Family & Society

 From MSNBC:

As evidence of breast-feeding’s health benefits continues to grow, the rate of 6-month-old babies who’ve been exclusively breast-fed -- no other fluids or solids, not even water -- has increased in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The 2011 rate was 14.8 percent, up 4 percentage points from the 2007 rate, the year the CDC issued its first breast-feeding “report card.” That’s still well below the 25.5 percent target in the government’s “Healthy People 2020” report.

Reaching that target may be more difficult than expected, however, because of both the expectations and reality surrounding nursing, according to the CDC’s 2011 report card -- and the research published in the journal BMJ Open.

“A woman’s ability to reach her breast-feeding goals is affected by a host of factors including support from her family, community, employer and health system,” according to the CDC.

[...]

 From the Huffington Post:

"I was really stunned to read that Mitt Romney has now said he wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood, because really what that means is he wants to get rid of preventative health care for 3 million folks every year," Richards told reporters on Wednesday.

"It shows an extraordinary lack of understanding of family planning and the budget to say one of the ways he's going save money in this country is by ending birth control and family planning," she added. "The most conservative economist will tell you that family planning saves money. It saves taxpayers money. It's ludicrous to think that Mitt Romney, who is running for president of the United States, thinks we're going to balance the budget by ending birth control access in this country."

[...]

 From Women's eNews:

While American women still earn about 77 cents for every dollar men earn and continue to work hard to close the salary gap, women in other parts of the world earn a mere 30 to 40 percent of what men do.

These are the women who never made it to a classroom, who often forgo already scarce food for themselves to feed other family members, who are unable to start their own businesses and who are likely to die in childbirth or from a preventable disease due to lack of basic health care.

The ability of families worldwide to pull themselves out of poverty -- through education, health and food security -- disproportionately rests on the shoulders of women.

Just ask Barbara Ayisa of Ghana. In her village of Affumkrom, she spends her day growing onions and maize, while taking care of her children. Her husband provides some economic support, but is engaged in other activities, leaving Barbara to manage the household. She benefitted from assistance that teaches her how to store her maize until she can sell it at the best price, earning the most she can for her family.

[...]

 From Reuters:

That contrasts with growth of 2.4 percent a year between 1976 and 1992.

The result: the labor force in 2008 had 1.64 million fewer such women than if the growth rate had kept up its earlier trend, slightly more than 1 percent of the total workforce in that year.

[...]

 From UPI:

emale firefighters required to take pregnancy tests--and test negative--to be hired.

A pregnant truck driver fired after requesting "light duty" work per her doctor's recommendations.

A pregnant sales clerk told to get an abortion by her supervisor.

Stories from the dark ages of working women's history? Sorry.

[...]

 From The New York Times:

 From Reuters:

 From The Cap Times:

The move toward mainstream acceptance of contraception began in the early 20th century and accelerated in the 1940s. In 1942, the Birth Control Federation of America changed its name to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Margaret Sanger, leader of the birth control movement, opposed the change. She thought the new name weakened the woman-empowering message of the term “birth control.” But she was overruled. Abraham Stone, medical director of the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau, explained at the time that “planned parenthood” signaled “the need for individual couples to plan their families and for nations to plan their populations.”

As the birth control movement became mainstream, it still took several years for the nation’s leaders to endorse it. In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared: “I cannot imagine anything more emphatically a subject that is not a proper political or government activity or function or responsibility . ... The government will not, so long as I am here, have a positive political doctrine in its program that has to do with the problem of birth control. That’s not our business.”

Just a few years later, President John F. Kennedy — a Democrat and the nation’s first Catholic president — supported family-planning programs as part of foreign aid. Even Eisenhower, JFK’s Republican predecessor, eventually came around, admitting in the mid-1960s: “Once as president, I thought and said that birth control was not the business of our federal government. The facts changed my mind. ... Governments must act. ... Failure would limit the expectations of future generations to abject poverty and suffering and bring down upon us history’s condemnation.”

For the next two decades, every American president promoted contraception as an essential part of domestic and foreign policy. Even the Catholic Church considered lifting its prohibition on contraception — and almost did.

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