Womenstake

It's a No-Brainer – Healthy Women Need Contraception

by Jen Swedish, Health Law Fellow 
National Women’s Law Center

This post is part of a daily series for National Women's Health Week. 

As we celebrate National Women’s Health Week, we’d be remiss if we didn’t emphasize the importance of women’s reproductive health to their overall well-being.

Access to reproductive health services is essential for healthy women. Yesterday’s blog post encouraged women to get regular check-ups, and experts recommend routine pelvic exams, Pap tests, and screening for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). In addition to routine gynecological care, reproductive health care includes family planning services, abortion, sterilization, and infertility treatment – that is, services related to women’s ability to have children.

A woman who wants only two children must use contraceptives for roughly three decades of her life. Yet, at a time when one in five women age 15 to 44 is uninsured and many more are underinsured, many women simply cannot afford to pay for contraceptives on their own. According to the Guttmacher Institute, approximately 17 million women are in need of publicly-subsidized contraceptive services and supplies, and this number is likely to increase even more as a result as of the growing population of uninsured Americans and the recent rise in the cost of birth control.

The "Matriarch of Interracial Marriage" and Other Groundbreaking Female Plaintiffs

by Jen Swedish, Health Law Fellow 
National Women’s Law Center

The recent death of Mildred Loving, hailed by the Associated Press as the “matriarch of interracial marriage,” struck me as a good opportunity to blog about women who have used the court system to challenge discrimination. Mrs. Loving, a black woman, and her husband, a white man, made history in 1967, when their lawsuit led the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage. 

Though certainly a trailblazer, Mrs. Loving was by no means the first woman to use the court system to fight discrimination. That distinction may belong to Myra Bradwell, who in 1873 challenged Illinois’s denial of her application to practice law because she was a woman. Unfortunately for Ms. Bradwell, however, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Illinois, and one justice who defended the ruling claimed that women’s “timidity and delicacy” rendered them unfit for work outside the home. 

Blech!  Thankfully, it’s 2008, and women like me are allowed to practice law despite our “delicacy.” Of course, many women still face discrimination solely based on our gender, including lower pay for the same work. Lilly Ledbetter is another amazing woman who attempted to use the court system to challenge discrimination. After learning that she had received lower pay than her male colleagues for over two decades, Ms. Ledbetter sued her former employer, but the Supreme Court ruled against her, saying that she hadn’t sued in time. Not one to give up, Ms. Ledbetter brought her challenge to the U.S. Congress – you’ve probably heard of the bill named after her, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would reverse the Supreme Court’s decision. The House passed the bill last summer, but two weeks ago, the Senate couldn’t reach the 60 votes necessary to schedule a vote on the bill. Ms. Ledbetter’s fight is not yet over, however; tell your Senators that the bill deserves fair consideration on the Senate floor.

Ms. Ledbetter, Ms. Bradwell, and Mrs. Loving are just a few of the groundbreaking female plaintiffs whose courage to fight discrimination through the legal system we all benefit from!

Unequal Pay = Unequal Access to Health Care

by Jen Swedish, Health Law Fellow
National Women’s Law Center

Earning only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn means that quality health care is unaffordable for many women. Because women use more health care services on average than men yet earn lower incomes, their out-of-pocket costs are higher. As a result, women are more likely to avoid needed health care because of cost, opting not to see a doctor or specialist, fill a prescription, or get a medical test or treatment when needed. And, when women do obtain the health care they need, they are more likely than men to have problems paying for their care.

As my colleagues regularly share in their weekly series of posts, health care reform is an especially important issue for women, and proposals for reform can make great strides in helping women obtain and afford health insurance. On today, Equal Pay Day, though, I wonder: would women need health care reform as badly if only they were paid the same as men?

Who May Miss the Bus on an Omnibus Appropriations Bill?

By Jen Swedish, Health Law Fellow
National Women's Law Center

Lately, Congress and the White House have been engaged in a seemingly never-ending battle over federal spending for fiscal year 2008.  As Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) recently explained to The Washington Post, the major disagreements have to do with the amount of federal money going to the war versus the amount of funding allocated to domestic spending.  According to Senator Byrd, "It is extraordinary that the president would request an 11 percent increase in the Department of Defense, a 12 percent increase in foreign aid and $195 billion in emergency funding for the war while asserting that a 4.7 percent increase for domestic programs is fiscally irresponsible."

One of the domestic spending bills recently passed by Congress included a $28 million increase for the Title X family planning program, which gives millions of low-income women access to contraceptives.  Unfortunately, the president vetoed these needed investments, and Congress failed to override his veto by two votes.

Now, as Congress contemplates options to complete the FY08 appropriations process, including a huge omnibus bill that would group all remaining spending bills together, the amount allocated to Title X will likely decrease – certainly below the $311 million Congress initially approved, and possibly all the way down to the FY07 amount of $283 million.  Flat-funding the program would be devastating, as Title X desperately needs to address the growing demand for publicly-supported contraceptive care. After years of no increase in the level of funding, the family planning program has been unable to keep up with inflation, medical advances, and a growing population of uninsured Americans.

Maintaining the $28 million increase for Title X would help keep the promise made by President Nixon when he signed the program into law in 1970, saying “No American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.”  Nearly 17 million low-income and uninsured women are in need of publicly-funded contraceptive care.  Urge your member of Congress to ensure that these women don’t miss the bus on the omnibus spending bill.

Texas Ranks Number One in the Nation for Abstinence-Only Funding and Births to Teen Mothers. What’s Wrong With This Picture?

by Jen Swedish, Health Fellow
National Women’s Law Center

Texas presents a bit of a conundrum — despite receiving the most federal funding for abstinence-only programs, the state has incredibly high teenage pregnancy rates. At over $17 million, Texas receives more than 10 percent of the total federal funds for abstinence-only programs and nearly twice as much as the next-best funded state, Florida. Over the weekend, the Lufkin Daily News reported that Texas leads the nation in births to young women aged 15 to 19 and in repeat births, that is, births to teens who were already mothers. Clearly, despite the huge outpouring of federal funds, the abstinence-only approach has failed young women in Texas.

Abstinence-only programs harm young women by censoring important health information about contraceptives. Federal guidelines prohibit abstinence-only programs from providing teenagers with any information about contraception except its failure rates, and even this information is often greatly exaggerated. According to a report by Representative Henry Waxman, 11 of the 13 most popular curricula used in federally-funded abstinence-only programs contain “major errors and distortions of public health information,” including exaggerated reports of contraceptive failure rates and rates of disease transmission.

Undermining a young woman’s confidence in contraception threatens her health and increases her chance of becoming pregnant when she does become sexually active. High school students in Texas are having sex at higher rates than their cohorts nationwide, but they report lower usage of condoms and birth control pills, putting young women at even greater risk of sexually transmitted infection and unintended pregnancy. A sexually active young woman who does not use contraception has a 90 percent chance of becoming pregnant within one year, and young women aged 15-19 who do not use a contraceptive at first sex are twice as likely to become teen mothers as those who use a method.

Yet, folks in Texas and in the U.S. Congress still believe that we shouldn’t provide students with information about contraception in addition to abstinence. What’s wrong with this picture?

(ETA: Check on more on this from the Daily Women's Health Policy Report.)

Why Our Private Eyes Will be Watching Dr. Orr

by Jen Swedish, Health Fellow
National Women’s Law Center

Three days ago, Steph Sterling wrote about Dr. Susan Orr, President Bush’s recent appointee to oversee the Title X family planning program, saying we’d be watching to make sure she doesn’t make any mischief in the coming months. You might have thought to yourself: With just over a year left in Dr. Orr’s tenure, just how much mischief could she really make? As it turns out, quite a lot!

As the New York Times recently reported, every presidential administration uses the tail-end of its time in office to engage in hasty rule-making. Often, the last-minute regulations issued are so controversial that they wouldn’t have passed a vote in Congress. For example, after Congress refused to limit Title X funds legislatively, at the end of President Reagan’s second term, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) instituted sweeping changes to the program via regulation. These regulations imposed the domestic “gag rule” that restricted Title X clinics from even discussing abortion as an option with patients. Similarly, we assume the Bush Administration is hard at work, writing new regulations it hopes will leave a lasting impression on the country. As the new Acting Deputy Assistant for Population Affairs at DHHS, Dr. Orr may participate in this last-minute rule-making.

Because Dr. Orr, an outspoken opponent of contraceptive coverage, will be leading and potentially making rules regarding a program intended to provide the nation’s low-income women with contraception, we plan to keep a close eye on her. And so, I’d like to dedicate Hall & Oates’s “Private Eyes” especially to Dr. Orr:

You can’t escape [our]
Private eyes
They’re watching you
They see your every move
Private eyes
They’re watching you
Private eyes
They’re watching you watching you watching you watching you