Young Women

Nearly 35,000 low-income women in the state are now eligible for free pregnancy counseling, contraception and screenings for sexually transmitted diseases and breast cancer under a program that starts at the beginning of the year. Lawmakers and health officials announced Monday that women with incomes up to 200 percent of the federal poverty line — or $22,000 per year for a single woman — can gain access to the free family planning services beginning Jan. 1. The program was made possible by the Family Planning Works Act, legislation enacted during the last General Assembly session.

Anew study by the American Association of University Women shows a persistent inequality when it comes to salary earnings among college-educated men and women. Despite efforts to ensure that men and women holding the same or similar jobs earn roughly the same pay, researchers find a still-prevalent wage gap. The problem needs to be addressed on a number of fronts, including women choosing higher-paying jobs, employers making sure that women and men are given access to similar economic opportunities and continuing vigilance against lingering gender discrimination.

We admit to mixed emotions over the stiff sentence handed down to Janie Renee Cochran, the Bowie woman convicted earlier this year of supplying Washington-area families with illegal nannies.On the one hand, Cochran's defense that she was driven to flout immigration laws by the "high" induced from taking the anti-depressant drug Prozac is a pathetic attempt to evade responsibility. On the other, one wonders at the wisdom of putting a mother of three young children in jail for the crime of trying to help other working mothers find affordable child care.

Even though some self-appointed guardians of public morals may be outraged, the Carroll County commissioners were right to support the creation of a day-care center for teen mothers. The board correctly understood that helping to keep these young women from dropping out of school will help to make them economically self-sufficient adults capable of caring for themselves and their children.If we, as a society, want to discourage young mothers and their children from collecting public assistance, this project, promoted by a group called Raising Hopes, makes a great deal of sense.

MEXICO CITY -- Showing some skin to reach Mexico's macho consumers isn't new. Women sell everything from tools to beer. But the use of a Playboy model in ads to protect sea turtles has put one U.S. ecology group in the middle of a feminist flap. In one poster, Argentine model Dorismar poses provocatively as three turtles scoot along a Mexican beach. "My man doesn't need turtle eggs," says the text. "Because he knows they don't make him more potent." The "sexy campaign," as the San Diego-based group Wildcoast calls it, is designed to stop Mexican men from consuming raw turtle eggs that have been illegally marketed as an aphrodisiac.

ANYONE WHO denigrates the feminist movement of the 1970s -- including young women who declare, "I'm no feminist" -- should take a look at a tape of an interview with two teen-age heroes who appeared together last week on the Today show. Tamara Brooks, 16, and Jacqueline Marris, 17, were abducted at gunpoint from a lover's lane in Lancaster, Calif., driven to a remote location, raped and held captive for 12 hours before sheriff's deputies shot and killed their kidnapper. The young women, who did not know each other before they were taken from separate cars, kept their wits and worked together, communicating by tracing letters in each other's palms, to distract the kidnapper.

"It's not economical to go to bed early to save candles - if the result is twins." Improbably, this ancient Chinese proverb holds an important recommendation for Maryland's budget today. Currently, our state offers low-to-moderate-income pregnant women extensive health care coverage through our Maryland Medical Assistance Program. We also make comprehensive family planning services available for these same women - but only after they have already given birth. That's right: Maryland only offers family planning for women who have already started a family.

Rona Jaffe, 74, whose 1958 novel The Best of Everything told the melodramatic story of four young career girls torn between storybook romance and cutthroat corporate Manhattan, died of cancer Friday at University College Hospital in London, where she was on vacation. Movie producer Jerry Wald essentially commissioned Miss Jaffe, at the time a 25-year-old former associate editor in publishing, to write a book that he could turn into a blockbuster feature film. Less than a year after the book appeared, The Best of Everything was released as a chic but heavy-handed film by 20th Century Fox. Hope Lange, Diane Baker, Martha Hyer and the 1950s model Suzy Parker starred as the young women about town.

One caring adult can make a difference in a young person's life, the saying goes. That's the philosophy City Council President Sheila Dixon has embraced with the Young Women in Action Girls Mentoring Program, a new initiative targeting girls at six Baltimore middle schools. About 60 girls from each school will be chosen to participate in volunteer-led workshops addressing issues that include peer pressure, conflict resolution, health and dating. Pupils eventually will be paired with mentors from the community.

HASSELT, Belgium -- With both public and private grief, the people of this town yesterday buried two victims of a sex-crimes case that has confronted Belgians with unaccustomed self-doubt, anger and fear.In separate services two young women, Eefje Lambrecks, 19, and An Marchal, 17, who had been missing for more than a year, were laid to rest here. Their bodies were discovered last week on the grounds of a house owned by an associate of Marc Dutroux, who is the chief suspect in the case.Dutroux is a convicted rapist of minors who has acknowledged abducting the young women.