Are women's rights eroding in the US

So after yesterday's post I decided to look up women's rights in google News and see what came up. I was astonished to see this article from the New York Times  about how on a bus which goes through a Jewish neighbourhood women were not allowed to sit in the front of the bus, in some instances such as if the bus was crowded they were asked to pay the driver then enter the bus through the back door.  I understand that some of this stems from the religious ideals of some in that community, but they are forcing their religious views on other patrons. To some extent I want to say we should respect others' religious freedoms, but at what point do we allow religious freedoms inhibit others personal rights? For me it's when they start to inhibit others rights. For example any one should be able to wear what ever religious dress they like as this guy won the right to, but if it allows you to force me to have to wear your religious dress then you've gone too far. You can eat what ever you want, or don't want, but I'll have my bacon and lobsters and cheese burgers thank you. Where I can sit on a bus, that I think has gone too far as well.

I found another blog post on Mitt Romney's misunderstanding of how the pill works on Jezzabel. The comments are awesome. I love how they point out that at conception yes there is life, but the egg and sperm cells as all cells are alive as well, so if life is equivalent to personhood, washing your hands is murder because you are killing bacterial cells. I realise that this argument is a bit sensational, but I don't think many who take this position actually understand what is happening at this point in the process of the making of a baby. I understand the whole religious nature of their argument, but I think that they have sensationalised this to the extreme as well. Do they really think that God would want to punish a women who needed an abortion to save her life? Maybe they do, maybe they really believe that the women's life isn't worth as much as the unborn child's.  At what point does the zygote become a person? Personally I think I would define it as either when it can feel pain, or more probably, when it can survive outside of the mother, then it is an individual human. Then after this is decided, when the rights of the women and the child clash, how does one choose whose rights should prevail, especially if each of their lives are at stake? Not easy questions, and I'm sure there will always be conflict with any answers given, but I think the more important question is do we as a country want politicians to make hard and fast laws on topics that a) they might not understand completely, and b) on topics that are incredibly personal and the answers probably vary based on your religious beliefs.