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Womenstake, NWLC's Blog

Women of Childbearing Age: Take Your Talents Elsewhere

Posted by Jill C. Morrison, Senior Counsel | Posted on: February 02, 2012 at 01:30 pm

We are thrilled that the Department of Health and Human Services HHS has upheld its decision to exempt only a narrow class of religious employers from the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage requirement. This means most insurance plans are required to provide coverage for all FDA approved contraceptives with no co-pays, deductibles or cost-sharing. But not everyone is breaking out the sparkling cider. You might have noticed that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church is pretty displeased. It is important to note that these objections come from the hierarchy, and not Catholic women (or men) themselves, as 98% of them have used contraceptives that are deemed forbidden by the Vatican.

In all the hoopla however, you may have missed this priceless quote from the Rev. William Grogan, bioethics chairman of the Chicago Archdiocese, in a trade magazine called Modern Healthcare. Rev. Grogan believes that women should know that their Catholic-affiliated employers (such as hospitals and universities) have an objection to birth control, and should expect these religious institutions to impose their beliefs on their workers. Rev. Grogan said, "If women want those types of medications, they shouldn't seek employment with organizations which are publicly known to be opposed to their use."

In issuing the contraceptive coverage rule, HHS gave clear guidance on exactly when workers can be expected to follow their employers' religious dictates.

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My Health Is Not a Pork Chop

Posted by Dania Palanker, Senior Health Policy Advisor | Posted on: February 02, 2012 at 11:00 am

I don't expect pork chops at a Jewish barbecue. I also never expected pork chops in my law school cafeteria. What does that have to do with my access to health care? It's a long story...

I decided to go to law school just months after being diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Scared, in pain, and facing a possible progression of my condition, I realized if I was going to go to law school, I had to go now. I started to research law schools and quickly realized something — I didn't really have a choice of schools.

The fibromyalgia diagnosis meant I couldn't give up my health insurance — student insurance may not have covered my needs. Keeping my health insurance meant I couldn't give up my job. Luckily, I lived in a metropolitan area with four top tier law schools offering part-time programs. Great! Except two of the schools were too far from work for me to make it on time for classes. So that leaves two options.

At this point, it's November 2003. I don't have time to study for the December LSAT exam, so I register for the February exam and plan to apply for the 2004-05 school year. Great! Except one of the two remaining schools won't accept the February exam for this application cycle. I could wait a year, but when you're terrified that you might wake up one day with so much pain that you will have to file for disability, a year is a very long time. So I apply to the remaining option.

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California Considers Cutting Child Care Assistance for 62,000 Children

Posted by Karen Schulman, Senior Policy Analyst | Posted on: February 01, 2012 at 05:21 pm

With California facing a $9.2 billion budget gap, programs that provide critical supports for children and families are at risk of major cuts. Governor Jerry Brown has proposed to reduce funding for child care and development programs by $517 million (28 percent), eliminating 62,000 children from these programs.

The proposed cuts would come on top of the significant cuts to child care and development programs the state has made over the past few years and exacerbate existing gaps.

Funding for child care and development programs has been reduced by nearly $1 billion since 2008, which has resulted in 100,000 fewer children able to participate in these programs. Nearly 190,000 children are already on the state's waiting list for child care assistance. In addition, California made its previously refundable child and dependent care tax credit nonrefundable as of Tax Year 2011, cutting tax assistance for low- and moderate-income families with child care expenses by more than two-thirds.

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Save the Screenings (And Women's Lives Too)

Posted by Alison Channon, Program Assistant | Posted on: February 01, 2012 at 02:50 pm

Last September, my sister marked the 6th anniversary of her breast cancer diagnosis when she was only 24. Thanks to knowledge about self-exams and a kick in the butt from our family's medical history, my sister knew she needed to see a doctor. Thanks to excellent medical insurance, she was able to catch her cancer early, and pursue the course of treatment her doctors recommended.

My sister was lucky. She was employed full-time with great insurance. Seeing a doctor for a breast exam wasn't out of her reach financially and thank goodness, neither was surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy.

But for too many women, the medical treatment my sister received is an economic impossibility. Nineteen million women had no health insurance in 2010, and in 2005, when my sister was diagnosed, the Affordable Care Act wasn’t there to allow adults under 26 to stay on their parents’ health plans. As of yesterday, the life-saving treatment my sister received is even more out of reach for low-income and uninsured women.

That's because yesterday the Planned Parenthood Federation of American announced that Susan G. Komen for the Cure has withdrawn its financial support, cutting off 19 affiliates from grant money supporting breast cancer screening. In Orange County, California, Komen money supported the local affiliate's initiative to provide breast health education to Vietnamese women. In Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, $165,000 slashed from the Rocky Mountain affiliate's budget means hundreds of women won't get screened for breast cancer. And in Clallam County, Washington, losing Komen money means losing funding for the local affiliate’s mobile clinic that provided breast cancer screening for 400 under-served and isolated women last year.

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"After All, Girls Only Play with a Soft Ball"

Posted by Brittany Papalia, Intern | Posted on: February 01, 2012 at 01:11 pm

"After all, girls only play with a soft ball." That's what Dennis Papalia, the assistant coach for the girls' varsity softball team, overheard. In 1973 Papalia was asked by a friend to help coach the girls' softball team. It was then that he had realized the injustices that his school district was causing.

Because the school refused to fund a JV team, the varsity team was larger than most, but because the boys' baseball team had first priority on the gym and playing fields, the varsity softball team had difficult times trying to figure out times and places to practice. At that time, the varsity softball coach made $333 a year, while the ninth grade basketball coach made $1,000 a year.

Eventually Dennis was able to form a JV team, but the team's funding was little to none. At one point he had to ask friends of his who weren't even teachers or faculty to help umpire the games because the girls' teams couldn't even afford to pay professionals. Sometimes practices would have to be dedicated to stenciling uniforms that the girls had brought in on their own, because the school wouldn't give them any.

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Tell Congress: Make Millionaires and Corporations Pay Their Fair Share

Posted by Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security | Posted on: January 25, 2012 at 03:52 pm

In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama emphasized a vital point: that unfair, and even counter-productive, tax breaks for corporations and the very wealthy shortchange needed investments for women and their families.

Tell your Members of Congress to make millionaires and corporations pay their fair share, to protect vital programs and to create jobs for the millions of struggling Americans who need them.

Instead of showering tax breaks on the wealthy, the oil and gas industry and on corporations that ship American jobs overseas, Congress needs to:

Protect vital programs: Women and their families depend on federal programs to protect their health, get quality child care, attend college, and meet their basic needs during difficult times and as they age. We need to protect vital programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, child care, Head Start, and Food Stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

Create jobs: Unemployment remains painfully high, and while job growth has started to pick up, millions of women and men are still struggling to find jobs. We must extend federal emergency unemployment benefits to help people who are hurting now and invest in programs that put women and men back to work.

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Protect Roe - Join the Virtual March

Posted by Judy Waxman, Vice President for Health and Reproductive Rights | Posted on: January 20, 2012 at 10:05 am

Ninety-two. That's the number of anti-abortion measures passed into law across the U.S. in 2011. And in case you're wondering, yes, that's a record — in fact, it's over 2.5 times the previous record. Needless to say, this is NOT cause for celebration.

Instead, this weekend we're celebrating the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized a woman's right to choose. But women's access to abortion has never been more in jeopardy — so for the next week, we're partnering with organizations across the country to host a virtual march and demand that our elected officials protect women's access to safe and legal abortion.

For years, anti-choice advocates have tried to chip away at Roe at both the state and federal levels. And if last year is any guide, they're making progress. Their ultimate goal: overturn Roe and force women into the back alleys again to obtain illegal and unsafe abortion. We can't let them take us back to those days — the cost to our lives and well-being is just too high.

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Media Spotlight on Child Care, Finally

Posted by Karen Schulman, Senior Policy Analyst | Posted on: January 19, 2012 at 04:40 pm

Child care is an everyday concern for families, but on most days it is overlooked by the media. In the past few months, though, that's started to change, as the New York Times, AP, and CNN have all done stories about the child care funding cuts occurring across the country. These stories, which include quotes from NWLC's Director of Leadership and Public Policy, Helen Blank, and data from NWLC's October 2011 report on state child care assistance policies, examine child care cuts and the resulting hardships for low-income families unable to receive help paying for child care.

In addition, the New York Times wrote about child care for parents working evenings, nights, and early morning hours, and the Huffington Post published a column on the decline in the availability of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds for child care.

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