Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Health, Women.
Tags: birth control, contraception, edward r. korman, emergency contraception, judge korman, morning after pill, obama administration, reproductive rights, roger hollander, women, women's rights
Today, U.S. District Court Judge Edward R. Korman heard arguments regarding the Obama administration’s Motion to Stay his Order from April 5, 2013, requiring that emergency contraception be made available without age and point-of-sale restrictions. Over a two-hour period, Judge Korman made it clear that the government’s position was unjustifiable. Calling the government’s conduct a “charade” the Judge condemned the “political influence” that has caused a “total and complete corruption of the administrative process.”
“As Judge Korman made clear today, the administration’s tactics affect all women but have the greatest negative impact on poor women, young women and African American women, as well as immigrant women. This is politics at its worst and the administration should be ashamed of its duplicitous conduct,” stated Andrea Costello, Senior Staff Attorney at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and counsel for the plaintiffs in the litigation.
“President Obama sought to sacrifice the reproductive rights of women of all ages at the altar of his political strategy,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. “He wants to placate the political right wing at the expense of the health needs and reproductive rights of women. It is as plain as day that the Obama administration has used deception and distraction as a tactic to avoid complying with the Court Order to make the Morning After Pill available without age restriction or identification barriers.”
The Court indicated that it would issue a ruling on the government’s motion by the end of the week.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) represents the plaintiffs, grassroots feminists activists with National Women’s Liberation (NWL) and 15-year-old Anaya Kelly in Tummino v. Hamburg. The lawsuit was filed along with the Center for Reproductive Rights and Southern Legal Counsel against the Food and Drug administration and Health and Human Services.
On April 5, the Court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor that there was no scientific basis for the Obama administration to continue to restrict access to emergency contraception. Judge Korman ordered that it be made available to women and girls “without a prescription and without point-of-sale or age restrictions within thirty days.” The Court found that the FDA had improperly restricted this safe and effective contraceptive after “political interference” from the White House, and had done so against the medical and scientific evidence recommending the drug be made readily available.
Instead of complying with the Court’s Order, the government announced last Tuesday that it would force all women and girls to present government-issued ID to store clerks in order to obtain emergency contraceptives, and that it would continue to deprive over-the-counter access to young teenagers. The next day, Wednesday, the government announced it was appealing the decision and that it was seeking a stay of the order pending appeal.
Originally published by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.
Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Women.
Tags: birth control, condoms, contraception, family planning, reproductive rights, robin marty, roger hollander, women health, women's rights
Photo: 100 Red Flags.
by Robin Marty, Senior Political Reporter, RH Reality Check
November 16, 2012 – 10:00am (Print)
Note: Think that anti-choice politicians and activists aren’t trying to outlaw contraception? Think again. Follow along in an ongoing series that proves beyond a doubt that they really are coming for your birth control.
How do you make an extreme anti-choice advocate angry? Suggest that not being forced to have one child after another after another after another might be a positive goal toward which to work.
Human Life International is aghast at the idea that global groups might think it would be beneficial to both women and their families that they have some control over when they get pregnant, spacing children far enough apart to be able to recover physically between births and actually care for the children that they give birth to. In fact, the idea is so upsetting, they are up at arms with the assumption that their tax dollars might somehow go to fund this — despite the fact that it would save money in additional medical costs.
Via LifesiteNews:
Declaring birth control a right means “everyone else must pay for…the new right” Clowes told LifeSiteNews, “even if those forced to pay for it may object to it on moral grounds. This violates the more basic human right of freedom of conscience, which has for some time now been dispensed with by UN ‘human rights’ champions.”
The UNFPA estimates “222 million women have an unmet need for contraception” and that providing this “need” will cost $4.1 billion.
Providing such funds, the report states, “would save approximately $5.7 billion in maternal and newborn health services” – an argument similar to that made by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in the United States.
The article claims that IUDs and hormonal contraception both work to keep fertilized eggs from implanting, causing “abortions.” But even more interesting is the comments, where even barrier methods of contraception is considered “murder” of children. As one commenter stated, condom use is “murder in potential as much as a conceiveved [sic] fetus is human life in potential.”
The answer to avoiding all murder is still the same: sex only in marriage, and while using natural family planning. Anything else is “rape.”
Yes, you heard me, they are redefining rape again.
For those having sexual relations within natural marriage and want to regulate births, there is natural family planning. Those having sex outside of marriage, be prepared for an unfulfilled life where sexual intimacy is surrounded by unnatural, unreliable, and deadly methods of birth control and is typically an expression of consensual, mutual objectification- which, for all intents and purposes is a form of rape.
The only thing seem to enjoy more than defining rape? Apparently, coming up with new reasons to come for your birth control, of course.
Follow Robin Marty on Twitter, @robinmarty
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Health, Women.
Tags: abortion, anti-choice, Canada, pro choice, reproductive rights, Stephen Harper, women's health, women's rights
I just signed on to this urgent campaign to defend women’s reproductive
rights in Canada. This is an important issue and I hope you’ll join me:
http://www.leadnow.ca/defend-our-reproductive-rights
In
just 48 hours, our MPs will debate a Conservative motion that the Canadian
Medical Association, representing 70,000 doctors, is calling a backdoor attempt
to criminalize abortion.
In 1988, the Supreme Court of
Canada ruled that the abortion provision of the Criminal Code was
unconstitutional. But this week, Parliament will be debating a motion
that would threaten our reproductive rights – and the rights of our friends,
daughters, mothers, sisters, and partners.
Prime Minister Harper has
chosen to allow this motion to go forward to a free vote in Parliament, so every
MP must decide whether or not they will stand up for the rights that women and
our allies have been fighting to protect for decades.
We need a
huge public outcry to show our MPs that Canadians will not tolerate this attack
on women’s rights. Please click here to send an urgent message to your MP to
defeat Motion-312 now – then forward this to
everyone.
http://www.leadnow.ca/defend-our-reproductive-rights
Thank
you,
Roger Hollander
Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Humor, Women.
Tags: abby zimet, birth control, Humor, political satire, reproductive rights, republicans, roger hollander, women's health
Because women today are faced with so many choices, it’s safe to assume most of the decisions they make will be wrong. Coming to their rescue is a new program to sponsor a uterus in need. Act now, and you’ll get a kit including the uterus’ photo, biography and information about “the woman who happens to surround it.” Brought to you by some funny people.
From comments on the program: “I’d like to sponsor a uterus but I’m easily distracted by other things…Can I arrange to have the uterus put down if I lose interest?”
Posted by rogerhollander in Uncategorized.
Tags: abstention, adolescent sexuality, birth control, Contraception | HIV and AIDS, danene sorace, debra hauser, elizabeth schroeder, health, human rights, monica rodriguez, reproductive rights, roger hollander, sex education, Sexual rights, Sexuality, sexuality education, Sexually Transmitted Infection, siecus, std, stds, STIs, virginity pledges
by Debra Hauser, Advocates for Youth
and Monica Rodriguez, Sexuality Information & Education Council of the US (SIECUS)
and Elizabeth Schroeder and Danene Sorace
May 1, 2012 – 9:20am, www.realitycheck.org
Sometime this month, an updated list of “evidence-based” teen pregnancy prevention programs was endorsed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and posted to the website of the Office of Adolescent Health (OAH).
No notice, not even a press release to announce the addition of three programs to the coveted list of 28 deemed effective and carrying the HHS seal of approval. Until now, this list was the holy grail of the Administration’s commitment to a science-based approach to teen pregnancy prevention and a directive for grantees of the President’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative (TPPI).
So why the secrecy about the new additions? What does the Administration have to hide?
We have been around long enough to expect politics as usual in Washington, D.C. The backroom deals and secrecy should not surprise us. The jettisoning of young people and their sexual health for political expediency is not new. But, this blatant hypocrisy needs to stop. This latest example is just too much.
Perhaps the Administration realized that the inclusion of Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education on this select list would call into question its commitment to young people and their sexual health. Once again, they have succumbed to the political pressure of social conservatives and allowed the ideology of the right to prevail over the health and well-being of the nation’s youth. The Obama Administration’s endorsement of this abstinence-only-until marriage program runs in direct contradiction to its stated commitment to the health and well-being of young people and, quite possibly, its promise to uphold science and evidence.
The Trampling of Young People’s Sexual Health
The President has talked about his administration’s commitment to LGBT health and rights by recording his own “It Gets Better Video” and announcing support for both the Safe Schools Improvement Act and Student Non-Discrimination Act. And, the CDC has recognized the disproportionate impact of the HIV epidemic on young men who have sex with men and has committed millions of federal dollars to reducing the burden of disease on this population.
Yet, at best Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education ignores LGBT youth – and at worst it promotes homophobia. The stigmatization of LGBT youth throughout the program reinforces the cultural invisibility and bias these students already face in many schools and communities. The curriculum’s focus on marriage as the only appropriate context for sexual behavior further ostracizes LGBT youth and the children of LGBT parents who still cannot legally marry in most states.
The Director of the CDC has called teen pregnancy prevention and HIV prevention two of the country’s six “winnable battles,” and recent analysis of National Survey of Family Growth data trends indicates that significant reductions in teen births have been primarily fueled by increased contraceptive use.
Today roughly 40 percent of high school students have had sex and young people under age 29 continue to account for approximately 30 percent of all new cases of HIV infection.
Yet, Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education does not include information about the health benefits of contraception or condoms.
Igniting Fears and Spreading Misinformation
In fact, Heritage Keepers contains little or no information about puberty, anatomy, sexually transmitted diseases, or sexual behavior. Instead, most of its lessons are devoted to promoting the importance of heterosexual marriage and the value of abstinence before marriage. Students are asked to take virginity pledges and class time is devoted to having students envision and plan their wedding days. Heritage Keepers also teaches students that:
- “Males and females are aroused at different levels of intimacy. Males are more sight orientated whereas females are more touch orientated.” The implications of this difference are explained further: “This is why girls need to be careful with what they wear, because males are looking! The girl might be thinking fashion, while the boy is thinking sex. For this reason, girls have a responsibility to wear modest clothing that doesn’t invite lustful thoughts.” (Heritage Keepers, Student Manual, p. 46)
- “Sex is like fire. Inside the appropriate boundary of marriage, sex is a great thing! Outside of marriage, sex can be dangerous.” (Heritage Keeper, Student Manual, p. 22)
- “Cohabitation (when two people live together before marriage) is not like marriage! [Heritage Keepers, p. 30] When couples live together outside of marriage, the relationships are weaker, more violent, less [equal], and more likely to lead to divorce” (Heritage Keepers, Student Manual, p. 26)
- “One reason may be that when people bond closely through sexual activity, then break up and bond with someone else, and then someone else, it may become increasingly difficult to maintain a lasting bond.” (Heritage Keepers, Teacher Manual, p. 56)
- Sexual activity outside of marriage can lead to:“Sexually Transmitted Viruses, Sexually Transmitted Bacteria, Cervical Cancer, AIDS, Legal and financial responsibility for a child until he or she is at least 18, Raising a child alone, Emotional hurt and regret, Increased chance of abuse from a partner.” (Heritage Keepers, Student Manual, p. 35)
When planning their weddings during class:
- Young men are asked to envision their wedding day: “The doors swing open and there stands your bride in her white dress…This is the woman you have waited for (remained abstinent for) who has waited for you…This woman loves you and trusts you with all that she is and all that she has. You want to be strong, respectful and courageous for her. With all your heart, you want to protect her, and by waiting (sexually) you have.” (Heritage Keepers, Student Manual, p. 59)
- Young women are asked to envision their wedding day: “Everything is just as you have seen it in a million daydreams…” When the bride takes her father’s arm: “Your true love stands at the front. This is the man who you have waited for (remained abstinent for) and who has waited for you…This man wants to be strong and courageous for you, to cherish and protect you… You are ready to trust him with all that you have and all that you are, because you have waited (sexually) you have it all to give.” (Heritage Keepers, Student Manual, p. 49)
Limited Evidence of Effectiveness
Not only does the Heritage Keepers program ostracize LGBT youth, withhold life-saving information from sexually active and HIV-positive youth, and use fear-based messages to shame sexually active youth, youth who have experienced sexual assault, and youth living in “nontraditional” households, there are also questions about the effectiveness of this program to delay sexual initiation or favorably impact sexual behavior among youth. The original evaluation by Stan Weed, et al., of the Heritage Keepers program in 2005 was criticized by other researchers for having a flawed design and was never published, much less published in a peer-reviewed journal. Next, the program was reviewed in a congressionally mandated study of Title V abstinence-only-until marriage programs conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., and published in 2007. Mathematica found no evidence to support the effectiveness of the program. Specifically, their interim report stated:
…the [Heritage Keepers] Life Skills Education Component did not have significant impacts on 11 of the 12 intermediate outcomes related to sexual abstinence. The one exception is a significant impact among middle school youth on their friends’ support for abstinence.
Mathematica’s final report concluded:
Findings indicate that the [Heritage Keepers Abstinence Program’s] Life Skills Education Component had little or no impact on sexual abstinence or activity.
But, we are expected to believe that the third time must be a charm? This winter, Mathematica was contracted by HHS to review evaluations for their rigor, and this time they recommended Heritage Keepers for inclusion on the list of HHS-approved programs. To date, there is still no published peer-reviewed manuscript to help assess what, if anything, changed for the program to make the list. Was a new study conducted? Did the authors submit new data or simply rework the old?
A Call for Evidence and Rights
Whether the data exists to support the program’s effectiveness is still in question, but the egregious content of the program is crystal clear. The Administration’s hypocrisy must end. It is time to embrace both an evidence- and a rights-based approach to youth sexual health promotion. Evidence of effectiveness is important, but it should not be sufficient. It is not enough to help some students delay sexual initiation while leaving others ill-equipped to protect themselves when they do have sex. It is unacceptable to promote teen pregnancy prevention at the cost of ostracizing LGBT youth, survivors of sexual assault, or youth who are sexually active. Thirty years of public health science clearly demonstrates that providing young people with information about the health benefits of both abstinence and contraception and condoms, does not cause young people to initiate sex earlier or have sex more often. Abstinence-only-until marriage programs leave young people unprepared. They are unethical.
Young people have the right to honest, age-appropriate, comprehensive sexual health information to help them protect their health and lives. The Administration should immediately remove Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education from the HHS-endorsed list of evidence-based programs currently posted on the Office of Adolescent Health’s (OAH) website. America’s youth deserve better.
Follow Debra Hauser on Twitter, @AdvocatesTweets
Posted by rogerhollander in Arizona, Health, Women.
Tags: abby zimet, abortion, anti-abortion, Arizona, conception, health, jan brewer, personhood, reproductive health, reproductive rights, roger hollander, women, women's rights
by Abby Zimet
Proving definitively that Arizona is the worst place in the country to be a woman, or even a biped, Gov. Jan Brewer has signed into law three extreme anti-abortion measures including a so-called “egg drop” bill that effectively bans abortion after 18 weeks, except in cases of medical emergency, by redefining pregnancy as beginning two weeks before conception. Also under the richly named Women’s Health and Safety Act, schools and the state must promote adoption and birth as the best outcome for an unwanted pregnancy, in part by displaying images of fetuses. And clinics must have signs warning against abortion “coercion” – all this, in the name of “protecting women from the serious health and safety risks of abortion.” We’re speechless.
Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Right Wing, Women.
Tags: abby zimet, abortion, abortion rights, alan, Arizona, birth control, dick, gop, idaho, pro choice, reproductive health, reproductive rights, republicans, right wing, roger hollander, women, women's health, women's rights
The surreally awful news in the war on lady parts just keeps coming. An Idaho legislator wants women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound and “counselling;” if she was raped, her doctor should make sure she was really raped and not just a participant in “normal relations in a marriage.” Alaska’s State Rep. Alan Dick (really) wants women seeking an abortion to get an ultrasound and a written permission slip from the guy who, you know. Arizona wants to make it nigh on impossible to get an abortion, but if you make it through all the legislative hurdles you should have to watch an abortion. Then again, the author of the Arizona bill requiring women to prove to their bosses they are using birth control pills for non-slutty reasons, or get fired, is rewriting the bill because apparently, bewilderingly, some people got upset. Funny: Why don’t we feel better?
Posted by rogerhollander in Art, Literature and Culture, Health, Media, Women.
Tags: abortion, doonesbury, garry trudeau, hb 15, Media, political satire, pro choice, rape, reproductive health, reproductive rights, roger hollander, wiomen's rights, women
Roger’s note: this article contains a wonderful interview with Garry Trudeau, a most worthwhile read. I loved his phrase: “comedy malpractice.”
Published on Monday, March 12, 2012 by
Common Dreams
– Common Dreams staff
Fans of Garry Trudeau’s ‘Doonesbury’ may have to adjust their reading habits this week as many US newspapers have decided to move the popular comic strip from its place on the comics page to the editorial section. Some papers, in fact, have decide to drop the strip entirely after they saw that this week’s arch would be grappling with a rash of new state laws across the country that will require women seeking abortions to submit to state-run ultrasounds and other invasive procedures.
The Los Angeles Times is one of the papers that has decided to run the series, but will move it from the comic pages, where it normally appears, to their Op-Ed page. Explaining the decision, Sue Horton, the Op-Ed and Sunday Opinion editor of The Times, said, “We carry both op-eds and cartoons about controversial subjects, and this is a controversial subject.”
And The Guardian in the UK, which also runs the strip, reported today:
Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau has defended his cartoon strip about abortion, which several US newspapers are refusing to run, saying he felt compelled to respond to the way Republicans across America are undermining women’s healthcare rights.
The strip, published on Monday and scheduled to run all week, has been rejected by several papers, while others said they were switching it from the comic section to the editorial page.
In an email exchange with the Guardian, Trudeau expressed dismay over the papers’ decision but was unrepentant, describing as “appalling” and “insane” Republican state moves on women’s healthcare.
About 1,400 newspapers, including the Guardian, take the Doonesbury cartoon. The Guardian newspaper is running the cartoon as normal on Monday.
The strip deals specifically with a law introduced in Texas and other states requiring a woman who wants to have an abortion to have an ultrasound scan, or sonogram, which will show an image of the foetus and other details, in an attempt to make her reconsider.
It portrays a woman who turns up at an abortion clinic in Texas and is told to take a seat in “the shaming room”. A state legislator asks if she has been at the clinic before and, when she says she had been to get contraceptives, he replies: “Do your parents know you’re a slut?”
Later, she says she does not want an intrusive vaginal examination but is told by a nurse: “The male Republicans who run Texas require that all abortion seekers be examined with a 10-inch shaming wand.” The nurse adds: “By the authority invested in me by the GOP base, I thee rape.”
The Kansas City Star is among the papers not running the cartoon in its normal slot. “We felt the content was too much for many of the readers of our family-friendly comic page,” an editor told Associated Press. The Star will use a replacement strip offered by the organisation that syndicates Doonesbury, Universal Uclick, and move the abortion one to its editorial pages.
The cartoonist was not surprised about the controversary surrounding the new series, and defended it in several interviews by saying that the new spate of laws was shocking, deplorable, and rife with comic opportunity. “To ignore it,” Trudeau told The Washington Post, “would have been comedy malpractice.” Trudeau’s complete interview with the Posts follows:
Q: In 1985, you decided to pull a week of abortion-related strips satirizing the film “The Silent Scream,” which purported to show the reactions of a fetus. So what’s different now? What spurred you to create an abortion narrative in the current political climate?
A: In my 42 years with UPS, the “Silent Scream” week was the only series that the syndicate ever strongly objected to. [Syndicate president Lee Salem] felt that it would be deeply harmful to the feature and that we would lose clients permanently. They had supported me through so much for so long, I felt obliged to go with their call.
Such was not the case this week. There was no dispute over contents, just some discussion over whether to prepare a substitute week for editors who requested one [which we did].
I chose the topic of compulsory sonograms because it was in the news and because of its relevance to the broader battle over women’s health currently being waged in several states. For some reason, the GOP has chosen 2012 to re-litigate reproductive freedom, an issue that was resolved decades ago. Why [Rick] Santorum, [Rush] Limbaugh et al. thought this would be a good time to declare war on half the electorate, I cannot say. But to ignore it would have been comedy malpractice.
Q: After four decades, you’re an expert at knowing the hot-button satiric words and phrases — such as, in the case [this] week, terms such as “10-inch shaming wand.” Can you speak to how you approached writing these strips?
A: Oddly, for such a sensitive topic, I found it easy to write. The story is very straightforward — it’s not high-concept like [the satiric] Little Timmy in “Silent Scream” — and the only creative problem I had to work through was the physician’s perspective. I settled on resigned outrage.
Texas’s HB-15 [bill] isn’t hard to explain: The bill says that in order for a woman to obtain a perfectly legal medical procedure, she is first compelled by law to endure a vaginal probe with a hard, plastic 10-inch wand. The World Health Organization defines rape as “physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration — even if slight — of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object.” You tell me the difference.
Q: Going back through the history of the strip, I’m surprised not to see a previous abortion strip in “Doonesbury’s” dossier. Have you tackled abortion before?
A: No. Roe v. Wade was decided while I was still in school. Planned Parenthood was embraced by both parties. Contraception was on its way to being used by 99 percent of American women. I thought reproductive rights was a settled issue. Who knew we had turned into a nation of sluts?
Q: Over the past 40 years, “Doonesbury” helped change the comics game for many newspapers and comics creators themselves. Do you think newspaper editors have “loosened up” over time regarding comics? Or have they grown more reluctant or skittish — or, even worse, dispassionate?
A: It’s a mix, but in general I spend much less time playing defense, presumably because of the ubiquity of topical satire these days. “South Park” and “The Daily Show” have stretched the envelope so much, most editors no longer see “Doonesbury” as the rolling provocation they once did.
Plus, I think I get a bit of a pass simply because I’ve been around so long. After all this time, editors know pretty much what they’re going to get with the strip.
Posted by rogerhollander in Criminal Justice, Health, Idaho, Women.
Tags: abortion, abortion rights, choice movement, Criminal Justice, fetal pain, health, idaho, idaho law, rebecca boone, reproductive rights, roger hollander, Unwanted Pregnancy, women's rights
// <![CDATA[
var inst_def = Badges.getUniqName();
window[inst_def.obj_name] = new Badges({
unique_id: inst_def.unique_id,
holder_id: "badges_v2_1",
panel_layout: 8,
complete_callback_func_name: "",
share_details_callback: false,
additional_panel_classes: "",
entry_params: {
"id" : 944351,
"title" : "Idaho Abortion Lawsuit: Jennie Linn McCormack Challenges State Fetal Pain Law",
"created_on": 1314844320,
"vertical_name": "Politics",
"tweet_comm_hash" : "",
"tweet_comm_text" : "",
"force_fb_like" : 1
},
global_name: "window." + inst_def.obj_name
});
// =====================================================
// Now goes logic for every layout
window[inst_def.obj_name].setPanelBorderStyle("glamorous_4");
var slices = {
1: "facebook_glamorous",
2: "retweet_glamorous",
3: "email_glamorous",
4: "google_plusone_glamorous"
};
// checking for ie7 safari 3 and ff 3.5 browsers because +1 badge not work
if ((jQuery.browser.mozilla && (jQuery.browser.version <= '1.9.2'))
|| (jQuery.browser.msie && (jQuery.browser.version <= '7.0'))
|| (jQuery.browser.safari && (jQuery.browser.version Roger’s note: aren’t you touched by the compassion of the Fundamentalist Christian Right (Wrong) and their concern for foetal pain (although it’s all right to bomb into smithereens Muslim civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan)? And their passion for preventing the government from impinging on individual freedom (like the freedom to pollute the planet into oblivion) but somehow doesn’t include a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions).
Jennie Linn McCormack filed suit in federal court against Bannock County’s prosecuting attorney, contending Idaho’s new law banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy violates the Constitution.
Idaho is one of six states that have enacted such bans in the two years. The bans are based on the premise that a fetus may feel pain at 20 weeks.
McCormack, who was briefly charged with having an illegal abortion, is seeking class-action status in her lawsuit against prosecutor Mark Hiedeman. The suit also challenges other parts of Idaho abortion law.
McCormack was charged with a felony in June after police said she took pills to terminate her pregnancy last December. Police found the fetus in a box at McCormack’s Pocatello home Jan. 9, and an autopsy determined it was between five and six months gestation. Police said McCormack told them she didn’t have enough money to go to a licensed medical professional, so her sister helped her access abortion-inducing drugs online.
A judge later dismissed the criminal case without prejudice for lack of evidence. That means the prosecutor may refile charges if he chooses, unless the federal courts stop him from doing so.
In the lawsuit, McCormack challenges the lack of access to abortions for women in her region, as well as the ban on abortions after 20 weeks.
She notes there are no elective-abortion providers in southeastern Idaho, forcing women seeking the procedure to travel elsewhere.
McCormack was unmarried and unemployed at the time of her pregnancy – with an income of $200 to $250 a month – and already had three children. She couldn’t afford the time or money it would take to travel to Salt Lake City to get an abortion, the lawsuit says.
If McCormack prevails, it will be a win for women across the region, said her attorney, Richard Hearn of Pocatello.
“If we’re successful, they’ll be able to access legal and safe abortions in southeastern Idaho,” whether performed with medicine or surgically in a clinic, Hearn said Wednesday.
Hiedeman could not be immediately reached for comment.
Idaho law bars women from getting abortions from anyone but licensed Idaho physicians, and requires that second-trimester abortions be performed in a hospital. Women who purposely cause their own abortions, or who get abortions from unlicensed physicians, face up to five years in prison and up to a $5,000 fine.
McCormack is asking a judge to find that those criminal sanctions are unconstitutional, in part because they wrongly burden women in regions like southeastern Idaho that lack abortion providers.
Another Idaho law, passed during the 2011 Legislature, bans abortions once a fetus has reached 20 weeks on the belief that fetuses begin to feel pain at that stage. Idaho was one of five states – along with Kansas, Alabama, Indiana and Oklahoma – that enacted bans modeled after a fetal pain bill passed in Nebraska in 2010.
McCormack says the new law violates the Constitution because it doesn’t contain an exception allowing for abortions if necessary to preserve the mother’s health, and because it prohibits some abortions even before a fetus has reached viability. Roe v. Wade barred states from prohibiting abortions done before the age of viability, and other legal rulings have since determined viability occurs at 22 to 23 weeks gestation.
That contention echoes an opinion written by Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden’s office, which advised state lawmakers that the fetal pain bill could be found unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.
It’s not the first time Idaho lawmakers have passed abortion laws that they were warned likely would be found unconstitutional. In the past decade, Idaho has spent more than $730,000 to defend restrictive abortion laws that ended up being struck down by courts. Those costly rulings prompted legislative leaders in recent years to require that abortion-related legislation be reviewed by the Idaho attorney general’s office.
Republican state Sen. Chuck Winder, who sponsored Idaho’s fetal pain legislation, didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
The National Right to Life Committee said Wednesday it believes the law will be upheld.
“Unborn children recoil from painful stimuli, their stress hormones increase when they are subjected to any painful stimuli, and they require anesthesia for fetal surgery,” the group’s legislative director, Mary Spaulding Balch, said in a statement. “We are confident that the Supreme Court will ultimately agree and will recognize the right of the state to protect these children from the excruciatingly painful death of abortion.”
Janet Crepps, director of the U.S. legal program for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said laws like fetal pain bills are both unconstitutional and bad policy. They also are “demeaning to women and their doctors” because they don’t take into account how each woman’s situation is different, she said.
“When you think about all the regulations that are piled onto abortion, it just clearly becomes impossible for doctors to provide them and women to receive them in a situation like McCormack’s,” Crepps said. “It’s a really sad situation.”
___
Associated Press writers John Miller in Boise; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala.; Phillip Rawls in Montgomery, Ala.; Jennifer O’Malley in Indianapolis; Scott McFetridge in Omaha, Neb.; and Chris Clark in Kansas City, Kansas, contributed to this report.
Posted by rogerhollander in Democracy, Women.
Tags: abortion, abortion rights, crystal eastman, female suffrage, feminism, gender equality, gender norms, hyde amendment, parental leave, pay inequality, reproductive rights, roger hollander, suffrage, wal-mart, women's rights
Op-Ed, LA Times, August 26, 2011
American women won the right to vote in 1920. But how far have we come since
on other issues important to women?
Today we celebrate the anniversary of female suffrage, a
victory that took more than 70 years of political struggle to achieve. After
women won the right to vote in 1920, socialist feminist Crystal Eastman observed
that suffrage was an important first step but that what women really wanted was
freedom. In an essay titled “Now We Can Begin,” she laid out a plan toward this
goal that is still relevant today.Eastman outlined a four-point program:
economic independence for women (including freedom to choose an occupation and
equal pay), gender equality at home (raising “feminist sons” to share the
responsibilities of family life), “voluntary motherhood” (reproductive freedom)
and “motherhood endowment,” or financial support for child-rearing and
homemaking.Since the 1920s, women have won many rights and opportunities
in areas as diverse as higher education, professional sports and, in six states,
same-sex marriage. But on the core priorities that Eastman identified, how far
have we come?
Eastman optimistically called equality in the workplace
“the easiest part of our program,” noting that “the ground is already broken” on
women’s participation in various professions, trades and unions. One of the
chief barriers was “inequality in pay,” a problem that has proved remarkably
enduring.
Women on average still make only 77 cents for every dollar paid
to their male counterparts, according to the National Women’s Law Center. This
pay disparity is worst for women of color, who earn only 61 cents if they are
African American and 52 cents if they are Latina. This pattern has been
remarkably constant.
Women’s lower earnings are related to gender segmentation in the workplace that relegates women to the lower rungs of the
economic ladder. At Wal-Mart, for example — the nation’s biggest employer — women make up about 70% of hourly
workers but only about 30% of managers. The Supreme Court recently ruled that
the retailer’s female employees could not join together in a class-action
lawsuit, making it nearly impossible for them to challenge patterns of
discrimination.
Although women now outnumber men on college campuses, the
upper echelons of most professions and political bodies remain male-dominated.
Just look at Congress: Only 17% of its members are women. Between 1923 and 2011,
only 28 women have chaired congressional committees, and only 45 women of color
have ever served in Congress — just one in the Senate. The new congressional
“super-committee” of 12 legislators charged with reducing the federal deficit
has one white woman and not a single woman of color.
On the home front, gender norms have changed significantly since 1920, but women still do the
lion’s share of child care, elder care and household planning. And child-rearing
is still regarded as a private matter rather than a contribution to society.
Although a recent Time magazine cover story suggested an end to “chore wars,”
its own data showed that married women with children still do more work at home
than their husbands, and full-time employed moms with children under age 6 spend
more hours on household chores than any other group.
Given women’s disproportionate responsibility for child-rearing amid lesser economic
opportunities, the ability to plan whether and when to have children is
critically important. As Eastman said: “Freedom of any kind is hardly worth
considering unless it is assumed that [women] will know how to control the size
of their families.”
This was a tall order in 1920, when it was a crime
simply to disseminate information about contraception. Fertility control is now
legal, but women’s reproductive freedom is under intense attack. The 2011
legislative session saw a record number of anti-choice bills introduced — and
passed into law. In just six months, state legislatures passed 80 laws to
restrict access to abortion.
State legislatures also have made deep cuts to family planning budgets, which has the
perverse result of increasing unintended pregnancies. The Hyde Amendment bans
federal Medicaid coverage of abortion, and only 15 states pay for abortion care
with their own revenue. This means that low-income women in most of the country
can have an abortion only if they can afford to pay for it out of pocket, making
the right to abortion an empty promise for millions of women.
When it comes to support for child-rearing, the United States is the only major
industrialized nation without a national policy guaranteeing paid parental
leave. While a few states and cities have taken the initiative to implement
their own policies, the vast majority of mothers (and fathers) have no right to
paid time off to care for a newborn baby. Many workers do not even have a right
to take unpaid leave, because the federal Family and Medical Leave Act applies
only to relatively long-term workers in workplaces with 50 or more employees,
leaving out small businesses, new employees and workers who have put in fewer
than 1,250 hours at that job.
With no paid leave, and discrimination against pregnant
women on the rise, women are a long way from Eastman’s vision of having
child-rearing “recognized by the world as work, requiring a definite economic
reward and not merely entitling the performer to be dependent on some
man.”
In all four areas that Eastman discussed, female suffrage has not
ushered in the wide-ranging changes that its opponents feared and its advocates
championed.
Eastman understood that work and home are inextricably bound,
that women’s freedom depends on resolving what we now call “work/family”
conflict. As long as women face a “motherhood penalty” while men benefit from a
“fatherhood bonus,” gender equality will remain out of reach. Racial
discrimination has made the path to equality that much harder for women of
color.
The real question now is, in Eastman’s words, “how to arrange the
world” so that women have “a chance to exercise their infinitely varied gifts in
infinitely varied ways, instead of being destined by the accident of their sex”
to lesser economic opportunities and heavier domestic burdens.
To do this, our institutions must become more responsive. The workplace has to change
to allow people with families to hold good jobs, and policies must change to
allow women to plan their families and to ensure that no one is left behind. In
the 90 years since winning the right to vote, women have achieved gains by
organizing in the streets and the workplace, by lobbying legislatures and
bringing lawsuits. Arranging a more just world will require a new wave of
political action at all levels, from local to national, home to
workplace.
On Aug. 26, 2020, we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of
women’s suffrage. Let’s make this the decade we create the conditions that bring
true equality.
Eve Weinbaum is director of the Labor Center and an
associate professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Rachel Roth is director of communications and foundation support at the National
Network of Abortion Funds and the author of a book on women’s
rights.
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG -
http://www.avg.com
Version: 9.0.901 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3859 – Release Date:
08/26/11 00:34:00
Judge Calls Obama Administration Position a “Charade” in Blocking Morning After Pill May 7, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Health, Women.Tags: birth control, contraception, edward r. korman, emergency contraception, judge korman, morning after pill, obama administration, reproductive rights, roger hollander, women, women's rights
add a comment
Today, U.S. District Court Judge Edward R. Korman heard arguments regarding the Obama administration’s Motion to Stay his Order from April 5, 2013, requiring that emergency contraception be made available without age and point-of-sale restrictions. Over a two-hour period, Judge Korman made it clear that the government’s position was unjustifiable. Calling the government’s conduct a “charade” the Judge condemned the “political influence” that has caused a “total and complete corruption of the administrative process.”
“As Judge Korman made clear today, the administration’s tactics affect all women but have the greatest negative impact on poor women, young women and African American women, as well as immigrant women. This is politics at its worst and the administration should be ashamed of its duplicitous conduct,” stated Andrea Costello, Senior Staff Attorney at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and counsel for the plaintiffs in the litigation.
“President Obama sought to sacrifice the reproductive rights of women of all ages at the altar of his political strategy,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. “He wants to placate the political right wing at the expense of the health needs and reproductive rights of women. It is as plain as day that the Obama administration has used deception and distraction as a tactic to avoid complying with the Court Order to make the Morning After Pill available without age restriction or identification barriers.”
The Court indicated that it would issue a ruling on the government’s motion by the end of the week.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) represents the plaintiffs, grassroots feminists activists with National Women’s Liberation (NWL) and 15-year-old Anaya Kelly in Tummino v. Hamburg. The lawsuit was filed along with the Center for Reproductive Rights and Southern Legal Counsel against the Food and Drug administration and Health and Human Services.
On April 5, the Court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor that there was no scientific basis for the Obama administration to continue to restrict access to emergency contraception. Judge Korman ordered that it be made available to women and girls “without a prescription and without point-of-sale or age restrictions within thirty days.” The Court found that the FDA had improperly restricted this safe and effective contraceptive after “political interference” from the White House, and had done so against the medical and scientific evidence recommending the drug be made readily available.
Instead of complying with the Court’s Order, the government announced last Tuesday that it would force all women and girls to present government-issued ID to store clerks in order to obtain emergency contraceptives, and that it would continue to deprive over-the-counter access to young teenagers. The next day, Wednesday, the government announced it was appealing the decision and that it was seeking a stay of the order pending appeal.
Originally published by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.