Senior Women Web

In its first few days in session, Congress has used a backdoor tactic known as the Congressional Review Act to eviscerate a clean water protection that took years of scientific research and public engagement to create. The Stream Protection Rule was a common sense safeguard that provided the monitoring of streams near coal mining operations — many of which feed into drinking water sources — for pollutants such as lead, arsenic, selenium, and manganese. more »

Angela Thomas thought her breast cancer diagnosis and the double mastectomy that followed were the most traumatic things she would ever experience. When the 32-year-old actress sought fertility treatment so she could have a baby after the cancer care was finished, her insurance company refused to pay. Thomas didn't need chemotherapy, which can affect fertility. But her doctors told her she shouldn’t get pregnant for the next five years, while she was on a cancer-related medication, and that having a healthy baby could be harder in her late 30s.   more »

Sonya Zalubowski writes: We now have the largest immigration since the waves that brought my own family here back in the early 1900s. Talk now here and all over Europe roils about what to do about these huge movements of people. I found reassurance in thinking about my own family and how they lived and worked after coming here in the early 1900s. I share with you this little vignette I wrote in the voice of a ten-year-old in my memoir about growing up in the 1950s in Kenosha, Wisconisn, the grandchild of immigrants from Poland who through their hard work carved out their new lives in this country. more »

Experts say the growth in the number of never married individuals stems from a variety of factors, including the rising share of young adults across the nation — particularly in a number of cities, including Philadelphia — and the tendency of those young adults to marry later in life than their age group once did. According to the Census Bureau, the median age of individuals in first marriages nationally increased from 26.2 in 2005 to 28.7 in 2015, following a decades-long trend. In addition, census data show that more adults are living together and/or having children without getting married.  Although Philadelphia’s percentage of adults who never married stands out among the most populous cities, it is very much in keeping with those of other high-poverty cities. © The Pew Charitable Trusts The percentage of adults in… more »