Workers' rights: The average adjunct professor brings home $90 (after taxes) per week per class at my school, and is not allowed to teach more than 3 classes per term so that we don't have to offer them health insurance. This is not, in any way, enough money to afford basic life necessities in our area. Many students make more money being food servers (and adjuncts, being professors, feel guilty for taking jobs from them if they go and work part time too--it is also, as I understand it, embarrassing to wait on your students).

Erosion of abortion rights--Several years ago in class I had a student who really changed my opinion of abortion. First you have to understand that my political beliefs stay as far outside of class as possible, because I want all students to feel safe in sharing their opinions. I would never grade a student based upon whether they agree with me or not, but there is a preconception that teachers will, so I would rather students just not know what I think and play devil's advocate to everybody. But this student was older, devoutly religious, and told a student who did a presentation about 3rd trimester abortion that she had had one. The class went silent. She described to us the horrible disorder and birth defects her baby had, and just how wanted her daughter was (her name was Mallory). We had outlawed third trimester abortion in that state, so she had to go out of state to a clinic that has now been closed because the primary doctor there was murdered. She told us, point blank, that she knows that she is going to hell for having her daughter aborted and believed so going in for the procedure. However, both she and her husband decided that trading their souls so that their daughter would never feel pain was worth it. If she had been born she would have lived less than a day and known nothing but pain. They were well respected during the procedure, got to hold her, and she was buried and they visit her grave. I had already known abortion was important in giving people control over their bodies and lives (and I think it's especially true because of how poorly society treats young pregnant women--a grad student in my program who was married was regularly spat on and told to go home by other students because they thought she was a pregnant, unmarried, undergrad after her fingers swelled and she could not wear her ring), but I learned from her how important it is period. Whereas before I would have argued that we need abortion, but that we really need to work on making pregnancy more possible, less costly, and less frowned upon, now I still think we need to do that, but that we need safe, legal abortion too--no matter the place of pregnancy in society. The things we've been taught about late term abortion are largely not true, as my student's case is much like a lot of them--women getting wanted children aborted because of terminal illness in the child. Doctors need to know how to perform this procedure, families should not have to travel to do it, and we need to have more compassion for women and families who have been through it.