Reproductive freedom

  • May 8, 2012

    by Jeremy Leaming

    His colleagues did not want to hear it, but the House Judiciary Committee’s Ranking Member Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) blasted the Republican’s reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act as wholly inadequate and a “flat-out attack on women,” as The Huffington Post’s Laura Bassett reports.

    Bassett writes that Conyers’ comment sparked “audible sighs and one ‘Come on!’" from Republicans on the panel. Conyers, however, was reacting to the House version, which strays remarkably from the one the Senate passed in late April. The Senate’s reauthorization bill approved despite Republican opposition includes extensions of services to low-income victims of domestic violence, to undocumented immigrants, as well as more help for Native American women and lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender victims of domestic abuse. The House version, H.R. 4970, does not include those extensions of services.

    In statement from House Judiciary Committee Democrats, the measure is described as rolling back “important protections for immigrant victims – putting them in a worse position than under the current law, and excludes other vulnerable populations such as tribal women, college students experiencing abuse …. In short, this legislation seeks to fight domestic violence, but only if the sponsors agree with the race, immigration status, sexual orientation, or gender identity of the victims.”

    Those extensions spurred Republican opposition in the Senate, causing the reauthorization to languish for months. VAWA was passed in 1994 with strong bipartisan support and reauthorized twice since then. But this time around, conservative lawmakers have chaffed at extending services to more people. The obstructionism caught the attention of The New York Times, which said in a February editorial that the opposition was “drive largely by an antigay, anti-immigrant agenda.”

    During the Senate’s struggle to pass VAWA, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told The Times that the opposition was part of an overarching effort “to cut back on the rights and services to women.”

  • May 1, 2012

    by Jeremy Leaming

    Tennessee lawmakers appear to be itching for national attention, regardless of how buffoonish their actions. Or more likely the lawmakers that passed measures attacking science education and making a sham of sex education are only interested in pleasing localized interests, such as Christian right activists.

    Yes, the rest of the country has taken note of the fatuous measures successfully pushed by state Rep. Jim Gotto and Sen. Bo Watson.

    Gotto’s measure, which has been sent to the governor, declares that only abstinence can be discussed in sex education courses, meaning no discussion of so-called “gateway sexual activity,” which according to the bill is “sexual conduct encouraging an individual to engage in non-abstinent behavior.” TPM reports that groups like Planned Parenthood that provide sex education information to the schools “could face $500 fine,” for violating the measure.

    Will Gotto’s prudish measure do anything other than draw ridicule? On the national stage, ridicule is likely all Gotto’s measure will garner. But his measure is likely not aimed at curbing unwanted pregnancies or garnering praise from other states. It’s all about pleasing a constituency stuck somewhere in the 1950s. If the representative were truly concerned about teenage pregnancy and birth rates, he would have not have advocated for abstinence-only rhetoric.

    Studies overwhelmingly show abstinence-only policy is not sound education. Late last year researchers from the University of Georgia found that states using abstinence-only programs in public schools have far higher teenage pregnancy and birth rates than those states that have comprehensive sex education programs. Kathrine Stranger-Hall, a science professor at the university, said, “Our analysis adds to the overwhelming evidence indicating that abstinence-only education does not reduce teen pregnancy rates.”

    The other bill, pushed by Sen. Watson, has already become law, and also harkens to the past. Tennessee has a history of fighting science, but it is not alone in fighting evolution, the cornerstone of biology. Kansas drew nationwide attention in the late 1990s and again in 2005 for its effort to push evolution from the science curriculum.

    Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Bible’s creation story could not be taught alongside evolution in science courses, Christian Right activists have been working year after year to find a way to circumvent the Supreme Court.

  • April 26, 2012

    by Jeremy Leaming

    In 1994 federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle banded together to advance legislation aimed at tackling the prevalence of domestic and sexual violence. It was and remains a noble goal. Indeed it represented one of the more communitarian pieces of legislation of the time. The nation it seemed, even if fleeting, to be concerned about bettering the quality of lives of some of the nation’s most vulnerable, as opposed to catering solely to the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful.

    Today reauthorization of the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), as noted on this blog, is mired in mindless obstructionism. The reauthorization measure was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in February, and finally passed the Senate today on a 68-31 vote. But House Republicans are itching to keep obstructionism alive, promising their own reauthorization measure.

    Though the Justice Department has reported a decline in domestic violence, a 2011 National Census of Domestic Violence Services revealed that more than 67,000 victims of domestic violence received federal help in a single day.

    Moreover since enactment of the VAWA it has become apparent that services need to be extended, such as free legal services to victims, authority for Native American officials to respond to abuse of Indian women by those not covered by Indian jurisdiction, more help to undocumented people who are victims of domestic violence, and to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender victims of domestic violence.  

    It is this effort to help more people that spurred opposition. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) complained about the reauthorization measure’s additional services. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said the bill’s efforts to expand the reach of domestic violence programs were meant to “invite opposition.”

    Right-wing lobbying groups have also ramped up opposition to reauthorization. The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins said the VAWA reauthorization bill “does real violence to the budget and individual freedom.

    Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a Tea Party favorite, took to the Senate floor to declare that he was not voting against helping victims of domestic violence. He said he was voting against “big government and inefficient spending ….”

    Sen. Patrick Leahy, who introduced the reauthorization measure with Michael Crapo (R-Idaho), lauded today’s Senate vote, and said he hoped the House “will soon consider this legislation ….”

    But The Associated Press reported recently that a group of Republicans in the House is working to create a different reauthorization bill. It would likely strip the Senate’s efforts to help undocumented immigrants, Native Americans, and gays, lesbians and transgenders.

    During the Senate’s drawn-out effort to reauthorize the VAWA, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told The New York Times that the Republican opposition “is part of a larger effort, candidly, to cut back on the rights and services to women. We’ve seen it go from discussions on Roe v. Wade, to partial birth abortion, to contraception, to preventive services from women. This seems to be one more thing.”

  • April 12, 2012

    by Jeremy Leaming

    The nation’s growing income inequality, among other issues concerning the economy, should play a significant role in the presidential election, but writing for The Nation, Ari Berman delves into why the Supreme Court should also be “a major issue in November.”

    The Supreme Court is simply not balanced. The court has been shoved far to the right. Berman cites Nate Silver’s reporting for The New York Times on a recent study that “finds that the current court is the most conservative since at least the 1930s.”

    The Martin-Quinn Scores, which Silver rendered in two charts, also “imply that, on the basis of its median justice, the current court is farther from the ideological center than any recent court. For instance, it is farther from the center than the liberal courts of the late 1960s that were under Chief Justice Earl Warren.”

    And beyond deciding whether health care reform will stand or fall, the Roberts Court is likely to consider a slew of major issues in the “not-so-distant future,” Berman writes. Some of these concerns include affirmative action policy, voting rights, marriage equality and reproductive rights. (As Berman notes, Republican state lawmakers have passed numerous onerous restrictions on reproductive rights over the last few years.)

    The right already gets it. Leaders of the conservative movement have obsessed over the make-up the federal courts and the high court in particular, for decades. And those leaders haven’t stopped obsessing. Berman notes that NRA leader Wayne LaPierre declared, in hyperbolic fashion, at this year’s Conservative Political Action Committee, “If Obama wins re-election, he will likely appoint one – and perhaps three – more Supreme Court justices. It’ll be the end of our freedom forever.”

  • March 23, 2012

    by Jeremy Leaming

    As the Obama administration and supporters of its landmark health care reform law take note of the law’s anniversary – enacted two years ago today – Timothy Egan takes a look at the state lawmakers opposing the law who have found some health care regulation they can support.

    Earlier this week this blog noted Idaho’s efforts to join a slew of other states that have enacted laws requiring women to undergo invasive ultrasounds and hear government propaganda before obtaining abortions. During the state senate’s consideration of the bill Sen. Chuck Winder in responding to the fact that the legislation did not contain exceptions for victims of rape or incest suggested that women have difficult determining when they’ve been raped.

    “I would hope that when a woman goes in to a physician with a rape issue,” Winder said, “that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was the pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage or was it truly cause by rape.”

    In a piece called “The Church Lady State,” for The New York Times Egan takes right-wing policy makers to task for their efforts to micromanage sex lives of Americans. He notes the Tea Party grumblings over Obama’s Affordable Care Act and other regulations, such as those promoting energy conservation, and says none compare to what “your freedom-hating Republican Party has been doing across the land to restrict individual liberty.”

    Egan continues:

    They want the state to follow you into the bedroom, the bathroom and beyond. They think you’re too stupid to know what to do with your own body, too ignorant to understand what your doctors tell you and too lazy to be trusted in a job without being subject to random drug testing. Your body is the government’s business.

    The “church lady state,” or Idaho, however, is on the verge of enacting an even more stringent ultrasound law than those passed in Virginia or Texas, he notes. It “would subject many women to invasive, trans-vaginal inspections.”