Evergreene Digest A Journal of Progress for the Rest of Us

Immigrant women face particularly challenging and sometimes horrendous scenarios, because they are female.
A Need For – And A Fear of - Help

Amie Newman, RH Reality Check

With the recent passage of possibly the most far-reaching state immigration law in the country, Arizona and the immigrants who live there are on everyone’s minds. Among many extreme policies, the law allows for local law enforcement to detain anyone about whom they have a “reasonable cause” to believe may be in the state illegally. Reasonable cause is left up to the discrimination (no pun intended) of each individual police officer – it could be the color of one’s skin or someone’s accent. As Silvia Henriquez, the executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health writes, “The law goes beyond encouraging racial profiling; it demands local police seek out “foreign characteristics” in order to hunt down immigrants without documents…” That is, it also requires residents to carry their immigration papers at all times; or face state criminal penalties if one is caught.

Rape culture is alive and well on sports radio.

Kristin Schall, The Socialist Magazine

Rape culture is alive and well on sports radio. On April 16, 2010, the commentary of the predominately male fans who called into Mike Francesa‘s show on WFAN, a sports talk radio station in New York City, was dominated by discussion of the sexual assault allegations that have been made against Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger. The Super Bowl MVP is accused of exposing his genitals to a twenty year old woman in a Georgia night club and then following her into a bathroom where she had sought refuge from his advances and having sex with her despite her telling him that it was “not OK.” Roethlisberger denies the charges and the WFAN callers have rallied to his defense.

• In Oklahoma, it's now legal to keep health information from patients in order to make their reproductive decisions for them.
• Rachel Maddow: Invasive OK law skirts constitution with trauma
• Abortion War Heats Up In The States

Nicole Belle, Crooks and Liars

Amazing that the party allegedly for less government intrusion in our lives finds no problem spearheading this kind of heinous legislation:

Oklahoma just passed the country's strictest law on pre-abortion ultrasounds, along with another law that basically allows doctors to lie to pregnant women.

In addition to a law that requires women view ultrasounds before their abortions, Oklahoma now shields doctors who hide information about birth defects from malpractice suits.

Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet

Oklahoma is not a hospitable place for a woman seeking to assert her reproductive rights. There are only three licensed abortion providers in the whole state, and local legislators appear fixated on narrowing residents' already-limited abortion options by passing one restrictive, demeaning, and almost certainly unconstitutional law after another.

On Tuesday (April 4), the Oklahoma state legislature overrode the governor's vetoes on two such bills and made them law. One requires that a woman seeking an abortion must look at her ultrasound -- the screen must be in her line of sight (she has the option of covering her eyes) -- as the health care provider narrates the state of the fetus. The other law prevents a woman from suing her doctor for withholding information about potential birth defects.

More...

• Since President Obama signed health care reform into law, a significant number of states have taken advantage of the law's carefully negotiated abortion provisions to restrict access to abortion coverage.
• Health Care Bill Throws Women Under the Bus on Reproductive Rights

Zaid Jilani and others, Think Progress

Since President Obama signed health care reform into law, a significant number of states have taken advantage of the law's carefully negotiated abortion provisions to restrict access to abortion coverage. The Nelson amendment attached to the health care bill not only prohibits public dollars from being used to finance abortions and requires insurers that choose to offer abortion coverage to collect a separate check from policy holders, it also specifically reasserts states' right to ban private insurers from providing abortion coverage to women within the state-based exchanges.

As a result, states have used the Nelson language to reignite the abortion wars. As Center for American Progress Action Fund's Director of Women's Health and Rights Program Jessica Arons explained, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) "opened the door for them to legislate away private insurance coverage of abortion and the states are walking right through. This is no longer about public funding for abortion (and in fact, it never really was); this is about making abortion impossible to obtain for women of all means."