Migration Category: news-1-5000-national

Medical Students for Choice (MSFC) are demanding abortion training be a part of every medical school student’s curriculum. As a result of MSFC’s efforts, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has recommend that abortion training be a standard component in medical education, and several medical schools have adopted this standard. In 1995, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) required medical schools’ obstetrics and gynecology programs to include abortion as a routine component of their training. Since then, anti-choice lawmakers have challenged that decision by attempting to remove the ACGME’s power to regulate medical education standards.

On November 23, pro-choice Democrat Maria Cantwell was declared the winner in the Washington state Senate race over anti-choice incumbent Slade Gorton (R). An automatic recount will be conducted this week, but both political analysts and Cantwell’s campaign manager are confident that the recount will mirror last week’s count. With all counties reporting, Cantwell had 1,199,260 voptes to Gorton’s 1,197,307 _ a lead of 1,953 votes.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case against a North Carolina election district where 46 percent of registered voters are black. The case is a followup to a 1993 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed white voters to challenge districts drawn to help minority voters. The case centers on North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District, which includes the cities of Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Greensboro and is currently represented in Congress by Melvin Watt (D). In 1997, state legislators redrew the district, reducing the percentage of registered voters who were black from 57 percent to 46 percent. A lower court ruling said the District was unlawful because it was based on race, but Democrats in North Carolina say the district was drawn on partisan lines to maintain the 6-6 split between Republicans and Democrats in the 12th District. A decision is expected by July and could prove influential in the redistricting process that will use new 2000 census data.

Abortion provider Dr. LeRoy Carhart, the sole plaintiff in the recent US Supreme Court case Stenberg vs. Carhart which found that Nebraska’s so-called “partial-birth” abortion law was unconstitutional, is being forced to fight yet another eviction lawsuit to keep his clinic in business. Several months ago, a group of anti-choice individuals purchased the building that houses Dr. Carhart’s abortion clinic and have since terminated his lease and issued an eviction notice. Dr. Carhart was involved in a series of legal battles in order to maintain his occupancy and although a judge had previously ruled that the “eviction notices were improper” and that Carhart should not be evicted while his appeal proceeds through the courts, the anti-choice individuals have recently filed a new lawsuit alleging that Carhart should already have vacated the property. Carhart is Nebraska’s only provider of second and third-trimester abortions so, should he be evicted, women in Nebraska would be forced to cross state lines in order to attain that type of procedure.

Massachusetts State Attorney General Thomas Reilly plans to appeal US District Judge Edward Harrington’s injunction against enforcement of MA’s law establishing “buffer zones” around abortion clinics. Similar laws intended to protect clinics, reproductive health service providers, and women from anti-choice violence and blockades exist in 14 states and the District of Columbia. Judge Harrington ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it prevented anti-choice protestors from approaching patients entering the clinic, but allowed abortion clinic employees and volunteers to approach patients. Reilly is arguing against the judge’s ruling and the opposition’s argument that the law violates protestors’ right to free speech, saying that the law is not a speech case but one of public safety. MA Planned Parenthood argues that the law protects women’s rights to obtain health care services “free from intimidation.”

A recent study at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston linked anorexia to loss of bone density in young women. Published in The Annals of Internal Medicine, the study suggests that even estrogen cannot counteract the damage to bones caused by anorexia. In the 130 anorexic women studied, 92 percent showed enough bone loss to double their risk of fracture, and 38 percent were diagnosed with osteoporosis. Women across the study showed the same rate of bone loss, despite the fact that about 25 percent were taking estrogen. Women with lower weights experienced the most extreme bone density loss, and calcium and vitamin D did not improve the problem.

California’s Medicaid-funded Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment Program (Family PACT) has successfully expanded access to reproductive health services for a significant number of the state’s low-income residents, according to the Guttmacher Report on Public Policy. A study by the Institute for Health Policy Studies and University of California-San Francisco Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Services estimated that the program prevented 108,000 unintended pregnancies, including 24,000 teen pregnancies, and avoided 41,000 abortions, including 9,000 for teens, a group particularly at-risk for unsafe abortion because of teens’ limited access to reproductive services. While Family PACT spent $114.4 million dollars in FY 1997-98, the study estimated that the pregnancies it prevented would have cost $511.8 million in medical, social services, and education costs.

Read the Guttmacher Report on Public Policy article on Family PACT.

A new Massachusetts buffer zone law that prevents anti-choice protestors from approaching within 6 feet women who are entering abortion clinics and are within 18 feet of that clinic has been temporarily barred by US District Judge Edward F. Harrington. Judge Harrington ruled Monday that the law is unconstitutional and unfairly discriminates against people protesting abortions because it forces them to stand at a distance, while clinic workers are allowed to approach and escort patients into the clinic.

In his ruling, Judge Harrington stated the buffer zone around Massachusetts clinics violated anti-choice activists’ rights of free speech. Judge Harrington’s ruling is in direct conflict with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which ruled in January 2000 that buffer zones around abortion clinics would not violate anti-choice protestors’ First Amendment rights.

Members of Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church, known for their fierce anti-gay rhetoric and hate speech, arrived at the Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire on Monday to an unwelcoming community of students, faculty and Exeter-area ministers. Followers of Phelps held up “Thank God for AIDS” signs outside the school in protest of the Academy’s decision to let gay and lesbian faculty and staff serve as monitors in student dormitories, while the Academy’s students and faculty donned rainbow pins and held diversity celebrations across campus. Fourteen area churches also united to denounce Phelps’s messages, recognizing the group’s right to free speech, but condemning its message of hate and denigration.

A Florida National Organization for Women lawsuit challenging the Constitutionality of state license plates bearing the phrase “Choose Life” will finally see a courtroom in January of 2001. The lawsuit, filed in 1999, argues that “Choose Life” license plates convey a political message and are therefore unconstitutional because the state of Florida should not sponsor such messages. The phrase “Choose Life” also conveys a religious message, which infringes upon separation of church and state.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala accepted the presidency of the University of Miami this past weekend. Shalala formerly served as president of Hunter College in New York and chancellor of the University of Wisonsin, Madison. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Shalala has supervised health and welfare policy, including many measures that affect women. Shalala played a key role in convincing Roussel Uclaf to transfer RU 486 (mifepristone) patent rights to the Population Council, contributing to the eventual approval of mifepristone by the Food and Drug Administration. Shalala has addressed issues like rape in the United States and domestic violence, releasing studies in the late 1990s that stressed the importance of nationwide resources to combat violence against women. In 1998, she helped in the development of the Public Health Service’s National Women’s Health Information Center, a government resource that provides 24-hour medical resources to women and health care providers on issues affecting women’s health.

The inflammatory Westboro Baptist Church visited Maine this past weekend, and plans to visit Vermont and New Hampshire in the next few days, says the Boston Globe. Westboro Baptist Church members, with the infamous Rev. Fred Phelps, traveled to Kennebunk Maine, picketing outside several churches who supported the recent ballot measure to extend anti-discrimination protection to lesbians and gays. The ballot measure failed by a narrow margin. The group plans to picket in Montpelier, Vermont, today to register their opposition to the state’s same-sex civil union law. The group will then move on to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire to protest the school’s June announcement allowing lesbian and gay couples to serve as live-in advisors in its dormitories.

The Westboro Baptist Church is best known for its “God Hates Fags” picket signs, and for protesting outside the funerals of gay and lesbian individuals, including murdered University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard. In Kennebunk, the group faced a counterprotest of local individuals holding signs reading “Zealots Go Home.” Westboro Baptist Church, located in Topeka, Kansas, is not officially affiliated with any denomination. Even the Southern Baptist Convention, which is openly anti-gay, has disassociated itself from Westboro and its leader Phelps.

On November 17, the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP) petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down South Carolina’s Regulation Number 61-12, a measure that imposes “medically unnecessary” regulations on abortion providers. CRLP classified Regulation 61-12 as a “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers” (TRAP), a “wave of regulations intended to make abortion prohibitively expensive and increasingly difficult to obtain.” Despite the fact that abortion providers must already comply with state and federal laws governing similar health care providers, South Carolina’s Regulation 61-12 “subjects abortion providers to unique levels of government intrusion and oversight.” The law requires patients to undergo tests for sexually transmitted diseases, whether or not a doctor deems then necessary, and allows a state agency to copy and remove patient records, in direct violation of doctor-patient confidentiality. It also requires specific architectural features of the facility, including hallway and doorway width, that are not imposed on similar health care facilities and which can substantially raise costs for the provider. CRLP is challenging the regulation as an endangerment to women’s health, and a violation of privacy rights and the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. “The true intent [of this TRAP law] is to make it virtually impossible for physicians to provide abortions in their office and to segregate abortion services from mainstream medicine,” said CRLP staff attorney Bonnie Scott Jones.

Danco Laboratories LLC, a women’s health pharmaceutical company that has been granted an exclusive license from the Population Council to manufacture, market and distribute the early abortion pill known as Mifeprex in the US, announced Thursday that it will begin the distribution of the pill immediately. The initial batch of pills will go to centers that perform surgical abortions, including 28 Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country. Danco is also shipping out information materials to health care professionals.

Danco, Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation (NAF) say they will recruit and train more health workers and doctors to use Mifeprex, widening women’s access to this safe and effective form of early abortion. NAF has trained over 2,000 doctors and health care professionals on the use of Mifeprex this year and anticipate an increased demand for training in 2001. NAF will also offer a range of resources to educate health care providers about Mifeprex, including an interactive CD-ROM, an accredited self-study guide, and a patient education manual. A NAF representative reported that of the 3,000 monthly calls NAF receives, half are from women inquiring about Mifeprex and its availability.

The struggle to bring mifepristone to the United States was long, as abortion rights groups and the Feminist Majority Foundation’s RU 486 Campaign battled anti-abortion activists to gain approval of this drug, which has shown promise not only in providing early abortion, but in treating certain progestin-dependent tumors and conditions. The FDA approved mifepristone on September 28, 2000.

How to Get Mifeprex

For more information on mifepristone, its uses, and the struggle for U.S. availability of the drug, please visit FMF’s Reproductive Rights Center online.

On November 10, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry closed its borders to Afghan refugees after a month-long influx of 30,000 people, raising the number of Afghans living in Pakistan to 2.1 million. Pakistan, population 140 million, has been the sole harborer of Afghan refugees since 1995 when the United Nations ceased providing food and shelter relief to Afghans and focused only on health and education aid due to a decreased budget. Rueters reported that, on November 9, Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province barred all new refugees; the province housed 1.2 million of the 1.5 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan at the time, as it borders on a drought-stricken segment of Afghanistan that is the focus of armed conflict between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. In September, Tajikistan closed its border as well, following the Taliban’s capture of Taloqan when 70,000 Afghans fled.

Afghanistan’s drought was expected to prompt thousands more people to flee into Pakistan and other neighboring countries. The World Food Program predicted as many as 1 million Afghan people could face starvation this winter. Already, entire villages have been forced to relocate after losing crops and herds to the drought. Pakistan cited “security and economic considerations” as reasons for the border closures.

Refugees from Afghanistan report fear of abuses at the hands of the Taliban, as well as grenade attacks and aerial bombardment that have accompanied the fighting in the region between the Taliban and the United Front. Human Rights Watch has confirmed cases of abuse at the hands of the Taliban, including detentions of suspected United Front supporters, summary executions of prisoners, and forced conscription. It also reports that the closing of borders and the denying of asylum to refugees fleeing persecution is a violation of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which Tajikistan signed. In addition, it violates customary international law, making Pakistan liable as well, especially considering the fact that Pakistan is suspected of supplying military and monetary support to the Taliban. In fact, Islamic seminaries in Pakistan have been an important source or recruitment for the Taliban, Human Rights Watch says.

The Taliban has imposed a brutal system of gender apartheid in Afghanistan, forcing women and girls into a state of virtual house arrest. Little has been done within the international community to alleviate the situation. Afghanistan has the largest refugee population in the world, with more people fleeing every day and a bitter winter ahead during a horrific drought. Complicating the matter, oil interests could favor the Taliban, as many countries and companies want plans on a trans-regional pipeline to move forward. According to the Afghan Press, Pakistan’s energy minister promised a “safe route” for an Iran-India pipeline, and called for a regional energy alliance encompassing Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbajan and Afghanistan.

Read about the Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan and join the Feminist Majority Foundation’s efforts to increase humanitarian aid to the region, deny Taliban recognition by the United States, the United Nations, and other bodies, and to restore the right to work, to attend school and to move freely to the women and girls of Afghanistan.

Amidst the lawsuits filed by Florida residents and members of both political parties, the National Right to Life Committee filed their own lawsuit over the hand recount of Florida votes. The anti-choice group is seeking a restraining order to stop the hand recount. A federal district court judge rejected the anti-choice group’s suit, stating they had not established a viable reason for the restraining order, but the group is appealing that decision.

Today, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) released a study on the status of women in the United States, a state-by-state analysis of women’s political and economic status and statewide policies affecting women. “The Status of Women in the States: Politics, Economic, Health, Demographics” reveals that the size of a woman’s paycheck, her access to health care and reproductive health services, and her access to political power are deeply interconnected and vary appreciably based on where she lives. IWPR ranks Connecticut and Vermont (tied in first place); Washington; Hawaii; Colorado, Minnesota, and New Hampshire (tied in fourth place); and Alaska as the top states for women. Mississippi (51st), Alabama and Tennesse (tied in 50th); Arkansas, Kentucky, and South Carolina (tied); Oklahoma; Florida; and Pennsylvania as the worst for women. “The reports are premised on the reality that women are of critical importance in our nation’s life, both economically and politically, that women are inherently equal to men, and that they deserve equal rights and their fair share of all the resources that society has to offer,” IWPR President Heidi Hartman said today in a press conference detailing the report’s findings.

Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal said the reports are “nuggets of information that every women’s organization and activist in the country should read, because they can help to provide the road map for strategies to gain equality for women.” “In no state have we achieved equality,” Smeal said at the IWPR’s press conference this morning. “This report shows great deficits for women, but it also shows how constructive federal legislation and more concerted advocacy at the state level can better the conditions for women nationwide.”

“Women’s poverty rates are 50 percent higher than men’s, and the hardest hit women are single moms,” said Heidi Hartman, IWPR’s President. Smeal linked the report’s findings to the gender gap, arguing that the report’s findings and the recent election results are interrelated. She noted that 63 percent of single women voted for Gore, giving him a 15-point gender gap. Amy Caiassa, Study Director for IWPR, called women to action, saying women must “demand that their policymakers do, in fact, address their needs with appropriate policies” and “claim more and more places in higher office.” In many of the states where women fared well, the state legislature was more gender-balanced.

The report’s findings include a detailed analysis of the wage gap. Nationwide, women make 74 cents on a man’s dollar. In Washington DC, women make 86 cents, the highest in the nation, largely due to government-based jobs that include equal pay requirements. The biggest wage gap is in Wyoming, where women make only 63 cents. Grave differences were also found in health care and access to reproductive health services. Only 18 states require comprehensive sex education. 49 percent of insurers do not cover contraception, keeping women’s out-of-pocket medical expenses higher than men’s. However, the feminist movement’s success is seen in the fact that in the last three years, 11 states have passed laws requiring insurers to cover contraceptives.

For a free synopsis of the report or to purchase copies of the full report ($15 each), please visit the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Suspected bomber Eric Robert Rudolph has been indicted by a grand jury in connection with two abortion clinic bombings. Rudolph faces more than twenty counts in Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham and is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List for a 1997 double-bombing at an abortion clinic in North Carolina and the 1998 Birmingham bombing at New Woman All Women Health Care Clinic that left one off-duty police officer dead and permanently disfigured a nurse. Rudolph is also wanted in relation to the 1996 bombing at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta and a 1997 bombing of an Atlanta gay nightclub where several people were injured. Rudolph has been a fugitive for more than three years and is suspected of living in the mountains in North Carolina. US Attorney Doug Jones says, “Now that he has been indicted, when Rudolph is arrested he will proceed immediately to trial.” The FBI has offered a $1 million dollar reward for information leading to Rudolph’s arrest.

The Siebert Financial Corporation, headed up by early women’s rights supporter Muriel Siebert, has purchased two websites, wfn.com (Women’s Financial Network) and herdollar.com to form a powerful women’s financial website. The new site will address the financial needs and interests of women, including online investing, trading, retirement planning and small business financing.

Siebert, a long time feminist and businesswoman, was the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1967, and the first woman to be the New York State Superintendent of Banking. She was also one of the first people to establish a discount brokerage house in 1975. The Siebert Financial Corporation has been ranked number one by Smart Money and Kiplinger’s above Fidelity, Charles Schwab, E*Trade, and Ameritrade.

The Los Angeles Police Department Rampart scandal, which broke over a year ago and revealed deeply rooted corruption in the LAPD, including framing innocent people, fabricating evidence, and covering up physical abuse by police officers, has produced three convictions of LAPD officers. Of the four officers charged with conspiracy, Sgt. Edward Ortiz, Sgt. Brian Liddy, Officer Michael Buchanan, and Officer Paul Harper, three, Ortiz, Liddy and Buchanan, were convicted and could face sentences of two to four years in prison.

These convictions are just the first of many anticipated prosecutions of LAPD officers involved in an excessive use of force and corruption scandal that is department wide. “The continued under representation of women in the LAPD and police departments nationwide contributes to a climate within law enforcement agencies in which police brutality and cover-up is widespread,” said Katherine Spillar, National Coordinator of the Feminist Majority Foundation. Research conducted both in the U.S. and internationally demonstrates that women police officers rely on a style of policing that uses less physical force and are less likely to become involved in incidents of use of excessive force.

A recent study by the Feminist Majority Foundation and FMF’s National Center for Women & Policing of police brutality lawsuits against the LAPD shows that male officers are involved in excessive force and misconduct lawsuits at rates substantially higher than their female counterparts, with payouts on male officers exceeding payouts on female officers by a ratio of 23:1. Moreover, male officers disproportionately accounted for the lawsuit payouts involving killings and assault and battery. Male officer payouts for killings exceeded female officer payouts by a ratio of 43:1 and for assault and battery male officer payouts exceeded female officer payouts by a ratio of 32:1. Over this same period, male officers outnumbered women LAPD officers by a much lower ratio of 4:1.

Cover-up of police officer wrong-doing is not new with the Rampart scandal. A probe of the LAPD by the department’s Inspector General revealed many domestic violence related crimes involving LAPD officers over a seven year period between 1990 – 1997. Reports detailing felony assaults and rapes by police officers were never arrested or prosecuted. Instead, the complaints were placed in confidential personnel files and sealed.

“We know that women do the job of policing equally as well as men, responding to similar calls and encountering similar dangers,” said retired police chief Penny Harrington, director of the National Center for Women & Policing. “The evidence is compelling, and shows that increasing women on the force holds the key for substantially decreasing police violence in its costs to citizens,” continued Harrington.