Transcripts For MSNBCW Melissa Harris-Perry 20141025 : compa

woman, injuring four others before killing himself. law enforcement sources identified the shooter as freshman jaylen ray fryberg. just last week he was crowned home coming prince. the victims have not yet been identified and police are not saying anything about a positive motive. joining us now live from marysville, washington, nbc news correspondent hallie jackson. hallie, what is the latest on the students' condition? >> reporter: here is what we know at the moment, melissa. two young women are in critical condition at providence everett hospital. at harborview, a 15-year-old is also in critical condition and a 14-year-old is in serious condition. we understand this morning that those two boys are cousins of the suspected shooter in this case. that's according to their grandfather. law enforcement sources are identifying that shooter as jaylen fryberg. as you described him, he was described by classmates as a popular student, on the football team. he was an athlete and seemed to be, by most accounts, a happy kid. at this point, there's no official word from police on the relationship between fryberg and the young woman who was killed yesterday. at marysville pilchuk high school, classes will be canceled all next week. an active investigation as they try to piece together what exactly happened in the school's cafeteria just after 10:30 in the morning, when students described seeing their classmate open fire, looking victims in the eye. some chilling descriptions of what exactly happened inside that high school. the community is beginning what will be, of course, a long and difficult grieving process. already we're seeing members of the community come together. a candlelight vigil at a local church here in marysville drew more than 1,000 people. emotional service. people hugging. people crying. praying. thinking about the families whose lives will be forever changed because of this. melissa? >> in marysville, washington, hallie jackson. thank you for your reporting. we're going to turn now to the story of brittany maynard. just one week from today, if all goes according to her plan, 29-year-old brittany maynard will drink a glass of water filled with a lethal dose of crushed doctor-prescribed pills and drift off into a sleep from which she will never wake. brittany's profoundly personal and private decision after being diagnosed with a terminal, quickly advancing illness made the cover of this week's "people" magazine and has become the subject of international interest and discussion after she shared her story in this video posted online two weeks ago. >> 70 days post-op, i went in for another mri and told i had a great change. they were looking and saying it looks like grade four, which is the worst and most aggressive form of brain cancer. it's called glioblastoma. that was a major shock to my system and the system of my family. it went from having potentially years of time to being told i had like six months. >> doctors have told brittany that if the cancer is allowed to run its course, the decline before her death will include a series of unrelenting seizures, headaches, nausea, vomiting, pressure in her brain and the loss of all of her bodily functions, including moving, even thinking. instead on november 1st, the day brittany has decided to die, she's planning for the end of her life to come on the terms that she has chosen for herself. >> i plan to be surrounded by my immediate family, which is my husband and my mother and my stepfather and my best friend, who is also a physician. and probably not much more people. and i will die upstairs in my bedroom that i share with my husband with my mother and my husband by my side and pass peacefully with some music that i like in the background. >> brittany has said that in addition to a peaceful death, having access to the lethal prescription has also given her peace in her final days of life. >> i can't even tell you the amount of relief that it provides me to know that i don't have to die the way that it has been described to me that my brain tumor would take me on its own. >> although she describes this as a private decision, following her diagnosis, brittany has devoted much of this year to advocating publicly for others in her situation to have legal access to the same relief. she qualified for physician-assisted suicide after relocating to oregon where the practice is permitted under the state's death with dignity act. oregon is one of five states, including montana, new mexico, vermont and washington, that have legalized the option to end one's own life with the help of a doctor. other states have introduced similar legislation and brittany has teamed with advocacy organization compassion and choices and launched the brittany maynard fund to push for those bills to be enacted into law. now the particular circumstances of brittany's story, a vibrant, young woman, a newlywed whose life feels like it's just beginning, compelled by illness to make a decision on how it will end has renewed attention and brought a new audience to an old and ongoing debate. how we die has been at issue mainly fought out by the elderly, patient advocacy groups for the terminally ill, health care providers. most are middle aged or older. a whole new generation is now looking at brittany and wondering why their state does not permit physicians to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to the dying. for more than 20 years, the majority of americans have not only wondered but agreed that a physician should be allowed to legally and painlessly end the life of a patient with an incurable disease. that consensus has been tested periodically to force us all to consider the broader implications of personal end-of-life decisions. sarah palin, invoking the mythical death panel claim. in january, dispute in texas over whether to keep a pregnant, but brain dead woman alive, on life support, was ended when a judge ordered a hospital to comply with her family's wishes to have her removed from the machines that were keeping her alive. and recently, right here on this program, dr. ezekiel emanuel talked about physical and mental disability that can be averted by dying by age 75. it raises different concerns by bodily autonomy than those we've been accustomed to. reproductive rights debate and fraught personal and policy questions that it raises about the beginning of life. but now, brittany maynard has compelled us, once again, to collectively consider where we stand when a decision needs to be made about the end of a life. joining me now, professor of religious studies and graduate chair of religion at the university of pennsylvania. sandeep johar at long island jewish medical center and authored of "doctored: the illusionment of an american physician." >> from university of langone's medical center. death with dignity laws. for some who are not embroiled in this debate, for whom brittany maynard is just bringing it out, why would one need a law? can't you -- maybe it's illegal to take one's own life but it can actually be practiced. why isn't everyone just free to take their own life whenever they are prepared to do so? >> there are states that make assistance in dying illegal. so these laws turn that around. some states have tried to ban suicide but, obviously, impossible to do. so, i think the argument here is the way people do end their lives on their own is violent, messy and sometimes doesn't work, leaving them impaired, leaving them with severe brain damage if they shoot themselves or get found trying in a garage with gas, not taking their lives. >> and they have to do it alone. if you do it in the bed, as brittany was talking about, with your family around you, they are potentially implicated as a criminal act. >> as assisting, yeah. you have a wags here where people say, look, you're just giving the means to them. you still have to take the pills. you still make the decision. it's not a jack kevorkian style thing where i help kill you by flipping a switch. you have to get the medicine. you have to decide whether to swallow it or not. it's more humane, it has more dignity. >> this year has been a tough year around the question of death and laws for me because i have had so many people pass so close to one another. hospice was an extremely important part of the passing of my beloved brother-in-law, the question of how people make that transition. but hospice, the kind of pallative care presumptions, what hospice does to allow you to go ahead and let go versus making this active decision to come to an end. >> yeah. i think hospice is generally well regarded among patients and families who have experienced it. so i think it's a very viable alternative. in my experience as a cardiologist, i've seen patients who have been very sick, but not necessarily suffering from pain at that precise moment. so, hospice is really for people who are really in the throes of pain and nearing the end of life. in brittany's case, she doesn't want to go through that horrible, terminal phase of her illness. she wants to have the right to make the decision to end her life before she goes through that. so, you know, i agree with what dr. kaplan said. it seems almost oxymoronic to talk about a safe suicide. we have plenty of examples where people try to end their lives and they don't succeed and go through a very violent and painful course. and we see that with executions, as we've seen fairly recently. so i think the term death with dignity really applies here. because people have the right to, in my view, end their lives in a way that is commensurate with their values. >> i want to talk about that. from desmond tutu, i had read a piece about how nelson mandela was allowed to pass. i didn't know much about in it. he said don't let me linger. we let our beloved mandela linger too long. i was taken aback, in part because i think of many religious world views, but particularly a christian world view saying that there is -- not only is there value in suffering but redemptive value in undeserved suffering. that is kind of a core religious principle for christians. >> yeah. i think it depends on what branch of christianity you're talking about. for desmontd tutu, he's an episcopalean. this is about the family trying to drag it on or people thenking about what they would do and catholics who say you have a right to life. you don't want to end life in a way that would not be in keeping with what god would want. there's part that have redemptive suffering. you think about hinduism. you could say this separates you from your karma and your darma you're doing on earth and you don't want to do that. one is, what are the desires of that person? how do they see their world view, vis-a-vis other world views. with brittany may nard right now, this will be a case, like the terry schiavo one, where people are saying this is wrong and others will say this is her right to take her life. >> it is brittany maynard as opposed to brittany murphy. >> i'm sorry. >> no, that's okay. it gets tough in these conversations. so few of us ever want to have these conversations at all. and sort of how that leaves both us as well as our communities where we don't have those conversations at all. ngs, extra. we need to do something different. callahan's? ehh, i mean get away, like, away away. road trip? double wings, extra ranch. feels good to mix it up. the all-new, fuel-efficient volkswagen golf tdi clean diesel. up to 594 miles of adventure in every tank. cshe is the greatest thing ever. one little smile. one little laugh. honey bunny... 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(baby noise...laughter) we created legalzoom to help you take care of the ones you love. go to legalzoom.com today and complete your will in minutes. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. goodnight. goodnight. for those kept awake by pain the night is anything but good. introducing new aleve pm. the first one with a sleep aid. plus the 12 hour strength of aleve for pain relief that can last until the am. now you can have a good night and a... good morning! new aleve pm. for a better am. new nestlé© toll houser for delightfulls morsels. in honor of our 75th anniversary, we're bringing you nestlé© toll house chocolate filled with caramel, peanut butter, cherry and mint. so peanut butter up some blondies and brownies. caramel-ify those chocolate chip cookies. and give that thing a hint-y of something cherry or minty! it's time to bake the world a better place with new nestlé© toll house delightfulls. bake some love™ nestlé©. good food, good life. i hope to enjoy however many days i have left on this earth and spend as much of it outside as i can, surrounded by those i love. i hope to pass in peace. >> since deciding to publicize her story, brittany has been subject to criticism from opponents of policies like the oregon law that is allowing her to legally end her life. the most vocal of those critics, a palative care physician, outspoken in his opposition to brittany's choice. >> he said once again she thinks this is her personal choice but physician-assisted suicide is not a personal act. it's a social act. physicians aren't personal. we're trained by society. we're licensed by society. we're certified by board that is represent society and we're paid by society. lethal prescription it's a social act. i'm not exactly sure where i fall on this question. i think i agree with the physician in this case that it certainly isn't entirely personal. the question of how we think about life and the decisions we have to make about it are public. >> no doubt about it. and we have these laws in place because people went to the ballot box and said we see it as a person's right to gain access to legal pills. >> yep. >> should they choose. but, remember -- >> and just for folks who may not know, the oregon law, in order to qualify for the death with dignity act within oregon, you have to be at least 18. you have to be capable of making the decision for yourself. you have to be an oregon resident and you have to be terminally ill, being within six months. >> two doctors have to confirm it. you have to report it to the police. very social in that sense as a supervisor thing. oregon has had that law around for more than a decade. we haven't seen people rushed off to the hereafter. i was an early critic, like ira, but i changed my view. i think it hasn't been abused. and we have -- >> you just said right there, as you said it, i just -- that is the thing, i guess, that most gives me the feelings. i keep thinking every time i hear the conversation about the suffering is the reason i need it to end. although i understand it deeply, personally, i worry about any argument that says a life that is full of suffering and pain and agony is a life not worth living because that kind of pain and agony and likely early death is not evenly zbripted in the population. it is likely to say something specifically about communities that we may be most engaged with. >> exactly. and i was just thinking, brittany has the means to be able to do this. she has privilege to be able to do this. she has money. she has insurance. she has all this. >> right. >> what about the person who doesn't have it? >> right. >> suffering the same way. >> in a nursing home, dying of aids, she was in horrible shape. no one had offered her hospice or palative care. that thing that brittany is getting to do, a lot of people don't get to do in this country. >> part of her claim, why she's using these final days not just for her personal use, but as an activist is because she's trying to expand it. i do wonder, particularly as physicians thinking through this, is there a point at which physicians are either keeping, because of their own ego saying you've got to stay alive, because it is important to me that i be able to preserve life when, in fact, we may be at a place where it's time to say let me help you make the transition? >> the way she's going about this has touched a nerve. it seems so brave. she wants to infuse this last phase of her life with purpose and meaning. i think that's -- and also because she's so young. physicians don't want to talk about the end of life. that is a fact. and because we feel so imp tent at this terminal phase. so, you know, hospice is one option. it doesn't necessary ily how do you get into hospice? you need to have a physician who advocates for you and makes the effort to enlist the resources that are available. a lot of patients -- i've had patients -- i had a patient recently who had severe end stage heart failure and developed a jaw cancer and the cancer was eating away at his bones and he was suffering so much. and it took forever to get him into hospice. >> what you just said right there, often what president obama would say was his mom in her final days spent all the time filling out insurance forms instead of doing whatever else it was. what monica lewinsky is doing with her new twitter account. >> and oscar de la renta. stay with us. we have more on this when we come back. stores, we provide financing solutions for all sorts of businesses. banking. loyalty. analytics. synchrony financial. engage with us. ♪searching with devotion ♪for a snack that isn't lame ♪but this... ♪takes my breath away before i pass i'm hoping to make it to the grand canyon, because i've never been. >> well, brittany made it to the grand canyon. that final wish has, in fact, come true. "people" magazine reported that brittany and her family made that trip to the grand canyon earlier this week. apparently she suffered from some of the most painful and debilitating seizures acid. we took a look at pew polling to see what people are saying their own wishes are. brittany is thinking very carefully of what she wants. 37% giving it a great deal of thought and even for the group of people over 75, not even a full half of them having given a lot of thought to end-of-life wishes. how do we get folks, whatever else we think about, physician-assisted suicide, to have that conversation? >> this is a crucial conversation. some people are afraid to write it out on paper because, you know, they think it's going to happen. we don't get -- >> you are going to die. >> i understand, but they think it's going to happen sooner. magical thinking. pick a decision maker. let them know you've picked them. have a backup decision maker. when people are very, very ill, documents don't count. family counts. or your friends or your partner or whoever is there. if you can make it clear who speaks for you, you can take care of the end of your days a little bit better. the other key thing in getting this conversation going -- i'll turn toward religion here in a second. our religious leaders don't bring it up. think about the last time you went to church, synagogue and had a discussion of living wills, advanced directives or anything. >> the downside of having someone make the decision for you is that they substitute their own judgments. >> you want to have that conversation so they know what you want. >> i know but i've seen so many cases where -- >> they override? >> -- the son or daughter overrides the wishes of a parent. not being a religious person myself, i find it fairly arrogant for people to look at suffering as having this sort of redemptive quality. there are types of suffering, physical suffering especially that no one should have to go through. >> people say to me sometimes -- >> person has a right to not go through that. >> -- i have to suffer for my sins. >> there's a political, legal question. and then there's a question about -- jo mean to adjudicate whether my religious beliefs or someone else's should be substituted but only that it becomes a part of a discourse of whether lives that are full of suffering are lives worth living. and just that we have to be careful about that at the same time. >> thanksgiving is coming. to get at this issue of not doing what you want, have the discussion with all your family there so that everybody knows what you want. >> and do it before you start drinking. althea will be back in our next hour. thank you to arthur caplan and dr. juahar. what ring ring!... progresso! it's ok that your soup tastes like my homemade. it's our slow simmered vegetables and tender white meat chicken. apology accepted. i'm watching you soup people. make it progresso or make it yourself ay... sometimes too close, which means we're always getting into each other's hair. that's why we use head & shoulders. keeps us 100% flake free, and smells gorgeous. i use it... my whole world uses it. head & shoulders. now smells better than ever. a private funeral service will be held november 3rd here in new york city for famed fashion designer oscar de la renta, who passed away following a long battle with cancer. de la renta's work had been a staple in the wardrobes of hollywood celebrities and the nation's first ladies. the dominican born de la renta designed for every first lady since jackie kennedy. the designer's work was so popular, it even once forced a first lady to make an executive fashion decision. in december 2006, then first lady laura bush hosted attendees of that year's kennedy center honors at a white house reception before the main event. she wore an $8,500 de la renta dress. you can see it here in this white house greetings card. the first lady was not the only one who said yes to that particular dress. that night, to the first lady's surprise, not one, not two, but three of the attendees wore the exact same dress. now, mrs. bush took it in stride, even laughing about it with her husband. but the first lady was left with a classic fashion conundrum. to change or not to change? the ever graceful hostess, having the advantage of her closet being just up the stairs, the first lady changed before the show. when she arrived at the kennedy center she was clad in a shimmering black dress so that none of her guests had to worry about who wore it better. of course, the whole thing just has me thinking, has it ever once been a news story when more than one guy at the big party is wearing the same tux? has any president hustled to change his bow tie when he learned that two or three of the guests have also chosen black silk? when we come back, oscar de la renta, first lady fashion and feminism. one of the legacies oscar de la renta leaves behind is his fashion shows tended to run on time, rarity in the fashion world. just another way the designer icon stood out. de la renta passed away after a long struggle with cancer. at 82 years old the beloved designer was enjoying one of the best years of his storied career. for more than five decades, the fashion pioneer celebrated the lives of women with elegant designs that graced nearly every major star of the day. eventually, he became a star in his own right and some of his most valued clients were america's first ladies. >> i think for first ladies, he was able to really bridge this divide between, you know, the private woman who has her own sense of fashion, her own sense of aesthetics and how she wants to dress and the public woman who had to kind of appease a nation. >> as he designed for our nation's first ladies, de la renta became part of our nation's political story, part of president john f. kennedy's aristocratic imagine came from his wife, jacqueline, who spoke french and was adorned in de la renta gowns. regal comparison of kennedy's white house to arthur in camelot. not what rosalyn krter hoped to invoke when she arrived in a dress she had worn publicly not just once but twice before. hers was a message of humble modesty that framed her husband's approach to the presidency. as a former actress, with an enviable flare for the dramatic, nancy reagan was frequently dressed by de la renta. as a result, she endured criticism for dressing during a recession. she countered, what would have happened if i had stopped borrowing dresses and wearing only the clothes i could actually afford to buy? before long instead of calling me extravagant, the press would have referred to me as dowdy and frumpy, often used to describe hillary clinton's first lady fashion choices. she knew her clothes were not just about her. in her memoir "living history," a first lady's appearance matters. i was no longer representing not only myself, i was asking the american people to let me represent them in a role that conveyed everything from glamour to motherly comfort. de la renta frequently dressed clinton, including to make a distinct political statement in a 1998 on the cover of "vogue" magazine, adorned in a de la renta gown, clintn's cover photo depicted the first lady thriving amid political fallout after president clinton's affair with monic ka lewinsky and de la renta comes up in a telling conversation between clinton and her husband about the meaning fashion choices have for first ladies. >> we met oscar de la renta in december 1993 when we hosted the annual reception for the kennedy center honorees. and i had bought a dress off the rack. it happened to be one of the oscar de la renta dresses for sale in that way. so he and his wonderful wife, annette, go through the receiving line. he takes my hand and he goes, is that my dress? and he said, oh, it's wonderful. i'm so delighted. >> it was amusing to me, you know. i never had anybody go through a line and say is that my suit? >> de la renta has been celebrated for five decades of deciding glamorous grouns for the nation's first ladies. he has spent five decades helping shape our nation's politics. joining me today to discuss the legacy of oscar de la renta and impact on fashion and first ladies and politics, terry agens, author of "hijacking the runway" and former host of e's! fashion police. and "the fierce and urgency now" and from nyu, currently writing a book called "skin and masks" about how the cosmetics industry shapes our ideas about race, health and beauty. did oscar de la renta thenk of dressing the first ladies as solely a fashion choice or also a political one? >> i think it's a combination, but i don't -- i think it's more of a business choice than -- >> that's interesting. >> there's great commerce underneath dressing anybody who is a public figure. i think that that's always taken into consideration and certainly the first ladies are global figures. they're not just national figures. when you're on a global stage, sales increase all over the world. >> and yet i wonder if dressing like a first lady -- so in this moment, with first lady michelle obama, there is a certain cache to dressing like a first lady. but there hasn't been for a long time. i'm not sure that people thought of it as aspirational to look like laura bush, for example. and i wonder -- as you write about hijacking the runways and celebrities take it from designers. if there's something here about -- what would it mean if it were aspirational to be like a political woman? >> i think michelle obama, one thing she really did was she made fashion super accessible for everybody. >> j. crew. >> hi, low, target. she really showed women that you could show your arms and, you know, wear cardigan sweaters. this was something that first ladies didn't do. so, i mean, i really think that she brought -- that she really made fashion accessible for a lot of women. and they started to emulate her. that's probably why she became the biggest fashion role model that we've had in the white house. >> certainly at least since jackie kennedy. i want to stay on michelle obama for a minute as first lady. you talk about bearing your arms and wearing the cardigans. i want to show this picture of the first lady on vacation in the grand canyon with her family. >> short. >> wearing shorts. and what you see when you see that picture. isn't it, in part -- i know it seems odd to go to you on this one, julia, isn't it, in part, political test of what you think you see when you see the first lady in a pair of shorts? >> absolutely. part of it is about the fashion and part of it is about the media. those pictures are being taken not just by established media but all sorts of cameras are going off. fashion changing for the first lady not just because of michelle obama but how she's capture captured on vacation. i must say, eleanor roosevelt was also famous. she hated fashion. >> right. >> she didn't care about it. she wore what she wanted to wear. it was a big deal at the time. she didn't act like a first lady in that respect. she was criticized for it. fashion designers were upset with her. but she wanted to make a statement that that was not her priority. >> she acted more like a president than a first lady in many ways, which is part of what left her a different legacy. michelle obama as first lady for a moment. she went to the first -- in 2009, right after the inauguration, she goes to the first joint session of congress sleeveless. maureen dowd writes -- i'm interested what you think about this. let's face it. the only bracing symbol of american strength right now is an image of michelle obama's sculpted biceps. her husband urges bold action but it is michelle who looks as though she could easily wind up and punch out rush limbaugh, bernie madoff and all the corporate creeps who ripped off america. clearly, she saw someone who could muscle up for america. >> sure, of course. the thing about michelle obama's arms is everybody talks about it. they're fantastic, right? they're actually her husband's secret weapon, right? they also say something about her femininity that people are not that comfortable with, right? in the way that hillary rodham clinton wears the pant suit, right, michelle obama has got her arms and we're always a little bit uncomfortable with a strong woman. that's why her arms are so, so widely commented upon. >> and for me, that intersection also feels racialized. so there's the gender component but the other piece of it is like she can't actually punch out rush limbaugh and bernie madoff and that idea that she is the muscle feels both to me like a particular thing that that's doing to the president as well as like an elevation of like the black woman ass almost too much. she and oscar de la renta also did not get along. >> that was also consistent. hillary rodham clinton was also the muscle in the white house. she didn't bare her arms. separately as a fashion issue, i think all women that i've dealt with and spoken to have an insecurity about their arms. it's a really delicate issue that women face. i don't know where it stems from. but it's consistent. so it's kind of interesting that michelle doesn't have that issue. she's an outly loutlier. >> sarah palin, we're talking about first ladies. she was running for the vice presidency and doing so in high heels and pencil skirts and there was a lot of critique that she had spent too much money on her fashion. sort of the nancy reagan point. what were her other choices? >> she also was constructed. she clearly was plucked out of nowhere. >> alaska is somewhere. >> no, i didn't mean that kind of like -- it wasn't a slam on alaska. but she was plucked out of anonymity to the rest of the world. all of a sudden she is on a global stage. there's an imagery issue. we are always looking at images. i mean, politics is a little different because people do have a voice. they are speaking to us on a daily or maybe less frequent basis. but they do connect with us in that way. celebrities conversely don't. we're constantly judging them based on a series of images we see of them. with sarah palin, all of a sudden, she's plucked out of -- >> she has to give us something. >> stick with us as we go to break and the discussion about intersection of politics and fashion. i can't help but to play for you this moment from the youtube debate in the 2008 democrat ic primary. >> i would like for each of you to look to your candidate to your left and tell the audience one thing you like and one thing you dislike about that particular candidate. >> senator clinton has done for america, what her husband did for america. not sure about that coat. health can change in a minute. so cvs health is changing healthcare. making it more accessible and affordable, with over 900 locations for walk-in medical care. and more on the way. minuteclinic. another innovation from cvs health. because health is everything. political consultant donna brazil launched a great little column in oprah's magazine, rules to live by. one, wear comfortable shoes. men don't wear high heels and they don't make allowances for women who do. telegraphs your preference for style over substance. that was hard for me to read. i have a strong preference for high heels, in part because i am a short woman. but i wonder, is that us subjecting ourselves to a beauty myth and fashion myth that keeps us out of power? >> i think to a certain extent, i agree. you don't want to be tripping down the hallway. it doesn't make you look very professional or together. on the other hand there's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation here. you have to look good, right? you have to look the part. there's only a few men -- and i count mark zuckerberg among them -- who can show up to work in a t-shirt. the rest of us have to put a little effort into it and to tell women that, you know, they don't is itself a myth. right? >> yet that little bit of effort, you know, we work very hard on this show to make sure that we have lots of women at the table. it actually takes more time for our guests to get ready. it's a production issue to put more women -- same thing is true as a matter of politics. you're running for office, you have a tight schedule. you have to make four changes. you can't just take off the tie. you have to stop for the makeup. literally, is fashion a thing that keeps women from being able to assume the highest levels of power? >> my guess is that isn't the major factor. there's other parts of sexism. >> but it's not irrelevant, right? >> it's probably relevant, but it can be overcome. margaret thatcher famously used her purse as a prop and basically would jab people with it. there was a term for it to symbolize her not being happy with you. so, there are ways to turn fashion in your favor. but i'm sure it is part of a logistical puzzle. it certainly is a puzzle that they have to deal with in terms of what they look like, what's accepted and what's not whereas male politicians, other than john edwards and his haircut don't have to deal with it. >> we were sort of looking, going through the beauty myth and she makes a claim that twigy and audrey hepburn and the little black dress show up at exactly the same moment when women have the pill, greater access to higher education, workplace when suddenly we should be thinking about our jobs we think about our thighs. the fashion narrative becomes get as tiny as possible. is fashion inherently anti-feminist? >> i don't think it is. >> no, i don't think it is. the thing, we were talking about this earlier about the whole idea you have the gay designers. >> gay men. >> gay men. and they want us to look a certain way. their idealized sense of a woman is androgenous, flat chested. >> there's a gay aesthetic in which women are almost extremely overtly -- >> in fashion it's androgenous. >> looks better on a hanger essentially. >> but then that has a political implication, right? so i think about it relative to sarah palin. i don't agree with her politics, per se. i did think it was fascinating that a woman with a -- >> you had choices. >> and a woman with a young family wearing high heels would feel that she could run for office at that level. >> sure. and, you know, i agree with you to a certain extent. but there's something a little bit false about the sarah palin as like earth mother, you know, wearing mom jeans and t-shirt. it's kind of a false populism. that's the biggest thing in fashion right now, is dressing normal normally. the elite have been wearing these $12,000 dresses. when the elite don't -- when mark zuckerberg is wearing his t-shirt, we're actually hiding the fact that there's such inequalities rather than showing them. >> right, right. there's something that feels masking. >> that's my product of credit. people can now afford to be people who they're not. fashion used to tell an honest story of who you were, any given sunday in u.s.a. you would find a church filled with girls wearing sunday clothes and guys wearing sunday clothes and other girls wearing different clothes in the same church every sunday, the daughters of merchants, doctors, lawyers and you knew who they were because of their clothes. it was like a little bit of a cast system. but as credit became available to everybody, you no longer were telling the world who you were. you were telling them who you want to be. >> oh, so it becomes as entirational literally on -- you can buy your louis vvuitton ove time. >> and they start dressing down in part of a signal that -- >> thank you, teri agins and robert. and to julian. still to come, big baby news from kate middleton. and this week, how mon ica lewinsky is taking on the internet and gaining thousands of followers while she does it. more at the top of the hour. i take prilosec otc each morning for my frequent heartburn. because it gives me... zero heartburn! prilosec otc. the number 1 doctor-recommended frequent heartburn medicine for 9 straight years. one pill each morning. 24 hours. zero heartburn. 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(all) awesome! i love logistics. yei could come by your place. my place? uhh... um... hold on. introducing the all-new volkswagen golf. plenty of room for whatever life throws at you. trublcovergirl p!nkrfect blend for each of us blend of rockstar and mama bear her trublend... light 4 janelle blend of punk and funk deep 6 sofia comedienne and colombiana medium 6 there's a trublend to match 99% of all women. find yours it blends in doesn't build up for a flawless nude look so easy breezy beautiful covergirl find your trublend at covergirl.com welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry. monica lewinsky believes she is the first-ever victim of the internet. in 1998, she was a 23-year-old former intern at the white house. she had no public profile to speak of. but then the world learned of her affair with the most public man in america, the president of the united states. the affair was first reported in early 1998 by the then fledge ling website, the drudge report. then in september 1998 special prosecutor ken star used the internet to release a report on the affair. 745 pages of the most intimate details of lewinsky's sexual relationship with president clinton. we all knew those details, we knew her face and we knew her name. >> overnight i went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one. i was patient zero. the first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the internet. >> that was liewinsky on monday at the forbes 30 under 30 event, in her first public speech after ten years spent more or less in hiding. lewinsky recalled the day the star report was released in september 1998 and her reading every excruciating word, knowing everyone in the world with an internet connection could do the same. >> i couldn't imagine ever showing my face in public again. i cringed. i yelled. i sobbed. and the mantra continued. i just want to die. >> her name had become a punch line. and one with serious staying power. less than a year ago, 15 years after the star report was published, beyonce released "partition," a song that referenced about what happened to lewinsky's blue dress. now she is returning to public life, saying she hopes her unique story of hyper public humiliation can draw more attention to the problem of cyber bullying and online harassment. she cites, in particular, the death of tyler clemente, who committed suicide in 2010 after his roommate secretly filmed his intimate encounter with another man and streamed it online. lewinsky said while she was touched by the tragedy, her mother was particularly upset. >> she was back in 1998, back to a time when i was periodically suicidal, when she might very easily have lost me, when i, too, might have been humiliated to death. >> we don't have comprehensive data on how many people take their own lives due to bullying or online harassment. there is some research that shows while traditional in real life bullying can increase the risk of suicide, cyber bullying increases or heightens that risk even more. lewinsky tried to capture the unique feeling of being humiliated in a form as broad as the internet. >> the experience of shame and humiliation online is different than offline. there is no way to wrap your mind around where the humiliation ends. there are no borders. >> and it is that point where i want to begin. joining me now, anthea butler, professor of religious studies from the university of pennsylvania. soria chemley who writes for the huffington post, and tyler coates, deputy editor of decider.com. so, we hear from lewinsky there the possibility that online harassment is more than just something different in form than it may also be substantively, meaningful different than even the horror that is face-to-face bullying. >> right. it's no coincidence that the person whose life was ruined via the internet happened to be a woman just as it's no coincidence that the biggest celebrity hack was also women. >> and specifically about shaming and sexuality. >> exactly. it had to do with sexuality and shame involved, right? the internet is a place that's very unsafe for women, just like sauks. it's meaningful for her to come out and say i'm not going to apologize. i'm going to come out and have a wider message. >> what do we do with the argument and, you know, i'm raising an almost 13-year-old girl. there's part of me as mom that just wants to say, so don't read it. so don't go on instagram. so don't go on the twitter. don't worry about facebook. it always seems to me that is the initial response. what do you do with that as a response to this? >> i don't think it's a really practical response. ta's so integral to our lives. it's an essential aspect to the way we interact at school, the way we interact at work. it's our public forum. and so seeding that ground as a woman certainly telling young women to seed that ground is really the wrong message to send. i think we need to look at what's happening wi, what the dynamics are. the word bullying or harassment masks that. it really doesn't tell enough of the granular detail of how differently girls and boys are treated. and we're teaching children they're equal, right? they run into this wall of double standards when they enter puberty. that's when we really see theesques take place and see them in much more amplified ways online. >> it does feel like if there were one place where men and women, boys and girls would be equal, it would be in the digital space, right? because everybody is a little picture and everybody has 140 characters and everybody has literally the same platform, right? so wouldn't this -- i mean, it feels as though structurally it is built to generate a kind of galatarian space in terms of gender, race, maybe only in terms of a digital divide of class access. beyond that, it should be the most of all of our spaces. >> absolutely. men and women still online receive different forms of harassment and even in the most recent pew research has shown that men respond to harassment in different ways than women because it's sort of, as you were saying, something that they can shake off. i have experienced it, too. like probably not in ways that a lot of my female friends who write for the internet have received awful, horrific things. it has been something that i kind of have just tried to ignore. as a gay man, i think i experience masogeny in a different way. but i still do. >> just ignore it, which is an awful lot of the strategy i've taken myself recently, and i think about suggesting that kind of isolationism is what terrorism is, to isolate us and separate us. i'm at a point where i don't retweet anything that i really like because i fear that i would send all of my hater -- all of the harassment that comes to me over to some person who doesn't deserve it. and so i keep thinking, i guess it is having an effect. it's literally quieting whatever little digital voice i might have otherwise had. >> yeah. i remember when you were on twitter at the beginning. >> i loved it! it was like a twitter party. >> this is one of the problems that twitter has right now. those of us that have been active users become less active because of what is happening. so, you know. but i'm thinking about the statement you made, little avatar in a little picture. so some of the african-american women i followed on line changed their pictures to white men. what happens when you change to white men? nobody bothers you. you can say what you want. that moment you change your avatar into a white male or, you know, even a white woman sometimes, but mostly a white male, if you change it to a white male, you are not harassed. and i'm thinking of several people who have done this. i don't want to call their handles out but it just changes. >> that is -- but that's fascinating social psychological experiment. to get a -- whoever gets to achieve white maleness, right? and to literally be able to do it overnight. >> so the whole thing is about the buy as that people have in real life follow them into the internet. so if you are a -- you racialize everything. you're going to racialize it on the internet f you don't like women, you're going to do that on the internet. all the things you don't like are going to go into your internet life. >> i'm going to say one thing. that idea of disembodiment and freedom was essential when the internet began. all that technology, eutopianism about how to change our environment and in the last five years has been an exponential change. the introduction, proliferation that really pervasive use of photography has, i think, amplified status quo inequities as opposed to helping dissipate them. so something like this where people are changing their avatars really speaks to that idea of how racialized and sexualized those interactions can become. >> so, this is fascinating, right? initially it is that kind of perfect decardium where it could be just ideas. in social media, following cats. i had no idea what they were. and they had bizarre names and that sort of thing. but you're right. as we move from 140 characters to primarily being that your greatest clicks come when you have the picture or video or instagram or the vine, then all the embodiment comes back. you're no longer disembodied thought. more on this. up next, is there a directed line from monica lewinsky to gamer gate? i'm not sure. we'll talk more about that when we come back. dads take nyquil. the nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, fever, best sleep with a cold, medicine. my motheit's delicious. toffee in the world. so now we've turned her toffee into a business. my goal was to take an idea and make it happen. i'm janet long and i formed my toffee company through legalzoom. i never really thought i would make money doing what i love. we created legalzoom to help people start their business and launch their dreams. go to legalzoom.com today and make your business dream a reality. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. ring ring! ...progresso! you soup people have my kids loving vegetables. well vegetables... shh! taste better in our savory broth. vegetables!? no...soup! oh! soup! loaded with vegetables. packed with taste. last week, we talked to anita carcisian, threats made by male gamers rallying under an online movement generally referred to as #gamergate. initially gamer gate was about claims of certain game designers and their relationship with his journalists who cover the industry. but the term has since become synonymous with online assaults and threats toward women within the gaming community. the hallmark of gamer gate is its attacks on those who speak out against them. among their most recent targets is felicia day on "supernatural," video game enthusiast and fictional web series about online gaming. to quote buzz feed, day is the geek of your dreams. day spoke about gamer gate for the first time after attempting to avoid the topic for fear she would be attacked. she wrote, quote, i realize that letting the actions of a few hateful people influence my behavior is absolutely the worst thing i could do in life and not an example i want to set, ever! within minutes she was docs'd. the exact thing she said she feared speaking out might cause. day is not alone. 40% of internet users say they have been harassed online according to new numbers released by pew users. 40% of people online have been called ovengsive names, humiliated, threatened. young women being the most likely to being severely harassed, between 18 and 24, they say they've been the target of sexual harassment, 26% say they've been stalked. the majority of women say online harassers are people they don't know. here is the thing i struggle with. a woman is in much more physical danger from someone she knows, someone she's close to in the physical world more than she is from an anonymous person online according to the most presencive statistics compiled by the justice department more than a decade ago, 55% of american women have been physically assaulted or raped in their lifetimes and 76% of adult women who have been assaulted were assaulted by an intimate partner. so, my question to my panel is how dangerous is harassment in 140 characters? this is the conversation i'm having with my producers all week. i hate the things that get said to me online. but the only person who ever sexually assaulted me was somebody i knew, who i never had any kind of digital interaction with. >> right. i think there's a lot of information, as you said. there's also a lot of overlap between what's happening online and what's happening offline. national network domestic violence recently did a survey of all shelters in the country and found 66,000 calls a day to those shelters for help. at 90% of them, the shelters are struggling with what to do with technology-enabled abuse. they really don't know what to do with it. and a tech summit that is really focused on the mechanics of how that abuse is enabled online, how it's abuse by telephones, e-mail. even in the pew survey, you could see a break between men who are being called names and purposefully embarrassed versus women who are being stalked, physically threatened, sexually harassed and, like many of us, i think, are familiar with, that harassment -- which again is that broad bucket term is sustained. effects on their professional lives, emotional lives, on their prespeech. everybody is worried about a loss of speech. >> i have a find my family a approximate. p on app on my phone. if i'm in a domestic violence situation, my abuser could track me to a safehouse via my phone, which is a little bit different than the actual online stuff. 13-year-old daughter moment here. i also am thinking about -- so, again, for me the experience of sexual assault is a very physical and personal one, but also people who send unsolicited sexualized photographs to young -- that constitutes a kind of sexual assault. >> exactly. there was an interesting study done two years ago, actually, that went into detail about what young girls face. and the idea that there's a choice is ludicrous. they're getting these requests. researchers talked about having to interrupt the study at certain points because these young girls, as young as 11 years old, were getting requests from other boys. >> or from grown men. >> exactly. and what came out of that research was that these young girls feared their peers online in this virtual world more than they did strangers, stranger danger. they think that's very troubling. >> right. i want to come back to your point about the sort of role of men within all of this. so if we go back to gamer gate for a second, which really does seem like it has become shorthand for harassment, abuse, potential violence. former nfl player, trying to find one tweet we could sort of put on television here. and for the record none of you f''ing gamer gate tools tried to dox me even after i tore you a new one. i'm not even a tough target. >> i think, you know, men are probably more conditioned to be less worried about physical assault and obviously sexual assault. what you were saying earlier about even young women who experience a sort of assault. the biggest problem with online harassment, you never know who it is. i've had personal experiences where i have known people who were trolling me and figured it out that it was people i had known since college. i was like, why? what was the point of this? when you have the experience where you know someone personally, you figure out that someone you mow physically in your close proximity is doing something to you and then you have someone who you can't -- completely anonymous, you have no idea. that's really the problem with the effect of online harassment. it's the uncertainty and the unknown that's terrifying. >> i wonder about answers, think through policy answers. we talked about sort of how an individual user might behave differently but whether or not policy answers that preserve the freedom, flexibility, capacity that we love in social media and on the internet that to its core democrat democratic neutrality of it all but create some protects for people to be able to use those free spaces. >> i think that's really true. i think about all the women of color that i know that are always completely trolled every day they live on the internet. and i think one of the things that has to happen is, first, these platforms need to realize that if they're going to continue the way they are -- i'm looking at you, twitter -- you want these users, you want people to use this space, you need to make it a space that is safe for them so you can manage threat. >> we want to be on it. it is a useful, valuable space. >> most of the people who are on it who have a public platform, you have an employer or somebody behind you who can help you work through some of these things if they are internet savvy. if they are not and you're just a blogger who started blogging and somebody didn't like what you did, some picture of you slipped out on the internet, you don't have anybody to protect you. law enforcement, there's nobody there. law enforcement doesn't understand it. i hold these platforms accountable. if you're on senate chat and all your stuff went out last week or you're on twitter and you report -- you were telling me, you report somebody on twitter for abusive behavior and they tell the abuser you're reporting them. >> are there some best practices within the land of facebook and snap chat? are some doing it better than others? or worse? >> i think there are some doing it. they're all at different stages of where they find themselves, right? for 18 months i've been working closely with facebook and recently with twitter. there's a coalition of orgs and individuals that deal with gender violent sexualization and technology. and so facebook, for example, responded 18 months ago to a campaign that we ran that had them confront this idea of what mass masogeny is. twitter is just beginning. >> to think through it? >> to think through it. >> i'm not even sure they're all the way on the end of the spectrum. yik yak -- twitter may fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. >> that comes down to the moderation policies and those are not neutral ideas. those are really informed by people's larger ideas about culture and gender. >> you want to talk about a job i don't want to have, moderating. that is just swimming in it. thank you to soriya. >> thank you. >> and tyler. you really did help me to change my world view on that a little bit. thank you to tyler and anthea, who is just a friend so glad to have you back at the table and thank you tore liv. she is going to stick around a little bit. up next, the big thing kate middleton did this week. ♪ ♪ "here i am. rock you like a hurricane." ♪ fiber one now makes cookies. find them in the cookie aisle. this week, the duchess of cambridge did something millions of pregnant women do every day. she went to work. after being out of the public eye for more than a month, she made her first public appearance since she announced she and prince william announced they are having their second child. severe morning sickness, same condition she suffered from when pregnant with prince george. on tuesday, the duchess was there, smiling with her husband, prince william, as they greeted the president of singapore. she even brave aid ride in a royal carriage and later that day dazzled her royal watchers in a pale blue evening dress. riding in carriages, greeted heads of state, looking glamorous, even when you're a little green around the gil sincere part of the job when you're a member of the royal family. kate has managed to do all of this while also reflecting some of the realities of motherhood. after the beth of her first child, she appeared on the hospital steps, proudly displaying her post baby bump along with her newborn son and taking a break in the early stages of this second pregnancy, she reminds our celebrity-obsessed public that carrying a child is not just about the glow and cute maternity clothes. sometimes it's all about the morning sickness, so severe you simply can't get out of bed. of course, kate is not the only expectant mom to have health issues disrupt her responsibilities. but unlike kate, many pregnant workers don't have the freedom to just take a break from some of their duties. their stories and a new report on the pregnancy penalty, when we come back. the setting is perfect. you know what? 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[ male announcer ] ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain; it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. side effects include headache, flushing, upset stomach and abnormal vision. to avoid long-term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. ask your doctor if viagra is right for you. alriwe need to do somethinguble widifferent. ranch. callahan's? ehh, i mean get away, like, away away. road trip? double wings, extra ranch. feels good to mix it up. the all-new, fuel-efficient volkswagen golf tdi clean diesel. up to 594 miles of adventure in every tank. a report by the center for american progress shows three-quarters of women entering the workforce will become pregnant at least once while employed. whether it's because of a promising career, a much-needed paycheck or both, women are working further into their pregnancies. 88% of first-time mothers who worked during pregnancy are on the job right up until the eighth or ninth month. there are signs that the workplace has not caught up to this reality. a pivotal case involving a maryland woman who says she was the victim of pregnancy discrimination. and a new report by the legal advocacy group a better balance declares that there is a pregnancy penalty. buy as and inflexibility toward women in the workplace that starts when they become pregnant and snowballs into lasting economic disadvantages. the report finds that despite advances in gender equality over the past 40 years, women continue to jeopardize their livelihoods simply by having children. armanda legros says that's what happened to her. during her pregnancy, she was working for an armored truck company when her doctor advised her against lifting heavy objects. her boss responded by sending her home immediately, without pay. earlier this year, she shared her story before a senate committee hearing on working women. >> it should not lead to fear or financial dire straits but the experience of having my son without a paycheck was one of the hardest for my family. >> thank you for having me here this morning. i was with my job about three years before i was pushed out at six months pregnant because i gave a note saying i had to restrain from heavy lifting. my manager took one look at the note and told me that i would have to, you know, work without any restrictions and this was a worldwide policy and i would not be able to go back to work until i provided a note giving me clearance. >> this was a decision made by a manager but a decision that he says is policy of the company. is that right? >> yes, that's correct. >> so hold on for just one second. as a matter of law, if that policy does, in fact, exist, is that a policy that is in violation of u.s. law? >> so the pregnancy discrimination act says you have to treat pregnant workers as well as you treat those who are similar in ability to work. so what that means is if an employer provides light duty or some sort of accommodation, if someone has a temporary back swrr, for example, they have to provide the same accommodations for a pregnant worker. unfortunately, lots of employers still haven't gotten that message. what happens is that women are pushed out and lose their income at the moment they need it most. and no woman should lose her job because she's pregnant. >> and just as a matter of your own personal experience -- we can't adjudicate the case here. had you seen other workers, for example, who had a back swrr and for some other reason why they had to, for some period of time do lighter duty be accommodated? >> there was, in fact, a worker who injured himself on the job. he was accommodated, given light duty. he was also working at the same time period that i was working. so, i didn't see why i wasn't accommodated when he was able to. >> so, as i hear that story, it's like there's 15 thing that is rise up in me about like where is the union in this moment? let's sue the suckers and -- so i'm having all -- but we know that sometimes what feels like a zrimtry act like that is so clear. i'm pregnant. here's my note. go home without pay. but other times that pregnancy penalty, as the report shows, is happening in maybe more insidious, in less clear ways? >> what we see is it's nearly 36 years marking the anniversary of the pregnancy discrimination act. as emily said, pregnancy discrimination is alive and well in this country. while blatant discrimination exists, there are -- this rising form of discrimination that armando mentioned, you hand in a note that requires modest accommodation to continue working, they're pushed out and the economic consequences are truly devastating. you heard from armanda. just this week, you may have heard about another client who requested temporary relief from mandatory overtime. it was doctor's orders and they said, i'm sorry, no restrictions and sent her home. she lost her health insurance. and the economic consequences were really devastating. and this happens to women over and over and over again. >> so i'm thinking about how that ends up structuring an overall economic job market. again, as a college professor, i've got lots of young millenials going out into the job market. if they recognize that even a discussion about family, even at the dinner that you might have or in -- even discussing the fact that you have children. it's all about individual choices but i'm wondering if knowing these realities about pregnancy discrimination shift how young women even encounter the job market. >> of course it has a huge impact. we're still stuck in the stonage when it comes to the workplace. even taking companies sort of off the hook to actually deal with this problem. there's another part of my brain that is enslaved women in the u.s., immigrant working women in the u.s. who were forced not to go home, but to work until it was harmful to themselves, allow me the capacity to work but also wanting to say we demand to be better than -- we would like leave time as well. >> that's why the leave issues are so important. this impacts lower wage women. women who work in retail, as cleaners, as nursing assistants, in restaurants are put in this situation where they're being asked to choose between the job and the health of their pregnancy, which is a decision nobody should have to make. >> hold on for me one second. we'll talk more about this when we come back and talk about sort of the question of both the balance question around employment while pregnant but then also the part where you're parenting a new, young baby and sort of the challenge there as well. we need to take a quick break. but first, i want to listen to the president on the very issue of work/life balance. >> when michelle and i had our girls, we gave everything we had in trying to balance work and chasing careers. i'll be honest with you, it was harder for her than it was for me. when she was with the girls she would feel guilty, am i doing everything i need to do on the job? when she was at work, she worried about the are the girls missing me? i know barack is messing up somehow. ring ring!... progresso! it's ok that your soup tastes like my homemade. it's our slow simmered vegetables and tender white meat chicken. apology accepted. i'm watching you soup people. make it progresso or make it yourself  this is charlie. his long day of doing it himself starts with back pain... and a choice. take 4 advil in a day or just 2 aleve for all day relief. honey, you did it! baby laughs! all the political wrangling over obamacare the public often missed the opportunity to hear about the actual provisions of the affordable care act like section 4207 which requires an employer to provide a reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for her nursing child for one year after the child's birth and employers must give women this break and a place orne a bathroom that is shielded from view and free from intrusion and from co-workers and the public. another reminder that balancing work and family is not just about how organized and determined the individual woman is, it's about policy and ensuring the workplaces make room for pregnant women and mothers. we've talked a little bit about the pregnancy discrimination piece, i want to deep talking about that but there's also the parenting of brand new baby piece that can feel so uneven on a work site. z>> parents of a child without paycheck, it was the most difficult thing for me to do. i felt it would have been easier if i was better financially, and i was clearly not in a state where i was able to provide for them as much as i wanted to provide for them, which made it difficult and made motherhood difficult especially when you want to enjoy having a new baby and enjoy the precious times with them. it felt like more of a burden than a blessing at the time. >> i so appreciate that you just said that because i think particularly in these settings, we just get into the conversation of, so you have 24 hours and how hard it is to balance these hours with baby versus without baby, but that idea of the necessity of an economic safety net in order to be able to even enjoy the experience of parenting, so you would have rather been in a circumstance of having to balance the workplace than not having sufficient resources. >> yes. >> mother hood is a risk factor for poverty for all these reasons because women are forced off the job when they're pregnant because they go on to unpaid leave when they have a baby and have no income, when women's income is so critical for families' economic securities. if the paycheck is lost often the family is in a desperate situation. >> and that gap for women who are mothers versus women not mothers continues over time. there's a gender gap in men ral b general but a mother hood gap. >> right. >> how do you think it's about the culture of presumptions what mothers are meant to be up to versus fathers. fathers experience a pay -- >> a happy bonus. >> many fathers earn more lifetime than men never fathers. >> that needs to be part of the compensation. talking about the gender wage gap, it is smaller than the gap between mothers and non-mothers and yet when we have these conversations, we don't really mention that. and in terms of policy, we've seen countries do very well and reduce that burden on women and put it on, sort of equalize it across men and women in sweden, for example, when you have good child care policies and better parental need policies and in america we're still the last industrialized country to not have paid parental leave. >> i've gotten in trouble more than once for saying this, but it feels to me because there is, that that happens in part pause there is a prurpesumption that h individual family's responsibility is solely their responsibility and that we, rather than saying there is -- we have an interest, a community interest in quality experiences of childhood and of parenting and we're willing to invest in that, just like parks and roads and family is something we could invest in through our policy. >> right, there is a narrative, a strong belief in this country that this is their individual problem to solve on their own compared to many other countries where there is a culture of care, supportive laws and policies to help workers, men and women, care for their families without risky their economic security. as we said in our report the pregnancy penalty is a key trigger for inequality for women that pushes them deep near poverty when they need financial security the most and policies not only strong on pregnancy discrimination happening in new york city and around the country this year but also paid sick days and paid family leave that helps keep women attached to the workforce and earning the income they deserve. >> we talk about employment discrimination. is there pregnancy penalties and discrimination in housing as well? i'm thinking if you show up and you are visibly with child, are you less likely to be able to rent an apartment? does it exist anywhere other than simply in employment? >> certainly there are housing discrimination cases where landlords don't want children in the apartment, even though that's illegal. >> that's a violation of the federal fair housing act. >> it is. there are problems if you're pregnant in school with schools not making basic accommodations and excusing your absences so you can have your baby and take your finals when you come back. there's a link between policy and culture and when we are clear in our public policies that this is what we as a nation and community believe about family and about work and about our obl fwagss to each other, that really has an impact on what people think about our mutual obligations and one of the reasons why the supreme court case is so important about peggy young, the u.p.s. driver forced off the job when she had a 20-pound lifting restriction because it's real opportunity for the court to speak in a clear voice and say that's not what we are about and not what workplace justice is about. >> do employees have a legal responsibility to tell their employer that they are pregnant? >> no. >> you can be just like no, i'm eating cake. >> you never have to tell. at some point you might want to mention it for practical and other reasons but there's never an obligation on the employee to inform the employer, and frankly, at some moments there may be reasons not to, if you're in an interview process early in your pregnancy, studies and reports have shown that actually people respond less well to pregnant women in those situations, are less likely to think that they're competent and committed to their job. there might be a real reason not to bring it up until later in the process when you're a little more secure. >> what choices do you feel like you're left with after you were sent home and sent home without pay in terms of being able to then as a person who was pregnant seek other employment? >> well, i wasn't left with much options. i had to apply for public assistance. i had to basically get medical -- you basically start from scratch to provide for my family, which was very hard, and looking for a job six months pregnant was not easy. i was visibly pregnant so at the interviews it wasn't really, it didn't seem successful and i knew exactly why it wasn't successful. people usually don't talk about it or you know, the interview manager wouldn't speak about it or tell you why, but you know why you didn't get the job. >> so it's compounding. i appreciate you made the point about health insurance being attached to it, right? you go from being, having a paycheck and having health insurance to having neither and then also not being able to just get a job because that pregnancy discrimination is following you in the interviewing process. >> yes, correct. >> it's something we don't think about often enough but one valuable and i appreciate the report and the legal work around it. thank you to emily teen liz also thank you to dena and armando. up next, remembering a rethinker. ♪ (receptionist) gunderman group is growing. getting in a groove. growth is gratifying. goal is to grow. gotta get greater growth. i just talked to ups. they got expert advise, special discounts, new technologies. like smart pick ups. they'll only show up when you print a label and it's automatic. we save time and money. time? money? time and money. awesome. awesome! awesome! awesome! awesome! (all) awesome! i love logistics. the rain, the mud-babam! we're new to the pacific northwest. it's there. the outside comes in. (doorbell) it's a swiffer wetjet! oh, i love this! i could do this everyday. ewww. sunshine is overrated, now we can get messy. in 2012 i spoke at a conference in new orleans on the mental health of new orleans youth. there i had the opportunity to meet a truly extraordinary local community organizer. he was widely praised as a transformative thinker and an outspoken advocate. he had already been a central part of changing the contract new orleans schools had with their food provider to include locally grown produce instead of cheaper processed food. and he was outspoken about how standardized tests created an unhealthy learning environment for students by adding an extraordinary amount of stress to the school day. that organizer, george carter, is 15 years old this year, but he had already established himself as a leading voice in the city. he joined the new orleans organization, kids rethink new orleans schools, when he was only 7. working to evaluate school communities and recommend systematic improvements. george's family is called the founding family of rethink. he and his three siblings have been members of organizations since its beginning. george was a participant in the first ever youth-led orleans parish school board forum. he had been on the team that won a design competition for planning educational facilities. he had contributed to the rethinker's first book "feet to the fire: the rethinkers' guide to changing your schools." george was passionate about making schools safe for kids and he had just begun an internship with the capital post conviction project of louisiana. this week we lost george carter. he was shot. his body found in the middle of the street in new orleans on tuesday at 7:00 a.m. george was 15 years old, but he had already changed his community. he was grappling with big ideas about how to make our world safer and healthier and more just. he was rethinking our schools and advocating for the voices of youth to be included in our education system. he was working to turn big ideas into transformational changes. george carter was 15 years old. and he was shot. george, george's family is accepting contributions to cover funeral expenses. you can find a link to donate at the rethink facebook page. george, rest in peace. rest in power. we will continue the work that you have pioneered. >> i believe that the solutions in us, the youth, we are the one that can change our school. we are the one that goes to the school every day. we are the experts, and we are here education nation, this is our opportunity to take the power and change our schools. >> that's our program for today. thank you for joining us. i'll be bam here tomorrow morning 10:00 a.m. eastern. up next is "weekends with alex witt." ♪ [ woman ] i will embrace change... everything life throws my way. except for frown lines. those i'm throwing back. [ female announcer ] olay total effects. nourishing vitamins, and seven beautiful benefits in one. for younger-looking skin. so while your life may be ever-changing... ♪ ...your beautiful skin will stay beautiful. total effects from olay. your best beautiful. what caught my attention i saw somebody get out of the table and like stand up and i saw him walk up and he like had a gun and i just saw him, boom, boom, boom, start shooting at people, and at that time i kind of just froze. >> witnesses describe the scene of a deadly high school shooting as new details emerge about who the gunman was targeting. new rules, another state changes its quarantine policy. what this could mean for doctors who volunteer in africa. warning signs, a report about the ottawa gunman's actions in the days before the shooting.

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