Author: storiesinamerica

Forty years ago, CEOs earned $24 for each $1 workers got; in 2004, CEOs got $431 for every worker dollar. In 2004, total CEO compensation averaged $12 million, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.

You Senators and Represenatives make $165,200 per year and average an estimated 1.9 percent yearly cost-of-living increase.
What about minimum wage earners? Minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 an hour since 1997. At $5.15 per hour, a person working full-time will earn just $10,700 annually. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage is now worth less than one-third of the average wage in the U.S. – its lowest share since 1949, when the minimum wage was worth more than half of the average wage. Research has shown that 7.3 million people would benefit from raising the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour, including 1.8 million parents with children under the age of 18.

Nearly three-quarters of minimum wage workers are over the age of 20 and many can’t afford to buy food. In 2004, 23 million people used food stamps, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up from 17 million in 2000.

Every year, the Democrats vote to raise minimum wage, while the Republicans vote to keep it at $5.15.

This week, the Democrats will force a debate and a vote on raising minimum wage to $7.25 an hour over two years. This issue alone could get the working poor to the polls. The majority of the minimum wage earners I met on my six-month road trip didn’t even know that the government has the power to raise their wages. The problem is, the ‘liberal media’ doesn’t care about minimum wage and barely gives it any coverage.

“I challenge every Republican member of Congress who has spoken in favor of a minimum wage increase but who for years has allowed the Republican leadership to block House action to sign on to our petition,” said Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. “It is immoral to tell working Americans that they should try to provide for their families’ needs while earning only $5.15 per hour.  Democrats respect the value of work, and we have fought for years to try to ensure that the minimum wage keep pace with inflation and is updated periodically.  American workers have earned it.”

Update: The women in these photos will give you hope…

Happy International Women’s Day. I wish there was more to celebrate.

At today’s White House International Women’s Day ‘celebration,’ Laura Bush said, “There are encouraging signs for progress for women in many parts of the world, and I’m proud to be married to a man whose policies promote this success.”

The lies are becoming unbearable.

It’s time to stop mincing words. Right-wing policies are KILLING women.

While the right-wing is on a rampage to overturn Roe v. Wade, their anti-choice, anti-women policies have been literally killing women overseas for years and it’s time to make the connection:

“Because of the constitutional guarantees embedded in the Roe v. Wade decision, Republican administrations have been unable to completely defund abortion groups in the United States, so they’ve taken it out on poor women in developing countries, but those policies are coming home,” says Steven Sinding, an American who serves as director-general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), a London-based organization that supports the poor, underserved and marginalized in 180 countries.

The United States has funded international family planning programs since the 1960s, but in 1984, the Reagan Administration passed the Global Gag Rule, which denies U.S. Agency for International Development funding to overseas organizations that perform legal abortions with exceptions for rape and incest or to save a woman’s life; provide counseling and referrals for abortion; engage in abortion-related public policy debates; or lobby to make abortion legal or more available in their own country.

“Americans have the right to say where their funding is going, but we find it completely unfair to be asking others not to talk about certain topics which are not liked by the American establishment,” says Tewodros Melesse, director of the IPPF’s Africa Region Office. “We believe the American Constitution and virtue of the American democracy exists on individual choices, on freedom and on democracy and to deny that right to others sends the wrong message.”

The Clinton administration ended the Global Gag Rule in 1993 by executive order; President Bush reinstated it on his first day in office in January 2001, halting an estimated $15 million per year in funding to the IPPF after it refused to sign the rule.

“If American women understood what the actions of our government means to the lives of women around the world, particularly poor women in poor countries, they couldn’t in good conscience support this administration for any reason,” says Sinding. “The fact is, what the Bush administration is doing to women in the developing world hasn’t really penetrated the consciousness of the American electorate.”

The funding cuts have caused many clinics to close.

This year alone, 19 million women will face serious injury, illness or death as a consequence of abortions performed by unskilled people under unsanitary conditions. Nearly 70,000 will die.

I just posted a few of the interviews I did for the AlterNet article.

How Do Bush’s Anti-Choice Policies Affect African Women?
“While the current [American] administration and anti-choice groups says abortion kills life, the very precise intervention to prevent abortion is leading millions of women to abortion and killing so many babies and so many mothers. Over 50 percent of the maternal deaths in Africa are linked to complications due to abortion, which are preventable.”
-Tewodros Melesse, director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Africa Region Office
http://storiesinamerica.blogspot.com/2006/03/how-do-bushs-anti-choice-policies.html

Q&A with Kenyan Doctor About Reproductive Rights
“We used to have 17 clinics; now we have nine. We’ve been closing them one after another; we were hoping that someone would come to our rescue, but it never happened. After the clinics closed, fetuses were thrown in the streets. We feel the rate of abortion has gone up because women have no access to family planning.”
-Dr Joachim Osur with Family Health Options Kenya
http://storiesinamerica.blogspot.com/2006/03/qa-with-kenyan-doctor-about.html

(Cross posted at StoriesinAmerica, where women’s issues are covered, not ignored)

Five Iraqi women arrived in New York City over the weekend to tell Americans what life is like under occupation and to meet with UN and US officials to call for withdrawl of the American troops and a peace plan. Over the next few weeks, these women will be visiting cities, including Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Diego and Berkeley. Click here to check out their schedule. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could stay longer and visit middle America?
Two of the women, Faiza Al-Araji, a civil engineer and blogger (read about her experience in the states here), whose family recently fled to Jordan after her son was temporarily kidnapped, and Eman Ahmad Khamas, an Iraqi journalist, translator and human rights activist, were on Democracy Now yesterday. Here are excerpts from that interview:

AMY GOODMAN: You just heard the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, when asked how things are going, saying they were going very well, but he wouldn’t put a smiley face on it, but that things are going very well. What is your response?

FAIZA AL-ARAJI: I’m watching the documentary on the TV now. I’m Iraqi. I left Iraq because of the kidnapping of my son in the last summer and stay in Jordan as refugee. You know, the story went out; living there is different. It’s completely different about the story your media is sending you or the message the media is sending you. When somebody telling you that things is going on in Iraq well and everything is fine, please ask him, “What is your evidence? What is your proof? What is your clue? Give me. Give me something on the ground.”

I can make a kind of debate. I’m ready to have a debate with the American leaders, to sit with them in front of the American people. I want to hear from them, and I will give them the answers for everything they are talking about, because we have the real story on the ground. After three years of evaluation, I think Iraqis have the right to talk about the evolution of the war, not the American leaders, because we are who are suffering here and we are — we lost the money of Iraq, we lost the souls of Iraqis, we lost the souls of loved ones in Iraq. We have — our kids have been kidnapped. Our neighbors have been killed. We lost everything. But what about the leaders? They are sitting in their chairs, and they have the power. And they did nothing for the Iraqi people to help the Iraqi people. I’m not telling this from my mind. It is facts on the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you even move around in Iraq?

EMAN AHMAD KHAMAS: We can move around, but it is very risky. It is very dangerous, especially if you go to dangerous places. I mean, I go, for example, to the places that are bombed. And I have faced death many times. I was almost shot many times. But it is risky. But, I mean, we have to go. We have to see these people. We have to listen to them.

AMY GOODMAN: We are going to end by asking what you think the solution is, to both of you. What’s the solution?

FAIZA AL-ARAJI: What’s the solution? What’s the solution, my dear? There is chaos. If you turn your face from this direction, from – there is a lot of problems in Iraq. How could you — can imagine to start? What is the first step to stop all of this? The first step is, help the Iraqis to have national unity government, to make a kind of reconciliation between them after the last election, to get a good government, a real government which is – who us representative of the Iraqi people. This is step number one. Step number two, train — give training for the police Iraqi men and for the soldiers to help their people, not to arrest them and kill them and to campaign or to move with the American occupation force to kill Iraqi people. We need something new, strong, to trust them. And then the other step, that we can ask the troops to go out, to pull out the troops from Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: Eman Khamas, do you think that U.S. troops should leave immediately?

EMAN AHMAD KHAMAS: Yes. The occupation should end immediately.

AMY GOODMAN: What would happen then?

EMAN AHMAD KHAMAS: What would happen? Iraq would be free, would be really liberated. Iraq is now occupied.

AMY GOODMAN: The press describes it as it would immediately descend into civil war.

EMAN AHMAD KHAMAS: No. I mean, it’s not going to be like that. I mean, you have to plan it in a way that, you know, guarantee that there will be no civil war, as you said. There is the U.N., there is the Security Council, there are the peacekeeping troops. There are many things that they can work out to, you know, follow this security vacuum, so that it wouldn’t, as you say, go into civil war. But the occupation should end immediately. It’s something wrong. It’s wrong for the Iraqis, for the Americans, for the world, for peace, for the international law. Everything. It’s wrong. It has to end now. Immediately. And then – and we Iraqis, we can work things out. We are capable of that. And if we kill each other, it’s our problem. It’s not the American’s problem. But we — I’m sure that we are capable of taking care of ourselves.

The women joined Code Pink at a protest outside the US Mission to the United Nations yesterday, where they tried to present a “Women’s Call for Peace” petition demanding the withdrawl of US troops from Iraq. Cindy Sheehan and three activists were arrested after refusing to leave the premises without delivering the petition.

Ann Wright, a former Army colonel and U.S. diplomat, said in a group statement that the US Mission, representing the United Nations’ US delegation, refused to send a representative to meet with the delegation and the women refused to leave without delivering the petition. “I am outraged that the U.S. Mission could not send someone down to meet with a delegation of women whose lives and families have been shattered by this destructive and immoral war.”

This is how the Iraqi women will remember their first day in America, Home of the Brave and Land of the Free.

I compile this list daily at StoriesinAmerica

Please spread the news. Unless anti-women abortion laws get passed, women’s issues are still at the bottom of the news barrel.

An additional item: Kenyans are on the Verge of Starving to Death

General

*America saw itself as a promised land, a place where the hardworking and faithful could come and build a nation of prosperity, free from the imperfections they had left behind. But that ideal also sowed a bad seed that germinated over generations into a shameful chapter in American history.

Source: Christian Science Monitor

Reproductive Rights

*After all the plotting and planning, the time was thought to be propitious. It was to be the conclusion of a carefully crafted, long-term effort that had been the right’s fundamental ideological objective for decades. These opponents of reproductive rights were poised to for their grand moment–the evisceration of a woman’s right to privacy and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 2006? No, 1989.

Source: TomPaine.com

*Gov. M. Jodi Rell is siding with the state’s Catholic hospitals in the battle over whether the hospitals should be forced to offer the morning-after contraceptive pill for women who have been raped. Some lawmakers and advocates for sexual assault victims have called upon the General Assembly to require all Connecticut hospitals, including the four Roman Catholic hospitals, to provide emergency contraception if requested by the rape victim.

Source: Hartford Courant

*The federal government has approved the state’s request for a Medicaid waiver to extend family planning services to 200,000 women without health insurance coverage, Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Thursday. “We specifically requested this federal family planning waiver because we believe extending these services to low-income women across our state greatly increases the chance that every pregnancy in Michigan is a wanted one,” the governor said in a release.

Source: AP

International

*The BBC’s Alan Johnston looks at what the rise of Hamas and its formation of the new government might mean for Palestinian women.

Source: BBC

*The ratio of female lawmakers in Taiwan is the highest in the world in 2005, showing the governments efforts to promote women’s participation in politics have borne fruit, a women’s group said Monday.

Source: CNA

*Seven Thais, including a female monk, a novice and two nuns, have made the United Nations’ list of Outstanding Women in Buddhism for 2006.

Source: The Nation

*Aiding victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, providing mother-and-child care in remote areas of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, giving courses to female detainees in Yemen to help them find their way in society after release – these are examples of the commitment shown by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to carefully assessing and meeting the specific needs of women in all aspects of its work.

Source: IRCR

*What’s in a name? If you’re a married woman in Argentina, it’s often a little word called “de,” meaning “of,” that comes after your maiden name and before your husband’s last name. But for many Argentine women these days, the possessive ring to that traditional formulation feels offensive and smacks of a not-too-distant chauvinist past here when women were put on pedestals but locked in cages … figuratively, of course.

Source: Christian Science Monitor

*Every police station in the Philippines has a women’s desk, manned by female investigators specially trained to handle crimes against women and children.

Source: Channel NewsAsia

*Mounriatou was just 16 when she was taken from her home in Togo to the oil-rich state of Gabon. Less than a year later she was dead from Aids after being gang-raped by a group of boatmen on her way to the “promised land”. Just before she died she told aid workers her story. Now the charity, Plan International, is fighting to stop child trafficking and keep children like Mounriatou safe in their own countries.

Source: BBC

*It is a smelly, offensive and debilitating condition in which women injured in childbirth uncontrollably leak a trail of urine or feces. The condition, known as fistula, all but disappeared in the Western world in the late 19th century, when Caesarean section births became widely available. But in sub-Saharan Africa, the condition remains widespread, sentencing as many as 3 million women to a life of abandonment and enforced solitude.

Source: The Washington Times

It was expected, but it’s still infuriating and degrading. South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds just signed a law that requires a young girl who is raped by her father to have his baby. The only exception is to save a woman’s life. The ban would take effect on July 1, but a federal judge is likely to suspend the ban during the legal challenge.
Even in most African countries where abortion is illegal, there are exceptions for rape and incest. Many governments are relaxing abortion laws in Africa to decrease the incredibly high number of unwanted pregnancies and back street abortions.

This year alone, 19 million women will face serious injury, illness or death as a consequence of abortions performed by unskilled people under unsanitary conditions. That’s 52,054 women per day. Virtually all of those women live in the poorest countries in the world, and almost every death and injury could be prevented, according to the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s report, Death and Denial: Unsafe Abortion and Poverty.

Making abortion illegal will not make abortion go away. Women will do whatever it takes to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, even if it means taking their lives into their own hands. This is not a fight about a medical procedure; this is a fight about women’s lives and women’s place in society.

South Dakota’s “pro-life” governor expects the law will be tied up in court for years and will not take effect unless the Supreme Court upholds it. If you want to let Rounds know how you feel about this law, call: 605.773.3212

I compile this list daily at StoriesinAmerica:

“As a Pennsylvanian, I am particularly appalled that local and national Democrats would hand our Senate nomination to someone who openly supports giving Roe an Alito-induced death. Those whose political successes have depended on the ballots and contributions of pro-choice voters but now facilitate the career of someone who would repeal those rights deserve special enmity.”
-Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL, commenting on Robert Casey’s support for Alito. Michelman might jump into the race herself.
General

*America regards itself as an eminently civilized country, but in many states female prisoners who give birth are required to be held in shackles during labor. Besides being grotesquely inhumane, this appalling practice is medically dangerous.
Source: NY Times

Politics

*After Robert Casey, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to challenge vulnerable Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, joined Santorum in backing the Supreme Court nomination of conservative judicial activist Samuel Alito, Kate Michelman was not happy. After saying she was “sorely disappointed by the lack of commitment to women and fundamental rights by the United State Senate,” the former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America ripped into Casey and local and national party leaders who back the socially-conservative Pennsylvania Democrat who is an ardent critic of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed women the right to choose. How angry was Michelman? The veteran activist who has lived for almost three decades in Pennsylvania might just jump into the Senate race herself.
Source: The Nation

*The green dome over the Capitol has been one of Harrisburg’s landmarks for 100 years. For many women interested in politics, it has served as a glass ceiling. Only four states have a smaller percentage of women in their legislatures. The 34 female legislators represent 13 percent of the General Assembly’s membership. Pennsylvania has had one of the smallest percentages of women lawmakers for the past 30 years, even as women have become increasingly active in politics.
Source: PennLive

*A federal law that takes effect March 6 requires that mail-order brides brought to the United States be informed of their immigration rights and the criminal histories of any husbands-to-be.
Source: Women’s eNews

International

*Saudi Arabia’s longstanding ban on female drivers went an extra mile this week when women were barred from using golf carts to move around a cultural festival, according to Saudi newspapers. Men were permitted to use carts during the first 12 days of the Janadriya Heritage and Cultural Festival when only male visitors are allowed to attend, but the carts were withdrawn during the last three days which are reserved for women.
Source: Guardian

*Women living and working in Iran, particularly those working for the foreign media, are finding all kinds of difficulties strewn in their path, writes Frances Harrison.
Source: BBC

*In the fusty and unrelentingly chauvinistic gentlemen’s club of French politics Ségolène Royal is a one-woman revolution. Little more than a year from polling day in France and the phénomène Ségo is gathering strength. She is up against centuries of ingrained sexism, but there is a growing sense that this elegant luminary of the Socialist party could become France’s first Madame la Présidente.
Source: Guardian

Health

*Kerry Easton’s blond mane held secrets. Last year, she decided to unveil them by participating in the largest-ever study of mercury contamination as measured in human hair. “I’d been eating sushi and tuna twice a week for years,” says Easton, a fundraiser in San Francisco. “As a result, my hair had very high levels of mercury–more than double the level of one part per million that the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.”
Source: Women’s eNews

I compile this list daily at StoriesinAmerica

‘Since I was born, we’ve had only male presidents. We need something better than the men have provided.”
-Irma Presentación, one of the women watching the motorcade of Lourdes Flores, the woman favored to become the first woman president of Peru
General

*Six months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, advocates are still collecting rape reports from sex-assault survivors whose stories were lost in the storm. They hope the new database will be valuable during future crises.
Source: Women’s eNews

*The effort to establish the National Women’s History Museum in Washington was revived yesterday. The idea passed in the Senate last year. Supporters have now launched a push to convince the House of the museum’s merit.
Source: Washington Post

Reproductive Rights

*Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said on Friday that all of its pharmacies would carry emergency contraceptive pills, bowing to pressure from states seeking to force the world’s biggest retailer to do so. In a statement posted on its Web site, Wal-Mart said all of its pharmacies would begin carrying “Plan B” contraceptives as of March 20.
Source: Reuters

*Ratigen Street divided two groups of protesters Thursday on the University of South Dakota campus, but the issue that brought them there has the potential to divide a nation. Clinging to signs with slogans such as “Stand Up For Choice,” abortion-rights activists lined Cherry Street east of Ratigen Street, jumping and cheering as motorists honked their horns in support.
Source: Sioux City Journal

*Banja Lamtsogolo (BLM), a sexual and reproductive health NGO is tackling HIV/AIDS among Malawi’s women by handing out free female condoms.
Source: AllAfrica.com

International

*Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Lourdes Flores in Peru represent the success of women in politics throughout Latin America.
Source: Miami Herald

*Comprising 40 per cent of India’s HIV infected population, women in the country are gradually becoming more susceptible to the disease, UN experts said here on Friday.  “Women are biologically more susceptible to HIV infection. Besides, gender disparities, lack of education and trafficking of women are making the situation worse,” said Archana Tamang, chief of the women’s human rights and human security unit, United Nations Development Fund for Women.
Source: Times of India

*The European Commission is setting out an action plan to address equality of the sexes across the European Union. Women in the EU earn 15% less than men and a new Commission report says progress in closing the gap is slow.
Source: BBC

*When South Africa’s former deputy president appears on a charge of rape at the Johannesburg High Court next week, he’s likely to draw a crowd of rousing supporters – including many women.
Source: IRIN

*An Indonesian delegation to discussions on gender and international migration at the UN headquarters led by Women Empowerment Minister Meutia Hatta has stressed the need for measures to protect female migrant workers, especially those in the informal sector. “We have an interest in the issue because 77 percent of 2.1 million Indonesian migrant workers are female,” the minister said here Thursday.
Source: Antara News

*Congress member Prema Cariappa, moving the Girl Child (elminitaion of Discrimnation and Violation of Rights and Other Welfare Measures) Bill, 2003 said there is a sharp decline in the female sex ratio and women in general were discriminated and violated across the country [India]. The Bill seeks to eliminate discrimination against the girl child by providing for the equal upbringing and removal of neglect by her parents and guardians. She is either married off in her childhood or forced into begging, prostitution and other crimes. There should be deterrent punishment for such violations, she added.
Source: India News

*Spain’s Socialist government on Friday set out to tear down one of the last bastions of male privilege with a draft bill to ban sex discrimination at work. The proposed law will oblige companies with more than 250 workers to introduce “equality plans” aimed at eliminating discrimination against women in pay, promotion and benefits. It also introduces eight days of paternity leave for men.
Source: Financial Times

*With Angela Merkel settling in as the first woman to run Germany, Expatica asked female expatriates about their experiences. Despite now having a woman in the top job and a generous maternity leave system, many of them are frustrated by what they see as old-fashioned attitudes.
Source: Expatica

And other undercovered news (mostly women’s issues) of the day. I compile this list daily at StoriesinAmerica
General

*Archaeological finds from Mexico and Peru show that, long before Europeans arrived, women served as warriors, governors and priestesses.
Source: AP

Politics

*One of 55 House Democrats who’ve signed a “Catholic Statement of Principles” says it’s an effort to keep abortion from becoming their single defining issue. Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro says she and other Catholic Democrats are “very proud of our spirituality,” but reserve the right to obey conscience rather than church teachings.
Source: AP

*Paula Duran is an outreach worker with a style of her own. That style — heavy on fishnet, tattoos and suggestive poses — is at the heart of an ideological disagreement between Brazil and the United States over the best way to fight AIDS.
Source: Washington Post

In the Courts

*A Cook County judge abruptly decided Wednesday that a 20-year-old woman needn’t watch the homemade video that prosecutors say shows her being gang-raped during a drunken party. “I’m not going to force her to view the videotape,” Judge Kerry M. Kennedy said Wednesday, backing off his earlier warning that he might jail the former Naperville woman if she refused to watch the video while testifying against one of her alleged attackers.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times

Reproductive Rights

(I cut and paste ledes. Is it common for the morning after pill to be called an “abortion pill?”)
*A slate of abortion-related bills passed in the [Georgia] state Senate on Thursday, requiring doctors to offer women seeking the procedure a look at an image of the fetus and clearing pharmacists who don’t want to give out abortion pills they say go against their beliefs. A third bill would create a murder charge any time a fetus is destroyed in an attack on a pregnant woman.
Source: AP

*Republican Gov. Matt Blunt and Missouri’s largest anti-abortion group expressed reservations Thursday about newly proposed legislation seeking to ban most abortions in the state. Blunt said he feared an abortion ban could lock the state in a legal battle, which Missouri Right to Life said may not yet be winnable.
Source: KMBC

In the Workplace

*For four decades, the number of women entering the workplace grew at a blistering pace, fostering a powerful cultural and economic transformation of American society. But since the mid-1990s, the growth in the percentage of adult women working outside the home has stalled, even slipping somewhat in the last five years, leaving it at a rate well below that of men, various studies show.
Source: The NY Times

International

*Dubai-based news channel Al Arabiya mourned on Thursday the murder in Iraq of two technicians and a young female Iraqi reporter renowned for her brave frontline journalism.
Source: Middle East Times

Here’s today’s undercovered news roundup…
General

*There is now only a single woman on the court. Imagine the world if homes, businesses, schools, had one woman for every eight men.
Source: Newsweek

*Many states fail to adequately protect incarcerated women from sexual misconduct at the hands of corrections staff and allow the dangerous practice of shackling inmates during the third trimester of pregnancy — including during labor and delivery, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) said in a report released at the start of Women’s History Month.
Source: Amnesty International USA

In the Workplace

*A Colorado Springs woman who claimed that Wal-Mart fired her after she accused a co-worker of sexual harassment appears to have reached a settlement with the retail giant. Sherri Anderson, a 40-year-old former Wal-Mart employee, filed the suit in federal district court last year, alleging she was discriminated against because she is a woman. She claimed a store greeter made sexually suggestive remarks, pinched her bottom and tried to grab her breast, causing her “humiliation [and] injury in reputation” at the 3201 E. Platte Ave. Wal-Mart.
Source: CSIndy

Reproductive Rights

*The Missouri Supreme Court has upheld the state’s 24-hour waiting period for abortions, a decision that turns the focus of the legal battle to federal court. The unanimous ruling Tuesday by Missouri’s highest court focused on whether the 2003 law ran contrary to the state constitution. The judges rejected arguments that it was overly vague and deprived people of liberty and privacy rights.
Source: AP

*Women seeking abortions [in Kentucky] would have to be told in person of medical risks and alternatives at least 24 hours before the procedure, under two bills that advanced in the Senate and House yesterday. Women now normally receive that information from a recorded telephone message. But Senate Bill 125, which passed the Senate 34-3 and now goes to the House, would require the information to be delivered “orally” and “in person” by a doctor or a doctor’s designee.
Source: The Courier-Journal

Anti-women, anti-life lawmakers in Mississippi are upset that they will no longer go down in history as the first state in the country to force women who are raped by their fathers to have the baby. A Mississippi House Committee has voted to ban all abortions, with an exception to save the life of the woman. If this bill passes, it will kill many more women than it will “save.” There are no exceptions for rape or incest:

Mississippi already has some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation, requiring a 24-hour waiting period in all cases and parental consent before a minor can have a pregnancy terminated.

The state has only one operating abortion clinic, in Jackson.

Terri Herring, president of Pro-Life Mississippi, said the Senate’s sonogram proposal could have an immediate effect of persuading some women to avoid abortion. She said the new House proposal likely would prompt a court challenge if it were to become law.

“To have a law in the courts would, in effect, not make any substantive change in Mississippi’s abortion practices,” Herring said.

She also said: “Whether it’s South Dakota or Mississippi, our goals are the same. We want to end abortion in our lifetime, and we want to see Mississippi be the first state to end abortion.”

Susan Hill is president of the National Women’s Health Organization, which runs the only abortion clinic still operating in Mississippi. She said she wasn’t surprised by lawmakers’ move.

“What took them so long? I thought they’d be ahead of South Dakota,” Hill said.

She said her organization will battle attempts to put more restrictions on abortion in Mississippi.

“We’re realists,” Hill said. “We know we’re in a state where the Legislature is anti-choice.”

The full House is expected to vote on the bill next week, according to House Public Health Chairman Steve Holland, a Democrat from Plantersville:

Holland said he brought up the near ban on abortion because he’s tired of piecemeal attempts to add new restrictions year after year. He said he woke up about 3 a.m. Tuesday and decided to introduce his proposal, and he only told two House staff members about his plans before he made the move.

“I have a strong dilemma within myself on this,” Holland said. “I can only impregnate. I can’t get pregnant myself.”

So he woke up at 3 a.m. and decided it’s time to force women to have botched abortions. I’d like to know how many of these guys who “can only impregnate” take Viagra or “male enhancing” drugs.

Unlike the South Dakota law, an amendment tacked on to the Mississippi law would provide free education and medical services to any child born in the state, until the age of 19. Democratic Rep. Omeria Scott, an African-American woman, had to “persudade” fellow members to pass the amendment:

Scott said her proposal could extend beyond the public schools and Medicaid already offered. She said it could make a significant difference for a poor woman who’s trying to decide whether to have an abortion.

“Anyone who wants to take this language out of this bill is not for life,” Scott said.

The article forgot to mention how Scott voted, the MS House doesn’t keep records and her office isn’t answering.

I visited Mississippi on my six-month road trip to the so-called “red states” and met a slew of pro-choice Democrats; the problem is, they aren’t organized. The MS Democratic Party recently added abortion to its platform, but many Democratic politicians are anti-choice. Many Southern Democrats who are pro-choice told me if they publicly announce their support for a woman’s right to choose, their opponent will use the statement in an ad and they will lose their next election. To say it’s a dire situation is putting it mildly.