Anti-Choicers Fight to Defund Planned Parenthood

In the Wall Street Journal, Stephanie Simon reports on a new anti-choice crusade to block public funding of Planned Parenthood.  The funding is used to subsidize contraception, STI testing and education services, for low-income women and teens.  Anti-choicers are working to portray Planned Parenthood as flush with cash.  Writes Simon,

...the new lobbying effort, backed by conservative Christian groups such as the Family Research Council, focuses more on economic than moral concerns. The campaign paints Planned Parenthood as a wealthy organization that doesn't need taxpayer help. Planned Parenthood reported record revenue and a $115 million budget surplus last year, and it is building a network of elegant health centers to attract middle-class clients.

Planned Parenthood responds that "its health-care services fill a critical need, especially now, when so many people are losing their jobs -- and their health insurance."

With a pro-choice administration taking office, anti-choicers make it clear that their activism will turn local:

With a Democratic president soon to take office, "we're very limited as to what we can do" on a federal level, said Thomas McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council. "But on the local level, there are a lot of victories to be had." The group has been courting elected officials who they think would be receptive in states including Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky.

Letters to the Editor Criticize Douthat Op-Ed

Letters to the New York Times criticized Ross Douthat's recent op-ed on abortion politics in that newspaper as "out of touch" and "a ruse." Douthat, who claimed the anti-choice stance of his party was not to blame for its 2008 electoral losses, characterized the anti-choice movement as willing to compromise and the pro-choice movement as absolutist.  Wrote co-chair of the Republican Majority for Choice, Jennifer Blei Stockman,

The leaders of the anti-choice movement need to understand that pro-choice Republicans are not absolutists. The inflexibility of social fundamentalist leaders and the inability of the party and the McCain-Palin campaign to acknowledge that the G.O.P. and the country have changed since the 2000 and 2004 elections contributed significantly to the party's loss.

Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health board member (and RH Reality Check contributor) Dr. Paula Hilliard writes,

Ross Douthat is out of touch with this country when he characterizes abortion bans and mandatory parental involvement as "compromise."... Overturning Roe v. Wade would not be a compromise, but a repudiation of what Americans believe about abortion.

And reader Rita Hermansky writes,

An unexpected, unwanted pregnancy can be mentally, emotionally and physically devastating for a woman. It can be a financial catastrophe (more than half of all teenage mothers end up on welfare) and can result in a woman's death. Exactly which part of this agonizing ordeal is Ross Douthat willing to compromise on?

A Public Works Program for Men Only?

In the New York Times, commentator Linda Hirshman questions how many of the 2.5 million new jobs President-Elect Obama has pledged to create will go to female workers.  Writes Hirshman,

The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force.  It turns out that green jobs are almost entirely male as well, especially in the alternative energy area. A broad study by the United States Conference of Mayors found that half the projected new jobs in any green area are in engineering, a field that is only 12 percent female, or in the heavily male professions of law and consulting; the rest are in such traditional male areas as manufacturing, agriculture and forestry. And like companies that build roads, alternative energy firms also employ construction workers and engineers.

Hirshman recommends that Obama concentrate public spending in the "most important infrastructure - human capital" - where women are largely employed.

Supreme Court Today To Hear Pregnancy Discrimination Case

The Supreme Court today hears argument in the pregnancy discrimination case AT&T vs. Hulteen, in which plaintiffs argue that their leave taken for pregnancy should count for "service credits" on par with other kinds of disability leave, even if taken prior to passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. In a release, the Center for Reproductive Rights argues,

The Center for Reproductive Rights wrote a brief that informs the Court of substantive equality principles, arguing that prior to 1976 (before PDA was enacted), it was the uniform view of the federal courts of appeals and the EEOC that discrimination based on pregnancy constituted sex discrimination within the meaning of Title VII (which protects individuals against employment discrimination on the bases of race and color, as well as national origin, sex, and religion).

PDA, enacted in 1978, only confirmed that this view of Title VII was correct.

Watch the Oral Argument In Favor of Marriage Equality in Iowa!

You can watch the webcast of the Iowa marriage equality case oral argument here and you can read briefs from the case here (hat tip to Nan Hunter).