Seven members of the House and 19 senators have urged Health and Human Services secretary Mike Leavitt to withdraw the appointment of birth control opponent Susan Orr to head the HHS office that funds family planning clinics. Each group sent a letter to the secretary, with the House letter calling Orr’s appointment “yet another misguided […]
133 student activists participated in a global leadership conference this weekend at Brown University. The conference, “Global Leadership Summit: Eliminating Violence, Empowering Women,” was co-hosted by the Feminist Majority Foundation and the Brown Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance. Participants in the conference came from 20 colleges in the region. The weekend featured a variety of lectures […]
Phill Kline, the former Kansas attorney general and extreme abortion-rights foe, has used his new position as Johnson County district attorney to levy more than 100 charges against Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. The Overland Park clinic, located in Johnson County, is accused of 23 felony counts of providing false information […]
According to a study released this week by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), the status of women’s health within the US is in an overall state of decline. In Making the Grade for Women’s Health: A National and State-by-State Report Card, each state was graded and ranked on 27 health benchmarks, and no state […]
Twenty years after the launching of the World Health Organization”s Safe Motherhood Initiative, the sexual and reproductive health status of women across the globe has remained relatively poor and “disturbingly static,” Population Action International (PAI) reports. PAI, an independent policy advocacy group, released a study this week of women in 130 countries, analyzing nine reproductive […]
Don Imus, the radio host forced off the air in April for using a racist and sexist slur when describing the Rutgers women’s basketball team, is expected to announce that he will begin to broadcast with the largest talk radio station in the country, WABC. The show on WABC radio, owned by Citadel Broadcasting, would […]
Once again, President George Bush has appointed an opponent of women’s reproductive rights to head the Office of Population Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Susan Orr, who has a Ph.D. but is not a physician, will be the acting HHS deputy assistant secretary, administering $283 million in yearly Title X […]
Congresswoman Lois Capps (D-CA) will head the US Congressional delegation at the upcoming Women Deliver conference in London (Oct 18-20) to address the crisis of maternal mortality worldwide and highlight the vital connection between women’s human rights and economic development, according to a press release from her office. Other delegation members Hilda Solis (D-CA), Gwen […]
Nancy Tsongas will be the first woman to represent the state of Massachusetts in Congress since 1983 and the first woman to represent Massachusetts’ fifth district since 1960. Tsongas won the October 16th special election to fill the sea vacated by former Rep. Marty Meehan, who resigned to accept a chancellorship position at University of […]
Agence France-Presse (AFP) recently reported that a Delhi-based nonprofit is working with women in India to produce sanitary pads. Millions of Indian women who cannot afford store-bought sanitary pads often rely on dirty rags, strips of old clothes, or nothing at all while they”re menstruating, putting their lives at risk, aid workers say. “The solution […]
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles is evicting nuns from their convents in order to sell the buildings to help pay off a $660 million settlement with victims of pedophile priests. The archdiocese announced that it will sell up to 50 non-parish properties, including their headquarters, the Los Angeles Times reports. A convent in […]
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill this weekend that would have required health insurance companies that cover cervical cancer treatments to cover the cost of the vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is linked to many kinds of cervical cancers. The bill passed in the Assembly by a vote of 52-23 and 26-13 […]
Popular feminist blog Feministing.com is in the running for several Blogger’s Choice Awards, including the Best Blog of All Time and the Best Political Blog, for which it currently ranks in the top three. The winners of the awards, determined by popular vote, will be announced at the blog conference PostieCon in Las Vegas, NV […]
More than 100 students rallied last week to show their outrage after a noose was found on an African American professor’s office door at Columbia University’s Teachers College. The target of the racist act was Madonna Constantine, a psychology and education professor who specializes in race and multiculturalism. The Hate Crimes Task Force of the […]
Long-supported primarily by Republicans, abstinence-only sex education programs are surviving the Democratic take-over of Congress. Funding for such programs, which receive $200 million a year from the federal government, could even increase, with the help of House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey, D-WI, reports the Los Angeles Times. Obey is supporting abstinence-only programs, despite […]
In advance of the upcoming Women Deliver conference in London, a report released Friday shows that worldwide maternal mortality rates have been declining at a rate of less than one percent a year. The report, Maternal Mortality in 2005, jointly published by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNFPA and the World Bank, points to the […]
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), along with eight co-signers, has sent a letter to the chairs and ranking members of the House Appropriations Committee and Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs in support of funding for programs for Afghan women and Afghan women’s rights. The letter expresses “strong support for the language included in […]
Women continue to be significantly underrepresented as partners in large law firms, composing no more than about 30 percent of partners in any of the big-city law firms, according to a diversity study released Wednesday by Building a Better Legal Profession, a grassroots organization of law students. The goal of the study is to help […]
The number of abortions dropped nine percent worldwide between 1995 and 2003, from 46 million to 42 million annually, according to a new study by the Guttmacher Institute and World Health Organization (WHO). The decline was concentrated in developed regions like Europe where abortion is legal and birth control is widely available. The data demonstrates […]
State officials have asked the South Dakota Supreme Court to rule on whether or not the identity of a major contributor to a campaign to uphold a state law that would have banned abortion must be disclosed. The contribution came from Promising Future, a corporation established by State Rep. Roger Hunt (R) that gave a […]
