PA Lawmakers Should Care More about the Health of the Commonwealth’s Residents

By Amal Bass, WLP Staff Attorney

With the uncertainty of the 2012 elections behind us, we know that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — known to many friends and foes alike as “Obamacare” — is here to stay, with most of its provisions having passed constitutional muster under U.S. Supreme Court review.  Nevertheless, Pennsylvania has stalled on the implementation of this important law, despite having already accepted millions of dollars in federal funding to prepare for it.  To protect the health and well-being of Pennsylvania’s residents, the Corbett Administration and the Pennsylvania General Assembly must act now to determine how the Commonwealth will handle key features of the ACA, including the establishment of an insurance exchange and the expansion of Medicaid eligibility.

The ACA will create state-based marketplaces for private insurance that will make affordable coverage available to small businesses to purchase for their employees and to individuals who do not qualify for Medicaid and who do not receive health insurance through their employers.  These exchanges are scheduled to open for enrollment on October 1, 2013, with coverage beginning on January 1, 2014.  States have three options: set up their own exchanges, partner with the federal government, or have the federal government set up and run the state’s exchange.  Although Pennsylvania had announced its intention to build a state-run exchange a year ago, it did not submit a Declaration Letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by November 16, 2012, as required.  Last week, the Obama Administration extended the deadline to December 14, 2012 for states to submit blueprints for such exchanges for approval by HHS.  The states that intend to partner with the federal government have until February 15, 2013 to submit their plans to HHS.

The Corbett Administration has not indicated what it intends to do about the establishment of an insurance exchange.  Bills are pending in the General Assembly, but there has been no action on them.  The Commonwealth is thus far behind several other states that are taking the necessary steps to set up these exchanges on time.  Without clear direction from the governor and without appropriate legislation, it is likely that Pennsylvania will not set up a state-run exchange in a timely manner, resulting in either a federally-run or partnership exchange.  Federal involvement in the Commonwealth’s exchange may be in the best interests of Pennsylvanians, or it may not be — but it is certainly not in Pennsylvania’s best interests for the Governor and the General Assembly to ignore one of the most important issues in years.

The Corbett Administration has also remained silent on whether the Commonwealth intends to expand Medicaid eligibility to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, with the federal government paying a large portion of the costs as part of the Affordable Care Act.  In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court upheld most of the Affordable Care Act, but weakened the Medicaid expansion provision by making it so that states that refuse to comply do not lose all of their Medicaid funding.  Medicaid expansion would provide health coverage to working families that cannot otherwise afford private insurance and would bring more than $17 billion in federal dollars into Pennsylvania’s economy.  Representative Dan Frankel (D-Allegheny) has introduced legislation, H.B. 2557, to enable Medicaid expansion, but the bill has not yet passed.  If Pennsylvania declines to participate in Medicaid expansion, many poor individuals, many of whom are women, will be left without health coverage.

Pennsylvania’s refusal to engage in ACA implementation, including its silence on the establishment of an exchange and the expansion of Medicaid, shows its disregard for the health of the women, men, and children who live in the Commonwealth.  It is time for the Corbett Administration to take Pennsylvania residents’ health and well-being seriously.

For more information on the ACA and WLP’s work on access to health care, see WLP Health Care Reform and WLP’s Report, Through the Lens of Equality: Eliminating Sex Bias to Improve the Health of Pennsylvania’s Women.

UPDATE RE: H.B. 2718 Would Penalize Women on TANF for Having Children Unless They Are Survivors of “Legitimate” Rape

UPDATE (10/26/12):  Within three days of the publication of this blog post, three of the six house sponsors of H.B. 2718 have removed their names from the sponsorship of the bill.  The prime sponsor, Rep. RoseMarie Swanger, defended the bill initially, but reversed her position three hours later, saying that she did not check the language of the three-page bill.  She has informed the Philadelphia Inquirer that the bill will not go forward in its current form.

By Amal Bass, WLP Staff Attorney (10/23/12)

Led by State Representative RoseMarie Swanger of Lebanon County, lawmakers in Pennsylvania are targeting poor women and children with the introduction of House Bill 2718, which would prevent women who receive benefits under Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) from receiving an incremental increase in benefits due to the birth of a child.  As of October 17, 2012, the bill is in the Human Services Committee.

As the Women’s Law Project discussed in its report, Through the Lens of Equality: Eliminating Sex Bias to Improve the Health of Pennsylvania’s Women, less than 2% of Pennsylvania’s residents receive TANF, and only 17.6% of Pennsylvania’s residents living below the official poverty line receive cash assistance benefits.  That latter percentage will be even lower now that Governor Tom Corbett has eliminated General Assistance, the welfare benefit program for individuals who were ineligible for TANF.  Most of the families who receive cash assistance through TANF live in counties where the monthly benefit is $403 for a family of three, often not enough for most families to meet their daily expenses.

Instead of helping these families who are struggling to make ends meet, H.B. 2718 seeks to reduce the assistance families receive by preventing a family from receiving additional TANF benefits if that family has a child while receiving benefits or while on a temporary period of ineligibility for TANF.  The result is a denial of assistance to the most needy and vulnerable, the newborn children themselves and their families.  This harmful bill serves as yet another example  of how hypocritical many of Pennsylvania’s politicians are in caring only about “life” before birth and not afterwards.

The bill contains a narrow exception for survivors of rape and incest that is so fraught with conditions that it is unlikely that many survivors will be able to avail themselves of it.  It is largely an empty gesture grounded in insulting beliefs about survivors of sexual violence.  H.B. 2718 does not use the term “legitimate rape” explicitly, the term used by Republican Todd Akin in support of his inaccurate and ignorant argument that women cannot become pregnant as the result of a rape, but it is built upon similar stereotypes of rape survivors.

In essence, this legislation creates a “legitimate rape” test based on misconceptions of how “real” rape victims behave, a test that determines whether a family may receive the incremental increase in benefits after the birth of a child.  If this legislation passes, a woman who is pregnant as a result of rape must send a signed statement to the Department of Public Welfare stating:

 [1] that she was a victim of rape or incest… [2] that she reported the crime, including the identity of the offender, if known, to a law enforcement agency or [3] in the case of incest where a pregnant minor is the victim, to the county child protective service agency… stating the name of the law enforcement agency or child protective service agency to which the report was made and the date such report was made.

This bill presumes that “real” rape victims report the crime to police and will have no trouble disclosing the details of the crime to the Department of Public Welfare, when research shows us that many victims never inform the police for a wide variety of reasons.  For example, as the Women’s Law Project wrote in its amicus brief in Reedy v. Evanson:

Decades of research has documented the fact that the vast majority of sexual assault victims do not report their sexual assault to police… Some of the most common reasons that victims give for not reporting are their fears that their report will not be taken seriously, they will not be believed, or they will be seen as responsible for their own assault. (internal citations omitted).

H.B. 2718 fails to reflect this reality of sexual assault, resulting in harm to survivors who become pregnant as a result of violence.

Pennsylvania’s women and children need laws that do not penalize and stereotype them.  H.B. 2718 must be defeated.

Pennsylvania Voter I.D. Law Disproportionately Impacts Women as Election Draws Near

Molly Cohen, WLP Intern

When Pennsylvania passed a law earlier this year imposing a voter ID requirement on voting in every election and narrowing the list of acceptable forms of ID, critics quickly pointed out that the law targets specific populations. Low-income voters, racial minorities, and elderly voters are less likely to possess the necessary photo ID. For many, obtaining proper identification entails a descent into the oft unnavigable maze of state bureaucracies. Additionally, despite Governor Corbett’s promise that there would be no financial cost to this process, those who do not have a raised-seal copy of their birth certificate must pay ten dollars to obtain one. Without this, they cannot apply for a photo ID if they have never had PennDOT issued ID before. The cost and effort of this process may dissuade otherwise eligible voters from participating in the coming election.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia (PILCOP), the Advancement Project, and the law firm of Arnold & Porter, LLP, filed a lawsuit on behalf of ten Pennsylvania residents who will be unable to cast their votes this November because of the new regulations, alleging that the law creates an “undue burden” on voters without photo identification and disproportionately affects the poor.

However, in addition to targeting the aforementioned marginalized groups, voter rights advocates warn that this issue significantly impacts women across the socioeconomic spectrum. As we explained in an earlier article, women commonly change their names and their addresses to marry or divorce. According to Faye Anderson, the chief spokesperson of a voter information network called the Cost of Freedom Project, approximately 34% of eligible female voters do not possess citizenship documents that bear their current name. Anyone who does not take steps to correct a mismatched last name or outdated address may be unpleasantly surprised to find that she cannot cast a ballot at the polls.

The validity of the Voter ID law is, at best, questionable. Proponents of the legislation peddled it as the cure for voter fraud, yet there is no evidence that any such problem actually exists. While Governor Corbett, who signed the bill, initially claimed that the law would only impact 1% of Pennsylvanians, a new study places the number closer to 9% statewide. In Philadelphia County, 15.6% of active voters do not possess PennDOT ID and may be ineligible to vote. These statistics have been proffered as evidence that the law, which passed along strict party lines, was designed to suppress liberal votes and ensure the GOP retains political primacy in the state. Mike Turzai, the State House Majority Leader,  reinforced these concerns when he spoke at a recent Republican State Committee meeting. He named the law as one of the party’s accomplishments for the year: “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

A hearing slated for July 25^th in the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court in Applewhite et al. v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, et al. will determine whether the law will be in effect this November.

Those who oppose the Voter ID Law have organized several protests and events for the week leading up to the hearing in order to increase media attention and public pressure. A partial schedule is included below.

Saturday 7/21:
PA Voter ID Coalition Operations Center Open House from 11 am to 2 pm at 310 West Chelten Avenue in Philadelphia

Tuesday 7/24:
NAACP Rally for Justice at 1 pm at the State Capitol (3^rd Street & State Street) in Harrisburg

Wednesday 7/25:
Hearing in Commonwealth Court to stop the Voter ID Law at 10 am in Courtroom 3002 at the Pennsylvania Judicial Center (601 Commonwealth Avenue in Harrisburg). This is a public hearing, and supporters of the lawsuit are encouraged to attend.

There will also be protests across the state on the same day.

Philadelphia: 11 am – Thomas Paine Plaza (Broad Street & JFK Blvd)

Lehigh Valley: 12 pm – Lehigh County Government Center (7^th Street & Hamilton Street, Allentown)

Pittsburgh: 1 pm – Freedom Corner (Crawford Street & Centre Avenue)

Victory for Women’s Athletic Equity: PA High School Disclosure Bill Passes

During the closing hours of last week’s state budget frenzy, 40 years after the enactment of Title IX, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed its own landmark legislation to advance gender equality in educational opportunities. The Equity in Interscholastic Athletics Disclosure Bill passed the state House of Representatives on June 30 as part of an omnibus school code bill (HB 1901) which the Governor has approved. This provision, strongly supported by the Women’s Law Project and many other advocates for women’s equality, including the Women & Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania, will require all public high schools, middle schools, and junior high schools in Pennsylvania to report annually the number of athletic opportunities they provide to girls and boys, broken down further by race/ethnicity, as well as other data that may reflect the quality of the athletic programming offered. Pennsylvania will join Kentucky, Georgia, and New Mexico in requiring secondary schools to disclose basic information that will help inform students, parents, and community members of whether their schools may be in violation of Title IX.

Since Title IX was enacted in 1972, the number of girls participating in interscholastic high school athletics has increased significantly. However, a large gap remains between the number of high school girls and the number of high school boys playing competitive sports. In recent years, this gap has widened. There are now approximately 1.3 million more boys than girls participating in high school sports. This imbalance is greatest in urban schools, where 73% of the boys but only 45% of the girls in grades 3-12 are involved in athletics, a disparity that affects girls of color most significantly. And even where girls have the opportunity to play, in many districts, they receive inferior equipment, uniforms, fields, facilities, coaching, publicity, scheduling, and transportation compared to the boys.

Currently, female students who suspect that their school’s athletic program is treating  them unfairly must either confront school officials before they have all the facts, or file a Right-To-Know request, which can sometimes lead to administrative battles and time-consuming appeals. Beginning in 2013, Pennsylvanians will only have to visit the Department of Education’s website to obtain the basic information that is key to grassroots reform efforts.

At stake is far more than just the fun and friendship that team sports create. Participation in organized sports improves leadership skills, opens doors for college scholarships, and correlates with better grades, a better chance of graduating and getting a job, and lower rates of depression, drug and alcohol use, smoking, teen pregnancy, and obesity. In fact, over 80% of female executives report that they played a team sport in their youth.

For more information on athletic inequalities in Pennsylvania, see WLP’s publication:  Through the Lens of Equality: Eliminating Sex Bias to Improve the Health of Pennsylvania’s Women (2012);  2009-2010 Title IX Audit of the Pittsburgh Public Schools ;  Are Schools Giving Female Athletes a Sporting Chance? A Guide to Gender Equity in Athletics in Pennsylvania Schools (2009); and Gender Equity in Intercollegiate Athletics: Where Does Pennsylvania Stand? (2005)

And Then There Were None: Pennsylvania Bill to Permit Expert Testimony in Sexual Assault Cases Lands on the Governor’s Desk

Amal Bass, WLP Staff Attorney

House Bill 1264, which provides for expert testimony in certain criminal proceedings, has passed the Pennsylvania House and Senate, and is now on Governor Corbett’s desk. Until this legislation is signed by the Governor and goes into effect, Pennsylvania remains the only state in the country that does not permit juries in criminal trials to hear expert testimony explaining the dynamics of sexual assault. The bill, sponsored by Representative Cherelle Parker (D-Philadelphia) and 61 representatives from both sides of the aisle, will allow expert testimony in criminal cases involving sexual offenses. This legislation permits the prosecution or the defense to call experts who, because of their “experience with, or specialized training or education in, criminal justice, behavioral sciences or victim services,” can help juries and judges understand “the dynamics of sexual violence, victim responses to sexual violence and the impact of sexual violence on victims during and after being assaulted.”

This legislation will help counter the misconceptions juries and judges have repeatedly applied in the past to sexual assault cases. These misconceptions, known as rape myths, “are attitudes and beliefs that are generally false but are widely and persistently held, and that serve to deny and justify male sexual aggression against women.” Kimberly A. Lonsway & Louise F. Fitzgerald, Rape Myths in Review, 18 Psych. of Women Quarterly 133, 133-134 (1994). These myths are connected to sexist attitudes about women and distort the dynamics of sexual assault.

Two rape myths, for example, are the belief that rape is rare and that women often lie about its occurrence. Other rape myths include the beliefs that sexual assault victims will actively resist their assailants throughout the assault and that they will report the crime as soon as possible.  Adherence to these myths may make jurors and judges more inclined to believe that a victim’s delay in reporting the assault, her lack of visible physical injuries, or perceived inadequate resistance to the attack indicate that she is lying about what happened.

In reality, research shows that many rape victims cannot or do not fight back during an assault for a variety of reasons, including fear, immobilization due to being physically restrained, or immobilization due to their own psychological responses to trauma. Thus, many victims do not have visible physical injuries and do not actively resist their attackers during the assault. Furthermore, a delay in reporting an assault is very common, as victims dealing with the immediate aftermath of an assault are in the process of making sense of what happened to them and are figuring out what steps to take. Contrary to a common misconception, there is no “right” or “normal” way for a victim of sexual assault to behave.

Pennsylvania’s enactment of HB 1264 will promote justice for victims of sexual assault by giving lawyers such as prosecutors the tools they need to address these commonly held misconceptions about the dynamics of sexual assault. To learn more about rape myths in the criminal justice system, see the Women’s Law Project’s amicus brief in Commonwealth v. Claybrook and our chapter on sexual violence in our report, Through the Lens of Equality: Eliminating Sex Bias to Improve the Health of Pennsylvania’s Women.

Ongoing study: Mandatory ultrasounds have very little impact on abortion decisions

Mandatory ultrasound viewing is quickly becoming the new favorite tactic of the state-level war on choice. Six states currently require all women seeking abortions to view ultrasound images, and until women’s health advocates weighed in with a tidal wave of opposition, our very own state of Pennsylvania was poised to be the seventh.

The rationale behind mandatory ultrasound laws is that when a pregnant woman sees the ultrasound image of her fetus, she will feel a maternal attachment and be less inclined to terminate her pregnancy.

We’ve been hearing this argument for years.  According to the Family Research Council (an ultra-conservative group that actively opposes abortion, divorce, LGBT rights, and embryonic stem-cell research to name a few), “eight in ten pregnancy resource centers report that ‘abortion-minded’ women decide to keep their babies after seeing ultrasound images,” and “[a]ccording to an executive director of an Iowa pregnancy resource center, 90 percent of women who see their baby by ultrasound choose life.” Americans United for Life insists that “medical evidence indicates that women feel bonded to their children after seeing them on the ultrasound screen” – as evidence, they refer to a 1983 study that reported exactly two cases of women, around three months pregnant, feeling bonded with their fetuses after viewing ultrasounds.

Now, almost thirty years later, assistant medical professor Tracy Weitz is conducting a more comprehensive study – interviewing twenty abortion-seeking women in two states and surveying ultrasound clinicians about their practices – to determine whether ultrasound advocates’ claims are accurate. And while research is far from over, preliminary results suggest that women consistently choosing to carry their pregnancies to term after viewing the ultrasound image is less documented phenomenon, and more pro-life fantasy.

The majority of clinicians interviewed felt that ultrasound viewing typically had little or no impact on a woman’s decision. Some reported that the information gathered through the ultrasound was useful to women making their decisions – information such as gestational age – but the ultrasound itself was rarely a game-changer.  Said one:

 I’ve never had a patient change their mind simply by seeing the ultrasound… just seeing the ultrasound hasn’t made anyone say, “Okay well, I don’t want to do this.”

Weitz recommends giving all women seeking abortions the option of viewing an ultrasound image of the fetus, but discourages mandatory viewing laws and warns against expecting the images to change women’s minds. After all, as her study points out, 60% of abortion patients already have at least one child – and therefore, almost definitely have seen ultrasound images before – and most women who terminate their pregnancies do so because of the “material conditions of their lives.”

According to the same study,

The research has surfaced a few case studies in which women went to crisis pregnancy centers and were allegedly given false information about their gestational status. In some instances, women underwent ultrasounds and were told they were further along than they actually were, and were thus ineligible for abortions.

Mandatory ultrasound laws often have the effect of driving women to centers like this, which are some of the easiest places for women to get ultrasounds, but are agenda-driven and often not staffed with trained medical personnel.

This study seems poised to substantially debunk the maternal attachment myth behind ultrasound laws. When the results become widespread public knowledge, perhaps we can start to focus on the real reasons behind these laws. In the states where they are enforced, mandatory ultrasound viewing laws are a delay tactic aimed at preventing abortions by forcing women who want them to jump through time-consuming, expensive hoops so that by the time they have completed all of the legal requirements, they are too far along in their pregnancies to abort.

Weitz’s research confirms what pro-choice advocates have been saying all along: mandatory ultrasound laws are not based in scientific fact. They are not passed with women’s best interests at heart.  And a bill has been introduced in Pennsylvania.  Learn more about the threat by visiting the Legislative Action page on WLP’s web site and by following Pennsylvanians for Choice and We’ve Had Enough PA .  Take action here with petitions, signs, and other tools to make your voice heard. And Pennsylvania residents, remember to contact your representative in the house to express your opposition to HB 1077, Pennsylvania’s ultrasound bill.

Thank You to our male friends, colleagues, brothers, fathers, and partners for Speaking Up!

Everyone expects to hear women speak up about reproductive health issues–specifically about protecting a woman’s right to control her own body – because women bear the burden  - pun intended –  if no one speaks up.  Women and women’s organizations have been vocal, visible and active in Pennsylvania, outraged by the ridiculous and indefensible HB 1077 that would require women to have an ultrasound 24 hours before having an abortion.   What we did not expect was the gentle, rational, articulate voice of a man from Franklin County, PA, who wrote to his local paper about this bill, chiding the legislators to be honest about their intent:

Pennsylvania HB 1077 is a good example of how controversial legislation can debase the entire system.  I consider myself pro-life. In my idea of a perfect world, abortion and capital punishment are used rarely and nobody dies because he can’t afford the medical treatment needed to keep him alive. If I personally knew someone considering abortion, I would try my damnedest to get her to consider other options.

I also consider myself pro-choice, by which I mean I would not try to keep a woman from having an abortion by calling the cops and having the government force her to have the baby. I have a whole long list of places where the government does not belong, and a womb is on it.

No government in history has ever stopped abortion. The prohibition of abortion works exactly as well as the prohibition of alcohol. Women with money have always had access to clean, safe abortions, and they always will. When we talk about criminalizing abortion, we’re talking about sending poor women to back-alley abortionists and desperate young women to whatever horrifying choices they can make. And sending police after them….

In politics, people get so convinced that what they want to do is righteous, and so frustrated that they can’t get it done, that they will tell any kind of lie and cut any corner to achieve their goal. That includes designing bills that try to dress up their intent in a big pile of fertilizer.

HB 1077 announces its fertilizer tendencies with its name. It’s called the Woman’s Right-To-Know Act, as if there are women out there who have been demanding more information from their abortion doctors but just can’t get answers.

The bill requires women to get an ultrasound at least 24 hours before an abortion. The ultrasound provider must make sure that the screen display faces the woman. Thankfully, it does not require anyone to grab her head and force her to watch. She must get copies of the ultrasound and deliver them to the abortion provider. The doctor must offer her the chance to watch an ultrasound of a similarly-aged fetus. No other medical procedure in this country has similar requirements.

A heartfelt thank you to this man, a teacher, who took the time to write such a thoughtful letter.  The public needs to hear from men as well as women on this issue.  Encourage your brothers, fathers, friends, husbands, partners, and colleagues to speak up and speak out in support of your rights!

Lastly, it was reported today that HB 1077 has been temporarily shelved, but please don’t be fooled by this tactic. In all likelihood the bill will find new life after the Pennsylvania election. So please call your representative in the Pennsylvania House (and have the men in your life call theirs) to oppose HB 1077. This legislation is deceptive, demeaning and offensive.

Other stories on HB 1077:

Pennsylvania House GOP leaders delay bill forcing women seeking abortions to undergo ultrasounds (Patriot News)

PA abortion measure shelved (Tribune-Review)

PA Legislature Passes Disastrous “TRAP” Law

On December 14, 2011, after a raging legislative fight over women’s abortion care that lasted most of the past year, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed Senate Bill 732 and sent it to Governor Corbett for his signature or veto. SB 732 will require safe, accessible abortion providers to comply with the burdensome and costly regulations now reserved for ambulatory surgical facilities, even though abortion is much safer and simpler than surgeries commonly conducted in ambulatory surgical centers.

Known as “TRAP laws,” (“Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers”), similar measures have been enacted in several states and are a tactic recommended by the National Right to Life Committee for closing down women’s clinics. Every medical and public health organization in Pennsylvania that has weighed in on the matter, including the unquestioned medical authority, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, opposes SB 732.

If SB 732 is allowed to take effect, most or all of the 20 existing freestanding clinics in Pennsylvania may have to stop offering abortion care temporarily, while they hire architects and contractors to transform their small clinics into sophisticated medical facilities; or they may close permanently, if they determine that their costs of making the required upgrades are prohibitive (particularly in light of the unavailability of public funding for abortion care). Instead of attending to the 37,000 Pennsylvania women who rely on them for safe care each year, providers will have to install hospital-grade elevators, acquire parking spaces and covered entryways, install specialized HVAC systems, double or triple the size of their procedure rooms, and rip up their flooring and install new flooring, among many other unnecessary and costly physical plant specifications.

The Women’s Law Project is busily at work on a legal strategy. The Governor could avoid not only litigation but also the potential of grievous harm to women simply by vetoing this bill. Please call him today, and tell him to veto SB 732, for the sake of the one in three women who will need abortion care by age 45.

GOVERNOR CORBETT: 717-787-2500
Honorable Tom Corbett
Governor of Pennsylvania
225 Main Capitol Building
Harrisburg PA 17120
PLEASE DELIVER A MESSAGE TO GOVERNOR CORBETT:
RESPECT WOMEN’S HEALTH – VETO SB 732.

“It’s the Economy, Stupid” – Occupy Pennsylvania and Legislative Priorities

Like most Americans, Pennsylvanians want jobs, fair taxation, and smarter spending… but all they’re getting are ill-advised spending cuts, bickering across party lines and moral grandstanding about women’s healthcare. 

A few weeks ago, the Occupy movement, a grassroots movement for corporate accountability that attracted so much attention on Wall Street, came to Pennsylvania. Local Occupiers set up camp in Philadelphia in the first week of October, and in Pittsburgh and Harrisburg on October 16th.

 These Occupations have sponsored a broad range of activities from civil disobedience in Philadelphia, to children’s story hours, community art projects and anti-police violence demonstrations in Pittsburgh, to a Halloween party and protest parade this past weekend in Harrisburg. Occupiers are notably politically and intellectually diverse, residing in a tent city where Marxists sleep next door to Ron Paul libertarians, who share donated food and resources with union leaders and die-hard Obama supporters.

In fact, they are so politically diverse that they’ve been widely mocked as disorganized and unable to reach consensus. Critics have publicly asked, “What are these Occupiers so angry about?” These charts speak to the varied interests of the demonstrations’ participants.

The Occupiers are a diverse group, and they don’t all want to end the Federal Reserve or elect the Green Party. But the demands and grievances they do share resonate with many Americans; according to a recent Associated Press poll, over one-third of Americans support the Occupy movement.

According to The Huffington Post:

The protesters cite the economic crisis as a key reason for their unhappiness. The unemployment rate hovers around 9 percent nationally. Many homeowners owe more than their homes are worth. Foreclosures are rampant. And many young people – the key demographic of the protesters – can’t find jobs or live on their own.

The most consistent key factor in all this anger – repeated twice in the above quotation – is unemployment. Jobs. People who had jobs lost them; people looking for jobs can’t find them; people who have jobs are dealing with cuts in their hours, pay, and benefits that make it harder to support themselves on those jobs. People in bad job situations can’t leave their jobs because they wouldn’t be able to find another source of income. All this job anxiety makes people’s lives uncertain, and that uncertainty is causing anger, frustration, and restlessness among American citizens.

You’d imagine that lawmaking officials in our state, wanting to get re-elected, would be scrambling to pass legislation that would create more job opportunities for the 8.2% of the Pennsylvania labor force that was reported out of work in September 2011.

This has not come to pass. In the past year, PA has slashed the budgets for public education (which gives people the work skills they need to get jobs), libraries (which enable people without home internet access to fill out online job applications), and public transportation (which gets people to and from their jobs). This is, of course, to say nothing of the people currently hired by schools, libraries, and bus and train companies who will be laid off as these cuts take effect. 

Pennsylvania’s current policies lay the groundwork for massive, long-term unemployment on a much larger scale than we’re seeing right now – and that’s just what the legislature is doing in its spare time!

In the first six months of 2011, Pennsylvania lawmakers spent a whopping one-third of their voting session days at the Capitol working to restrict access to safe, legal abortion at a time when and one in six children in the state lives in poverty.

Our lawmakers need to check their priorities soon, or Pennsylvania’s children – who are already suffering – will grow up with fewer job opportunities than their parents have right now. Although not everyone is rushing to Occupy the nearest city, most agree with the message that PA’s legislators could serve constituents better by making economic recovery a priority.

Record number of anti-choice bills introduced in 2011: We’ve Had Enough!

A recent article published by the Guttmacher Institute gives us the chilling statistics to back up the fight we have all been facing in the Pennsylvania legislature. 

In the first six months of 2011, states enacted 162 new provisions related to reproductive health and rights. Fully 49% of these new laws seek to restrict access to abortion services, a sharp increase from 2010, when 26% of new laws restricted abortion. The 80 abortion restrictions enacted this year are more than double the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions enacted in 2005—and more than triple the 23 enacted in 2010.

 These new provisions include mandatory counseling – in some cases counseling at anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centers”, increased  waiting periods, gestational bans (including the “heartbeat bill” in Ohio that makes abortion illegal before a woman may even know she is pregnant), banning abortion coverage in the new abortion exchanges, regulations on medicated abortion and targeting funding of providers.  

These drastic measures across the U.S. are mirrored in Pennsylvania. Before going on its legislative recess the Pennsylvania Senate passed Senate Bill 3, banning abortion coverage in the new state insurance exchanges. Furthermore it is extremely likely that the legislature will begin its season in September by heaping ambulatory surgical regulations on to abortion facilities for no reason, as abortion facilities are already subject to ambulatory gynecological facilities regulations as well as the regulations laid out in the Abortion Control Act. 

Not only would ambulatory surgical regulations not fulfill the stated goal of protecting women’s health, but on the contrary they will force abortion clinics through costly, and sometimes impossible, renovations. In many, if not most cases, the new regulations will shut down abortion clinics in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvanians for Choice, an affiliate of the Women’s Law Project, is planning a rally in Harrisburg when the legislature comes back from their summer recess. This rally is our chance to stand up and say We’ve Had Enough of legislative attacks on women’s rights. 

Save the date: September 27, 2011. Come join us in Harrisburg!

Check out the We’ve Had Enough and Pennsylvanians for Choice websites and stay tuned to the WLP blog for more on the rally.