Gynetics Inc. and The Women’s Capital Corp. have plans to bring new emergency contraception drugs to market. Research has shown that a levonorgestrel-only pill is more effective and produces fewer side effects than the ethinyl estradiol and levonorgestrel combination that is currently available for sale as part of Gynetics’ Preven emergency contraception kit. The Somerville, […]
A Louisiana law that bans certain surgical abortion procedures was found to be unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Thomas Porteous declared, “This act’s broad language seems to purposefully create confusion and ambiguity,” and said that the law would interfere with a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. Although anti-choice activists claimed that only late-term procedures were targeted, […]
Osama bin Laden, a major instigator of anti-U.S. terrorism and top suspect in the August 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, has allegedly lost favor with Afghanistan’s extremist Taliban regime. The Taliban has been harboring the fugitive in Afghanistan since last August and has refused to turn him over to the U.S. […]
Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia suggest that human hair may be used to screen women for breast cancer in the future. Veronica James and colleagues conducted x-ray analysis on the pubic hairs of groups of healthy women, women with breast cancer, and women who did not have breast cancer, […]
A group of international women’s urged attendees of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women to help reverse worldwide declines in breast-feeding by encouraging government to support nursing mothers. International Women Count’s Selma James stated “Out aim is to show what society loses in health and welfare when breast-feeding is not properly valued […]
A group of fourth-grade students from Luxmanor Elementary School in Montgomery County, Maryland, has urged Children’s Hospital to pull a television commercial that depicts a young girl who is tormented by stomach pains caused by her algebra class. The ad, which has been running on Washington, DC-area stations since January, depicts an adolescent girl who […]
FBI and Planned Parenthood officials have announced new information about the slew of anthrax threats sent to women’s health clinics and pro-choice organizations in the last few weeks. The FBI has confirmed, after conclusive tests, that none of the almost 30 letters claiming to contain anthrax actually held the deadly bacteria. Officials also revealed that […]
Leading congressional Republicans Rep. Christopher Smith, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, House Republican Leader Dick Armey and Republican Whip Tom DeLay have pledged to block President Clinton from paying arrears to the U.N. until he agrees to allow a provision, sponsored by Smith, which would eliminate U.S. aid to international family planning groups that perform abortions, […]
Amnesty International has uncovered widespread evidence that female inmates in U.S. prisons are subjected to a “double sentence” of rape, unwanted groping and fondling, and other inhumane treatment meted out by prison guards. Michel Forst, who heads Amnesty International in France, said that female inmates are punished both through their court-ordered sentences and “specific humiliation […]
The Shawnee Girl Scout Council will offer a new achievement patch to Girl Scouts who work to educate themselves about domestic violence. The Council, which governs 15 counties in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, will debut the new patch at its annual meeting March 20. Junior Troop 47 of Wiley Ford designed the patch, […]
The nonprofit Children’s Home/Chambliss Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee has provided 24-hour day care for 30 years and has become indispensable to its community. Executive Director Phil Acord said, “We see ourselves as one of the major cogs that keeps the community working and people productive.” In a changing economy where many parents now work evening […]
More than 900 current or former female employees of Merrill Lynch have filed claims of discrimination against the financial services company. When Merrill Lynch settled a class action suit last June, the company’s lawyers anticipated that somewhere between two hundred and three hundred people would file complaints, far fewer than the 900 who actually did. […]
France’s Senate will soon consider a constitutional amendment that would “favor equal access by men and women” to elected office. Constitutional scholar Guy Carcassonne has reported that the vaguely-worded amendment would most likely result in the passage of laws which would limit the percentage of a party’s male or female candidates to 60 or 70% […]
The U.S. Justice Department had urged the Supreme Court to make it easier for employees to win large punitive awards for workplace discrimination. Currently, workers must prove that an employer acted “with malice or with reckless indifference to the federally protected rights of an aggrieved individual” in order to collect large punitive damages. Prior to […]
New research from the Population Council has found that young girls in Egypt today are at least ten percent less likely to endure female circumcision than were their mothers. The decline seems to have begun after the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) took place in Cairo in 1994, intensifying the Female Genital Mutilation […]
According to a report made by congressional auditors, the Pentagon’s estimate that it will cost $300 million to house men and women in separate barracks is misleading at best. The auditors contend that the Army and Navy’s estimates are based on the costs of building barracks for new recruits and assumes that large portions of […]
The U.S. State Department harshly condemned the Taliban’s abuse of women in its 1998 human rights report, which was issued on Friday. The report described how the Taliban has issued harsher and harsher decrees limiting the rights of women since it overtook Afghanistan’s capital city, Kabul, in September 1996. Under the Taliban’s decrees, Afghan women […]
Mifepristone has long been regarded as a safe and effective form of early abortion, and has also been proven effective for use as an emergency contraceptive when taken within three days of an unprotected sexual encounter. Now, a World Health Organization study reveals that the drug remains effective even 5 days after unprotected sex. Dr. […]
In a research report published in the American Psychological Association’s Developmental Psychology journal, University of Massachusetts at Amherst psychologist Elisabeth Harvey argues that mothers cause no harm to their children by working outside of the home. Harvey analyzed data that had been collected for the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The specific data that Harvey […]
U.S. Vice President Gore announced Friday that the U.S. government will give states $223 million for programs to prevent, detect, and stop domestic violence. One hundred thirty-eight million will be allocated to improve the criminal justice system’s response to violence against women and to improve services for abuse survivors under the S.T.O.P. Violence Against women […]
