My story of sexual harassment is typical #MeToo

Oct. 26, 2017

The news is awash with stories of powerful men preying on women at work. After settling a woman's lawsuit in January for $32 million - an astounding figure - Bill O'Reilly inked a new four-year employment contract with Fox News.

It seems Fox and others have a profound desire not to heed a victim's story when it might mean losing a revenue-generator like O'Reilly.

Since the recent revelations about film mogul Harvey Weinstein, Amazon Studios' Roy Price and New Orleans chef John Besh, more than 1.7 million women have tweeted #MeToo to say they also have been victims of sexual harassment or assault, many in the workplace. Is this a moment of enlightenment? A final end to harassment? I'm skeptical, but I believe there are ways we can each help to reduce it.

First, a story.

When I was in grad school in Manhattan, I was having trouble with my desktop computer, and the manufacturer sent a technician to my apartment to help. My four roommates were out. When the tech finished, he asked me to kiss him. I refused. I called his office to report him, but the woman on the phone didn't believe me.

Months later, as I was graduating and looking for a job, an editor from my former newspaper called unexpectedly. He said he could get me an internship at a prestigious New York newspaper if I would share a bottle of wine with him. I said I would get back to him about that. Later, getting together with some of my colleagues, male and female, who knew him, I told them what he had said. My story was met with uncomfortable silence.

I accepted an internship, instead, at a large West Coast newspaper, and drove my Mitsubishi Colt across the country, where I rented a room in a home where the owner was looking for a couple of tenants. Within a few days, I woke to the sound of my landlord masturbating outside my bedroom door. I froze, and later called police to report him. As I sat in the cruiser giving my report, it became clear that the police officer was mocking me. I left as soon as was politely possible.

I mentioned this incident to an editor at my paper, and he offered to let me stay at his place. I did, for about two weeks. There were just the two of us in the house, and I was wary. But he didn't try anything, and I was grateful. His kindness allowed me to get on my feet and spend another five years working for that newspaper.

Later, when I mentioned my story to another intern, she said I had been stupid to rent that first room. Perhaps.

It would be nice if that editor's kindness were the happy ending to my story.

However, I encountered another editor after a while who made comments about women's breasts and men's genitals. I told him the comments made me uncomfortable, but they didn't stop. I discussed his talk with human resources. The woman there said she would counsel my editor, and she advised me to find another job. I did.

Years later, now as a married woman with two children, I reported to another editor who would stop by my desk and make suggestive remarks about my underwear and the state of my marriage. Two colleagues who could overhear said to me, how can you stand that? I just shrugged. The years had taught me that speaking to HR or even to friends wouldn't elicit justice or even sympathy. I put my energy into finding another job.

Last week, in an op-ed in The New York Times, actress Lupita Nyong'o wrote about her harassment at the hands of Weinstein. "I wish I had known that there were ears to hear me," she wrote. "That justice could be served. There is clearly power in numbers."

I wish so, too. When a friend or an employee speaks about this, don't ignore it. And maybe, offer to put her up, or at least back her up, until she regains her pride and sense of safety.

Hillary still has wooing to do with left-leaning women

Hillary supporter

On a recent evening over watermelon martinis, a group of Long Island women went around the table voicing their nonsupport of Hillary Clinton. They're a left-leaning group, ranging in age from mid-40s to early 60s -- supposedly part of Clinton's natural constituency.

"She's rich," one said. "I always distrust rich people, how they made their money."

Another cited Clinton's campaign contributions from Monsanto, the big developer of genetically modified foods. A third woman derided the Clinton White House-era limits on welfare and passage of the 1994 crime bill, which helped to fill our prisons. A fourth said Clinton has no charisma.

Tonight, as Clinton takes the stage to accept the Democratic nomination for president - the first woman in a major American party to do so - shouldn't she by right enter the embrace of this generation of women as the zenith of our aspirations? However, if this critical group is any measure, Clinton still has some winning-over to do. These women aren't ready to hand her that pointy glass-shattering hammer just yet.

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed that 52 percent of registered female voters from both parties support Clinton, but that number fell to about 35 percent among white women ages 35 to 64. Can Clinton build enthusiasm tonight? Possibly. She needs to remind us that she's like us. We've known her in public life for decades.

And yet, she must also show that she's not too much like us. She must be extraordinary enough to claim this historic first.

Her husband laid the groundwork Tuesday night. It's the job of the spouse at a party convention to humanize the candidate and also to remind people of her history. Bill Clinton described first noticing Hillary on campus at Yale Law School in a way that showed she was like other women: thick blond hair, big glasses, no makeup. But he also claimed that even in 1971, she was extraordinary. Magnetic and self-possessed to the point that he hesitated to touch her back to get her attention and introduce himself. Tonight, Clinton must make that case for herself.

She cannot answer my friends' every concern. A disadvantage of a long public life is a host of positions, and detractors can choose among them as a basis for disapproval.

But Clinton can talk about her life and ideals. She was born into a middle-class family in which her dad made custom drapes and her homemaker mother told her she could be a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Many Americans can relate to humble beginnings and high aspirations, but not all of us persevered until we were the Democratic nominee for president.

Clinton can remind Americans that her early instinct was to advocate for migrant laborers, battered children and the legal rights of minors. She later wrote a book about relying on community, and on the campaign trail at the Brooklyn Navy Yard last month continued to speak about "prosperity that lifts everyone who has been left out and left behind."

She could point out that, when thwarted in her 1990s White House health care overhaul, she took to the road as first lady to advocate for women's rights around the world. Then when she was a U.S. senator from New York in the 2000s, many of her staff were women whom she accommodated through their pregnancies and early motherhood.

As history-making as Clinton's acceptance tonight will be, her most potent message to women voters of my generation will be to remind us of the road we've traveled together, the aspirations we've held for ourselves, our country and our children. It's not her zenith, she must recollect, it's ours.

First published in Newsday. Anne Michaud is the Interactive Opinion Editor for Newsday.

Election year politics at play in Plum Island preservation

Plum Island, NY, USA – August 24, 2014

Plum Island is like the turn of a kaleidoscope. At one rotation, a viewer sees Long Island's largest seal colony and a favorite destination of fishing boats. At the next turn, it becomes a prize sought by developers of golf courses and condos.

To many, though, Plum Island is a vision of Washington's partisanship cemented into place. The 3-mile, relatively untouched haven of trees and sandy beaches in Long Island Sound is off-limits to the public and has been owned by the federal government since 1826, when it was a military installation called Fort Terry. Since the 1950s, about 20 percent of Plum Island has served as an animal disease center researching everything from swine flu to foot-and-mouth disease to other livestock ailments.

Today, as the federal government moves to relocate the research laboratory to Kansas, this strip of land 1.5 miles off the tip of Orient Point is, to federal budget hawks, a potential $33 million bonanza. As preservationists try to block Plum Island's sale to a private developer, they've run straight into the kaleidoscopic chamber of mirrors known as an election year.

Even though leaders on both sides of the aisle agree that this green jewel should be preserved, the real issue is who would get credit for doing so. This will come as a complete shock to no one.

But it's a shame to have what is mostly agreement behind the scenes -- to preserve this land -- result in paralysis. Plum Island is an extraordinary treasure that should remain pristine.

The island's future is playing out in the context of the 1st Congressional District, which encompasses both Long Island forks westward to Brookhaven and Smithtown. Republican freshman Rep. Lee Zeldin tried to rescind the part of the 2008 federal legislation that initiated the sale of the land. The proceeds are supposed to help fund the $1.25 billion Kansas replacement facility, scheduled for completion by the end of 2022.

However, Zeldin's ban on a sale also expires in 2022. This spring, real estate agents were scheduling boat trips for potential Plum Island buyers, so he submitted a second bill that mirrors a Senate measure sponsored by Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal; Plum Island is less than seven miles south of Niantic, Connecticut. The second measure creates a one-year moratorium on marketing the island to buyers. It passed just last week.

There are two schools of thought about why Zeldin's ban expires in 2022. One is that House Speaker Paul Ryan, a budget hawk, said he didn't want to give up the potential cash. The second is that Senate Democrats said privately they would push Zeldin's House bill in their chamber. In the absence of a Republican sponsor, there's evidence they're still considering that.

Not to take sides here, but Democrats see 2016 as an opportunity to wrest the 1st CD seat from Zeldin. History shows the power of incumbency grows after a first term. And New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, especially, has been a vocal supporter of Zeldin's November opponent, Democrat and former Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst. If Blumenthal's bill were to pass in the Senate, Zeldin might look too good.

Environmental advocates from New York and Connecticut will be in Washington today to lobby in part about Plum Island. Let's hope they can twist the kaleidoscope to a pattern that produces a win for all of us who live near Long Island Sound.

First published in Newsday. Anne Michaud is the Interactive Opinion Editor for Newsday.

Don't let kids lose their smarts in summer

Two young children are reading books together outside in a teepee tent for a education or learning concept.

It's that time of year again. School's out, and summer stretches before us. My parents would have said, go out and play. But we're living in an age when parents are more hands-on, for many reasons: anxiety about getting into college and earning a break on the sky-high cost; unpredictable economic storms, insecure jobs, stagnant wages that create a slippery slide down and out of the comfortable middle class.

As a result, families are more concerned that these weeks of summer include some learning. For people with time and money, summer promises specialty camps, out-of-town vacations, lessons and trips to museums and concerts.

But summer learning loss - the idea that students lose ground academically when they don't engage in educational activities during the break - is particularly acute for children in families with lesser means.

Sociologists at Johns Hopkins University demonstrated this by tracking 800 Baltimore students over two decades. They found that better-off kids retained more over summer break because they were involved in stimulating activities, even if they had very little to do with a textbook and a No. 2 pencil. In fact, by ninth grade, summer learning loss was responsible for two-thirds of the achievement gap between low-income students and their better-off peers.

In recognition of this finding, places from St. Louis to Teton County, Wyoming, have started affordable, educational summer programs for low-income families.

But even without communitywide cooperation, families with tight budgets and short together time can create stimulating summers. I asked parenting expert Denise Daniels for her ideas and checked out the suggestions on Educents.com, a website that curates fun learning projects and products.

1. Write a summer bucket list. Parents and kids should sit down at the start of the summer to list a few activities they want to make sure to include before the sunny days end.

2. Look to community organizations for free or low-cost resources. Libraries often organize summer reading contests. Some towns host free outdoor music concerts and other entertainment. YMCAs and JCCs run inexpensive day camps, and many camps will offer scholarships to families that can't afford the regular price.

3. Create your own "camp." Children can choose their five favorite recipes and make them on successive days for a week of cooking camp. Or they can re-enact a scene from a favorite book, making costumes and putting on a performance. Science camp, community service camp - the possibilities are as rich as one's imagination. Or, collect several families to host camp weeks on a rotating basis.

4. Scouts' motto: Be prepared. Have a travel kit to keep kids entertained when you're in transit, or if children need to spend a few hours at a parent's workplace. Keep art supplies in the home. Write out a list for a scavenger hunt. Have workbooks for the appropriate grade level tucked away for odd moments.

5. Mix in academics in fun ways. Get kids to read aloud to their pets. Have them cook or shop with an adult to practice math. Websites offer computer programming tutorials, and kids can subscribe to receive science kits regularly by mail.

6. Just be. In the final analysis, the most important contribution a parent can make to a good summer is 20 minutes of one-on-one time daily. Bedtime reading, especially stories that teach kids about emotions, can be ideal for fostering this connection.

Do you have something to add? Let me know. It doesn't have to feel like a classroom to count as a lesson.

First published on Newsday.com. Anne Michaud is the Interactive Opinion Editor for Newsday.

Who did this killer hate, and why?

Orlando shooting 1

This is a sad truth of our time: As a society, we have developed a series of rituals after mass shootings. One is playing out now. It's called name the enemy.

Since the tragic massacre in Orlando this weekend, at Latin night in the LGBT club Pulse, some of our leaders have been stepping up to podiums and taking to Twitter to say why this carnage occurred. Who did Omar Mateen hate, and why? Naming the enemy is a necessary process. It allows us to post extra police details at certain New York clubs and neighborhoods, as the New York City Police Department has done. But we must approach this naming with care and be on the lookout for how our leaders use the ritual, because reality is usually more complex than the initial picture.

Brad Hoylman, the only openly gay member of the State Senate, stressed the importance of naming the enemy. For him, it's homophobia. The Senate passed a resolution Tuesday expressing "sincerest, heartfelt condolences to the Orlando community" and gratitude for first responders. The resolution was a simple single sentence.

Yet Hoylman, a Democrat, wouldn't sign it because neither the LGBT community nor Latinos were mentioned. Hoylman called this "a colossal oversight or intentional omission." He noted, "At its core, pride is an affirmation we have the right to exist and live and love openly. It's times like Sunday morning that this fundamental concept is put to the test."

It was a poignant speech, and naming the enemy this way opened the door for the senator to make it. His sentiments won't hurt any in his district, which encompasses Stonewall and the West Village in Manhattan - the seat held for years by gay advocate Tom Duane. Hoylman also took the opportunity to call for an end to injustices, such as state statutes about hate crimes and discrimination that don't specifically protect transgender people.

This advances his own agenda - but was the Orlando assault only about Latin night at an LGBT club? I think not. Leaders risk oversimplifying when they cherry-pick the background of an assailant like Mateen.

Shortly after the shootings, on Monday night, the presidential candidates named their enemies with care, before very much was known about Mateen. Hillary Clinton acknowledged this - but then launched into her definition. She said the shooter was "apparently consumed by rage against LGBT Americans, and by extension, the openness and diversity that defines our American way of life."

Naming the enemy as a hater of diversity allowed Clinton to call for unity and to embrace moderate Muslims as allies against terrorism.

Calling Mateen a lone wolf, a "radicalized" individual, Clinton avoided the need to take direct retaliation against the Islamic State or any one group.

Sen. Bernie Sanders took Clinton's lone-wolf theme further - he has a way of sharpening the point on the Democratic conversation - when he tweeted Tuesday, "We know that one hateful person committed this terrible crime - not an entire people or an entire nation."

Donald Trump, of course, is the prince of enemy-naming. In fact, that's the basis of much of his appeal, what he calls doing away with political correctness. Even as the dust from the Orlando disaster was settling, Trump dared President Barack Obama to say the words radical Islam. Trump's definition of the impulse behind the shootings leads to a fair number of policies that begin with closing our borders and end . . . where?

That's the crucial question we must bear in mind when deciding on the enemy's name.

First published in Newsday. Anne Michaud is the Interactive Opinion Editor for Newsday.

More generations living under one roof -- and liking it

If you need any further evidence that the American family is in the throes of change, and no longer a Norman Rockwell portrait of the nuclear nest, check out this finding from the respected Pew Research Center: For the first time in 130 years, more people age 18 to 34 are living with their parents than with a partner in their own households. Slightly more than 32 percent of millennials lived in their parents' home in 2014, according to the analysis published last week and based on U.S. census data. There's also been a dramatic drop in the share of young Americans who choose to settle down romantically before age 35, writes Pew's Richard Fry. Marriage is declining in general, and people are marrying later.

The living-at-home numbers haven't been so high since the 1940s Depression-era peak of about 35 percent, Pew said, which suggests that the reasons are economic. Then, they had the Great Depression. Now, we had the Great Recession. Many young people still can't find jobs, middle-class wages have declined for decades, and housing prices remain out of reach on most single salaries.

But that's not all that's going on. This cohabitation is partly a barometer of the economy, but also partly about women's rising earning power. Women with good jobs aren't quite so ready to accept a mate's bad behavior, fewer are getting pregnant and a pregnancy doesn't lead so quickly to a walk down the aisle as it once did. A good number of single mothers live in their parents' homes.

Americans have been redefining family for decades - through divorce and remarriage, with same-sex couples, with monogamous couples who never marry - and this mix of multiple generations in the house is only the latest twist. Call me over-optimistic, but generations under one roof can benefit everyone involved.

One writer, Alan Jacobs, recently described his experience in multigenerational home this way: "Through living as an extended family my parents got free child care, my grandparents got free rent, and I grew up surrounded by family members who loved me. How did living this way become an image of a 'life gone wrong'?"

Old and young people can also learn from one another. Younger people can witness the metamorphosis of retirement, and the health changes that come with age - and find models on how to plan for these transitions themselves. More hands in the kitchen can mean families eat healthier, and generations can pass along hobbies, interests and skills. This goes both ways - older people can learn from young household members how to use social media to connect with distant family and friends.

An organization called Generations United, which advocates for policy changes to support grandparents who are raising children, says the growth in multigenerational homes is a sign that there's greater harmony between millennials and their parents. Donna M. Butts, the executive director of the Washington-based group, wrote in response to the Pew finding that studies show "millennials and their parents like each other . . . unlike some previous generations who couldn't wait to get away from their parents."

That's a big generalization. Surely, many millennials would like to be out on their own. As I thought about this column, I asked my 17-year-old if her vision for her future is a super-souped-up room of her own in her parents' house. She scoffed before I could get to the second half of the question about an apartment of her own.

I take pride in her growing independence, to be sure. But if life leads her back home for a stay, as the Pew numbers tell us, we'll be in good company.

First published in Newsday. Anne Michaud is the Interactive Opinion Editor for Newsday.

Could this course from the mental health community apply to addiction?

Joyce Burland recalls, during one of her first meetings for families of mentally ill people, seeing a silver-haired couple who looked serene. They had twin sons, both with schizophrenia, and had been grappling with that reality for about 60 years. The couple hadn't abandoned their sons, and they were very much involved in their lives. Burland, whose 30-something sister with five children had recently become delusional - "it was a mess," Burland said - wondered how she could achieve anything approaching serenity. She remembers the sight of that couple as "a guiding moment."

A clinical psychologist, Burland would go on to write a 12-week course for families of people with mental illness, which is used across the United States, and in Mexico and Italy. Her course, called Family-To-Family or F2F, is intended to move people from panic and struggle to living in relative peace with a long-term, debilitating illness.

"Our job is to move the illness to a factor in families' lives, not the only fact, so they can live with joy and spontaneity while undertaking a really long job," said Burland, who is now the national director of the Education, Training and Peer Education Support Center for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The organization advocates for individuals and families affected by mental illness.

The success of Burland's program, which has served about 375,000 people since its start in 1991, made me wonder whether it could help people living with another arduous, life-long problem: addiction. Last year, 442 people died of opiate overdoses on Long Island - a record, up from 403 a year earlier. This is a battle we are losing to heroin, oxycodone and fentanyl.

People in the anti-drug community on Long Island say they have support groups, but nothing as extensive as F2F. Burland agreed that her program could be useful for families coping with addiction - not as a replacement for something else, but as one more tool.

The first few weeks of the course help people through the initial shock. The course outlines information about the medical basis for mental illness, therapeutic drugs, and what is a symptom and which behaviors are changeable. Burland updates the curriculum to reflect new research.

The middle third of F2F describes what it's like for a person living with mental illness and, more recently, Alzheimer's.

The final sessions help families cope with mixed emotions - anger, guilt, resentment - and return to caring for themselves instead of living life under siege. They set rules about giving money or shelter, for example, until the ill person agrees to take medication.

Jeannette Wells of Springfield Gardens is a volunteer who leads classes twice a year. She attended two days of training in Albany to become certified with NAMI to teach F2F. She said the classes create a natural community who can rely on each other later.

F2F was revolutionary in its day. Psychiatry for roughly a century had blamed mental illness on dysfunctional or abusive parents, Burland said. Some of that stigma persists, making it hard to admit to a problem. In that, there are parallels with drug and alcohol abuse.

While Family-To-Family has served only a fraction of the millions who might benefit, it has created a core of advocates in every state who can speak knowledgeably to doctors and social workers, and who have won milestone legislation requiring parity in health insurance coverage.

Whether parity is always enforced . . . that's the next challenge.

First published in Newsday.

Obama turns to African-American issues in his home stretch

Just as Attorney General Loretta Lynch rounded her first anniversary as the nation's top law-enforcement officer, she was on a national tour to promote her plan to help integrate people with criminal records back into society. As her weeklong tour stopped at the Talladega Federal Correctional Institution in Alabama a week ago, she joked to a group of inmates in a substance abuse treatment program that one of the benefits of being attorney general is "you get to pick a week - and name it something."

And that she did. Last week was the country's inaugural Lynch-titled "National Reentry Week." The Department of Justice issued policies intended to lower barriers to finding jobs, housing, education and treatment for people who've served time, been on probation, or who have an arrest in their past.

The AG's initiative doesn't address race, which was the right judgment. But to the extent that people of color are disproportionately enmeshed in the criminal justice system, Lynch's action is an important call for broader civil rights. She picked up the Obama administration's baton to make it easier for people with records to overcome stigma and bias.

During this presidential campaign, our nation is wrestling with the impact of the 1994 crime bill, signed into law by President Bill Clinton, which resulted in mass incarceration, particularly of black Americans. The prison population rose 628 percent between 1970 and 2005, and black men account for more than 37 percent of the total population. President Barack Obama is using his final months in office - a time of relative freedom for a sitting president - to cement his legacy and to address issues of particular interest to African Americans.

"Yes, more people of color will be affected, because more are pulled into an unfair justice system," said Monique Dixon, deputy policy director and senior counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, a leading civil rights law organization.

The DOJ is focusing on rehabilitation and ending recidivism by giving former offenders a greater stake in a better life. The action is one response to a new generation of activists loosely organized under the umbrella of Black Lives Matter.

Bennett Capers, a Brooklyn Law School professor, agreed that Obama is focusing more on issues of concern to AfricanAmericans.

"To fight the perception that he is a black president . . . Obama has had to work extra hard to appear neutral and race-free, i.e., the president for everyone," Capers said in an email. "I think with his last year in office, a lot of that pressure has dissipated."

One DOJ initiative listed in Lynch's "Roadmap to Reentry" is expanding video visitations to its women's prisons next month, and eventually to all of its facilities. The AG directed the Bureau of Prisons to figure out the details of how this will work in practice.

The program could allow some of the 2.7 million U.S. children with a parent behind bars to "visit" via video conference, strengthening family relationships. Lynch also has urged the nation's governors to make it easier for felons to obtain state-issued identification after they get out of prison. Dixon said this would pave the way to opening bank accounts, obtaining housing and jobs, voting and applying for public benefits.

Lynch also has urged the federal government to set a model by waiting until after a job candidate has received a provisional offer of employment to ask about his or her criminal record - also known as "ban the box" for the box applicants must check on job forms regarding their criminal history.

Nearly everyone deserves a second chance, especially after having served their time. As a society, we shouldn't make life so hard for people that their only option is to return to crime.

First published in Newsday.

Bernie Sanders pushes cost-of-college debate to 2016 mainstream

When Hillary Clinton won big Tuesday in New York's Democratic primary, she said it's not enough to diagnose problems, one must have a way to solve them. Her swipe at Sen. Bernie "Free College" Sanders echoed what she told Newsday's editorial board last week, when members asked whether she's disappointed that young women aren't more thrilled by the ceiling-shattering prospect of her candidacy for president. Clinton responded that young people were "excited by something new and that is a little different and a little revolutionary and promises free college."

Aha. The price of a college education is front and center in this campaign in a way it never has been before. Democrats like Clinton and Sanders are speaking to their party's left-most wing, which wants answers. And once the GOP names its candidate, it's a good bet that he will have to answer the question, too.

Whether Sanders' "free" college is really free or practical, he has at least put this issue on the front burner. As a country, we have an obligation to take down barriers to people making better lives for themselves. American history, as Sanders often points out, shows that we have traditionally valued education as a public good - not something people should be priced out of. Let's return to that inspired impulse.

We live in an age when jobs that don't require a college education seem to be moving offshore, and even a degree doesn't promise steady employment. American students and parents cling to the hope that an education will smooth life's path in this rock-and-roll economy. The majority of colleges and universities are fielding growing numbers of applications in the last 15 years, and with the demand and rising costs of attendance, student debt is soaring.

President Barack Obama's response has been to vastly expand federal loan programs. Pell grants grew from $14.6 billion a year in 2008 to about $40 billion today. He also wanted to assign a single number to each college or university to indicate the value they offer - something like the letter grades displayed in each New York City restaurant window, said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the higher education industry association American Council on Education.

The ratings system was designed to put pressure on colleges and universities to control costs. It never materialized -- perhaps the higher education lobby fought against it, perhaps it was too complicated from the outset. Stories differ. However, there does seem to be a greater emphasis on numbers. College admissions officers speak about retention rates from freshman to sophomore year -- a measure of student satisfaction - and about the percentage of graduates who have jobs within six to nine months. Admissions officers boast about "return on investment" -- that is, how much those graduates make in salary compared with the cost of tuition.

As Sanders wants to make higher education free, Clinton wants it to be debt-free. Her "New College Compact" would still require well-off families to pay tuition. Lower- and middle-class families -- along with military veterans and those who've completed a national service program -- could go to public universities tuition-free. Everyone, Clinton says, should be able to graduate without taking on debt.

She also has adopted initiatives that Obama hasn't been able to push through, such as free two-year community college. Expanding opportunities for Americans is the right direction. Let's hope the campaign talk survives the reality postelection.

First published in Newsday.

Gay Talese had no female role models? How about these women journalists....

When I was in my 20s, a friend challenged me about the books I was reading. He said, they're all by women authors. Do women (like me) only like to read works written by women?

I thought of this when I heard about the conference on narrative journalism at Boston University last weekend and the ruckus caused by keynote speaker Gay Talese, a pioneer in importing storytelling techniques from fiction to enliven magazine and newspaper writing. Asked whether there are female writers he admires, Talese told the room of about 600 men and women, no, there were none.

He has since said he misunderstood the question, and he thought the questioner was asking whether there were women journalists who had inspired him in his youth. Talese is 84, and it's true that female journalists in the 1950s were more rare.

Still, his response, while perhaps candid, lacked grace. The greenest of public speaking consultants could have told him to pivot and answer the question as if it were phrased, is there anyone you admire today?

Talese might have mentioned journalist and screenwriter Nora Ephron, author of "When Harry Met Sally." In a documentary about her life, "Everything Is Copy," by her son Jacob Bernstein, Talese lavished praise on Ephron, specifically for the phase of her career as a magazine journalist.

Perhaps Talese isn't as nimble onstage as when he has time to reflect. But I can still manage a pivot. Here is my own list of great women journalists who have influenced me.

Ellen Goodman and Erma Bombeck. Clearly, two very different writers, they are joined in my memory as writers my mother and I loved when I was growing up and read The Boston Globe at home. Goodman wrote columns about social change and progressive politics, once boldly comparing deniers of man-made global warming to deniers of the Holocaust. Bombeck was folksy, chronicling suburban family life with comic irreverence. Their heirs today are apparent in female columnists and mommy and daddy bloggers.

Betty Friedan. Her book "The Feminine Mystique" was published when I was 3. I grew up secure in its message that women should not allow society to tell them who they should be.

Gloria Steinem. Not for the usual reasons. Her 1992 book about believing in oneself, "Revolution From Within," inspired me to value myself outside of a relationship when I was a single newspaper reporter in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s.

Linda Hossie, Maggie O'Kane, Mary McGrory and Mary Williams Walsh. These reporters wrote about systematic and organized rape as a weapon of ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War. This was a time, in the early- to mid-1990s, when atrocities against women usually went unmentioned in war coverage.

Adrienne Rich. Although she had been writing since the 1950s, I discovered her books when I was a young mother in the late 1990s. Rich presented bracing truths about motherhood that I was reading nowhere else.

And, finally . . . the many amazing women journalists I've worked with through a half-dozen newspaper jobs. The ones whose adrenaline pumped when they pursued a story. The ones who patiently and persistently dug through data and documents, cajoled and protected sources, and who made that extra phone call to be sure they were fair to all sides. The ones whose writing was as vivid as a painting.

Yes, my male colleagues have been equally as skilled and dedicated. I'd be pulling a Talese if I didn't say so. Yet, even though one man on a stage may not always remember these women journalists -- or if history gives them the slight -- they have surely shaped their times.

First published in Newsday.

Docs, dentists and other health care pros give too many pills, risking addiction and overdose

When I read about the arrest of a person like Steven Parry, a Hauppauge osteopath who’s accused of prescribing 750 pills to a Long Island woman just 20 days after she had overdosed, I think the opioid crisis is well in hand. But in reality, such extreme cases are the easier ones to detect. Day-to-day overprescribing for routine health issues like a pulled molar tooth, back pain or a broken bone — that’s what alarms anti-addiction advocates.

“We’ve done a good job of locking up the bad actors,” says Jeffrey Reynolds of the Family & Children’s Association treatment center in Mineola. “They’ve been driven out of business, or they understand the game has changed. The other 99.9 percent need more guidance . . . . They’re not doing criminal things, they just haven’t had the education.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently recommended that doctors prescribe no more than three days' worth of pills such as Vicodin or Percocet for an acute problem like a root canal or a sprain during a lacrosse practice. But health care professionals often prescribe 12 or 30 or more.

Opioid pills were linked to 343 deaths on Long Island in 2012 and 2013. Deaths involving opioid painkillers have been leveling off since 2012 when New York began tracking prescriptions through a database called I-STOP — Internet System for Tracking Over-Prescribing Act. But I-STOP had the unfortunate unintended consequence of making heroin cheaper than pills and more attractive as a way to get high. Still, government statistics show that deaths involving opioids continue to outpace heroin-related deaths.

Collectively, we must overcome this. It’s important to help people live abundant lives, not bleed their lives away in counterfeit euphorias that erode their health and break their spirits.

I-STOP passed the State Legislature after the 2011 Father’s Day murders of four people in a Medford pharmacy by a man seeking opioid pills for his wife. The legislation omitted a requirement for physicians and dentists to take a three-hour class every two years on managing pain, palliative care and addiction. The Medical Society of the State of New York opposed the class as burdensome, when physicians spend 50 hours a year or more in continuing education. After two defeats, advocates have not submitted the bill again this year.

However, there are signs that the medical community is taking opioid abuse more seriously. Leading medical and dental schools are voluntarily adding instruction on prescribing painkillers to the curriculum. “We’ve been partially there, and we’re going to be doing more. We’re incorporating it,” said Dr. Ronald Kanner, an associate dean at the Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine.

The Food and Drug Administration announced this week that it will add its most serious warning — like the warning on a pack of cigarettes — to immediate-release opioid painkillers. And the American Medical Association posted training modules on its website suggesting physical therapy, massage, yoga, acupuncture and other pain relief efforts before pills.

The pendulum has perhaps swung too far in favor of medication, says Kanner, who was among the first pain management fellows at Memorial Sloan Kettering in 1979. “There are doctors who are well-meaning who don’t take the time or don’t understand fully what the potentials for abuse are,” he said.

In his practice, which treats chronic pain, Kanner is very direct with new patients. He asks whether they’ve ever had a problem with drugs or alcohol — and even whether they smoke — to weed out those susceptible to addiction.

Hofstra’s right to teach all student doctors to be so careful.

First published in Newsday.

GOP is playing the long game on abortion rights

Even as the Democratic presidential candidates prepped in Miami Wednesday for their debate, state legislators to the north in Tallahassee were passing new restrictions on Florida clinics that perform abortions. The legislature's vote seemed to be lost on the three journalists asking questions, none of whom mentioned it. Thank goodness for Joshua Dansby, a law student from Washington, D.C., who submitted a question on Facebook for the candidates. He wanted to know what the Democratic presidential candidates would look for in a Supreme Court justice.

Hillary Clinton said she would look for people who believe that Roe v. Wade is settled law and that Citizens United needs to be overturned as quickly as possible. Then the panel cut to commercials without asking Sen. Bernie Sanders to respond. Sanders has said elsewhere that he, too, would nominate a justice who would overturn the disastrous lifting of limits on third-party campaign spending.

Small matter to the interviewers, I guess, having one Republican legislature after another ban abortion through these backdoor restrictions on clinics. Just like in Texas, the Florida law would require doctors at these clinics to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and for the clinics to be fitted as mini-hospitals, even when they dispense pills, which are nonsurgical.

The effect in Texas has been to reduce 41 clinics in 2012 to 17 today. The average Texas county is 111 miles from the nearest clinic, and the U.S. Supreme Court just heard arguments last week about whether this makes abortion a practical impossibility for many Texas women - either because they can't travel or afford the trip, or because they can't get an appointment at overbooked clinics.

If the Supreme Court splits 4-4 on the Texas case, the law will stand - and so may those in Florida, Louisiana, Virginia, Wisconsin and many other states.

Our Democratic presidential candidates, who say they are pro-abortion rights, should be making more of an issue of this de facto loss in many places of the right to terminate a pregnancy.

Because women are suffering. A November paper from a group called the Texas Policy Evaluation Project -- a collaboration among researchers at the University of Texas, the University of California-San Francisco, Ibis Reproductive Health and the University of Alabama-Birmingham -- found that between 100,000 and 240,000 Texas women have tried to end a pregnancy on their own without medical assistance.

That exposes the lie that many state legislators tell, that tightening the rules at abortion clinics is meant to protect women's health. Better a procedure in a clinic with medical professionals than one of these methods that are turning up in Google searches: abortion by herbs like parsley or vitamin C, coat hangers, bleaching one's uterus or punching one's stomach. In 2015, there were more than 700,000 searches looking for self-induced abortions. Searches have skyrocketed since 2011, when states began abortion crackdowns.

The human misery implicit in those searches is devastating.

Democrats, whose party stands for a woman's right to choose, should cry out with more force. They should be working to win back state legislatures; Republicans control both chambers in 30 states. The GOP was smart to soften its emphasis on overturning Roe v. Wade in court, and to focus instead on winning legislative races.

Abortion foes have been playing the long game, with foresight about the power they would gain in state legislatures. It's time the forces for choice learned to think long-term, too.

First published in Newsday.

Taylor Swift's powerful gift to Kesha

Upside down stretching

Women helping women. That's a concept you're most likely to hear at a seminar about career mentors or a shelter for battered spouses. Not usually in the high-glitz world of female pop stars. And yet this week, singer Taylor Swift announced she was giving $250,000 to Kesha Sebert, a singer with money and manager problems. Kesha, as she is mononymously known, is waging a court battle to get out of her recording contract with Sony Music Entertainment. She alleged that her producer drugged and raped her, and she asked a New York judge to release her to work with other producers.

The judge denied Kesha's request last week, saying she can't unilaterally cancel her contract. Celebrity website TMZ reported that she is struggling financially because her producer has been withholding royalty payments for three years. It's the same producer - the legendary Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald - whom Kesha is accusing of rape. Gottwald has denied the assault allegations and has filed a defamation countersuit. This situation is a mess.

The hashtag #FreeKesha trended on Twitter over the weekend. A celebrity feminism-fest ensued, with tweets of support from Adele, Demi Lovato, Lady Gaga and Lena Dunham. Then Swift stepped in with a cash donation for Kesha "during this trying time."

That's not a story line one usually hears from women artists. More often, it's Nicky Minaj calling out Miley Cyrus at the MTV Music Video Awards, or Madonna claiming Lady Gaga ripped off "Express Yourself" with a very similar-sounding "Born This Way."

Search "dueling divas" on the Internet, and you'll see what I mean.

These feuds are all very entertaining and even heighten the celebrity of their participants. It would be naive to think that at least some of the rivalry isn't manufactured for headlines. Immediately after Swift's $250,000 announcement, singer Lovato tweeted that Swift should have done more.

"Take something to Capitol Hill or actually speak about something and then I'll be impressed," said Lovato, who has been famously candid about her own eating disorder.

Be that as it may, I cheer Swift's gift. In it I see the glimmer of women growing into their power and using it to benefit each other. Perhaps they're creating a new narrative beyond the threadbare "token" and "abuser" stories the music world likes to tell.

The token narrative is something women in journalism know from years ago. It says, why should we hire a woman reporter? We already have one of those.

The same has been true of women pop stars. I remember people asking in the '80s, whom do you like, Madonna or Cyndi Lauper? As if I was supposed to choose just one. I said, both.

More recently, it's Beyoncé or Rihanna. Choose one.

There is also an abuser narrative, in which, for example, Amy Winehouse gets hooked on drugs supplied by her boyfriend, and her dad only makes matters worse by pushing her to perform. Or Bobby Brown hit his wife, Whitney Houston. Or Chris Brown's violence toward Rihanna.

In the abuser narrative, the women are victims. It's a relief to see women with the star power of the #FreeKesha crowd claim their fame and money as a means to ease the apparent victimhood of Kesha.

Who knows? Maybe as a society we'll soon be able to see past binary either-or choices, such as the stale idea that a woman must be cutthroat to achieve success. Power or sisterhood? Both.

First published in Newsday.

Psst, Barbie! Girls don't fit into categories

I have to hand it to Mattel for introducing a new, diverse line of Barbie dolls. The ladies now come in seven skin tones, various hair textures and three additional body types: tall, curvy and petite. The company's new dolls represent a well-intentioned effort to reflect real girls' differences, replacing the not-so-subtle ideal of the teeny waist and Caucasian complexion.

But when it comes to girls' self-image, Barbie can never be diverse enough - nor should she have to carry that responsibility for our culture. This is where toy companies must leave off, and adults must grab the baton. Because the battle to win girls back from the cliff-edge of self-critical harm has not been won.

As the mother of two teenage girls, I hear stories about self-harm regularly. One girl had to leave school for several months to regain her health after a bout with anorexia. Another is happier at her new, svelte weight, which she achieved by throwing up her meals. Roughly 30 million Americans are afflicted with "pathological dieting," according to the National Eating Disorders Association.

Thighs so petite they don't meet - "thigh gaps" - are in vogue. And corsets are back in style, now called waist trainers, to squeeze girls into Beyoncé or Kardashian curviness.

These fashions reflect a dissatisfaction with self, sometimes also expressed in self-mutilation or "cutting." Rows of self-made scars adorn the arms and legs of girls on Tumblr, like striped sleeves and leggings.

I searched "self-harm" on Tumblr to try to find these images, which I had only heard about. Wisely, Tumblr's first response was a screen that asked, "Everything Okay?" It directed the reader to a counseling and prevention resources page.

Likewise, there are pro-anorexic websites, such as Pro-Ana Nation, that encourage self-starvation, as well as plenty of sites that aim to help. EatingDisorderHope.com, for example, offers a wealth of treatment and support ideas, and RecoveryRecord.com has created a phone app for wellness.

As girls enter preteen years, as young as 8, psychologists say, they become aware of what it means to be accepted, and they begin to try to live in a way that will bring that about. Idealized images of beauty in both traditional and social media show girls what society expects of them.

We grown-ups should be the antidote to this cultural message, but often we're not. Grown women pass along expectations to girls, even with simple remarks about the natural weight gain and body changes in adolescence. Or we "lead" by example: by denigrating ourselves and how we compare with the beautiful ideal. I think older women have far more influence than we tend to believe.

That's good news, because it's an opportunity. Women's Health seized on this idea in its January-February issue when editor-in-chief Amy Keller Laird announced that the magazine would no longer use "body-shaming" phrases, such as "How to get the bikini body you want" or "How to drop the next 10 pounds - fast." Instead, Laird wrote to readers, "We'd rather focus on the greater benefits of getting a strong-as-hell core: running, surfing, dancing, climbing, being able to carry a 2-year-old up and down the stairs 10 times a day."

We can all join in this positive approach. I won't say we can undo all of the anxiety and pressures girls feel. But we can seize the opportunity when it arises to praise a girl's unique features or abilities or interests - even if it's done so quietly that no one notices but her. Even if it's only loud enough to resonate in her heart.

No two are alike - not snowflakes, not people. Even Mattel can't match that.

First published in Newsday.

Terminally ill deserve aid-in-dying mercy

First published in Newsday.

Youssef Cohen is an associate professor of political science at New York University. He is 68 years old, and has a deadly form of cancer: mesothelioma.

He has been combating the cancer for nearly four years, with chemotherapy, surgery and radiation. Recently, he enrolled in a trial of a new therapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Cohen hasn't given up on life, but he has one request: the option, when hope is exhausted, to choose a death without agony.

"I don't think I'm afraid of dying; I've accepted that," Cohen said in an interview. "But I have a lot of fear. I wake up in the night, and the fear is the fear of dying in agony unnecessarily."

Cohen works to control his fear with humor and laughter, but he dreads no longer being able to swallow, to breathe or to numb the pain. He is speaking out in support of New York State passing a death-with-dignity bill, which is the law in four states. The state laws allow a terminally ill adult who is mentally sound to request life-ending medication that can be self-administered.

"If I had that choice, I would be less afraid," Cohen says.

Listening to this brave, hopeful man who has lived on three continents and written three books, I want him to have that choice. He was raised in a Jewish home but isn't particularly religious. I was raised in a Catholic home and am not particularly religious. I don't know what I would do in his situation.

The Medical Society of the State of New York, the Catholic Church and the disability rights group Not Dead Yet oppose physician assistance in dying. They argue that it promotes suicide for people considered no longer useful or a burden to society. They say there are sufficient medicines to ease suffering at the end of life.

However, physician help in dying is gaining traction with the public. In September, a poll by EaglePoint Strategies found that 77 percent of New York voters said they support access to assisted suicide. Two advocacy organizations - End of Life Choices New York and Compassion & Choices - are lobbying in Albany and gathering grass roots support. Oregon has had an assisted suicide law for 18 years, and California passed a similar law in October.

California acted after the high-profile advocacy of 29-year-old Brittany Maynard, who moved from California to Oregon to access medical aid in dying after a terminal diagnosis of brain cancer. Maynard decided to end her own life on Nov. 1, 2014. Her case, youth, and courage gave a new face to the aid-in-dying debate, and her online video explaining her decision held the interest of audiences around the world. Oregon's law gave her the option of autonomy and self-determination to the end.

Dr. David S. Pratt is an Albany-area palliative care specialist whose position on aid in dying has changed over his 15 years of practice in pulmonary medicine. Some patients if his intensive care unit were on ventilators, weren't strong enough to live without them and hadn't made provisions to prohibit their use. The patients had arrived at the emergency room blue and breathless, he said, and "in some sense, they were stuck."

Another two of Pratt's patients ended their lives violently, with devastating effect on their families. These cases persuaded Pratt that there are insufficient compassionate tools for patients who wish to stop suffering.

Cohen has watched friends decline, including one with pancreatic cancer who didn't want aid in dying. "That's OK with me, it was his choice," he said. "But I wouldn't choose it."

We must add options for people like Cohen.

Common Core-aligned SAT downplays aptitude in favor of learning

First published in Newsday.

College-bound Americans, along with their parents and guidance counselors, exhaled with relief when the PSAT scores were announced last week. This college entrance exam was the first to reflect the much-debated Common Core learning standards, and the importance of a good score cannot be overestimated.

Anxiety over the PSAT ballooned when the scores were delayed by nearly two months. Usually, scores for a test taken on Oct. 14 would have been available in early November. They came out Jan. 7.

Clearly, the College Board, the nonprofit organization that administers the SAT, wants to get this right. And the result? My survey of one - my daughter, who is a high school junior - showed exactly the same scores on the old SAT and the new PSAT. She took both in the fall, as did many students hoping to get one last opportunity at the SAT before it was redesigned. I've heard that many other test-takers were pleasantly surprised with their PSAT scores.

Skeptics of the test had been warning college-bound students away from the new SAT, which will be given for the first time this March. For example, test-prep expert Adam Ingersoll of the Compass Education Group told education bloggers that a student taking the new SAT would be "a guinea pig" until the test established a track record.

So, I found the similarity between the old and new test scores reassuring. But what I like even better is the direction in which testing for college preparedness seems to be moving. The old SAT - previously the Scholastic Aptitude Test - purported to measure a student's potential, with its infamous arcane vocabulary words, tricky math questions and points deducted for wrong answers.

The new version more closely reflects what kids have learned in school, like its competitor, the ACT - previously short for American College Testing - according to Jay Bacrania, chief executive of test-preparation company Signet Education.

The new SAT design would seem to reward effort as opposed to sheer innate ability, which has potentially sat on the bench lazily wasting its high school years. Who's to say it will get into the game in college?

The SAT had to change because it was losing ground to the ACT. The SAT had been popular on the East and West coasts, while the ACT was favored in the middle of the country. As of 2012, the ACT overtook the SAT in terms of the number of test-takers. The College Board hired David Coleman, a chief architect of the Common Core English standards, to rescue its SAT.

So, why not simply take the ACT instead?

I asked Bacrania. He said students who can work fast and understand charts and graphs will appreciate the ACT. The new SAT will appeal to test-takers with a higher reading level. There is more reading throughout the test, including in the math section.

Fair entrance exams are vital because our changing economy is forcing a higher percentage of people to attend college to earn a good living. There are more applicants, and the Common Application has made it easier for one student to apply to many colleges and universities. Inundated, many college admissions offices are relying heavily on test scores.

The stakes are high not just for individual students, but for our future as an educated nation with a shot at a healthy middle class. Parents and kids may "opt out" of standardized tests in grades three through eight, but that's not as uncomplicated an option as college nears.

The new watchword for parenting is resilience

First published in Newsday.

I still have the video: My daughter all fluffy Uggs and skinny legs in tights, alone onstage, rendering the breathy, moody version of Adele's "Someone Like You" that she had been singing for months in the car, the bedroom, the shower. Her version wasn't at all what the community theater group wanted for casting "Oliver!" It was looking for big, Broadway-style projection. Someone who could belt it out.

My 15-year-old must have recognized this as we sat listening to others' auditions. Later, as we drove home, she said she might like to work on the stage crew.

This is my story about letting my kid try and fail. We all have them. Because in this new world of skittish economies, unpredictable weather disasters and gun violence in previously benign places like holiday parties and classrooms, the new watchword for parents is resilience. It's an essential change from the days of self-esteem and everyone receives a trophy for participating. Encouragement has its place in a child's life. But in recent years, as we heard reports from college admissions officers and potential employers that parents were sitting in on interviews to coach their precious offspring, helicopter-style, we started to pull back. And that's a good thing.

Teacher and parent Jessica Lahey published a book in August, "The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed." She advises parents to allow schoolchildren to experience disappointment and frustration so they can grow into resilient and independent adults.

Her message has permeated parental conversation, and I often hear it paraphrased as, "Let children fail." But that's too glib. The point isn't to invite failure, but when failure makes its inevitable way to our doorstep, to acknowledge it without freaking out. I prefer to say, "Let them try," or another favorite, "Face your fears."

I was a shy kid, and the only way I developed confidence was to prove to myself that I could do something that immobilized me with terror. Going to Africa with the Peace Corps. Driving a motorcycle. Learning to ski. Getting married.

Resilience is crucial today because the potential for failure and frustration is greater. A Gallup poll this year found a significant decline in the percentage of Americans who consider themselves middle class: down to 51 percent from 61 percent between 2000 and 2008. A Harvard Institute of Politics poll of millennials, ages 18 to 29, asked about their aspirations. Nearly half said the American dream is dead for them.

Another recent poll, by the Public Religion Research Institute, found that 72 percent of respondents believe the Great Recession isn't over. Technically, it ended in June 2009.

Pundits say this gloomy mood is why GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump is doing so well in the polls. His rants about closing borders and excluding Muslims seem to promise security for people battered by decades of economic transformation.

"Resilience" is showing up in all sorts of contexts: in a discussion of Japan's economy and Spain's insurance market. In a White House round-table about the ability of businesses and communities to plan for severe and lengthy droughts. In weighing whether our intelligence infrastructure can adequately detect threats.

For most kids, childhood isn't a string of successes, but rather a pockmarked path of highs and lows. Our job as parents is to encourage them to try the new and frightening, not to warn them away from risk. Learning to bounce back from a defeat is a trait for a lifetime.

Veiling in Mideast, hyper-sexuality in West: Equally unappealing

Women in full burqas and niqabs poured into Tehran's streets last week to protest the modern dress of their urban sisters. City women usually nod to the conservative religious dress code by wearing knee-length coats and head kerchiefs in public. But earlier this month, several dared to bare their full heads and faces for a photograph. So, the protesters -- about 1,000 women and men -- appealed to Iran's morality police to better enforce the law, which obliges women to cover their hair and much of their bodies in loose clothing when outside, regardless of their religion.

As I studied the images of the mob of black-cloaked women, I thought we could use more public modesty ourselves. As I see it, the head covering and burqa cloak are symbols of subservience. They erase individuality, represent hostility to girls' education and independence, and press unique souls into one narrow feminine role.

And yet, I wonder whether the same couldn't be said about a culture that turns a Hannah Montana into a twerking, crotch-rubbing wrecking ball.

The anonymity and servility of the burqa have an effect similar to the oversexuality of women in Western society. Only, we don't see our problem as clearly because it's so familiar.

This isn't merely the complaint of a middle-aged woman whose body seems to shape-shift by the season -- although, many days I wouldn't mind relinquishing the work of figuring out which clothing still fits and looks presentable. In many traditional cultures, the dress -- be it an Amish apron, Victorian corset or Orthodox Jewish wig -- has served to defy age and defect as well as conform to patriarchal ideals.

No, I'm more concerned with what our daughters see.

I worry that we are pushing the other extreme in the West, and it's a line that keeps moving further out. Just like head-to-toe draping, allowing women to think their only value is sexual is a way to reinforce lower status.

Both the burqa and Western "sexualization," the term used by the American Psychological Association, disguise a girl's individuality. Magazines show women dressed revealingly -- or not at all -- with body postures or facial expressions that convey sexual readiness. These are the models of femininity presented to young girls, who devour them.

There are thongs for 7- to 10-year-olds, some imprinted with slogans such as "wink wink." One study found that as much as one-third of clothing available for preteen girls at 15 national stores had sexualized characteristics such as push-up bras, string bikinis or Daisy Duke short shorts.

By dressing older, girls receive attention for their appearance, and along with it, popularity and social success. Is there anything more important to a middle-schooler? A favorite app with this set, Hot or Not, lets kids rate each other on "hotness." But can they possibly understand the negative side of too-young, too-sexy?

A sexualized girl will likely be treated as less competent, and that may cause her to limit her ideas about herself, her education and her future. It's not a long journey from there to early sex, pregnancy, abortion or a starring role on "Teen Mom."

Just as a burqa makes a woman invisible, anorexics say they pursue Western ideal thinness to disappear.

The opposition to Western clothing in Tehran may be driven by a desire to control women, but some of that resistance may also be a well-founded fear of Lady Gaga and her imitators. As we look to judge Muslim countries, we would do well to mind our own debilitating excess.

First published in Newsday.

Courts say UPS within its rights to fire pregnant worker

Some pregnant women and new mothers find that today's workplaces have become more understanding environments. Still, others are being pushed out of jobs just when their new or growing families need their paychecks most. And, as far as the courts are concerned, it's all perfectly legal. Just ask Peggy Young, who had been driving for the United Parcel Service in suburban Maryland for about a decade when she got pregnant. Her manager asked for a doctor's note about physical limitations and received the usual advice that Young shouldn't lift more than 20 pounds. Young thought she could work around it - she rarely handled packages that heavy, and she figured she could turn to co-workers when needed.

But a senior UPS manager thought differently, Young claims in a discrimination complaint. He told her she was a liability and should leave the building, not returning until she was no longer pregnant. Just 12 weeks along, Young and her family were left without her paycheck and with inadequate health insurance.

That might sound like a clear-cut case of discrimination, but shockingly, courts across the country have ruled against women like Young who have sued based on federal pregnancy discrimination and disability laws. Young has lost in court twice. Her lawyer, Samuel Bagenstos, says he is optimistic that the U.S. Supreme Court will take her case in its next cycle.

If the court were to rule on Young vs. UPS, it would eliminate confusion about federal protections. "Federal law is unclear," said Joanna Diamond of the ACLU of Maryland to the Baltimore Sun. "Right now, pregnant workers can be treated worse than other employees."

That sends the wrong message to many employers, said Emily Martin, vice president and general counsel of the National Women's Law Center. "Unfortunately, a lot of employers don't seem to have gotten the message that there are legal protections for women in this situation," she said. "Some workplaces seem to have a culture of no, and you can leave if you don't like it."

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission logged 5,797 pregnancy discrimination claims nationwide in 2011, and that's probably a low number. For every woman with the know-how, time and resources to file with the EEOC, imagine how many more are too intimidated by employers or the government.

These multiple burdens are intolerable: Women not only bear the children, but must police their legal rights while being denied temporary leniency on the job. Martin's organization interviewed a restaurant worker who says she was required to ask permission to use the bathroom, drink water or have a snack, and denied early leave for a doctor's appointment - all of which were allegedly accommodated before she became pregnant.

Two groups are at higher risk for pregnancy discrimination, says The National Women's Law Center: The first is low-wage workers with little bargaining power who employers feel they can replace easily, in retail, food service, home health care and some nursing jobs.

The second is women working in traditionally "male" jobs, such as police and corrections officers, mail carriers and truck drivers. A request to accommodate a pregnancy is seen as further evidence that women don't belong in those jobs. Such attitudes unfairly put families at risk, at a time when women are more often breadwinners and are working later into their pregnancies.

The third-trimester belly draws curiosity and solicitude - but also apprehension from some employers. Offer her a seat; don't pull away the chair.

First published in Newsday.

Clinic "safety" concerns refuel abortion debate

When New Yorkers think about threats to reproductive rights, our imaginations drift to such benighted states as Louisiana, Texas and North Carolina, which have imposed onerous restrictions on abortion providers so that abortion care is all but unavailable. But the battle is coming home.

New York, it bears reminding, once led the nation on women's issues, hosting the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, and in 1970 passing one of the first laws legalizing abortion -- three years before the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

In a report issued earlier this month, a Manhattan organization with ties to the Vatican said the state health department is failing to inspect many abortion clinics. Some haven't been inspected for a decade. "We strongly believe that everyone should agree that when abortion is legal it should be safe," Greg Pfundstein wrote in an email. He's the president of the Chiaroscuro Foundation, which obtained the health department records through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

The foundation is affiliated with the Chiaroscuro Institute, whose president, Helen Alvaré, chairs the Catholic Women's Forum and is an adviser to the Pontifical Council of the Laity in Vatican City.

In 2012, the foundation donated more than $3 million to anti-abortion organizations around the country. But it is especially interested in New York, where it has launched a Fighting 41 campaign, referring to its calculation that "in New York City, 41 percent of all pregnancies except those which ended in miscarriage ended in abortion." The foundation has since revised the number down to 37 percent, which it says is nearly twice the national average.

Two days after the health department inspection numbers were made public, Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino called on state Health Commissioner Dr. Nirav Shah to resign. Two days after that, Shah quit.

On the job since 2011, Shah had been rumored to be unhappy at the health department because his room to make policy was cramped. Shah said he would be leaving to become senior vice president at the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in sunny Southern California, probably at least tripling his $136,000 government salary. It's doubtful he pulled that off in two days. And if he did, I'll be downloading his podcast on motivation.

Astorino, the Westchester County executive who opposes abortion, saw an opening against Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has been backing a 10-point plan called the Women's Equality Act that includes an expansion of abortion rights.

It's difficult to tell whether the 25 clinics licensed by the health department have risked women's health. But since January 2000, the department found numerous violations, including failure to ensure that the medical staff had proper credentials, reuse of one-time disposable suction tubes and failure to ensure that a nurse was present during and after abortions.

The department's rules call for an unannounced inspection at least every four years - less than the two-year circuit required for tanning salons, Chiaroscuro likes to point out. Department spokesman Bill Schwarz said the department didn't meet the four-year goal because of a heavy load: responsibility for 3,500 hospital systems, nursing homes, dialysis centers and more. However, he said, complaints or allegations of physician misconduct receive immediate response.

Wherever one stands on abortion, as of now, it's legal. These clinics must run cleanly and safely, especially if New York and other progressive states are serving as a safe zone for reproductive rights nationwide.

First published in Newsday.