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When Texas Republicans cut off Planned Parenthood from the state’s Women’s Health Program — losing millions in federal funds and endangering access to health care for women in the program — Gov.

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The Great Recession, not long ago, was labeled the “ man-cession ,” because it hit sectors that employed male workers hardest. That doesn’t mean it spared female workers, though, and the ensuing economic recovery has been worse for women, as manufacturing and other male-heavy industries have rebounded but education and other female-dominant sectors continue to struggle.

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House Democrats have released a new study tracking the House GOP’s harmful anti-women agenda . Since January 2011, the Republican-controlled House has voted 55 times on bills to “undermine women’s health, roll back women’s rights, and defund programs and institutions that provide support for women,” according to the report prepared by the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Democratic staff.

Tags: #abortion, climate, congress, election, media, security, thinkprogress, women

By Hakim and Kathy Kelly, September 3, 2012 She says the fighting must stop for everyone, including women. Guns and bombs, she says, are not improving women’s rights. read more

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By Susan Eisenberg, September 3, 2012 The Department of Labor needs to shake off the three decades of inertia that has allowed the construction industry to view equal opportunity for women as optional. read more

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Attorneys for the Planned Parenthood clinic in Overland Park had requested in March to have the same charges dismissed.

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Women are a growing part of the American workforce. In the last 25 years, the number of working women has grown by 44.2 percent , while 59.4 percent of working-age women are currently in the labor force

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By Betty M. Song and Amy Woo Lee, June 14, 2012 Congress needs to pass a version of the Violence Against Women Act that fully protects immigrant women who fall victim to domestic violence. read more

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Former Rep. Claudine Schneider (R-RI) Former Rep. Claudine Schneider (R) was the first — and only — woman to represent Rhode Island in Congress. Over five terms in the House (from 1981 to 1991), she helped pass key environmental, health, and gender-equity laws, including the Economic Equity and the Pension Equity Acts. Like former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO) and former Rep. Connie Morella (R-MD), Schneider told ThinkProgress there is no longer a place for centrists like herself in the modern Republican Party: THINKPROGRESS: Why do you think today’s Republican Congresswomen are so much less progressive on issues relating to women’s health and safety? SCHNEIDER: Because they are afraid of losing in the primaries. The have drunk the Kool-Aid that makes them think it is more important to win, than to do what is right by ending discrimination. The conservatives have co-opted the primaries and in order to win, they appear to do whatever it will take. Clearly, based on [ the voting records of the 24 current Republican Congresswomen ], they are NOT voting in the best interest of all women and men, because when women lose (on fair pay, etc.) families lose! THINKPROGRESS: Would you have felt at home in the Women’s Policy Committee with these 24? SCHNEIDER: Not at all! Congress is elected to represent all of the people in one’s district, to begin, one’s state, country and the world. As a Congresswoman, my job was not to represent my Party or my contributors. My job was to vote for the “good of the whole.” Schneider says that there is “obviously not” a room for centrist women in today’s Republican Party, noting that “moderates have been pushed out in every primary” or retired to avoid being bullied by leadership. President Ronald Reagan, she claims, “would be embarrassed” by what has happened to the party. She is “disappointed and sad that the Republican women have chosen to form the Women’s Policy Committee to divide and fracture the Congress further. It is only by working together that the Congress can be effective … This is merely posturing so that the Republican party might stop hemorrhaging the women’s vote.”

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Failed Supreme Court Nominee Robert Bork In 1987, the Senate rejected Judge Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court in light of Bork’s long record of extremism . Bork once described the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters as “unsurpassed ugliness.” He claimed that it is “ utterly specious ” to suggest that women have a constitutional right to use contraception. And he believes that the Constitution does not protect women from gender discrimination . Nor has Bork moderated his views in the twenty-five years since he was denied a seat on the Court. Bork said it was “silly” to say that women are discriminated against as recently as last October. Mitt Romney, however, apparently finds this kind of outlook quite appealing, because he selected Bork to co-chair his “ Justice Advisory Committee .” At a recent campaign event, Vice President Biden went after Romney for his poor judgment in selecting Bork for this role : [Biden] addressed specifically the issue of contraception, saying that he “noticed today” that Judge Robert Bork, “a fine man, and a man who I disagree with a lot,” had been named as the Romney campaign’s “justice coordinator.” (He appeared to have read an editorial in today’s New York Times which addressed this fact. Bork was actually named as a chair of Romney’s “Justice Advisory Committee” last August, a Romney spokesperson confirmed.) He discussed the Bork confirmation hearings, which he oversaw as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the discussion of Griswold vs. Connecticut . “So we’re kind of returning to the past. You know that movie, ‘Back To the Future?’ It feels like to me that we’re going Back to the Future,” he said. Not too long ago, of course, the Romney campaign spent days pretending to believe that President Obama’s own view of motherhood was somehow in question because someone who has no association with his campaign said something dumb on CNN . Meanwhile, Romney continues to trust Bork as one of his top legal policy advisors — even after Bork claimed that there’s no such thing as discrimination against women and that women who think there is are “silly.”

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