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Opposition To Abortion Rights Declining Among Black Voters, Opinion Pieces States
"In recent years, conservative political strategists have painted African Americans as being more opposed to abortion than the white population," but experts believe that there actually "is a declining black support for conservative social policies like abortion," Tracie Powell, a former congressional fellow with the American Political Science Association, writes in a CQ Politics opinion piece. According to Powell, a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey found that 49% of black U.S. residents -- who generally are considered more religious than the entire U.S. population -- are in favor of keeping abortion legal in most or all cases.Powell continues that experts vary in their explanations of the declining opposition to abortion rights among blacks. She writes that Christopher Metzler, an associate dean at Georgetown University, said that economic concerns, such as the high unemployment rate for black workers, have become more important than abortion for the group. According to Powell, Metzler said that black U.S. residents also have started questioning the antiabortion-rights agenda because they received little support from conservatives in return.Powell writes that some experts believe the feelings of black U.S. residents regarding abortion might go "deeper than current economic and social realities." Powell adds that Salamishah Tillet, founder of the organization A Long Walk Home, said that reproductive injustice for black women dates to times of slavery, when they had no reproductive rights. According to Tillet, black women face reproductive injustice in modern times through underfunding of family planning programs, lack of access to contraception and legislation like the Hyde Amendment, which restricts access to abortion for low-income women, who are disproportionately black and Hispanic.Powell writes, "I doubt most Americans, including those who are black, consider abortion a civil rights issue, and I"m not arguing that it should be." However, "I do know that while black Americans remain one of the most religious demographics in the country, this isn"t the 1960s and African Americans no longer march lock-step behind the church," she writes (Powell, CQ Politics, 6/10).
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Immigration Changes Will Deprive UK Of Doctors, Says BMA Leader
Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of BMA Council, has written to the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson, to request that he intervenes to ensure that the UK does not lose further doctors as a result of recent changes to the immigration system. The changes restrict international medical students, who are studying in the UK, from continuing with their medical training beyond the two-year postgraduate Foundation Programme.
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Blogs Comment On Media Coverage Of Abortion Issues In Health Reform Debate, Other Topics
The following summarizes selected women"s health-related blog entries. ~ "Mainstream Media Reinforces Unexamined Arguments Against Public Funding for Abortion," Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check: It "seems that mainstream media s ... believe that abortion is an effective cudgel to beat health care reform to death," Marcotte writes. According to Marcotte, the "unvarnished truth" is that there is "no way that any kind of public health care plan will have elective abortion coverage. Nor is there any real chance of abortion becoming mandated coverage." However, "you wouldn"t know it to read the media coverage of this issue," she writes, continuing that "we"ve got the toxic mixture of pants-on-fire lying anti-choicers and cowardly media outlets that give the opponents of health care reform an opportunity to lie about the potential for taxpayer-funded abortions." Those who defend health care reform are "so busy trying to shut down the misinformation about abortion coverage that we"re not having the more interesting discussion about whether or not abortion should be covered," Marcotte says. She adds, "And by not having that discussion, we"re allowing the belief that some people"s moral objections to abortion should dictate federal policy lay unchallenged," she continues. She writes that she "suspect[s] that anti-choicers latched onto taxpayer-funded abortions because they can count on a lot of the public to imagine the government funding female licentiousness." Marcotte concludes that the "good news is that this contempt for female sexuality has receded enough that the media debate hasn"t -- yet -- turned to whether or not health care reform should cover contraception" (Marcotte, RH Reality Check, 7/28).~ "Privileging Opposition to Abortion," Jamison Foser, Media Matters for America: Some reporters "have skewed their reports in favor of those who oppose" coverage of abortion in federally subsidized insurance plans, according to Foser. For example, Foser writes that on a recent episode of MSNBC"s "Hardball," host Chris Matthews asked Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) "leading questions that encouraged them to state their opposition to insurance coverage of abortion" but never asked them "one simple question: Why shouldn"t abortion be covered, given that the procedure is legal?" Foser adds, "Nor has he asked if there are any other legal procedures that shouldn"t be covered." The "premise that taxpayers who oppose abortion shouldn"t have to pay for them with their tax money carries obvious implications the media ignores," Foser writes. He adds that the "idea that taxpayers shouldn"t pay for insurance that covers medical services they don"t support is fundamentally incompatible with the very concept of insurance." He continues, "If every interest group wields veto power over the medical care insurance can cover, insurance simply can"t work." However, this is not the "only logical inconsistency on the part of abortion foes that the media fail to examine" in their coverage of abortion issues in the health reform debate, he writes. "Many of those who are most adamant that the government not allow abortion to be paid for by health insurance plans are the same conservatives who argue against health care reform by warning of the prospect of a government bureaucrat getting between you and your doctor," according to Foser. He continues that the "same people who want a government ban on insurance coverage for a legal medical procedure turn around and demagogue about government bureaucrats making medical decisions," which is "a pretty obvious inconsistency, the kind any reporter should be able to spot easily." However, the "tension between those two positions has gone unexplored in news reports about the abortion controversy," Foser concludes (Foser, Media Matters for America, 7/24).~ "Obama Abortion Backtrack Shows He"s All Rhetoric, No Fight," Bonnie Erbe, U.S. News & World Report"s "Thomas Jefferson Street": "[O]ne thing we know will not be incl
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Confirmation Hearings For Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor To Begin July 13

Senate Democrats on Tuesday announced that confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor"s nomination to the Supreme Court are set to begin on July 13, the New York Times reports. According to Democrats, the schedule puts the Senate on track to confirm Sotomayor before the August recess. By the Thursday before the recess, 72 days will have elapsed since President Obama nominated Sotomayor, which is the same number of days that passed during the confirmation process for Chief Justice John Roberts (Herszenhorn, New York Times, 6/10).Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said, "There is no reason to unduly delay consideration of this well-qualified nominee." He said that critics" attacks on her character are "compelling reasons to proceed even ahead of this schedule," adding that Sotomayor needs to be given a chance to respond to her critics (Isenstadt/Raju, Politico, 6/9).Republican senators have started a campaign to stall the confirmation process, saying they need more time to review her judicial record (LoBianco, Washington Times, 6/10). Republican senators had requested to delay the hearing until September. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that Democrats are acting "unilaterally" and "being dismissive of the minority"s legitimate concerns for a fair and thorough process."Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he discussed the timeline with Obama and Leahy, both of whom had reviewed a letter from McConnell that expressed concerns about the process starting before September. According to Reid, Obama and Leahy went ahead with an earlier schedule after concluding that the timetable was similar to that of past nominations (New York Times, 6/10). Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women"s Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women"s Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company. © 2009 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.


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