The summer of 2016 could witness a defining moment in women’s history. Will the Supreme Court rule that several Texas clinic requirements are constitutional, thus undermining the undue burden standard, and empowering abortion rights opponents’ to use clinic shutdown laws to severely limit access to abortion?
Woman on the $10 Bill – Mark your calendars, folks. In 2020, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States, a woman (gasp!) will be featured on the ten dollar bill.
Even though documentary film maker and Academy Award winner Michael Moore said after he finished his last film, Capitalism, A Love Story (2009), that he was through with making movies – he apparently didn’t mean it. And it is a good thing for us. Where to Invade Next, is the tongue-in-cheek title of this funny and ironic documentary which makes the case for empowering women and bringing back to the U.S. our original ideas which have helped Europeans flourish. The film opens nationwide on February 12.
Breast Cancer Still a Leading Cause of Death – About 231,840 new cases of invasive breast cancer are estimated to occur in women this year and about 40,950 deaths from breast cancer will result, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS). Breast cancer remains the most common cancer among women in the U.S. – other than skin cancer – and breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, after lung cancer. According to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federal research agency (USPSTF), the median age at diagnosis is 61 years and the median age at death is 68 years.
In 1989, NOW members at the National NOW Conference adopted a resolution calling for “direct and equal representation for women in elected office and at all levels of government.” It reminded readers at the time that only five percent of the members of Congress and 17 percent of members of state legislatures were women. The resolution resolved that the goal of equal representation for women can only be accomplished by “pursuing legal strategies which challenge reapportionment plans for gender and racial bias” and “requiring redistricting guidelines that make gender balance and increasing representation of women a priority.”