Using Pseudo-science At HHS

By Kathleen C. Barry

I thought the battle for women's rights had largely been won but the extremists are coming out of the closet with their real agenda, the assault on birth control. This fringe has won converts for its warped pseudo-science at the Department of Health and Human Services, where a proposed rule would codify that anyone receiving federal funding could not be required to provide birth control under the basis that it might violate their religious views.

The new rules would mean that all health care providers -- including pharmacists and medical staff at hospitals and clinics, medical schools and even family planning centers -- could refuse to provide all forms of contraception. Women’s rights are being put at the whim of their providers who could now claim a “conscience” clause to refuse to cover birth control in medical plans or provide pregnancy prevention to rape victims.

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Georgia is Pushing Gun Law Boundaries in Wrong Direction

By Alice Johnson

A few months ago, Georgia made it legal for people with permits to carry firearms in a concealed manner into state parks and recreational areas, onto public transportation and into restaurants that serve alcohol.

The General Assembly passed these very serious public safety provisions even though no committee ever held a meeting about them. There was no scrutiny by any professional law enforcement personnel or restaurant owners, never any opportunity for public comment.

The language was added in a conference committee on the last day of the session -- a committee that met without posting any notices, in a room in the basement of the Capitol, without openness or oversight. And 60 percent of legislators voted for it two hours before the session ended on the most hectic and chaotic day, as the clock wound toward midnight and the end of the General Assembly for another year.

Currently, the Senate Firearms Law Study Committee is preparing to remove what is left of the “public gathering” section that the new law decimated -- making it possible for firearms to be carried in churches, in schools, on college campuses and in government-owned buildings. Their plan is to allow carrying concealed handguns anywhere, at any time, by anyone who can pass a fingerprint background check and pay the $15 application fee the state requires.

Does it make sense to do these things? Is there a public safety imperative that justifies these changes in the law? Can we trust a permit holder to shoot straight, know safety rules and practice emotional good judgment when no training is required to get a permit? Why do these kinds of crazy bills get passed?

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Severe Poverty Hiding Behind the Brighter Headlines

By Carol Spruill

The Census Bureau recently announced the good news that the official poverty rate in 2007 was "not statistically different" from 2006.

But upon digging deeper into the Census Bureau’s full 71-page report the “not statistically different” poverty rate was an overall national increase from 12.3 percent to 12.5 percent. This meant that the number of additional people living on incomes below the poverty line in this country had increased in one year by over 800,000.



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Why North Carolina Needs A Pay Equity Study

By Polly Williams

The recent passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act in the U.S. House of Representatives has drawn national attention to the continuing disparity between women’s earnings and men’s. Equal pay for equal work is fair -- we all seem to agree on that -- yet women’s wages continue to lag behind. The gender gap has narrowed so that women now make 77 percent of what men do, yet even recent gains for women only appear because men’s average earnings rate went down.

Since our state government, with about 90,000 employees, is North Carolina’s largest employer, wage disparities between men and women are, or should be, of prime concern to legislators. Yet The Studies Act of 2008 failed to include the proposed Pay Equity Study Commission. The proposal would have resulted in a study of wage disparities by both gender and race. Four such proposals have been introduced in recent years, without result.

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Art Drives the Vote in Missouri

By Sue McCollum

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a giant squid?

When you look up in the sky while driving Missouri’s highways during the next few weeks, don’t be surprised if you see something unusual. You won’t catch a glimpse of Superman, but you may encounter a giant squid brandishing gas pump nozzles like a six shooter, Captain America or a field of sunflowers--all super-sized images with one central message: to encourage Missourians to register and vote in this November’s election.

Featuring the work of eight contemporary artists, 70 billboards with the language, “Vote: Your Future Depends On It” and http://www.artthevote.com/, began appearing across Missouri in the beginning of September. Look for the billboards on major highways across the state and in urban areas like Kansas City, Springfield, Cape Girardeau, Hannibal, St. Louis, Kirksville and Columbia. The billboards are sponsored by Art the Vote, an initiative of the Missouri Billboard Project, which is using art to inspire voter registration and voting in this November’s election.

The billboard images, sometimes subtle, sometimes provocative, reflect the artists’ thoughts on many of the key issues facing our state and nation, including fuel prices, the environment and the war. The billboards were created by seven nationally renowned artists and the winner of an Art the Vote online billboard competition. Four of the artists are Missourians--Tom Huck, Peregrine Honig, May Tveit and competition winner Karen Kay. The other artists, Annette Lemieux, Willie Cole, Mark Newport and Martha Rosler are known for their political artwork.

Like all art, the images on the billboards may receive mixed reviews. Some may like it. Some may not. But, whether you like the art or not, we all can agree on the importance of the billboard’s message and the artists’ desire to inspire young voters to register and vote this fall.

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The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy

By Joan Lamunyon Sanford

Much has been said about 17 year-old Bristol Palin’s pregnancy and the so-called “right” decision she made to choose parenting over abortion. But we should remember that what is the right decision for Bristol may not be the right decision for all young women with an unplanned pregnancy.

Bristol is fortunate to have loving parents who support her decision, and all of our youth deserve the same. Loving parents who will support them in whatever decision they make. Sadly, this is not always true.

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Listen Up! America’s Families Demand Action

By Luz A. Vega-Marquis

In McAllen, Texas, Martha Sanchez doesn't dare drink the water that runs out of the tap, for fear of getting sick. In Augusta, Georgia, Sunny Johnson, a single mother of two, thinks that working full-time as a certified nursing assistant should earn her a wage that puts her above the poverty line. (It doesn't.) In San Francisco, California, Cathleen Muhammad wants justice and good health for her children, who appear to have been made seriously ill by exposure to asbestos from a nearby construction site.

These three stories exemplify the different struggles families are facing in America today; meanwhile we have 37 million people -- 7.7 million families -- living in poverty.

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E-Verify: A Flawed Approach to Immigration Reform

By Suzanne Brown

The federal government has continually failed to address fundamental, structural problems with the country’s broken immigration system. Missouri’s leadership hasn’t done us any favors either by approving the Illegal Aliens and Immigration Status Verification law. This law does not adequately deal with Congress’ failures to provide options for employers to hire legal workers or to keep families together because an “enforcement-only” approach is not a viable solution.

There are three main problems with the new law.

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Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tehran

By Rev. Amanda Hendler-Voss

This week the words of Wendell Berry come to mind: “We concluded in 1945, after our atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that we had made war ‘unthinkable’ -- and we have gone on thinking of it, preparing for it, fighting it, suffering and profiting from it ever since.” Who could have imagined, in the midst of a disastrous war in Iraq, that we would be in such desperate need of remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki? After all, war is utterly destructive and incredibly costly -- win, lose or draw.

And yet, according to former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, “the war between the United States and Iran is on.” More than 230 members of Congress are co-sponsoring a proposal, which includes language that sounds an awful lot like a unilateral naval blockade of Iran -- deemed by the UN to constitute an act of war unless sanctioned by a Security Council resolution. And in case you missed it, Congress already approved $400 million to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran (which may include a major air attack and a nuclear option).

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Title IX: Ensures Equality In Education

By Janet Bandows Koster (pictured on left) and Betty Shanahan

Recent efforts by federal agencies to verify university compliance with Title IX are under scrutiny. Some claim Title IX compliance reviews are a “new” way to apply the law to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), but this law has been applicable to all educational programs receiving federal funds for 36 years. Title IX compliance can open the doors to the so-called “male-typical pursuits” in STEM fields to women, just as equal opportunity mandates have done for once-closed careers of firefighters, police officers and military personnel.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. It requires gender equity for boys and girls, men and women in every educational program that receives federal funding - not just in college sports. It also authorizes and directs federal funding agencies to implement the provisions of the law.

A 2004 Government Accountability Office report noted that the federal agencies have not discharged their obligations to ensure that educational institutions comply with the statues. In fact, most only passively receive statements of compliance with Title IX -- usually in the form of a pro forma assertion.

Title IX compliance reviews can help to confirm that academic institutions receiving federal funding establish a climate that ensures a representation of women in STEM disciplines that reflects their level of interest. Any difference in participation, then, is a result of the personal interests of women and not due to environmental factors that discourage them from entering or remaining in these fields.

There have been several recent articles arguing that women don't want to be scientists and engineers, and that those of us advocating for more women in these fields are not acknowledging innate gender-specific career inclinations. In fact, the problems encountered by women considering a STEM career vary by discipline. The low number of women earning degrees in physics, chemistry, computer science and engineering is often attributed to a lack of interest, but the fact that many women with excellent academic performance enter but later abandon these fields suggests otherwise.

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Railroading Immigrants…and the Constitution

By Kathleen Walker

Federal immigration officials swept into Postville, Iowa in May and detained nearly 400 workers at a kosher meat processing plant. Swiftly, local enforcement and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency arrested, charged with crimes, extracted pleas, and sentenced 297 of these individuals by the end of the following week. Apparently, this shock and awe strategy was specially designed to drop the hammer on undocumented workers doing backbreaking jobs under reportedly sub-optimal conditions.

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HHS Proposal Undercuts State Birth Control Laws

By Cristina Page

The Bush administration's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been called "ground zero for the ideological wars in this country," and a new HHS proposal leaked this week proves why. In a spectacular act of complicity with extremists on the right, HHS is proposing to allow any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception.

The American public is nearly unanimous in supporting contraception: 90 percent favor wide availability for birth control, and 90 percent of sexually active women of reproductive age are using it. It is simple common sense: the average woman spends nearly three decades of her life attempting to be sexually active without getting pregnant, and access to contraception is the only proven way to avoid an unintended pregnancy.

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G8 to Poor Women: Let Them Eat Dirt

By Yifat Susskind

Last week, leaders of the world’s richest countries, the Group of Eight (G8), met to chart the course of the global economy at the luxurious Windsor Hotel Toya Resort and Spa in Toyako, Japan. While President Bush and his colleagues discussed world hunger over a six-course lunch, women in Haiti were preparing cakes of dirt for their children’s dinner.

Eating dirt, mixed with salt and vegetable shortening, is the latest coping strategy of Haitian mothers trying to quiet hungry children in a year when the cost of rice (Haiti’s staple food) has risen nearly 150 percent.

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Creating a Stronger, Safer Juvenile Justice System

By Frances Deviney

Texas’ juvenile justice system is necessary and critical for protecting our citizens and helping to rehabilitate troubled youth. Unfortunately, it has not done either very well in recent years.

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Rebate Checks Alone Won’t Rebuild the Economy

By Blanca Rojas

As millions of Americans receive their tax rebate checks in the mail, the government is waiting to see whether this cash infusion will trigger a mass spending spree. Supporters believe this strategy will create rebate-fueled purchasing power that will give consumers the confidence they need to purchase that new flat-screen TV or simply pay off their overdue bills, jolting the economy back to life in the process.

The problem with this scenario is that no one can predict whether the rebate checks will do the job. Rebate checks are only one piece of the economic recovery equation; Congress must also create a growth package that contains proven initiatives for pulling the country out of a recession. This package should include four things: an expansion of unemployment insurance, a temporary increase in food stamp benefits, increased aid to state and local governments, and investment in infrastructure projects that would immediately put people to work.

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Eating American on the Fourth of July

By Rinku Sen

On this Fourth of July, I will be eating hot dogs. While I was trying to fit in as an Indian immigrant child throughout the 1970's, they represented the quintessential American food. I begged my mother to let me have them for dinner every night instead of chicken curry and rice. She nixed the hotdogs but sometimes allowed spaghetti and meatballs -- straight from a can. Hotdogs were "invented" by German immigrants serving their traditional sausages in the hustling streets of the new world, and spaghetti, everyone knows, came from Italy. If I had been celebrating Independence Day 150 years ago, however, neither would have been on the menu. In those days, Germans and Italians weren't considered Americans, or even white. When they fought over the most lucrative street corner for food vendors in the 1880's, the press reported these incidents as "race riots."

I'll be sharing this holiday with a group of restaurant workers, largely immigrants. Along with the hotdogs, we'll have tacos, samosas, falafel. According to one side of the immigration debate, we can keep our goodies to ourselves. America doesn't want them, or us.

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No Girls Allowed In Golf

It turns out that the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia isn’t the only “no girls allowed” golf club. Veronica at WorkItMom points to a New York Times article about Phoenix, Arizona country club, where women’s weren’t allowed in the men’s dining room.

Women at the club are not permitted to have lunch in the men’s grill room with their husbands after a round of golf; they have been barred from trophy ceremonies after tournaments, even ones they have sponsored, and may not participate in one of the most sacred rituals of the men’s grill room — sealing a deal over a beer with a client.

Of course separate but equal, right?

“The ladies’ grill is a very small room where a bunch of little old ladies gather to play cards,” said Wanda Diethelm, a health care executive. “And if you make any noise, they shush you.”

The fact is most so-called "private clubs" aren't private at all -- and instead benefit from companies that get tax benefits to underwrite the clubs. As Veronica writes:

These clubs may not have to be fair, but the companies that we work for do. They should not be allowed to pay for memberships to any group that discriminates and certainly should not encourage workers to take clients to discriminatory places either. We’re not that far from the time when business meetings were held at strip clubs too.

Martha Burk of course has been writing and protesting about this injustice for years but few people have been listening. It seems that even the spouses of the women of Phoenix Country Club, can’t even advocate for change without having their lockers defaced. The spouses should consider themselves lucky. Martha's gotten death threats.

--Rachel Joy Larris

Bias in Cocaine Sentencing Remains

By Kara Gotsch

Willie Mays Aikens was not a drug kingpin, but he received a kingpin-sized sentence for selling crack cocaine. A former Kansas City Royal and 1980 World Series record holder, Aikens received a 21-year sentence for selling 63 grams of crack. At the end of his baseball career he had become addicted to powder cocaine but had no previous record for drug distribution when an undercover officer asked him to sell the drugs that led to his lengthy incarceration in 1994. This month Aikens received a sentence reduction after 14 years in prison -- authorized due to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s determination that penalties for crack cocaine offenses are unnecessarily harsh. He returned to his major league hometown, Kansas City, to enter a halfway house, and hopes to soon reunite with his daughters, who live in Mexico with their mother.

Aikens’s release coincides this month with the 22-year anniversary of the death of Len Bias, another prominent sports figure who played basketball at the University of Maryland. His legendary cocaine overdose on the night he was drafted by the Boston Celtics launched the punitive legislative reaction by Congress that would later subject Aikens to a stiff mandatory sentence for selling crack cocaine.

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Food Policies Leave People Hungry

By Yifat Susskind

This week the U.N. convened world leaders in Rome to hammer out solutions to the food crisis. Once again policy leaders are forgetting that food is about people. Over the past few months, 30 countries have been wracked by food riots. The government of Haiti has been toppled. Rice reserves in the Philippines are now under armed guard. And U.S. corporate agribusinesses have a starring role in this disaster. Farmers in poor countries have gone broke by the millions because they can't compete with the artificially low prices of U.S. food imports.

Take Mexico, for example. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the U.S. demanded that Mexico open up its markets to cheap U.S. corn. Since NAFTA took effect, U.S. corn exports to Mexico have tripled, flooding the Mexican market and causing domestic corn prices to drop by more than 70 percent. As a result, most of the country’s 15 million corn farmers have gone from being poor -- but getting by -- to watching their children go hungry. Mexican President Felipe Calderon explains the food crisis in his country as a direct outcome of U.S. food policy.

The same story is repeated in nearly every country where the food crisis is raging. Millions of rural families from Colombia to Cameroon have been forced to go from growing their own food to buying imported staple items, putting them at the mercy of global markets. In the past year, the costs of basics like corn, rice, and wheat has doubled and tripled. Farming families whose livelihoods were destroyed by U.S. agribusiness can no longer afford to buy food from these same companies. That injustice -- not any absolute “food shortage” -- is at the heart of today’s crisis.

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The Anti-Family Planning Movement: Coming to a Bedroom Nearest You

By Cristina Page

Like lawn ornaments in summer, protesters outside the local abortion clinic are fixtures in many places in the United States today.

Their presence and message have long been so predictable that, without looking or listening, people believe they understand the point. And so you might not notice that the protest taking place outside your local clinic today has fundamentally changed.

It is no longer about abortion. June 7 is the anniversary of Griswold v Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that granted married people the right to use contraception. To mark the day, anti-abortion groups are taking to their normal posts outside clinic entrances not to convince Americans to oppose abortion but rather to stop using contraception.

The national campaign is called "Protest the Pill Day 08'" and it is organized by several leading anti-choice groups including the American Life League and Pharmacists for Life. The groups’ website is full of unscientific, medically inaccurate information.

Anti-contraception activism has been working its way up the priority list of the anti-choice movement in the United States in recent years and today's campaign is one of the most organized and visible displays of this broadening agenda.

Currently, there is not one pro-life organization in the U.S. that supports contraception. In fact, the multi-pronged attack against the right to use contraception is led entirely by anti-abortion groups. Their initiatives (to name just a few) include opposing health insurance of contraception, urging pharmacists to deny women's birth control prescriptions, and attempting (with no scientific rationale) to reclassify the birth control pill, and all other hormonal forms of contraception, as abortion methods with the goal of banning them. This represents an important and frightening shift in focus by the anti-abortion movement.

Despite the fact that contraception is the only proven way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and reduce abortion rates, anti-choice groups would forgo these benefits, and even risk dramatically increasing abortion rates, in favor of a larger, more insidious goal: changing Americans' sex lives.

As the American Life League, the nation's largest pro-life educational organization, explains in its materials, "The American Life League denies the moral acceptability of artificial birth control and encourages each individual to trust in God, to surrender to His will, and to be predisposed to welcoming children." The American Life League prefers to put the choices in the hands of God, a choice they want to impose on everyone. "It must be clear that couples understand that when they ask God to not send them another child just now they are also saying, ‘If it is Your will to send us another child at this time, we praise You for Your divine providence,’” the group says.

Buoyed by their success in rolling back abortion rights, these groups seek nothing less than a complete American lifestyle makeover: sex can't ever exclude the possibility of procreation. But instead of convincing Americans to see things their way, groups like the American Life League have decided the more expeditious path is to attack the right to use contraception.

The right to use contraception is relatively new: the Griswold decision was rendered in 1965 and Supreme Court granted single people the right to use contraception as recent as 1972. But the changes these decisions set in motion now form a list of what Americans won't live without. Today, 95 percent of people have sex before marrying. Indeed, studies show that most Americans in a relationship are having sex, on average, once a week. The typical American female is fertile for approximately 30 years of her life. For about 23 of those years she is trying not to get pregnant. Much of our lifestyle, and the architecture of our most intimate relationships, is rooted in family planning. And we should be grateful for this.

In the 1950s, when there was no sex education, no birth control, no legal abortion (the exact legislative agenda of today's pro-life movement!) teen birth rates soared and have not been equaled since. Today, the rate of teen motherhood, not coincidentally, has been reduced by more than half.

The right to plan your family to the size you want and can support is a cherished, and frequently exercised, American family value. So, the next time you pass by the protest outside your local clinic listen carefully: their real target is your way of life.


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Page is the author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex and spokesperson for BirthControlWatch.org
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Copyright (C) 2008 by the American Forum. 6/08

Immigration Raids Lead U.S. to a Moral, Legal Crisis

By Raquel Aldana

Postville, Iowa has been turned into a ghost town. Nearly a third of its residents, mostly undocumented workers from Guatemala and Mexico, sit in jail convicted of identity crimes or awaiting deportation. Hundreds more hide in fear. Their children, too scared to go to school, have left the town’s classrooms nearly empty. For this, Postville should thank their local police, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), and a failed immigration policy.

Aided by local law enforcement, ICE arrested 389 workers during the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history at the Postville meatpacking plant, the area’s major employer. In an unprecedented move, ICE criminally charged 302 of these workers with aggravated ID theft and/or using false social security numbers. Within days, ICE resolved their fate: 297 men and women pled guilty and were sentenced to prison and subsequent deportation. Only a few await criminal trials or immigration hearings.

Postville is one of the latest in a series of immigration raids that have intensified in the past three years. These raids are leading our nation to a moral, legal and humanitarian crisis.

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Unfinished Business on Women's Issues

By Polly Williams



With the General Assembly about to start its “short session” – it is important to remind the legislature of its unfinished business on issues of women’s equality.

North Carolina Women United’s recently released report card on the 2007 legislature is a good assessment of what was accomplished in 2007 – and a blueprint for what needs to happen on some issues in the upcoming session.

While the report focuses on women, the truth is that many of these measures benefit men as well. What is good for women and families also benefits everybody.

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Playing Political Games In Doctors’ Offices

By Kellie Freeman Rohrbaugh

Over 700,000 Missourians don’t have access to adequate health care coverage. The fact that women experience this disparity more intensely than men, is further compounded if they live in rural Missouri. Politicians in Jefferson City just don’t understand the struggles of women and families living in “outstate Missouri.”

In order to access health care, rural Missouri women make an appointment, often well in advance, make sure they have time off work and childcare, and then fill the gas tank for the long ride into the doctor’s office. The last thing anyone wants to deal with is more politicians and lawyers telling them how and when to talk to their doctor.

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Many Women Unaware of Access to Emergency Contraception

By Alison Mondi

Since emergency contraception was approved by the FDA in 1998, Washington’s pharmacists and lawmakers have led the nation in ensuring that women have access to this safe and effective form of birth control. Yet many women are still unaware of the many resources and programs our state provides to ensure that they can access Plan B.

The FDA approved Plan B for over-the-counter sales to women over the age of 18 in 2006. However few women are aware that Washington passed a law in 1998 allowing pharmacists to dispense emergency contraception without a doctor's prescription. This program -- known as Pharmacy Access -- allows all women, regardless of age, to obtain Plan B without a prescription at participating pharmacies and goes a long way toward removing the age-barrier to over-the-counter Plan B access.

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Fair Wage Engenders Basic Human Dignity

By C. Melissa Snarr, Ph.D.

The United States first introduced minimum-wage legislation in the midst of the Great Depression. Recognizing the failures of unregulated markets, the nation chose to draw a moral line below which no market economy could fall; desperate people should not be required to work at desperation wages.

Citizen-emboldened politicians understood taking advantage of people's economic vulnerability was morally unconscionable, even amid economic turmoil.

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Juan’s Story: Undocumented But Not Un-American

By Sally Kohn

The first thing I noticed about Juan when I met him is his presence. For a young man, just graduated from high school --- that period when most of us were shy and awkward at best --- Juan is confident and vocal, the kind of person with clear potential to be a leader in whatever field he might choose.

The second thing you notice about Juan is the sadness in his eyes. His country, the only home he has ever known, decided his potential is irrelevant --- that no amount of talent and passion and vision and drive could ever overcome the fact that he and his family once crossed our nation’s borders without permission. It’s as though Juan the person doesn’t exist without Juan the paperwork. In our country, he’s treated as a number --- one to be reduced or feared.

Read more and watch a video of Juan telling his story...

Who Really Pays for Taxes in North Carolina

By Meg Gray Wiehe

Two workers arrive at the office at 8 am. By 8:34, one of the workers has earned enough money to pay his share of state and local taxes for the day. The other worker must keep going for another 17 minutes to earn enough to pay his share. The difference between these two workers is their income, but not in the way you make think.

In North Carolina today, it is the state’s poorest taxpayers who pay the highest share of their incomes in state and local taxes and the wealthiest taxpayers who pay the least.

State and local taxes pay for many of the things that keep North Carolinians safe and enhance their quality of life. These include physical structures like roads, jails, and school buildings, and services like health care, education, and restaurant inspections.

Because these investments benefit everyone, each North Carolinian should contribute an appropriate share of his or her income to pay for them. It should be a common goal that all North Carolinians pay similar shares of their incomes in state and local taxes. A good case can also be made that wealthier taxpayers should contribute a greater share of their incomes.

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Mind the Pay Gap

By Mary Beth Maxwell

Recent headlines reveal what many of us already know -- Americans are witnessing the highest inflation rates seen in over 20 years. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food prices climbed nearly five percent in 2007, and as housing and energy costs skyrocket out of control, working families are getting squeezed. In these difficult times, we should also be reminded that women face even greater financial struggles when weathering this economic storm.

With the observance of Equal Pay Day on April 24, we mark how far into each year a woman must work to earn as much as a man did in the previous year. Recent wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not give cause for celebration. In 2007, women earned only 80 cents for every dollar a man earned. This pay gap was substantially greater for minorities, with African-American women making only 70 cents and Hispanic women making only 62 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. While women are more reluctant to negotiate salaries and are often employed in underpaid professions, one grim reality remains -- gender-based discrimination still inherent in our society has largely caused the pay gap that persists today.

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Recruiting for Women's Editorial Forum 2008 Leadership Class

Hello Real Women, Real Voices readers!

Read below to find out what we have been up to here at the national office and throughout the country. We have grown our organization and turned out an amazing number of op-eds. The topics of the pieces we sent out in 2007 varied from education, to the environment, to state tax reform. We have hired new staff and begun several new programs that have expanded the number and constituencies of people who are all working to put progressive issues into the forefront of the media.

New topics are always arising and we plan on continuing to work with media all over the country and cover even more issues in the upcoming year. Our chief focus for the coming weeks will be setting up an amazing National Women's Editorial Forum Training Institute for our 2008 class. If you have an recommendations for applicants, send them our way!

Read below to hear about NWEF's past successes training a new generation of women leaders in the media:

Major Accomplishments in 2007

• American Forum published over 150 Op-eds, over 40 of them in newspapers with over 100,000 readers including the L.A. Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• Forum articles reached, on average, more than 13.6 million households via print media and 24.9 million listeners and viewers via radio and television broadcast.
• Usage of Forum articles has continued to grow with more than 70% of media outlets using many of the articles distributed by the Forum.
• American Forum increased its creation and use of MP3 files which enabled the Forum to provide short guest editorials in the authors own voice to media outlets interested in encouraging citizens to speak up and out about issues of the day.
• The National Women’s Editorial Forum Leadership Institute media trainings were held in June, September and December with over 100 participants
• Executive Director Denice Zeck held op-ed trainings for organizations nationwide, reaching over 200 participants
• The National Women’s Editorial Forum launched the blog Real Women, Real Voices, which provided exclusive coverage of issues such as the Alabama anti-choice protests, the ratio of females chosen to present questions at the YouTube presidential debate and the role of women and minorities in Imus’s return to radio.
• American Forum was rewarded its own Channel on YouTube – only aprroved organizations were given nonprofit channels.
  
  

First Class of Leadership Training Institute Graduates, June 2007

What participants had to say about our first media training:

“I enjoyed the purpose behind this training. It was a very worthwhile experience to hear and see so many women being so engaged, to their issues, and their willingness to share with others. The presentations were very informative, each person knew her subject and presented in a way that was clear, not boring, and relevant.”

“This conference is one of the best I have attended for sometime. The trainers were wonderful, accessible, and open to share information…Thank you for the experience! I’ll treasure it for the rest of my life!”

“The most significant thing I gained was the introduction to a wonderful think tank of women with a great deal of knowledge and the willingness to share. It will provide me with everlasting resources that will empower me and my community. I liked the diversity!”

NWEF Training Participants listen to talks from the producers of Face the Nation and the Charlie Rose Show

NWEF participants and Advisory Panel members speak with White House Press Corp Dean, Helen Thomas

Join us for more incredible opportunities for our 2008 Institute.

Collaborative Mental Health Policy is Best Option For Alabama

By Amy Hinton

For many years, mental health advocates have complained that mental health policy is made in a vacuum. The tendency is to treat mental health as if it were an island, separate and distinct from any of the other legitimate functions of government. It is not.

Several state agencies, including the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Youth Services (DYS), recently participated in the first phase of a multi-year collaborative strategic planning grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. It gave Alabama the opportunity to explore ways to reduce the number of adults and juveniles with mental health and/or substance abuse disorders that come into contact with law enforcement and the state criminal and juvenile justice systems. The goal is to not only reduce the numbers, but also to improve early identification efforts that would appropriately route persons with mental illness into the correct social service delivery system.

Many state agencies are being forced to deal with mental health issues in much the same way as an entertainer tries to keep multiple plates spinning on sticks during a vaudeville show. This is neither an effective nor efficient use of Alabama’s limited policy and planning resources. The concept of collaborative policymaking regarding mental health issues is relatively new and unfamiliar to most state agency leaders who may feel the issue has little relevance to their particular service area. Nothing could be further from reality. Mental health is an important policy issue that touches every major service area in state government.

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How the Christian Right Goes Wrong

By Cristina Page

New research reveals that female students in programs that promote abstinence exclusively are more likely to get pregnant than those in programs that teach about the full range of contraceptives as well as abstinence. The news, published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, is just the latest proof that the $1.5 billion dollar “just say no to sex” experiment on our teens has failed. And while Christian conservatives defend their approach even in the face of this latest devastating news, it’s time to ask them one simple question: Shouldn’t the results matter?

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Gas Gouging and Green Jackets

By Martha Burk

Paid at the pump lately? Who hasn’t, and we’re paying more with each tank. Gas is up a quarter a gallon in the last two weeks alone, but don’t expect big oil to feel your pain. The moguls at ExxonMobil, the fattest of the petroleum cartel cats, will squander several millions of your fuel dollars sponsoring the Masters golf tournament and entertaining their buddies during the April 8 to 12 festivities.

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PSA: Uncle Sam Plays Cupid

Public Service Announcement distributed by American Forum, denouncing marriage promotion as an approach to fight poverty.

PSA: Compassionate Care for Rape Victims

Public Service Announcement distributed by American Forum that declares emergency contraception should be properly explained and available to rape victims.

PSA: Pharmacists and Patient's Rights

Public Service Announcement distributed by American Forum on the need to support two proposed Board of Pharmacy rules that together will protect patient access to prescriptions.

PSA: Legislature Attacks Reproductive Rights Again

Public Service Announcement distributed by American Forum on extreme views on abortion that certain Virginia legislators possess.

PSA: Doctors, Legislators and the Courts

Public Service Announcement distributed by American Forum on the federal abortion ban decision recently upheld by the Supreme Court.

PSA: Pharmacists and Morality

Public Service Announcement, distributed by American Forum on how women in Washington state are feeling the repercussions of Bush's federally appointed judges by allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense Plan B medications.

PSA: Accurate Sex Education

Public Service Announcement, distributed by American Forum, on the importance of medically accurate sex education curricula used throughout school districts in North Carolina.

PSA: Pharmaceuticals Change, Our Mission Shouldn't

Public Service Announcement, distributed by American Forum, on the importance of pharmacists doing what's best for patients based on medical and not personal views.

PSA: Contraception and Health Insurance

Public Service Announcement, distributed by American Forum that conveys the legacy of the federal judiciary.

PSA: Can You Hear Us Now?

Public Service Announcement on Verizon's rejection of services to NARAL Pro-Choice America based on their deeming the organization's mission "too controversial."

Public Service Anncmt: Truly Value Motherhood

A Public Service Announcement by Martha Burk, distributed by American Forum, chronicling various social policies from inadequate maternity leave to equal pay.

Public Service Anncmt: The Real Estate of Women's Health

This Public Service Announcement, distributed by NWEF, focuses on the battle over real estate for women's reproductive health centers.

Overweight Epidemic Requires Community Solutions

By Laurie Iscaro

Our hurried lifestyles lead us toward sedentary recreation. Our children “play” with the computer, I-Pods and Gameboys, and our teens spend many idle hours on MySpace and Facebook. Our schools rarely provide recess or physical education any more, and our kids are rushed through 20-minute lunches in a cafeteria where chicken fingers, pizza and ice cream are more common than a salad bar. Once home, kids who are alone without supervision often opt for sugary or salty treats and TV instead of outdoor play and a nutritious snack.

It’s little wonder we’re having issues with being overweight and obese. Yet schools alone cannot meet the needs of the healthy child for physical, artistic, social and emotional expression.

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Women Make History Today on the New York Times Op-Ed Pages

As part of National Women's Editorial Forum's project to monitor Op-Ed pages of newspapers across the country, I have been reading the opinion section the New York Times for several months and have been very discouraged by the lack of women authors. The names of women rarely appear as bylines, and when they do, there is usually only one, most often one of the Times’ two female staff columnists. So, imagine how ecstatic I was to see that all of the four op-eds posted in today’s New York Times featured women authors. Then I discovered the topic to which the entire page was devoted: the Elliot Spitzer sex scandal.

One author is a woman who sympathizes with Spitzer’s wife, Silda, having gone through a similar predicament herself. The second author wrote with a male author to explore the myth of the victimless crime, discussing the consequences of the sex-for-hire industry and publicity faced by the prostitutes themselves. The third author is a former sex worker, and the fourth author is a syndicated columnist uses Elliot Spitzer’s poor choices as evidence as to why America should elect a woman president, as if that would eliminate infidelity among male politicians.

Not to discredit the voices of these women, but I find it interesting that the only time I’ve ever seen women dominate the commentary section in the nation’s paper of record is when the topic is sex, prostitution, and dishonorable conduct by a married male politician.

This is why it is so critical to monitor women in the media. Tracking the behaviors of local, state, and national publications allows us make valid plausible arguments in defense of the absence of women in the commentary continuum. You can help us by letting us know what’s on the op-ed page of your local newspaper. It’s easy to do through our Web-based form.

Sign up for Women’s Monitor today!

--Sui Lang Panoke

Join The Women’s Monitor Project

Following on the heels of the discussion of The Washington Post’s editorial judgment in selecting guest columns, this is a good time to reintroduce the National Women’s Editorial Forum’s “Women’s Monitor” project. We are currently looking at Opinion pages across the country to see how many feature women’s voices and how often.

We need your help to know who’s there and who’s not -- so we can begin to make change, one paper at a time. We’re looking for volunteers who don’t mind reading their own daily newspaper (or any one accessible on the web) and providing a report of the day of how many of the opinion columns (not unsigned editorials) are written by women.

For example, a sample report from the Los Angeles Times on March 7, 2008 shows the paper printed five columns, all by men. We’re looking for readers across the country to track their paper (or papers) and submit similar daily reports. (Looking at papers online is fine). The more reports, and the more consistent the data, the more we can take the numbers to the papers and demand they provide a forum for women’s voices. Women shouldn’t be regulated to the token voices, representing only one-fourth or less of the paper’s columnists….or less. As Katha Pollitt recently pointed out at the Washington Post the “current roster of op-ed columnists: 16 men, two women.”

That’s unacceptable and it’s time to get the data to show the editors they are excluding women’s voices from the debate.

Click here to apply for a password to the Monitor and afterwards you’ll be able to submit a report of your paper’s Opinion page breakdown.

If anyone has questions feel free to email us at nwef (at) mediaforum dot org.

We’re looking forward to hearing about how well papers across the country represent (or don’t) women’s voices.

---Rachel Joy Larris

Farm Bill Reforms Must Be Permanently Funded

By Kathryn Sherlock

It's stunning that in a country with such abundant resources, know-how and advanced technology, we can’t seem to figure out how to end hunger.

Second Harvest reported in 2006 that 35.5 million people, 12.6 million of whom were children, experienced food insecurity (the government’s more palatable term for people who are hungry). Households with children reported food insecurity at almost double the rate of households without children. New Mexico ranked second in the nation behind Mississippi in food insecurity between 2004 and 2006.

Congress has an opportunity to do something significant toward ending hunger as they make their final decisions on the Farm Bill. What gets included (or not) will set U.S. agricultural policy for the next five years or more. This impacts everyone in New Mexico.

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Where Are the Women?

After the fracas over the characterization of women in the Sunday opinion section of an important newspaper, a prominent feminist calls for a drastic increase in women editors and columnists.

On Sunday, the Washington Post offered, on the front page of its opinion section, two featured essays under a shared headline, “Women vs. Women.” One of those essays was penned by Charlotte Allen, a well-known opponent of feminism, who proclaimed that women were essentially inferior to men in nearly all categories she deemed meaningful, which include driving skills, spatial relations and math (and did not include verbal skills or multitasking).

The torrent of anger that answered the Post’s publication of Allen’s piece was predictable, and perhaps even welcomed by a Web site looking to up its page views. Into this fray stepped Katha Pollitt, the resident feminist columnist at The Nation, who, in her rebuttal today on the Post’s Web site, asked the question we have been begging for some time: If women were more equitably represented on the opinion page editorial staffs of major papers, and as columnists within those pages, would a piece like the Allen essay ever had seen the light of day. From Pollitt’s rebuttal:

Here's a thought. Maybe there's another thing women can do besides fluff up their husbands' pillows: Fill more important jobs at The Washington Post. We should be half the assigning editors, half the writers, and half the regular columnists too (current roster of op-ed columnists: 16 men, two women). We've got those superior verbal skills, remember? Drastically increasing the presence of women isn't a foolproof recipe for gender fairness -- Allen is far from alone in her dislike of her sex -- but I have to believe a gender-balanced paper would reflect a broader view of women than The Post does at present.

In addition, Laura Rozen offers this savvy take on her blog, War and Piece, and Ann Friedman puts forth an excellent send-up at Feministing.

From Prison to Work and Not Back Again

By Rep. Helen Miller and Roger L. Baysden

There are over 2 million people behind bars in America and the numbers continue to grow. That’s more than the entire populations of Vermont, North Dakota and Alaska combined.

While major strides have been made in our country to better understand the needs of offenders, the United States still remains the single largest warehouser of inmates in the world. Far too little discussion is occurring on how to best address the needs of the 1.8 million offenders that will be released from our penal system and return to the communities from which they have come.

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Moving Women From Benchwarmers to Captains

By Linda Tarr-Whelan

Sometimes progress is measured by half-court movements. When I was in school, girls played basketball by different rules than the boys. We played on a half-court and could only dribble three times before passing the ball. Girls were regarded as too fragile to run the distance. Now, tell that to the women in the WNBA.

It's good to measure positive change, like women’s full court professional basketball. Recognizing these changes is what we celebrate in March as Women's History Month. But I'm done with simply celebrating where we've been. Instead, it's time to look at March as more a celebration of our future: let’s call it “Women Making History Month.”

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When Uncle Sam Plays Cupid

By Jean Hardisty

Romance and marriage proposals are in the air on Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, cupid isn’t the only matchmaker hard at work this season. An increasing number of low-income women find themselves pushed to the altar -- not by their relations or suitors, but by the federal government.

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Abstinence-Only Defies Voters’ Priorities

By Dr. Charles Jaynes and Margery Engel Loeb
A year ago, Governor Rick Perry showed great leadership when he issued an executive order requiring the state's sixth grade girls to get the HPV vaccine, to prevent cervical cancer. It was a bold move for a state that is conflicted about how best to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

But, if Gov. Perry truly wants to stop the spread of STDs, he will change the state's policy that allows teaching abstinence-only sex education. Recent studies have revealed that an abstinence-only plan won't stop the spread of STDs or decrease the rates of teen pregnancy.

Texas teenagers lead the nation in birth rates, and, as new figures from the National Center for Health Statistics show, after 14 years of steady decline, teen pregnancy rates went up 3 percent across the country in 2006. To many public health officials and educators, the cause for the increases in pregnancy was apparent: since 1996 the only federal funding available to states for sex education is for "abstinence-only" curricula.

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Listen to an Audio Version of this Commentary below:

Learning Starts At Birth

By June St. Clair Atkinson and Stephanie Fanjul

To truly prevent the dropouts of tomorrow, our work begins at the very start: the day a child is born. Why? Because children are born learning, and if we wait until third or first grade or even kindergarten to pay attention to what they've missed, it's already late in the game.

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What’s the Next Step for Health Care

By Lydia Pendley

There is a small window of opportunity for New Mexico to take the next important step toward real health care reform that will lead to a rational, affordable system of health coverage and health care for all people living in the state.

There is still time in the 2008 legislative session for action, if our legislators have the political will to create the infrastructure that will lead to a sound, evidence-based plan for health care for all by the longer 2009 legislative session.

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Stop Stalkers Before They Become Headlines

By Marianne Hill

She could have been my daughter, or my neighbor’s daughter. Carnesha Nelson was a bright, attractive 19-year-old college student who unfortunately became the obsession of a young man who worked on her campus. He hounded her and wouldn't take no for an answer. The night he assaulted her, she ran screaming from him, pounding on the doors of neighboring apartments. Residents called the police, but did not let her in. He caught and killed her.

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Listen to an Audio version of Marianne's commentary and a short interview on Women & Stalking Prevention.

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Counting Commentaries On Roe V Wade

Today’s the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision of Roe V. Wade. For me, it’s an anniversary that is both worth celebrating and also a good time to take an annual stock of our pro-choice rights.

Since newspapers love anniversaries I wanted to see what is running in the country’s op-eds and editorials today about Roe V. Wade, and reproductive rights in general. I’m only looking at op-eds and editorials (not news articles and not items like newspaper blogs). And I’m only looking at January 22. I’ll be updating the list consistently throughout the day, the plan is to examine at least two major papers in every state, but also to survey some smaller papers.,

So far here is what I’ve found: Out of 41 papers surveyed (so far) only 7 ran anything about Roe’s anniversary. Here is the breakdown so far.

Washington Post
One column “Political Orphans In 2008; Is There Space for Our Pro-Life Ethic?” by a Catholic couple, Liz McCloskey and Peter Leibold, who bemoan the fact that the Democratic party -- which they feel is a better fit for their values than the Republican party -- is dismissive and unwelcoming to their anti-choice views.

LA Times
One column “Abortion's battle of messages; It's not 1973. Pro-choice forces must adjust to regain the moral high ground” by Frances Kissling, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is the former president of Catholics for a Free Choice and Kate Michelman is the former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the author of "Protecting the Right to Choose."

A pro-choice editorial “Roe, 35 years later; The landmark abortion ruling is established law. Overturning it would cause severe upheaval.”

Denver Post
One column “Abortion Debate Is Changing” by a regular Denver Post columnist, David Harsanyi. It’s emphasis that abortions should be rare and suggests that the morning after pill be a "palatable compromise to later-term abortions."

Philadelphia Inquirer
Two columns (one pro-choice, one anti-choice) The anti-choice column, “Violating Rights of Unborn” is by Marybeth T. Hagan, the author of "Abortion: A Mother's Plea for Maternity and the Unborn."

The pro-choice column, “Let's Support A Set of Choices” is by Melissa Weiler Gerber is executive director of Women's Way, and Ann Fessler is author of The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade.

Chicago Sun-Times
One editorial “After 35 years, foes erode 'Roe'”

Tallahassee Democrat
One pro-choice column, “Rather than attacking abortion rights, help prevent the need,” by Staci Fox, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of North Central Florida.

Akron Beacon Journal
One column “A Growing Aversion To Abortion” by a Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman. Entirely anti-choice.

Papers without any editorials or op-ed columns on Roe’s Anniversary
Albuquerque Journal
Arizona Daily Star
Arizona Republic
Atlanta Constitution Journal
Austin American Statesman
Baltimore Sun
Boston Globe
Boulder Daily Camera
Chicago Tribune
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Dallas Morning News
Houston Chronicle
Jackson Clarion Ledger
Kansas City Star
Las Vegas Review Journal
Lincoln Journal Star
Louisville Courier-Journal
Madison Capital Times
Miami Herald
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Nashville Tennessean
New York Times
Omaha World Herald
Pittsburgh Review Tribune
Raleigh News & Observer
Reno Gazette-Journal
Salt Lake Tribune
San Francisco Chronicle
San Jose Mercury News
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Times
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
St. Petersburg Times

Stay tuned for more updates…
-- Rachel Joy Larris