I have always loved to vote. There is something deeply satisfying about walking into that booth (or sitting down at that table with the cardboard shield) and ticking boxes for candidates I support.
I learned this early. I cannot remember a time in my young life when my Mom or Dad didn’t take me with them to the gym at our school, to cast their votes. My paternal grandmother was very involved in politics in New York (as a Republican, regrettably, but that was back in the day when some of them were still sane). My maternal grandmother voted in the small village in Vermont, and took my Mom with her when she did so. When she was growing up, there was no such quadrennial treat, because when she was growing up — the daughter of an immigrant who had not chosen to immigrate and whose husband had deserted her with three children to raise — women could not vote. My Nana was 17 years old before they could.
And let no one ever say that women were finally “granted” the right to vote (or that our black brothers and sisters were “given” this right) — they fought for it. For a very, very long time.
They risked imprisonment and torture fighting for it.
This week in herstory:
On October 23, 1915, over 25,000 women marched up Fifth Avenue in New York City to advocate for women’s suffrage. At that point, the fight had been ongoing for more than 65 years, with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 first passing a resolution in favor of women’s suffrage. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t find success for another five years.
New York’s 1915 suffrage parade was the largest held in the city until that time. But many still had reservations. The New York Times ran an article warning that if women get the vote, they will “play havoc for themselves and society,” and that “granted the suffrage, they would demand all the rights that implies. It is not possible to think of women as soldiers and sailors, police patrolmen, or firemen” Heavens, think of the chaos!
New York Historical Society
(Well played, New York Times.)
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I don’t understand anyone — in particular women — who don’t exercise the right our sisters fought to hard to secure. One of them in my Aunt, of all people, my mother’s younger sister. She styles herself a “radical feminist” and refuses to vote because she won’t “participate in the patriarchy.” She actually said this to me.
She fails to see the link between the “radical feminists” who secured this precious right and the obligation each of us has to exercise it. SMDH.
Her obstinacy is just one reason that I spend every first weekend in November getting out the vote. (I will be doing so next weekend. I’m driving a distance to do so, because I live in a district here in Virginia that is deeply navy blue and we are so darn close to flipping both houses of the Virginia legislature that I can taste it and candidates to the south need my work much more than anyone local does.)
Help us get out the vote here in Virginia! Or help other Democrats win in upcoming elections in Kentucky, Mississippi or New Jersey.
Kentucky
Mississippi
New Jersey
Virginia
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Some elections, of course, have been far more satisfying than others. I was so thrilled to vote for a (terrific) woman for President of the United States in 2016. I remember the simple awe of finally being able to do so. That day. Other women at my polling place were as choked up as I was. (And many of us were wearing pants suits.)
I spent the entirety of the next day in tears (and rage and fear), as I suspect so many others here did, as well. The candidate I worked for and voted for did not.
She told us to get back to work.
Our constitutional democracy demands our participation, not just every four years, but all the time. So let's do all we can to keep advancing the causes and values we all hold dear. Making our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top, protecting our country and protecting our planet.
And breaking down all the barriers that hold any American back from achieving their dreams. We spent a year and a half bringing together millions of people from every corner of our country to say with one voice that we believe that the American dream is big enough for everyone.
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This loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what's right is worth it.
It is, it is worth it.
And so we need — we need you to keep up these fights now and for the rest of your lives. And to all the women, and especially the young women, who put their faith in this campaign and in me: I want you to know that nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion.
Now, I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but someday someone will — and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.
And to all of the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.
Thank you again, Hillary Clinton. And happy birthday.
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We’ve got a lot of work still to do.
REPRODUCTIVE INJUSTICE
South Carolina Legislature Removes Rape and Incest Exceptions From Draconian Six-Week Ban Because “If we’re going to just base our decisions on what a court might say, we won’t do much.”
State senators on Tuesday removed exceptions for rape and incest from a bill that bans abortions roughly six weeks after conception, potentially setting up a conflict with the House, which approved the exceptions earlier this year after contentious debate.
Senators in committee voted 4-3 to strike the exceptions, as proposed by Sen. Richard Cash, R-Powdersville, the chamber’s most ardent abortion foe. Another 4-3 vote advanced the measure to the full Medical Affairs Committee.
The bill, H.3020, would make it illegal to get an abortion in South Carolina after a fetal heartbeat has been detected, which occurs five to eight weeks into most pregnancies.
Cash said the Legislature should do what it thinks is right on the issue instead of worrying over what courts will uphold.
Post & Courier
Abortion Deserts
The website ADVANCING NEW STANDARDS IN REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH (ANSIRH, no acronym) from UC San Francisco, has a page listing the twenty-seven "abortion deserts" in the United States.
LINK
The results showed that access to abortion facilities and certain types of services greatly vary throughout the United States. “Abortion deserts”, or cities where people have to travel 100 miles or more to reach an abortion facility, exist in every region in the country except the Northeast. Research shows that the Midwest region (92 facilities in 10 states) has the least abortion facilities per capita, while the Northeast (233 facilities in 9 states) has the most. Six states (Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia) have only one abortion facility.
And doctors who travel in to provide abortion care face “death threats and abuse.”
Read More Here.
Poland
In Poland, a new law not only prohibits single women who froze their eggs or embryos from retrieving them, but grants the clinics where they are stored the “right” to give them to married couples instead.
In 2012, as she approached her thirty-eighth birthday, Irena, a single lawyer living in Warsaw, began researching fertility clinics with a friend. Neither woman had been having much luck dating—Irena blames her “feminist attitude,” which is not widely shared in conservative Poland—but they didn’t want to miss out on parenthood. Browsing the Web sites of the clinics, they noticed that almost all of them featured only photos of couples. Irena’s friend phoned to confirm that they would treat single women, too.
Irena’s first five artificial-insemination attempts failed, and so did her first attempt at in-vitro fertilization, in which eggs are retrieved from a patient’s ovaries and fertilized before being transferred to the uterus. At the time, the Polish government was offering to reimburse heterosexual couples for their fertility treatments. The procedures were expensive, and Irena, being single, had to pay for them herself. Still, her second round of IVF, in the summer of 2015, looked promising. She got six quality embryos, froze four, and transferred the other two.
Then the law passed.
I live in a horrible, patriarchal, conservative country, Irena thought, when she heard about it. Luckily, her transfer had worked, and, in August—two months before the new law was to take effect—she learned that she was pregnant. Then, at ten weeks, she miscarried. The law was now in effect, and, as a single woman, she was blocked from accessing her own frozen embryos unless she could convince a male friend to sign with her. This would make him financially liable for her child and grant him custody rights. Moreover, another provision in the law, intended to insure that unused embryos wouldn’t be destroyed, mandated that they be donated to an infertile heterosexual couple if they weren’t used within twenty years. The four remaining frozen embryos, stored in a cryotank, were Irena’s last chance at parenthood. There was now a real possibility that they’d be given to someone else.
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WOMEN’S HEALTH INJUSTICE
It’s not just reproductive health, low income women across the country face increasing difficulty obtaining basic health services as a result of the mal-administration’s war on women’s rights.
Nearly 900 (Planned Parenthood) clinics have lost funding from a federal family-planning program since a Trump administration rule banned recipients from referring patients to abortion services, according to a new report.
Power to Decide, an unplanned pregnancy-prevention organization, estimated 876 clinics nationwide lost Title X funding after recipients refused to comply with the rule.
The loss of funding could prevent low-income women from getting affordable reproductive health care, the organization said, including cancer screenings and STD testing. Some women have gone without health services because of resulting higher costs, the report said.
USA Today
Fighting Back!
Three Lawsuits Challenge Administration’s Rule Barring Health Facilities From Mentioning Abortion
All three lawsuits claim the administration’s new rule imposed on federally funded clinics violates a provision of Congress’s annual funding bill which declares that “all pregnancy counseling shall be nondirective.” The plaintiffs argue that the rule’s provisions restricting information about some pregnancy options while permitting information on others violates this requirement, because the rule purposefully “directs” or steers patients away from any referral for abortion.
Ninth Circuit Panel Rules That Administration’s “Exemptions” for Contraception Coverage Violated Law
At issue was a lawsuit California and 13 other attorneys general brought to block rules the Trump administration unveiled in 2017 to provide two sweeping new exemptions to the requirement that employer-sponsored health insurance plans provide contraceptive coverage to women with no out-of-pocket cost. One was for any employer “with sincerely held religious beliefs objecting to contraceptive or sterilization coverage”; the second was for “organizations with sincerely held moral convictions concerning contraceptive coverage.”
(snip)
The states (and the District of Columbia) that challenged the exemptions made their customary procedural arguments, but the heart of the case was the administration’s authority to craft any exemptions at all. And in a split decision, the three-judge appeals panel held that the administration did not.
LA Times
As the Los Angeles Times editorial page correctly noted: “The fight over the contraception mandate has always been as much about employers’ ability to dictate female workers’ behavior as it has been about conscience rights.”
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PROGRESS!
On October 22, abortion was decriminalized and same-sex marriage legalized in Northern Ireland.
Legislation making the changes - which was passed by MPs at Westminster - came into force at midnight.
The first same-sex weddings in Northern Ireland are set to take place in February 2020.
The government has until the end of March to come up with regulations for the provision of abortion services.
BBC
FDA Issues Proposed Rule Requiring Manufacturers of Breast Implants to Warn Recipients of Cancer Risk.
The FDA says breast implants have been linked to, among other things, a rare type of cancer of the immune system.
The FDA recommends that manufacturers identify risks in the boxed warning, including that breast implants are not lifetime devices.
The recommendations were released in draft form to allow for 60 days of public comment before they are finalized.
USA Today
Colorado
Abortion rates have dropped again in Colorado, and health authorities are crediting increased access to birth control statewide.
Pharmacists have written thousands of prescriptions for the birth control pill since 2017, when Colorado became only the third state in the nation to allow women to get prescriptions for oral contraceptives at the pharmacy instead of only from a doctor.
State and federal dollars are funding free and low-cost IUDs — intrauterine devices that prevent pregnancy for five years or more — for low-income women and teens who visit community health clinics across the state.
Another contributing factor: the so-called morning-after pill has been available over the counter at Colorado pharmacies since 2013.
“The goal has always been access,” said Gina Moore, assistant dean for clinical and professional affairs at the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy. “We are just really pleased.”
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Let’s Stay Loud!! (And GOTV)
Note:
In Argentina’s general elections on Sunday, parties on the left and right are running outspoken feminist candidates—likely a response to protests in recent years that mobilized women across classes and political persuasions. The focus on gender equality has opened up room for consensus in a divided landscape, Catherine Osborn writes for FP.
And this week’s Tweet:
As always, this series is a group effort. Thanks to elenacarlena, mettle fatigue, SandraLLAP, ramara, officebss and Tara for the links!