The Supreme Court will soon issue decisions on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act health care reform law and the harsh Arizona anti-immigration law SB 1070--two laws that have already had far-reaching consequences for Latinas and could continue to shape our lives for years to come. Each case is complex, and potential outcomes are many. But regardless of how the Court rules in each of these cases, there is no doubt this is a profound moment in our civil and human rights history--one that will impact our collective efforts toward a more just and humane society.
Too often, debates around health care and immigration lack a gender perspective. The issues that define the women's rights movement of today are inexorably tied to these two Supreme Court decisions, not because they specifically speak to gender bias, but rather because the outcome of these decisions defines the societal structures that will oppress or empower women. As Latinas are increasingly cut off from health care, educational and economic opportunities, and reproductive rights, we must use a gender lens to reexamine priorities and solutions across movements.
A chorus of policymakers, advocates, and faith leaders around the globe already champion health as a human right, and some nations have even enshrined this right in their constitutions. But in the United States, health is still treated as a luxury not a right. Today, one in three US Latinos is uninsured--more than any other racial or ethnic group. Latinas face substantial additional obstacles in accessing health care, such as employment, income, immigration status, and language barriers. The result is poor health outcomes, including high rates of cervical cancer, HIV/AIDS, and other serious issues.
Latinas across the country are fighting back. Our Latina Advocacy Network (LAN) in the Texas Rio Grande Valley holds juntas comunitarias (community meetings) on a daily basis to discuss the destructive cuts to women's health services in Texas and to bring attention to the promise of the Affordable Care Act in restoring health and dignity for women in Texas. While the Affordable Care Act doesn't solve all of the problems Latinas face, we know that by putting women's health first we'll take a step toward substantial improvement in health care access for all.
These meetings are also an opportunity to empower women to act as their own advocates. Lucy Felix, NLIRH organizer, always starts the conversation at these meetings by asking women one simple question: "Who is the most important person in your life?" After waiting for replies that include their mother, siblings, children, and partners, she proclaims, "It should be you!"
As Lucy holds these meetings in Texas, our Latina sisters in nearby Arizona face their own set of challenges, including one of the harshest immigration laws in the nation. The Supreme Court will soon decide whether that law should stand; at issue are provisions that criminalize the mere presence of undocumented immigrants and authorize racial profiling by law enforcement. This law creates a hostile environment where Latinas are targeted by the criminal justice system rather than protected by it. Adding insult to injury, the passage of SB1070 and copycat laws across the country has also been accompanied by a flood of troubling anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Laws like SB1070 have a direct impact on women's health care, as well. Once a woman has been detained, she can expect to face the brutal conditions of detention centers. Women have been separated from their children, forced to give birth in shackles, put at high risk for sexual assault and denied access to medical care. Anti-immigrant state laws and detention policies are not only an intrusion on immigrant women's rights, they are an intrusion on all women's health and dignity.
Immigrant women are the backbone of our community. Their health and opportunities affect their ability to provide for and care for their parents, children and partners, and fulfill the dreams for themselves and generations to come. Health care access and the ability to live in a community free from stigma and bias that leads to harmful and even deadly state action are human rights issues.
How the Supreme Court decides these two landmark cases will deeply influence Latinas' ability to keep themselves, their families, and our communities, healthy. Regardless of the ruling however, NLIRH will continue to work toward a comprehensive movement that will reduce racial and ethnic health inequities, that will ensure reproductive health access for Latinas, and demand that all women, regardless of race, ethnicity, or immigration status, have the opportunity to live healthy lives free from mean-spirited bias and attack.
Wendell Potter: There's a Sleeper in the Reform Law That Could Transform U.S. Health Care
We don't have that with Asian immigration. Asians come here, and they're done with Asia. They're not going back. They have no loyalties back home. They're glad to be out of that hellhole and into a civilized world. Hispanics need to emulate that.
Any arguments against these preventive programs results in a situation of Cutting off your nose to spite your face and in the end will result in more illness and problems. It is a shame that we can't learn from our history and understand why these programs were developed by intelligent people in the past. "Going Back" as the "Conservative" Republicans want will result in more illnesses, suffering, hunger, deaths, uneducated, crimes, and homeless people than there are now in the US. When the statistics start showing up probably 10 to 20 years from now we will all say "what happened?" and hopefully history will repeat again and we will rebuild the programs. Doing away with prevention and social services provides a quick economic "fix" that years later leads to a deficit.
Any ill illegal alien should be treated until they are medically stable enough to be returned to their home country. They should them be sent home by any means necessary up to and including air ambulance.
Tell it! Don't stop now, Latina. Whine some more about the brutal conditions of THIS detention center. Too bad homeless actual American citizens will not be treated to luxurious digs like this.
"KARNES CITY, Texas -- With free Internet access, cheap overseas phone calls, private bathrooms and no lights-out policy, the new immigration detention center in this isolated corner of South Texas would hardly seem like a prison if not for the electronically locking doors and reinforced-glass windows."
"Guards don't carry handcuffs, and they're not even referred to as guards, but rather, "assistance staff." There's no wall around the facility, and the exterior is painted a crisp royal-blue and burgundy. The dorm-style rooms have four bunk beds, a private bath, television and phone, which inmates can use to make international calls at just 15 cents a minute – a rate mostly unheard of outside. Detainees can stay up all night if they want, or even wander into common areas while everyone else sleeps."
"The Karnes facility's gym has weight-lifting equipment, a soccer field, indoor and outdoor basketball courts and sand and nets for beach volleyball. There are 117 pay phones, a law library, microwaves, board games and washers and dryers so inmates can do their own laundry."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/14/feds-unveil-reform-minded-detention-center-texas_n_1345338.html
To immigration law opponents, EVERY immigration law is "harsh". Do you support any immigration law? Do you support any form of its enforcement? Do you believe in accountability to immigration law or should people just be allowed to violate it with impunity?
"provisions that criminalize the mere presence of undocumented immigrants"
Nothing in 1070 criminalizes the mere presence of unlawfully present aliens. That would never get off the ground.
"and authorize racial profiling by law enforcement"
Actually, 1070 establishes a higher standard than what is allowed by Supreme Court decisions.
illegals have absolutely no right to be in our United States
As a bloc, Hispanics insist on making about race and then complain bitterly that it is a racial issue.
SB1070 is another matter. Nowhere does it mention race, as much as illegal aliens and their allies would like it to. This is why profiling was never a question to be argued for it. That most of the illegal aliens affected would be of one ethnicity is actually their own doing. Still that doesn't give them any more rights than if they were all of another ethnicity. There is no reason any ethnicity should be given special rights over everyone else and there is certainly no reason to do it for foreigners no matter where they are from.
Healthcare is more dodgy than SB1070 on being approved. Americans are sure they want illegal aliens to leave but not so sure they like HCR the way Obama has framed it.
If the SCOTUS rules favorably on SB1070 there will be more laws like it throughout the nation and then all the protests and lawsuits Mexico can finance won't make a difference on changing them. Latinos still won't be granted or denied rights any more than other Americans.
AL SANCHEZ
Hypothetically if statistics showed that say 1 in every 5 Americans of Italian descent were car thieves would that then cause all Italian Americans to stand behind and defend all car thieves and at the same time make make car theft a racial issue?
Minority rights derive from laws not the other way around. Applying double standards to eviscerate any one law diminishes them all. If they truly want a lawless society then they should all go to Somalia not the US!
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/unbelievable-anchor-babies-in-just-1-hospital-parkland-memorial-dallas-tx/blog-348947/?page=6
The EMTALA is somewhat like the 14th Amendment. It's initial purpose was to insure that indigent patients were seen by ER personnel and had their condition stabilized prior to transfer to a county hospital if one was available. It was never intended to serve as cover for wholesale abuse of our ER system by illegal aliens. It is difficult to believe but at one time in the not too distant past the Emergency Care system of CA was the finest in the nation. Now we watch as it is dismantled piece by piece.