During the final debate on the bill, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, noting that prior pregnancies and Cesarean sections “and most unbelievable of all” domestic violence could be considered pre-existing conditions, said, “We should all be ashamed.”
The bill should change this, which is more than good. (It’s not clear that the fix will be instant; exclusions for pre-existing conditions are set to end in 2014, although in the interim insurance should be available through a high-risk pool.) Despite the regrets about public options, the bill is sounding better all the time.
So do we have to wait until 2014 for domestic violence to not be an impediment to obtaining insurance? The way the high risk pool is set up, you first have to be uninsured for 6 months (and will someone please explain how the ugliness of that black hole got into any of this)–so if you get raped during that 6 months, are you sh*t out of luck?? If anyone knows more about this, please share your understanding, I’d like to be wrong about how I’m reading this, but I have a bad feeling I’m not.
After years of prostitution and sexual abuse, when she was 16 (it s tarted when she was 11), (Sara) Kruzan snapped: She killed GG (her pimp), was arrested and convicted of first-degree murder. Despite attempts by her lawyer to have her sentenced as a juvenile, the judge described her crime as “well thought-out” and sentenced her to life without parole.
“My judge told me that I lacked moral scruples,” she recalls, a term she did not know the meaning of.
Law enforcement sources in Dickson County said Genella refuses more than half of the domestic violence warrants that go before him. To put the numbers in context, the I-Team compared his record to domestic violence arrests in Davidson County. Last year, police asked for more than 4,000 domestic violence warrants. The I-Team didn’t find a single one refused by the judicial magistrate.
These domestic violence ads were banned from television:
and:
and:
But yet television executives apparently have no problem with onscreen violence against women. According to The Parents Television Council:
Incidents of violence against women and teenage girls are increasing on television at rates that far exceed the overall increases in violence on television. Violence, irrespective of gender, on television increased only 2% from 2004 to 2009, while incidents of violence against women increased 120% during that same period.
The most frequent type of violence against women on television was beating (29%), followed by credible threats of violence (18%), shooting (11%), rape (8%), stabbing (6%), and torture (2%). Violence against women resulted in death 19% of the time.
Violence towards women or the graphic consequences of violence tends overwhelmingly to be depicted (92%) rather than implied (5%) or described (3%).
Every network but ABC demonstrated a significant increase in the number of storylines that included violence against women between 2004 and 2009.
Although female victims were primarily of adult age, collectively, there was a 400% increase in the depiction of teen girls as victims across all networks from 2004 to 2009.
Fox stood out for using violence against women as a punch line in its comedies — in particular Family Guy and American Dad — trivializing the gravity of the issue of violence against women.
From 2004 to 2009 there was an 81% increase in incidences of intimate partner
So there you have it, a culture of visual impunity that implies that violence against women is a perfectly okay form of entertainment is acceptable but talking about the real thing is unsuitable for viewers.
In the very low blow department–As I’ve pointed out before, the current system of health insurance in this country is hugely discriminatory against women, but what I somehow missed until today is that health insurance can be denied to victims of domestic violence in nine states and the District of Columbia because domestic violence is considered a pre-existing condition! No this isn’t a Granny Death Panel type rumor, it comes straight from a website run by the oh-so-radical Department of Health and Human Services.
Science Progresshas a very interesting gendered analysis of male contraception here that examines the economic and health inequities that are implicit in regard to the lack of more options for male birth-control, something that may change in light of a new genetic discovery.
Not being responsible for some or all of these economic, health-related, and other burdens is a significant boon for men. Men typically do not have to dedicate time and energy to contraceptive care, pay out of pocket for the usually expensive and sometimes frequent (often monthly, or at least four times a year) supply of contraceptives, acquire the knowledge about contraception and reproduction needed to effectively contracept, deal with the medicalization of one’s reproductive health, endure the bodily invasion of contraception, suffer the health-related side effects and the mental stress of being responsible for contraception, and face the social repercussions of their contraceptive decisions (such as whether to use a particular contraceptive or to switch contraceptives), and the moral reproach for contraceptive failures. Women who contracept have to devote and sacrifice many aspects of themselves and what they value: their body, health (physical and mental), time, money, etc. These contraceptive burdens and sacrifices limit people’s freedoms. Since men are frequently not responsible for contraception, they are absolved from these burdens and thus their freedom is not infringed upon. In short, men’s autonomy is enhanced by their freedom from contraceptive responsibility.
At the same time, however, men’s autonomy is also diminished by the fact that they are usually not responsible for contraception.
As the article points out, even if there were more options, social mores regarding male responsibility for contraception would clearly need to change.
Sign the MomsRising petition telling Kraft it is so not okay to put “synthetic growth hormones, artificial colorings like yellow #5, and chemical sweeteners like aspartame” in the macaroni we feed our kids, especially since they no longer use those chemicals in the products (I hesitate to call this food) in other countries.
Our Bodies Our Blog has an interesting piece about tactics used by Merck to market Gardisil. Regardless of the efficacy and safety of the vaccine (and the long-term answer to that is still unknown), the marketing strategy leaves a lot to be desired.
And last, in the WTF department, a study finds that women are 3 times more likely to be arrested in domestic violence cases in England even though men are far more likely to be the perpetrators.
