Quiet attack on women -- Final End

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, [8], 9, 10 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 11:22:50 05/26/02 Sun
Author: Drummond
Subject: Quiet attack on women

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0520-02.htm
A Quiet Attack on Women
by Elizabeth Warren
Published on Monday, May 20, 2002 in the New York Times

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Women's rights are suddenly at the center of the
Congressional debate over the nation's bankruptcy laws � but only in the
most cynical and opportunistic way. After five years of enormous
contributions and lobbying from the financial industry, Congress now
stands ready to dismantle protection for families under the nation's
bankruptcy code. Diverting attention from the harm rewriting the law would
do to women, members of Congress have managed to turn an argument about
financial affairs into a debate over abortion.

Congressional negotiators are scheduled to meet Wednesday to see if they
can reach a compromise on a bill that would make it harder for individuals
to file for bankruptcy. At issue is a provision, included in the Senate's
version but not in that of the House,that would prevent abortion opponents
from declaring bankruptcy in order to avoid paying court fines and
damages. If the negotiators can agree on a bill, President Bush is likely
to sign it.

Banking and credit lobbyists have been trying to change the bankruptcy
laws for years. The current bill was stuck in conference between the
Senate and House until Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware � where many banks
and credit-card issuers are incorporated � agreed to vote with Republicans
on almost all the issues that were holding up the bill. But Mr. Biden also
told his Democratic colleagues that he would support anamendment to stop
abortion protesters from using bankruptcy protection to avoid damages they
might otherwise have to pay for violating federal law in violent clinic
protests.

Regardless of one's views of the amendment, the bill itself is
unconscionable. If it becomes law, the economic effects on more than 1.2
million women each year will be devastating. Apparently many politicians
believe they can remove the last safety net for families facing financial
disaster (many of which are led by women) so long as they can find another
highly visible issue that lets them proclaim their support forwomen.

In the past 20 years, bankruptcy filings for female-headed households have
increased at more than double the rate of bankruptcies for comparable
households with an adult male present. (Families with children are more
economically vulnerable than those without,and since women keep the
children more often in the case of divorce, more women are filing for
bankruptcy.) Women � married, divorced, widowed and single � now outnumber
men seeking bankruptcy protection by more than 300,000 a year. The more
than one million women filing for bankruptcy protection this year will
bring nearly two million children into bankruptcy court with them.

Most of these women will be in bankruptcy court for reasons beyond their
control. More than 90 percent of women who file for bankruptcy have been
hit by some combination of unemployment, medical bills and divorce. Women
are more likely than men to seek bankruptcy in the aftermath of a divorce
or a medical problem, though both men and women cite job problems as the
biggest difficulty.

At the same time, 200,000 women will find themselves in bankruptcy court
not as debtors but as creditors � trying to collect alimony or child
support from their ex-husbands. Traditionally, alimony and child support
are nondischargeable, which means these debts must be repaid even if the
ex-husband files for bankruptcy, because women and children, unlike
commercial creditors who can choose their debtors, cannot charge their
husbands or fathers a premium for being bad credit risks.

Yet in the pending legislation, credit-card companies and car lenders have
devised a number of ways to ensure that more of their debt, including
interest and penalties, is made similarly sacrosanct and payable forever.
This puts divorced women in direct competition with credit-card companies
for some of an ex-husband's limited income.

Some 30 women's groups, from the National Organization for Women to
Hadassah to the Y.W.C.A., have announced their opposition to this bill. Do
politicians like Mr. Biden who support the bankruptcy bill believe they
can give credit-card companies the right to elbow out women and children
so long as they rally behind an issue like abortion? The message is
unmistakable: On an economic issue that attracts millions of dollars of
industry support, women have no real political importance.

Wednesday's meeting of the House-Senate conference is the final showdown.
Will the credit industry's bankruptcy bill pass the conference? Or will it
stall over the issue of abortion? If Senator Charles Schumer, who wrote
the abortion provision in the Senate bill,holds his ground, he will do a
great service to the women who have fought hard for their rights to access
to abortion clinics. But if the amendment prevents the bill's passage, he
will do an even greater service to hundreds of thousands of women trying
to collect child support and to millions more who are trying to survive
after financial disaster.

These women are not fighting a pro-life or pro-choice battle. They are
just fighting to make it to the next payday.

Elizabeth Warren is a professor at Harvard Law School

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

I've heard about this. -- Lona, 15:44:26 05/26/02 Sun
- Re: I've heard about this. -- sue da babe, 10:27:59 05/28/02 Tue