
{"id":12302,"date":"2010-09-02T09:01:07","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T17:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=12302"},"modified":"2010-09-02T09:01:07","modified_gmt":"2010-09-02T17:01:07","slug":"time-for-another-suffrage-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/09\/02\/time-for-another-suffrage-parade\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for another Suffrage Parade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Paige Johnson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This month marks the 90th anniversary of women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suffrage in the United States and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s looking more and more like time for another Suffrage Parade.<\/p>\n<p>In 1913, Alice Paul and friends organized the Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C. They were frustrated by slow, incremental progress in their fight to win the vote. On March 3, more than 5,000 suffragists hit the streets in support of a woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right to vote. The Suffrage Parade was timed to coincide with Woodrow Wilson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s presidential inauguration. The suffragists wanted to send a clear message \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they would hold Wilson accountable for women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suffrage.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there were many mainstream supporters of women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suffrage who discouraged demonstrations like the Suffrage Parade. These supporters clung to incremental change, believing that state by state women would gain the right to vote. They didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to rock the boat and, of course, they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to risk offending their friends in power.<br \/>\nMore than 90 years later, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still having the same debate. How much rocking do we do when our friends are captaining the boat? If this last year is any measure, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time we start moving.<br \/>\nDuring the knock-down, drag-out fight for health care reform in this country, abortion was the only medical procedure purposefully carved out. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as the bill was ultimately named, marginalizes abortion care by forcing women who want a comprehensive health plan to write a separate check for abortion coverage. In addition to signing new restrictions into law through health care reform, President Obama issued an executive order immediately following the bill signing that would keep in place all existing federal funding restrictions on abortion.<\/p>\n<p>If this weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough, in July 2010 the president took the proactive step of issuing an abortion coverage ban in the newly created Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plans, or high-risk pools. Part of health care reform, these plans are intended to insure those with pre-existing conditions by pooling them together to lessen the total cost of coverage. This means the most medically vulnerable women with pre-existing conditions like breast cancer or diabetes will not have access to comprehensive health care. These are the very women most likely to face health challenges related to a pregnancy. They deserve comprehensive care that includes abortion.<\/p>\n<p>As bad as it all sounds, there were definite victories for women in health care reform. For many women, being able to cover their children until they reach the age of 26 is an immediate gain. Doing away with denying children health coverage because of pre-existing conditions is another win for mothers. Protecting access to essential community health care providers, many of whom are trusted and used primarily by women, was also a good thing.<\/p>\n<p>Another potentially huge win for women was nestled inside the health care bill. The Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Health Act, an amendment offered successfully by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), requires that health plans cover at no or low cost comprehensive care and screenings that address women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unique health care needs. The example given on the Senate floor was breast cancer, which, of course, is not unique to women.<\/p>\n<p>After passage of the bill, the administration released regulations stating that Pap smears would qualify for coverage under the Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Health Act. Birth control, a uniquely female item for the most part, was not mentioned. Instead, an advisory panel has been created and instructed to decide if contraception should be considered preventive care.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tempting to suggest that the federal government ask for assistance from the roughly 98 percent of women in the United States who will use birth control at some point in their lifetime. Likely, the majority of these women would say they used birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies, a condition unique to women.<\/p>\n<p>But now we await a panel of experts to tell us that birth control is prevention and thus applicable for no or low-cost coverage under the Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Health Act.<\/p>\n<p>Sixty-five percent of unmarried women voted for Obama in 2008. Fifty-seven percent of the pro-Obama vote came from women. Having birth control declared preventive sounds very much like incremental change.<\/p>\n<p>It may have taken a while, but Alice Paul and her friends did hold Woodrow Wilson accountable for suffrage. He was president when women won the vote.<\/p>\n<p>It took 144 years after the founding of this country before women \u00e2\u20ac\u201c representing more than half the population and having birthed the other half \u00e2\u20ac\u201c won the right to vote. We can accept incremental change, or maybe, just maybe, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to organize the next Suffrage Parade.<\/p>\n<p><em>Paige Johnson is the director of public affairs at Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This month marks the 90th anniversary of women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suffrage in the United States and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s looking more and more like time for another Suffrage Parade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12303,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12302\/revisions\/12303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}