News of Interest

 The following news came from www.womensenews.org

Sept. 11th Fund Rules May Undervalue Women's Lives

(WOMENSENEWS)--Dated methodology suggesting women have shorter work-life expectancies than men could leave relatives of female Sept. 11 victims with smaller monetary awards than those who lost men in the terrorist attacks.

A panel of economists has said that the fund's preliminary rules contain "glaring errors in methodology," and treat female workers unfairly.

John Ward, an economics professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, said the fund currently plans to rely on outdated federal tables that underestimate the length of a woman's work life. Statistics show that women generally work about five years less than men, in part because of family responsibilities. But that gap has narrowed in the past two decades and Ward said the plan ignores an average of 25 hours of housework per week done by working women--worth up to $300,000 in a lifetime--compared to 10 hours for men.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Lauren Porsch first learned about the connection between poverty and lack of access to abortion two years ago when she was a junior at Barnard College in New York City. While working on a Saturday escort team at an abortion clinic, one woman arrived who couldn't afford her abortion. The health insurance she relied on would not cover the procedure. Porsch and the other escorts considered pooling their money to help her. Eventually, the clinic made arrangements with the woman so that she could obtain the care she needed.

While still in college, Porsch and her three friends formed the New York Abortion Access Fund in 2000. By the end of that first year, they had raised $8,000 and provided financial assistance to 30 women, including one woman who traveled to New York from out of state the week after her house burned down.

Porsch's organization is one of 85 independent groups across the country that provide funds to women who lack money to pay for abortions and whose government health insurance, such as Medicaid, does not cover their procedures, reports the National Network of Abortion Funds of Amherst, Mass.

 Hyde Amendment Denies Medical Insurance Coverage to Many Women
January 22 marks the 29th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in every state. But that right lasted only a few years for women who rely on Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income families.

In 1976, U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde, a conservative Republican from Illinois, whose latest claim to fame came from directing the failed Congressional inquiry into alleged conduct by President Bill Clinton, passed the first version of an amendment named after him to restrict Medicaid coverage for abortion. The Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment in 1980 by a 5-4 decision. Freedom of choice for a woman does not mean "financial resources to avail herself of protected choices," the court wrote.

"I think the court misunderstood the reality of low-income women," Bebe Anderson, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy said. "The restriction is designed to influence low-income women's decisions and place them in a situation in which they are forced to carry a pregnancy."

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