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Arkansas Latest Attack Against Women
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Yesterday, the Arkansas state senate passed a bill that defunds Planned Parenthood. If you think this is just about abortion, you should think again.
Planned Parenthood offers essential services to the women of Arkansas. Already, only 40% of all the counties in the state even have an OB/GYN, the closing of Planned Parenthood would diminish that even further. Consider- to actually see a doctor who specializes in women’s medicine, patients in Arkansas may have no alternative but to leave the state.
Furthermore, Planned Parenthood is the only organization that provides comprehensive sex education in Arkansas high schools. The curriculum focuses on abstinence, but also provides information about pregnancy, HIV, and other STIs. Without Planned Parenthood providing the curriculum and the tools, most high schools will simply stop teaching the subject.
In defunding Planned Parenthood, Arkansas adds more insult to injury to women who would choose to end a pregnancy. After their recent anti-abortion bill, which bans abortions starting at 12 weeks, the closure of Planned Parenthood may effectively end access to care within the incredibly short timeline left to those women. It is a clear violation of their constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.
Write to the state representatives in Arkansas. Write to the governor. Do not let this stand.
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- Arkansas: the Most anti-Woman State in the Country
April 9, 2013
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Equal Pay Day
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Today is Equal Pay Day, when the average American woman’s earnings catch up with the average American man’s for the last year.
It took from January 1, 2012 until today- April 9, 2013- for women to earn the same amount that men earned in 2012 alone. That’s more than a full three months of pay that women are being denied annually, simply because of their gender.
There are so many laws and corporate rules and social taboos that continue this problem. It’s against many company’s policies to discuss your salary with your coworkers and it’s considered rude to ask friends about their financial situations, so how can a woman learn what she SHOULD be earning, opposed to what she takes home?
We need real equal pay laws. Laws with teeth, with criminal penalties for companies that discriminate against women. We need to treat women with dignity and respect, not because any other person is in charge of caring for them, but because we are human beings.
Women, imagine that right now, every cent you’d earned in 2013 had been given to you when you earned it, last year. A full quarter of your income, denied to you. This is what is happening.
Write to the president. To your congressmen. Get angry. It’s Equal Pay Day, and it’s time somebody paid.
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April 5, 2013
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In Georgia High School, Prom is Still “Whites Only”
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In Wilcox Country High School, racial integration isn’t exactly new. But one thing is- a mixed race Prom. The school always hosts two Proms and two Homecoming dances- one for whites, and one for “integrated” students. How “whites only” is it? Last year, a mixed race student was actually ejected from the dance- for not being white.
For the first time, this year the students elected only one Prom king and queen, versus the “white” and “integrated” king and queen of years past. The king is white, and the queen is black. Yet, she is still banned from the “whites only” Prom.
Many of the students have worked to end this segregation, but the school is utterly uncooperative. That’s because the Proms are not sponsored by the school- they are entirely paid for by donations from parents and students. Therefore, the students who wish to end this so-called tradition have taken matters into their own hands. They picked a day, and began raising money to put on their own Prom for everybody themselves.
Still, students in the school tear down their fundraising posters, and many of the parents are vehemently resistant.
Next time somebody tells you that racism is dead, tell them this story.
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April 1, 2013
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Why the Indian Novartis Case Matters
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The Indian courts have ruled against an international pharmaceutical company, Novartis, allowing local companies to produce its anti-cancer drug without paying liabilities. So why does this matter here, in the United States?
There have long been debates about whether or not medicine should be a for-profit institution. If the purpose of medicine is to help people, how is it beneficial to force sick people to bid for the access to health? This is a real problem even here, where we take freedom from diseases like polio and tuberculosis for granted. More than half of all bankruptcies in the US are caused by medical bills. Many patients, upon learning they have cancer, have no choice. Die, or forfeit all you own.
Even among medical researchers, the debate rages.
This Novartis case is important because the courts chose the right to access to healthcare over the right to maintain control of intellectual property. They have said that when lives are at stake, profits are irrelevant.
Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?
If you are on the side of human life, it is an unequivocal good. On the side of free markets, it is a disaster.
Let’s hope this debate reaches our own shores with real-world consequences soon. It’s a debate that the millions of Americans in health-related bankruptcy would love to take part in.
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March 28, 2013
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The Supreme Court and DOMA
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While things might not have looked particularly good OR bad at the Prop 8 hearings, there were definite changes in the overall tone by the time the DOMA hearing rolled along.
As expected, the four conservative justices (Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito) have made their position on marriage equality clear. Justice Scalia once famously compared gay people to murderers, and even supported throwing them in jail.
Also as expected, the four more reasonable judges (Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) are on the side of equal rights for all Americans. Sotomayor has made her position on anti-gay discrimination very clear over the day’s proceedings- she finds it appalling.
Which leaves only the swing voter- Justice Anthony Kennedy.
His votes have been sometimes confusing. While he tends to side more often with the conservative judges, he has been known to take unexpected swings center left. And most importantly, he has a history as an advocate for equal rights for LGBT Americans.
He made it clear yesterday that his greatest concern regarding DOMA was that it overrides the individual states’ ability to make their own laws in this regard, and he seems to find that unconstitutional.
Hopefully, come June or July, we’ll know how he really feels. And we will be one major step closer to recognizing the rights of every American.
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March 27, 2013
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The Supreme Court and Prop 8
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Today is the second day in the Supreme Court’s marriage equality week.
Yesterday, they heard arguments regarding California’s notorious Prop 8. As expected, opponents of marriage equality tossed in the same old arguments. As expected, several of the justices shot them down.
The argument that marriage is essentially procreative? Then we should ban marriage for infertile couples, and for those past menopause as well.
justice Sotomayor went even farther- asking if a ban against gays marrying could be interpreted as an excuse to deny them other basic rights. Like equal pay, protection against job discrimination, or protection against laws that describe homosexuality itself a crime.
Today should be another interesting day at the Supreme Court, as the court takes up the DOMA laws that deny federal benefits to same-sex couples.
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March 20, 2013
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While You Weren’t Looking at North Dakota
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Late last week, the North Dakota legislature passed the most restrictive, draconian anti-choice bill in the country. It effectively bans abortions starting at six weeks gestational age.
It has one exception- “life of the mother.” That means that if you’re raped and become pregnant, you’d better know you’re pregnant before most pregnancy tests do, or you can’t get an abortion. If you go to your 20 week ultrasound and discover that the baby’s heart is outside its body, you have to carry it until it becomes toxic enough that it will kill you, or deliver it. If you get a 12 week amnio and discover that it has Tay Sachs, you will deliver your baby and watch it grow for six months, and then spend the next two years watching it slowly and painfully die.
And all of that is irrelevant, because Roe v. Wade settled this issue. The Supreme Court settled what American’s constitutional rights are, and those rights are to control their own bodies. Until a fetus can survive outside of the mother, the mother has the right to choose not to carry it. And after it’s viable, she has the right to adopt out or raise it as she sees fit- but the law protects her.
This ban is utterly unconstitutional.
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March 19, 2013
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Prosecuting Internet Crimes in Steubenville
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This weekend, a judge ruled in a notorious rape case. Two high school football players in Steubenville, Ohio, were convicted of raping a teenaged girl while she was passed out. They became part of the outrageously small 5% of rapists to be sent to prison.
Their sentences were minimal, but at least they were convicted.
That was too much for some people. Multiple media outlets couched their coverage in terms of how the rapists have been victimized by the girl they attacked. How “promising” their lives were, how unfortunate their sentences, how drunk their victim was when they assaulted her.
These ideas are pervasive. So pervasive, in fact that there are new charges in the Steubenville case. The Ohio attorney general has arrested two more teenagers.
This time? Girls. They are accused of using social media to send the victim death threats. Because she ruined the lives of those two “promising” football players.
The reason we have never heard the name of the victim is simple- the law protects the victim. If she wants her privacy, and why wouldn’t she, she is entitled to it. She’s a victim, her life doesn’t need to be any more difficult.
That Ohio is pressing charges against these girls is an historic milestone. Even more important though should be the message that it is NEVER okay to blame a victim. Not for her crime (as though being drunk is granting everybody license to attack you), and not for seeking justice for a crime committed against her.
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- Who Should the Law Protect?
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March 18, 2013
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Rape Culture in the Steubenville Trial
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Finally, it seems some measure of justice will be served. The two boys who viciously assaulted an unconscious girl will be going to jail until they’re 21. Or, rather, they’ll serve a minimum of one year or two years, depending on the boy in question.
And yet, that’s not the story you hear when you turn on CNN. What you hear about is two teenagers, well liked, good students, who’s lives will be forever ruined by having been convicted of this crime.
You don’t hear about the trauma of one girl who was brutalized and humiliated while she was unconscious. You don’t hear about an entire police force that was complicit in covering up this crime in order to protect the beloved town football team. You don’t hear about an entire house full of teenagers who watched and joked while not a single one stepped up to defend another human being who was being horrifically abused.
No, the coverage is about those poor, poor boys.
THIS is why women are terrified of coming forward about sexual assault. THIS is why crimes are so unreported. Because even when the whole world has seen the video footage and the instagram photos, your incredibly guilty attackers will only serve a year or two in jail, and you will be the villain responsible for ruining their lives.
Those boys deserve more jail time than this. They attacked an unconscious girl, carried her from place to place to repeatedly rape her, and DOCUMENTED IT WHILE IT OCCURRED. These young men abandoned any claim to victimhood the moment they became predators. They deserve to go to jail. And they deserve to have the whole world know what kind of terrible crimes they so callously committed.
And THAT is the story that the media should be telling.
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March 13, 2013
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Mays and Richmond Go to Trial in Steubenville
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Today, finally, Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmond will begin their trial for the rape of one of their classmates.
The girl was unconscious, and the friends of the accused posted instagram photographs of the pair carrying her from place to place, where she was repeatedly raped. While the rape occurred, friends of the popular football players filmed themselves making jokes about the pair raping the girl. They made jokes about her likely death.
It has been a horrific tale, more and more coming slowly to light.
Finally, today, the court ruled that the prosecution could force the friends of these football players- their teammates- to testify. If convicted, the two would be sent to a juvenile prison until they turned 21.
It is too little, too late.
We, as a culture, need to teach our young men NOT to commit these horrific crimes, rather than focus on telling girls again and again to protect themselves- that the burden is on them. We cannot assume that our sons simply know, that they will not stand by while their friends commit these crimes. That they will not be complicit in sexual violence.
That is the lesson we must take away from this.
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Related Posts:
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- Rape Culture in the Steubenville Trial
- Violence Against Women Week: Day Four- Universities
- Prosecuting Internet Crimes in Steubenville
- A “Pardon” in Afghanistan
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