from a TheConversation article on LongCovid care that also describes “belly breathing”: inhaling leisurely through the nose and exhaling slightly more leisurely through the mouth (pursed lips for greater control, if you like) while reclining or lying comfortably or sitting in a supported position that lets you put one hand at midriff and the other at chest so you feel midriff expansion (instead of top of chest) as you breathe in and subsidence as you breathe out. The deepest parts of the lungs get nicely aerated and expel the ol’ dust piled up in there. “Long COVID patients who use these techniques show improvement in symptoms of breathlessness and sense of well-being” and so can we!
<small>Note: the author — male — doesn’t acknowledge that most of the advice and many of the terms come from loooong established professional and patient community self-care protocols of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, a disorder in which women are the majority … as they also are in the LongCovid patient group. Tsk, tsk. Credit where credit is due, dude.</small>
<big> This Week In The War On Women meets Saturday evenings & reblogs across the week. Everyone interested is welcome to comment, bring news links & stories, and consider joining to reblog here or write for the group. For automatic delivery to yr Activity Stream of our posts & reblogs, click the FOLLOW button HERE.</big>
<big>♀️ 50+ women’s-news sources HERE including 17 related DK groups besides ours, from DK 210+ Health/Med, Cause, Comm’ty, Heritage/Identity & Friendly Open Thread Grps&Series, 2011 -2023,
♀️ Our Saturday posting history the past few years is HERE.
♀️ Trailblazing & Activist Women in History/wow2 is HERE.
♀️ Everything blogged&reblogged to our group is here.
ThisWeekInTheWarOnWomen is a team effort. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE ON THE TEAM THIS WEEK for news item and discussion —especially Tara the Antisocial Socialworker, SandraLLAP, Angmar, and elenacarlena. MUCH appreciation!</big>
|
|
State government news
________________________________________________________
<big>Via Jessica Valenti: <big>Alabama Republicans have introduced a bill that would allow women to be charged with murder if they have abortions or if their miscarriages were deemed to be the result of “reckless” behavior. </big> "Reckless" can include pretty much anything, even being the victim or rape or domestic violence, if the pregnant woman is deemed to have placed herself in harm's way. The bill hasn't passed yet, so let's hope there's enough of an outcry.</big>
________________________________________________________________
Prism via URL Georgia’s fetal personhood law adds ‘unborn dependents’ to its tax code.
From URL email:
Georgia recently introduced a unique tax exemption that lets people claim fetuses as dependents, giving unborn dependents legal rights. The move raises concerns among reproductive justice advocates who worry about audits, potential criminalization, and the emotional toll of documenting miscarriages. Reproductive rights advocates are uncertain about how this law will affect people and how to advise clients...
____________________________________________________________
From POLITICO 12-week abortion ban will do great harm, North Carolina’s governor says:
...He added: 'It will effectively ban many abortions altogether, because of the obstacles that they have created for women, for clinics and for doctors.'
Cooper has vowed to veto the bill, but Republican legislators hold large majorities in both the General Assembly and state Senate and could override the veto….
_________________________________________________________
From Jezebel Louisiana Republicans Kill Rape, Incest Exceptions to Abortion Ban After Unhinged Hearing:
...Pastor John Raymond of Slidell, La., testified against the bill, saying that an abortion in the case of rape would make it so there are two victims instead of one–a talking point parroted by anti-abortion activists throughout the discussion. Women will 'clamor to put old boyfriends behind bars in order to dispense with the inconvenience of giving birth,' he said.
Raymond, mind you, currently faces numerous criminal charges for cruelty to juveniles, including multiple allegations of physically abusing a 4-year-old, once allegedly holding him upside down by the ankle and whipping his butt. The pastor has also been accused of taping three 13-year-old boys’ mouths shut after they refused to stop talking in class."...
_________________________________________________________
From AP Vermont’s Republican governor signs 1st-in-nation shield bills that explicitly include medicated abortion
[The] governor signed abortion and gender affirming shield bills into law Wednesday that are the first in the country to explicitly include protecting access to a medication widely used in abortions even if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration withdraws its approval of the pill, mifepristone.
The bills protect providers from discipline for providing legally protected reproductive and gender affirming health care services.
“Today, we reaffirm once again that Vermont stands on the side of privacy, personal autonomy and reproductive liberty, and that providers are free to practice without fear,” Republican Gov. Phil Scott said in a statement.
In the identical bills passed by the House and Senate, “reproductive health care services” includes “medication that was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for termination of a pregnancy as of January 1, 2023, regardless of the medication’s current FDA approval status.
___________________________________________________________
GOP boycott in Oregon threatens abortion, transgender bills and protesters' own political careers:
Democrats control the Statehouse in Oregon, but under the rules still need a certain number of Republicans to be present in the chambers to pass legislation.
Republican and Democratic leaders in the Oregon Legislature met behind closed doors for a second day Thursday to try to bridge the divide as the boycott entered its ninth straight day, with partisan bills on abortion, gender-affirming care and gun control on the line. Lawmakers with 10 unexcused absences are barred from reelection under a constitutional amendment passed overwhelmingly last November by voters weary of repeated walkouts…
...Republicans are expected to file legal challenges to the constitutional amendment if they’re disqualified.
__________________________________________________________
KFF News via Calif Healthline Federal Rules Don’t Require Period Product Ingredients on Packaging Labels. States Are Stepping In.
...The manufacture and sale of period and related products is a big business, with revenue expected to top $4.5 billion in the United States this year. [Tens of millions of Americans use these products, for example averaging] up to 17,000 tampons or pads in their lifetime, and they might also use rubber or silicone cups, or absorbent period underwear…. while manufacturers contend they are safe, most disclose little about the chemicals they contain….
The FDA regulates and classifies menstrual products as medical devices, meaning they are not subject to the same labeling laws as other consumer items. [But in] 2021, New York became the first state to enact a menstrual product disclosure law requiring companies to list all intentionally added ingredients on packaging. California’s governor signed a similar law that took effect this year, but it gives manufacturers trade secret protections, so not all ingredients are necessarily disclosed. At least six other states have introduced legislation to address safety and disclosure of ingredients in these products.
Advocacy groups studying the effects of the New York law say the new labels have revealed commonly found ingredients in menstrual products that may contain carcinogens, reproductive toxicants, endocrine disruptors, and allergens … Vaginal and vulvar tissues are capable of absorbing fluids at a higher rate than skin, which can lead to rapid chemical exposure….
___________________________________________________________
And the rest
__________________________________________________________
NativeNewsOnline Remaining Charges Dismissed Against environmentalist Winona LaDuke for activism against Enbridge’s Line 3 Expansion Oil Pipeline Project
LaDuke, a White Earth Ojibwe citizen and former executive director of Honor the Earth, was arrested with six other women on July 19, 2021, for protesting in front of a Line 3 replacement site near the Shell River in Wadena County [Minnesota].
“I’m grateful, I was the last defendant on the river,” Winona LaDuke said in an interview with Native News Online. “We are still working to protect the Shell River from big agriculture and Enbridge.”
After her arrest, LaDuke spent three days behind bars because of a warrant issued by Aitkin County for violating conditions of release. She was previously arrested in Aitkin County on December 5, 2020 and was charged with two counts of misdemeanor trespass for participating in a prayer lodge on the shores of the Mississippi River. LaDuke was also arrested in Aitkin County on January 9, 2021 protesting at a Line 3 work site and posted bail with conditions to remain law-abiding.
LaDuke’s six co-defendants, stemming from the July 19, 2021 event, were dismissed by Wadena County in October and November 2022. ...
___________________________________________________________
nativenewsonline 'Turning pain into power' | Family of MMIW Launches Beauty and Self-Defense Line
In the lead-up to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women's Month, one Oklahoma family impacted by the crisis has launched a beauty and personal safety line they hope could someday someone's life.
The line, Skye Woman Beauty, comprises eye shadow pallets, a lip collection and a heart-shaped highlighter pallet; and red-colored keychain canister of pepper spray with UV dye, and a pink, 5.5-inch kubaton that can be used to injure a person or break a window.
For co-founder Alecia Onzahwah (Shawnee) Skye Woman Beauty is a multipronged family effort to process their grief, help other Indigenous families navigate life after a loved one is missing or murdered, and honor her late daughter, Skye Jim (Shawnee, Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma)….
...A portion of the revenue from Skye Woman Beauty will go toward Skye Jim's Justice Fund, which can be found here.
_______________________________________________________
yesmagazine.org.- 11 May2023
The Matriarchs Who Helped Seattle’s Urban Native Population
The streets of downtown Seattle in the 1950s and ’60s were the edge of a cliff for many Native American, Alaska Native, and First Nations people. The land that once nurtured them was now covered with cold concrete buildings into which they were not allowed entry. The sidewalks and parks became their homes when they couldn’t get a day-labor job, or maybe they spent a few nights in a decaying hotel when they could.
But amid this, on August 19, 1960, a new storefront appeared on First Avenue. Located in Belltown, just a few blocks north of Seattle’s “Red Ghetto,” the Seattle Indian Center opened its doors, offering an oasis inside the urban wilderness. Any Indian, regardless of their tribe or background, was welcomed, offered coffee, and counseled. They were given food, clothing, and emergency financial assistance, but most importantly, they were listened to and treated as human beings with a rich heritage.
The kind Native women who volunteered there were not outsiders or government workers. They were Native mothers and grandmothers who saw in the faces of the Native street people the eyes of their ancestors pleading for help. … led by Pearl Warren from the Makah tribe, [seven Native mothers] formed the first “urban Indian” support organization in the country, the American Indian Women’s Service League [in 1958. In opening and running the Seattle Indian Center and supporting the energies of the community, they fueled] political inroads that contributed to the Red Power Movement, and became a wellspring that gave birth to a number of important Native service organizations that continue their work today……………….
Further reading at the link and, among others, at:
________________________________________________________
LINK The Native American Women Warriors Association
is an organization created to serve and recognize Native American women veterans of the US armed services. Of the 2,800 groups that applied to be part of President Obama’s Inaugural parade in January 2013, they were among the 60 chosen, to form a colour guard.
{Founder and president Sgt.] Mitchelene BigMan … served 22 years in the Army, including two tours in Iraq [and her grandmother served in World War II). Nearly 5,000 Native American women have served in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. [Born] and raised on the Crow reservation in Montana [where unemployment was high an alcoholism and domestic violence were chronic, Bigman] enlisted at age 21 and went on to become a mechanic supporting a combat battalion.
"It was an all-male battalion," she said. "When I showed up, they were really disappointed, and the tension, I could just see it. First of all I'm female, a minority and a Native American. I had to prove myself three times as hard sometimes."
And she did. When she retired after two decades, she formed the [NAWWA, which] includes all ranks and [military branches, [promoting diversity and equality in the military and on reservations, and support for their women veterans]. In [the inaugural parade], they displayed their badges of military service on their native warrior dresses [traditionally worn for prayer and dance for] healing….
Images HERE. The NAWWA has been asked to represent the United States as leading color guards in the 80th D-Day parade that will take place in June 2024, Normandy, France. Donations can be made for that event or to support the organization’s efforts to
assist our Native American women veterans in receiving the help desperately needed tools to empower themselves to take on modern challenges in education and employment. Guide those needing special services to attain a powerful mind, body and spirit. … make aware the significant roles that women in the military hold. Promote fair recognition as warriors amongst our male counterparts. Educate the importance of a warrior status. Challenge philosophical assumptions[:] warriors are both women and men….
Further reading on the 2013 inaugural participation HERE.
________________________________________________________
The NewYorker In the Post-Roe Era, Letting Pregnant Patients Get Sicker—by Design
...In recent interviews, twelve Texas doctors told me that, under the legal conditions that curtail their ability to treat pregnant women in medical distress, the risk of patient harm had escalated. The doctors said that they felt a professional and public obligation not to hide what they were seeing every day, although several requested anonymity to discuss sensitive cases.
Five Texas doctors I spoke with mentioned that, in their hospitals, pregnancy complications like sepsis, which is life-threatening, were on the rise. “We are seeing more frequent first-trimester complications,” a Houston doctor said, “and my colleagues and I sense that it’s leading to more death.”….
________________________________________________________________
STAT For Spanish-speaking Latinas, language gaps — real or perceived — tied to discrimination during labor
...[Jessica Valdez, an OB-GYN resident physician at the University of California, San Francisco] and colleagues published a study in late March that found that being a primarily Spanish-speaking woman makes you much more likely to experience discrimination during labor — but much less likely to feel pressured to get certain medical interventions.
The researchers looked at 1,202 women who self-identified as Latina in the 2016 Listening to Mothers in California survey, a statewide representative sample of women who gave birth in hospitals. Adjusting for other demographic, maternal, and neonatal factors, they analyzed the association between primary language and perceived discrimination due to language differences, perceived pressure for medical interventions, and perceived mistreatment during labor. They found that, compared to monolingual English speakers, Spanish-only speakers were significantly more likely to report language-based discrimination. Bilingual Spanish-English speakers reported experiencing some language-based discrimination, though less compared to monolingual Spanish-speakers….
________________________________________________________________
Beckers Johns Hopkins hospital names 1st female president
Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center has named Jennifer Nickoles its next president.
Ms. Nickoles has served as the hospital's interim leader since her predecessor, Richard Bennett, MD, retired in July 2022. She has served Johns Hopkins Medicine since 1996, according to a May 8 news release shared with Becker's: Her previous roles include chief of staff and vice president of operations for system integration and affiliations.
She will be the first woman to hold the role in the hospital's 250-year history.
________________________________________________________________
Reuters Goldman Sachs to pay $215 mln to end gender bias lawsuit:
"The settlement disclosed on Monday covers about 2,887 current and former female vice presidents and associates who worked in investment banking, investment management and securities."
________________________________________________________________
STAT More than celebrations, community baby showers can also be prenatal care — and could save lives
The Bronx auditorium was bustling with pregnant people, and Detective Fred Washington of the police department’s community affairs bureau had a promise.
“If anyone goes into labor, NYPD is here to help!” he shouted to the hundreds of people who had come from all around The Bronx to the community baby shower to receive donated diapers, pacifiers and children’s clothing. Along with the items, the showers have provided hundreds of expectant families with education on safe sleep, domestic violence, the importance of car seats, prenatal [nutrition]...
_______________________________________________________________
ReligionNewsService Embodying Islam: Nadiah Mohajir works to better Muslims’ sexual health and relationships
...More than a decade ago, Nadiah Mohajir, a Pakistani American Muslim and a consultant at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in her native Chicago, began to see the extent to which fellow Muslims needed culturally aware information about healthy relationships, sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy. Long a confidant for friends dealing with such issues, she saw a deep unmet need for a place where Muslims could talk about sexual health as well as gender-based violence.
After some initial pilot programs, Mohajir founded HEART Women & Girls, now a national nonprofit that works to, as its website says, “promote sexual health, uproot gendered violence and advance reproductive justice … as a 'third space' — not the home and not the mosque — that provides muslims the safety and openness they need to discuss issues about their bodies, while honoring Muslim traditions….
_____________________________________________________________
AP News the beginning of a Catholic congregation’s end.
Through more than 200 years of service, the Sisters of Charity of New York have nursed Civil War casualties, joined civil rights demonstrations, cared for orphans and taught countless children. But the Catholic nuns recently decided that their aging order will no longer accept new members in the United States and has announced that it is on a “path of completion.”
[With] a roster of every sister who had ever served the congregation, they honored the women who preceded them. “We just held up that book and said, ‘They’re here with us.’ (It’s) recognition that we’ve all done what God asked us to do,...”
_____________________________________________________________
TheNewYorker The fiction of Anzia Yezierska captures the perennial tension between personal ambition and the obligations of care By Maia Silber JWA.org Anzia Yezierska 1881–November 21, 1970
...In 1915, she published her first short story, “Free Vacation House,” about the humiliations charitable organizations perpetrate on the women they claim to help. In 1922, her collection Hungry Hearts was made into a silent film. Her first novel, Salome of the Tenements (1923), drew on the experiences of famed labor organizer, Rose Pastor Stokes….
...Yezierska was catapulted briefly to fame and fortune when Hungry Hearts (1920) caught the attention of Samuel Goldwyn, who based a 1922 silent movie on it. In 1925, Sidney Alcott directed a silent film based on Yezierska’s Salome of the Tenements. Although Goldwyn brought Yezierska to Hollywood as a screenwriter, she found her writing blocked amid wealth and removed from the culture she knew. Refusing a $100,000 contract, she returned to economic struggle in New York. In the early 1930s, she worked for the WPA Writer’s Project, cataloging trees in Central Park. Beginning in the 1950s, she wrote book reviews for the New York Times, primarily on Jewish or women’s themes whose import she universalized….
...During the 1950s and 1960s, she wrote of the plight of Puerto Rican immigrants in New York, and, during the last decade of her life, she explored the theme of aging—the diminution of one’s faculties, the lack of dignity and respect, the loss of independence….
_____________________________________________________________
TheNewYorker The Vindication
of E. Jean Carroll
_____________________________________________________________
HighCountryNews ‘We need to touch the earth’
by Margo Hill.
We need to touch the earth. On the reservation growing up, we ran in the mountains and played in the rivers and collected eagle and hawk feathers. Kids now are wrapped in the digital world. I want my grandkids, when I have some, to be out in the world, touching Mother Earth.
When I think about going into court for water adjudication or water-quality standards, I think about how this river is connected to our aquifer — how we all need clean drinking water and a place to walk and think and be. We as parents have to unplug as well. Once we’re in touch with the water and nature, we will understand the value and how important it is for our health. There is so much we can learn from what is right here.
#iamthewest
_____________________________________________________________
TheSentencingProject The female incarcerated population stands over six times higher than in 1980 (525%).
Research on female incarceration is critical to understanding the full consequences of mass incarceration and to unraveling the policies and practices that lead to their criminalization.
Over the past quarter century, there has been a profound change in the involvement of women within the criminal justice system. This is the result of more expansive law enforcement efforts, stiffer drug sentencing laws, and post-conviction barriers to reentry that uniquely affect women … While 2020 saw a substantial downsizing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this trend reversed with a 10% increase in 2021 …
...Though many more men are in prison than women, the rate of growth for female imprisonment has been twice as high as that of men since 1980. There are approximately 976,000 women under the supervision of the criminal justice system. … Over (half 58%) of imprisoned women in state prisons have a child under the age of 18…. In 2021, the imprisonment rate for Black women (62 per 100,000) was 1.6 times the rate of imprisonment for white women (38 per 100,000). Latinx women were imprisoned at 1.3 times the rate of white women (49 vs. 38 per 100,000). The rate of imprisonment for Black and Latinx women has declined since 2000, while the rate of imprisonment for white women has increased….
_____________________________________________________________
from AP Catholic elementary school changes its name to remove the name of bishop heading the diocese during a time of “unthinkable abuse of children by priests.
The principal of the John A. Marshall School in Morrisville, Vermont told students on Monday that on July 1 the school will become known as All Saints Catholic Academy.
___________________________________________________________
LaPrensaLatina “Operation Identify Me”: Interpol publishes photos of murdered women to help identification, a “black notice” first in public news
Paris, May 10 (EFE).- The International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, released photographs of almost two dozen women Wednesday whose bodies were found in [Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium,] and who are believed to have been murdered.
The organization released facial reconstructions of 22 women along with pieces of clothing and jewelry found with their remains to help identify them, in a pioneering initiative.
“Most of the 22 victims died violently, and some were also abused or starved before they died. Partly because the women are likely from countries other than where they were found, their identities have not yet been established,” Carina van Leeuen and Martin de Wit of the Dutch police said in a statement on the Interpol website….
_____________________________________________________________
TheGuardian Woman in Cornwall died four months after reporting rape, inquest hears
A senior coroner has expressed deep concern over the way police and mental health services dealt with the case of a vulnerable woman who [apparently] fell from a railway bridge four months after reporting she had been raped.
Tamsin Dolamore, a 24-year-old carer, was found on the tracks near a railway station in Cornwall and died in hospital the following day having sustained head injuries and a cardiac arrest.
During an inquest in Truro, it emerged there was a delay in appointing a sexual offences liaison officer to her case, and a shortage of detectives to investigate sexual attacks.
Though her GP had said her world had been “turned upside down” by the rape, she was not seen by mental health services and was told she would have to wait five or six months for help from charities that help survivors, because of pressure on their resources….
_____________________________________________________________
USAToday Shakira gives moving Woman of the Year speech at Billboard's Latin Women in Music
..."It’s been a year where I’ve realized we women are stronger than we think, braver than we believed, more independent than we were taught to be,"...
______________________________________________________________
HighCountryNews How social work can help fight the impacts of climate change — Denver’s Lisa Reyes Mason leads a new generation of social workers in helping communities adapt to the climate crisis.
“...at its core, social work is meant to be a profession that's about social justice and social change. It’s about what are the inequities in society, whether that’s racial or economic or other aspects of diversity or identity, and how we challenge them….”
When Lisa Reyes Mason was doing her social work dissertation on water insecurity in the Philippines, she was often asked, “How is this social work?” Today, a decade later, with climate change rapidly transforming communities across the West, she is seen as a pioneer in her field. Not only does Mason see social work playing a critical role in confronting the climate crisis, she also believes the West has much to learn from places that have already taken steps to adapt to climate change. Her research in the Philippines, for example, found that many families, regardless of income, were already recycling their gray water — a practice that is just starting to gain traction in an increasingly water-starved West.
In 2015, social work’s accrediting body added “environmental justice” to the competencies that all social workers in the U.S. must possess. Now, every graduate in the field has some knowledge of environmental justice issues and how these might interface with their work. Yet, as both the speed and scale of climate change and natural disasters accelerate, social workers are struggling to keep up with the impacts, especially on the already vulnerable communities that they tend to serve.
Lisa Reyes Mason is a biracial social worker, scholar and advocate for climate justice. On the faculty at the University of Denver, she is one of the leading researchers on how social work can both mitigate climate change and help communities adapt to its worst effects. HCN spoke with Mason on how social workers are helping communities cope with climate change, how their strategies are tailored to the political and ecological realities of the West, and where the field needs to go in the future….
___________________________________________________________
Fooddive.com Michelle Obama launches healthier food and beverage company aimed at children
Geared to growing interest among consumers to protect their children from rising youth obesity rates and the attendant health risks —high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes in particular — Plezi Nutrition aims to offer both expert persuasive education on food choices, and attractive products lower in sugar and sweetness, higher in nutrients kids need. First up, a drink called, like the company, Plezi, in Sour Apple, Blueberry Blast and Orange Smash flavors. with water and fruit juices as its main ingredients, 75% less sugar than leading competitor beverages, stevia extract in the mix, plus fiber and nutrients, such as potassium, magnesium and zinc, for children ages 6 to 12, at times when drinking milk or water is less feasible.
...During her time at the White House, Obama launched “Let’s Move!,” an initiative that promoted exercise and healthier eating for children. ... Obama is not only a [PLezi] co-founder but a strategic partner [tasked with working] behind the scenes [on] the company’s mission and model how food and beverage brands can produce better-for-you offerings. “I’ve learned that on this issue, if you want to change the game, you can’t just work from the outside. You’ve got to get inside—you’ve got to find ways to change the food and beverage industry itself...”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 20% of U.S. children and teens aged 2 to 19 are obese … The American Heart Associated noted children and young adults aged 2 to 19 years of age consume 16 teaspoons of added sugar per day — more than 53 pounds each year… A 2022 study by the Access to Nutrition Initiative found about 70% of all [Consumer Packaged Goods] food and beverages [from the eleven largest companies —Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz, ConAgra, Campbell Soup, General Mills, Kellogg, Keurig Dr Pepper, Mars, and Unilever —] are less “healthy,” and no big CPG gets a majority of its sales from “healthier” products….
...Obama announced a “Kitchen Cabinet” advisory group of experts in nutrition, public health and parenting who will guide and advise the company’s educational efforts, as well as marketing approaches and product development.
____________________________________________________________
Medscape Breast cancer screening recommendations come to late for too many Black women.
The US Preventive Services Task Force currently recommends that breast cancer screening start at age 50 years, regardless of race or ethnicity.
But a new analysis of breast cancer deaths supports a "race and ethnicity-adapted" approach to breast screening, with Black women starting screening 8 years sooner — at age 42…..
_____________________________________________________________
We believe that everyone should be able to take time to be there for their family — to care for themselves or a loved one without risking their job or paycheck.
You can join with them to petition Congress, https://paidleaveforall.org/... or tell your story, https://paidleaveforall.org/... . Personal storytelling has strengths and weaknesses, but will often move listeners in a way objective facts do not,
_____________________________________________________________
TheConvo An obscure 1800s law is shaping up to be the center of the next abortion battle – legal scholars explain what’s behind the [post-Civil War-era] <big>Comstock Act</big>
Anti-abortion groups are looking for new ways to wage their battle against abortion rights, eyeing the potential implications of a 150-year-old law, the Comstock Act, that could effectively lead to a nationwide abortion ban ….There are now legal cases questioning the [FDA’s] regulation of mifepristone, one of the two drugs [standardly used] for medication abortion. If courts find that the FDA has the authority to approve mifepristone for abortion, the Comstock Act could still prevent the pill’s distribution….
...Read one way, [it] could prevent mailing mifepristone to a person’s home, regardless of whether this person lives in a state where abortion is legal.
A broader interpretation, advanced by anti-abortion groups ... would mean the Comstock Act applies to the distribution of all drugs and medical tools used for abortions, not just mifepristone.
[Although Dobbs v Jackson returned abortion issues to states] it’s important to understand that the Comstock Act is a federal law that applies to [all states, even those where abortion remains legal….]
WIKIPEDIA Comstock laws
... passed by [Congress] under the Grant administration ...[starting March 3, 1873 with] the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use ... criminalized any use of the U.S. Postal Service to send ... obscenity, contraceptives, abortifacients, sex toys, personal letters with any sexual content or information, or any information regarding the above… A similar federal act [in] 1909 applied to delivery by interstate "express" or any other common carrier (such as railroad) [as well], In addition about half of the states enacted [releated laws] considered by women's rights activist Mary Dennett to also be "Comstock laws". [They] were named after their chief proponent, US Postal Inspector and anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock….
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
Campaign season 2024 is ON. GET INVOLVED: