ProgressWomen

By Amanda Marcotte  – Slate.com  |  Posted Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012, at 6:24 PM ET

Planned Parenthood clinical assistant Nicki Bailey discusses the new abortion laws with a patient in Austin. Photo by Eric Schlegel, Texas Tribune

In a shocking move Tuesday afternoon, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the country’s most famous breast cancer charity, pulled its grants for breast-cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood. Komen claims that their reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation from Congress, but as it’s well-understood on both the left and the right that the investigation, headed by Rep. Cliff Stearns, is a nuisance investigation that will almost surely turn up nothing, this excuse sounds lame indeed. The likelier explanation is the one offered by Planned Parenthood, that Komen caved under relentless pressure from anti-choice activists who oppose Planned Parenthood for offering abortions as well as low-cost contraception and STD prevention and treatment. In addition, Komen has a history of not playing nice with other women’s health organizations. Planned Parenthood has created an emergency fund to replace the Komen grants, to keep the breast-cancer screening service from being interrupted.

The existence of breast-cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood has always been a thorn in the anti-choice side. Most of Planned Parenthood’s services are related to the choice to be sexually active—contraception, STD screening and treatment, cervical cancer screening—making it easy to write off those services as unnecessary if you follow the strict abstinence-only prescription the Christian right has for women. Breast cancer, however, can strike the lifelong virgin, the married woman who only has sex for procreation, and the dirty fornicator (i.e. the vast majority of American women) alike. Because of this, anti-choicers have tried to create a rift between women’s health advocates who focus on breast cancer and those who focus on reproductive health concerns below the waist. Today, they had a victory with Komen’s act of cowardice.

No matter how much anti-choicers wish otherwise, it’s not feasible to create an approach to women’s health that separates good girl concerns from bad girl concerns. For instance, many women land in gynocologist’s offices seeking contraceptive services and cervical-cancer screenings, and doctors use that opportunity to teach the art of breast self-exam. As noted inmy previous post on the Santorums’ pregnancy troubles, even the world of the hated abortion provider and the much-vaunted obstetrician can’t be so easily separated, as the latter is often called upon to have knowledge of pregnancy termination in case of a medical emergency.

In the end, the grant money is less important than the symbolism of Komen buying into the conservative myth of good-girl health care vs. bad-girl health care. In reality, women’s health care can only work if it’s comprehensive health care. Komen has already been under serious scrutiny by those who argue that the organization cares more about shoring up their image than making real progress in the fight for women’s health, and with this move today, they proved their critics right.

Click here for more information.

image via wikimedia commons

Newt Gingrich has been repeating ad nauseam his claim that Barack Obama is “the best food stamp president in American history.” However, this is not true.

Brooks Jackson of FactCheck.org reports:

Newt Gingrich claims that “more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.” He’s wrong. More were added under Bush than under Obama, according to the most recent figures. [emphasis added]

…To be exact, the program has so far grown by 444,574 fewer recipients during Obama’s time in office than during Bush’s.

In a Businessweek article, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack criticizes Mr. Gingrich’s remarks:

Those who get the federal assistance “are playing by the rules,” Vilsack, whose department administers food stamps, said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg News. “There are misconceptions about this program and confusion” about recipients caused by negative portrayals by some Obama opponents, he said.

Given the program’s importance in keeping working families out of poverty, it also shouldn’t be mischaracterized as a handout for the undeserving, he said.

To start with, “food stamps” is not even the proper terminology. The program’s name has been changed to Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). Contrary to Mr. Gingrich’s insinuations, more whites are on SNAP than African Americans. Here is some demographic information about SNAP recipients:

• Race/Ethnicity
• 35.7% of participants are white (non-Hispanic)
• 22% of participants are African-American (non-Hispanic)
• 10% of participants are Hispanic
• Age
• 47% of SNAP beneficiaries are under 18 years of age
• 8% of SNAP beneficiaries are 60 years of age or older
• Gender
• 56% of SNAP beneficiaries are women
• Single parents (usually a mother) headed more than half of all SNAP households with children
• Income
• 41% of recipients are part of a household with earned income (the “working poor”)
• 85.3% of SNAP households live in poverty

CONGRATULATIONS TO JAMIE CROCKETT, STUDENT AT UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI’S SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM FOR BECOMING A FINALIST. 

WE LOVE HER VIDEO…YOU WILL TOO!  WATCH IT HERE.

On November 16, 2011, the Women’s Media Center invited girls ages 14-22, to create a 1- 5 minute video for our first annual Girls State of the Union (#GSOTU) video contest. Like the President’s report , the Girls’ State of the Union sums up the condition of the country—with a special emphasis on the welfare of girls.

From California to the Carolinas, diverse young women and girls articulated their unique visions for change. They aptly demonstrated superior problem-solving skills, creativity, and thought leadership, and reinforced the important role girls play in our union. Contest participants communicated their “State of the Union” in many ways including amplifying their voices using art, music, multimedia, and poetry to add personal flair.

Our distinguished group of new media and celebrity judges, including actresses Kyra Sedgwick and Marisa Tomei, will select the final winner of the contest during the first week of February. We will be announcing the winner on our website and our #SheParty Tweet-up  on Wednesday, February 8^th between 3PM and 5PM EST.

In honor of Women’s History Month, the Women’s Media Center will arrange for the winner to travel to Washington, DC between March 17-19, 2012  to deliver her address, receive top-notch media training, and star in a video about the Girls’ State of the Union.

We are so proud of every girl and young woman who participated in the contest. We salute you!

Congratulations to our six fabulous finalists:

Shree Bose : Ft. Worth, TX

Samantha Crisp :Chapel Hill, NC

Jamie Crockett :St. Louis, MO

Shira Gorelick:  Livingston, NJ

Diedra Shores:  Memphis, TN

Adora Svitak :  Redmond, VA

Calls on Missouri General Assembly to Stop Assault on Women’s Rights

courtesy of salon.com

Jefferson City – State Representative Stacey Newman (D-St. Louis) announced today that she has filed a resolution in the Missouri House to designate the week of January 22-29, 2012 as “Reproductive Rights Awareness Week.”  The announcement coincides with the 39^th anniversary of the U. S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.

As of June this year, states enacted 162 new provisions related to reproductive health, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based policy and research center.  Of those new laws, 49 percent seek to restrict access to abortion, a near doubling of 26 percent in 2010. Eighty abortion restrictions were enacted this year, more than triple enacted in 2010 and double the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions enacted in 2005.

“The consistent legislative effort to restrict access to legal medical reproductive choices,  including birth control, is negatively impacting the health and welfare of women throughout the country,” stated Rep. Newman, chair of the House Progressive Caucus. “This resolution was developed by women to bring education, awareness and action to protect women’s health and safety and to ensure reproductive rights under federal law.”

House Concurrent Resolution 24 was filed Wednesday, January 25 with 29 co-sponsors, including several House members who are not members of the Progressive Caucus.

Along with Missouri, the Reproductive Rights Resolution is being introduced in 14 other states including Wisconsin, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Arizona, Hawaii, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Michigan, Washington, Utah, New York and Ohio.

State Representative Newman is one of 18 legislators from throughout the U.S. who participated in the July 15-17 2011 Strategic Action Convening on Reproductive Rights and Justice sponsored by the Center for Women’s Studies.  The group of female lawmakers pledged to introduce a resolution in their 15 states designating a week in January for awareness of reproductive rights. They hope the resolutions will provide a rallying cry to pro-choice advocates nationwide.

I wrote this post as part of NARAL Pro-Choice America’s 2012 “Blog for Choice Day” – click the link for more entries.

On Friday I attended the St. Louis Freedom of Choice Council‘s celebration of the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The theme was “4000 Years of Choice,” and it made a salient point: though abortion has been legal in the U.S. since only 1973, abortion is not something new. Women have been ending pregnancies for as long as we have been getting pregnant. Regardless of its legal status, women will have abortions.

Part of why Roe was (and is) such an important decision is because legal abortion means safe abortion. Before Roe, countless women suffered injuries and death from undergoing illegal abortions. Unsanitary conditions and untrained practitioners meant that a very safe procedure was quite risky. During the 1950s and 1960s, an estimated 160-260 women died from illegal abortions each year in the US. Thousands more came to emergency rooms with dangerous complications from injuries. This Mother Jones article, “The Way It Was” gives a moving account of life pre-Roe.

While we’ve come a long way since 1973, we cannot be complacent. Anti-choice activists work hard to erode women’s right to choose, and they have been successful. Clinic harassment, 24-hour waiting periods, the Hyde Amendment, the ban on so-called “partial-birth” abortions and pharmacy refusal laws are just some of the ways opponents of choice have infringed on a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. In fact, 2011 saw both Congress and state legislatures wage a “War on Women” with a glut of anti-choice measures being proposed and passed.

As we commemorate the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must renew our resolve to remove these social and legal obstacles so every woman in America can access safe and legal abortion care.

image via ThinkProgress

Fantastic news today: the Obama Administration has ensured that most all employers will have to offer insurance plans that cover birth control!

Per the news release from the US Dept. of Health and Human Services: “the final rule on preventive health services will ensure that women with health insurance coverage will have access to the full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA-approved forms of contraception.” [emphasis mine]

Jessica Arons, Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at American Progress, guest blogging for ThinkProgress:

Today, in a huge victory for women’s health, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that most employers will be required to cover contraception in their health plans, along with other preventive services, with no cost-sharing such as co-pays or deductibles. This means that after years of trying to get birth control covered to the same extent that health plans cover Viagra, our country will finally have nearly universal coverage of contraception.

Opponents of contraception had lobbied hard for a broad exemption that would have allowed any religiously affiliated employer to opt out of providing such coverage. Fortunately, the Obama administration rejected that push and decided to maintain the narrow religious exemption that it initially proposed. Only houses of worship and other religious nonprofits that primarily employ and serve people of the same faith will be exempt.

…Family planning results in better health outcomes for women and their children—a woman who has a planned pregnancy is more likely to be in better health when she gets pregnant and more likely to seek prenatal care, and children who are born at least two years apart are healthier. Family planning is also the most effective tool we have in reducing unintended pregnancy and the need for abortion. [emphasis mine]

It is terrific to get some good news on women’s reproductive rights from this administration. Thank you, President Obama & Secretary Sebelius.

The full statement on the decision from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is here.

Planned Parenthood has petition so you can thank President Obama for standing up for women’s health.