act – that rape victims should not have to pay to be examined at the hospital after being sexually assaulted – very differently.

If you're at all like North Dakota Congressman Kevin Cramer, you'll know that the best way to comport yourself in a hearing at which a deeply disenfranchised population is attempting to redress the systematic injustices it has endured for centuries — with a focus on the disproportionate rate of murder and sexual…

Dear Gentlemen of the GOP:

Remember when a whopping 130 House Republicans voted against the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization bill last month? Some of them are banking on your amnesia.

The House voted Thursday to accept the bipartisan Violence Against Women Senate bill, 286-138. Eighty-seven Republicans and 199 Democrats to support the bill; no Democrats opposed it.

Finally: House Republican leaders are ready to let their VAWA bill go to make way for the Senate's legislation, which includes protections for LGBT, Native American and immigrant survivors of domestic violence. From the Huffington Post:

The Violence Against Women Act reauthorization passed the Senate and is now waiting for its fate from the House, where conservatives will surely come up with a variety of creative ways to explain why they object to protections against Native American, LGBT, and undocumented victims of domestic violence.

The Senate passed the Violence Against Women Act this afternoon, by a vote of 78 to 22. Every female senator voted in favor of the act (phew) and, naturally, those dissenting 22 were all Republican men, including rising GOP star Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who apparently decided it would be more helpful to his career if…

I am a Dakota and Lakota Sioux Native American woman who was born and raised on the reservation. As a girl I was raped; yet I overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to become an attorney and later, a tribal judge. For all of these reasons, I am acutely aware of the severity and urgency surrounding the problem of…

Are you for or against violent crimes against women? Ask these 8 male senators who voted yesterday not to consider the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

You, a sane person, might think the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act — something that's a proven saver of lives — would be an easy, bipartisan pass in Congress. Well, the two other times the 1994 legislation came up for reauthorization, it was. However, during the 2012 reauthorization, which slid…

You'd think the Violence Against Women Act was a nonpartisan no-brainer: can't we all agree that the federal government should work to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of violent crimes against women?

In case you needed another reason to feel disillusioned today, we live in a country where politicians are having a hard time passing the Violence Against Women Act because, this year, it strives to protect too many vulnerable women. Ah, America.

Over the last year and a half or so, conservative lawmakers have been feverishly at work enacting laws designed to shove the whole government into your vagina, since it's for damn sure not going to be looking over your boss's shoulder to make sure he's not screwing you over. Here's a run-down of the War on Women, in…

It's not hard to come up with a pretty long list of the ways in which Native Americans have been mistreated and abused by this country's government, but in addition to all of the horrors they've endured throughout history, there's now a very modern problem facing people living on reservations: they experience…

Congresswoman Gwen Moore, a Democrat from Wisconsin, told reporters that the watered down House Republican version of the Violence Against Women Act was insulting to her as a woman of color, and as a rape victim. The House's version of the bill stripped away provisions from the Senate version of the bill that would…

The House of Representatives is debating a stripped down version of the Violence Against Women Act introduced by a cabal of Republicans who thought that the Democrats' proposed inclusion of undocumented, Native, and lesbian women went too far and "watered down" the definition of violence. The Violence Against Some…

Here's Minnesota Senator Al Franken breaking down into tears during the Violence Against Women Act debate today. On the Republican side of the legislative branch, John Boehner's usually prolific tear ducts have remained tellingly silent.

Faced with accusations that their opposition to renewal of the Violence Against Women Act is a sign that they've taken a very unpopular "pro-woman beating" stance, Congressional Republicans are hurriedly drafting their own version of the bill to prove that they don't hate all women. Their version will be sort of like…