Migration Category: National Old Site

Ohio state Representative Robert Mecklenborg announced Sunday that he is resigning after news of a drunk driving charge became public. Rep. Mechlenborg, chairman of the House Government and Elections Committee and sponsor of a controversial bill requiring voters to show a valid photo ID to register, was arrested in Indiana last April for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol and with an expired driver’s license. According to media reports, he was accompanied in his car by a young woman and was found with Viagra in his system. His announcement of resignation came just days after Republican House speaker William Batchelder publicly asked him to leave office.

Information regarding the arrest was not made public at the time, but surfaced late last month, just one day after Mecklenborg delivered an impassioned speech on the House floor in favor of House Bill 125, which would ban abortions at the first detectable fetal heartbeat.

Mecklenborg sponsored a voter ID bill (HB 159) just days after the arrest and without a driver’s license of his own. The most restrictive state voter ID bill yet, it would require voters to show one of the following at the polls: Ohio state ID card, Ohio driver’s license, Military photo ID, or U.S. passport. According to American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, HB 159 could deny the right to vote to thousands of citizens who do not have the very limited acceptable forms of identification. They claim that it would disproportionately affect low-income, disabled, racial and ethnic minorities, college students, and the elderly. The bill has passed the House and awaits a vote in the Senate.

A Tea Party convention and straw poll scheduled for late September in Kansas has been called off amid sluggish enrollment and allegations of infighting. On the event’s website, Freedom Jamboree chair William Temple accused local groups of a “preoccupation with prospering their own organizations at the expense of the ‘grassroots’ movement as a whole” and said “the spirit intrinsic in 2009 has diminished nationwide, and some lethargy and weariness persists.”

The Kansas City event was expected to feature a straw poll and appearances by Republican presidential candidates Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. Temple wrote that he hoped to draw at least 350 tea party groups. As of July 1, however, only 62 organizations had pledged to attend.

“If anyone in the our movement has a plan or direction that can unite the movement again, and reverse the nation’s headlong march toward the economic abyss, please take the reins!” Temple wrote on the website. “It appears the Tea Party horse is riderless, and riding off in all directions at once!”

The Freedom Jamboree is the second major Tea Party gathering to be canceled in as many years. Organizers blamed high temperatures and conflicts with summer vacation schedules when plans for a 2010 Las Vegas event fell apart.

On Thursday, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon (D-MO) said he will allow two bills that restrict late-term abortions to pass and become a law without his signature. House Bill 213 and Senate Bill 65 passed the general assembly with overwhelming majorities. Missouri had already banned abortions except to preserve the life or health of the woman, but the new law removes the general health or mental health exceptions. Under the new law, abortions are only allowed after 20 weeks to save the woman’s life or when continuing pregnancy risks substantial injury to the woman’s major bodily functions.

This law permits doctors to decide viability on a case by case basis. Doctors who violate the new law are subject to a fine of up to $50,000, loss of their medical license, and imprisonment.

Governor Nixon has said he supports abortion rights, though he has now allowed multiple abortion restrictions to pass without his signature or a veto. Other states, including Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Indiana have passed laws restricting late-term abortions.

Yesterday California Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act into law, which will require that school curricula and textbooks include information about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans. Governor Brown stated that the law “revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books.” The law will go into effect in January, although textbooks will not undergo revisions until 2015.

Roland Palencia, executive director of Equality California, “Today marks a monumental victory for the LGBT civil rights movement as the contributions of diverse LGBT community will no longer be erased from history. Thanks to the FAIR Education Act, California students, particularly LGBT youth, will find new hope and inspiration and experience a more welcoming learning environment that will embrace them.”

This is the first law on record requiring schools teach both about the contributions of LGBT Americans and those with disabilities.

On Tuesday, Democrats won all six of their primaries in Wisconsin’s recall elections after facing an unusual challenge from party-switching Republicans. The Republicans ran so-called “Fake Democrats” in order to force a primary, delaying the recall vote by a month and giving their real candidates more time to appeal to constituents. Five of the six primaries were won by women candidates.

“The voters of Wisconsin have rejected the Republicans’ dirty tricks, despite their best efforts to turn out voters in these primaries for fake candidates,” said state Democratic Party spokeswoman Gillian Morris.

The recall bids grew out of this spring’s bitter fight over an anti-union law backed by Republican Governor Scott Walker. Opponents of the law are targeting six Republican state senators who voted for it; the Republicans are trying to unseat three Democrats who fought against it. If Democrats gain three seats, they will win control of the Senate and greatly improve their chance of thwarting further Walker initiatives. The election will be held August 9.

A law designed to expose fake crisis pregnancy clinics has been put on hold in New York City. US District Judge William H. Pauley III on Wednesday imposed a preliminary injunction on the law, which would require facilities to tell patients whether they provide emergency contraception or abortion services and whether they have health professionals on site. In March, the New York City Council voted 39 to 9, with one abstention, to pass the bill, which was promptly signed into law by Mayor Michael Bloomberg (D).

The law’s backers vowed to appeal. “The judge got it wrong,” said City Council member Jessica S. Lappin, who sponsored the legislation. “This is an important measure to protect women from dangerous and deceptive practices, and we’re not going to give up. We’re going to keep fighting.”

Currently, there are an estimated 3,500 CPCs nationwide, most of which are affiliated with one or more national umbrella organizations. CPCs often pose as comprehensive health centers and offer “free” pregnancy tests. Some CPCs coerce and intimidate women out of considering abortion as an option, and prevent women from receiving neutral and comprehensive medical advice. These clinics are typically run by anti-abortion zealots who are not licensed medical professionals.

Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo announced that priests, parochial school administrators, and parishes in the Catholic diocese may no longer hold fundraising events for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Bishop Blair expressed his concerns that although the breast cancer awareness group does not currently fund embryonic stem-cell research, it might in the future.

Bishop Blair stated in his letter, “at the present the Komen Foundation does not fund cancer research that employs embryonic stem cells. However, their policy does not exclude that possibility. They are open to embryonic stem cell research, and may very well fund such research in the future. They are also contributors to Planned Parenthood.”

Executive Director Mary Westphal of the Northwestern Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Foundation stated that organization has never given money to Planned Parenthood and does not currently fund embryonic stem-cell research. She went on to say that she was “extremely disappointed” with Bishop Blair’s decision.

New Hampshire’s Executive Council, comprised of five Republicans, indicated that it will meet again to reconsider its previous decision to defund Planned Parenthood. On June 22, New Hampshire’s Executive Council voted 3-2 to block funding for Planned Parenthood clinics, cancelling the state’s contract the organization and denying Planned Parenthood $1.8 million in state funding. Additionally, Planned Parenthood can no longer distribute low-cost birth control or antibiotics to any of its uninsured patients because the clinics also provide privately funded abortions.

Without insurance, many women will not be able to afford the full cost of birth control or other prescriptions. This affects about 120 low-income women every day and 70 percent of Planned Parenthood’s patients. According to Jennifer Frizzell, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, Since the decision, Planned Parenthood clinics have had to turn away 20 to 30 patients per day who wanted to refill their birth control prescriptions.

This vote makes New Hampshire the eighth state to attempt to defund Planned Parenthood.

In a special election yesterday for California’s 36th Congressional district, Democrat Janice Hahn defeated Republican Craig Huey by 54.6 percent to 45.4 percent. Hahn, a Los Angeles city councilwoman, is a firm supporter of women’s reproductive rights, fair pay, and equal education. Hahn also supports preserving Social Security and promoting green technology and jobs. Representative Jane Harman (D-CA) previously resigned this seat earlier this year in order to head the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think tank.

During her campaign, Hahn stated, “with the recent attacks on a woman’s right to choose by extremists in Congress, it’s clear that we need to send more pro-choice leaders to Washington. I will protect a woman’s right to choose and beat back any attempts to strip groups like Planned Parenthood of the funds they use to provide women’s reproductive health care to women who can’t afford it anywhere else.”

Hahn was endorsed by the Feminist Majority PAC, NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC, and EMILY’s List. Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, stated, “Republican self-funder Craig Huey would add ranks to a party currently waging war on American women and families and attempting to end Medicare as we know it. Janice is the progressive leader that California families deserve.”

At the San Bernardino Valley College campus yesterday, seven undocumented students were arrested for unlawful assembly and blocking traffic while protesting immigration policies. In total, approximately 125 people from across California gathered in total, carrying signs and chanting.

Isaac Barrera, one of the arrested students stated, “we chose this campus because we keep hearing of cases where the campus police are working directly with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ICE in detaining and even deporting undocumented youth. We have had enough, our communities have been hiding for far too long and we need to show them they do not need to be afraid.”

One of the policies the students protested required certain counties to check the immigration status of people detained by the police and potentially deport them. Mohammad Abdollahi, co-founder of the Dream is Coming Project stated, “It’s not always for civil disobedience, but if you roll a stop sign (you can be deported). That’s what these students were fighting against, these policies that are criminalizing our communities.”

A Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report showed a large gap in outcomes between African American and white women in almost every aspect of reproductive health, including higher rates of preterm delivery, infant mortality, and maternal deaths among African American women. The report suggests that race is the strongest predictor of disparities in birth outcomes.

The report also found that unexpectedly the race gap in birth outcomes does not narrow with educational attainment or age; or in other words, unlike white women, African American women do not experience better reproductive health and birth outcomes with increased age or socioeconomic status. Arline Geronimus, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health believes this is due the “cumulative impact of constantly dealing with disadvantages” a phenomenon she titled “weathering.” She suggests weathering may lead “birth outcomes for black women to deteriorate with maternal age.”

Susan Cohen, author of the report “Abortion and the Women of Color: The Bigger Picture” proposes that stressors and life events that are more common in low-income and minority women also lead to higher rates of abortion in African American women. According to the US government statistics collected by the CDC, African American women are five times more likely than white women across all income levels to seek an abortion.

I will never forget the day in 1981 that I asked Betty Ford to be an honorary co-chair with Alan Alda of the Equal Rights Amendment Countdown Campaign. I thought it would be a long, involved process. But she said almost immediately that she would be honored to do so.

At the time Betty Ford, the wife of former President Gerald Ford, was one of the most admired women in the United States. She also was completely unpretentious. If she could help women win full equal rights with men under the U.S. Constitution, Betty Ford wanted to give it her all. Read the rest of “Betty Ford, Champion of Women’s Rights” by Eleanor Smeal at CNN.com.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), and The Southern Poverty Law Center, joined by a coalition of other civil and human rights groups, recently filed a lawsuit against an Alabama anti-immigration law, scheduled to take effect in September. The law requires that state law enforcement officials “stop, question, and detain” any person who they have a “reasonable suspicion” is undocumented.

The law also requires parents and students in primary and secondary schools prove their immigration status to the schools with affidavits. Public schools in Alabama must then publish figures on the numbers of immigrants who are enrolled in schools, as well as any additional costs to the school due to the education of undocumented immigrant children. Moreover, the law bars undocumented immigrants from enrolling in any public college after high school and makes it a crime to rent housing to undocumented immigrants.

Cecilia Wang, the director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, stated, “Alabama has brazenly enacted this law despite the fact that federal courts have stopped each and every one of these discriminatory laws from going into effect. Local Alabama communities and people across the country are shocked and dismayed by the state’s effort to erode our civil rights and fundamental American values. Just as we’ve stopped similar draconian laws in Arizona, Utah, Indiana, and Georgia from going into effect, we will do so here in Alabama as well.”

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit voted 2-1 to strike down the anti-affirmative action provision of the Michigan Constitution. That provision, which was passed in a 2006 referendum, banned any preferences on the basis of ethnicity, sex, or race, particularly affecting admissions policies at state universities. This decision overturned Article I, Section 26 of the Michigan Constitution. Other states, including Arizona, California, Nebraska and Washington, have similar bans.

The 2006 referendum, also known as the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), was designed to “sound as if it advocated equal opportunity for minorities and women seeking public employment, public contracts or admission to public universities. In fact, it did away with programs created to support equal opportunity,” as the Lansing State Journal described the initiative. Many reports on this ruling, and on the MCRI itself, fail to note that it also prohibits sex-based affirmative action, such as public school efforts to engage more girls in science and mathematics.

The passage of that referendum with 58 percent of the vote was an enormous loss for defenders of affirmative action, as well as for universities that are deeply impacted by the ban, like the University of Michigan. Following the referendum, the percentage of underrepresented minority students admitted to Michigan’s freshman class dropped from 12.6 percent in the 2005 to 9.1 percent in 2008. In 2010, a class action lawsuit was filed against a similar California anti-affirmative action measure, Proposition 209, by the same Michigan-based group that brought the successful Michigan suit, arguing that the measure negatively affected the numbers of minority students, particularly at UCLA and Berkeley.

The dissenting judge and lone Republican appointee on the Sixth Circuit panel, Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, noted that the referendum actually overturned a decision that had been made by academics (i.e. admissions policies), not a political decision. She stated “Michigan has chosen to structure its university system such that politics plays no part in university admissions at all levels within its constitutionally created universities. The Michigan voters have therefore not restructured the political process in their state by amending their state constitution; they have merely employed it.”

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette announced that he will appeal the ruling because “MCRI embodies the fundamental premise of what America is all about: equal opportunity under the law. Entrance to our great universities must be based upon merit, and I will continue the fight for equality, fairness and rule of law.” Critics of affirmative action expect the decision to be overturned by the full Sixth Circuit, which contains a substantial majority of conservative judges.

Planned Parenthood of Arizona has won a temporary victory over new state laws restricting access to mifepristone, also known as RU-486 or the “abortion pill.” The two statutes would have taken effect on July 20, requiring the pill to be administered by a doctor rather than a nurse practitioner.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Richard Gama put enforcement of the laws on hold pending an August 22 hearing on a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood, which argues that the laws deny mifepristone users equal protection and violate privacy rights explicitly granted by the Arizona constitution.

“This is about women accessing basic health care that has been provided safely for over a decade by nurse practitioners and physicians assistants with no evidence, no medical evidence, that that situation needs to change,” said Bryan Howard, president of Planned Parenthood of Arizona. He added that the restrictions would make it impossible for Planned Parenthood to provide mifepristone in Flagstaff, Prescott and Yuma, where its offices are staffed only by nurse practitioners.

An activist group says it has collected 10,000 signatures demanding that state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser resign after fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused him of grabbing her neck in a chokehold. “Prosser took his bullying to a new level of unacceptable conduct and now he must go,” said One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross in a statement. “There is no excuse for David Prosser’s conduct and the people of Wisconsin are demanding he resign.”

Meanwhile, women’s groups and some female elected officials are calling on the judge to at least go on leave while he is under investigation. “Somebody who has been potentially victimized in the workplace certainly deserves to be safe and not in the same workplace working alongside the person accused of assaulting them,” said Lisa Subeck, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin and a member of the Madison City Council, in a press release Tuesday.

Justice Bradley alleged Prosser “put his hands around my neck in anger in a chokehold” last month while she was “demanding that he get out of my office following a disagreement about labor issues.” Two investigations of the incident are ongoing, one by the Dane County sheriff’s office and another by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission.

This is not the first time Prosser’s behavior toward the women he works with been called into question. In April, Prosser issued a public apology after e-mails released to the Journal Sentinel revealed that he had called Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a “bitch” and threatened “to destroy her.”

Yesterday Governor Bobby Jindal (R) signed a law requiring that clinics providing abortion services post signs indicating that a woman cannot be forced to obtain an abortion and that her partner is legally obligated to pay child support. The signs must also state that services are available to help women during and following their pregnancies and that adoptive parents may be able to offer financial assistance with the pregnancy, regardless of whether or not that statement is true.

Planned Parenthood indicated that it opposes language that “urges (a woman) to consult an independent physician about the risks of abortion to [her] physical and psychological well-being.” Planned Parenthood, which does not operate in Louisiana, vocally opposed the law stating that it patronizes women and compromises the doctor-patient relationship.

The law also requires that abortion providers notify women about a biased state Department of Health and Hospitals “abortion alternatives” website that includes information about adoption services, so-called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), which do not offer women neutral or comprehensive medical advice. The website also includes statements about so-called fetal pain, which has been discredited by medical experts

According the Guttmacher Spring 2011 Policy Review, family planning services are indispensable for many women, particularly marginalized populations like poor and low-income women.

In “The Numbers Tell the Story: The Reach and Impact of Title X,” Susan Cohen states as a result of the federal Title X family planning program, which subsidizes contraceptive services and provides support to create and sustain the large network of health centers, there are fewer teenage pregnancies and abortions, which saves both the federal government and the states billions of dollars in medical costs that would have been paid for by Medicaid. Cohan contends that “it’s completely irresponsible and illogical that the House of Representatives voted to defund Title X…Title X is precisely the kind of government program that should be strengthened, not gutted.”

According to “The Role of Family Planning Centers as Gateways to Health Coverage and Care,” written by Rachel Benson Gold, family planning centers provide services to more than 7 million women per year, boosting maternal and newborn health, lowering the rate of unplanned births and abortions, and providing sexual health care, as well as contraceptive services. Moreover, one in four women who obtain contraceptive services do so at one of the 8,000 publicly funded centers.

These centers provide an avenue into the US health care system for women who may not have another outlet for medical care, as 60 percent of women who receive care at a family planning center say it is also their primary source of medical care.

US District Court Judge Carlos Murguia blocked a law that would have shut down all but one abortion provider, Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, in the state. Murguia said there was evidence the clinics would “suffer irreparable harm” by being forced to close, and questioned whether the rules “rationally related” to patient health.

The law requires that abortion providers be licensed by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, which is authorized to regulate buildings and equipment for abortion clinics and to conduct inspections of the clinics twice yearly. The new regulations were sent out in mid-June by Governor Sam Brownback’s administration to abortion providers, which were then required to comply by July 1. The list of requirements is approximately 36 pages and stipulates hundreds of details including the minimum square footage of janitors’ closets and the temperature range for procedure and recovery rooms (68 to 73 degrees and 70 to 75 degrees, respectively).

Anti-Abortion activists in Kansas have not slowed in their effort to impose a de facto ban on abortion. Kansas Coalition for Life started collecting signatures on a petition Tuesday calling for a special session of the legislature to prohibit abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detectable. Since that happens at around the seventh week, when many women do not even know they are pregnant yet, the law would directly challenge the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which allows women to obtain abortion services until fetal viability at 22-24 weeks.

Today Federal District Court Judge Same Sparks is scheduled to hear arguments in a case filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) on behalf of Texas medical providers challenging Texas’ new abortion ultrasound law. The law, scheduled to take effect September 1, requires that women seeking abortion services forced to obtain and view an ultrasound.

The Center for Reproductive Rights claims that the law violates patients’ and doctors’ First Amendment Rights by requiring “physicians to violate basic standards of medical ethics by compelling them to disregard the wishes of patients who do not want to receive this information.” Bebe Anderson, lead attorney from CRR stated that the law is “most definitely the most extreme of this kind in the country. [It is] an intrusive hijacking of the doctor-patient relationship.”

The law requires that doctors show the woman the ultrasound. If the woman refuses to view the image, the doctor must describe it in detail and play the sound of the fetal heartbeat, if a heartbeat is present. Following the ultrasound, the woman must then wait a 24 hour period before obtaining an abortion. Women who live over 100 miles away from an abortion provider would only be required to wait two hours.