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MADRE has worked in Haiti since the early 1990s. When the earthquake
struck, we immediately reached out to our sister organizations. Thanks
to your generosity, we were able to provide them with life-saving
support.
Humanitarian Relief
MADRE
supported the formation of, the International Feminist Solidarity Camp,
a network of women's rights activists and organizations in Haiti, the
Dominican Republic and the broader Latin American and Caribbean region
that came together in response to the earthquake.
MADRE worked
with the International Feminist Solidarity Camp to provide crucial
health services and supplies such as medicine, clothing and hygiene
products, and to respond to the need for shelter through the
distribution of 20 large tents. This support enabled the creation of a
maternal/infant health clinic and shelters for elderly people displaced
from a nursing home and children displaced from an orphanage.
Reproductive Health Care
When
the earthquake struck, there were an estimated 63,000 pregnant women in
Haiti. With extremely limited access to emergency obstetric care,
including a severe shortage of skilled midwives and maternity clinics,
many pregnant women were forced to deliver their babies in the street.
MADRE
partnered with Circle of Health International (COHI), an organization
that addresses maternal health in disaster settings, to support
multiple delegations of Kreyol-speaking midwives who provided critical
reproductive health care to more than 350 women a day and trained
Haitian midwives to deliver on-going care.
One such delegation
included an epidemiologist, a family health care practitioner and a
certified nurse-midwife. The team trained 15 earthquake survivors to
perform a women's health needs assessment and to provide evidence-based
recommendations for women's health services in Haiti. MADRE
incorporated the results into our advocacy work at the United Nations
to ensure that the health needs of women and infants are met in
governments' responses to the earthquake.
MADRE also continued
to work with SOFA, a national Haitian women's organization, to rebuild
the capacity of Klinik Famn, a clinic that MADRE and SOFA co-founded in
1996, after the clinic was damaged by the earthquake. The clinic was
one of the few places equipped to treat injuries and illnesses after
the disaster.
Ensuring that Haitian Women Have a Voice in Rebuilding Haiti
MADRE
helped launch an international initiative to ensure that Haitian
women's voices are heard in all phases of reconstruction in Haiti.
MADRE is an international women's human rights organization that partners with community-based women's groups to advance women's human rights, challenge injustice and create social change in contexts of war, conflict, disaster and their aftermath. MADRE advocates for a world in which all people enjoy individual and collective human rights; natural resources are shared equitably and sustainably; women participate effectively in all aspects of society; and all people have a meaningful say in policies that affect their lives. For more information about MADRE, visit www.madre.org.
Under the new legislation, Iowans would no longer be allowed to purchase fresh meat, white grains, nuts, canned fruits, American cheese, and other foods with SNAP benefits.
Republicans in the Iowa House introduced legislation this month that would impose a slew of fresh restrictions on the kinds of food people can purchase using SNAP benefits, sparking outrage among local groups who say the measure would exacerbate hunger in the GOP-dominated state.
The Des Moines Area Religious Council (DMARC), an interfaith group that operates the largest food pantry network in Iowa, noted in a statement earlier this week that if the bill passes, "Iowans could no longer use their SNAP benefits to purchase meat, nuts, and seeds; flour, butter, cooking oil, soup, canned fruits, and vegetables; frozen prepared foods, snack foods, herbs, spices—not even salt or pepper."
"This is a punitive policy that will do nothing to improve the health and nutrition of Iowans, but rather be a detriment," the group said.
The Iowa Hunger Coalition (IHC) also condemned the bill, voicing opposition to its proposed food restrictions as well as new asset limits that would make it more difficult for families to qualify for SNAP, a program funded by the federal government and administered by states.
"This bill would restrict SNAP participants' ability to make their own food choices, take food away from Iowans, and increase hunger and food insecurity in our state," IHC warned.
\u201cThe GOP just proposed new restrictions on the types of food eligible for purchase with SNAP benefits, putting even more pressure on families with children.\n\nIn addition, they would aim to keep families with more than one vehicle from receiving help. \ud83d\udc4e\u201d— Sami Scheetz (@Sami Scheetz) 1674174431
According to Feeding America, the largest hunger-relief organization in the U.S., roughly 229,500 people—including 80,160 children—are facing food insecurity in Iowa.
The details of the new legislation—which is sponsored by 39 Iowa House Republicans, including Speaker Pat Grassley—were met with national anger.
"This is so profoundly cruel and petty," said Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of the progressive advocacy group Indivisible.
Sarah Bowen, a sociologist who studies food and inequality, noted in a tweet on Thursday that "Republicans have tried to destroy SNAP for years," animated by the lie that "SNAP recipients are all stocking up on lobster and steak."
"This is the most ridiculous proposal I've seen though," Bowen added. "No chicken or ground beef. No chili beans. No American cheese?!"
SNAP recipients are already limited in what they can purchase at the grocery store using their benefits, but Iowa Republicans are seeking to dramatically expand those restrictions.
As Todd Dorman of the Iowa Gazetteexplained in a column on Thursday, the legislation "would require the Department of Health and Human Services to seek a federal waiver allowing Iowa to scrap an already restrictive federal list of approved foods and replace it with a list of food available to recipients of aid to Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC."
"The bill would also, for the first time, create an asset test, limiting household assets to $2,750 or $4,250 if one member of the household is over 60. It exempts just one vehicle, potentially making households with two cars ineligible," Dorman wrote. "Beyond all of that draconian wisdom, the bill would force recipients to jump through far more regulatory hoops to become eligible and stay on SNAP, wrapping recipients tightly in red tape and likely costing the state millions more to administer the program."
"Only two groups support the bill," Dorman added. "One is the Florida-based Opportunity Solutions Project, which sends its minions across the country to cut holes in the social safety net and oppose policies such as Medicaid expansion. The group is part of a web of conservative think tanks and bill mills bankrolled by rich donors who think if you just make poor people hungry and sick enough, they'll utilize their bootstraps."
The other group is the right-wing Iowans for Tax Relief.
"This is not about protecting kids," said one advocate. "It's about policing transness."
A Democrat's proposed amendment to one of the latest anti-transgender rights bills exposed that Republicans' efforts to prohibit LGBTQ+ minors from accessing gender-affirming healthcare "is not about protecting kids," one advocate said Thursday.
In Utah on Wednesday, state Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla (D-1) proposed an amendment to Senate Bill 16, which would ban gender-affirming surgeries for minors and place a moratorium on medical professionals providing puberty blockers, citing concerns about equal opportunity protections.
If Republicans such as state Sen. Michael Kennedy (R-14), who sponsored S.B. 16, are as concerned as they say they are about ensuring minors don't have surgeries when they may not fully understand the long-term ramifications, Escamilla argued that cisgender teenagers should also be blocked from participating in Utah's plastic surgery boom.
"If we're going to target kids and the ability for their parents to make decisions with their providers, then all children should be included."
The state ranks second in the nation in per-capita plastic surgeons, and one surgeon estimated in 2005 that teenagers accounted for about 15% of his patients. A number of plastic surgery clinics in the state advertise services for teenagers.
"We happen to live in a state that loves plastic surgeries," said Escamilla in a committee hearing on S.B. 16, "and I think we should have an equal opportunity to make sure that no child will ever have access to plastic surgery. If we're going to target kids and the ability for their parents to make decisions with their providers, then all children should be included and [we should] not be targeting a specific group of kids."
Kennedy said he personally did not support plastic surgery such as breast augmentation for teenagers and denied the practice is prevalent in Utah, but said, "If that has been done it's likely to have been done for decades and decades and decades in this state," suggesting it should be allowed to continue for that reason.
As researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine wrote in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in November, puberty blockers have also "been used safely for decades in children with precocious puberty and endometriosis among other medical indications" and are now endorsed by numerous medical organizations "for youth with gender dysphoria," but those facts haven't stopped Kennedy and other Republicans across the country from trying to ban their use.
The failure of Escamilla's amendment—which was supported by the two Democrats on the committee and opposed by the five Republicans—proves that the GOP in Utah is "totally fine with targeting trans teens and letting cis teens do what they want," said rights advocate Erin Reed, who tracks legislative attacks on transgender people.
\u201cIt was never about protecting kids.\n\nYesterday in Utah, Senator Escamilla called Republicans bluff by making them vote on banning teenage breast implants in an anti-trans healthcare ban.\n\nAll Republicans voted against it.\n\nSubscribe to support my work.\n\nhttps://t.co/KdOLjluXmp\u201d— Erin Reed (@Erin Reed) 1674148127
S.B. 16 is now expected to be debated on the state Senate floor, and will have "catastrophic" consequences for transgender youth if it passes.
Numerous studies have shown that gender-affirming care reduces the risk of depression and suicide among transgender teenagers and children, leading the American Academy of Pediatrics to recommend that youths have access to puberty blockers and "when appropriate, surgical interventions."
Republicans' refusal to back Escamilla's amendment showed that "this is not about protecting kids."
"It's about policing transness," she wrote, "and making it harder to exist as a transgender person in America."
"What did he know and what was the market anticipating when he sold? That's a critical moment," said one securities law expert.
Experts said Friday that Elon Musk's large sale of Tesla shares shortly before the company announced lower-than-expected vehicle deliveries should draw scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, an agency that has previously investigated and charged the billionaire for fraud.
The Wall Street Journalreported Friday that earlier this month, "Tesla announced fourth-quarter vehicle deliveries that were significantly below the company’s most recent forecast to investors. The news sent Tesla's stock price plunging when markets opened the next day."
Just weeks before the company's announcement, Musk sold roughly $3.6 billion worth of Tesla stock, raising questions over whether the Tesla CEO unlawfully took advantage of material nonpublic information.
James Cox, a securities law professor at Duke University, told the Journal that Musk's stock sale "should be of great interest to the SEC."
"The issue here is, what did he know and what was the market anticipating when he sold? That's a critical moment," said Cox.
\u201cQuite the chart on Elon's $TSLA share sale in the WSJ https://t.co/jcWZJLqICU\u201d— Robert Smith (@Robert Smith) 1674215599
Musk has repeatedly clashed with the SEC in recent years, saying in 2018, "I do not respect them."
The comment came after the agency charged Musk with securities fraud over "a series of false and misleading tweets about a potential transaction to take Tesla private." Musk ended up paying a $20 million fine for the tweets, and he's currently facing a shareholder lawsuit over the debacle.
Musk has since purchased Twitter for $44 billion, a transaction that also drew the attention of federal authorities.
The SEC—now headed by Gary Gensler, a former Tesla shareholder—launched an investigation last year to examine whether Musk properly disclosed his purchase of Twitter shares prior to the takeover.
Musk could soon be facing additional heat from the SEC over his suspiciously well-timed stock sale. As the Journal reported Friday, the Tesla chief "sold nearly 22 million shares December 12-14 at an average price of about $163 a share, according to a regulatory filing."
"When the stock closed on January 3 at just over $108, the shares Mr. Musk sold the prior month had declined in value by $1.2 billion," the newspaper continued. "The stock has since rebounded to about $127."
In an interview with the Journal, Georgetown University securities law professor Donald Langevoort said of the sale, "Is it suspicious? Yes. Is it entirely possible there are other explanations? Of course."
"But that's what the enforcement process is all about," he added.