ILF POST

By Gloria Feldt As Congress works through the economic stimulus package, representatives need to keep in mind the connection between a woman’s need to determine her reproductive life and her ability to benefit from and contribute to economic recovery and growth. (This is an exclusive commentary I wrote for the Women’s Media [...]

By Gloria Feldt How many male politicians do you think are burning their little black books and expunging e-mails today, as another of their brotherhood bites the dust from his own lack of zipper control? We have way too much information about John Edwards and his self-described narcissism. Clearly, like any good [...]

By Gloria Feldt For those exhausted with Clinton-Obama debates I thought I’d comment on the recent Cindy McCain “farfallegate” recipe scandal–you can scroll down to the end to see the evidence:
Cindy McCain was probably clueless that an intern on her pugnacious war hero husband’s campaign staff had rifled [...]

By Gloria Feldt Like many women who identify themselves as feminists, Kathleen Turner and I are divided in our presidential candidate pick. We spent 18 months collaborating on her just-released memoir, Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles. During [...]

By Gloria Feldt The headline summed it up so accurately it made my teeth hurt: “Republican Unity Trumps Democratic Momentum” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/washington/21cong.html
Robert Pear and Carl Hulse wrote the article that sums up Congressional Democrats’ 2007 accomplishments, or lack of them, in the New York Times, December 21. But whoever wrote [...]

By Gloria Feldt Sex educators (before the ‘abstinence only’ people made them stop talking about sex at all, which is a whole other story), use a technique called “desensitization” to help people get to where they can talk sensibly about previously verboten facts such as the proper names for body parts. Secrecy creates mystery and [...]

By Gloria Feldt Rosaura “Rosie” Jimenez died bleeding and doubled over in excruciating pain from infection caused by the botched illegal abortion she sought in desperation. She was 27, a scholarship student in McAllen, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, six months shy of getting her teaching credential and struggling to make a better life [...]

By Gloria Feldt Mention the U.S.-Mexico border and you set off political hot buttons. Everyone knows the two countries share complex historical, economic, and cultural relationships. But one relationship is seldom acknowledged: the movement of women across the border in both directions to obtain abortions over the years.
Sarah was a 22-year-old law school student [...]

By Gloria Feldt Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man’s attitude may be, that problem is hers – and before it can be his, it is hers alone.
September 14 [...]

By Gloria Feldt It’s the sweltering heat of summer. We can count on seeing ads for escapes to the beach, reminders to wear sunscreen, and the extreme anti-reproductive rights, homophobic Operation Save America’s annual attempt to turn up the political heat by mounting a media-circus demonstration at a high profile women’s health center that [...]

By Gloria Feldt My first false balance post described how the media forces the existence of “the other side” even when there is none, such as the other side to a heinous crime, or to a health care service such as a pap smear. The second dealt with requiring sensational false balance before reporting [...]

By Gloria Feldt My first false balance post described how the media forces the existence of “the other side” even when there is none, such as the other side to a heinous crime, or to a health care service such as a pap smear. But there are many more kinds of false balance.
False [...]

By Gloria Feldt I’m not a journalist. I make no claim to be. I’m an advocate and author. Writing commentary is a big part of what I do. Writing commentary is all about having a point of view. And I do have a point of view, no bones about it. But I [...]

By Gloria Feldt How do I even begin to comment on all the fallacies, misuse of language, and out-and-out false dichotomizing of “Breast Cancer Not Linked to Abortion, Study Says” (4/24/07) by Nicholas Bakalar in the New York Times? Though the headline is accurate, the article itself offers false balance at its [...]

By Gloria Feldt [The] partial birth abortion ban is a political scam but a public relations goldmine…The major benefit is the debate that surrounds it.–Randall Terry
So said the founder of Operation Rescue, a militant anti-choice group that blockaded abortion providers, in 2003.

By Gloria Feldt This is a Moment with a capital “M”. The opportunity for fundamental social change doesn’t come often, so let’s take full advantage of it.
Shock jock Don Imus’s racist and sexist remarks about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team didn’t go beyond his typical bottom feeder discourse, but in this [...]

By Gloria Feldt Who ever thought of Women’s History before 1970? Almost nobody, male or female. Officially, it’s been in existence since 1978 and started on the left coast (as Women’s History Week) in Sonoma County CA. Now it sounds just nice and ordinary, and you can even buy Women’s History Month [...]

By Gloria Feldt I’ve never known my friend Dr. Allan Rosenfield, 20-year Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, to be humble. But he seems genuinely astonished by the tributes he has received over the past year since he was diagnosed with Amotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (A.L.S.).
As many [...]

By Gloria Feldt Change is in the air this week in Washington, D.C. “This is what happens when they ban smoking in those smoke-filled rooms,” observed Congresswoman Rosa De Lauro (D-CT) as she welcomed some 1,000 women to high tea January 3 in honor of the first female speaker of the U.S. [...]

By Gloria Feldt With W, up is down and down is sideways. We’ve grown inured to the duplicity, the sleight of hand, the wink while Haliburton profits as our sons and daughters die in Iraq, the ruthlessness with which the 1 percent get richer while the rest of us get a burgeoning [...]

By Gloria Feldt So now President Bush wants to cooperate. Now he wants to reach across the aisle. Now he wants to work together with the Democrats, finally to show he can be that “uniter not divider” of his 2000 campaign promises. That perhaps he isn’t even the sole decider of everything after all. [...]

By Gloria Feldt Part one of a small series in honor of the Oct. 16 anniversary of the first American birth control clinic, with the purpose of exploring why birth control is still at stake today and what we must do to secure the right and access to it:
I’m not much for [...]

By Gloria Feldt Note: given the news about the FDA’s current proposal to allow plan B Emergency Contraception (EC) to be sold over the counter–BUT with requirements that women under age 18 must have a prescription and that pharmacists must keep all EC behind the counter thus making it more difficult for women of any [...]

By Gloria Feldt The world was riveted when Natalie Holloway went missing in Aruba last year. Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, “The Da Vinci Code,” mesmerizes readers and movie-goers by spinning the tale around how Mary Magdalene went missing from Christian theology except as a reformed harlot.
In an equally riveting mystery, women have disappeared from [...]

By Gloria Feldt Recently, I was asked to say what I think is the biggest health challenge facing women today. That’s a big question, but as I thought about it, the answer boiled down to one simple word. Not easy to solve, but simple to define. Let me begin with an example.

By Gloria Feldt I recently attended a swishy book party in Los Angeles for Joe Klein and his latest book “Politics Lost: How America’s Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You’re Stupid.” Klein of course is the Time Magazine political columnist who also wrote “Primary Colors”, the thinly disguised hit piece on the Clinton [...]

By Gloria Feldt So the Hammer finally nailed himself. I am so disappointed. It would have been much more fun to defeat Tom DeLay fair and square at the ballot box in November. I was prepared to walk door-to-door in the district (my son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons who deserve better representation live there). [...]

By Gloria Feldt I don’t know who coined the phrase, but it means I’ve reached the point where I’d vote for a yellow dog before a Republican in the next elections. It’s clearly time for a major course correction.
For three decades, I was professionally nonpartisan and personally voted for candidates who represented my values regardless [...]

By Gloria Feldt Think back with me to September 1995, to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Thrilling and ambitious goals were set for improving the lives of women, and that improves the lives of their families, their communities, and the world.
The official conference was in Beijing, but the much larger [...]

By Gloria Feldt The biggest news about the sweeping new South Dakota law that will ban all abortions except to save the woman’s life–no exceptions to preserve her health or for rape or incest–is that this news story has been repeated over and over for more than a generation. But this time [...]