Author: Feminist Majority Foundation Blog

President Obama named Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) to replace former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine (D) as the chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for the 2012 election cycle. Congresswoman Wasserman Shultz will be the first woman chair of the DNC since Debra DeLee, who served from 1994 to 1995.

Wasserman Shultz is in her fourth term in the House of Representatives and has announced that she will continue in this position while also serving as DNC chair. Currently, she is the chief deputy whip and serves on the Budget and Judiciary committees.

Former Governor Kaine announced yesterday that he will be running for the Virginia Senate.

Forty-one senators, composed of thirty-nine Democrats and two Independents led by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), announced that they will filibuster any spending bill blocking funding to Planned Parenthood. Following the Senate vote to approve another short-term spending measure in mid-March, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced that an amendment to defund Planned Parenthood will not be included in the Continuing Resolution (CR) budget deal for 2011.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the forty-one senators requested that the Senate leaders “stand with us against extreme proposals by some members of the House to eliminate support for women’s health and family planning programs and providers that service millions of women and families.” The senators stated that “Without access to these services, many of these women will be unable to get preventive screenings, be at far greater risk for diseases such as cancer and will face more unintended pregnancies.”

In February, House Republicans, led by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), voted for a Continuing Resolution that prohibited any federal funds from going to Planned Parenthood, even in reimbursement for services rendered. In spite of Republican claims that the Pence amendment would prohibit taxpayer funding of abortions, such spending is already prohibited. The Continuing Resolution would also eliminate all of Title X funding, the only federal family planning program dedicated solely to reproductive health. Title X provides reproductive health services to millions of women yearly. Title X funds some 4,500 clinics, including community health centers, public health clinics and about 900 Planned Parenthood clinics.

Planned Parenthood health centers across the country conduct over one million cervical cancer screenings and 830,000 breast exams yearly. Its clinics also provide contraception, basic health care, including family planning, cancer screenings, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, to approximately 2.5 million women per year.

On Sunday, the Texas Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 98-49 to approve a two-year budget proposal that would cut family planning funding, as well as funding for public schools, nursing homes, and college financial aid. The bill proposes to transfer $40 million of state funds previously allocated for family planning services to other programs, including those that promote abortion alternatives and represents a 60 percent cut in family planning services.

Representative Dawnna Dukes (D) predicted that the cuts would cause the majority of the state’s family planning clinics to close. Moreover, Representative Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) stated, “Eighty thousand kids are not going to get their scholarships and grant money because of this bill. Forty-three thousand people are going to get kicked out of nursing homes or denied nursing home entrance because of this bill; 335,000 Texas jobs are going to go away because of this bill.”

The budget proposal would cut state spending by $23 billion and will now go to the state Senate for a vote. Texas senators announced that they will restore some of the cuts to family planning funding.

Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will announce a new national sexual assault awareness campaign for colleges and K-12 schools at the University of New Hampshire today. The campaign aims to educate schools about their responsibilities in preventing and responding to sexual assaults under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sexual discrimination, violence, and harassment.

The schools will receive materials outlining their obligations to file complaints, assist victims, and pursue disciplinary action against students accused of sexual violence. Vice President Biden stated, “Students across the country deserve the safest possible environment in which to learn. That’s why we’re taking new steps to help our nation’s schools, universities and colleges end the cycle of sexual violence on campus.”

According to a report from the Department of Education, approximately 20 percent of women in college will be victims of sexual assault. Moreover, in 2009, nearly 3,300 forcible sexual offenses were documented on college campuses.

On Saturday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) signed a bill, sponsored by Representative Kimberly Yee (R-Phoenix) and Senator Nancy Barto (R), requiring that doctors offer every woman considering an abortion an ultrasound and the option to hear the fetal heartbeat, if detected. The bill also prohibits medical providers from prescribing mifepristone, also known as RU-486 or the abortion pill, remotely through telemedicine.

Michelle Steinberg, public policy manager and lobbyist for Planned Parenthood Arizona, stated that the telemedicine provision will place increased and unnecessary restrictions on low-income women and women in rural areas who seek abortions. Steinberg clarified, “This will make [abortion] unavailable in any place but Phoenix and Tucson. This isn’t going to make it any safer for women.”

The bill signing occurred at a fundraiser for the Center for Arizona Policy, a nonprofit organization that supported the ultrasound legislation. Brewer described her “consistent track record of support for pro-life legislation” at the event.

Two anti-abortion groups, Operation Rescue of Wichita, Kansas and Maryland Coalition for Life, have rented the building across the street from the Reproductive Health Services Clinic in Germantown, MD to open what appears to be a crisis pregnancy center (CPC). Both groups have focused on this clinic ever since Dr. Carhart, who worked with the murdered Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, announced in December 2010 that he would be offering abortions there.

Since December, Operation Rescue has staged demonstrations and indicated their intent to pursue anti-abortion legislation to shut down the clinic and restrict abortion in the state. The opening of a facility right across the street from the Germantown Clinic has pro-choice advocates concerned. Scott Roeder, who was convicted of murdering Dr. Tiller testified at his trial that he tried to steer abortion patients away from Tiller’s clinic to the CPC next door.

Troy Newman, president of Wichita-based Operation Rescue, stated, “We wanted to do more than just ask women not to abort their babies. We wanted to provide them with practical assistance, spiritual guidance, and true friendship so that abortion would no longer be an option.” Operation Rescue launched targeted demonstrations and so-called “street counseling” at Dr. Carhart’s Bellevue, Nebraska clinic in August 2009. Troy Newman of Operation Rescue has led a multi-group campaign called “Keep it Closed” that aimed to ensure Dr. Carhart did not open a late abortion clinic in Kansas or Nebraska.

A Feminist Majority Foundation Survey found that 32.7 percent of clinics located near a CPC experience one or more incidence of severe violence, compared to only 11.3 percent of clinics not near a CPC.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R) added an amendment to a bill passed by the state’s general assembly that would prohibit private health insurance companies that participate in the state health exchange from covering abortion services, except in cases of rape, incest, and when the woman’s life is endangered. The amendment would also ban women from using their own money to buy separate policy riders for abortion services.

Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, stated, “Banning abortion coverage will only result in dangerous outcomes for Virginia women in need of serious medical care resulting from complex and sometimes life-threatening pregnancies. Such a devastating ban goes against the very purpose of insurance…when unforeseen and dangerous circumstances arise, every woman deserves to have all options available to them when making these difficult and life-saving decision.”

The Virginia General Assembly will consider McDonnell’s amendments on Wednesday of next week. According to the Guttmacher Institute, “87% of typical employer-based insurance policies in 2002 covered medically necessary or appropriate abortions.”

Yesterday, the Ohio House Health and Aging Committee voted 12 to 11 on the “Heartbeat Bill” (HB 125) that would require women seeking abortions to undergo an ultrasound and prevent them from obtaining abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected. The bill does not make an exception for cases of rape or incest.

Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, stated, “It’s obvious this committee is a lot more interested in making headlines than in giving women better access to health care or doing something to bring jobs to the state or trying to fix the state’s budget mess.”

Although the bill received the necessary votes to move to the Ohio House floor, House Speaker William Batchelder (R-Medina) stated that he wanted consult with medical experts before the bill proceeds.

Yesterday, a bill restricting the collective bargaining rights of unions passed in the Ohio House by a vote of 53 to 44 and the Ohio Senate by a vote of 17 to 16, with six Republican senators voting against the bill. Republican Governor John Kasich stated that he will sign the bill by the end of the week.

The bill will take away the rights from over 360,000 public employees, including teachers, nurses, police officers, firefighters, safety workers and other government workers, to negotiate their health care, sick time, and pension benefits. Public workers will also be prohibited from striking and permitted to decline to pay union dues. The bill’s intent is to squash public worker’s unions and to deny public workers the opportunity to negotiate for vital benefits such as paid sick lead and paid family medical leave.

Approximately 700 protestors attended the Ohio Statehouse Rotunda for the House vote and chanted, “Shame on you!” Former Governor Ted Strickland and unions announced that they will develop a campaign to repeal the anti-union law through a referendum in the November.

On Monday, the North Dakota Senate approved an amendment to a sex education bill (HB 1229) that would require public schools to teach abstinence-only sex education. The bill passed in the Senate by a vote of 39 to 8 and will now move to the state House for a vote.

Last week, the North Dakota Senate Education Committee approved the bill, which would require that sex education programs provide “exposure of students to abstinence-based concepts” and “explain why abstinence from sexual activity until marriage provides safety from sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and other associated health issues.”

Comprehensive family planning services, like those funded by Title X, are based in science and are medically necessary (Feminist Campus). The federal government has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars since 1996 on abstinence-only education programs, which have proven ineffective at preventing unplanned pregnancy and the spread of STIs.

This morning the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (EDNA) was reintroduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA). The bill would require that federal employment laws, which currently prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin, age, and disability, also protect against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. EDNA would prohibit employers from firing or refusing to hire or promote employees on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, stated, “We all share the challenges of today’s economic downturn, but our community also faces arbitrary discrimination in the workplace, simply because of who we are and who we love. Congress must pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and ensure that all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity, get a fair chance to succeed at work.”

Currently 21 states and Washington DC have laws banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and 12 states and DC protect for gender identity.

Today the US Supreme Court will hear Wal-Mart v. Dukes to determine whether over 1.6 million women who work or have worked for Wal-Mart can sue the retailer together as a single class. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled three times to allow the lawsuit to receive class-action status, but Wal-Mart claims that the female employees should not be considered a class because the company does not have a company-wide discrimination policy and each outlet store acts as an independent business.

Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority Foundation, stated, “Big financial interest have been bailed out with the concept of too big to fail. Now are we going to protect large companies that break the sex discrimination laws with the false premise too big to sue effectively? Without the ability to take major class action there would be no way for women to challenge large companies who cheat them systematically.”

If the Supreme Court upholds the case’s class-action status, the case would be the largest employment class-action suit in history. Plaintiffs in the case allege that Wal-Mart systematically discriminated through lower wages and fewer promotions for women employees; however, the Supreme Court will not, at this time, rule on whether Wal-Mart discriminated against its employees.

Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), clarified, “For years, the Wal-Mart empire has been built upon miserly wages that were even more pitiful for women. The Wal-Mart executives who have profited from these practices should have the guts to face in court the women they cheated. They know that if they succeed in breaking up this class, most of the women will be unable to proceed on their own or in smaller groups.”

In early March, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), as well as 32 other organizations including the Feminist Majority Foundation, filed an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court in support of a class action suit against Wal-Mart for discriminating against its women employees in stores nationwide. The initial lawsuit was filed in 2001 by Betty Dukes, a former Wal-Mart employee, and six other plaintiffs who worked in 13 of the chain’s 3,400 US stores. The women are seeking what could be billions of dollars in punitive damages and back pay for gendered wage discrepancies for all female employees of Wal-Mart since 1998.

Republican Governor Bob McDonnell signed a bill requiring that clinics that perform first trimester abortions meet the Board of Health regulations on hospitals, which are far more stringent than the regulations on physician’s offices. The Virginia Senate and House voted to pass the bill in February.

Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, stated, “This is a distressing day for the women of Virginia and their access to safe, affordable reproductive health care in the Commonwealth. Through a legally questionable and ethically indefensible political gimmick, Gov. McDonnell has pushed through legislation that may result in politically motivated regulations of first trimester abortion providers that have nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with the legislature and governor’s personal ideology.”

The new regulations may cause as many as 17 of the state’s 21 women’s health clinics that perform abortions and provide necessary women’s reproductive health services, such as STI testing, cancer screenings, and family planning, to shut down as a result of the cost to implement the required changes. These regulations will significantly and unnecessarily increase the cost of early abortions and will make it more difficult to get an abortion in Virginia. Reproductive rights groups, including the Feminist Majority, the National Organization for Women, and the American Civil Liberties Union oppose the law, which restricts women’s access to reproductive health services.

The Arkansas Public Health and Safety Committee passed HB 1855, a bill requiring medical facilities that provide over ten non-surgical abortions per month to meet the standards of out-patient surgical centers and obtain a license from the state Health Department. The bill would require clinics to be equipped with defibrillators and ventilators and would impose new restrictions on hallway and parking lot dimensions. The bill will go the Arkansas House for a vote.

These regulations would impose unnecessary and onerous regulations on abortion providers and restrict women’s access to reproductive health services. Murry Newbern, director of community affairs at Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma, stated, “It’s a burden and it targets us specifically. This is just a tactic that people that want to reduce access to safe, legal abortion use make it more expensive.”

In Virginia, a similar bill passed into law in February that requires requiring clinics that perform first trimester abortions meet the Board of Health regulations on hospitals, which are far more stringent than the regulations on physician’s offices.

During a Women’s History Month program at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders espoused the benefits of comprehensive sex education for students in order to prevent unplanned pregnancy. Elders clarified, “If you can’t control your reproduction, you can’t control your life. If you don’t educate young people about their sexuality and how to protect themselves, you are setting yourself up to repeat the same thing.” Elders served as Surgeon General during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Elders’ remarks came approximately a week after Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour signed a bill mandating that public school districts teach either abstinence-only or abstinence-plus sex education by June 30, 2012. In February 2010, the Mississippi state House passed a bill to allow “abstinence-plus” sex education to be offered in the state. The “abstinence-plus” curriculum focuses primarily on abstinence, but also includes information about contraceptives and condoms. The proposed legislation prohibits any schools from demonstrating proper condom use and requires boys and girls to be separated into different classes by gender during sexual education classes. Parental permission will be required for students to attend “abstinence-plus” classes.

Teen birth rates and rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia in Mississippi are among the highest in the US. A Department of Education survey on teen pregnancy indicated that 91 of 121 Mississippi public school districts either did not have a sex education policy, or did not know if one existed.

On Wednesday, the Idaho Senate voted to approve the Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks, unless the woman’s life is endangered, and making it a felony for abortion providers to conduct the procedure after 20 weeks. Last week, the Idaho Senate State Affairs Committee passed the bill by a vote of 7-2. The bill will now go to the state House of Representatives, where it is expected to pass, for a vote.

The Idaho Attorney General’s Office stated that under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Unborn Child Protection Act is unconstitutional “insofar as it proscribes some non-therapeutic abortions even before a fetus has reached viability.” Moreover, the American College of Gynecology refutes assertions made by Idaho’s Republican senators that fetuses can feel pain at 20 week, stating that there is “no legitimate evidence that fetuses can experience pain.”

The Idaho bill is modeled on a Nebraska law, signed in April 2010, which outlaws abortion after 20 weeks. Nebraska is also the first state to restrict access to abortion by requiring a doctor to screen women for any mental or physical problems before they perform the procedure.

The Colorado Senate passed a civil union bill (SB 127) yesterday by a vote of 23 to 12. The bill, introduced by Senator Pat Steadman (D) would allow same-sex couples to enter into civil unions and attain some of the same benefits enjoyed by married couples, such as the right to visit a partner in the hospital and the right to make decisions about the partner’s medical care. The bill would not, however, allow same sex couples to obtain marriage licenses. The bill will now go to the Colorado House of Representatives for a vote.

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, stated, “Legislators in Colorado have taken an important action to advance equality for all Coloradans. We call on the Colorado House to swiftly follow the Senate’s lead on this crucial legislation.”

On Tuesday, Senator David Sokola (D) introduced a civil union in the Delaware state Senate. Currently, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington DC allow marriage of same-sex couples. Six states, California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii allow same-sex couples to form civil unions or domestic partnerships, which carry some of the legal benefits of marriage.

South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard (R) signed an extreme anti-abortion bill into law Tuesday requiring that women undergo a 72 hour waiting period and mandatory counseling from a crisis pregnancy center (CPC) before obtaining an abortion. Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, clarified that CPCs are “they’re not licensed, they’re not regulated, they’re not accredited and they’re openly ideological.” The law does not make exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

South Dakota is the first state in the country to mandate a 72 hour waiting period, although 25 states currently require a 24 hour waiting period. After the law takes effect July 1, women seeking abortions could have to make multiple trips to South Dakota’s only abortion provider in Sioux Falls. Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated that they would file a lawsuit against South Dakota.

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 do not offer women neutral or comprehensive medical advice. Often CPCs are run by anti-abortion zealots who are not licensed medical professionals.

Yesterday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided to uphold a temporary stay on Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in California. The Appeals Court denied a motion filed by the American Foundation for Equal Rights to set aside a stay on a Federal District Court decision until the 9th Circuit Court appeals process is completed.

In August 2010, Federal District Judge Vaughn Walker overturned a 6 to 1 ruling by the California Supreme Court in May 2009 that upheld the measure. In 2008, Proposition 8 was passed by voters in an electoral referendum.

Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, stated, “Today’s ruling is a major setback for same-sex couples and their families who must continue living every day in legal limbo without the basic freedoms and protections guaranteed to them by our nation’s Constitution. Every day same-sex couples are denied the freedom to marry, their families suffer significant harm. We cannot stand idle as the courts continue to deny our basic humanity. We must demand our equality and speak out against this injustice.”