Migration Category: Feminist Newswire

Stories from the Feminist News Wire.

Abortion Clinics in Texas Help Women Impacted by Hurricane Harvey

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Whole Women’s Health (WWH), a group of clinics that provide abortion care and other reproductive health services, announced on September 8th that it will offer free abortions to women impacted by Hurricane Harvey in Texas for the entire month of September. They have stated that they will set up four locations in Texas in partnership with abortion funds like Lilith Fund and its own Stigma Relief Fund, where these abortion services will come at no cost to the patients.

The group said in their recent online statement, “during Hurricane Harvey, many of the clinics in Houston had to close, leaving women with very few options…continued political attacks on abortion access make an unwanted pregnancy particularly stressful in Texas — add that to the stress of dealing with hurricane aftermath.”

In crisis situations, women’s sexual and reproductive health care programs are often forgotten by disaster relief groups. Whole Women’s Health stated, “the need for abortion care does not stop for natural disasters.” The lack of sexual health facilities and aid for women during times of disasters and crises can cause higher rates of sexually transmitted infections and unsafe abortions and pregnancies. It has also been shown that high levels of sexual assault correlate with crisis zones.

As stated by Annie Gebhart, the training and technical assistance director of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, “a disaster like a hurricane can exacerbate the factors that lead people to commit sexual assault, like poverty, displacement, lack of housing, and lack of a law enforcement presence.” This issue was brought to light after the sexual assault epidemic in emergency shelters that took place during Hurricane Katrina. The conditions of many of these shelters created an environment conducive to rampant sexual assault.

Even before the devastating damage that Harvey created for Texas, there were many barriers put in place for women in Texas looking to obtain safe and affordable abortions. In a statement made in August, Yvonne Gutierrez, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Texas, said “Gov. Abbott is hell-bent on cutting off access to reproductive health care, regardless of how many women he hurts.”

Texas lawmakers have recently passed anti-abortion legislation such as the House Bill 214, which restricts all private health insurance plans, as well as plans sold through the Affordable Care Act, from covering abortion services unless the life of the women is directly at risk. Due to this, women would have to buy supplemental health insurance if they felt like they would ever need or want an abortion.

 

Media Resources: Mic 9/8/17, Whole Women’s Health Blog 9/1/17, Vox 9/11/17, Feminist Newswire 9/7/17

 

 

Civil and Human Rights Groups Urge Lawmakers to Pass DREAM Act

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Late last week, the Feminist Majority Foundation joined 186 civil and human rights groups who signed onto a letter to Congress urging them to pass the DREAM Act without amendment.

The DREAM Act, introduced to Congress by Democratic Senator Richard Durbin (D – IL) and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R – SC), is a bipartisan bill that would allow undocumented immigrant youth — most of whom grew up in the United States — to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship. Former President Obama released a statement urging Congress to work together to pass legislation to protect DACA recipients.

The DREAM Act would provide an avenue for current DACA recipients to apply for permanent residency. The Act would also end the deportation proceedings of anyone who qualifies for the DREAM Act and children over five years of age who are in elementary or middle school.

Another piece of legislation that is meant to protect DACA recipients from being uprooted from their homes is the BRIDGE (Bar Removal of Individuals who Dream and Grow our Economy) Act. The bill would allow immigrants to gain “provisional protected presence” if they are enrolled in an educational program, have a high school diploma or GED, or are an honorably discharged veteran. The bill was recently introduced to Congress by Senator Coffman, (R – CO).

After Trump’s decision to repeal DACA, protests have erupted throughout the country. Protesters in major cities have taken to the streets in support of protecting undocumented immigrants. From the Trump Tower to the White House, protesters have been showing up in solidarity with DACA recipients. Undocumented immigrants have also spoken at protests throughout the country about the implications of the repeal of DACA on their lives and communities.

Media Resources: American Immigration Council 9/6/17; The New York Times 9/5/17; NPR 9/6/17; The New York Times 9/5/17; National Immigration Law Center 7/24/17, 4/6/17; CNBC 9/5/17; The Leadership Conference 9/7/17

Success of Afghan Girls’ Robotics Team Inspires More Girls to Join Robotics Program

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After the success of the Afghan Girls’ Robotics Team that visited the United States in July, more and more young girls in Afghanistan have expressed interest in becoming more involved with robotics and technology.

The Afghan Girls’ Robotics Team participated in the First Global Challenge in Washington D.C. After the State Department denied the girls visas twice, widespread condemnation from feminist and humanitarian groups successfully put public pressure on the Department of Homeland Security to issue humanitarian paroles that allowed the girls to enter the country. The girls were awarded silver medals at the competition for their “courageous achievement.”

Upon their return to Afghanistan, the Girls’ Robotics team was welcomed by President Ashrad Ghani and First Lady Rula Ghani, members of parliament, the Minister of Education, and several other state officials. Although they received a positive welcome, many still have concerns about the girls’ safety.

Roya Mahboob, founder of the Afghan Citadel Software Company and CEO of the Digital Citizen Fund, said in an interview with the Feminist Majority Foundation that the Afghan Robotic have become a “symbol of courage and positive change in Afghanistan.” Families who did not want their daughters to come to the United States have asked Mahboob if their daughters could join the team and attend future conferences.

The Afghan Girl’s Robotics team, which is a training project under Digital Citizen Fund’s program, started with only 12 students, but aims to expand by adding eight more this year. The students who are interested in joining the team are mostly from the cities of Herat, Farah and Nimruz. The girls will attend the World Summit AI in the Netherlands in October.

Mahboob’s organization now has the capacity to enroll eight girls who also take an exam before joining the program. According to Mahboob, there were hundreds of girls standing in lines to take the entrance exam for the program. Mahboob’s dream is to establish the first School of Technology, Engineering, and Innovation in Afghanistan. In the meantime, she is working to find additional funding so that she can expand the robotics program and enroll more girls.

DeVos Attacks Title IX Campus Sexual Assault Guidelines

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In an announcement at the Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that she is working to replace Title IX protections for survivors of gender based violence and sexual assault.

In her speech, DeVos criticized the guidance put in place under the Obama administration in the Dear Colleague Letter to protect students from sexual assault on college campuses. She remarked that she will be hearing from politicians, medical professionals, and the clergy to “replace the current approach” in handling Title IX complaints and instances of sexual violence.

DeVos gave voice to those she referred to as so-called “falsely accused” and claimed the existing guidelines overreached and failed to give those accused of sexual misconduct due process.

Demonstrators gathered outside of the Antonin Scalia School of Law to protest DeVos’s expected rollback on Title IX protections for survivors of sexual assault. Survivors shared their experiences and described the necessity of Title IX in seeking justice on campus. Many young women detailed how, before the creation of the Dear Colleague Letter, administrators gave deference to students accused of sexual assault at the expense of survivors. Current students spoke about the desire for policy reform that priorities survivors of sexual violence and chanted “Protect survivors, not rapists!”

Several women’s rights groups have spoken out against DeVos’s recommended policy changes. The group “End Rape on Campus,” (EROC) a survivor advocacy group that works towards ensuring an end to sexual violence on school campuses, called the speech, “an attack on survivors of sexual violence and the right to an education free from violence.” Annie E. Clark, the Executive Director of EROC, further stated, “we will not accept this blatant favoritism for the rights of rapists under the guise of fairness.” Several women’s rights groups have made statements condemning DeVos’ promise to roll back the Title IX guidelines including the National Women’s Law Center, the National Organization for Women, Know Your IX, and the Feminist Majority Foundation.

After Secretary DeVos’ speech, former Vice President Joe Biden released a statement in which he wrote, “I’m asking everyone who has a stake in this fight to step up. Students, parents, faculty, alumni. Don’t just sit and watch. Speak up.”

Sexual assault prevention organizations are also uniting to stand against the injustices that many survivors will continue to face under the changes that DeVos and the Trump Administration are currently proposing. They hope to ensure that the policies enacted during the Obama administration, such as the guidelines in the Dear Colleague Letter, which provided guidance for investigations and hearings, are not dismantled.

Earlier this summer, Secretary DeVos held meetings with Men’s Rights Advocates who claimed to be the victims of false accusations of campus sexual assault. Then after spending just 90 minutes with survivors of campus sexual violence, she met with members of the National Coalition for Men (NCFM), whose President, Harry Crouch, has stated that survivors of abuse are to blame for their harassment.

Media Sources: CNN 9/7/17, Time 9/7/17, NWLC 9/7/17, NOW 9/7/17, Know Your IX 9/7/17, Feminist Newswire 9/7/17, Feminist Newswire 7/19/17, Think Progress 7/11/17

Writer and Activist Kate Millett Dies at 82

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Dr. Kate Millett, a groundbreaking feminist writer, artist and activist, died this week in Paris at 82.

Millett’s 1970 book Sexual Politics became a cornerstone of the women’s liberation movement. In that text, originally prepared as a doctoral thesis by Millett at Columbia University, she exposed how patriarchy was woven into the fiber of society and its institutions, including philosophy and religion, medicine and science, and even the notion of family. “Every avenue of power within the society,” she wrote, “including the coercive force of the police, is entirely in male hands.” She also explored how the socialization of women impacted their entire lives, coining the term “interior colonization” to describe the “totality of their conditioning” to accept and defend their own subjugation.

Millett had been identified and had identified herself as bisexual and a lesbian, and she was a driving force in the push to create a more inclusive women’s liberation movement that allied itself with LGBT liberation. After the release of Sexual Politics, she came out while married to a male sculptor when she was pressed by an audience member at a speaking engagement about her sexuality. “Yes I said yes I am a lesbian,” she wrote later, reflecting on the experience. “It was the last strength I had.” That same year, she was chosen to read a statement of feminist solidarity with lesbians alongside her longtime friend Gloria Steinem, co-founder of Ms magazine. The last years of her life were spent married to her longtime partner Sophie Keir.

Sexual Politics turned Millett into an overnight celebrity, leading her to be crowned the “Mao Tse-tung of Women’s Liberation” by TIME magazine for writing what the New York Times called “the Bible of Women’s Liberation.” Millett, however, shied away from the spotlight—opting instead to continue writing and working in academia. She taught at Barnard, Bryn Mawr and the University of California in Berkley; she wrote books centered on her own institutionalization and her relationship with her mother that were ripe with social commentary on mental health and the mistreatment of elderly women; she sculpted and opened a women’s art colony; she filmed a documentary with an all-female team; she traveled to Iran on “a mission to and for my sisters” and shined a light on violence against women in the Soviet Union, Nazi Europe, Ireland and South Africa.

“Kate was brilliant, deep and uncompromising,” Steinem told The New York Times in an email after her death. “She wrote about the politics of male dominance, of owning women’s bodies as the means of reproduction, and made readers see this as basic to hierarchies of race and class. She was not just talking about unequal pay, but about woman-hatred in the highest places and among the most admired intellectuals. As Andrea Dworkin said, ‘The world was asleep, but Kate Millett woke it up.'”

Anti-Abortion Law in Texas Temporarily Blocked by Federal Judge

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Last week, a federal judge handed down the decision to temporarily block a anti-abortion law set to take effect in the state of Texas on September 1. The law, SB 8, would have gone into effect on Friday and banned two types of procedures that are usually used in second trimester abortions.

The two types of procedures banned within the bill include dilation and evacuation and dilation. As one of the safest surgical abortion methods, dilation and evacuation abortions make up the majority of second trimester abortions. The attempts to limit these procedures are part of a larger effort to end women’s access to abortion throughout the state. The bill passed the Texas state senate this spring and was forwarded to Texas Governor, Greg Abbot, who signed the bill into law in May of 2017.

Pro-choice advocates from NARAL Pro-Choice Texas and the Center for Reproductive Rights have called SB 8 unconstitutional and unnecessary. While SB 8 was being debated in the Texas Senate and House, demonstrators protested by dressing in the clothing of Handmaids from Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Judge Lee Yeakel of the US District Court of the Western Texas District handed down a restraining order that will prevent the law from taking effect until the law’s constitutionality can be determined. A hearing date has been set for September 14, 2017 when arguments for a continued injunction by the reproductive rights advocacy groups who petitioned the court for the injunction in July will be heard.

In his 17 page decision, Yeakel wrote “this court finds no authority for holding that government-mandated medically unnecessary, untested, or a more invasive procedure, or a more complicated and risky procedure with no proven medical benefits over the safe and commonly used banned procedure.” And that the law would force women to undergo procedures that “are more complex, risky, expensive, difficult for many women to arrange, and often involve multi-day visits to physicians, and overnight hospital stays.”

The temporary measure to block SB 8 from taking effect is a victory despite the increase in restrictions for abortion providers and limitation on abortion access in the state of Texas. In August, Texas lawmakers passed a bill to further restrict abortion access. House Bill 214 bans all private health insurance plans and plans sold through the Affordable Care Act marketplace from covering abortion care unless the life of the woman is directly at risk. Instead, women would be required to buy supplemental insurance should they ever think they may need or want an abortion, prompting some Democratic lawmakers to accuse Republicans of forcing women to buy “rape insurance.”

Media Resources: NPR 8/31/17; CBS 8/31/17; NBC News 9/1/17; New York Times 8/31/17; Feminist Newswire 5/30/17, 8/17/17

What to Expect as Congress Heads Back to Washington

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Members of Congress returned to Washington yesterday after a month long August recess and there is a long agenda on the docket, but their first priority will be to pass a budget bill that will fund the government for fiscal year 2018. If they do not pass a budget bill by September 30, the federal government will shut down on October 1.

It is likely that if they cannot come to an agreement on the 2018 fiscal year budget, they will do as they’ve done in previous years and pass a bill, known as a continuing resolution, which funds the government through December, at which point they would have to start the budget agreement process all over again.

But many GOP lawmakers are looking to rebound from their failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act by racking up legislative wins this fall. Since Republicans have control of both the Congress and the White House, they are expected to try to move forward on initiatives they have long touted as priorities.

However, it is almost guaranteed that they will also have to take a vote on raising the debt ceiling in order to fund some of these initiatives, a vote that many members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus would likely object to. If the debt ceiling is not raised by September 29, the Treasury Department warns that the government will reach its debt limit and default on its debt, leading to a mass destabilization of financial markets.

While it is not yet clear what the final budget bill will look like, President Trump released a budget proposal in May that outlined a number of controversial plans. The proposal seeks to defund Planned Parenthood by barring them from receiving Medicaid reimbursements or Title X funding. It would also eliminate federally subsidized student loans, purge more than $700 million from the Perkins loan program, end the public service loan forgiveness program, and cut funding for college-work study programs in half.

He also proposed cutting the nutritional assistance program by 25 percent and narrowing eligibility for food assistance through SNAP. Cuts to these programs are dangerous, as 12.7 percent of children and adults in the United States in 2015 did not have consistent access to the amount of food necessary to sustain a healthy diet, which numbers out to around 15.8 million households. In addition, five percent of Americans or 6.3 million households could be described as having very low food security.

In addition, Trump’s budget proposal would make it more difficult for people to access social security benefits, and cut $63 billion in retirement benefits to federal workers. As expected, the plan also offers significant budget cuts to the Labor Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Education Department, and the State Department.

Of course, Trump’s budget allocates $2.6 billion for border security, including $1.6 billion for the border wall with Mexico. Experts say that not only would the wall be ineffective, but $1.6 billion would not even begin to cover the costly project, which would likely run into the tens of billions of dollars. However, Trump has promised to shut down the entire federal government if the budget bill does not set aside funding for the border wall.

While Congress might be able to delay fights over the border wall and Planned Parenthood, they will have to immediately allocate more funding to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) before their funding runs dry at the end of September, though some Republicans in the House have pushed to privatize the agency.

Congress will also have to immediately extend funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which is set to run out of money at the beginning of October. CHIP funds health insurance for approximately 9 million children across the country whose parents make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough money to afford private health insurance. Trump’s budget proposal called for cutting $5.8 billion out of the program over the next ten years and capping children’s eligibility to qualify for healthcare.

After a budget is passed, the Senate is expected to use the budget reconciliation process to overhaul the tax code and create a plan that is more favorable for the wealthy and corporations. The budget reconciliation process would allow the Senate to pass a tax bill with only 51% of the vote, instead of the 60 votes typically required of fiscal measures, therefore allowing the 52 Senate Republicans to exclude Democrats from negotiations.

A major reason Republicans wanted to force the healthcare bill through before September was so they would have the necessary spending cuts to fund the tax break for the wealthy. Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority Foundation, said in a statement, “Just like the House version, the Senate bill has almost nothing to do with healthcare, but is instead concerned with syphoning off enough money from Medicaid to give a massive tax break to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. This bill disgracefully places Medicaid on the chopping block, along with 74 million people who rely on its services, two-thirds of whom are women.”

But the fight over healthcare may not be over yet, as the President spent the August recess encouraging Congress to continue working to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act when they returned to Washington. Senate Majority Leader McConnell is open to considering a new healthcare bill, but many on Capitol Hill are also urging a bi-partisan solution that would stabilize the insurance markets. Many fear that President Trump and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price will allow the private insurance marketplace to implode if Congress does not step in.

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Media Resources: CBS News Feminist Newswire 6/1/17, 5/23/17, 9/12/16, 6/22/17;

Trump Administration Set To End DACA Immigration Program

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President Trump has reportedly decided to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, as soon as Friday. Implemented under President Barack Obama, DACA is a two year, renewable program for undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as minors.

Immigrant rights activists say the DACA program has improved the lives of thousands of immigrants. Approximately 800,000 undocumented immigrants, who are commonly referred to as “Dreamers,” have been issued work visas, received a college education, or deferred deportation because of DACA, allowing them to stay independently and safely within their communities.

Officials in ten states have pledged to challenge the legality of DACA if President Trump does not agree to put an end to the program by September 5.  Now that Trump has decided to rescind DACA, it is unclear whether the dissolution of the program will be gradual or instantaneous. Advocates are fearful that when the Trump Administration ends the program they will potentially call for the deportation of the 800,000 immigrants enrolled in DACA.

According to Human Rights Watch U.S. Advocacy Director Jasmine Tyler, the repeal of DACA would “expose hundreds of thousands of people to deportation by a cruel and unjust immigration system that fails to take into account their deep ties to the US.”

All over the country, immigrants and advocates have been demonstrating to protest the potential repeal of DACA. In New York City on August 30, over 1,000 protesters demonstrated outside of Trump Tower with #DefendDACA signs and chants. Several speakers spoke to the positive impact DACA has had on their lives and how the repeal of the DACA would be a direct attack on immigrant communities.

Since his inauguration, Trump has been moving forward with his mass deportation agenda which includes executive orders that have tripled the size of the Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations and allowed ICE the authority to deputize countless local law enforcement agents to act with the authority of federal officials in arresting and detaining undocumented immigrants. Trump’s anti-immigration stance was emphasized by his recent pardon for former Arizona Sherriff Joe Arpaio, who is infamous for unconstitutionally racially targeting and detaining individuals he suspected of being in the country without proper documentation.

Media Resources: New York Times 8/27/17; Politico 8/30/17; The Hill 8/28/17; Human Rights Watch 8/28/17; Feminist Newswire 8/29/17, 11/10/15

Trump Administration Shuts Down Initiative to Combat Gender-Race Wage Gap

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The Trump administration has announced that they will shut down a 2016 Obama-era initiative that empowered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to collect pay data sorted by gender, race, and ethnicity from businesses with 100 or more employees.

The Trump administration called the rule, which would have required employers to provide only summary date, not specific salary information on individual employees, “enormously burdensome” and  unhelpful. But most employers were already prepared to file this data and a number of large public companies began widely disclosing this information in recent years. The policy was purposefully crafted with the employer community in mind and the goal of efficiency.

Vicki Shabo, vice president for workplace policy and strategy at the National Partnership for Women and Families, credited the policy’s dismantling to “the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the federal contractors’ business lobby and anti-worker and anti-regulatory senators on the Hill.”

The data collection, which would have begun in spring 2018, would have covered over 63 million employees and provided more concrete information on pay discrimination across industries and occupations. Unlike previous data collection initiatives, this one would have included information on benefits and retirement packages, and not simply wage information, providing a more comprehensive picture of the gender-race pay gap.

The initiative was aimed at encouraging greater voluntary compliance with equal pay laws, but would have also helped the EEOC and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) identify and focus their investigations on employers who flout the laws.

In June, the Trump administration released a budget proposal that disbanded the Labor Department division that has been tasked with policing discrimination among federal contractors for nearly forty years. Thanks to the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) millions of dollars in settlements have been awarded to Americans, who without systematic audits from OFCCP may not have known that they were subject to discriminatory practices by their employers.

In April, Trump revoked the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which aimed to ensure that companies with federal contracts are in compliance with fourteen federal labor laws. This order went lengths to protect women in the workplace by addressing two major workplace concerns: pay transparency and forced arbitration clauses for sexual assault and discrimination claims.

Women currently make an average of 80 cents to a man’s dollar, but the racial disparity in the gender wage gap is vast. Based on data from 2015, compared to white men, Asian women earned 90 percent, white (non-Hispanic) women earned 76 percent, black women earned 62 percent, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander women earned 60 percent, American Indian women earned 58 percent and Hispanic/Latina women earned 54 percent.

The fights for gender pay equity on the federal level have been a back and forth tug for over 60 years. The first Equal Pay Law was signed by President Kennedy in 1963, making it illegal to pay women less money for doing the same job. However, a Supreme Court ruling later limited the amount of time that a woman had to file a wage discrimination suit against her employer to within 180 days of the first discriminatory pay check. In 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, allowing women to file suit for wage discrimination no matter how much time had passed since the discrimination first began.

In 2014, Senate Republicans unanimously blocked a bill that would have made it illegal for employers to punish employees who discussed their wages. Democrats had hoped the bill would empower women and others to have constructive conversations about their position responsibilities and salaries.

This year, Representative Rosa DeLauro introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act for the 11th time, a bill that aims to strengthen discriminated workers’ position in court, end retaliation against workers who speak out, and improve federal enforcement capabilities concerning anti-discrimination laws.

Media Resources: Feminist Majority 2/1/16, 6/1/17, 4/7/17, 4/4/17; The Hill 8/29/17; Huffington Post 8/30/17

South Carolina Governor Blocks Funding to Abortion Providers

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In the latest attack on abortion access, South Carolina joins a long list of states who have attempted to pass legislation or set up obstacles for individuals trying to access abortion services.

Last week, South Carolina Governor Henry McMasters signed an executive order that bans funding of any non-profit organization or practitioner that offers abortion services. The executive order bars the funding of abortion providers by state and local resources and will undoubtedly limit the number of people who will receive abortion procedures or preventative care at these facilities. According to many reproductive rights advocates, this executive order is a pointed attack on Planned Parenthood, which has three clinics in the state. The Los Angeles Times reports that Governor McMasters said in a statement that “taxpayer dollars must not directly or indirectly subsidize abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.”

Governor McMaster’s executive order follows the most recent rollback on Title X funding protections by the Trump Administration.  After Trump’s inauguration, the House and Senate, using the Congressional Review Act, repealed a rule put in place by the Obama administration in December that blocked states from cutting off Title X funding to women’s health clinics that provide abortion services.

Title X of the Public Health Services Act is the only federal domestic program that is exclusively concerned with providing funds for family planning and reproductive health services. Title X funding is awarded through competitive grants to whichever healthcare providers prove they are best qualified for meeting the needs of the communities they serve. By passing the measure to gut Title X funding protections, the federal government has once again opened the doors to allow states to bar women’s healthcare providers from funds that pay for STI/STD treatments and birth control, not because they are unqualified providers, but because they also happen to offer abortion services through non-governmental funding.

This is not South Carolina’s first attempt to limit access to abortion services. In 2016, a South Carolina State Senator proposed a “personhood amendment” which would have effectively outlawed not only abortions but also emergency contraception, IUDs and birth control pills. The bill failed to get the necessary number of votes to be included on the Senate agenda before the summer 2016 recess. However, earlier in the same year, South Carolina lawmakers passed a bill that was signed into law by then Governor Nikki Haley that banned abortions after 20 weeks.

Earlier this month, Texas lawmakers passed a bill to further restrict abortion access in the state. House Bill 214 was given early approval by the Texas State Senate during a 30-day special session called by Governor Gregg Abbot in July. The bill bans all private health insurance plans and plans sold through the Affordable Care Act marketplace from covering abortion care unless the life of the woman is directly at risk. Instead, women would be required to buy supplemental insurance should they ever think they may need or want an abortion.

 

Media Resources: Los Angeles Times 8/27/17; Reuters 8/25/17; Washington Examiner 8/25/17; Feminist Newswire 7/6/16, 3/31/17, 6/9/14, 8/17/17

Trump Pardons Notorious Arizona Sheriff Despite Widespread Outrage

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Last week, President Trump issued an executive pardon for former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio, a notorious Arizona official who abused his position to unconstitutionally racially target and detain individuals he suspected of being in the country without proper documentation.

Since 1993, Arpaio has been in the national spotlight as one of the cruelest sheriffs in the country. In addition to illegally stopping, detaining and imprisoning people based on their race and ethnicity, some of whom were American-born citizens, Arpaio ran an outdoor Tent City jail under the hot sun that he himself likened to a “concentration camp.” Prisoners were given inedible food, denied access to newspapers and information, and were forced to live outside without heat or air conditioning. Arpaio also reinstituted chain gangs in his prisons, where prisoners are forced to work and move around while shackled together.

In 2007, Arapaio ordered the arrest of two owners of The Phoenix New Times in their homes after the paper published a story about the county subpoenaing records of readers’ internet searches. The charges were later dropped and the owners successfully sued the county for millions.

From 1996 to 2015 there were 39 suicides in the Maricopa County jail and 157 deaths overall. In addition, the sheriff failed to investigate over 400 sexual assault claims.

After over two decades as sheriff, a federal judge ordered Arpaio to stop illegally detaining people based on their race or ethnicity. When he refused to comply with the federal court order, he was tried and convicted of federal contempt.

Arpaio is a longtime supporter of Donald Trump who for years echoed Trump’s claims that President Obama was not born in the United States. The White House has sweeping Constitutional authority to pardon people convicted of federal crimes, and are not required to provide any legitimate reasons for taking such action.

While other modern Presidents have also exercised pardon power, legal experts have been quick to point out that this is a unique situation, as Trump has consistently been bombastically critical of the judicial system that was responsible for the crack down on Arpaio’s systematic racial intimidation and detention.

Since his inauguration, Trump has been moving forward with his mass deportation agenda, resurrecting a failed Obama-era program that automatically checked the immigration status of anyone booked into local jails. In addition, he issued an order allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations office to triple in size, and gave ICE the authority to deputize countless local law enforcement agents to act with the authority of federal officials in arresting and detaining undocumented immigrants as part of ICE’s immigration “task force.”

A February executive order also laid out a strategy for deporting people prior to their trials, allowing anyone who has been in the country for less than two years to be removed immediately, including children who are alone, fleeing violence or seeking family in the United States. The President has also threatened to shut down the government should he not receive funding for his long-promised Mexican border wall in September.

 

Media Resources: NPR 8/28/17; New York Times 8/27/17; The Journal Gazette 8/29/17; Feminist Majority Foundation 2/21/17

Lebanon Repeals Legal Loopholes for Rapists

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Last week, the Lebanese Parliament voted to repeal Article 522 of the government’s penal code which halts the prosecution or conviction of an alleged rapist if the perpetrator marries their victim. Lebanon joins Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia on the list of countries to recently repeal similar legislation.

These laws, commonly referred to by women’s rights advocates as “rape laws,” offer a loophole for sexual assailants to avoid jail time by agreeing to marry their victim. Similarly, women’s rights advocates have worked on campaigns to have these laws repealed so that women who have been assaulted cannot be revictimized by being coerced into marrying their assailant. The repeal of rape laws is a step toward protecting women’s basic human rights.

After a nationwide campaign against the rape law by Lebanese women’s rights group ABAAD Institution for Gender Equality, Lebanese parliamentarians finally voted to repeal Article 522 after a proposal was submitted last December. The campaign, in collaboration with UN Women Lebanon, included online petitions, billboards, and even a concert to address long held societal norms that helped keep the rape law in place. While the victory was celebrated in Lebanon, advocates have not lost sight of the work that remains. While the Lebanese Parliament repealed Article 522, Articles 505 and 518 remain in the penal code and allows the loophole to apply for those accused of assaulting minors under the age of 15.

On August 1st, the Jordanian Parliament voted to repeal Article 308 of the penal code, which, much like Lebanon’s article 522, allowed rapists to avoid prosecution if they agree to marry their victim to protect their “honor.” The repeal has passed the Parliament and is expected to pass the Senate and be approved by King Abdullah II. Wafa Bani Mustafa, a Jordanian Parliament member and women’s rights advocate, remarked on the progress that remains in changing the mindset of society but that the repeal of the law “is a strong message to society” and is the first step in the right direction.

In 2014, Morocco repealed their rape law, Article 475.  Article 475 stated that a rapist cannot be prosecuted if they marry their victim. In some cases, rape victims were forced to marry their attackers by their families in order to protect the family’s honor. Morocco’s Article 475 came under international scrutiny in 2012, when a 16 year old girl committed suicide after being forced to marry her rapist, who was almost a decade older than her.

According to Al-Jazeera, these rape laws stem from colonial laws such as the Napoleonic Code and Latin laws. In France, similar legislation was struck down in 1994.

UN Women declared the repeal of Lebanon’s Article 522, the repeal of similar legislation in many other states, as a “historic day” and a symbol of progress in the campaign to end violence against women.

Media Resources:  UN Women 8/18/17; Al-Jazeera 8/1/17, 8/4/17, 8/24/17; BBC 8/16/17; New York Times 8/1/17; Feminist Newswire 1/24/13

Trump Reinstates Ban on Recruitment of Transgender Troops

Posted on by Feminist Newswire

President Trump issued a memorandum last week reinstating a ban on transgender individuals serving openly in the United States military and forbidding the Department of Defense from providing medical treatment related to healthcare for transgender service members.

There are currently 1,320 to 6,630 transgender people serving in the military. Trump has instructed the Department of Defense and Homeland Security to assess how to handle those transgender troops already serving, refusing to say whether or not they would be permitted to remain in the military. Should the Defense Department decide to discharge all of those troops, it will end up costing them hundreds of millions of dollars.

Army Captain Jennifer Sims, who is based in Germany and currently preparing for her transition surgery, told the Associated Press that the President’s decision contradicted the speech he made last week during which he praised the military for their tolerance and celebrated that service members come from all walks of life but are united by their values and shared sense of duty.

“Being transgender had absolutely no impact on my fitness for duty,” says Army Captain Jennifer Peace, a transgender woman who was deployed to Afghanistan in 2012 while transitioning. “There should be no transgender standard—there should be an Army standard. If I can make the Army standard, I should be able to serve.”

The ACLU has already filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on behalf of six current members of the military, arguing that the ban violates the Constitution’s promise of equal protection under the law, as well as violating due process by singling out transgender individuals for discrimination.

The new rule officially enacts the Tweet that Trump issued a month ago calling for the end of the 2016 Obama-era initiative to allow transgender troops to serve openly in the military. At the time, Politico reported that the President’s decision to ban transgender troops was a trade-off so that House Republicans would fund his Mexican border wall in their spending bill. Some far-right House Republicans were allegedly opposed to the spending bill because they were against defense spending being used to pay for service member’s transition surgery, but were never opposed to transgender individuals serving.

A 2016 RAND Corporations study commissioned by the Defense Department concluded that letting these troops serve openly would have “minimal impact” on readiness and healthcare costs, largely because there are so few in the military’s 1.3 million-member force. Specifically, the study estimates the total costs for hormone treatment and gender transition surgery could range from $2.4 million to $8.4 million, an amount which would also represent “an exceedingly small proportion” of total military healthcare expenditures, which amount to more than $50 billion per year, including $84 million a year on erectile dysfunction medications.

The same week of President Trump’s July Twitter announcement, the Department of Justice filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect LGBT people from employment discrimination. The brief will be considered when the court hears the case of Zarda v. Altitude Express, in which the plaintiff alleges he was fired from his job in 2010 because he is gay.

Title VII prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of sex but remains vague when applied to the rights of LGBTQ people. However, a growing number of courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) have determined that Title VII can protect LGBTQ individuals against discrimination due to the notion that firing an employee as a result of their nontraditional physical appearance or sexual preference amounts to prejudice. The Justice Department’s brief, and its contentious timing, implies that the transgender troops currently serving could be discharged, or essentially fired, because of their gender identity.

Media Resources: CNN 8/25/17; Washington Post 8/26/17; ACLU 8/28/17; Feminist Majority Foundation 7/26/17, 7/31/17,

Reflecting on the 19th Amendment: The Right to Vote and Women’s Equality

Posted on by Feminist Newswire

August 26 is Women’s Equality Day, the 97th anniversary celebrating the day when the 19th Amendment went into effect mandating that the vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

On this day in 1920, the train carrying the 38th state signature needed to ratify the amendment arrived in Washington DC from Tennessee. After 72 years of fighting to include those two short lines in the Constitution, the women of the suffrage movement would finally have their dream realized, despite the fact that most of the women at the original Seneca Falls Convention had long since died.

Of course, the 19th amendment did not protect all women in the United States from disenfranchisement, as discriminatory poll taxes, literacy tests and other degrading practices, coupled with terroristic intimidation by white supremacists, would restrict black women from equal access to voting for another 45 years. Native American women, as well as Asian American women, were often denied their right to citizenship in the courts and state law, and therefore were also barred from voting in many instances.

Despite the progress that has been made, the right to vote is currently being threatened at the state level. After the Supreme Court’s 2013 5-4 ruling in the case of Shelby County v Holder effectively dismantled parts of the 1964 Voting Rights Act, the federal government had far less oversight over voting regulations in states with a history of racial discrimination at the polls. Many Republican controlled legislatures then began passing laws that could suppress voter turnout under the guise of wanting to prevent non-existent in person voter fraud.

At the time of the November 2016 election, 31 states had voter ID laws on the books, which were estimated to disenfranchise a potential 21 million Americans who did not have access to any acceptable government-issued photo ID. That is 11 percent of US citizens. The majority of these people are low-income, people of color, and the elderly, who are hindered for a number of reasons, including lacking the necessary funds needed to obtain the documents required to secure an ID.

Additionally, state legislatures are suppressing voting rights through means ranging from discriminatory redistricting plans that dilute the voting power of certain communities, to unethical purging of voter rolls without properly notifying those affected.

But while some states have passed laws aimed at suppressing voter participation, other states have passed automatic voter registration bills. Alaska, California, Oregon, Colorado, Georgia, West Virginia, Connecticut, Vermont, the District of Columbia and Illinois have all implemented an automatic voter registration system, and twenty other states have introduced legislation to implement a similar process.

Today, women hold the voting capability to decide national elections, especially women of color, who are the fastest growing voter block in the country. 63.3 percent of registered female voters turned out in the November 2016 election as opposed to 59.3 percent of registered male voters. Women tend to vote differently than men because of their respective life experiences, a phenomenon that has been termed “the gender gap.” Far from voting the same as their husbands, women frequently take more seriously into consideration a number of issues including care giving responsibilities, the pay gap, and domestic violence and sexual assault.

Unfortunately the 19th amendment is still the only explicitly guaranteed constitutional protections women have, a fact that was brought up time and again during the confirmation hearings for the newest Justice Neil Gorsuch, who is a constitutional originalist and therefore attempts to interpret the document as it was written. This narrow view of women’s protections under the Constitution left many women’s right advocates concerned that he would be complicit in eventually overturning Roe v Wade.

That’s why the fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, a federal Constitutional amendment that would prohibit sex discrimination and guarantee equal rights for women and girls, has picked up steam recently. In March, Nevada became the 36th state, and the first state since 1982, to ratify the ERA.

The ERA is far from symbolic; it would help women in cases of discrimination in education, employment, wages, insurance benefits, scholarships, military service, social security, violence against women, and so much more. Without the passage of the ERA, women have been forced to try to gain equality law by law. If the ERA was ratified by 38 states and became the law of the land, there would be a Constitutional provision against the Supreme Court, Congress or state legislatures gutting equality on the basis of sex.

Media Resources: Pew Research 5/12/17; Teen Vogue 8/18/17; Feminist Majority Foundation 8/26/17, 11/3/16, 2/1/17, 3/20/17

US District Court Strikes Down Texas’s Revised Voter ID Law

Posted on by Feminist Newswire

United States District Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos handed down a decision to strike down Texas’s revised voter ID law (Senate Bill 5) on the basis that it continues to discriminate against African American and Latino voters. Judge Gonzalez Ramos issued a 27 page decision on the 23rd of August stating that the voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act and is unconstitutional.

The new law passed the Texas State Senate in May and was signed by Texas Governor Gregg Abbot in August. Senate Bill 5 is a revised version of Senate Bill 14, which was also struck down by Judge Gonzalez Ramos due to its discriminatory nature. The August 23rd ruling is the latest decision in a series of legal battles that began in 2011 against Texas’s voter ID laws, which are the strictest in the United States.

The law in question required individuals to show one of a limited selection of six government issued photo identifications when they went to vote.  In October 2014, US District Judge Gonzalez Ramos issued a 143-page order striking down SB 14.  According to Judge Ramos, the law was “an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote” and has an “impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose [in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.]”

The Obama administration and lawyers suing the state argued that the law purposely privileged forms of identification that were more likely to be held by white voters—like military IDs and concealed handgun carry permits— and excluded those more likely to belong to people of color—like employee photo IDs and university photo IDs. The objection issued by the Obama administration was withdrawn after the 2016 election by President Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the basis that the Justice Department no longer believed the law was passed with discriminatory intent. The move by Trump’s Justice Department is of little surprise following the confirmation of Attorney General Sessions, who has been a consistent supporter of discriminatory voter ID laws.

Civil Rights advocates claim the August 23rd decision by Judge Gonzalez Ramos as a victory in the fight to end voter suppression in Texas. However, more states are issuing suppressive voter registration laws on the basis of “preventing” voter fraud. The Brennan Center for Justice, a leading organization in the fight against strict voter ID laws, is representing the Indiana NAACP and the League of Women Voters in Indiana in a case against the Indiana Secretary of State over their strict voter registration law passed in the state senate in July. The lawsuit filed on August 23rd  claims that the law violates the National Voter Registration Act and illegally purges voter legislation roles.

The new law removes voters through the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck System, which finds voters that are registered in another state. The system, however, is flawed and had a 17% error rate in Virginia. The result is that many Indiana voters are wrongfully removed from voter rolls and therefore ineligible to participate in elections.

Media Resources: Feminist Newswire 2/28/17, 9/27/16, 8/6/15; Politico 8/23/17; Mew York Times 8/23/17; AP 8/23/17; NPR 8/23/17; Brennan Center for Justice 8/23/17

New Poll Shows Strong Public Support for Abortion

Posted on by Feminist Newswire

The Center for Reproductive Rights has released the results of a new poll that shows 61 percent of adults in the United States support the federal government passing legislation to protect women’s access to abortion and prevent state’s from passing laws meant to restrict that access, known as TRAP laws.

In addition, the poll found that 69 percent of adults want Roe v Wade to remain the law of the land and 66 percent support a woman having access to abortion care in her own community,

45 states and the District of Columbia have laws subjecting women and/or abortion providers to burdensome regulations. Between 2011 and now, some 369 abortion restrictions have been passed by state legislatures, twice as many as in the previous decade. When informed of this fact, 59 percent of respondents considered this to be the wrong direction for the country to head in.

In fact, many of these laws are already considered unconstitutional. In 2016 the Supreme Court heard the case of Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt and ruled that Texas’s law requiring abortion clinics to comply with ambulatory surgical center standards, as well as mandating that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at local hospitals, was unconstitutional, as it had no proven medical benefit and constituted an undue burden on women seeking abortion. The Guttmacher Institute says there are 18 states that passed bills mandating the same or similar requirements.

But just because it is unconstitutional, does not mean that Texas or other states have given up on their anti-abortion agenda. Last month, the Texas state legislature went into special session in order to pass a number of bills, including one that bans all private health insurance plans and plans sold through the Affordable Care Act marketplace from covering abortion care unless the life of the woman is directly at risk. In June, Governor Abbott signed into law a bill that requires fetal remains to be buried or cremated, prohibits donations of fetal tissue and implements sweeping bans on some of the safest types of second trimester abortions.

Despite a state legislature hostile to women’s health, 54 percent of Texans support the federal government passing legislation to protect women’s access to abortion.

The Women’s Health Protection Act is a piece of federal legislation, re-introduced in 2017, that aims to protect the rights of women to access abortion services. It states that “access to safe, legal abortion services is essential to women’s health and central to women’s ability to participate equally in the economic and social life of the United States.” The bill makes state TRAP laws illegal, including requirements that force individuals seeking abortion to undergo unnecessary medical tests and in-person visits prior to the procedure.

81 percent of respondents in the Center’s survey want Congress to make women’s healthcare a priority, and an equal percentage want Congress to be vocal about women’s health issues. Of those who want Congress to be more vocal, 66 percent support the Women’s Health Protection Act.

 

Media Resources: Center for Reproductive Rights 07/2017; Feminist Majority Foundation 4/20/17, 8/17/17, 6/29/17;

Trump Dissolves Climate Advisory Panel Ahead of Report on Global Warming

Posted on by Feminist Newswire

On Sunday, the Trump Administration decided to dissolve the Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment. The Committee’s charter came up for renewal on Sunday, but the committee’s chair was informed that the Administration planned to let the charter expire with no intention for renewal.

The Assessment Advisory Committee falls under the oversight of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration and is comprised of 15 people including local and government officials, academic experts, and corporate representatives. The goal of the Advisory Committee is to interpret and analyze data from the National Climate Assessment—a report produced every 4 years—and make the information accessible to people inside and outside of the federal government. Additionally, the Committee is given the responsibility of making recommendations to officials in both the public and private realms for how to keep climate change in mind when making decisions on how to proceed with development and infrastructure plans.

Those who sat on the Committee have expressed disagreement with the administration’s decision to let the charter expire, as the Committee have been reviewing the Climate Science Special Report, a document that will be useful in creating the National Climate Assessment due in 2018, which has already alarmed environment experts.

The report concludes that global temperatures have risen significantly in the past forty years, making temperatures between 1980 and 2017 the warmest in over 1500 years. What’s more, the authors of the report said it was “extremely likely” that over 50% of the temperature increase in the past seventy years was caused by human action—namely, the emission of greenhouse gases. The report predicts that global temperatures will increase by five to 7.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, and determines that even if humans stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the earth would still warm by at least 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. Among the most ground-breaking of the report’s claims is that extreme weather events induced by climate change, including heatwaves and droughts, can be directly attributed to human action.

Trump himself provoked outrage from environmental groups and public officials alike when he withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, an international pledge to reduce carbon emissions signed by every nation in the world besides Syria and Nicaragua. Additionally, Trump’s budget plan proposes a 31 percent cut to the EPA’s funding, which would eliminate 20 percent of the workforce and cut over 50 EPA programs. In addition, the EPA would be cut by 2 percent each year after 2018 for the next 10 years.

Women, especially those in poorer countries, are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Women in developing nations tend to rely on food production to make a living, meaning that erratic weather can be economically devastating for women and their families. What’s more, women are more likely to be impoverished than men, and poorer people tend to live in less desirable areas that are vulnerable to floods, droughts, or storms. Women are also more likely than men to die in natural disasters, meaning that climate change puts women’s lives at risk.

 

Media Resources: CNN 8/21/17; The Hill 8/20/17; The Washington Post 8/20/17; Time 8/20/17; Feminist Newswire 8/9/17; Scientific American 8/21/17

A Win for India’s Women’s Rights Movement

Posted on by Feminist Newswire

Today India’s Supreme Court ruled the religious practice of “triple talaq,” which allows men to divorce their wives by simply repeating the word “divorce” three times, unconstitutional.

“Triple talaq” can only be performed by a man to instantly divorce his wife. Women who have been divorced in this manner are often left without economic support, access to their children, or even a place to live.  In the case of Shayara Bano, who filed a petition as part of the Supreme Court Case, she was denied access to her children after her husband of 15 years divorced her via letter. For many women, they are divorced by phone, email, text message, Skype, Facebook, or even the popular messaging app WhatsApp.

Amreen Begum, a 25 year old mother of 2 children was dumped on the side of the road by her husband. Instead of waiting for him to perform the “triple talaq,” Begum took matters into her own hands. While at the local police station filing a report against her husband for domestic violence, she shouted “talaq talaq talaq” and her husband’s name. She is believed to be the first woman to have attempted the practice highlighting the blatant gender inequity in this common divorce custom.

Seven women who were divorced by their husbands under this practice petitioned the Supreme Court, with the help of several women’s rights organizations, to investigate its constitutionality and the obvious gender bias of “triple talaq.” The case was heard by 5 judges of different faiths including Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Islam and the 3-2 decision was handed down early this morning.

Women’s rights advocates hail this decision as a major victory for Muslim women in India. Shayara Bano’s lawyer stated that the decision set an important precedent because it ruled that Bano’s “fundamental rights had been violated.” Women’s rights organizations such as Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA – Indian Muslim Women’s Movement”) championed the victory and one of their founding members, Zakia Soman, called the practice of “nothing but patriarchy masquerading as religion.” BMMA has compiled data on “triple talaq” and testimonials from talaq survivors for the last ten years and launched a major campaign last year to end “triple talaq” on the basis of gender justice and women’s economic and social empowerment.

“Triple Talaq” has already been outlawed in many other Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Egypt. Due to the diverse religious make-up of India’s population, India’s government allows communities to follow religious laws in family matters such as marriage and divorce. With the religious practice of “triple talaq” now banned, Muslim women will be able to take advantage of non-secular divorce laws that require men to support their wives and children after a divorce.

Organizations such as BMMA are part of the growing women’s rights movement in India. Although the women’s rights movement in India received heavy international attention after the brutal gang rape of a young woman in New Delhi in 2012, Indian women have a history of fighting for their rights throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. India’s feminist movement contains factions based on religion, ethnicity, geography, and social status. These groups not only call for progress on behalf of gender justice, but also weigh in on socio-economic, environmental, and public policy issues. Just last year, India’s only all-female newspaper Khabar Lahariya went digital allowing it to spread its feminist journalism across India and deeper into rural communities. The paper’s all female reporting staff seeks to examine local power structures based on gender, religion and caste.

 

Media Resources: The Indian Express 3/8/17; Feminist Newswire 1/2/13; BBC 8/22/17; BBC 8/22/17; The Guardian 8/22/17; The Independent 8/22/17; Feminist Newswire 8/15/16; The Guardian 5/11/17

President Announces Continuation of Mission in Afghanistan

Posted on by Feminist Newswire

On Monday evening, President Trump announced to the country that the war in Afghanistan would move forward and that he would increase troop levels, but failed to include details over strategy or how success would be measured in a conflict that has now stretched on for over 16 years.

There are currently 8,400 American troops stationed in Afghanistan, serving as part of the approximately 13,000 international forces tasked with training and advising the Afghan military. About 2,000 of those American troops carry out counter-terrorism missions in the country.

Despite campaign rhetoric describing a desire to withdraw and decrying Afghanistan as a failure, the President said he has come to recognize that pulling out troops would threaten the tremendous progress that has been made and leave the country vulnerable to the Taliban as well as some of the same ISIS forces that have overtaken Iraq in recent years.

President Trump said he is committed to training even more Afghan troops, who make up the overwhelming bulk of the fighting forces,  and will put greater pressure on Pakistan to crack down on border areas that give sanctuary to Taliban fighters.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani responded that he was pleased with President Trump’s announcement, and added, “The strength of our security forces should show the Taliban and others cannot win a military victory. The objective of peace is paramount. Peace remains our priority.”

While Trump placed blame for the current Afghan predicament on President Obama, foreign policy experts were quick to point out that their strategies are not all that different. However, a large and confusing deviation between the two Presidents’ policies came when Trump declared that, “We will no longer use American military might to construct democracies in far-away lands,” adding, “We are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists.” Meanwhile, Trump’s State Department is severely understaffed, as there is not even currently an ambassador to Afghanistan in the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

But supporting the societal and political gains that have been achieved, especially for women, is critical to establishing security and stability in the region. Continuing to work with women and girls in a way the President might dismiss as “nation building” is considered imperative to the larger mission of peace.

Portrayals of Afghanistan in the American media often show war, women in burqas and extreme violence. In reality, however, women and girls now have much more opportunity to attend schools and universities, as well as access health facilities. Rates of infant, child and maternal mortality continue to fall and there are more and more women being trained as midwives. There are also growing numbers of women participating in STEM industries, free media, music groups, advocacy, athletics, the military and the electorate. Some 80 percent of Afghan women now have regular or occasional access to mobile phones.

But advocates for Afghan women and girls still see a lot of areas for improvement. In a recent briefing for Members of Congress held by the Feminist Majority Foundation, Afghan women suggested future policy initiatives that could support Afghan women who join security forces, establish national election fairness and human rights commissions, and increase women’s access to education, health services and contraception. In addition, increased resources need to be directed to women in areas formerly controlled by the Taliban, and though there is a rise in women entrepreneurs, many do not know how to grow their businesses to enter the international market.

The Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues is a position within the State Department that is charged with advancing this exact type of policy and promoting the rights of women and girls by considering their experiences and perspectives in all diplomatic missions. So far, the Trump administration has failed to appoint anyone to this position.

Media Resources: New York Times 8/21/17; CNN 8/22/17; Tolo 8/22/17; Feminist Majority Foundation 6/21/17, 7/28/17

Oregon Passes Reproductive Health Equity Bill

Posted on by Feminist Newswire

Last week, amidst the rise of anti-abortion state legislation, Oregon became the first state to pass legislation to solidify and ensure equal access to abortion and birth control for all state residents.

Lawmakers, in collaboration with the Pro-Choice Coalition of Oregon, introduced a bill in January entitled the Reproductive Health Equity Act of 2017. The bill ensures no-cost birth control and health services such as cancer screenings, preventative care, abortions, STI testing, and pre-natal and post-partum care to all residents of Oregon. The bill also covers undocumented immigrants, gender non-conforming people, and transgender individuals according to the Pro-Choice Coalition of Oregon’s press release from January. All of these reproductive health services will be available at no-cost to any individual, even if the Affordable Care Act were to be repealed.

In July, the bill passed Oregon’s Senate, and Governor Kate Brown signed the bill into law on August 15. This law serves as an example of the most comprehensive law to protect access to reproductive health care at the state level. The bill also provides additional coverage to thousands of Oregon residents who are covered by insurance plans that were “grandfathered” in after the passage of the ACA (allowing those insurers to be exempt from the employer mandate for no-cost birth control) or are on high-deductible plans that make paying for contraception or abortion nearly impossible.

Several states have moved to pass legislation to ensure that birth control remains cost-free and accessible after the Trump Administration declared its intent to rollback parts of the Affordable Care Act including the contraceptive mandate for employers. Now, 28 states have laws that improve access to contraceptives including Nevada where Republican Governor Brian Sandoval signed a bill in June that requires insurers to offer 12-months of no-cost birth control.

These “reproductive health equity” or “contraceptive equity” bills come at a time when state anti-abortion legislation is on the rise. In Texas just last week, the state Senate passed House Bill 214 which bans all private health insurance plans and plans sold through the Affordable Care Act marketplace from covering abortion care unless the life of the woman is directly at risk. Instead, women would be required to buy supplemental insurance should they ever think they may need or want an abortion, prompting some Democratic lawmakers to accuse Republicans of forcing women to buy “rape insurance.”

Texas joins ten other states that require additional insurance to cover abortion procedures including Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Utah. Only Utah and Indiana make exceptions to this rule in cases of rape and incest.

Media Resources: Feminist Newswire 8/17/17; Slate 7/6/17; US News 8/15/17; New York Times 6/9/17; Mother Jones 1/23/17

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