However, the statistic you site at the end of the post - one in three women abused by their partners - seems like a startlingly high rate of abuse. If this is true then either many of my female friends and relatives are hiding abuse by their partners or the people I know are lucky. I'm not saying that this statistic isn't true and I'm not trying to be the jerk who tries to find out how the statistic is "wrong". It's just that the sheer number of victims takes your breath away. That would be at least 50 million victims.

Considering how much productivity is lost by abusers harassing their victims at work, I'd say this is a money-saver.

While it's generally unproductive to call people names, I believe you are an offical women-hater.

Heads work better when they are pulled out of the ass, YGBKM. I suppose you fancy yourself a libertarian or something - aren't you people all supposed to move to New Hampshire or something?

But wait, "Badass WA Senator Patty Murray..."? Are you kidding me? "Badass"? There are a lot of words I would use to describe Patty Murray, but "badass" isn't anywhere close to that list. I've met her. She's a good person. She mostly casts votes the way I'd like her to. I voted for her before, and I'll vote for her again. But come on. She's widely known not to be the brightest bulb in the box, and she is hardly an innovator. I'm actually surprised she came up with an idea like this. She is not by any stretch of the imagination a badass.

This law protects everyone.

It's not fair on employers or employees to ask businesses, especially small businesses, to foot the bill for employee misfortunes they had nothing to do with. Victim protection, like health care, should be covered by nationalized services.

Hope that happens after 2008.

Today (for those still up).

In the Seattle metro area.

This frankly sounds like horseshit. Please cite your source for that stat.

(That said, this is probably good legislation).

1) Employers WILL look at things like this and see yet another risk in hiring a female employee, unfortunately. It's just cold economics. Unless, perhaps, there is some risk of roughly equal likelihood that men would seek leave. But I don't see how that could be appropriately fit in to this effort, since men don't quite suffer from domestic abuse the way women do.

2) How easy is it to prove that an at-will employee was fired because of abuse?