American Forum

MISSOURI FORUM

By: Bailey Parrish

My name is Bailey Parrish. A 23-year old-employee of a Catholic hospital, I grew up in Ozark, Mo., and moved to Springfield, Mo., to study psychology, biomedical science and religious studies at Missouri State University. When I was 20, I was hired on as a nurse's aide. It's hard, unglamorous and underpaid work, but together with nurses, doctors, social workers, housekeeping and administration, we take care of our patients. We also take care of each other.

I will continue to work with what has become my family until I move to Washington, D.C., in the fall to study public health promotion. This will be a happy move because my education will allow me to reach more people, but it will be sad because I will be leaving the mothers, grandmothers, sisters and brothers that have changed me for the better.

The Obama administration recently made a decision to protect affordable access to birth control. Now, millions of women including those in my surrogate family, who are employed at religiously affiliated hospitals or universities, will receive the same health and economic benefits as everyone else. These are benefits we need.


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AMERICAN FORUM

By Patricia West

As a Pennsylvania social worker specializing in family dynamics, I’ve spent most of my 40 year career analyzing and trying out various ways to keep women healthy and safe. This month [June 7] we celebrate the anniversary of a breakthrough in that process: the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court decision that legalized contraceptive use for married couples—and more importantly, recognized an individual’s right to privacy in family planning matters.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently recognized family planning as one of the ten great public health advances of the 20th century. At clinics and centers that provide family planning, the complications of pregnancy that are a woman’s most common source of ill health can be prevented or treated. And our national family planning program – Title X of the Public Health Service Act of 1970 – made family planning available to low-income people as well as the rich. As a result, some 98 percent of us have used birth control at some point in our lives, and we mostly take it for granted.

We shouldn’t. The House voted recently to defund Title X completely for fiscal 2011. The Senate saved the program, but another attempt to kill it is certain this year. The attackers are using innuendo and misinformation to entangle family planning in their anti-abortion war, claiming to cut spending but ignoring the truth: Title X, the only dedicated source of federal funding for family planning services, saves the government some $3.4 billion every year by preventing unintended pregnancies, nearly half of which would likely end in abortion.


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AMERICAN FORUM

By Clare Coleman

If you’re an average woman, you want two children, according to various surveys. That means you’ll spend about five years of your life trying to become pregnant, being pregnant or recovering from pregnancy, and 30 years trying to avoid it.

You can do that thanks to the June 1965 landmark Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut, which affirmed the right of married couples to use contraceptives -- and more importantly, recognized an individual's right to privacy in family planning matters. Universal usage and acceptance of contraceptives followed, transforming the lives of millions of Americans.

The Griswold case was a catalyst for our national family planning program -- Title X of the Public Health Service Act -- the only dedicated source of federal funding for family planning services. Created in 1970, Title X provides access to family planning for all, without regard to economic circumstances.


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AMERICAN FORUM

By Mahnaz Afkhami

A new day has dawned in Egypt. The dictator has been brought down. Euphoria is in the air. How will women fare as euphoria yields to reality?

During the past several days, I have kept in touch with our partners in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries. They all agree that Egypt forecasts their destiny. They are enthusiastic and their exuberance is contagious.

Having lived through Iran’s 1979 revolution that dashed the hopes of millions, I was skeptical about Egypt’s prospects for a peaceful transition to participatory democracy. And I know revolutions are heady experiences, especially for the young, and especially for young women in repressive Middle Eastern countries. The Cairo air now shimmers with possibility, just as the air of Tehran once did.


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AMERICAN FORUM

By Jennifer S. Smith, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Kristen Forbes of Noblesville, Indiana, had recently graduated from college when she was diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer at age 22. After a yearlong, painful battle, she succumbed to the disease, leaving behind a bright future and grieving family members and friends.

Like most of the 4,000 women in the United States who die of cervical cancer each year, Kristen’s death was preventable. We now have the medical know-how and the tools to stamp out this major cancer once and for all. What we need now, as our country honors National Cervical Cancer Awareness Month this January, is the will among members of the public health community – government officials and policymakers, medical professionals, insurers, women and others – to make it happen.

Cervical cancer used to be the leading cause of death for women in the U.S. With widespread use of Pap test screening in the last 50 years, cervical cancer rates have declined significantly, but have leveled to about 12,000 cases each year. This disease should be relatively easy to prevent. We know it’s caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV, a common sexually transmitted infection. Most HPV infections go away on their own, but persistent HPV infections can lead to cell changes that can progress to cervical cancer. Fortunately, with proper treatment, the disease can usually be stopped before cancer develops.

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Riane Eisler

AMERICAN FORUM

By Riane Eisler and Kimberly Otis

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia just asserted for a second time that our Constitution does not protect women against discrimination. That was one of the arguments for passing the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)., and ironically, people of Scalia’s “conservative” persuasion often countered that the ERA was not needed precisely because women are already protected by the 14th Amendment.

Kimberley Otis

Indeed, many Supreme Court cases have invoked the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to strike down laws that blatantly discriminate on the basis of gender. But now we’re told that these cases for four decades were wrong because the Constitution was never intended to protect women. And that’s true if we only look at original intent. The focus of the framers of the Constitution was to protect the life, liberty, and property of white men who owned substantial property. And the focus of the 14th Amendment was implicitly on African-American males.

Of course, the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause uses the term “person,” and in this 21st century it’s bizarre that a jurist would think “person” does not include members of the female half of humanity.


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AMERICAN FORUM

By: Linda Meric

The much heralded and hotly contested mid-term elections are done. The ballot questions have been decided and the candidates are either grateful because they pulled out a win or gloomy because they didn’t. Either way, it’s time to move on.

It’s time now to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Women have been waiting for a very long time. Frankly, we’ve grown impatient. The moment is here. The U.S. Senate must pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, for the women of today, and for the women of tomorrow.


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By Jennifer Hughes

As a long-time food service worker, I know how difficult it can be to survive on tips. I remember working at a place where the minimum wage was $5.15/hr and no one could get full-time hours because the employer did not want to offer health benefits.

On top of being a full-time student, I had to constantly make quality of life decisions. I cut as many corners as I could: living with roommates, buying generic food and hygiene items, walking to class and carpooling to work. I was a long way from my home and my family, and my dog was all I had.

The last straw came when I had to make a decision between whether my dog or I would eat that night. It was hard decision but not one that I had not made before. I realized then that I could not keep my dog if I could not afford to feed us both. It was a heart-wrenching decision but I found a loving family to take him. I thought I had done everything right. He was like my child. It was at that moment that I wondered about the families of other tipped workers. What did they do? I decided there had to be an end to this system of poverty that keeps hard-working people like me in poverty.


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By Mark Mellman

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By Riane Eisler

The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference makes evident potential catastrophic effects of climate change, including its enormous economic and human tolls. It also clearly shows how poor nations in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and island states will suffer most from the inevitable floods, droughts and other weather disasters.

But there’s more that needs to be made clear in Copenhagen. If we look closely, there’s a hidden truth with huge implications that we must bring to the attention of conference delegates to ensure that allocated funds actually protect those most vulnerable to these natural disasters.

Studies show that women are 14 times more likely to die in natural disasters. One heart-rending study of a Bangladesh flash flood found that 90 percent of casualties were female. Many factors contributed to this high casualty rate, all were avoidable. A woman’s role in this Southeast Asian nation, as in most of the Middle East and parts of Africa, is one of dependency -- so of course, these Bangladeshi women were not taught to swim. But perhaps the most important factor was that they lived and died in a culture where women are so rigidly controlled that they aren’t permitted to leave their homes without being accompanied by a male family member. When the flash flood occurred, they sadly stayed and drowned.

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By Susan Wysocki and Susan Scanlan

It’s not surprising that women are confused about the recently changed recommendations for cancer screening and prevention. New guidelines from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) – the leading medical group that provides health care for women – say women should wait longer to begin cervical-cancer screening and that they should be screened less frequently. On the heels of similar changes to breast-cancer screening guidelines, it’s understandable that many women might see this as a step backward.

On the contrary, the new cervical-cancer screening recommendations reflect advances in our understanding of this disease and in tools now available to prevent it. More importantly, they present an opportunity to educate women about the significant opportunity we have to further prevent – if not eliminate – cervical cancer.

New ACOG screening guidelines recommend women should begin getting Pap tests at age 21 (as opposed to within three years of becoming sexually active) and that, from ages 21 to 29, most women should have Pap tests every two years instead of annually. Additionally, screening for women 30 and older with a history of normal Pap test results now moves to every three years.

By Nan Orrock

When President Obama accepts the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, it is an opportunity to articulate a new international direction, away from nuclear proliferation, away from nuclear tests, and away from loose materials and increased risk. Hopefully, he will join the Nobel Committee in putting out the call that we must act now to reduce the enormous arsenal of nuclear weapons.

It will not be easy, or quick. And it shouldn’t be. As long as nuclear weapons exist, the U.S. must have a safe and reliable arsenal. The road to disarmament is, necessarily and rightly, long, and will take many years and many small steps to guarantee our safety and prevent any cracks in our security. But it is also vital; the longer nuclear weapons lurk, and grow, the graver the danger that a rogue state or a terrorist will use one.

One of the first steps should be to prevent new nuclear weapons. The easiest way to do this is to ban nuclear weapons tests.

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See my i-Commentary about this topic here: