Author: Feminist Majority Foundation Blog

A coalition of women’s rights leaders has launched a bipartisan campaign to double the number of women elected to the highest levels of government by 2020. Political Parity held a press conference on January 19th to announce the initiative chaired by Swanee Hunt and Kerry Healey. Healey dubbed the campaign a “grand experiment”. Speaking at the Round Table was Mary Hughes of the 2012 Project, Tiffany Dufu of the White House Project, congressional staffer Tara Setmayer, Debbie Walsh of Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), and Sam Bennett of the Women’s Campaign Fund. The panelists spoke to increasing the overall number of female elected officials over the next ten years by encouraging women to run for public office and by using research to further women’s campaigns. The group intends to turn 2012 into a new ‘Year of Women’. The original “Year of Women” occurred in 1992 when women were elected to office in vast numbers. Currently, women comprise only 17% of Congress. Bennett declared that “Political Parity is today’s Seneca Falls” and will work across party lines to promote women’s political campaigns.

The Silver Ribbon Trust Women Campaign, a coalition of 42 local and national pro-choice organizations, has declared January 20-27 Trust Women Week to celebrate and commemorate the 39th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The Silver Ribbon Campaign this year has organized a virtual online march in partnership with moveon.org to organize the pro-choice community around support for reproductive health and rights. So far there are close to 68,000 and counting participants in the march. The organizers of the march have declared it a “super-petition” for reproductive rights. Participants who sign up will be able to write a message to voice their support for reproductive rights. The messages will then appear on the national virtual map. Visit Trust Women Week march to participate.

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services announced today the Obama Administration will not broaden the religious exemption for contraceptive coverage under the Preventive Care package of the Affordable Care Act. This request, primarily by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, would have denied millions of American women contraceptive coverage, including students, teachers, nurses, social workers, and other staff (and their families) at religiously-connected or associated schools, universities, and hospitals, as well as institutions, such as Catholic Charities. Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority Foundation, stated, “This is a landmark victory for the health of young women. We applaud this decision for women by Secretary Sebelius and the Obama Administration. Birth control is the number one prescription drug for women ages 18 to 44 years. Right now, the average woman has to pay $50 per month for 30 years for birth control. No wonder many low income women have had to forgo regular use of birth control and half of US pregnancies are unplanned. This decision will help millions of women and their families.” Employer insurance plans must cover FDA approved birth control with no co-pays or deductibles starting August 2012. Non-profit religious institutions employer plans, under this new rule, that do not currently cover contraception must do so with no copays or deductibles beginning August 2013. Those non-profit religiously affiliated institutions that currently cover birth control, however, must offer it without copays or deductibles by August 2012. Moreover, student insurance plans at religiously affiliated universities must cover contraception with no co-pays or deductibles beginning August 2012. Only women who work directly for a house of worship, such as for a church, synagogue, or mosque itself, are exempted from this required coverage. Women’s rights and pro-choice groups, including the Feminist Majority Foundation, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the National Women’s Law Center, the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Organization for Women (NOW), and NARAL Pro-Choice America, urged the Obama Administration not to consider the broader religious exemption. In August 2011, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced new guidelines, developed by the Institute of Medicine, that will require private insurance plans under the Preventive Care package of the Affordable Care Act beginning on or after August 1, 2012 to cover without co-pays or deductibles a variety of services, such as an annual well-woman visit and cancer screenings, counseling, such as for domestic and interpersonal violence, and testing for HIV and STIs, as well as all FDA-approved contraceptives, breastfeeding support, lactation services, and supplies.

Operation Rescue, an extremist anti-abortion group, has launched a website – abortiondocs.org – which lists the photographs and addresses of abortion providers, as well as maps to find their places of business. The website, which describes itself as the “largest collection of documents on America’s abortion cartel,” aims to list every abortion provider in the country. Kathy Spillar, executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation and co-founder of the National Clinic Access Project, stated, “What causes us real concern is fear of where this could be headed. It opens the possibility that some so-called ‘grass-roots activist,’ who does believe in the use of violence, will be able to use this as a tool for stalking doctors, which has happened.” Rachel Maddow remarked on her show on MSNBC last night that website is Operation Rescue’s attempt to take individual WANTED posters, which she described as “a tried and true means of intimidation for the anti-abortion movement,” to a national level through the web. She stated, this is “an extremist movement with a history of violence taking something that is arguably criminal and trying to make it more mainstream and national.”

The Ohio Ballot Board approved the language purposed by anti-abortion rights groups for a personhood amendment, which proposes to give constitutional rights to a fertilized egg. The petitioners must now collect 385,245 signatures from 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties in order for the initiative to appear on the state’s November ballot. If the personhood initiative appears on the ballot, emergency contraception, birth control pills, IUDs, and abortions – even in cases of rape and incest or to save the life of the woman or girl – would be threatened. The initiative would even go so far as to eliminate medical choices for women, including some cancer treatments, in vitro fertilization, and could allow the state to investigate and even prosecute a woman for a miscarriage. In November, Mississippi voters defeated the Personhood Amendment by a vote of 58% to 42% with 96 percent of precincts reporting. Anti-abortion and anti-birth control extremists have indicated that they intend to put a similar measure on five state ballots in 2012.

District Judge James Wilson Jr. ruled that a fetal personhood ballot initiative in Nevada, which proposes to give constitutional rights to a fertilized egg, is misleading and fails to provide an explanation of its effects on voters, as required by Nevada law. Judge Wilson ruled that the Nevada Prolife Coalition, which filed the initiative, must indicate on the ballot initiative that it “will impact some rights Nevada women currently have to utilize some forms of birth control, including the ‘pill’; and to access certain fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization. The initiative will affect embryonic stem cell research, which offers potential for treating diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, and others.” In order for the initiative to appear on the Nevada ballot next year, the Nevada Prolife Coalition must collect 72,352 signatures by June. Elisa Cafferata, president and CEO of Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood Affiliates, stated, “Nevadans deserve to know that this initiative seeks to outlaw women’s health services like abortion, the birth control pill and treatment for complicated pregnancies, just to name a few. Nearly 20 years ago Nevada voters affirmed the tenets of Roe vs. Wade and a women’s right to privacy. Nevadans do not support interfering in women’s personal and private decision making.” In November, Mississippi voters defeated the Personhood Amendment by a vote of 58% to 42% with 96 percent of precincts reporting. Anti-abortion and anti-birth control extremists have indicated that they intend to put a similar measure on six state ballots in 2012. So far, reproductive rights supporters have defeated anti-choice state ballot measures in South Dakota, Colorado, and California in 2006 and 2008; in Colorado in 2010, and now Mississippi in 2011.

Governor Scott Walker’s administration recently announced that it will no longer contract with Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin (PPWI) as a part of the Wisconsin Well Woman Program. Under the Well Woman Program, in which PPWI has served as a state contractor for the past 16 years, women without insurance between the ages of 45 and 64 can get referrals for breast cancer, cervical cancer, and multiple sclerosis screenings at no cost.

PPWI indicated that this will effect over 1,000 women seeking cancer care from the organization. Teri Huyuck, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, stated, “The politics behind Governor Walker’s plan to end Planned Parenthood’s service to the Wisconsin Well Woman Program, both in care coordination and direct provision of cancer screenings and referral is becoming clearer. We urge Governor Walker and Secretary Smith to hear the voices of our patients and our community partners, asking them to put women’s health above their personal politics and maintain Planned Parenthood’s role in providing access to life-saving cancer screenings.”

The change is expected to go into effect in January 2012.

According to a study by the Guttmacher Institute’s Rachel Jones and Lawrence Finer entitled, “Who Has Second-Trimester Abortions in the United States?,” women with lower educational attainment, teenagers, women who have “experienced multiple disruptive events in the last year,” and African American women are more likely to have second trimester abortions-at 13 weeks gestation or later. This is the first comprehensive study of second-trimester abortion patients in the United States.

The researchers recommend that “removing the many existing barriers to early abortion services could reduce the number of second-trimester abortions, particularly among black women and those with less education. For women needing second-trimester procedures, having health insurance or other financial resources to pay for abortion services is especially important…Growing restrictions on public and private insurance coverage for abortion may paradoxically increase the need for second-trimester abortion by further delaying women’s access to services early in pregnancy, while also reducing access to second-trimester abortion services for poor and low-income women who need them.”

The study indicates that 90 percent of women who get an abortion do so during the first trimester and is based on a sample of over 9,400 women.

(correction from original story) FBI Director Rober Mueller told a Senate panel Wednesday that the FBI National Crime Information Center Advisory Board recommended to update the current Uniform Crime Report definition of rape that many say is too narrow. He also said his “expectation is it will go into effect sometime this spring.” Currently, the FBI defines rape as “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.”

“This is a very positive development,” says Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. “I’m excited to hear that the next steps are being taken toward a new definition, and I’m looking forward to hearing the details. We believe that updating and broadening this archaic definition to count the vast majority of rapes will result in more resources to curb what has been an intolerable level of violence, especially against women.” The new definition, adopted by various committees of the FBI, no longer includes the requirement that the victim must be a woman and takes out the the word “forcible.” The new definition says that “rape is penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

Following a massive grassroots feminist activism campaign, Senate hearings, and many meetings with various levels of the FBI, as well as over 160,000 emails to the Department of Justice and FBI, the FBI’s Criminal Justice Advisory Policy Board voted to recommend that the FBI update its 82-year-old definition.

The “Rape is Rape” campaign, launched by the Feminist Majority Foundation and Ms. magazine, went viral on the petition website Change.org, generating tens of thousands emails to the FBI and the Department of Justice urging this change. The update to the definition comes after years of urging by feminist organizations, spearheaded for more than a decade by the Pennsylvania-based Women’s Law Project. “Ultimately, accurate data is a fundamental starting point to improving police response to sex crimes and improved practice should led to increased victim confidence in police and reporting,” said Carol E. Tracy, Executive Director of the Women’s Law Project.

On Wednesday, Ohio Senate President Tom Niehaus (R-OH) announced that he will suspend hearings on the “heartbeat bill” due to the confusion created by the 20 amendments to the bill submitted by its supporters. He stated, “These eleventh hour revisions only serve to create more uncertainty about a very contentious issue. We’ve now heard hours of testimony that indicate a sharp disagreement within the pro-life community over the direction of this bill, and I believe our members need additional time to weigh the arguments.”

The bill has already passed the Ohio House and would ban abortions as early as 6 weeks following conception, before many women are even aware they are pregnant, and includes no exceptions for rape or incest. If passed by the Republican controlled-state Senate and signed by the Governor, 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 . Gary Doughtery, legislative director for Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Ohio, stated, “Ohio senators should take notice: Women are watching this waste of time and money that is making a bad situation worse for Ohio women and families.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio has indicated that it will sue if the bill becomes law.

A survey released yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 1 in 4 women in the United States, or 24 per minute, experienced intimate partner violence by either a husband or boyfriend. Moreover, 1 in 5 women stated that they were victims of rape and 1 in 6 of stalking.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius stated, “This landmark report paints a clear picture of the devastating impact these violent acts have on the lives of millions of Americans. The information collected in this ongoing survey will serve as a vital tool in the Administration′s efforts to combat domestic violence and sexual abuse.”

The survey also found that “as many as 29 million women say they have suffered severe and frightening physical violence from a boyfriend, spouse or other intimate partner. That includes being choked, beaten stabbed, shot, punched, and slammed against something or hurt by hair-pulling.” The rates of intimate partner violence were highest in Alaska, Oregon, and Nevada, while Virginia and Tennessee had the lowest rates. The information in the survey was gathered from a national phone survey of 16,507 U.S. adults.

Yesterday US District Judge Edward Korman ruled that he would allow the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) to refile a case against the FDA for “imposing unnecessary age restrictions on emergency contraceptives, and seek immediate relief to allow broader access to available drugs.” Judge Korman will also permit CRR to add Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as a defendant after she overruled the FDA’s decision to lift the age limit for emergency contraception and permit the over-the-counter sale of the Plan B One-Step last week and instructed the FDA Commissioner to deny the request for over-the-counter sales with a prescription for Plan B One-Step.

Nancy Northup, president and CEO of CRR, stated, “We intend to take every legal step necessary to hold the FDA and this administration accountable for its extraordinary actions to block women from safe, effective emergency contraception. It has been ten years of battling to bring emergency contraception out from behind the pharmacy counter. The FDA cannot simply continue moving the goal posts down the field for women’s reproductive healthcare.”

Judge Korman nevertheless denied the Center for Reproductive Right’s (CRR) request to hold the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in contempt of court for delaying a decision on nonprescription drug sales for Plan B. He indicated that the request was “moot” given the FDA recently issued its decision regarding Plan B.

Currently Plan B is available to women 17 years and older without a prescription. But because of the restriction that females under 17 must have a prescription to buy Plan B, it is only available for all women behind the counter of a pharmacy. Levonorgestrel, sold under the brand name Plan B, is a form of emergency contraception that must be taken within 72 hours of sexual activity.