The National Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 included a provision that requires salon tanners to pay a 10 percent tax each time they drop in for some faux sunbathing. The tax will generate an estimated $2.7 billion over the next ten years that will go toward the cost of extending health-care coverage […]
Search Results for: health care
Feds Slap Sheriff Joe Arpaio with Lawsuit
It’s been the summer of Arizona vs. the federal government, with lawsuits flying fast and furiously. The controversial state government now has yet another legal battle on its hands. Today, the U.S. Justice Department filed suit against Arizona’s infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio for his refusal to cooperate with a federal investigation of possible human rights […]
The Weekly Pulse: Egg Recalls, DIY Abortion, Sex Education
This week, it’s not just eggs that are doing the salmonella infecting, women are having DIY abortions along the U.S.-Mexico border, and in Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty would rather shell out major cash than have comprehensive sex education. Read about it in Lindsay Beyerstein’s weekly health round-up at The Media Consortium. Women on along U.S.-Mexico border […]
Douching for a Raise, Translating Ebonics and Feminist Polygamy: Editors’ Picks, 8/22-8/28
We selected some of the best feminist blog posts of the past week; check ’em out: In light of devastating floods in Pakistan that have left 20 million people homeless and 2,000 dead, Care2 asks, is the Miss Pakistan World pageant appropriate right now? “What is the very first thing you should consider if you want a […]
Equality, Without Marriage?
While following the ups and down of the Prop 8 trial, I was reminded of an editorial by Bob Morris in The New York Times way back in 2004. “Gay Marriage? How Straight” was a cheeky bit of contrarianism, a gay man’s lament that marriage equality could ruin what he considered the relative freedom of […]
Schwarzenegger’s Next Expendables—California Women?
National health care passed in March, but health insurance companies—with the full support of the California Republican legislators and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger—are still working overtime to gouge customers and block what would seem to be the most “family values”-friendly benefit of all: maternity services. For the third time in as many years, California State Assemblymember […]
Who’s Afraid of the Single Black Woman?
It was during one of those rainy Sunday afternoons–what I call my solitude time in the comfort of my home–that I discovered William Wyler’s 1949 movie The Heiress on TCM. I surf through my cable channels oh so delicately, lest I see another image berating my existence as a black woman. Movies of old rarely […]
Weekly Pulse: Dispersants, Insurance and Teen Botox
Is the IV Bag half-empty or half-full? Theda Skocpol, the author of a forthcoming book on President Barack Obama’s health care reforms, argues in The Nation that progressives are underrating reform. Skocpol urges progressives to get over their disappointment over the lack of a public health insurance option and rally around the president to support […]
For Latinas, A Fine Line Between Reproductive Justice and Eugenics
The advent of the birth control pill and legalized abortion were watershed moments for the U.S. feminist movement. At the same time, these advances continue to be bound to the race, class and economic status of those who have access to reproductive technologies. U.S. Latinas and Chicanas, along with Native American and African American women, have […]
Latinas and The Pill: From Racism to Bicultural Growing Pains
The Pill and condoms are my (combined) contraceptives of choice, although I have used spermicidal film inserts, spermicidal foam and the morning-after pill. I’m virtually inundated with options. But what if I had an accent? Or didn’t speak English? How would that affect my ability to obtain contraception? My own mother’s tale is telling. The […]