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The Abortion Fight Goes On – Right Here in San Diego

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Forced birthers intimidate and shame women at health clinic

The shouts of the “religious” zealots ring in my ears as I help escort patients from their cars to the front door of a local family planning clinic that provides abortion services one morning per week.

Armed with earplugs to hand out to patients who don’t wish to hear the abuse, I take the elevator up  to stand by the door of the clinic. Today the zealots are carrying large signs with graphic photos of bloody aborted fetuses and words claiming that Jesus saves and babies are not body parts. The good news is the “preacher” with a voice louder than the decibel limit who bellows out the scripture is not here today.
  [Read more…]

World of Wakanda: A New Marvel Comic Series

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By South OB Girl / OB Rag

While thousands of people were attending Comic-Con last week, Marvel Comics announced the release of a new comic book series on Friday July 22. The superheroes will be women. And the series is being written by women. George Gene Gustines, writing in The New York Times July 23rd issue, did an interesting review of the series, entitled, “Marvel Shines a Spotlight on Women.”

Wakanda is a fictional African country, and the world of the Marvel series, Black Panther. World of Wakanda will be a companion series. And will premiere in November.

The current Black Panther series is written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, author and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. The new comic will be written by two women, who are writing comics for the first time: the feminist writer Roxane Gay and the poet Yona Harvey.   [Read more…]

How to Win Workplace Equality? Invest in Neighborhoods Where Women Need It Most

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Women make up nearly half of the workforce, yet old-fashioned policies keep them unequal partners. To remedy this, we must first ensure basic opportunities—like making sure girls can get to school.

By Angela Glover Blackwell / Yes! Magazine

Shelia Williams, a single mother of five in Memphis, Tennessee, was putting herself through college when the city cut bus routes within the low-income, primarily Black neighborhood where she and her family lived. She almost failed her classes and had to derail her career goals simply because she couldn’t get to school.

Determined to finish school, Williams co-founded the Memphis Bus Riders Union, which successfully advocated to restore bus service. They did this by showing the Memphis Area Transit Authority how essential public transit routes were to opportunity for low-income residents in the city. Today, Williams is a member of the Memphis Area Transit Authority Board of Commissioners and remains an avid advocate for public transit in her city.

Williams’ case is an inspiring story, but this was a battle she shouldn’t have had to wage in the first place.   [Read more…]

Early Puberty In Girls Is Becoming Epidemic and Getting Worse

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Girls with early onset puberty face a number of mental and physical health risks.

By Martha Rosenberg / AlterNet

Padded bras for kindergarteners with growing breasts to make them more comfortable? Sixteen percent of U.S. girls experiencing breast development by the age of 7? Thirty percent by the age of 8? Clearly something is affecting the hormones of U.S. girls—a phenomenon also seen in other developed countries. Girls in poorer countries seem to be spared—until they move to developed countries.

No scientists dispute that precocious or early-onset puberty is on the rise but they do not agree on the reasons. Is it bad diets and lack of exercise that cause growing obesity? Is it soft drinks themselves, even when not linked to obesity? Is it the common chemicals known as endocrine disrupters that exert estrogen-like effects (and also cause obesity)? Is it the many legal, unlabeled hormones used in the U.S. to fatten livestock? Some researchers even believe precocious puberty could be triggered by sociological factors like having no father in the home or even stress.   [Read more…]

Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Targeted Regulation of Abortion Provider Law

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The Supreme Court’s 5-3 ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt will affect millions of women in several states. The case, arising from a Texas law, is the most important abortion rights case in a generation.

Justice Steven Breyer penned the majority opinion, which said in essence:

Both the admitting privileges and surgical center requirements place a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion, constitute an undue burden on abortion access, and thus violate the Constitution.

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LGBTQ Leaders Warn Against Islamophobic Incitement

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Sunday morning’s horrific mass shooting at an Orlando, Florida nightclub is being met with mourning, outrage, heartbreak and international solidarity, as well as words of caution against the unleashing of further cycles of violence through anti-Muslim and xenophobic incitement.

Approximately 50 people were killed and 53 wounded when a man opened fire at the Pulse club in the midst of Gay Pride month. The shooter has been identified as U.S. citizen Omar Mateen, who was killed by police.

Cindy Wiesner, a queer Latina Miami resident and national coordinator for Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, told AlterNet, “I am so saddened and angered by the senseless lives lost, people injured and a community that will be permanently marked by this. I worry about the fodder of hate and revenge that Trump and his kind will produce. Will he now opportunistically defend Latino people and LGBTQ people’s lives or are we just collateral damage?”   [Read more…]

Remembering Helen Chavez: ‘Are We a Union or Not?’

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She played a vital role with husband Cesar Chavez in birthing our country’s first enduring farm workers union

By United Farm Workers

After they were married in 1948, Cesar Chavez would return home after experiencing a fresh injustice toiling in the fields and tell his bride, Helen, “somebody’s got to do something about it.” Helen Chavez nurtured her husband’s dream of organizing farm workers. She and their eight small children gave up a middle class lifestyle in 1962, embracing a life of voluntary poverty to support her husband’s labors.

During the earliest years when he would sometimes return home to Delano, California after days on the road feeling alone and demoralized, not having recruited anyone into his new union, she would encourage him, saying, “Cesar, you have to have faith in God that what you’re doing is right.” He would feel better, go out and try again.

Helen Fabela Chavez, 88, who played a vital role helping her husband give birth to what became the first enduring farm workers union in U.S. history—and sustained him during the 31 years he led the United Farm Workers of America—passed away of natural causes on Monday, June 6 at San Joaquin Community Hospital in Bakersfield surrounded by many of her seven surviving children, 31 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.   [Read more…]

Despite Historic Achievement, Feminists Grapple with Clinton’s Deeply Troubling Record

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“As a feminist, I should feel a thrill right now. I grieve that I don’t,” lamented author and activist Naomi Klein.

By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

There is no doubt that history was made Tuesday night after Hillary Clinton sweptCalifornia, all but sealing her fate as the first woman to become a major party nominee for president.

Even before polls closed in the Golden State, the former secretary of state celebrated the moment at a Brooklyn rally, telling her supporters, “Thanks to you we’ve reached a milestone: the first time in our nation’s history that a woman will be a major party’s nominee.”   [Read more…]

Recall Petition for Judge of Stanford Rapist

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By Leslie Saltillo / Daily Kos

After writing a gripping account of her experience as a rape victim, and then reading that statement to her rapist in court on Thursday, 23-year-old “Emily Doe” in California may see more justice upcoming. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky who sentenced her rapist, Brock Allen Turner, to a mere 6-month jail term for three counts of rape/sexual assault — is now up for recall.   [Read more…]

What’s In a Name? Women, Marriage and Identity

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By Anne Haule / Musings of a Boomer Feminist

Juliet could not marry Romeo because of a long-standing family feud between her family (the Capulets) and his family (the Montagues). She laments that if it weren’t for the name “Montague” their love could survive – “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Brides from the 80’s to the present do feel that names matter and often put much thought into whether of not to take their husband’s birth name or retain their own.

The heterosexual tradition of the wife taking the husband’s name is based on English common law that held a husband and wife are one “person” under the law – resulting in the end of the wife’s separate legal existence – along with all her “single person” rights. Wives were considered “chattel” and were essentially owned by their husbands. This name change heritage is the reason many feminists beginning in the 70’s retained their birth names.   [Read more…]

African-American Women Now Top the List of Most-Educated Group in the Country

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A new study finds that African-American women achieve the highest outcomes of any demographic by race and gender.

By Kali Holloway / AlterNet

Statistics on black women and education have shown them leading all other gender and racial groups for a few years now. More than half of all black women specifically between the ages of 18 and 24 are enrolled in college, and black women overall outpace other race and gender groups in terms of college enrollment, according to the National Center of Education Statistics/U.S. Census numbers.

While those figures are noteworthy, a new report goes beyond mere enrollment numbers to show that black women also have the highest numbers where degree-earning is concerned.   [Read more…]

Surfing the Zeitgeist in San Diego: Twaddle, a Jagoff and a Corporate Juggernaut

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By Sid

Editor Doug Porter is on vacation for a week and the women at San Diego Free Press–Annie Lane, Barbara Zaragoza and Anna Daniels, are running the show until May 1. Doug not only writes “Starting Line” five days a week, he also edits and publishes submissions two days a week. Yeah, the man deserves a vacation.

The news–local and beyond–continues to serve up cringe inducing reporting, oddities and insights.   [Read more…]

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