Poor Women

Dauphin, Pennsylvania. -- "It's too important to become taboo,'' wrote Jonathan Alter in Newsweek. But in the almost two years since that comment, few have had the courage to revisit the topic: Norplant and poor women.One can well see how it became taboo. Shortly after Food and Drug Administration approved Norplant, a long-acting, reversible contraceptive, in December 1990, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a well-meaning but misguided editorial suggesting that it could help stem the ever-growing number of black children born into poverty.

Well. I know I speak for many women when I say, "Thank heaven that's settled. " Women like me have been struggling with our identities as working mothers for decades, but thanks to Hilary Rosen, Ann Romney and Hillary Clinton, we now have some clarity. Because of commentator Rosen's unfortunate choice of words (Ann Romney "never worked a day in her life"), we have it on the highest authority that raising children is, indeed, hard work. And because Hillary Clinton was caught knocking back a beer and dancing in a Colombia cantina while on summit duty, we now know it is impolite for a woman to drink beer from a bottle instead of a glass.

SANTO DOMINGO, Ecuador -- Thirty poor women in a steamy lowland suburb of washboard dirt roads have become businesswomen.That event may fall short of a miracle. But for 15 months, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) of Baltimore has helped them bring home income that does more than pay rent and buy clothes and food. In the macho world of Santa Teresita, their roles as breadwinners make the men stand up and notice.Their new status is one small result of a worldwide movement that favors lending money to poor women over men. The women have been found to be better credit risks because of their heightened sense of family responsibility and because they are better able to create small businesses for unselfish purposes.

There is a Planned Parenthood office in my neighborhood, and on most Saturday mornings a small group gathers outside and reads from the Bible and prays loud enough so that those in the passing cars can hear them. They are there not just to spread God's word, I suspect, but to intimidate women seeking the health services inside that building, whether it be an abortion, a Pap smear or an inexpensive packet of birth control pills. Though I respect their right to demonstrate and to preach, just the sight of them on Saturday mornings rankles me. That's because I came of age as a young woman at a time when it was illegal for me to use birth control because I was not married, and my outrage at that paternalism has never left me. That is why I see any attempt in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood in the way that I do: Not just an attack on a woman's right to an abortion, but an attack on a woman's right to decide for herself what is best.

State health officials said yesterday that it's unclear how President Clinton's plan to lift a ban on federal financing of abortions for poor women will affect Maryland, which uses state funds to pay for abortions in circumstances beyond those allowed under federal law.The Hyde Amendment, which took effect 16 years ago, allows the federal government to pay for abortions for poor women only if they risk death by continuing the pregnancy.Maryland, however, is one of eight states that uses its own money to pay for abortions if the pregnancy would harm a woman's mental or physical health, the fetus has a serious abnormality or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

Feminist leaders wrapped up their three-day conference in Baltimore yesterday vowing to push for action on a range of political issues and to draw America's poorest, most disenfranchised women into the movement. Invoking the school shooting near Flint, Mich., in February, Gloria Steinem said that women leaders must reach out to, rather than demonize, women like the mother of the 6-year-old boy who took a gun to school and is accused of shooting to death a girl in his first-grade classroom.

There is a Planned Parenthood office in my neighborhood, and on most Saturday mornings a small group gathers outside and reads from the Bible and prays loud enough so that those in the passing cars can hear them. They are there not just to spread God's word, I suspect, but to intimidate women seeking the health services inside that building, whether it be an abortion, a Pap smear or an inexpensive packet of birth control pills. Though I respect their right to demonstrate and to preach, just the sight of them on Saturday mornings rankles me. That's because I came of age as a young woman at a time when it was illegal for me to use birth control because I was not married, and my outrage at that paternalism has never left me. That is why I see any attempt in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood in the way that I do: Not just an attack on a woman's right to an abortion, but an attack on a woman's right to decide for herself what is best.

State health officials said yesterday that it's unclear how President Clinton's plan to lift a ban on federal financing of abortions for poor women will affect Maryland, which uses state funds to pay for abortions in circumstances beyond those allowed under federal law.The Hyde Amendment, which took effect 16 years ago, allows the federal government to pay for abortions for poor women only if they risk death by continuing the pregnancy.Maryland, however, is one of eight states that uses its own money to pay for abortions if the pregnancy would harm a woman's mental or physical health, the fetus has a serious abnormality or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

Washington. -- Yesterday you enjoyed one of life's most satisfying experiences: watching your children's faces glow over the unwrapping of every present, reveling in the tastes of a Christmas dinner and enjoying the love and affection of a happy family.I'm no grinch, but I can think of no better time than this to ask you whether we ought to prohibit some Americans from having children because they seem incapable as parents of providing their offspring with the food, toys and joys of the Christmas you and I have just experienced.

Philadelphia -- Whenever she watched the marches o abortion-rights activists on television, Cheryl Cruz noticed that something always seemed to be missing.That something was black women. And minority women of any other kind. To Ms. Cruz, an African American woman of 27, the message seemed clear: Abortion-rights activism wasn't for women like her. It was a white woman's thing. "It looked like their issue," she concluded.But Ms. Cruz, a receptionist at a Planned Parenthood office, recently decided to get involved after all. What changed her mind was the appearance of a new organization -- the Women of Color Coalition of Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania -- one of several groups giving minority women a stronger voice in the abortion-rights movement.

Crisis pregnancy centers in Baltimore must display signs stating they do not provide abortions or birth-control referrals under a measure approved by the City Council Monday night and thought to be the first of its kind in the nation. Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat who was lead sponsor of the initiative, called the measure a victory for women's well-being. She cited a study by an advocacy group indicating that women have been misled at pregnancy centers that provide counseling, clothing and food for expectant mothers - but not abortions.

Crisis pregnancy centers in Baltimore must display signs stating they do not provide abortions or birth-control referrals under a measure approved by the City Council Monday night and thought to be the first of its kind in the nation. Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat who was lead sponsor of the initiative, called the measure a victory for women's well-being. She cited a study by an advocacy group indicating that women have been misled at pregnancy centers that provide counseling, clothing and food for expectant mothers - but not abortions.

FIRST JOHN ROBERTS. Then Samuel Alito. In the view of some people, all that is needed now to overturn Roe v. Wade is the right case. I am not as sure as I once was that it would be a bad idea. Not because I want to see abortion outlawed. Criminalize abortion and only rich women will have safe ones. No. I want abortion to remain legal, and therefore available to poor women and young women and women without the resources to navigate a black market system. But I might like to see abortion rights re-argued -- in state legislatures instead of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Donation cap will hurt ability to help needy Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation is considering a proposal to cap charitable donations for contributions of clothing and household items at $500 a year per taxpayer. Assuming tax cheaters are inflating the value of their donations to charity, the committee estimates that this would result in $1.9 billion in additional revenue over 10 years. Unfortunately, if this proposal became law, it would have a devastating social and economic impact on many individuals in our community.

NEW YORK - Commitment isn't easy for guys - we all know that - but the Bush administration is taking the traditional male ambivalence about marriage to giddy new heights. On the one hand, it wants to ban gays from marrying, through a constitutional amendment that the Senate will vote on this week. On the other hand, it's been avidly promoting marriage among poor women - the straight ones, anyway. Opponents of gay marriage claim that there is some consistency here, in that gay marriages must be stopped before they undermine the straight ones.

NEW YORK - There has been quite a bit of chatter on the Web about how President Bush is trying to portray his middle initial, W, as standing for "women" and attempting to cast his agenda in a pro-woman light. While no elected official will ever declare that he is "anti-woman," it is difficult to see the Bush agenda from any other perspective. Soon after his inauguration, Mr. Bush issued the global gag rule, an executive order that denies U.S. government assistance to family planning or reproductive health agencies in other countries that make any reference to abortion in the course of counseling or providing services to their clients.

WHEN President Clinton was working the Congress, marshaling the votes he needed for NAFTA, some saw him as a smart politician playing the horse-trading game and others as a cynical sharpie who would sell his soul to the Devil if the Devil would deliver an aye.But some abortion rights advocates saw the shape of things to come. Someday soon, they fear, Mr. Clinton, pragmatist par excellence, will wheel and deal on a health-care reform package, and one of the cards he will trade away will be the inclusion of abortion coverage.

The governor of Maryland is downright bullish on spending taxpayer dollars for professional football franchises -- $200 million for a Browns stadium in Baltimore, another $73 million in corporate welfare for Jack Kent Cooke and his new stadium in Prince George's County."

SINCE ROE vs. Wade, a generation has grown up never having known a time when illegal, degrading and sometimes fatal abortions were common. But now, on the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark decision establishing a woman's right to abortion, we have cause for concern. That's true even here in Maryland, where in the 1992 referendum - the Question 6 campaign in which I was a leader - 61 percent of all Marylanders who cast ballots voted for choice. It will not take a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe to make legal abortion a thing of the past for many women.