Migration Category: news-1-5000-national

A report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) today documents racial disparities in the country’s growing prison population. According to prison admission statistics in 1996, nearly double the amount of African American men and women are being imprisoned for drug offenses than are white drug users, even though there are five times more white drug users than there are black ones. Due to the disproportionate imprisonment of black people for drug offenses, African Americans are sent to prison at 8.2 times the rate of whites. “Black and white drug offenders get radically different treatment in the American justice system. This is not only profoundly unfair to blacks, it also corrodes the American ideal of equal justice for all,” stated Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

The HRW report asserts that law enforcement agencies focus a large part of their resources on fighting drug activity in low-income, African American neighborhoods where the buying and selling of drugs takes place on the street, rather than in white neighborhoods where drug sales and use often take place behind closed doors. To remedy the racial disparity in imprisonment, the Human Rights Watch suggests repealing mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenders, increasing drug treatment, and eliminating racial profiling as a police tactic.

Women’s rights advocates have learned that the FDA is discussing onerous restrictions on Mifepristone that would drastically limit its distribution and threaten the safety of physicians. Pro-choice leaders are in agreement that these unprecedented restrictions under discussion would be unacceptable and would represent undue government interference with medical practice and women’s right to abortion.

Restrictions mentioned included a registry of Mifepristone providers and a requirement that providers have admitting privileges at a hospital within one hour of their practices. As commonly practiced today, an abortion provider might have an agreement with a backup doctor for admittance. However, surgical backup at a hospital is rarely, if ever needed with Mifepristone. These and other unnecessary restrictions mentioned would be so limiting that doctors would simply refuse to use it. What women’s rights advocates fear is that if something like this were to happen, Mifepristone would be approved but its use rendered null.

“Any restrictions under discussion are wholly unacceptable, unnecessary, and dangerous,” said Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority Foundation. “Mifepristone is available throughout Europe and China. Millions of women have used it safely and effectively. In fact, in 1996 the FDA itself ruled that Mifepristone was safe and efficacious. It is outrageous that its use has been denied to women in the United States this long.” The lack of availability of Mifepristone in the US is hampering research on the treatment of very serious illnesses. “The unavailability of Mifepristone has had a negative impact on research for treatment of serious uterine, breast, ovarian, and brain tumors,” commented Smeal.

Leaders of the women’s movement will be conducting a panel on Mifepristone’s impact worldwide later today as part of UN Beijing +5 activities. The event, open to the public, will take place at Hunter College in New York City from 2:00-3:30 PM. Panelists include: Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority Foundation; Jennifer Jackman, Ph.D., Director of Policy and Research for the Feminist Majority Foundation; Dr. Regine Sitruk-Ware; Larry Lader, President of Abortion Rights Mobilization; Agneta Strom from Norway Women’s Front.

Let the White House know that you oppose these restrictions by calling (202) 456-1414 to be transferred to the White House Comments Office.

Due to a new cab service started by the Dubai Transport Company, seven women have become the first female cab drivers in the Persian Gulf. Mohammed Obaid Al Mulla, director of the cab service, said Dubai had received several requests from female customers who did not want male drivers. Despite family, cultural, religious, and governmental prejudices that restrict women’s economic freedom, the seven drivers have received little societal backlash for their non-traditional occupations. Some speculate the lack of opposition is because the drivers will only serve women customers. The Dubai drivers were trained to navigate roads, perform basic first aid, and handle car trouble, police, and customers.

U.S. immigration officials demanded that seven Iranian women delegates to the United Nations Beijing +5 Conference be fingerprinted before their entry into the country Monday. The United Nations invited the women, representing three non-governmental organizations, to the conference. Rather than consenting to be fingerprinted, the women returned home to Iran in protest. “We were taken by cars used to transport convicts at the airport. We were treated as if we were criminals,” said Sediqeh Hejazi. According to Hejazi, the official Iranian delegation to the conference was admitted into the United States without being fingerprinted. U.S. federal law requires visitors from four countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan — to be photographed and fingerprinted on arrival to the U.S.

In its first attempt to estimate the extent of sex slave trade in England, the British government released a report Sunday stating that hundreds of women, most from the former Yugoslavia, are being forced into prostitution in Britain. Kidnapped or lured into the country by false advertisements for jobs, women are escorted into the country by traffickers posing as a husband or boyfriend. Upon arrival, traffickers take the women’s counterfeit passports and force them to work in brothels to repay travel costs, sometimes more than $20,000. The report recommends establishing a new “sexual exploitation” crime and enforcing stiffer penalties for forced prostitution.

In its first attempt to estimate the extent of sex slave trade in England, the British government released a report Sunday stating that hundreds of women, most from the former Yugoslavia, are being forced into prostitution in Britain. Kidnapped or lured into the country by false advertisements for jobs, women are escorted into the country by traffickers posing as a husband or boyfriend. Upon arrival, traffickers take the women’s counterfeit passports and force them to work in brothels to repay travel costs, sometimes more than $20,000. The report recommends establishing a new “sexual exploitation” crime and enforcing stiffer penalties for forced prostitution.

Sunday morning, 75 women gathered before the Western Wall in Jerusalem, one of the city’s holiest sites, to pray aloud. Their prayer was met by taunts and jeers from a crowd of mostly ultra-Orthodox men (and some Orthodox women) who accused them of desecrating the site with their presence. “You are not Jews,” some shouted.

The prayer gathering, a demonstration in favor of equality for women in Israel and in Judaism, followed last week’s vote on a bill that would set a seven-year jail term for women praying, wearing prayer shawls, blowing the Shofar, and participating in other rituals at the Western Wall. The bill passed the first of three required votes when nearly half the members of the parliament were absent, and is not expected to be made into law. It also violates a recent Israeli Supreme Court decision protecting women’s right to pray at the Wall.

In a 35 percent increase over last year, 8.2 percent of ExxonMobil shareholders voted in favor of adding sexual orientation to the corporation’s non-discrimination policy, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) reported Thursday. The vote follows the company’s shocking December decision to remove sexual orientation from its equal employment opportunity policy. When Exxon merged with Mobil Corp., the new company also to extend Mobil’s domestic partner benefits to ExxonMobil employees. The decision garnered angry letters, calls, and faxes, and eventually led to last week’s measure to vote on adding sexual orientation to ExxonMobil’s policy.

Proponents of the reworded policy called Thursday’s vote a success, despite the fact that the non-discrimination policy still excludes sexual orientation. “The vote shows shareholders with millions of dollars of ExxonMobil stock are concerned about ExxonMobil’s substandard equal employment opportunity policies,” said Diane Bratcher, chair of the Equality Project, a coalition of lesbian and gay shareholders. ExxonMobil’s competitors, including Sunoco and Shell, have policies that protect their gay and lesbian employees from discrimination.

A Superior Court Judge ruled that Arizona lawmakers overstepped their bounds in restricting state-paid abortions only to cases of rape or incest or where the mother’s life is in danger. Judge Kenneth Fields said that legislators are bound to fund “all medically necessary abortions” for poor women; making exceptions, he argues, is unconstitutional.

Arizona’s Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCS) provides free medical care for citizens whose income is less than $6,000 per year for a family of four. Bebe Anderson, attorney for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy that argued the case, claimed “lawmakers violated the rights of women in the AHCCCS program by legislatively determining which abortions are medically necessary.” Despite the fact that AHCCCS is largely federally funded and the Hyde Amendment blocks the federal funding of abortions, Judge Fields ruled that the state itself is responsible for funding all medically necessary abortions for its poor women.

Federal and state authorities met yesterday to negotiate reform recommendations for the Los Angeles Police Department, currently under fire for a continually evolving scandal. Since early this year, accusations and confirmations of beatings and shootings of citizens, perjury, drug dealing, and other illegal activities among Los Angeles Police officers have prompted outrage from citizens and political officials. FMF’s National Center for Women and Policing has highlighted the need for reform in the LAPD.

Among the list of demands is a computerized officer tracking system, as well as a revised system for investigating and disciplining officers who violate the law. Despite a 1997 commitment to develop a computerized officer tracking system (with the aid of federal funds), Los Angeles has yet to employ such technology.

The Israeli parliament yesterday attempted to override a recent Israeli Supreme Court decision granting women greater religious equality. Parliamentarians showed support for a bill that would ban women from wearing prayer shawls, reading from Torah scrolls, and participating in other religious rituals at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, under penalty of a seven-year jail term. The bill aims to block last week’s Supreme Court decision giving a women’s prayer group the right to pray at the Western Wall, which is already divided into women’s and men’s sections. While the bill is unlikely to become law, women’s rights activists and liberal parliamentarians reacted strongly to its introduction, saying it “undermines Israel’s democracy and undercuts women’s rights.” Liberal parliamentarian Naomi Chazzan called the measure “fundamentalist” and “frightening,” and vowed that her party “will do everything to prevent Israel from turning into an Afghanistan or Iran.”

Up to half of the female population of the world become the victims of domestic abuse, suggests Unicef’s report, “Domestic Violence Against Women and Girls,” released today. The study defines “abuse” broadly, from the abortion of female fetuses to the infanticide of girl-children, to “the deliberate under-feeding” of girls and their lack of access to medical care, to sexual abuse and incest, to “the fatal beating of adult women.” The report shows that domestic violence is alarmingly prevalent in every country and region, although “the problem is often most acute in the poorest countries.”

The study gathers already published research from many countries, and is part of Unicef’s recent series of studies on women’s rights aimed at uncovering the political, economic, and socio-cultural reasons behind women’s inability to overcome disadvantages like poverty and illiteracy.

Unicef released its report just before next weeks special General Assembly session assessing the advances women have made since 1995’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. The Feminist Majority Foundation will participate in this conference, presenting research and recommendations based on our work with women’s rights worldwide, including the Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan. For more information, please visit FMF’s Beijing +5 Schedule.

Penn State University pathologists have uncovered BRMS1, what is hoped to be a suppressor gene capable of preventing breast cancer tumors from metastasizing. Scientists believe the gene slows the spread of cancer by reestablishing communication between cancer cells, which allows tumors to remain localized. Researcher Danny Welch of Penn State’s College of Medicine explains that localized cancer tumors are “cured more than 90 percent of the time.”

The study, published in the journal Cancer Research, could enable early diagnostic tests that might prevent women without damage to the BRMS1 gene, located on chromosome 11, to avoid unnecessary chemotherapy. Researchers report that “between two-thirds and three-quarters of those who die show damage to chromosome 11.” Breast cancer claimed the lives of about 300,000 women worldwide in 1998; 180,000 more American women were expected to be diagnosed this year.

Texans United For Life has closed amid allegations that its president, Bill Price, misappropriated the group’s funds for personal use.

“We did find a problem with unauthorized use of funds by Mr. Price,” said Kyleen Wright, vice president of Texans United.

Wright also stated the group does not plan to pursue criminal charges against Mr. Price or file for bankruptcy. However, some former employees of Texans United will merge with the Arlington-based Greater Tarrant Right to Life, which plans to expand its efforts statewide.

Supporters of lesbian and gay men’s rights will gather on the National Mall this Sunday for the Millennium March on Washington, the fourth national rally for lesbian and gay rights in the past 21 years.

Scheduled to attend Sunday’s event will be the parents of Matthew Shepard, who died in October 1998 after having been beaten into a coma and left tied to a fence, and the mother of Pfc. Barry Winchell at Fort Campbell, KY, who was beaten to death after rumors began that he was gay.

Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, who has attended each of the four national rallies for lesbian and gay rights, will address the crowd on Sunday.

Critics of the event argue that the march was organized without enough grass-roots support. Diane Hardy-Garcia, executive director of Sunday’s March, disagrees. “One of the reasons we do marches on Washington is something that is important to the gay community – the real need to bring more people into the movement,” said Hardy-Garcia.

In a meeting with Wimbledon officials, top women tennis players demanded that they receive prize money equal to the men for the Wimbledon championships.

This year, the overall prize money was increased 6.1 percent to $12.69 million with a 7.9 percent increase in the women’s prize money, but the men’s champion will receive $73,900 more than the women.

The players argue that the prize money ought to be distributed equally for women and men because women’s tennis has become more popular than men’s.

Wimbledon officials dismissed their demand, claiming that “We have set a level of prize money which is in keeping with the stature of the event and which is attractive and fair to all the players.”

The U.S. Open is the only one of the four Grand Slam tournaments that pays the same prize money to women and men.

A Senate health appropriations subcommittee hearing convened on Wednesday to hear arguments on proposed legislation to allow the National Institutes of Health to conduct embryonic stem cells research. The federal government forbids the funding of any medical research that uses fetal tissue.

The subcommittee was convened by Senator Arlan Spector (R-PA), who took the unusual step of urging the C-SPAN audience to write Congress in support of embryonic stem cell research.

The NIH has proposed guidelines that could get around the ban by insisting the research be done only on cells derived by private companies, currently conducting stem cell research, rather than from the actual embryos.

Alternatively proposed legislation would allow women to donate embryonic tissue to federally funded researchers.

This important research should also have public funding not only to increase the research and also so that federal standards will be employed for embryonic tissue research.

The Los Angeles County’s Board of Supervisors has approved $450,000 in grants to four Los Angeles organizations to battle hate crimes.

Those groups receiving the grants are the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and the Youth Empowerment Project of the Martin Luther King Legacy Association.

The grants will run over three years and will give each group the money to pay for a staff person to concentrate on hate crimes.

Women are now in the majority in undergraduate and graduate education according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday.

The report, “Trends in Educational Equity of Girls & Women,” shows that in 1997, 70 percent of women enrolled in college after high school compared with 1972, when only 46 percent of women enrolled. Moreover, women represented 56 percent of graduate students in 1996, compared with 39 percent in 1970.

The survey, which compared female and male students in 44 categories, also revealed that women are still more likely to pursue careers in lower-paying fields such as education and psychology and less likely to major in math or science, although the gap between women and men in these fields is narrowing.

Both pro-choice and anti-abortion groups demonstrated as the Supreme Court of the United States heard a landmark abortion case determining whether a Nebraska law banning abortion procedure(s) was constitutional. At issue before the Supreme Court was only pre-viability procedures and not late-term procedures.

Simon Heller of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy argued the case brilliantly for the pro-choice side.

The Justices, led by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, indicated by their questions that the Nebraska law at issue was too vague and broad.

Nebraska’s so-called “partial-birth abortion” ban offers no exceptions in cases where women’s life and health may be at stake, and would also impose a frightening criminal penalty on doctors of up to 20 years in prison for performing so-called “partial birth” abortions.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg emphasized that the court’s precedents in abortion regulation recognized the women’s health and potential life of the fetus, and that “Whatever this ban does, it surely can’t be urged that it serves either.”

The Justices may rule that a state can make it a crime to use a specific method of abortion, thus leaving the potential for the 30 states who have similarly-worded bans to amend their laws. Such a decision would badly damage Roe v. Wade and endanger women’s lives and health.

This case marks the first time the United States government has issued an amicus brief on the side of abortion and is the first case address restrictions on abortions themselves before the court in eight years.

Anti-abortion demonstrators outside the Supreme Court, including Patrick Mahoney, Joseph Foreman and some 23 others were arrested because they refused to take down very large anti-abortion signs after warnings. The police had allowed the signs for most of the morning and for press opportunities but eventually ordered they be removed.

The Feminist Majority Foundation participated in a rally held by the National Organization for Women on the steps of the Supreme Court during the arguments. Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Janet Benshoof, executive director of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy also attended.