Women News, Dec 8, 2009

Jane: Last Wednesday the New York State Senate rejected a bill that would have allowed gay couples to marry. Proponents were startled by the 38-to-24 vote; they believed they had enough supporters going into the vote. “This is the worst example of political cowardice I’ve ever seen,” said Senator Kevin S. Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat. “Clearly people said things prior to coming to the floor and behaved differently.”

All 30 Republican senators opposed the bill. Support was heaviest among members from New York City and Westchester County and among the Senate’s 10 black members. Seven of the Senate’s 10 women voted for it. Said Senator Liz Krueger of Manhattan, “I’m a woman and a Jew and so I know about discrimination.”

The state’s Roman Catholic bishops had consistently lobbied for the bill's defeat.

Joan: On Wednesday, almost 1,000 women rallied on Capitol Hill to urge the Senate to pass health-care reforms that protect and address women's health care needs, including reproductive health and abortion options. The rally was part of a National Week of Action to get women to lobby against the Stupak-Pitts amendment -- which could prohibit women from purchasing private health insurance that would cover abortion. They might be able to purchase a separate policy for the sole purpose of abortion, if they purchased it with their own funds, exclusively. I'm afraid most women would think “I'll be careful,” before purchasing such a policy, forgetting—or hoping it wouldn't happen-- that sometimes intentional pregnancies cannot safely be carried to term.

Jane: On Thursday, the Boston Globe reported that Linda Griffith, a pioneer in tissue engineering at MIT, will lead a new Center for Gynepathology Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, devoted to better understanding and ultimately finding treatments for endometriosis which afflicts 5 to 10 percent of women, often at a young age.

Joan: On Thursday, the Senate approved a Health Care Reform Bill amendment introduced by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) that would require insurance companies to offer women's preventive care services at little or no cost to patients. Among the preventative services covered are screenings for cancer, diabetes and heart disease, as well as domestic violence and postpartum depression. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the amendment would cost $940 million over 10 years, which Mikulski said would be offset by surplus funds in the bill (CQ Today, 12/3). And there is language in the amendment basically saying to disregard the recent new findings of the preventive task force that would have limited mammograms and other regular testing.
According to Mikulski, she wrote the amendment because the "unique needs of women were not adequately addressed in the legislation". The amendment "would eliminate one of the major barriers to care by getting rid of high co-payments and deductibles," potentially saving lives." (New York Times, 12/4).

Jane: World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) announced that at least 88 journalists have been killed so far this year, with hundreds more media employees arrested. Last week's massacre in the Philippines, accounted for 30 deaths, making it the world's most dangerous country for media workers. According to the report there are at least 170 journalists in jail

Joan: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released its Abortion Surveillance report. The report lists how many abortions were performed in this country in 2006, at what gestational age, and with what medical procedure and breaks the statistics down by age, ethnicity and race. According to the report there were 846,181 abortions reported to CDC in 2006, a decrease from the previous years. The report attributed the decline to the "decline in the availability of abortion providers; the adoption of legislative restrictions and barriers to abortion services like mandatory waiting periods and parental involvement laws; and increasing acceptance of nonmarital childbearing."

The report also said, "Providing women with the knowledge and resources necessary to make decisions about their sexual behavior and use of contraception can help women avoid unintended pregnancies and thus reduce the number of abortions performed in the United States." So making abortion unavailable does have its desired effect: forcing women to continue pregnancies against their will.

And if the Stupak Amendment to the House Health Care bill passes, and Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska is trying to introduce a similar amendment to the Senate bill, so if that carries and the two are folded into the final form of the bill, nearly a million women each year might be forced to carry unwanted or dangerous pregnancies to term. A few wealthy women might be able to find an abortion but women living in poverty, who can least afford it, will have no choice, and they will be punished for being poor. A woman who is forced to carry an unwanted or threatening pregnancy to term because laws prohibit abortion essentially means is being placed in involuntary servitude as an incubator by the government for nine months plus, however long it takes to recover from delivery, if she recovers in the case of a dangerous pregnancy. I believe that is a violation of the 13th amendment which reads: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Jane: The Women's Media Center (WMC) announced that the New York Women’s Agenda (NYWA) will recognize WMC Co-founder Jane Fonda for her outstanding achievements in activism and social change. Gloria Steinem will present Ms. Fonda with the prestigious award.

Jane Fonda, co-founder of the Women’s Media Center has long been known for activism and advocacy on human rights and the empowerment of women and girls. She is a member of the Women & Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations and sits on the board of V-Day: Until The Violence Stops, a global effort to stop violence against women. An Emmy winner, two-time Oscar winner, and Tony Award nominee, Ms. Fonda has enjoyed tremendous success as a stage and screen actor, with many producing credits as well, including a film, in collaboration with the International Women's Health Coalition, entitled "Generation 2000: Changing Girls' Realities.” In May 2005, Random House published Fonda’s memoirs, My Life So Far, which immediately went to #1 on The New York Times Best Sellers list.

Joan:. DoubleX, a seven-month-old website devoted to "What women really think," announced that their site would be folding into Slate, the 13-year-old news and commentary site from which it grew. The move is a result of the recession. Jacob Weisberg editor in chief at Slate said, "Bringing DoubleX back into Slate should make it easier to develop both the editorial and business sides of the project while reducing our costs significantly."
With DoubleX folding back into Slate there has been a lot of controversy about creating websites just for women. Jezebel's Anna North, in a post headlined Do We Need Websites For Women? asked what was the purpose of a woman's blog. Over 200 commenters weighed in on the topic, confirming that women's blogs are popular. Jezebel's gets 1.17 million page views a day. Feministing's founder and editor Jessica Valenti recently told the New York Times Magazine that her site brings in 600,000 readers a month.
In 2008, the New York Times' reported a 35 % growth in sites aimed at women, "faster than every other category on the Web except politics", according to comScore, an Internet-traffic measurement company.

Jane: Today Massachusetts is having an election which could lead to the election of the first Massachusetts female US Senator. Martha Coakley is a true progressive and is the only candidate in this race to stand up for reproductive rights during the recent health reform debate. She has also been a true leader on marriage equality. Her chances of winning depend on getting the voters out to vote. Unfortunately, recent polling has shown that 93% of Massachusetts voters don't know the date of the election.

Joan: Paula Hawkins, the first woman elected to a full Senate term without being preceded in politics by a husband or father died Friday in Orlando. She was 82 and lived in Winter Park, FL.

Paula Hawkins was a conservative Republican who served a single term as a senator from Florida during the Reagan years. Her opposition to abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment made her anathema to the National Organization for Women, which picketed her appearances and accused her of embracing positions strictly in accordance with her Mormon faith.

Mrs. Hawkins was the leading sponsor of the Missing Children's Act of 1982, which created a national computer database of descriptive information on missing children. Mrs. Hawkins supported get-tough laws against drug traffickers. She fought for legislation to help stay-at-home women enter the job market after being widowed or divorced and to take into account years spent at home raising children when calculating women's pension benefits. In 1984, she was co-chairwoman of the platform committee at the Republican National Convention.

Jane: Good news for veterans. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that a federal agency that violates a veteran's preference rights in competitive hiring must give the veteran the job for which he or she applied and that the agency must pay any wages or benefits lost because of the violation.

The court's ruling stemmed from an appeal by Raymond Marshall, a 20 percent disabled veteran who in 2004 applied for a job with a division of the Department of Health & Human Services. An audit two years later revealed that the department had violated his preference rights by passing over him and selecting someone else for the budget analyst position.