Abortion and Medicaid

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/rick-scott-accepts-reality/

This week’s topic is a very sensitive one. It can be a personal and it can be an international issue. Abortion hasn’t been an issue in my family, in that, no one that I know of, has gone through that procedure. But I do know from close friends that abortion is not the easiest thing to go through. It’s a tough decision to make on a woman’s body and on the life that couldn’t been brought into this world. But, I think, abortion should be a choice for the woman, in the situation, to make, not the government. The government shouldn’t write laws that prohibit the choice to have abortions or not. 

Women should have the choice to have birth control, have abortion, and have all the rights to do whatever to their bodies. In the article by David Firestone, “conservatives ridiculed Gov. Rick Scott of Florida as a traitor to their cause after he announced yesterday that he would expand the state’s Medicaid program with money from President Obama’s health care reform system” (Firestone). Gov. Rick Scott is just accepting reality before anyone else. It is believed that all the holdout states will knuckle under and do exactly the same thing. In the article, Firestone says that if Florida invested a small amount of their own money to cover the poor, state get a huge increase in federal Medicaid funds. For example, “by spending $3 billion over the next decade on Medicaid, Mr. Scott’s state will receive $26 billion” (Firestone). The benefits of this small investment would be huge. There would be a significant increase in the number of insured people, rising by as much as 16 million if all states go along. 

Personally, women and children need to have more options and more resources. We women need to stand up and fight for our rights. We have the right to have an abortion if we need to, or if we want to. There are numerous reasons why women should have the right to have abortions. I’m not going to list them all out, but there are a lot. And in some states, that do allow abortions, the state doesn’t even cover the procedures with funding. It’s a procedure, right? So, why shouldn’t it be covered? It really does sicken me how much our country has developed over the religious reasons, not the moral and just reasons of when to do something, or do anything! Pro-life or pro-choice, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is the choice to have a choice.

Reproductive rights

The article on the Huffington Post website gives a more recent look on the laws and practices regarding reproductive rights in the United States. When most of the United States is focused on the dichotomy of pro-choice and pro-life, I think it is positive to see journalists in the media bringing attention to all aspects of reproductive rights to women. The author even alludes to the fact that women of minority have a harder time then most when she mentions forced sterilization. Nancy Northrup urges that reproductive rights can’t be looked at solely as abortion, which is what politics are doing. This article also speaks about recent victories in attaining reproductive justice. Northup brings attention to the need of politics to be less about which side is winning the abortion war and more about the full set of problems women face. She makes a good point that women in such places like Mississippi and Texas, who have had more stringent laws about reproduction, do not have equal access to their fellow women in other states. This fact is helping to further the divide between women, when we should be working together to achieve our goals. Northup is looking at the issue through a reproductive rights and reproductive health lens. She speaks to the policies that have been made as well as to the programs and facilities needed for women to have full rights to reproduction. All week we’ve been talking about these terrible laws and provisions that have been made by states that diminish women’s rights. Northup ends her article with some hope by speaking to the small but positive strides we’ve been making. She talks about the Affordable Care act that will give women coverage on reproductive needs. She also speaks of a lift on abortion restrictions for military women in cases of incest or rape. While I believe it is very important to learn about all the injustices happening against women with regard to reproductive rights, it can at times be overwhelmingly dismal as a woman. I like this article because it gives women hope, which is vital in any fight for justice. If there was no hope, why would we even want to keep trying?



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-northup/fight-womens-productive-rights_b_2491011.html

Mr. Cuomo's new agenda on women's rights

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/opinion/strengthening-reproductive-rights-in-new-york.html

Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to re-establish women’s equality for abortion rights by new agenda. New York’s abortion law bans the procedure after 24 weeks of pregnancy unless the woman’s life is at risk. But an exception to protect a woman’s health is required by federal law. Mr. Cuomo is trying to bring New York into line with them. Actually, some New York doctors fear prosecution and, as a result, some women are forced to leave the state to get the care they need although federal law comes before the state’s law. As we learned in the articles this week, seven other states have already passed similar protections. In contrast, lawmakers in Mississippi, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming have made state laws so restrictive. Some states could soon have no abortion services at all. I believe that Reproductive Justice exists when all people have the social, political and economic power and resources to make healthy decisions about our gender, bodies, sexuality and families for ourselves and our communities. Therefore, I suppose that his positive review toward women’s rights would help women in New York have choices related to reproductive rights.

Finally, Mr. Cuomo also aims to provide new protections for pregnant workers and victims of domestic violence as well as the abortion law. Job, housing and salary discrimination against women with children would be banned by his agenda on women’s rights. According to AAUW (2012), new research has documented that employers are less likely to hire mothers compared with childless women, and when employers do make an offer to a mother, they offer them lower salaries than they do other women. Fathers, in contrast, do not suffer a penalty compared with other men. This is called “the Motherhood Penalty.” So, as Mr. Cuomo says, the protections for those women are needed because I think that they have to be supported by a society and a company under the law.

Increasing birth rates caused by cuts in funding for family planning services

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/us/likely-increase-in-births-has-some-lawmakers-revisiting-cuts.html?_r=0

“Likely Increase In Births Has Some Lawmakers Revisiting Cuts”

Lawmakers passed a two-year budget in 2011 that moved $73 million from family planning services to other programs, which they are now paying the price for. It is causing birth rates to increase and in the long-run, costing them more in health care. This law would only benefit people that don’t believe in birth control or wealthy people that can afford alternative forms of contraception. This is especially harmful to people in low-income areas and people of color that have a harder time accessing birth control and often can’t afford to health insurance. The article says, “Poor women will deliver an estimated 23,760 more babies than they would have, as a result of their reduced access to state-subsidized birth control.” That statistic speaks volumes about how much influence this new law is already having on already increasing birth rates. This will increase health care costs, population rates and children born into unfit families. The author of the article, Emily Ramshaw, says, “The additional cost to taxpayers is expected to be as much as $273 million — $103 million to $108 million to the state’s general revenue budget alone — and the bulk of it is the cost of caring for those infants under Medicaid.” Personally, I know a lot of girls that have utilized plan parenthood and depended on the free contraception they offer to protect them. Without plan parenthood and the option of free contraception, we will have an increase in unprotected sex and unplanned pregnancies. The government thought they would benefit from the new law but in reality, no one really benefitted from the decrease in funding towards family planning services. In fact, most people lose from these new laws and it will lead to more negative than positive outcomes. 

“Virginia’s History of Forced Sterilization”

Source: http://www.wric.com/story/21099581/8news-investigates

From 1924 to 1979, the Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act forced approximately 8,000 people into being sterilized through procedures like vasectomies and tubal ligation because they were deemed unfit to reproduce.  The most current effort to provide compensations for victims had failed after the Virginian delegates let the bill for compensation die on February 7th.

The concept of forced sterilization is derived from eugenics, the control of breeding to increase the occurrence of so-called desirable traits. Those deemed to have “undesirable” traits are discouraged to reproduce in order to decrease the likelihood of those traits being passed on.  People subject to sterilization are disproportionally racial minorities, people with physical and/or mental disabilities, and even people deemed unintelligent. 

Eugenics has a negative connotation because of the Nazi regime.  However, eugenics had been a U.S. movement in the 1920s, years before Nazi Germany. Approximately 60,000 people in the U.S. were sterilized without their consent before the practice became illegal during the late 1970s.

This issue in Virginia demonstrates the disregard of reproductive justice in the U.S., both by the lack of coverage in national news and the refusal of compensation towards compulsory sterilization victims. However, the most troubling aspect of this issue is how this was an attempt at breeding people like animals and this attempt is being ignored in the news and politics.

Compulsory sterilization permanently stripped many people of their reproductive choice, leaving them unable to decide whether or not they would like to have children. Furthermore, forced sterilization is, among other things, a racist and ableist procedure. It especially targets people who do not fit the white, able-bodied mythical norm.

Forced sterilization is meant to wipe out “unfit” people from society.  But, like many other dark periods of U.S. history, compulsory sterilization has been downplayed or overlooked. As long as such issues are ignored, not everyone will have their reproductive rights acknowledged and respected. 

The Violence Against Heterosexual Women Act of 1994

Current Event: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/d/domestic_violence/index.html

The Violence Against Women Act was a bipartisan law passed in 1994. It protects women against domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking. It also supports many efforts to combat these crimes. The law had relapsed from 2011 and on. There has been a fierce battle over competing reauthorization of the bill. In April the bill was passed protecting transgender and lesbian women as well. The Republicans opposed this because they say that the bill already includes protection for all women. Republicans are upset that the bill will include protection for domestic violence with same sex couples. This month the Senate passed a bill 78-22 that is now forcing the House to act.

This is a huge issue. After all, we have already discovered that as minorities a lot depends on the government and what they say. The Republicans are trying to ignore the fact that there is oppression on transgender and lesbian women. This is something that needs to be addressed. It relates to our class because it is all about women, their rights, the injustice of it all, and the white middle aged men that we have to rely on to take care of our rights. It’s ridiculous.

This week in lecture we have been talking about violence against women. This act is put in place so that we can protect women against gendered violence. This type of violence is one that is produced from an imbalance in power between men and women and is very common. The problem is that most of the people who are making our laws are from a group that is denying the fact that there is an overabundant amount of violence towards women. In addition, they are part of the group that women are being protected against (men). This does not mean that all men are rapists but it does mean that at times they have a hard time seeing how important an issue is on the other side. I mean sexual assaults happen every 2 minutes and rapes about every 8 minutes. These are some serious statistics that our senators and representatives need to look at.

This is the ultimate in a system of oppression. They represent our country and they are saying that transgender and lesbian women are not good enough. Not only are they saying that  women do not need more protection but that lesbians and transgender peoples should not be included in this group. They are representatives of our country and they are saying that these groups are not important enough to be included in the bill. The new knowledge product is that it is time the government steps up and makes it happen. Abolish prejudices at the very top and then we won’t have these problems. It was hard enough getting the bill through for heterosexual women. God help us if we want to include transgender and lesbian women in there. It’s time there was some focus on these groups. Domestic violence can be huge in these groups and they need to be addressed. The whole thing just reaches a new level of oppression.

The whole thing just makes me incredibly sad. These politicians don’t see the need to include the minorities in the bill. It’s not like our government has to stand up for the majority anymore. After all, didn’t you hear? We’re all equal now. Equal my butt. This act needs to be passed with areas for all races, sexual orientations, and genders too. Although it is mostly women who are being abused, there are men who are being abused as well. People just laugh at them when they say a woman sexually harassed them or that their girlfriend hit them. It’s time we realize that we all deserve protection. No more and no less than others. How about a bill for that?

-Rachael Belcher

Oregon Divorce

Oregon is an equitable distribution state. They count a spouse as a homemaker as contribution to the acquiring of assets. This means that the court considers both spouses equally when dividing the property, even if the property is separately held. Custody can be given to either the father or mother depending on several variables. The court considers the conduct, marital status, income, social environment or life style of each. Alimony is determined by the duration of the marriage, the age and health of each spouse, the standard of living in the marriage and the earning capacity of each spouse (Meyer). Child support is also determined by many factors: number of nights the child spends with each parent, gross income, whether or not the parent is receiving spousal support, the child costs, the child's medical and insurance costs are all factors (Mactyre). This could affect single parent mothers negatively because even if they are making an equal or high enough income for the child support to be lower from the father, this means that they are spending a lot of time outside of the home and having a child at home means having to be home a lot, which would lesson the income or make it really hard on the mother without that extra support. 21.7 percent of children in Oregon are in poverty (Oregon) and poverty rates in female-headed households are 3 to 4 times as high as those for the general population (The Barriers for People in Poverty). In 31 percent of cases the fathers don't pay the child support calculated by the Child Support Agency (Nickson). If a father refuses to pay child support they could be refused to obtain a passport, their unemployment compensation would be intercepted, if applicable, their federal and sate income tax refunds would be offset, jail time could be enforced or ti can be taken out of their pay (Wolf).

Though our child support laws are a good start for now, more effort needs to be made in making sure that the father actually pays his support and that it's a fair amount. Since we know that domestic work, household maintenance, child care, and cooking makes up most of the work of a household, especially with children, and we know that women do most of that work, its important to take that into consideration of the amount of time they will have to go to a paid job outside of ALL that. Also since it isn't a two parent setting gender division of labor, the diving of chores between spouses based on their sex, isn't' even an option. So typically the single mother will have to do typical jobs done by the male spouse as well. And we know that because of the wage gap, the gap between average female and male earnings in the work place, gives women a disadvantage in the workplace, that women aren't going to be able to earn as much cash as a single father might be able to. Knowing these factors, from what we've learned in class and the readings this week, we know that women really need to be compensated for the time and work of taking care of a child, doing housework  AND keeping a job of their own. Sending in letters or meeting with important people within state government to talk over these issues would be a start to challenging the legal system of Oregon about these issues. However  it seems Oregon is pretty reasonable with its child support and divorce laws compared to other states.

http://www.partnershiptoendpoverty.org/research/barriers-of-poverty/
http://oregondivorceblog.com/wordpress/2007/05/how-is-child-support-calculated/
http://divorcesupport.about.com/od/statedivorcelaws/a/Oregon_Laws.htm
http://www.separateddads.co.uk/how-many-fathers-dont-pay-child-support.html
http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/bystate/stateprofile.aspx?state=OR
http://singleparents.about.com/od/legalissues/p/deadbeat.htm

Glass ceiling

Resource: http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/news/%E2%80%98glass-ceiling-still-exists%E2%80%99-women-workplace

Statistics shows that women income rose faster than men’s during the past decade. However, the “glass ceiling” still exists for women in the work place. In economics, glass ceiling means that the unseen barrier that keeps minorities and women from getting ahead, regardless of their qualifications or achievements.

Ms Williams, of the Women’s resource Centre, called on Government to establish a Fender Unit and to strengthen legislation to prevent discrimination against women. The 2010 Employment Survey indicated more females were in higher paying jobs compared to their male counterparts.  However while females are generally better off in terms of income, males continue to enjoy higher salaries in occupations grouped as senior officials, managerial and professional. As we learned in readings in last week, at every level of academic achievement, women’s median earnings are less than men’s median earnings, and in some cases, the gender pay gap is larger at higher levels of education. Claudette Fleming, executive director of Age Concern, responded to the report.

“It is important that we include ‘age’ as a basis for discrimination within the human rights legislation so that those seniors who need to can continue to work and earn an income past 65 years old,” Ms Fleming said.

 However, the statistics also show that working age people must prepare to finance their retirement as early and as much as they can. The appropriate balance is related to personal responsibility and government support. “We are hopeful that the Government will soon have CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) extended,” Ms Williams said. CEDAW is known as an international Bill of Rights for women. CEDAW is about eliminating discrimination against women and promoting equality. I agree that government should establish a Gender Unit to oversee policy formation, training and monitoring of policies to identify and correct gender deficiencies in every aspect of community life.

Women In Same Job Field As Men, Paid Less

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2012/10/25/Women-in-same-job-field-as-men-paid-less/UPI-38861351192351/

Women in this day and age are still earning substantially less than men. Before researching the topic of men and women in the workforce, I had little knowledge about sex discrimination that is still going on in our world today. I did not realize that men make about seven percent more than men. Recent college graduates were paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts. A group called the “American Association of University Women”, examined the gap between men and women who worked full time. The average age was a 23 year old with no children. Even if a woman were to graduate with the same degree as a man, they would still get paid sustainably less than a man.  These facts show that men still are being treated better. A woman has the responsibility of doing most household work, but they are still being paid less! Women are seen as caretakers. The occupations that follow under these categories are secretaries, teachers, counselors, ect. Men are drawn to more of the “manlier” occupations, which are engineering and science, and typically pay a lot more than the occupation of a teacher.  There has been a lot of debate when taking in account the wages of men and women. Some say it could be straight discrimination against women, but some may say that it is an issue of men being drawn to occupations that will pay more. Looking at the different gender roles and what is expected out a man or woman in our society make connect to the bigger picture at hand, the gender wage gap.  Enforcing laws against sex determination isn’t enough to stop the gender pay gap. We, as people living in the US, need to adopt policies and gender expectations that enable women and men to care for families in order to see an end to the gender pay gap.