Healthcare reform and women

Distressingly (but not surprisingly), women are generally more likely to be uninsured or underinsured than men are. Women skip well care more frequently than men do.

And women may face a specific set of often costly healthcare needs when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth, with hospital births (just the birth, excluding prenatal care costs) reaching $10,000. Pregnant women also face discriminatory behavior from insurance companies that claim that pregnancy is a preexisting condition, and so they may refuse coverage for pregnant women seeking insurance policies. You can read more about these issues in The Nation, which has an excellent analysis of the healthcare crisis as it pertains to women. -Sara

Boulder abortion doctor threatened with violence

Dr. Warren Hern of Boulder is one of just a few late-term abortion providers in the country. In May, his Wichita colleague, Dr. George Tiller, was gunned down outside his church by an anti-abortion crusader. So Hern was understandably shaken when just three weeks later he received an anonymous phone call saying that two Vietnam War veterans were coming to Boulder to attack and kill his family.

"My family was terrified," Hern told the Denver Post. "I was frightened, my staff was frightened. My 92-year-old mother was taken from her apartment in the middle of the night (by federal agents), and it was quite a frightening experience, and we took it seriously because Dr. Tiller had just been assassinated."

The call was traced to a 70-year-old real estate broker in Spokane, Washington named Donald Hertz. This week, Hertz was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges making threats of violence and of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The FACE Act, which was passed in 1994, is meant to protect abortion providers and their patients from anti-choice extremists who use or threaten violence. While the FACE Act is widely thought to be underused, its employment in the Hertz case is a small but important victory in the prosecution of anti-choice criminals. Violence against abortion doctors impacts not only their lives, but their practices and the lives of their patients, too. The FACE Act acknowledges this and should be utilized in appropriate cases. -Naomi

A global focus on women

The New York Times Magazine released a special issue on Sunday explaining "why women's rights are the cause of our time." The main story, penned by Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn, firmly suggests that international aid and micro loans directed specifically to women could go a long way toward eradicating poverty, violence and even terrorism on a global scale. While Kristof, WuDunn and a handful of other reporters detailed some very uplifting stories about women who turned their lives around in spite of repeated assaults, rape and forced prostitution, they also sketched a dire picture of women's welfare around the world. The issue is well worth reading in its entirety. In the mean time, here are some facts and figures highlighted in the print edition (published below verbatim) to demonstrate the urgency of women's rights: 

• 100 million women and girls are missing around the world because of gender discrimination. 
  
• 1 woman dies in childbirth for every 100,000 live births in Ireland; 2,100 women die in childbirth for every 100,000 births in Sierra Leone. 
• The U.N. has estimated that there are 5 thousand honor killings a year, the majority in the Muslim world. 
• 1 percent of the world's landowners are women. 
• 21 percent of young women surveyed in Ghana reported that their sexual initiation was by rape. 
• 130 million women around the world have been subjected to genital cutting. 

-Naomi 

Marketing women as meat

The men's magazine Maxim is opening several "upscale, modern and sophisticated steakhouses that feature a menu of mouth-watering, globally inspired cuisine." The restaurant, Maxim Prime, looks a lot like Hooters with better quality food and more expensive entrees.

The Lady Finger has written before about the troubling women-as-meat motif in food advertising, and explicit objectification of women in the restaurant industry. I have no doubt that Maxim Prime customers view this restaurant as distinctly different than Hooters, Burger King, or Hardee's. Yet, Maxim Prime's advertising is no more subtle (just more shadowy), and even the menu features a "twins" and a "threesome" section. Wrapping sexism up into an expensive, classy package doesn't make it any less sexist. -Sara