Women & Healthcare

1. States are re-defining health care so that (elective) abortion is not part of it. Arizona and Tennessee have such a law--which limits the insurance sold on the state's Exchange. There are similar bills awaiting signing in Florida, Mississippi and Missouri. see
http://community.feministing.com/2010/05/health-care-bill-results-in-ab.html


2. The Catholic Church has excommunicated a nun who sat on an ethics committee which decided to save a mother's life over that of her 11 week fetus by aborting that fetus. (Note to Church: If the mother had died, so would that fetus. Allowing that woman to live, means she can have other babies in the future).
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/05/15/20100515phoenix-catholic-nun-abortion.html


Need I say more? Our reproductive health and life is under seige!

May 9th

Happy Mother's Day, and Happy 50th Anniversary to the birth control pill--which helped make motherhood a choice.

Finally!

Finally, after 60 years we English speakers/readers have the complete unabridged version of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex.
de Beauvoir set out to anaylze the concept of woman--coming to the conclusion that women are "othered" by society. This study in the making and maintaining of women's inequality was eye opening when it was abridged, the unabridged version (What is a 2 volume paperback version in French is a 700 + page book in English) should only solidify more her argument.


Unfortunately, sixty years after she wrote this foundational book, women are still othered. Our rights are traded away as if they were baseball cards when legislation is written. Women are still earning roughly a quarter of what men earn--and those earnings matter from quality of life to political support to retirement.

Hopefully the republication of this book will spur on this generation of young women as it did their mothers and grandmothers before them.

Granny D

Yesterday Granny D Haddock died at age 100. At age 90 she walked across America to educate us about Campaign Finance Reform.

She is inspirational--she gave a wonderful, funny (she said she had become the epitome of the little old lady in tennis shoes) insightful talk at Marist a few years ago. She said that her involvement in politics (she also ran unsuccessfully for Senate) was what any citizen could and should do--if they believed in our democracy.


Here is the website for a video about her: http://www.grannyd.com/

Here is the NH paper article on her death:
http://www.wmur.com/news/22792574/detail.html

A women's history event

Wednesday March 3rd 7 p.m. in the Henry Hudson Room Fontaine Hall Marist College

Changing Society: [Black]Women, Race and the Law

Professor Gloria Browne-Marshall will speak about Black women catalysts for change who challenged the criminal justice system from the Colonial period to the Civil Rights era.

Professor Browne-Marshall is the author of Race, Law, and American Society: 1607-Present
(Routledge, 2007). She teaches at CUNY-John Jay in the Department of Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration forcusing on Constitutional Law and Racial Justice/Civil Rights Law, International Human Rights Law (African and Minority Rights), Child Advocacy (in the area of Statutory Rape, Education, HIV/AIDS)
.

This talk is sponsored by Women's Studies, History, Political Science and the African Diaspora programs as part of Women's History and Black History months.

Light snack will be served.

Thank you.

There's a lot of DV going around

Domestic violence (aka wife or woman battery)...now the mayor of White Plains, Adam Bradley, has been arrested charged with slamming his wife's fingers in the door, on purpose. [When Bradley served as Assemblyman in Albany he was sponsing the no fault divorce bill. No Comment necessary.] Domestic violence can happen in any home, in any relationship.

During times of stress and economic hardship, domestic abuse increases. We need to find an acceptable outlet for frustrations, and beating their women is NOT acceptable.
We need to teach our young men (and women) to relieve their frustrations by shooting hoops, or going out for a run. Our young (and old) need to learn to settle differences not with fists and weapons, but with (measured) words.

Governor Paterson: One Term Only?

As of 14 minutes ago (its 10:55a.m.) various news media have been announcing that Governor Paterson is withdrawing his name from the gubernatorial race....

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wbfo/news.newsmain/article/1/0/1617202/WBFO.News/Governor.Paterson.expected.to.end.re-election.bid