Careers
July 22, 2015
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Page 7
O PINION
Battlegrounds in the War on Women’s Bodies
Public health standards take a hit
J OYCELYN E LDERS , M.D.
As Americans, we strive
for safety -- the safest med-
icines, cars and toys. But
when it comes to women’s
reproductive health, state
legislatures have passed
about 250 laws since 2011
that put women’s health
at risk. And they do it under the
guise of “women’s safety.” Wom-
en of color are disproportionately
affected by these policies through-
out the Southern states where I
live and spend much of my time
mentoring young physicians and
health professionals.
Politicians are cutting access to
family planning services and tell-
ing doctors how to practice medi-
cine, especially concerning proce-
dures that terminate pregnancies.
Clinic licensing standards, in-
vasive ultrasound procedures and
mandatory waiting periods are un-
necessary because legal abortion
BY
is one of the safest
surgical procedures.
Nearly 90 percent are
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mester, when abortion
is safest.
Texas is one bat-
tleground in this war
on women’s bodies. A
few years ago, Texas had 41 abor-
tion clinics but a recent court de-
cision to uphold restrictions may
mean only 9 will stay open. The
public health community knows
ZKDW¶VOLNHO\WRKDSSHQPRUHXQ-
intended pregnancies, since many
of these clinics also provide con-
traceptive services.
Guttmacher Institute research
shows unintended pregnancy is
highest among the poor, youth
and women of color. Eliminating
barriers to culturally and linguis-
tically appropriate health infor-
mation and services would help
reduce these disparities, as would
age-appropriate sexual health ed-
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ing for these programs is being
cut. Again, it’s politicians making
these decisions, not health profes-
sionals.
The Affordable Care Act re-
solves disparities by requiring
that preventive services, includ-
ing contraception, be provided
at no cost. Congress’ attacks on
Obamacare, coupled with the Su-
preme Court’s pending decision
concerning access to insurance
plans, stand to jeopardize these
gains.
Ironically, some legislators talk
about the “sanctity of life” while
railing against affordable contra-
ception and prenatal care, which
serve to enhance women’s quality
of life.
Consider a young woman mak-
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self pregnant and not yet ready to
raise a child. Or an older woman
with health conditions that could
become life-threatening if she
stays pregnant. Because at least
93 percent of Texas counties do
not have an abortion provider, she
may have to travel long distanc-
es, take time off work that likely
has no paid sick leave and arrange
transportation. With Texas’ wait-
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a place to stay overnight. Once at
the clinic, she will hear state-man-
dated pseudo-science about the
“risks” of abortion.
Research shows that 42 percent
of women obtaining abortions
have incomes below the poverty
level. And because of the feder-
al Hyde Amendment, Medicaid
funding for abortions is prohibited
under most circumstances and in
most states.
The irony is that the U.S. ranks
47th among 183 countries for ma-
ternal deaths from pregnancy-re-
lated conditions. And childbirth
is 14 times more likely to result
in death than an abortion. These
rates go up for women with dia-
betes and other health conditions.
Before the 1973 Supreme Court
decision in Roe vs. Wade, the pub-
lic health community expressed
concern about high rates of mater-
nal deaths in the U.S. and the need
for universal access to a full range
of reproductive health services,
including abortion.
The recent restrictions, roll-
backs and de-funding of repro-
ductive health services will inev-
itably drive up maternal morbidity
and mortality rates, again placing
women’s health at risk.
As a nation, I hope we take a
hard look at how our public poli-
cies stand to jeopardize the health
of women and prevent this from
happening.
We must have healthy mothers
and healthy babies if we expect to
have a healthy nation.
Joycelyn Elders, M.D. is a
professor at the School of Public
Health, University of Arkansas,
and served as Surgeon General
of the United States from 1993 to
1994.
Companies like Uber Could Do More for Workers
Supporting the
information-age
workforce
BY I SAIAH
J. P OOLE
I have a love-hate
relationship
with
ride-sharing services
like Uber and Lyft.
I love the conve-
nience and level of service that
traditional taxis don’t offer. But
I hate what they portend for the
future of work with their rapidly
expanding business model that
pretends regular workers are fran-
chisees.
For one thing, casting em-
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risks, along with the security and
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to offer.
Workers toiling in the so-
called sharing economy get no
paid vacation or sick leave, no
company match for a 401(k) re-
tirement plan, and no employ-
er-paid health insurance. They
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bility that they need for family
obligations or even some fun, but
these folks are missing out on big
swaths of the safety net.
What’s more, the chief exec-
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are driving this share of our econ-
omy can get pretty stingy when it
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possible.
That prompted venture capital-
ist Nick Hanauer — a billionaire
who made most of his fortune by
investing in start-up technology
ventures — to propose a way
for workers in these nontra-
ditional employer-employee
relationships to have what he
calls “shared security.” These
kinds of supports would restore
more stability to the growing
information-age workforce.
“shared security accounts” and
“shared security standards.”
These accounts would encom-
pass “all of the employment ben-
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full-time salaried job,” including
health insurance, sick leave, paid
vacation, unemployment insur-
ance and workers’ compensation
insurance, Hanauer and Rolf ex-
plain in the journal Democracy.
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In the near term, that means
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that corporations are currently
earning will go to workers...
“In the old economy, you’d go
to work for a company, and it’s en-
tirely possible you’d stay there for
your entire career,” Hanauer told
me in an interview. “And all of the
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negotiated with that company,
probably through a union. But in
an economy in which somebody
may have as many jobs in a year
as their parents had in their life-
time, obviously negotiating these
things, employer to employer, job
to job, becomes impossible.”
Hanauer has teamed up with
David Rolf, vice president of the
Service Employees International
Union, to spell out his concept of
would be earned and accrued via
automatic payroll deductions,
regardless of the employment re-
lationship, and, like Social Secu-
ULW\WKHVHEHQH¿WVZRXOGEHIXOO\
prorated, portable, and universal,”
they write.
Hanauer, who lives in a Se-
attle suburb, estimates that the
costs would be modest. A com-
pany like Uber or TaskRabbit,
where people can hire them-
selves out for domestic work,
would only have to pay an ad-
ditional 8 cents per employee to
cover the cost of 20 days of sick
and annual leave. But Hanauer
sees far greater costs in the un-
certainty that is growing amid
today’s increasingly contingent,
on-demand workforce.
“It makes little sense to pay less
for an Uber ride but more in tax-
es for the poverty programs that
that Uber driver now requires,”
KHVD\V³7KLVLVDYHU\LQHI¿FLHQW
way of doing business.”
All employers — regardless
of the nature of their relationship
with a given employee — would
be legally required to meet these
proposed shared security stan-
dards. They include paid sick
leave, a living wage, and overtime
pay for workers earning less than
$69,000.
“In the near term, that means
WKDW VRPH RI WKH RXWVL]HG SUR¿WV
that corporations are currently
earning will go to workers, and
there will be people who will
squawk about that, but in the long
run that will be better for every-
body,” Hanauer says.
Our national labor standards
were built for the industrial era
and aren’t meeting the needs of
today’s wired economy. The cre-
ators of this app-driven world
pride themselves on their dis-
ruption of the old business order
— and sometimes disruption is
good. But we can’t keep dis-
rupting the paths to middle-class
economic security — and this 1
percenter’s proposal deserves se-
rious attention.
Isaiah J. Poole is online com-
munications director for the Cam-
paign for America’s Future. Dis-
tributed via OtherWords.org.
The Law Offices of
Patrick John Sweeney, P.C.
Patrick John Sweeney
Attorney at Law
1549 SE Ladd
Portland, Oregon
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