bon je fais remonter un fil, pour parler des derniers développements de la situation de l'avortement aux usa

La semaine dernière, commémorant l'anniversaire de l'arrêt Roe vs Wade, Hillary Clinton a gratifié son assistance d'un discours sur l'avortement, et a développé une rhétorique assez étrange. Succinctement, elle se positionne comme "pro-choice", mais déclare en même temps avoir pour objectif qu'on n'y ait plus recours. Après tout, pourquoi pas.

Du côté des pro-lifes, qui n'en peuvent plus depuis la réélection de bush, on salive d'avance sur le remplacement d'un juge de la Cour Suprême (William Rehnquist, atteint d'un cancer), qui permettrait d'installer à sa place quelqu'un de plus sensible à leurs opinons, leur but étant d'avoir une majorité conservatrice à la cour pour pouvoir renverser l'arrêt Roe vs Wade. Et si un ne suffit pas, deux autres sièges vont probablement bientôt se libérer (ceux de Paul Stevens, 84 ans et Sandra O'Connor, 74 ans).

Du point de vue législatif, deux mesures sont en bonne voie d'être adoptées : l'une interdisant à quiconque autre que l'un des parents d'accompagner une mineure dans un autre état pour se faire avorter (but de la manoeuvre : empêcher les mineures de contourner la loi, dans 34 états, qui oblige le personnel médical à informer les parents) ; l'autre obligeant les médecins à informer les femmes demandant un avortement au-delà de la 20ème semaine que le foetus pourrait ressentir de la douleur pendant l'acte.

Enfin, côté propagande, les pro-lifes essaient d'opérer un glissement sémantique dans le domaine de la fécondation par embryon surnuméraire (il s'agit d'un embryon fécondé in vitro en vue d'une réimplantation, mais qui n'est finalement plus nécessaire, l'implantation précédénte ayant réussi, par exemple, et que les "parents" préfèrent donner plutôt que de s'en débarrasser) : ce dernier ne serait pas "donné" à la mère qui le portera, mais "adopté" par elle. Pourquoi une telle importance sur le choix des mots ? Parce qu'on donne un objet, mais on adopte une personne. Si un embryon est adopté, c'est qu'il est une personne. Si c'est une personne, alors l'avortement est un meurtre. Si c'est un meurtre, il doit être banni ; et la boucle est bouclée.

US National's Death Sentence Revoked in Oman
US citizen Rebecca Thompson is no longer at risk of execution in Oman. Thanks to hundreds of letters written on Rebecca Thompson's behalf, the Sultan of Oman commuted her death sentence to fifteen years imprisonment. Many thanks to all those who wrote appeals!

Texas Court Reverses Murder Verdict
Andrea Yates, a Houston mother serving a life sentence for killing her five children, had her murder convictions overturned by a state appeals court due to false testimony by an expert witness.

Minnesota Couple Acquitted of Murder Charges
American Cynthia Kiecker and her Mexican husband, Ulises Perzebal, have been returned to the US after being held in prison since May 2003, in connection with the Juárez murders. Both Keicker and her husband report being tortured by the Mexican authorities. Human rights groups, including AI, actively worked for the couple's release.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-02-16-voa6.cfm

New York State Salutes Women's Vote Pioneer by Barbara Schoetzau

This week, New York State residents are saluting the pioneer who helped U.S. women gain the right to vote, Susan B Anthony.

Late last year, New York State Governor George Pataki signed into law a bill making February 15, Anthony's birthday, a day to recognize her life and legacy.

Anthony was an abolitionist, a labor activist and an educational reformer. But above all, she is remembered for her lifelong effort to win women the right to vote.

Lorie Lachiusa Barnum, executive director of the Susan B. Anthony House in Rochester, New York, says a group of New York State women spearheaded the statewide day of recognition as part of their efforts on behalf of a national day of commemoration. "They collected 15,000 signatures from 45 different states. And they are still pushing. They would still like to have a national holiday. But it seemed to them that Susan B. Anthony, who lived in New York State, and they are from New York States, so why shouldn't New York State give a special holiday or day of recognition," she said.

Anthony worked tirelessly on behalf of women's suffrage or right to vote. She traveled across the nation speaking about women's rights, gathered signatures and petitioned Congress. She once was arrested for voting. Susan B. Anthony died in Rochester before her dream of voting became a reality. "Susan B. Anthony was 86 years old when she died in 1906. The 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote, which is known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, was not passed until 14 years later, 1920," she said. "There were women in the country who did have the right to vote because there were states where women had the right to vote. It was just one month before she died when she gave her famous "failure is not possible' speech to urge the young suffragettes to just keep on keeping on."

Ms. Barnum says Susan B. Anthony continues to inspire people and many make pilgrimages to her grave leaving behind wreathes and tokens of their esteem. "What is touching about it is every time I go there is something that someone has left: stones, coins, notes, flags, flowers. Some of the notes the people leave are very touching," she said. "It was her persistence and her drive and her spirit that touches people today. We get people from other countries writing into our Web site. A woman from Indonesia saying, "I just learned about Susan B. Anthony and this has been a light in my life. Every women in the world should know her story."


1890s political cartoon showing Susan B. Anthony chasing after US President Grover Cleveland in effort to win support for women's suffrage

http://www.detnews.com/2005/lifestyle/0502/12/E04-86274.htm

Feminism 30 years later: We don't need to have it all by Marney Rich Keenan / The Detroit News

This morning reeks of normalcy, which is to say I have been successfully avoiding the blank computer screen. I have achieved this by carefully considering a load of whites waiting for the washer, or the cereal bowls that could be scraped before the frosted flakes crystallize on the rims or by any other housekeeping ritual that would postpone actually working. If procrastination were an athletic event, I would win a gold medal.

Unlike my comrades (women I greatly admire -- but no longer worry about measuring myself against), who, at this moment, which is 8 a.m., are more than likely in their offices, at their desks, already full-speed ahead on their spread sheets or mechanical drawings or depositions -- and, as another accomplishment I never mastered -- are dressed appropriately.

I remember coming back to the office downtown after one of my maternity leaves dismayed to discover when I looked under my desk that I'd slipped on mismatched black pumps from two different pairs of shoes.

But this morning the beds are made, thanks to a husband and father who has always pulled his weight in the domestic arena, the dishes can wait, as can the load of wash, and no one has left their school lunch on the kitchen counter.

So here I sit, a very fast typist, but a slow wordsmith, feeling terribly grateful but also worthy to be in this position in my life, here in my home office that seconds as a bedroom, finally finding balance between home and work after many years of walking the perilous tightrope in between.

Earlier this morning as I was driving our oldest to school, she asked "Is this a writing day?" referring to the days of the week upon which a column deadline approaches like a speeding locomotive. When she asked the subject, I said "Feminism."

"Very good topic, Mom," she said in a tone that suggested, at age 15, she is cognizant at the very least of a long ago women's movement that put a lot of sweat equity into a fight for equality. She'll understand the meaning of that equality more over time. And just as I was given opportunities my mother never had, she will reap the rewards of our hard-earned independence with which to shape her life and identity.

Feminism came up because Gloria Steinem was recently interviewed by Katie Couric, and besides looking amazing at 65 (my daughters called her "hot"), her assessment on the very topic she pioneered was this: "Young women now say, 'I hope I can have as interesting a life as my mother -- not the same life, but as interesting a life. That brings tears to my eyes because that is just so, so different."

I think it's less a factor of our age and more a nod to feminism that I and my closest girl-friends -- we are in our 40s and early 50s -- would agree that we are all right where we're supposed to be.

Regardless of personal circumstances -- and among us we have our share of divorce, bankruptcy, job loss and breast cancer -- there is a collective sense of a strengthened identity and power as women, that even in the face of our setbacks, "everything," like we tell our children, "will be all right." We can say this with certainty, I think, in large part because we are women. We know what we are made of; we know what it's like to come from behind, to be the underdog.

The Steinem story prompted the question: Where is feminism 30 years after the passionate fight for women's equal rights of the 1970s?

The answer, so long as you don't radicalize or equate the word feminism with liberalism or affirmative action, seems to be that feminism is alive and well.

While still lacking in equal pay parity (women are still paid about 76 cents for every dollar a man makes), women are changing the face of Capitol Hill. According to the NBC report, in 1971, there was one woman in the United States Senate; now there are 14. In the House of Representatives, there were 10 women; now there are 65. So far, 29 women have been appointed to Cabinet or Cabinet-level positions.

And where the absence of women in positions of power was once chiefly a result of sexism, the fact women don't rule the world seems to be a matter of deliberate choice. Who'd have thought? In hindsight, it seems so simple. Once motherhood was seen as a viable option, rather than a subservient pigeonhole, we had attained the freedom to choose our own path -- which, in my mind, is the ultimate women's liberation.

Remember the "Opt Out Revolution?" It was coined a few years back by New York Times writer Lisa Belkin. She found that scores of high-powered women had left ambitious career paths to spend more time with their families. According to research, approximately half of the graduating class at Ivy League schools with advanced degrees in business, medicine and law are women. Yet, only 16 percent of women are partners in law firms, only 16 percent of corporate officers are women and only eight companies in the Fortune 500 have female CEOs. And it's not the glass ceiling that prevents them from making it to the top, Belkin found, but a deliberate choice in favor of motherhood.

Pivotal in the progress of the feminist's cause, said Steinem, is that more men are assuming their share of the burden when it comes to raising children and household responsibilities. "Until we have democratic families, we're never going to have true democracy outside the family."

And as family becomes more of a contemporary value, stay-at-home moms are finally getting their due respect.

Maybe now, having chased the foolish notion that we can have it all, we have come to discover that not only is having it all impossible, we don't necessarily want it all.

Marney Rich Keenan's column runs in The Detroit News Features section on Wednesdays and in Homestyle on Saturdays.

http://www2.kbcitv.com/x5154.xml?ParentPageID=x5157&ContentID=x62340&Layout=KBCI.xsl&AdGroupID=x5154

Feminism And Democracy In The Middle East by Thanh Tan

During her visit to Boise State University on Wednesday, Gloria Steinem said true democracy in Iraq and the Middle East will be a challenge.

"There's no democracy without feminism. It's not possible. You can't have democracy without half the country (women) having equal rights. It's just not a possibility," Steinem said.

In Saudi Arabia, the first democratic election ever will not include a single female candidate. Nor are they allowed to vote.

Local Muslims say they are concerned actions like these have led many to assume Muslim women are uneducated and submissive.

"The perception has become that this is reflective of the entire culture. And that's the unfairness of this stereotyping," said International Community Center of Idaho President Azam Houle.

Houle was raised in a Muslim family and grew up in Iran. She says a small number of Muslims with fundamentalist beliefs have made life harder for some women, but not all. She says those fundamentalists have also managed to capture most of the media's attention.

"Actually, 1400 years ago, Islam gave women the right to choose, in addition to the right to education, right to owning their business, and right to inheritance," said Furqan Mehmood, executive director of the Islamic Center of Boise.

Yasmin Aguilar is an Afghan physician, who had to flee after being threatened by the Taliban.

"There are no schools except Islamic ones handled by fundamentalists. They just learn how to shoot, how to kill. That's all. So what can we expect from that society? I don't blame religion (for the way women are treated)," said Aguilar.

Like other social movements, these local Muslims say they hope time and access to education will bring equal rights to all women.

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050214/NEWS01/502140334/1002/NEWS

Talk honors feminism's pioneers

Whenever Ellie Johnson of Brighton needs inspiration, she heads to Mt. Hope Cemetery to visit the grave of Susan B. Anthony.

"I can't imagine what she went through," said Johnson, 60. "What a lady. She taught us that when you're in a struggle, you have a chance. Persistence is a powerful message."

Johnson was one of 40 people who attended Temple B'rith Kodesh in Brighton on Sunday for a talk about the Power of Equality.

Colleen Hurst, a historian for the Susan B. Anthony House, spoke of Anthony and other women, like Ernestine Rose and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who fought for social justice.

The women specifically fought for women's rights and against slavery.

"But what can we draw from their work today?" Hurst asked. "Find the things that are most important to you and don't be afraid to experiment. Care about what you are doing. Take your noble cause and make it happen.

Build working friendships, Hurst advised. And look for every opportunity to move forward. Don't look at defeat as a dead-end, she said.

Tuesday marks Anthony's 185th birthday and the first Susan B. Anthony Day in the state.

The Rochester Raging Grannies sang several original songs during Sunday's event. The ladies' original lyrics to old familiar tunes show their outrage about the current state of affairs in America, including threats to civil liberties and women's rights.

Judy Dunn, 63, of Henrietta, noted that it's been only 85 years that American women have had the right to vote.

"The sad part is that we're still fighting some of the same fights," said Judy Schwartz of Brighton.

Jan and Jeff Feldman of Pittsford said they're inspired by Anthony's work, as is their daughter Abby Feldman, 17.

"I love her quote, 'failure is impossible,'" Jan Feldman said. "That's the answer to so many questions."

"You always come up against obstacles," Jeff Feldman agreed. "You might fail a few times before you succeed."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Voyeur%20Suit

Jury awards women $1M each in voyeur case

Two women who were secretly videotaped under their desks at work were awarded $1 million each in a lawsuit against their former employer.

A jury found Tuesday that Patti Kidder and Katherine Dean suffered emotional trauma when Ocwen Financial Corp. managers and co-workers teased them about the video footage.

The women claimed they were harassed after a co-worker admitted in 1999 that he put a camera under their desks and sold the video to pornographic Web sites. Kidder said she was called "Patti porn star" and propositioned by a manager.

Ocwen, a mortgage company, fired the employee who planted the camera, but disputed the women's claims of sexual harassment.

Kidder was fired in 2000 for not being truthful on her job application about having danced topless before working at Ocwen. Dean left several months later.

http://www.edicom.ch/news/suisse/050218141455.fr.shtml

Des femmes réclament 100 millions de dollars à Novartis pour discrimination

Douze employées et anciennes collaboratrices de Novartis ont porté plainte à New-York contre le groupe pharmaceutique. Elles l'accusent de discriminer systématiquement les femmes et lui réclament 100 millions de dollars de dédommagement.
La plainte a été déposée auprès d'un tribunal de Manhattan. Les plaignantes reprochent à Novartis des pratiques discriminatoires en matière de salaires, de qualifications, de promotions, de formation continue ou de pratiques disciplinaires. Le groupe expose ses employées à un environnement de travail où les femmes sont ouvertement dénigrées et font l'objet de remarques sexistes et de blagues douteuses, écrit leur avocat, David Sanford, dans un communiqué.
La plainte est également dirigée contre certains cadres masculins, qui feraient fi du règlement interne en donnant du travail ou en contactant à leur domicile des collaboratrices malades ou en congé maternité. Novartis se fait passer pour comme une entreprise qui soutient les mères au travail, mais la réalité est tout autre, écrit David Sanford.
Novartis réfute bec et ongles ces accusations de sexisme et annonce vouloir tout mettre en oeuvre pour que la plainte soit rejetée par le tribunal. Le groupe assure qu'il traite équitablement tous ses employés et se dit très fier de ses dispositions et de son programme visant à promouvoir les femmes dans les domaines du marketing et de la vente.
Les plaintes pour discrimination sexiste au travail se sont multipliées ces derniers temps aux Etats-Unis. Une plainte collective est pendante contre le géant du commerce de détail Wal-Mart. Selon un juge, pas moins de 1,6 million de femmes devraient s'y rallier. En juillet dernier, la banque Morgan Stanley a dû verser 54 millions de dollars à 340 femmes qui l'accusaient de discrimination. La plainte s'est conclue par un accord à l'amiable.

http://www.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200502170751.asp

Flailing Feminists

Susan Estrich et al. just don’t sound all that smart.

Here's one for the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished file: On Feb. 13, the Los Angeles Times published a special Sunday opinion section featuring exclusively women writers in the first few pages. Two pieces were from the left: Science writer Deborah Blum regretted that that there are too few women scientists, while academics Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Barrett coauthored an argument against the notion that men are generally attracted to young, pretty women over high-achievers. Two were from the right: I suggested that perhaps women shouldn't be pushed against their will toward science careers (a longer version of this is up now at the Independent Women's Forum), and IWF coeditor Charlotte Allen lamented that feminist ideologues have replaced public intellectuals who happen to be women.


In response, USC law professor and Fox News pundit Susan Estrich sent an angry mass e-mail the next day to her rich and powerful contacts; she urged them to complain to Times editors and boycott Times advertisers until the paper includes more women in the opinion section. "For the last three years, my students and I have been counting the number of women whose opinion pieces appear in the Los Angeles Times, and the record is worse than dismal," she wrote. "Things have gone from bad to worse under the leadership of the new opinion editor, Michael Kinsley, who replaced an African-American woman..."

At this point you might be wondering: How, exactly, is a special all-female editorial package an affront to feminism? Apparently because the most prominently featured piece in Sunday's section was by Charlotte Allen, who, as Estrich explained to her e-mail list, is "a feminist-hater I have never heard of...her only book was about Jesus and religion" — ergo, she's obviously a wacky redneck fundamentalist. Actually, Charlotte Allen is a pretty well-known religious scholar. Early Christianity is not exactly one of my areas of expertise, but even I had heard of her book The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus, years before I started writing for IWF.

What's more, Estrich continued, Charlotte works for the dreaded IWF, "a group of right-wing women who exist to get on TV and get in newspapers attacking the likes of us...a lot of them turn out to be the wives of guys you see on right-wing talk shows." As opposed to the wives on Susan Estrich's Hollywood-heavy mailing list — like the ex-Mrs. Jerry Bruckheimer, Mrs. Larry David, Mrs. Jonathan Dolgen, Mrs. Peter Norton, Mrs. Richard Riordan, Mrs. Haim Saban, and the ex-Mrs. Bud Yorkin — every one of whom is of course fiercely independent of any income or name recognition provided by men.

"There are more wonderful women writers in L.A. than anywhere in the country; none of them are asked to write for the Opinion section," Estrich continued. Hey, what am I, chopped liver? (O.K., technically, I wasn't asked, I invited myself. Story of my life!) Obviously, what's really bugging Estrich is that not enough of the right kind of women were asked, and by this I don't think she just means her own syndicated column, which doesn't appear in the Times. "Ms. Magazine is based here, [editor] Elaine Lafferty finds phenomenonal writers, neither she nor them is in the Times," Estrich complained.

Now the Ms. situation is actually kind of noteworthy, because I can't think of any other brand name that remains so well known while representing a product that practically no one ever sees or even realizes still exists. A few years ago, Feminist Majority Foundation president Peg Yorkin tried to revive the fading magazine by moving it from New York to her home base of L.A. Media coverage of this was practically nil, but I was interested and tried to interview someone from the FMF for Reason magazine. A spokeswoman nixed that idea, saying she'd found some articles on the Reason website "anti-feminist."

Such Big Nurse control-freakism is typical of party-line feminists, who've developed a habit of excommunicating anyone who dissents from their received wisdom. When Susan Estrich complains that there aren't enough L.A. women writers in the Times, I doubt she'd be appeased if, say, they began running columns by KABC talk radio host Tammy Bruce, author of The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Culture and Values. Bruce, whom I admire as a true feminist because she's always valued women's welfare over general loyalty to the Left, was head of the National Organization of Women's L.A. chapter in the '90s. But she fell out with NOW's national leadership for making "racially insensitive" remarks on the air about O. J. Simpson's being a wife-beater.

But back to Susan Estrich, and her rather lapidary view of the male-to-female opinion ratio at the Times. At this point her rant becomes so enraged it shifts to upper-case: "THIRTEEN MEN AND NO WOMEN" on Iraq, she complains. "TWENTY-FOUR MEN AND ONE WOMAN IN A THREE-DAY PERIOD." Whenever I read this sort of thing, that old '60s song "Counting Flowers On the Wall" always begins to play in my head ("Watchin' Captain Kangaroo, now don't tell M-E-E-E... I got nothin' to D-O-O-O") — but actually, Estrich seems to have turned much of this research over to her students.

"If you knew how hard my students and I have been fighting to have women's voices included," she sadly informs her mailing list. Over at the IWF, Charlotte Allen had an apt response to that part of Estrich's letter: "Your 'students,' Susan? I thought you were supposed to be teaching law over there at USC — you know, torts, contracts, that kind of thing — not lining up young people to do free research for your pet ideological projects."

The Susan Estrich e-mail bomb highlights a big problem with the women's movement now: Its spokeswomen just don't sound very smart, and haven't for a long time. A few years ago Boston University journalism professor Caryl Rivers, railing against the notion of liberal bias in the media, complained in a Boston Globe opinion piece that NOW and FMF leaders don't appear on talk shows or in newspaper opinion sections as often as those from the relatively tiny IWF. Rivers made a good point, even if it wasn't exactly the one she was trying to make. Mainstream media are generally sympathetic to the NOW and FMF platforms, so if feminist leaders aren't appearing on op-ed pages very much, the likely reason is they're failing to come up with fresh or convincing arguments.

Frankly I'd miss these girls if they disappeared, though, because they are such entertaining characters. Not everyone agrees, at least not at first. An irritable friend of mine, watching the news at my house one evening, yelled to turn the TV down whenever Susan Estrich came on — her voice does make Carol Channing sound like a lyric soprano. But after a while he began to soften.

"It's interesting and kind of a shame," he said thoughtfully, watching Estrich (volume lowered) on Fox News, "that for all the many opportunities open to a woman of such accomplishment and background — editor of the Harvard Law Journal, TV pundit, etc. — that one is forever closed to her: phone-sex operator."

— Catherine Seipp is a writer in California who publishes the weblog Cathy's World. She is an NRO contributor.

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http://199.249.170.220/eandp/departments/syndicates/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000807458

Columnist: 'L.A. Times' Needs More Female Opinion Writers by E&P Staff

NEW YORK Syndicated columnist Susan Estrich says the Los Angeles Times is guilty of "blatant sex discrimination" for not running more opinion pieces by women.

"[Its] record is worse than dismal," Estrich said in a Valentine's Day e-mail sent to 50 prominent California women. The e-mail was condensed and published yesterday in the Washington Examiner.

"I have been trying, quietly, to force the editors there to address it -- but things have gone from bad to worse under the leadership of the new opinion editor, Michael Kinsley, who replaced an African-American woman, and now has three men in the top jobs, and 90% men writing for his section," wrote Estrich, a University of Southern California professor of law and political science whose newspaper column is distributed by Creators Syndicate of Los Angeles. Estrich said the L.A. area has many "wonderful women writers" who could write for the Times opinion section.

Kinsley, when asked by the Examiner to respond to Estrich's letter, said: "There were some accurate things in her e-mail, some inaccuracies, and some fantasies. I'm not getting into details." But he added: "She is right that we should have more women writing for our op-ed pages."

Then Kinsley said: "If Susan wants to boycott media institutions that don't adequately reflect her progressive feminist values, maybe she should start by resigning from Fox News, where she is a commentator."

===========================
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_02_24_05hm.html

Feminists Get Hysterical
Heather Mac Donald

First it was Harvard vs. Summers—and now Estrich vs. Kinsley

Gee thanks, Susan. Political pundit Susan Estrich has launched a venomous campaign (links here and here and here) against the Los Angeles Times’s op-ed editor, Michael Kinsley, for alleged discrimination against female writers. As it happens, I have published in the Los Angeles Times op-ed pages over the years, without worrying too much about whether I was merely filling a gender quota. Now, however, if I appear in the Times again, I will assume that my sex characteristics, rather than my ideas, got me accepted.

Estrich’s insane ravings against the Times cap a month that left one wondering whether the entry of women into the intellectual and political arena has been an unqualified boon. In January, nearly the entire female professoriate at Harvard (and many of their feminized male colleagues) rose up in outrage at the mere suggestion of an open discussion about a scientific hypothesis. That hypothesis, of course, concerned the possibly unequal distribution of cognitive skills across the male and female populations. Harvard President Larry Summers had had the temerity to suggest that the continuing preponderance of men in scientific fields, despite decades of vigorous gender equity initiatives in schools and universities, may reflect something other than sexism. It might reflect the fact, Summers hypothesized, that the male population has a higher percentage of mathematical geniuses (and mathematical dolts) than the female population, in which mathematical reasoning skills may be more evenly distributed.

A feminist gadfly in the audience, MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, infamously reported that she avoided fainting or vomiting at Summers’s remarks only by running from the room. And with that remarkable expression of science-phobia, a great feminist vendetta was launched. It has reduced Summers to a toadying appeaser who has promised to atone for his sins with ever more unforgiving diversity initiatives (read: gender quotas) in the sciences. But the damage will not be limited to Harvard. Summers’s scourging means that, from now on, no one in power will stray from official propaganda to explain why women are not proportionally represented in every profession.

The Harvard rationality rout was a mere warm-up, however, to the spectacle unfolding in Los Angeles, brought to light by the upstart newspaper, the D.C. Examiner. USC law professor, Fox News commentator, and former Dukakis presidential campaign chairman Susan Estrich has come out as a snarling bitch in response to L.A. Times’s editor Michael Kinsley’s unwillingness to be blackmailed. Estrich had demanded that Kinsley run a manifesto signed by several dozen women preposterously accusing him of refusing to publish females. When Kinsley declined, while offering Estrich the opportunity to write a critique of the Times in a few weeks, Estrich sunk to the lowest rung imaginable: playing Kinsley’s struggle with Parkinson’s disease against him. Said Estrich: Your refusal to bend to my demands “underscores the question I've been asked repeatedly in recent days, and that does worry me, and should worry you: people are beginning to think that your illness may have affected your brain, your judgment, and your ability to do this job.”

It is curious how feminists, when crossed, turn into shrill, hysterical harpies—or, in the case of MIT’s Nancy Hopkins, delicate flowers who collapse at the slightest provocation—precisely the images of women that they claim patriarchal sexists have fabricated to keep them down. Actually, Estrich’s hissy fit is more histrionic than anything the most bitter misogynist could come up with on his own. Witness her faux remorse at engaging in blackmail: “I really do hate to be doing this. I counted e-mail after e-mail that I sent and was totally ignored. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to help quietly. If this is what it takes, so be it.” Witness too her self-pitying amour propre: “You owe me an apology. NO one tried harder to educate you about Los Angeles, introduce you to key players in the city, bring to your attention, quietly, the issues of gender inequality than I did—and you have the arrogance and audacity to say that you couldn’t be bothered reading my emails.” Add to that her petty insults: “if you prefer me to conduct this discussion outside your pages . . . that makes you look even more afraid and more foolish.” And finally, mix in shameless self-promotion: “I hope [this current crusade is] a lesson in how you can make change happen if you’re willing to stand up to people who call you names, and reach out to other women, and not get scared and back down. If you recall, I wrote a book about that, called Sex and Power. It’s what I have spent my whole life doing.”

Selective quotation cannot do justice to Estrich’s rants. But their underlying substance is as irrational as their tone. Estrich lodges the standard charge in all fake discrimination charges: the absence of proportional representation in any field is conclusive proof of bias. Determining the supply of qualified candidates is wholly unnecessary.

For the last three years, Estrich’s female law students at USC have been counting the number of female writers on the Los Angeles Times op-ed pages (and she complains that there aren’t more female policy writers? Suggestion to Estrich: how about having your students master a subject rather than count beans.). She provides only selective tallies of the results: “TWENTY FOUR MEN AND ONE WOMAN IN A THREE DAY PERIOD [caps in original]” (she does not explain how she chose that three-day period or whether it was representative); “THIRTEEN MEN AND NO WOMEN” as authors of pieces on Iraq.

Several questions present themselves: how many pieces by women that met the Times’s standards were offered during these periods? What is the ratio of men to women among experts on Iraq? Estrich never bothers to ask these questions, because for the radical feminist, being a woman is qualification enough for any topic. Any female is qualified to write on Iraq, for example, because in so doing, she is providing THE FEMALE PERSPECTIVE. (This belief in the essential difference between male and female “voices,” of course, utterly contradicts the premise of the anti-Larry Summers crusade.) Thus, to buttress her claim that Kinsley “refuses” to publish women, Estrich merely provides a few examples of women whose offerings have been rejected: “Carla Sanger . . . tells me she can't get a piece in; I have women writing to me who have submitted four piece [sic] and not gotten the courtesy of a call—and they teach gender studies at UCLA. . . .” It goes without saying, without further examination, that each of those writers deserved to be published—especially, for heaven’s sakes, the gender studies professors!

Self-centered? Thin-skinned? Takes things personally? Misogynist tropes that sum up Estrich to a T. It is the fate of probably 98 percent of all op-ed hopefuls to have their work silently rejected, without the “courtesy of a call.” But when a woman experiences the silent treatment, it’s because of sexism. Similarly, it is the fate of most e-mail correspondence to editors to be ignored. But when Estrich’s e-mails are ignored (“I sent e-mails to my old friends at the Times. Neither time did they even bother to respond.”), it’s because the editor is a chauvinist pig.

The assumption that being female obviates the need for any further examination into one’s qualifications allows Estrich to sidestep the most fundamental question raised by her crusade: Why should anyone care what the proportion of female writers is on an op-ed page? If an analysis is strong, it should make no difference what its author’s sex is. But for Estrich, it is an article of faith that female representation matters: “What could be more important—or easier for that matter—than ensuring that women's voices are heard in public discourse in our community?” Her embedded question—“or easier for that matter?”— is quickly answered. She is right: Nothing is easier than ensuring that “women’s voices” are heard; simply set up a quota and publish whatever comes across your desk. But as for why it is of paramount importance to get the “women’s” perspective on farm subsidies or OPEC price manipulations, Estrich does not say.

She provides a clue to her thinking, however. For Estrich, apparently, having a “woman’s voice” means being left-wing. She blasts the Times for publishing an article by Charlotte Allen on the decline of female public intellectuals such as Susan Sontag. Allen had argued that too many women writers today specialize in being female, rather than addressing the broader range of issues covered by their male counterparts. For Estrich, this argument performs a magical sex change on Allen, turning her into a male. After sneering at Allen’s article and her affiliation with the “Independent Women's Forum which is a group of right-wing women who exist to get on TV,” Estrich concludes: “the voices of women . . . are [not] found within a thousand miles” of the Los Angeles Times.

In other words, Allen’s is not a “voice of a woman” because she criticizes radical feminism. Estrich does not disclose if she conducted this sex change operation on all conservative women when compiling her phony statistics on the proportion of female writers on the op-ed page.

“Women’s liberation,” for the radical feminists, means liberation to think like a robot, mindlessly following the dictates of the victimologists. But if all bona fide women think alike, then publishing one female writer every year or so should suffice, since we know in advance what she will say.

Depressingly, Estrich’s crusade, no matter how bogus, will undoubtedly bear fruit. Anyone in a position of power today, facing accusations of bias and the knowledge that people are using crude numerical measures to prove his bias, will inevitably start counting beans himself, whether consciously or not. Michael Kinsley could reassure every female writer out there that Estrich has not cowed him by publishing only men for the next six months. It would be an impressive rebuff to Estrich’s blackmail. I’ll happily forgo the opportunity to appear in the Times for a while in order to get my pride back.

http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2005/02/14/daily45.html?jst=b_ln_hl

Report urges help for women entering the work force

The number of single women and displaced homemakers is on the rise nationwide and Arizona is no exception.

Women Work, a national group aimed at helping working women, Thursday released its "Chutes and Ladders: The Search for Solid Ground for Women in the Workforce" report providing an update on the status of displaced homemakers (recently widowed or divorced women) and single mothers in the United States.

Based on 2003 census data, Arizona ranks third highest in the nation for number of displaced homemakers and single mothers -- a 73 percent combined increase from 1994 to 2003.

Arizona statistics show displaced homemakers have increased more than 27 percent, while the number of single moms has shot up 118.4 percent from 1994-2003.

Nationally the number of displaced homemakers has remained the same and the number of single mothers has increased 77 percent during the past 10 years.

The Chutes and Ladders report found that all too often displaced homemakers and single mothers have limited access to education and job training, work in low-wage jobs, and are living in or near poverty.

The report says that employers can do things to benefit their workers struggling with single parenthood. Such actions could include offering flexible schedules; expanding leave policies to include paid family leave, sick and personal days; and recognizing "real life" skills as transferable to the workplace.

Women Work also encourages lawmakers to adopt federal policies to fund more women and girl-worker training programs, increase the minimum wage and ensure that Social Security reform addresses the needs of women workers who have lower lifetime earnings and longer lifespans.

Locally, Arizona Women's Education & Employment Inc. (AWEE) has worked for nearly 25 years to help women transition from being the primary homemaker to the primary breadwinner after the death of a spouse or a divorce forces them back to the work force.

AWEE has several offices in Phoenix, and one each in Tempe, Gilbert and Prescott.

For more than 25 years, Women Work has served as a link between programs, agencies and educational institutions nationwide that provide education, job training and support services to millions of America's displaced homemakers, single parents and other women in transition.

For more: www.womenwork.org or www.awee.org.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-02-25-mammogram_x.htm

Many women still don't get annual mammograms by Kathleen Doheny, HealthDay

Mammograms are quick, relatively painless and potentially lifesaving tests.
Yet despite countless public service campaigns extolling the benefits of the breast cancer screening tool, only a small minority of women follow exactly the recommended guidelines for getting the exams, recent studies show.

Experts caution that women can't depend on their doctor or their health plan to remind them when the test is due. So they must develop their own strategies to adhere more closely to the recommended guidelines.

Annual mammograms are recommended for women age 40 and older. But only one in 20 women consistently follows that recommendation, according to a study published last year in the online edition of Cancer, a journal of the American Cancer Society.

Harvard Medical School researchers reviewed data from more than 72,000 women who got screening mammograms from 1985 to 2002 at Massachusetts General Hospital's Avon Comprehensive Breast Center. They found that only 6% of the women who had a mammogram in 1992 got all the annual screenings available to them over the next decade. Over the 10-year period, most women got five mammograms, half the number recommended by the American Cancer Society.

When the researchers looked at subgroups, they found that women from lower income levels got fewer mammograms than did wealthier women. And Hispanic, black and Asian women got fewer mammograms than other women.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, other than skin cancer, and is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, after lung cancer. About 211,240 women in the United States will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in 2005, and an estimated 40,400 women will die from the disease this year, according to the American Cancer Society.

If breast cancer is detected when it is still localized and hasn't spread to the lymph nodes, the five-year survival rate is 97%, according to the cancer society. And mammograms are designed to detect cancers early.

But some breast health experts say women may not be doing as poorly as the Harvard study indicates.

Debbie Saslow, director of breast and gynecologic cancer for the American Cancer Society, said that while women may not get a mammogram at exactly the same time each year, many are getting the screenings within a few months of each annual date.

"For all women age 40 and over, 55% got a mammogram in the past year and 70% got one in the past two years," Saslow said, citing statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Dr. Susan Love, another breast cancer expert and president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation in Pacific Palisades, Calif., agreed. "I don't think we are flunking," she said.

While women have room for improvement in adhering to mammography guidelines, Love said she'd give most women a "C plus" or a "B" grade for trying.

With job and family responsibilities, it's sometimes difficult to get a mammogram on a yearly basis, she added. Love, who is 57, said her last mammogram interval was almost 18 months.

Love encourages women to find a reminder or a trigger that will get them back to the doctor as close to the one-year mark as possible. "I usually try to schedule it around my kid's birthday," she said.

"Even if you don't get it done on that exact date," she added," you can at least schedule it."

Saslow and Love both agreed that health-care providers need to devise better reminder systems. "The No. 1 thing that would help is, if the doctors would tell women to get a mammogram," Saslow said. "But very few health systems or individual offices have reminders for cancer screening."

Both women noted that such reminder systems are routine for dentists' offices, and even veterinarians, who often send postcards that your pet needs a distemper shot or other immunization.

Saslow said the American Cancer Society has some pilot projects under way to create such reminder programs. "If you ask the individual who did not get a mammogram why, the No. 1 reason you will hear is, 'My doctor did not tell me to,' " she said.

Until those systems become standard practice, women must remind themselves to get a yearly mammogram.

"Some plans allow you to make the appointment a year in advance," Saslow said, so women can schedule their next visit while having their current exam.

Several Web sites, including the American Cancer Society's, offer reminders by e-mail, she said.

To learn more about breast cancer and early detection, visit the American Cancer Society : http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/CRI_2x.asp?sitearea=CRI&level=1

SOURCES: Debbie Saslow, Ph.D., director of breast and gynecologic cancer, American Cancer Society, Atlanta; Susan Love, M.D., president, Susan Love Research Foundation, Pacific Palisades, Calif.; Oct. 15, 2004, Cancer

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/112-03062005-459202.html

Detractors blame feminism for a litany of woes by JASON BODNAR AND DANIELLE CAMILLI

Some credit the feminist movement with opening doors in politics, the workplace and society. Others say the movement has opened some not-so-desirable doors as well.

"They have accomplished a lot, some good, some not so good," said Pat Miller, director of public relations for the Fountain of Life Center, an Assemblies of God congregation and school in Florence.

Many people can agree on the good: Although gender equality is still elusive, women have a lot more career and leadership opportunities than they did a half-century ago.

The not so good? That's open to interpretation.

"One of the negative effects was the erosion of the respect for the family," said Len Deo, executive director of New Jersey Family Council, a conservative activist group. "You see on the cover of a magazine, 'Who needs a father?' A father was not important from the perspective of their movement."

Deo contends the movement is partly to blame for an increase in single mothers and number of divorces.

In 1960, 87.7 percent of children lived with two parents, with 8 percent living with just their mother, according to U.S. Census data.

In 2003, 68.3 percent of children lived with two parents, and 23 percent lived with just the mother. During the same period, the divorce rate rose from 2.2 to 4.0 per 1,000 population, according to census data.


While the women's movement may have given females more options, many proponents don't believe it is to blame for the breakdown of marriages.

"I think we need to examine the social structures that might lead to these social problems," said Allison Kimmich, executive director of the National Women's Studies Association in Maryland.

To simply blame the fight for gender equality, she said, does not consider the complexity of the issue.

Some people also blame the movement for what they say is a decrease in the amount of time parents spend parenting.

They argue the increase in the number of working women, which many consider a positive in itself, has indirectly resulted in many children being raised in day-care centers instead of homes.

"Believing feminist doctrines, many women have assumed they can hold outside-the-home careers and fulfill roles of mother and wife with excellence," said the Rev. John Grove, pastor of the Columbus Baptist Church in Mansfield.

"For most people, it's too hard to be excellent both outside the home and inside the home."

http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2005/03/06twogenerationst.html

Two generations talk about feminism by EDWARD L. KENNEY / The News Journal

Two generations of speakers - one representing the overt feminist activism of decades past and the other the more covert style of today - provided a stark contrast as well as a melding of minds Saturday at the 21st annual Delaware Women's Conference at the University of Delaware.

"We have not come a long way, baby," Ms. magazine co-founder Letty Cottin Pogrebin, 65, told a luncheon crowd of more than 400 people at Clayton Hall.

"In the early years, we had media attention, we were media darlings. We were kind of a walking photo op," she said. "But today we don't really see that impulse to unite, the impulse for activism, because we are so busy today."

Her daughter and co-speaker, Robin Pogrebin, 39, a New York Times reporter, acknowledged the groundwork of women's rights laid down by her mom and others like her.

"I am a living example of the fruits of her labor in more ways than one," she said.

But, Robin Pogrebin said, "In some ways I feel I am living the benefits without in a sense giving back."

Both women have balanced a career and family, as many women do today. The daughter has two children and the mom three, plus six grandchildren.

"The way I deal with it is to have a covert motherhood," Robin Pogrebin said of her career. "All they know is I'm getting my work done.

"No one coming after me is going to have an easier time juggling all this," she said, "because we all do it privately."

"That's one of the things about the women's movement, we outed that," her mom added. "These weren't rights I could claim. But what we tried to do and what's not happening now is we really tried to make a systemic change."

At a news conference preceding the talk, the mother-daughter team also addressed change.

"We had the model of the civil rights movement and the war movement," said Letty Pogrebin, who helped found the feminist magazine in 1971. "You could actually see change. ... It stopped at a certain point where it really seemed threatening to the status quo.

"I really am so tired of pushing that rock up the hill and having it flattening us. The power is never given, it must be taken, and there are a lot of powerful people now who are resisting taking it away."

She said women's rights in the early days appeared threatening to many men, and in some ways it was a little unsettling to her as well, as women started "showing their bellies and having tattoos."

"I'm of that old school," she said. "Certain sexuality issues were hard for me to accept."

What it was really about was not trying to be more like men, she said, but women having the choice to be what they wanted to be.

Letty Pogrebin said one of the key feminist issues today is making sure women maintain reproductive freedom.

Economic parity also should be a top concern, even though progress has been made, she said. Women now make 70 cents for every dollar men make, compared with 59 cents to the dollar when she helped start the magazine.

"I guess I would have to say the glass is three-quarters full or two-thirds full," she said when asked to assess the overall progress of the women's movement. "But maybe that's my imagination. Maybe I should imagine a larger glass."

In addition to the speakers, the Delaware Women's Conference featured 78 exhibitors and 42 workshops with subjects that included "Home Improvement for Women" and "Managing Your Wardrobe."

La Donna Favazza, of Bear, who has attended the conference in years past, said she attended Saturday's workshop on home improvement and one on makeovers.

"I loved it," she said. "I walked away with better self-esteem, because now I know I'm going to see a difference in my appearance."

http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/03/01/42240518a7fc6

Panel shares perspectives on feminism by Elizabeth Westby

Former NOW president, journalists discuss media's coverage of movement

A panel of three self-professed feminists convened Monday afternoon at the McCormick Tribune Center as a part of the Crain Lecture Series to prove that the women's movement still is very much alive.

Karen DeCrow, former president of the National Organization for Women, said the media believe feminism has been dead for the last 15 years. She expressed her disagreement with this perspective.

In addition to DeCrow, Laura Washington, Medill '80 and a professor at DePaul University, and Medill senior Elaine Helm, editor in chief of The Daily, offered their perspectives regarding the ever-changing face of feminism in the media.

Syndicated columnist Georgie Ann Geyer, Medill '56, was expected to be the fourth member of the panel but could not participate because of an unforeseen commitment.

One media issue steeped in feminist concerns is coverage of women's rights in countries such as Iraq, said moderator Ava Greenwell, associate dean of Medill. Washington said she agreed but lamented that many Americans do not consider women in other countries as part of the same feminist movement.

"People read these stories and see these women as 'the other,'" Washington said.

DeCrow pointed to the media's celebration of the recent elections in Iraq as evidence that the press largely has ignored women's rights.

"Women aren't voting because they don't have enough polling places to offer separate ones for women," DeCrow said. "I think it's an embarrassment that we look at this situation and say, 'Oh, isn't this great.'"

In the national sphere, recent comments by Harvard University President Larry Summers suggesting that men possess a greater "intrinsic aptitude" for math and science than women have angered feminists. Washington chose to highlight the positive side of that controversy at the presentation.

"I think it's a good thing to put this issue out there," Washington said. "It's getting women to talk about feminist issues."

DeCrow said she agreed, expressing her belief that men and women do not differ in "intrinsic aptitudes."

"The poor guy didn't have a lawyer in his pocket (when he made his statement)," DeCrow said. She credited Summers for offering other explanations for the disproportionately high numbers of men in math- and science-related careers.

Feminist issues, Helm said, also affect campus events. She pointed to the recent name change of the group Women's Coalition to College Feminists as a result of a redefinition of the word "feminism."

"(The change) brings up questions of the word's associations with man-hating, bra-burning lesbians," she said. "(The group is) reclaiming the term."

Though the term "feminism" has been revised and "reclaimed" many times, DeCrow emphasized that it never has been dead.

"I'm an optimist," DeCrow said. "I don't think you can kill feminism. It's here to stay."

Medill freshman Kristin Maun said she was impressed with this message as well as the speaker. "I am very inspired by Karen DeCrow," she said. "To hear her say (the movement) is alive and well is a great comfort to me."

http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/02/28/4222933554fd8

Editorial: Feminists not just women

The renaming of Women's Coalition to College Feminists marks a healthy refocusing of the organization's goal: You don't need to be a woman to support women's issues.

Not all feminists are man-hating bra-burners. In fact, many men consider themselves feminists and support the push for equal rights for women. By renaming the group, College Feminists has the opportunity to attract all supporters of women's rights and dispel the negative connotation now attached to the word feminist.

Moreover, the name change gives the group a clearer identity. On the face of it, "Women's Coalition" did not indicate the group's overall mission.

The potential drawbacks of the name change stem from the stigma the feminist cause has endured throughout history. Stereotypes, confusion and parodies have created a cartoon-like image of what a feminist truly is. By reclaiming the word feminist and continuing to advocate common sense reform and general fairness, the group can demonstrate that being a feminist is not so radical after all.

Some people always will oppose the goals of the feminist movement and no amount of name tinkering will change that fact. Those who do not buy into the movement are likely to use this new name to attack the ideals of feminism. As a result College Feminists should be ready to counterpunch. The group should not let its opponents mischaracterize it.

Feminism is not just a battle between dueling genders. The movement includes men and women who share a common view of gender equality, and this new name better reflects that sentiment.

http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/03/01/42240518a7fc6

Panel shares perspectives on feminism by Elizabeth Westby

Former NOW president, journalists discuss media's coverage of movement

A panel of three self-professed feminists convened Monday afternoon at the McCormick Tribune Center as a part of the Crain Lecture Series to prove that the women's movement still is very much alive.

Karen DeCrow, former president of the National Organization for Women, said the media believe feminism has been dead for the last 15 years. She expressed her disagreement with this perspective.

In addition to DeCrow, Laura Washington, Medill '80 and a professor at DePaul University, and Medill senior Elaine Helm, editor in chief of The Daily, offered their perspectives regarding the ever-changing face of feminism in the media.

Syndicated columnist Georgie Ann Geyer, Medill '56, was expected to be the fourth member of the panel but could not participate because of an unforeseen commitment.

One media issue steeped in feminist concerns is coverage of women's rights in countries such as Iraq, said moderator Ava Greenwell, associate dean of Medill. Washington said she agreed but lamented that many Americans do not consider women in other countries as part of the same feminist movement.

"People read these stories and see these women as 'the other,'" Washington said.

DeCrow pointed to the media's celebration of the recent elections in Iraq as evidence that the press largely has ignored women's rights.

"Women aren't voting because they don't have enough polling places to offer separate ones for women," DeCrow said. "I think it's an embarrassment that we look at this situation and say, 'Oh, isn't this great.'"

In the national sphere, recent comments by Harvard University President Larry Summers suggesting that men possess a greater "intrinsic aptitude" for math and science than women have angered feminists. Washington chose to highlight the positive side of that controversy at the presentation.

"I think it's a good thing to put this issue out there," Washington said. "It's getting women to talk about feminist issues."

DeCrow said she agreed, expressing her belief that men and women do not differ in "intrinsic aptitudes."

"The poor guy didn't have a lawyer in his pocket (when he made his statement)," DeCrow said. She credited Summers for offering other explanations for the disproportionately high numbers of men in math- and science-related careers.

Feminist issues, Helm said, also affect campus events. She pointed to the recent name change of the group Women's Coalition to College Feminists as a result of a redefinition of the word "feminism."

"(The change) brings up questions of the word's associations with man-hating, bra-burning lesbians," she said. "(The group is) reclaiming the term."

Though the term "feminism" has been revised and "reclaimed" many times, DeCrow emphasized that it never has been dead.

"I'm an optimist," DeCrow said. "I don't think you can kill feminism. It's here to stay."

Medill freshman Kristin Maun said she was impressed with this message as well as the speaker. "I am very inspired by Karen DeCrow," she said. "To hear her say (the movement) is alive and well is a great comfort to me."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/06/national/main671958.shtml

Same-Sex Marriage In New York

Thanks to a trial judge's ruling in New York, we now can see more clearly than before an outline of the contours of the legal debate over the constitutionality of same-sex marriages in America.

We can see some definition now because the judge made certain factual findings—undisputed by the defendant, New York City, and legal conclusions that now no doubt will pop up every time a judge anywhere has to tackle this issue.

This factual and legal record, or the beginnings of it, anyway, is far more important than the ruling itself. By its terms, the decision now applies only to marriage licenses issued by the City Clerk of New York City. And even New York Supreme Court Judge Doris Ling-Cohen knew that her decision would be appealed, which it will be by order of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and that it may not withstand the rigors of appellate review. But unless the appellate courts return the case to her for further development of the facts — an unlikely scenario — the record now is locked in. This alone makes this ruling notable and worth watching as it progresses on appeal.

In concluding that the right to marry the person of one's choosing is both a privacy right and a liberty right, the judge cited many ways in which she believes "the plaintiffs and their children suffer serious burdens by being excluded from civil marriage" under New York's Domestic Relations Law. Being able to register as "domestic partners" just isn't enough either, in her view. She cited US General Accounting Office figures that "identified 1049 federal laws in which benefits, rights and privileges are contingent on marital status."

As examples under state law, the judge cited the fact that the "plaintiffs couples may not own property by their entireties; file joint state income tax returns; obtain health insurance through a partner's coverage; obtain joint liability or homeowner's insurance; collect from a partner's pension benefits; have one partner of the two-women couples be the legal parent of the other partner's artificially inseminated child, without the expense of an adoption proceeding; invoke the spousal evidentiary privilege; recover damages for an injury to, or the wrongful death of, a partner; have the right to make important medical decisions for a partner in emergencies; inherit from a deceased partner's intestate estate; or determine a partner's funeral and burial arrangements."

Judge Ling-Cohen found that one of the same-sex couples "had to endure considerable expense, including hiring lawyers, and had their privacy invaded in the process." She acknowledged and paraphrased the testimony of the child of the marriage — conceived through anonymous sperm donation — who said via affidavit that "it is unfair that her parents cannot be married to each other and that it is wrong that she can have a legal relationship with each of her parents, but they cannot have the legal relationship of marriage to each other." In all respects, the judge found, "but the ability to marry, the relationships (of the plaintiffs) are typical of countless couples with the City and throughout the State...."

Based upon those facts, and citing the Supreme Court's rulings a generation ago that struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriage, the judge declared that any individual has the constitutional right to marry the person or his or her choice, whether or not society as a whole approves of that choice. From a 1965 Supreme Court Court ruling that struck down a Connecticut law that banned the sale of contraceptives, she culled the following language: "Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to a degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions."

After recognizing that same-sex couples have the same fundamental right to marry as anyone else, the judge then addressed New York's rationale for trying to preclude such marriages. "Moral disapproval of same-sex couples or of individual homosexuals is not a legitimate state purpose or a rational reason for depriving plaintiffs of their right to choose their spouse," the judge wrote. As for the rational that only opposite-sex marriages further a state interest in procreation, Judge Ling-Cohen noted that the Domestic Relations Law "does not bar women who are past child-bearing age to marry" and that there are "millions of lesbian mothers residing with their children in the United States..."

"Neither the defendant, nor (friends of the court) indicate how (marriage) would be diminished by allowing same-sex couples to marry," the judge continued, "nor how the marriages of opposite-sex couples will be adversely affected by allowing same-sex couples to marry." Finally, the judge turned New York's argument on its head. She wrote: "Excluding same-sex couples from marrying may, in fact, undermine the State's interest in providing optimal environments for child-rearing, in that children of those families are then not afforded the same legal, financial and health benefits that children of married couples receive."

The judge also rejected New York's argument that "if persons of the same sex are allowed to marry in New York, such persons and their children will encounter legal difficulties and disabilities that married persons of opposite sexes do not encounter, resulting from the failure of other States and the Federal government to recognize such marriages." You can't deprive someone of a fundamental constitutional right, the judge declared, simply because other jurisdictions haven't yet recognized. "Any conflicts plaintiffs may face if they travel out of State, or rights which they will not receive from the federal government pale beside the tremendous protections and rights that access to marriage would provide for plaintiffs and their families under this State's laws.."

Then the judge spent some time attacking the perception that civil marriage as it exists today in America has evolved little since the beginning of the Republic. "History demonstrates that marriage is not a stagnant institution," the judge noted, and to say that "marriage must remain a heterosexual institution because that is what it historically has been" represents "circular reasoning, not analysis." Marriage used to involve "coverture," the judge wrote, a legal doctrine whereby the "very being or legal existence of the women" was "suspended during the marriage, or at least incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband...." Then wives were allowed to retain separate property. Then came no-fault divorce laws. In the judge's view, clearly a controversial one, same-sex marriage is just another step along a path of progress.

Many judges around the country, and around New York, will agree with the legal reasoning used in the decision. And many will not. But this ruling now sets a template for future rulings, from New York's appellate courts and perhaps as well from judges in other jurisdictions. Judges who want to prohibit same-sex marriages will have to get around the Supreme Court's ruling on anti-miscegenation statutes. In this scientific age of insemination, they will have to get around the fact that men and women can find ways to procreate outside of marriage that were undreamed of a century ago. They will have to get around the equal protection argument that posits that the government cannot discriminate against someone based solely upon their sexual orientation.

The legal battle over same-sex marriage is still much closer to its start than to its end. In fact, it may still be raging decades from now, much like the debate over abortion rights lingers on a generation after Roe v. Wade. So get used to these arguments and get used to debates over these sets of facts. They are going to be with us, and about us, for a long, long time to come.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=478984&page=1

Cable Companies Provide Porn While Funding Politicians by JAKE TAPPER and AVERY MILLER

While its previous owners considered adult entertainment "immoral," Adelphia Communications Corp., the country's fifth-largest cable television provider, last week became the first to offer hard-core adult films on pay-per-view to its subscribers.

"It's a very lucrative source of funds," said Dennis McAlpine, a media and entertainment industry analyst. "The cable companies and the satellite companies are programming agnostics in the sense that they don't care what the programming is. It's what the viewers want to see."

Viewers can watch such sexually explicit movies in the Hilton and Marriott hotel chains on video services like LodgeNet or on "On Command," which is owned by Liberty Media, formerly a part of AT&T; at home via DirecTV, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp; or via virtually every cable company, including Cox, Time Warner and Comcast.


'A Really Smart Business Decision'

Adelphia's programming decision is being applauded by the adult film industry.

"I think they made a really smart business decision," said Tim Connelly, publisher of Adult Video News, the trade journal of the adult entertainment industry. "So today Adelphia, tomorrow Wal-Mart."

While the corporations generate millions in profits from providing adult content, their political contributions are often given to those elected, in no small part, because of their stance on "moral values."

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Comcast Cable has given millions in political donations since 1998. The national Republican Party committees are its biggest organizational recipient, with donations totaling $851,000. President Bush is its biggest individual recipient with $109,000 in donations.

Adelphia has given $166,000 to Republican committees, $17,000 to conservative Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., and $12,000 to Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., one of the most conservative members of the Senate.

"I always admired the fact that [previous Adelphia owner] John Rigas had the courage to stand up and say no to the adult porn industry, even when it may have cost him potential profits," Peterson told ABC News. "I am disappointed that the new leadership didn't have the courage to continue the policy of putting our young people ahead of their bottom line."

Santorum would not comment on Adelphia's decision.

"Maybe the Republicans will be a little more forthcoming about it now," said Connelly. "They certainly don't have any problem taking the money from it."

http://www.penelopes.org/xbreve.php3?id_article=5960

Le SIDA tue les afro-américaines

En 2003, le taux de contamination par le virus du SIDA des femmes noires américaines était 20 fois supérieur à celui des femmes blanches et 5 fois supérieur à celui de des femmes de la communauté hispanique. En 1994, les femmes noires et hispaniques représentaient 75% des nouvelles contaminations et 85% neuf ans plus tard. De nombreux facteurs socio-économiques sont avancés par les experts pour expliquer cette surreprésentation (fort taux de chômage, pauvreté, allers-retours fréquents de leurs partenaires en prison, appartenance à des réseaux de sociabilité au fort pourcentage de personnes contaminées…). En attendant, et alors que le virus du SIDA fait des ravages dans cette communauté, rien ne semble véritablement entrepris pour enrayer cette propagation.
Source : Washington Post

http://www.alternet.org/story/21419/

Battle for Choice Rages Through States by Cynthia L. Cooper

In Michigan, the legislative session had only been open a matter of hours on Jan. 12 before Rebekah Warren, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Michigan, was wrangling with the first anti-choice bill, a proposal to ban embryonic stem cell research.

"Michigan has one of the most active and best funded right-to-life movements," said Warren. "Things start here. We see bills introduced in Michigan popping up later around the country."

One law enacted in Michigan last year, despite a veto by the governor, redefines the time of "legal birth" – formerly considered to be when a healthy infant is brought into the world – to a fetal stage. As a result, abortions in the first eight weeks of pregnancy could be prosecuted as homicide, legal experts have told Women's eNews.

On March 1, three national pro-choice legal organizations filed a lawsuit in federal court in Michigan, asking the court to strike down the law, scheduled to take effect on March 30. The groups – the Center for Reproductive Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood Federation of America, all based in New York – argue that the law is unconstitutional because it fails to protect women's health and encroaches on a woman's right to make a decision about an abortion even in the first trimester.

Merging on Virginia Capital

Early last month in Virginia, meanwhile, 300 people, decked out with orange neon "pro-family, pro-choice" stickers and handmade signs, joined the Virginia Pro-Choice Coalition and converged on the state capital of Richmond on Feb 3.

Inside committee rooms and outside on the streets, they declared their opposition to proposals by state legislators that will further thwart women's reproductive choices.

"There were especially a lot of young people from all over the state. It was astonishing," said Marjorie Signer, legislative vice president of Virginia NOW, which joined in the day of pro-choice lobbying.

As these pro-choice lobbyists looked on, one committee rejected a bill that would jeopardize the operation of abortion clinics by requiring expensive and unnecessary physical modifications. Two other bills on the same topic were later defeated, as well.

Deluge of Anti-Choice Proposals

Across the states, pro-choice activists are fighting against a deluge of anti-abortion proposals.

As of Feb. 1, 100 pieces of anti-choice legislation had already been introduced in the states, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research and advocacy organization in New York. In 2004, 714 anti-choice bills were proposed in the states and 29 were enacted, according to a January report by NARAL Pro-Choice America, based in Washington, D.C.

"There are people who don't accept a legal right to abortion and want to make it more difficult for people to access safe, quality care," said Vicki Saporta, president and CEO of the pro-choice National Abortion Federation, a national association of abortion providers that monitors state activities. "Each year, they try to pass legislation to restrict or undermine women's right to choose."

This year, states are witnessing a number of new anti-choice proposals that would give a fetus "personhood" rights equal to those of a living child or that require women undergoing an abortion to accede to a separate injection of anesthesia for the fetus or, alternatively, to sign a statement that a fetus feels pain, a point that lacks consensus among medical experts.

In Montana, an anti-abortion bill was introduced requiring death certificates for fetuses. In North Dakota, a proposal states that a woman who takes the "abortion pill," can be prosecuted for murder. (The proposal refers to mifepristone, which is marketed as Mifeprex and approved by the Food and Drug Administration.)

A bill in South Dakota would make all abortions illegal unless a woman faces severe health risks or her life is in danger.

"The way this is happening across the country, I think it's pretty scary, actually," said Warren, the activist from Michigan.

States Are New Legal Battleground

Anti-choice proposals began spreading through state legislatures after 1992 when the U.S. Supreme Court permitted states wide discretion to regulate abortion, without completely outlawing it.

Between 1995 and 2004, states enacted 409 anti-choice legislative measures, according to NARAL.

In some states today, women must wait 24 hours to get an abortion, teens may have to tell their parents and doctors and clinicians and hospitals may refuse to provide abortions.

These barriers at the state level have been reinforced by efforts to pass restrictions on abortion that extend to all U.S. citizens. Two years ago, the U.S. Congress passed a federal abortion ban on abortions in the second and third trimesters, but the law has been stopped from going into effect by the rulings of three federal courts that found it to be unconstitutional. The Bush administration is now appealing those decisions.

The five most-common targets of current anti-choice legislation, said NARAL, are: restricting teenager access; requiring the delivery of negative literature to a woman seeking an abortion and applying a waiting period; subjecting abortion facilities to onerous regulations; promoting abstinence-only education and approving the refusal of reproductive health care.

Instant Outrage in Virginia

One 2005 proposal in Virginia caused instant outrage. The bill would have subjected women to arrest for not reporting a miscarriage or other "fetal death" to the local police within 12 hours. After an internet alert by Democracy for Virginia, a group of activists who first coalesced to campaign for Howard Dean, thousands of women, including those who had suffered miscarriages, sent e-mail messages to bill sponsor John Cosgrove. Cosgrove withdrew the bill, saying its intention was misunderstood. (He said the bill was intended to apply to situations of "full-term babies who were abandoned shortly after birth" and not miscarriages.)

Also stopped in its tracks was a proposal by Virginia Delegate Robert Marshall to make the gynecological procedure of menstrual extraction, a low-tech method of removing shedding menstrual tissue directly from the uterus, into a felony unless a pregnancy test were conducted first. Other of Marshall's ideas, including one subjecting colleges to potential lawsuits for distributing emergency contraception, were also sidelined by the time the legislative session ended on Feb. 28, according to Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia.

Meanwhile, a bill introduced in Kansas could affect women with difficult pregnancies throughout the country. Because third-trimester abortions are illegal or inaccessible in a majority of states, many women with life and health-endangering conditions travel to Wichita, where Dr. George Tiller operates one of the few clinics that can help them. The proposed law would prohibit abortions after 15 weeks except at hospitals or ambulatory surgical centers. The proposal threatens Tiller's practice, said Julie Burkhart, executive director of ProKanDo, a political action committee founded by Tiller.

"I think about how many women will be affected and how abortion and reproductive rights save women's lives," said Burkhart, who lobbies against the legislation daily. "That's what keeps me going."

Pro-choice activists are fighting a similar law passed last year in Texas, where other anti-choice bills are also up for debate. One would permit pharmacists to refuse women's prescriptions for birth-control pills or emergency contraception. Another would make it harder for young women to get abortions by restricting how judges hear petitions from them, if parental notification – required in Texas – is impossible.

By rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, minors who do feel that they cannot safely tell their parents about a pregnancy are entitled to seek a "judicial bypass," by which a judge can confidentially approve their request for an abortion. The new proposal would add reporting requirements for judges and would identify those who grant judicial bypasses and the circumstances of the cases before them.