Migration Category: news-1-5000-national

The US Food and Drug Administration approved another option for American women to control their reproductive health. Lunelle, a monthly shot to prevent pregnancy, was proven to be 99 percent effective in clinical trials of over 1,000 women. The expected cost is between $30 and $37 per injection. Women taking Lunelle still have monthly menstrual cycles and cannot go more than 33 days between shots for the drug to be effective.

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), along with the Sex Trafficking Victims Protection Act, passed a joint House-Senate conference committee by a vote of 356-28.

This version of the Violence Against Women Act will provide $3 billion for battered women’s services and state programs to combat domestic violence, and extends the 1994 version of the bill with new additions for five years. It also provides training for judges on domestic violence and sexual assault cases. The Sex Trafficking Victims Protection Act provides $94.5 million and special visas for victims of sex trafficking and other forms of slavery. It also establishes programs to fight the trafficking of women and children, as well as harsh punishments for perpetrators.

This multi-issue anti-crime bill is expected to come up for a vote in the Senate on October 10. Until today, Republican leaders in Congress had been stalling VAWA’s reauthorization. Feminist leaders and Congresswomen have been demanding a vote on this important bill.

The reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) will keep thousands of domestic violence shelters and violence prevention programs up and running, as well as a national domestic violence hotline that answers 142,000 calls per year. Despite bipartisan support, Republican leaders have made VAWA a political football and have not yet allowed it to come to a vote in the Senate. Women’s rights leaders and Democratic women Congressional leaders held a press conference this morning to press for Senate scheduling of and immediate action on this landmark legislation. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) spoke at this morning’s conference, along with Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority and representatives from NOW, NOW LDEF, National Council of Negro Women, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, National Coalition of Women’s Organizations, National Council of Jewish Women, and the American Association of University Women.

House and Senate conferees on the Trafficking Victims Protection Act are in negotiations about amending the Act to include VAWA. The Trafficking Act would provide new penalties for international traffickers of women and children and provides assistance for trafficking victims. The Trafficking Act has bipartisan support, as does VAWA.

Congressional opponents to the FDA approved abortion pill, Mifeprex, also known as RU 486, are threatening to introduce bills that would heavily restrict the availability of the pill. Rep. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has proposed restrictions that would chip away at the availability of the pill and would greatly limit the number of doctors who would be allowed to administer it. For the past three years, Coburn has unsuccessfully tried to pass Congressional legislation barring the FDA from approving Mifepristone. In July the House rejected the Coburn Amendment by a close vote of 187 to 182. Because the legislative session will soon come to a close and Republicans are trying to avoid making abortion an election issue, Congress is unlikely to act this year on Coburn’s proposal.

Anti-choice activists in some states are also attempting to immediately lump RU 486 into existing state laws that would require parental consent, a 24 hour waiting period, and would prevent public funding of abortions and counseling by state employees.

In the presidential debates last night held in Boston, MA, Republican nominee George W. Bush attempted to skirt his anti-choice position, while Democratic nominee Vice President Al Gore pledged that he “support[s] a woman’s right to choose.” Bush tried to muddle his position on abortion and on the FDA’s recent approval of mifepristone, a method of early, medical abortion, contradicting his earlier statement that he would pursue legislation to take mifepristone off the market. Moderator Jim Lehrer asked if Bush would overturn the FDA’s decision; the governor responded, “I don’t think the President can do that.” Despite the fact that anti-abortion groups have repeatedly stated that the battle over mifepristone is not over, Bush definitively stated, “I think once the decision’s made, it’s been made„unless it’s proven unsafe to women.” The Food and Drug Administration, along with medical and scientific organizations like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have found that mifepristone is safe and effective.

Vice President Gore made it clear that he would appoint pro-choice Supreme Court Justices, and stressed that Bush’s use of the term “strict constructionist” was a “code word” indicating that he would appoint Justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Bush stated that he is “pro-life,” and said that the President should “promote a culture of life in America–the life of the elderly, the life of the unborn.” He claimed that abortion would not be a “litmus test” for his judicial nominations, but did say that Supreme Court Justices should “strictly interpret the consitution” and view it as a “sacred” document. Gore firmly responded that Bush was using “code words,” and pointed out that Bush’s “model Justices” are Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas–two of the most conservative, anti-choice Justices on the bench. While Bush criticized Gore for promoting “big government,” Gore stressed that Bush’s anti-choice stance would allow government to make decisions for women. “I trust women to make decisions that affect their lives, their destinies, and their bodies,” Gore said.

While Gore’s answers on abortion will likely please women voters, a key block in this election, the debate format might have turned many women off. “The formal debate commission thought it was enough to allow one white male over the age of 50 to ask all the questions,” said Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority Foundation. “The lack of a panel that looked more like America was detrimental to the debate, and the exclusion of women is a step backwards.”

The debate gave Gore a boost in the polls, with most showing the Vice President ahead between 6 and 12 points. The gender gap continues to give Gore an edge, with a strong majority of women supporting the Vice President.

Violence Against Women Office Director and former Iowa Attorney General Bonnie Campbell was nominated for a seat on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals 216 days ago. The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding up Campbell’s nomination, despite the fact that they recently approved the nominations of four males, whose names were submitted afterCampbell’s. Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Paul Wellstone (D-MN) took to the Senate floor yesterday to condemn the stalling of Campbell’s nomination by Republican leaders. “This Republican Senate is holding up the one person who really knows what violence against women is about, who headed that office and has done a superb job,” Senator Harkin said, calling the holdup “something short of scandalous.”

Tell Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and Senate Judiciary Chair Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to move Campbell’s nomination to the Senate floor.

Sheriff John McDougall lost a Republican primary runoff in Fort Myers, Florida on October 3 after receiving criticism for his vehement anti-abortion stance. McDougall, who has been in office for 12 years, has used his position to promote his anti-abortion, conservative religious position. For example, he called an abortion doctor who was seeking police protection from anti-abortion protestors a “baby killer.” When Governor Lawton Chiles vetoed a bill to create “Choose Life” license plates in 1998, McDougall made up 250 of his own, and displayed one in his office in the hands of a Virgin Mary statue. McDougall also posted letters attacking gays and lesbians, feminists, atheists, and the American Civil Liberties Union on the department website. His former officer, Rod Sharp, won the Republican nomination by 68 percent, and will run against Democrat Robert Neeld and Republican Gary Grosser, who will run as an independent.

Many health insurance companies, including Aetna, United Healthcare and Cigna, will cover the recently approved abortion pill, RU 486. Kaiser Permanente and Humana Inc. are still deciding on whether to cover RU 486. The pill, sold as Mifeprex, will be part of insurance companies’ standard medical benefits, rather than drug benefits, because the pill is an alternative to surgical abortion and is dispensed in a doctor’s office. Employers still have the option of providing their employees with medical benefits that cover abortion expenses. In addition to the insurance companies, the FDA has the support of the French creators of RU 486. They hope the FDA’s approval of RU 486 will help to increase acceptance of the pill in Africa, Latin American and Asia.

The Gender Gap continues to shape Presidential polls on the eve of the first nationally televised Presidential debate at 9 p.m. (EST) on CNN, CBS, ABC, C-Span and PBS. The latest Washington Post poll reveals a massive 18 point gender gap in favor of Gore, with 55 percent of women, compared to 37 percent of men, supporting Vice President Al Gore. Only 36 percent of women said they would vote for George W. Bush, while 52 percent of men would.

In its first day in session, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear Garrett v. University of Alabama, a case that calls into question the constitutionality of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The case involves a woman with breast cancer and a man with severe asthma who experienced discrimination by their employer because of their disabilities. According to a press release by The Association for the Severely Handicapped (TASH), at issue is whether or not Congress had the right to enact the ADA with regard to the woman’s and man’s experiences of discrimination. If the Supreme Court decides that Congress did not have the right to the right to hold the state responsible for upholding the ADA, the civil rights protected by the ADA could be jeopardized. Please visit www.tash.org/marchforjustice for more information on this important case.

A Catholic priest drove his car through the door of an Illinois abortion clinic on Sept. 30 and proceeded to vandalize the clinic’s front hallway with an ax. The clinic was not open at the time of the break-in and no one was injured. The building’s owner fired two shots from his shotgun into the air to stop the priest, who was arrested and charged with burglary and felony damage to property. The priest, Rev. John Earl, is the pastor of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Rochelle, IL. Earl did not reach the clinic office, so damage was confined to the entrance hallway and the door he crashed through with his car. His attack came just two days after the Food and Drug Administration announced the long-awaited approval of mifepristone, a safe and effective method of early, medical abortion.

Last week, as U.S. women finally received access to mifepristone, the Italian Health Ministry approved the sale of a French-made emergency contraceptive (EC) pill. The EC, called Norlevo, will be available this month to Italian women with a doctor’s prescription. Norlevo is used within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse, and blocks implantation of a fertilized egg. The Vatican issued its disapproval of the pill, claiming that there is little distinction between emergency contraception and medical abortion.

Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush spoke via videotape to the Christian Coalition’s annual conference this past weekend, saying that America must put more value on “the life of the unborn.” Bush’s comments were almost identical to those he made at the Republican National Convention, sending an anti-choice message, but one craftily worded to appease more moderate Republicans. Bush did assure the audience at the Christian Coalition that he would sign a bill banning certain abortion procedures, but did not comment on the FDA’s recent approval of mifepristone.

Bush was not scheduled to speak to the Christian Coalition, but conceded to speak via videotape after some Christian conservatives criticized his absence at the conference, to which both President George Bush and Bob Dole spoke in past election years. George W. Bush, despite his attempts to appeal to moderate Republicans, is opposed to abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or risk to a woman’s life and has said that he would support a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion if it provided those few exceptions.

In the last few weeks of Olympic competition, women athletes have excelled in every way. An unprecedented number of women athletes participated in the 2000 Olympics–42 percent of competing athletes were women. Thirty-nine world records were broken at the Sydney Olympics, 23 of which women athletes shattered. Of the 664 American athletes competing in the Games, 43 percent were women. American women also own 43 percent of the medals won by US athletes during the Games–39 of the 97 medals.

Women competed in 23 new events added to the 2000 Olympic line-up, and the stellar performances of women in Olympics will persuade Olympic officials to continue to increase the number of events available to women. Individual woman athletes have paved the way for the future of women in the Olympics–Stacy Dragila’s gold medal in the pole vault proves that women are physically capable of the strenuous sport. Marion Jones’ five medals, 3 gold and 2 bronze, is a record for women track athletes, and one she and other athletes will work to beat. Cathy Freeman’s gold is a result of her strength and talent, but also a symbol of Aboriginal pride. The 2000 Olympics was an opportunity for women athletes to shine all over the world and open doors for other women to succeed.

The 2000 Olympic Games have been a milestone in the woman’s movement. Twenty-three events for women were added to the Olympic lineup this year. Women are winning golds and setting world records in events thought to be too physically challenging in previous Games. Today, only boxing and wrestling do not offer an equivalent event for women athletes, and in the future, any proposal to add a new event to the Olympics will be required to offer both men’s and women’s events.

These Games have been a landmark for African American women as well. Tennis sensation Venus Williams, already a gold winner in the Tennis singles competition, teamed up with her sister, Serena, to beat the Netherlands in the gold medal match of the Tennis doubles finals. Venus is only the second American woman in history to win two gold medals for Tennis in the same Olympics. The first was Helen Wills who made history in 1924.

Marion Jones, who set out to make history of her own by being the first woman to win five gold medals in one Olympics, had two golds around her neck, for her wins in the 100 and 200 meter races. In her third event, the long jump, Jones came away with a bronze. Even though Jones’ quest for five golds has ended, she has the opportunity to win two more medals in relay competition and come away from the 2000 Olympics as a 5-time medal winner.

With women comprising over 40 percent of the 2000 Olympic athletes, and winning hundreds of medals, the 27th Olympiad offers a glimpse at women’s potential and the opportunities that lay ahead. Title IX has indeed made a difference for the women of the world.

After a 12-year campaign led by the Feminist Majority Foundation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone, a pill that provides an early method of abortion. FMF President Eleanor Smeal has been debating anti-choice leaders, including Olivia Gans of the National Right to Life Committee and Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, on various news programs and networks, including Rivera Live, FOX morning news, and CNN.

“Too often, the opposition is exaggerating the risks of mifepristone and referring to misleading, inflammatory images of women watching body parts fall from their bodies,” Smeal said. Mifepristone has been approved only for use within the first seven weeks of pregnancy, during the embryonic stage when the developing fetus is typically the size of a grain of rice. Scientists say that, at this stage of development, the embryo measures three to five millimeters. The opposition has been misleading the public by using confusing standards of dating the pregnancy. They claim that the heart starts beating at 21 days–21 days after conception, an uncommon way to measure embryonic development. Standard medical practice measures pregnancy from the first day of the last menstrual period. By this accepted, scientific method, heart cells of an embryo begin pulsing at 5 weeks. A fetus does not have a fully formed heart until nine weeks into gestation. “The opposition’s distortions of the risks and consequences of mifepristone, which have proven to be minor both in clinical trials and in the experience of European women who have had access to the drug for over a decade, are merely scare tactics. Don’t be fooled by their false claims,” Smeal added.

Anti-choice advocates have argued that mifepristone is not “medicine” because it does not “help people.” However, mifepristone shows promise as a treatment for certain progrestin-dependent tumors, such as some forms of uterine cancer and brain cancer. In addition, its use as a method of early abortion will have a profound impact on the lives of women. As anti-choice leaders continue to call mifepristone “dangerous,” medical clinical trials and the experience of hundreds of thousands of women show, as the FDA concluded, that mifepristone is safe and effective. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, for example, issued a press release yesterday stating that mifepristone is safe and effective, calling the FDA’s approval of the drug “long overdue.”

Abortion opponents are stressing presidential politics in the wake of the FDA’s decision, saying the battle over mifepristone is not over, and pointing out that Republican candidate George W. Bush is staunchly anti-abortion and against FDA approval, while Vice President Al Gore strongly supports a woman’s right to choose and spoke out for FDA approval.

A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that an overwhelming majority of parents in the United States want their teenagers to receive more comprehensive sex education in school. The study was based on surveys of over 4,000 students, parents, sex education teachers and school principals. Parents want more coverage of topics like birth control and HIV/AIDS, and want schools to address more “controversial” issues like abortion and sexual orientation. Parents also want their children to receive more practical, specific information, such as how to use condoms (85 percent of parents in the study wanted this information included), how to use other forms of birth control (84 percent), abortion (79 percent), and sexual orientation (76 percent). When asked what their school’s sex education curriculum included, 84 percent of students said “abstinence,” while only 61 percent said “abortion” and 41 percent said “sexual orientation.” A June study by the Othmer Institute also concluded that a majority of American parents wanted comprehensive sex education in the schools.

A federal judge criticized the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for alleged lax investigation into a harassment case brought by a lesbian police officer against her male colleagues. Elizabeth Bryant, who “came out” to her colleagues in the NYPD in 1997 after holding a public ceremony with her partner in Central Park, testified that other officers refused to ride with her and posted pictures around the precinct of a male bodybuilder with her face pasted over his. The case was settled out of court, but Judge Lewis A. Kaplan rebuked the department on the last day of court proceedings, saying that, if Bryant’s testimony were true, it was “outrageous” that the NYPD did not conduct a full investigation of Bryant’s complaints. Bryant will retire from the police force, but said that the Judge’s response was moving. According to the Associated Press, the judge’s comments could have a great impact, as federal prosecutors are in the midst of an investigation of the NYPD to see if it was complying with a 1998 consent decree in which it agreed to properly investigate sexual harassment claims. For more information on police response to violence against women and gender balance in the police force, visit FMF’s National Center for Women and Policing.

During a 90-minute “Choose or Lose” presentation on MTV, Al Gore spoke with 150 college students about his platform and the issues that most concerned them. Throughout the town hall style forum, Gore repeatedly voiced his support for abortion rights and approval of mifepristone, the early abortion pill. “The Supreme Court that is picked by the next president — three maybe even four justices _ will interpret the Constitution for the next 30 or 40 years, until you’re my age,” Gore told the audience. “And so, you have a lot riding on whether or not civil rights, equal rights, women’s rights are protected in the philosophical choices made by the next president.”

Gore continued to express support for women’s rights, and even used the “M” word, misogyny, when talking about the influence of popular music on society. Republican nominee George W. Bush has yet to accept MTV’s offer to appear in a similar program.

Top GOP Congressional leaders are blocking the Hate Crimes Bill, a bill which enjoys widespread bi-partisan support, from reaching the House floor for a vote. The bill would expand current hate crimes legislation to include gay and lesbian people, women and people with disabilities. The bill would also provide state and local officials more power to investigate hate crimes. Opponents of the bill claim that the bill is unnecessary because assault and murder are already against the law.

However, the recent shooting in a Roanoke, Virginia, gay bar, which was motivated by hate for gays, has some Republicans reconsidering their stance against the hate crimes bill.