Sens. Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray have introduced legislation that would block new Department of Health and Human Services provider conscience regulations from going into effect, Planned Parenthood Federation of America announced today. The proposed HHS rule would require any health care entity that receives federal funds certify that none of its employees are required to assist with medical services they find objectionable.

The Protecting Patients and Health Care Act block HHS from finalizing or implementing the regulations, so the legislation will have an impact even if it passes after the regulations have been promulgated. "This legislation sends a strong message to administrative agencies that Congress is willing to act when agencies exceed their authority by going beyond the scope of existing laws and congressional intent," says Planned Parenthood spokesperson Diane Quest.

"In the final days of his administration, the President is again putting ideology first and attempting to roll back health care protections for women and families," said Sen. Clinton in a statement. "The fact that the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] was never consulted in the drafting of this rule further illustrates that this is purely a political ploy." In fact, EEOC officials have publicly opposed the rule, saying that the regulations upset the balance between respect accorded to provider and patient conscience.

Clinton and Murray met with HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt in September to express their concern over the new regulation, but received no assurances that the regulation wouldn't impede women's access to basic health care services like contraception. "While I appreciate the Secretary sitting down with us today, we received no guarantee that women's access to contraceptives will be protected if these rules move forward," Sen. Murray said at the time. And in July, twenty-eight senators joined Clinton and Murray in signing a letter in opposition to the new regulations (President-Elect Obama was one of the signatories). Clinton and Murray are long-time champions of women's health; by holding up Andrew von Eschenbach's confirmation as permanent FDA commissioner, the pair forced the FDA to approve emergency contraception for over-the-counter access.

The new regulations are opposed by women's health groups, physicians' groups, members of Congress, President-Elect Obama, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and by over 200,000 individual commenters filing opposition to the regulations. They also appear to violate the Bush administration's own memorandum which directed departments not to engage in "midnight policymaking," except in the case of exceptional circumstances. In May 2008, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten directed all heads of executive departments and agencies to submit all proposed regulations before June 1, 2008, in order to “resist the historical tendency of administrations to increase regulatory activity in their final months.” The administration has not explained why these regulations rise to the level of exceptional circumstance. HHS has not yet released the new regulations, but they are expected in the coming days.

Abortion Won't Work as a "Wedge" Issue in Western States Anymore

Laura K. Chapin, a Democratic strategist and consultant for the No on 48 campaign in Colorado, says that in the wake of the resounding defeat of Colorado's personhood amendment, California's parental notification initiative, and South Dakota's abortion ban, we can conclude that voters in Western states will no longer be tempted by anti-choice ballot initiatives. Writes Chapin, "Ballot initiatives are tempting for abortion opponents because they at least partially sidestep the complications of the legislative process. This is especially true in states like California and Colorado that have very low thresholds for getting something on the ballot."  But the strategy backfired - the extreme amendments demonstrated to voters that pro-choicers are the true moderates and that votes showed that residents of Western states would rather focus on practical issues that affect their daily lives. 

TIME Examines "Troubling Ramifications" of Cosmetic Genital Surgery

I don't want to read about it either, but if you're going to, you couldn't do much better than Laura Fitzpatrick's "Plastic Surgery Below the Belt," in TIME, on the rise in cosmetic genital surgery.  Aside from pointing out that the surgery isn't medically indicated and can result in health complications as well as decreased sexual pleasure ("The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a committee opinion last year warning that women may experience scarring, chronic pain, obstetric risks or reduced sexual pleasure; a similar statement was issued in July by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists"), Fitzpatrick quotes sexologist and psychologist Leonore Tiefer saying: "Promoting a very narrow definition of what women's genitals ought to look like - even for those women who don't want surgery, it harms them."  Fitzpatrick also points out that cosmetic genital surgery can have "troubling ramifications" beyond our own borders.  

This kind of cosmetic surgery can interfere with advocates' ability to fight forced ritual mutilation in places like Africa, where the practice is still common, says Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of international women's rights watchdog Equality Now. Designer vaginas "are considered reasons for not throwing stones, so to speak, at other cultures," she says." 

Fitzpatrick concludes quoting social worker Laura Berman: "The best way to start enjoying your body could be far simpler than surgery: 'You may need a new boyfriend.'" 

Chinese Woman Allowed to Continue Pregnancy

Chinese officials were threatening to force Arigul Tursun, a six-months-pregnant mother of two, to have an abortion, but she has now been freed and allowed to continue her pregnancy, reports ABC News.  However, she was apparently only released because, said the local population control committee chief, "she wasn't in good enough health to have an abortion."  Some Republican lawmakers have suggested that this case proves that US funding should not be restored to the United Nations' international family planning agency, UNFPA. But UNFPA is not engaged in any way in coercive sterilization or forced abortion, and works with the Chinese government to promote a voluntary approach to family planning. 

Want to Know More About the New HHS Secretary?

For the back story on Tom Daschle, listen to the New York Times's Peter Baker talking about the Senator's background and likely priorities at HHS.  And Rev. Debra Haffner responds to the appointment.

A motion filed with the California Supreme Court to hear a same-sex marriage challenge to Proposition 8, an anti-gay marriage ballot measure passed this month that would amend the California constitution, has been granted.

However, a request for a "stay" of Prop 8 was denied essentially keeping the marriage ban in place until the case has been heard. Those California couples that were legally married prior to the passage of Prop 8 are stuck in what can only be imagined as a nightmarish limbo of being, for all purposes, forcibly divorced.

According to the Supreme Court order:

"The issues to be briefed and argued in these matters are as follows:

(1) Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the California Constitution?

(2) Does Proposition 8 violate the separation of powers doctrine under the California Constitution?

(3) If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional, what is its effect, if any, on the marriages of same-sex couples performed before the adoption of Proposition 8?"

While gay rights and reproductive rights advocates have encircled each other's movements for years, and there have certainly been many connections made between movements, the recent election may be responsible for a more in-depth examination of the ways in which these movements are critical to each other's successes. 

While three anti-choice ballot measures were soundly defeated on November 4th, anti-gay rights measures around the country, most notably in California were passed. The disconnect among voters was immediately picked up in progressive circles. As Shira Saperstein wrote on RH Reality Check recently,

Reproductive rights are about far more than abortion -- they also encompass contraception, adoption, and intimate relationships, including marriage. The ability to manage our fertility through contraception and, when necessary, abortion, enables us to plan our families and to determine whether, when, and with whom to have children. Adoption, too, allows caring adults to become parents and form loving families. And marriage provides legal and social benefits that make it easier to care for one another and to raise children with the security and resources they need to thrive.

On the Huffington Post last week, Richard Burns asks why people don't get the connection between reproductive rights and gay rights noting that it's difficult, if not impossible, to have one without the other,

The interesting thing is that the constitutional amendments and legislation banning same-sex marriage effectively withhold elements of the above rights - to family, reproduction and sexuality - from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Banning marriage, civil unions, domestic partnerships and even, as in the case of Virginia, contractual agreements that are deemed to replicate marriage rights, by definition limits our abilities to form families, as we cannot legally provide for and protect each other.

Saperstein makes the case that by framing these rights as central to the "core American values" we all hold close to our hearts we cannot possibly see LGBT rights and reproductive justice as anything but intimately linked:

These rights are indivisible, and defending them comes not only from a concern for women or for the GLBT community. Reproductive rights are about nothing less than the ability to chart one's own course in life--to make decisions about love, sex, and family without government interference or discrimination. That ability is central to core American values of freedom, equality, and fairness. It is time for progressives to join together in support of a complete and comprehensive reproductive rights agenda that advances liberty and justice for all.

For more information, including letters from one of only five organizations urging the court not to accept cases challenging the proposition, visit the California Supreme Court's web site. Despite the fact that the Kingdom of Heavens' letter opposing a court challenge begins by telling the court that the organization is acting "on behalf of the Almighty Eternal Creator" the court chose to hear the case.

Anti-Choice Sen. Ted Stevens Loses Seat
Anti-choice Alaska Senator Ted Stevens has lost his re-election race to Anchorage mayor Paul Begich, a pro-choice Democrat endorsed by NARAL Pro-Choice America. The Democrats are now two seats shy of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Writes Politico, "Begich defeated the Senate giant by a 3,724-vote margin after absentee and early votes were counted, a stunning end to a 40-year Senate career marred by Stevens’ conviction on corruption charges a week before the election."

Anti-Choicers Fighting Roe Marginalized?
Reacting to yesterday's Washington Post story on anti-choicers switching gears to work on programs to support women bringing pregnancies to term rather than overturning Roe, Catholic News Agency worried about tactics employed to "marginalize both pro-lifers who favor outlawing abortion and people who oppose homosexual politics."  The CNA piece extensively covers the work of the Third Way Foundation, a center-left think tank that has produced a memo suggesting politicians say, "“Conservatives want to tear this country apart and throw people in jail. I want to reduce the need for abortions by preventing unintended pregnancies and supporting pregnant women.”

Ross Douthat Says Anti-Choice Movement Should Stop Waging War on Contraception
Conservative commentator Ross Douthat endorses a variety of abortion bans and limitations in a recent blog post at the Atlantic, but says that the right-to-life movement should drop its fight against contraception, acknowledging that the right to use contraception is fundamental to the "post-Sexual Revolution human heart." 

 

I don't find the argument that either pill should be classified as an abortifacent particularly convincing, and I don't think the pro-life movement is helping its cause by blurring the lines between actual abortifacents, like RU-486, which are taken with the intent to abort an embryo, and contraceptives that are designed to prevent conception, but may have the secondary effect of preventing implantations on rare occasions. (At the moment, moreover, the evidence that this ever actually happens is relatively thin.) I think a pro-life movement that expends a great deal of energy campaigning against the pill is essentially assuming the permanence of Roe and Casey, and placing its hopes in a much broader cultural transformation that seems extremely unlikely at the present pass. It's behaving like a Church, in a sense, rather than a political movement, and I already have a Church: The point of the pro-life movement, as I see it, is to seek discrete and plausible political change, not to seek a revolution in the post-Sexual Revolution human heart.

Tiller's Lawyers Argue that Charges Should Be Dismissed
The trial against Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider charged with misdemeanors based on abortion care provided to women with fetuses viable outside the womb, is underway in Wichita, Kansas.  Tiller's lawyers are trying to convince the judge to throw out the allegations because the case is "based on evidence that Kline collected through abuse of his authority as the state's top law enforcement officer," writes Ron Sylvester in the Wichita Eagle.  Kline gathered evidence by conducting an investigation to determine whether abortion providers like Tiller were properly reporting sexual abuse among teens.  He later announced that his definition of indications of sexual abuse included any sex among underage patients, including consensual sex among teens of similar ages. Writes Sylvester, "The broad ruling so outraged health care providers and social workers that a group sued Kline in federal court and won." (Sylvester is also Twittering the case.)

The New York City Council today heard testimony on a bill that would improve access to women's health clinics and make it easier to prosecute harassers who protest outside of clinics.  The bill would create a 15-foot buffer zone around clinic entrances in which no protest would be permitted, but it does not target peaceful protesters, "sidewalk counselors," or prayer vigils. As Council Speaker Christine Quinn wrote in a letter to the editor in New York Daily News today, "Anyone who wishes to protest, and does not try to harass those who enter a health-care facility or willfully interfere with the operation of a reproductive health-care facility, should have no fear of arrest under our bill."  Quinn and NARAL Pro-Choice New York President Kelli Conlon wrote in the Metro newspaper, "Through the implementation of this Clinic Access Bill, health clinic staff can have protestors arrested who deliberately interfere with a clinic's operations. Additionally, this Clinic Access Bill will allow police to arrest protestors they see blocking clinic entrances and exits as well as parking lots and driveways, which is vital to health providers in outer boroughs."

Under the new law, providers could sue harassers on their clients' behalf, a provision that particularly frightened a panel offering testimony in opposition to the bill. A monsignor who engages in "sidewalk counseling" (unfortunately, I did not catch his name) stated to the Council that he would much prefer to respond to harassment allegations in court from the woman who felt harassed, rather than from the woman's provider. City Councilman Charles Barron responded with words I wish could be marshaled every time reproductive health advocates are fighting for protections: "With due respect, Monsignor, you may prefer that, but for a woman, an immigrant, a young woman who has been harassed, she may feel too intimidated to bring charges and may be relieved that her provider can."  Hearing a male lawmaker tell a male anti-choicer to put women's perspectives first felt ground-breaking, and the chamber erupted in applause.

EEOC Opposes New HHS Regulations

The New York Times' Robert Pear, who broke the story on the new HHS provider conscience regulations, wrote yesterday that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is "strenuous[ly]" objecting to the new regulations, which would broaden protections for providers who morally oppose to certain health care and would allow them to refuse to provide treatment without referring the patient to a provider who would provide care.  Pear explains the current balance of employer and patient rights in the area of provider conscience:

Under the Civil Rights Act, an employer must make reasonable accommodations for an employee's religious practices, unless the employer can show that doing so would cause "undue hardship on the conduct of its business."

In a letter commenting on the proposed rule, Mr. Ishimaru and Ms. Griffin, from the employment commission, said that 40 years of court decisions had carefully balanced "employees' rights to religious freedom and employers' business needs."

The proposed rule, they said, "would throw this entire body of law into question.

Some Anti-Choice Evangelicals and Catholics Work Toward Abortion Reduction

Writes Jacqueline Salmon in the Washington Post, "Some of the activists [opposed to legal abortion] are actually working with abortion rights advocates to push for legislation in Congress that would provide pregnant women with health care, child care and money for education -- services that could encourage them to continue their pregnancies."  The focus of these activists does not seem to be the banning of legal abortion, which causes Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League, to call the activists "sell-outs."  The coalition backs two House bills, including the Pregnant Women's Support Act, sponsored by Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.), and the Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act, sponsored by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who oppose abortion.

ACLU Seeks Documents Outlining Government Policies On Teens' Access To Reproductive Health Services

The Administration of Children & Families (ACF) has ignored the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act requests for information about its policies concerning refugee and undocumented teenagers' access to health care services, so the ACLU yesterday asked a federal court to order ACF to release the documents.  Said the ACLU in a release,

ACF issued the policy at issue after the media reported in June 2008 that Commonwealth Catholic Charities of Virginia fired four social workers who helped an unaccompanied, undocumented 16-year-old in its custody obtain an abortion and contraception. Commonwealth Catholic Charities receives funding through a federal grant administered for ACF by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The executive director of the Commonwealth of Catholic Charities defended the group's actions by stating in the press that facilitating access to abortion and contraception is "contrary to basic teachings of the Catholic Church.

"The Administration for Children and Families must ensure that taxpayer dollars are used to provide for the needs of some of the most vulnerable children and teens that make it to our shores. They are in need of our compassion and care," said Daniel Mach, Director of Litigation for the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. "Instead, the government appears to be allowing U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and its subcontractors to use federal dollars to impose their religious beliefs on teenagers from a wide range of religious backgrounds who have very few, if any, opportunities to obtain the necessary care on their own." 

 

Priest Asks Parishioners to Repent for Voting for Obama

Father Jay Scott Newman, a Greenville, South Carolina, priest has asked members of his church who voted for Obama to repent before seeking Communion.

 

Dr. George Tiller, the now-famous physician who performs late term abortions in Kansas (and one of the only physicians in the country who will perform abortions extremely late in the pregnancy if the pregancy poses a threat to the woman's mental or physical health) is set to go on trial in March of 2009, facing criminal charges (19 misdemeanors) that he, according to the Associated Press, "failed to obtain a second opinion from an independent physician for some late term abortions."

On Monday, at a hearing to attempt to have the charges against Dr. Tiller dropped, Tiller's attorneys argued that evidence obtained by former Attorney General Phill Kline was "tainted." Paul Morat, one of Tiller's attorneys, charged that Phill Kline, even prior to becoming Attorney General had plans to investigate Dr. Tiller simply on account of Kline's anti-abortion position. 

However, the big bomb of the day was Morat's interrogation about Kline's consumer protection chief, Bryan Brown, while AG. Brown was an anti-choice activist for many years (and still is by the looks of his blog) who was arrested at least twelve times for his anti-choice activism. 

Associated Press reports:

During his unsuccessful 2006 bid for re-election, Kline had asserted that Brown, who has been arrested a dozen times during abortion protests, was not involved in the Tiller prosecution. However, defense attorneys produced a 2003 memo Brown wrote with the subject line, "abortion clinic overview."

Not only did Kline use an anti-abortion activist arrested a dozen times for engaging in illegal activities to help collect evidence against an abortion provider, in an unbelievable example of misuse of process he in fact relied on Brown to document names of abortion clinic employees. As a former clinic employee, this chills me to the bone. 

Brown's rants on his blog portray a man with a mission, to be sure. Calling Tiller his "enemy", Brown writes, "I am proud to have one who does what he does for a "living" as an enemy."

Tiller's lawyers are attempting to argue for suppression of Kline's evidence in Tiller's trial in March.  

Planned Parenthood Federation of America with the ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights sent a letter today to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs criticizing them for failing "to explain how the Provider Conscience regulation meets the “extraordinary circumstances” standard laid out in the Bolton Memorandum."

As RH Reality Check has extensively reported on over the last several months, the Bush administration felt it necessary to quickly release proposed regulations, under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), that would have disastrous effects on health care consumers, in particular women seeking contraception, by elevating the opinions of health care providers above critical access to health care. These proposed regulations allow for health care providers and any staff members in federally funded health care facilities, to define contraception as abortion, and to refuse to provide women contraception - for any reason - if it conflicts with their personal belief system.

“It’s unconscionable that the Bush administration, while promising a smooth transition, would take a final opportunity to politicize women’s health,” said PPFA President Cecile Richards. “People want government to find commonsense solutions to problems, not to create them by allowing health care providers to withhold critical information and services at a time when affordable health care is hard enough to come by.”

Unfortunately for the Bush administration, though they thought these proposed regulations would quietly become embedded in HHS policy, health care advocates, health care providers, women's advocates, health care consumers and others took notice. In only a few weeks, more than 200,000 Americans registered their comments in the 30-day public commenting period - most of them vehemently opposed to such a regulation. 

"Ultimately, low-income women, who already face tremendous obstacles getting health care and rely more on public programs, will be hit the hardest by this regulation," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. "This new rule violates a woman's rights and needs as a patient and, in the end, only erects new barriers to her access to reproductive health care."

It was not looking good for Bush's eleventh hour attempt to curtail women's access to reproductive health care in a final move. But there's more. 

According to a directive from the White House itself (the Bolton memorandum), issued in May 2008, all proposed regulations were to be submitted by June 1, 2008 in order to be considered for passage, unless there were "extraordinary circumstances" at work. The HHS regulations were not submitted until August 2008, thus causing advocates and others to assume the only way they could be considered was for their content to address said "extraordinary circumstances."

Unfortunately, as of today, there have been no explanations to the American public as to why these proposed regulations, seeking to reprioritize provider opinions and belief systems as more important than patient care, address critical circumstances. In order to seek answers, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights have sent a letter (below) to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

You can take action here. 

 

November 17, 2008

Hon. Susan E. Dudley
Administrator
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Office of Management and Budget

725 17th Street, NW                                                                                

Washington, DC 20503

Fax:      (202) 395-3047
Email:   OIRA-submissions@omb.eop.gov



Dear Ms. Dudley:

The undersigned groups committed to women’s health are writing to urge OIRA to take its responsibilities seriously with respect to the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) “Provider Conscience Regulation” (RIN 0991-AB48, 73 Fed. Reg. 50274 (Aug. 26, 2008) (to be codified at 45 C.F.R. pt. 88).

As you are well-aware, on May 9, 2008, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten issued a directive for agencies to submit all proposed regulations they wish to finalize before the end of the Bush Administration by June 1, 2008, except in “extraordinary circumstances.”  Mr. Bolten’s directive explicitly sought to “resist the historical tendency of administrations to increase regulatory activity in their final months.”  The purpose of the deadline was to ensure that agencies did not engage in ill-conceived rulemakings prior to a change of administration.

Yet this is exactly what HHS is doing with the Provider Conscience regulation.  These regulations, which relate to statutes that have been on the books for years (in one case, since the 1970’s) were not proposed until late August 2008.  Moreover, HHS has put the rule on the fast track with a shortened 30-day public comment period and no public hearing.

This unjustified last minute regulatory rush, in clear contravention of the Bolten directive, was drawn to your attention by the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI).  In its letter dated September 5, 2008, IPI requested that you enforce Mr. Bolten’s directive by either explaining the “extraordinary circumstances” that require the issuance the Provider Conscience regulation, or preventing the promulgation of this eleventh-hour regulation.  Your response to that request, dated October 9, 2008, suggested that the Provider Conscience regulation is a “circumstance[] in which it would be appropriate for individual regulations to proceed without regard to deadlines if approved by OIRA, working closely with the heads of the President’s policy councils.”

You have failed entirely to explain how the Provider Conscience regulation meets the “extraordinary circumstances” standard laid out in the Bolton Memorandum.  If OIRA believes that extraordinary circumstances exist for this proposed regulation and plans to allow HHS to proceed with finalizing these regulations before the end of the Administration, we believe that OIRA owes the American public a clear explanation of the extraordinary circumstances that justify allowing this to happen.  We request that OIRA provide that explanation as soon as possible.

As demonstrated in the thousands of comments that HHS received in response to the proposed rule, this ill-conceived, last-minute regulation could have a dramatic negative effect on the delivery of basic healthcare to women.  OIRA should take its responsibilities seriously and not allow HHS to engage in ill-conceived, last-minute rulemaking – under the endorsement of OIRA.

Furthermore, we request that OIRA and OMB require HHS to undertake a more formal accounting of the costs and benefits of the proposed Provider Conscience regulation.  As IPI’s September 5 letter explained, the analysis performed by HHS was cursory and wholly inadequate.  That cost-benefit analysis does not even attempt to address the real cost of the regulation for women, especially low-income women, whose access to basic reproductive health services, including contraception, as well as information about those services, may be limited as a result of the regulation.

Both House and Senate passed a bill decriminalizing abortion to twelve weeks in Uruguay over the past few weeks, but late last week Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez vetoed the bill, and the legislature is unlikely to override it.

Despite being a physician by training, President Vazquez was apparently happy to ignore the high rate of maternal death as a result of unsafe abortion in his country: illegal abortion in Uruguay accounts for 29 percent of all maternal deaths, more than twice the average worldwide.

In a statement, President Vazquez said, "Our laws cannot ignore the reality of the existence of human life in the gestation period, as scientific evidence clearly shows...It's more appropriate to look for a solution based on solidarity, giving a woman the freedom to make other choices and thereby save both her and the baby."

 

Related Posts

• Alejanda Lopez Gomez, Uruguay's Congress Decriminalizes Abortion, But Battle Isn't Over

Supreme Court Hears Case Limiting Gun Rights for Perpetrators of Domestic Violence

Last week, the Supreme Court heard a U.S. government challenge arguing that a gun ban for perpetrators of domestic violence should be applied to all 50 states.  Despite being a federal ban, the law is inconsistently applied because not all states apply gun bans keeping firearms from felons to perpetrators of domestic violence, which is considered a "misdemeanor."

Allison Stevens of Women's eNews explains the technicalities that prevent enforcement of the law in certain states:

At the foundation of the case is the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, which barred convicted felons from possessing firearms.

For decades that law was rarely applied to domestic violence cases because most of those cases were treated as misdemeanors rather than felonies.

But in 1996, Congress amended the law to apply to those convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence. The bill was known as the "Lautenberg Amendment," named after Sen. Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat who championed it.

But the amendment did not entirely close the loophole because of a discrepancy in legal terminology among the states.

At the time the amendment passed, 17 states had specific laws criminalizing "domestic violence" misdemeanors.

The rest did not use that term.

Instead they categorized cases of domestic violence under broader terms such as assault, battery, kidnapping, rape or murder. That rendered the Lautenberg Amendment inapplicable in those states.

The World Economic Forum Quantifies Global Gender Gap

Says Reuters: "Using United Nations data, the report found that girls and women around the world had generally reached near-parity with their male peers in literacy, access to education and health and survival. But in terms of economics and politics, including relative access to executive government and corporate posts, the gap between the sexes remains large." 

Afghan Girls Blinded Heading to School; Mass Absences in Response

Last week two men shot acid into the faces of 15 girls heading to school near Kandahar, Afghanistan, and two were blinded.  On Thursday, the day after the attack, none of the school's 1500 students showed up.  Broadsheet's Tracy Clark-Flory reports that the country has seen hundreds of attacks on girls in educational settings since the fall of the Taliban (Taliban extremists are thought to be responsible for the attack); under the Taliban's rule, education of girls was forbidden.

U.S. Gets Poor Marks for Preterm Birth Rate

The March of Dimes' first Preterm Birth Report Card found that states around the country were failing in efforts to prevent pre-term birth, defined as birth before 37 weeks of gestation. Pre-term birth is the leading cause of newborn deaths and a major cause of cerebral palsy, blindness, hearing loss, learning disabilities, asthma and other chronic conditions.