the field. please thank our debaters. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> in four weeks, the first of the presidential debates here watch and in age. >>, actress kathleen turner on women's health and reproductive rights. then a discussion about college students cheating. and then, another chance to see a debate on student athletes and higher education. >> on oakwood newsmakers" john larsen, chairman of the democratic crisicaucus.

he looks at paul ryan as the gop vice-presidential candidate. sunday 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> actress kathleen turner serves as the chairman of planned parenthood board of advocates point she spoke thursday about women's health issues and reproductive rights at the national press club. this is one hour. >> good afternoon and welcome to the national press club. my name is theresa werner and i am the 105th president of the national press club. we are the world's leading professional organization for journalists, committed to our profession's future through our programming and events such as this while fostering a free press worldwide. for more information about the national press club, please visit our website at

www.press.org. to donate, please visit press.org/institute. i would like to welcome our speaker and those of you attending today's events. our head table includes guests of our speaker and journalist for club members. if you hear applause in our audience, please note that members of the general public are attending. so it is not necessarily a lack of journalistic activity. i would like to welcome their c- span and public radio audiences. her luncheons are also featured on our weekly podcast from the national press club available on i tunes. you can also follow the action on twitter, using #npclunch. after our speech concludes, i will ask as many questions as time permits could now i would like to introduce our head table

guest and i ask each of you here to stand up as your name is announced. from your right, mark bueno. laura lee, editorial assistant at npr. marylou donahue, editor of artistically speaking with marylou donahue and art website. molly smith, arena stage artistic director appeared leery lipman, a senior editor at aarp bulletin and former national press club president. rachel weiss, daughter of our speaker and singer-songwriter. [laughter] allison fitzgerald, freelance journalist and chairwoman of the speaker's committee. i was -- i will skipper speaker for just a moment. marilyn, sr. business news editor at npr and members of the speaker's committee and organizer of today's event.

phyllis, i guess of our speaker, peggy ankle, a playwright and club is to remember, nancy julio aliaga, freelance journalist. [applause] harrod speaker today, kathleen turner, is an actress and a civic activist. she first came to prominence in the early 1980's when she starred as the femme foot-tall maddy playing opposite william hurt in the thriller "body heat." [applause] she went on to star in a wide range of popular films and plays, and even provided the voice for jessica rabbit, the acclaimed animated movie "who framed roger rabbit?" but even as her acting career was blossoming, turner maintains a deep interest in civic events. the daughter of a foreign

service officer, she lived as a girl in venezuela, canada, england and cuba. she graduated from the american school in london and later from the university of maryland, baltimore county. she has been a decades-long member for people of the american way and a longtime supporter of amnesty international. she not only thinks globally, but acts locally through city meals with whom she volunteers as a meal delivered in new york city where she lives. [applause] turner serves as the chair of the planned parenthood federation of american board of advocates and has testified before congress on reproductive rights, which is her topic here today. besides acting and doing political work, turner is doing one thing -- helping to keep the spirit of molly ivins alive. she was a newspaper columnist whose passion for politics made a religion.

turner beens. that is because when former texas gov. ann richards was undergoing cancer treatment in manhattan, she happened to move into turner's apartment building. one day, ivins was visiting with richards and the ran into turner. they invited her out for an evening of laughter, paul stories and giving turner a unique appreciation of -- tall stories and giving turner a ins if appreciation of ivan' you have not already seen the play, the national press club journalism institute has tickets available for a special performance on september 13 where miss turner will meet the group after the performance. please welcome kathleen turner. [applause]

>> it is an honor and pleasure to be back at the national press club here in the last time i was here, i was speaking for child health. now someone that they gave me quite a compliment by putting out that no one asked a single question about my films. i have spent a good amount of time in washington, d.c. as an advocate for the arts. and if the chair of the board of advocates for planned parenthood, as a board member of people for the american way, and i am extremely happy to be here and i love performing molly ivins and the arena stage. i will confess that come at one point, i came close to spending a lot more time here than i anticipated, say, 15 or 20

years. i came to washington with joseph papp, the late founder of the new york public here. we were here to lobby for continue funding for the in town -- for the endowment of the arts. we met senator strom thurmond. i said something that i deeply believe, that what we have left of the societies and civilizations that preceded us, more than any other aspect or the arts, the paintings, the literature, the music, the architecture. these are the legacy is left to us. now our own art is what we will leave to the future. what senator thurmond -- we were not on the same page. [laughter] he said, now, little lady -- which of course please me to know when -- now, little lady, i

have been around here a little longer than you have, wouldn't you say so? [laughter] you know, i have always liked blondes. well, i am here to tell you that this funding just ain't going to happen, honey, little lady. i swear, i had my arm cocked back. thank goodness joseph papp grab my wrist and pulled it down because i thought one more "the ady" and thurman was going to lose his teeth or his dentures or whatever the heck they are. [laughter] now, that story will tell you something about my approach to activism. a word which comes, by the way,

from the same route as an actor, which means also one who participates. i believe passionately in being being gauged as a citizen, about causes that i -- about being abouted as a citizen se causes that i believe in. one of the benefits of reaching the age that i have is that i have the experience and the legitimacy to speak in my own voice, to speak the truth as i see it, and not give a damn whether someone might get upset about what i have to say. i do not lend my name to groups to use on a list. i invest in the issues i care about and the organizations are respect and i give what time i can. when i am home in new york city,

i am a board member and volunteer for city meals on wheels. sometimes, i get to deliver to older people who can no longer get out, although many of them really don't know who i am, except that i am a person from sitting meals. and a couple of times, they have given me the complement of saying that i should consider acting because i have such a nice voice. [laughter] now one of the issues i care most deeply about is the health, safety, well-being and rights of women. i am shocked that in this year's election, women are facing the biggest threat to their freedoms that i have seen in my lifetime. consider family planning -- the center for disease control considers the availability for family planning, the ability for women to have greater control

over the timing and number of children they have to be one of the top health advantages of the 20th-century. numerous research papers have linked the introduction of the birth control pill with positive social and economic gains for women. from completing higher education to marry later to narrowing the pay gap. earlier this year, the national bureau of economic research found that earlier access to the pill was linked to higher hourly wages later in life. this is no trifling fact in a sagging economy. 40% of working wives are out- earning their husbands. so why, here in the 21st century, are so many people

trying to reduce women's access to family planning? it does seem as though we are going back in time. it simply does not make sense. didn't you journalists just feel some professional sympathy for andrea mitchell who tried to keep a straight face and go with an interview with conservative under who said that girls could afford contraceptive by putting in aspen between her knees? that was silly. but attacks on family planning is not a joke. hear, seven states restricted or barred any family-planning funds from going to planned parenthood or any other health care provider that also provides abortions. when i was visiting the planned parenthood affiliate in los

angeles, it happened to be a day when they were providing abortions. now the doctor in charge of the clinic whispered to me, as we toured, that, of course, friday's was the day that they offered vasectomies. i had to ask her if they ever encountered people outside the clinic trying to stop men from entering. [laughter] it gives you something to think about. [applause] one in five women in america use or have used planned parenthood services, much to the benefit of men also appeared but all of the country, conservative politicians try to outdo each other in calling for the destruction of planned parenthood. do they really have no concern for the millions of women who rely on planned parenthood for basic health care and, yes,

contraception is a basic health care. it is essential to the health of women and the well-being of their families. if a woman cannot control her reproductive choices, she cannot control her life. every single republican in the house of representatives has voted to amend -- to amend title 10 family planning funding. every single one. these a the same people who keep talking about saving taxpayers money. of getting to the guttmacher institute, family planning services helps women avoid 1,940,000 unintended pregnancies each year, which would result in 860,000 and intended births and 810,000 abortions. every dollar saved taxpayers

$3.74 in medicaid costs, eliminating the family planning program would cost taxpayers billions of dollars in increased health care. and then we have the so-called personhood bill. this would give full legal rights to raise zygote at the moment that sperm meets egg. i have always wondered how do they know? [laughter] the personhood movement not only proposes to redefine pregnancy as occurring at the moment of fertilization, even though half of fertilized eggs do not result in sustainable pregnancy, but also wants a zygote weeks away from a potential pink + sun on a stick do we recognize as a

complete human being with rights. this would criminalize most of the common forms of contraception. not to mention the usual fertilization treatment and stem cell research as well as complicates the legality of medical intervention in the event of a life-threatening pregnancy. what i should tell you is that this personhood law was even too extreme for the voters of mississippi. the voters of mississippi absolutely rejected it. but mitt romney has said he is for creating legal protections in the constitution if necessary from the moment of conception. either he doesn't really believe that and was saying what he needed to say to get the nomination or he does believe it, in which case, american

women and men in their lives have better understand what this means. we need to explain this to people because mr. romney most certainly will not. the future of family planning and a woman's ability to make decisions about her life and her family are now the only things -- are not the only things at stake for women in this election. access to health care is on the line. some states are saying that they will not participate in an expansion of medicaid under the affordable health care act. that would leave more women outside the safety net. of course, mr. romney has promised to get rid of this altogether. we are already seeing the effects in texas. last year, gov. terry slashed funding to women's health, resulting in 180,000 women losing access to preventative health care this year.

and he has effectively sabotaged the medicaid women's health program which provides preventive care, including cancer screenings to 130,000 low-income women each year. earlier this year, mr. romney said he would oppose the blunt amendment, which would allow any employer to restrict any employees' health coverage based on the employer's religious beliefs. that did not go over too well with the far right. so it took him about an hour to back away from that position and to say that he does not in fact support the amendment, which would endanger access to contraception for 20 million american women now dr. linda rosen stock, who is the dean of public health at ucla and chair

of the nonpartisans institute of medicine's committee on preventive services for women, says that if every employer could decide what services they thought their employees should get, if we all of a sudden open up our celt -- our health care system like that, we would wreak havoc. if one employer did not like vaccinations -- some of them don't -- we cannot have employers dictating health care for individuals. and there is domestic violence which affects one in four american women during their lifetime. according to the justice department, three women die every day as a result of domestic violence. in the past, the violence against women act was passed with strong bodice and support. but right now, if we -- the

reauthorization is being held up because of the republican house of representatives projects elements of that would protect native american women and lgbt victims of domestic violence. and how about fair pay? women make 77 cents to the dollar, relative to men. in 2009, congress passed and president obama signed the lill y ledbetter fair pay act. it is the name of a woman who was discriminated by her employer for more than two decades but could not get justice because of the supreme court's conservative majority came up with a creative new way to read laws against job discrimination. the lilly ledbetter ad provides struggle protection for women and some states are doing now the opposite, weakening women's

legal protections against discrimination. it was brought to my attention the other day that extraordinary money wielded by a few men behind the far right conservative movement is aimed perhaps not so much at electing romney and ryan, but in fact in the senate. who knows what would happen if that were in republican hands. so all right, why? why? when women are 51% of the work force, 57% of higher educational degrees, primary care givers at home, primary consumer force in the marketplace, why have we done so little to protect ourselves in this political arena? so little to demand equal

representation? [applause] i want you to imagine something with me. imagine, if there was to be one day, say, the monday after mother's day, and easily communicated now by our social media, when women choose to stay home, not to gather anywhere or under the aegis of any organization, but just stay home. to sit down for a day and gather our collective breaths. can you imagine what kind of made him this would mean? [laughter] from the juice in the morning to the commuter in the workplace, television, the national defence, the food industry, transportation, all the way through to that good night kiss -- none of it worked without the

women of america. we would surely show the country what an essential element we are. but perhaps more important, we might show ourselves. [applause] i do have hope that the next generation will be different. people for the american foundation -- the american way foundation has a young elected officials network and we have hundreds of progressive people who have made it into public office before the age of 35. this includes some exceptional young women who i know will be serving in congress before long. they are not willing to be complacent or compliant or complicity in leading ideologues

return -- determine their health and welfare or restrict their possibilities in life. and we need more women to follow their example. if not, to run for office themselves -- if not to run for office themselves, but then to actively take part in this election. i believe that women can be in 2012 with the youth was in 2008. i know that all of you might not make it to an arena stage, so i will give you a little piece of mali here -- of molly here. [laughter] once upon a time, we had a newspaper editor in waco named william brandt. he hated to things, hypocrisy and baptists. he said, the only trouble with our texas baptists is we do not hold them under water long enough. [laughter] [applause]

now, brandt left us when he was shot in the back by an irate baptist. lying on the ground died, he got his own gun and blew his head to kingdom come. that was one way to get out of town. but i need more than that. i need a trumpet call here. many people in the streets banging pots and pans. do not throw away our legacy at of cynicism or boredom or neglect. you have more political power than 99% of the people who have ever lived on this planet give you can vote. you can register others. you can make signs, march, all your life, no matter what else to do. you have another job. you are a citizen. politics today stinks'.

it is rotten. these are some bad, ugly and angry times and i am so freaked out. but cult -- but politics is not about left or right. it is about up and down, a few screwing the many. it is not too hard to figure how to fix this. stop letting big money by our elections. here is the score now. every calculating coming equivocating, triangulating, hair splitting son of a bitch in office today spends half his time whoring after special- interest money. if officials were elected by ordinary citizens again, they would have to dance with but box, the people -- they would have no one else to dance with but us, the people. that would give me hope. [applause]

i have hope that common in this election, women will be empowered and active for ourselves. thank you. [applause] >> last month, a court -- planned parenthood is asking the court to reconsider. you think the courts are becoming less friendly to reproductive rights? >> that is an easy answer. [laughter] yes, they are. unfortunately, one of the things that has not been driven quite as much as it should be in

this administration -- and i will say that i think president obama deserves every credit we can possibly give him -- [applause] in any case -- let me get to my notes here -- but we have not filled the court as actively as we could have in this last term with the result that so much of the representation now in the courts and the control of the courts is still in the hands of previous administrations. in texas, yes, what he refused to accept the medicaid in obamacare, thereby cutting funding to plants that provide not only abortion services but cancers keening -- cancer

screening, ftd, every contraception, every aspect of essential health care for women, what has resulted and what i have been told just in the last week is that women are now crossing over to mexico to try to get some of the health care that they cannot receive in their own country. >> planned parenthood action fund hosted a fund-raiser at the democratic convention, but the organization does not reveal their donors. should planned parenthood do more to reveal funding sources and if not, why not? >> that is an interesting thought. as we all know, it is no longer a requirement for any organization to reveal your donors or where the money comes from. obviously, if that were true, all of our politicians would be

in deep trouble -- i was going to say something else, but this is a nice group. [laughter] in my opinion, yes, i don't see why not. the only thing that would give me pause would be if people feared that their own reputation for standing in the community might be threatened by this knowledge, public knowledge. >> karen handel, a former pr vp at the susan g. koman foundation says that the charity was subjected to a vicious mugging by planned parenthood who she calls a bunch of schoolyard thugs. >> the woman who wrote that is the same woman who ran for governor of georgia, is she not? and she was the one who ran on

the platform of the funding planned parenthood and title 10. gee, do you think she has a point of view? she lost not only the election, but she lost her position. i was at the l.a. affiliate offices. i was there the day that the susan g. koman debacle hit and the phones were ringing off the hook. and what we heard over and over again was that what money they had that they were going to send to the koman foundation they would no sen to planned parenthood because they did not trust that the foundation would transfer the funds that they promised to planned parenthood. what actually happened much of the time, i think, across the country was that people cut out the middleman because they

simply did not trust them anymore. >> do you have any sense how reproductive rights are doing in the rest of the world? are women in developing countries getting more family planning help or not? >> i do have some knowledge of planned parenthood international. we have -- for example, i will bring up the one in kenya. we have a very thriving clinic there. i trust most of you know that most planned parenthood affiliates -- all planned parenthood's -- are essentially self supporting, even within our country. we do have our national planned parenthood association which all thete's and directs work of our affiliates, but we expect the bill is to be self supporting. the same is true -- we expect

our affiliates to be self supporting. the same is true across the sea. one of the time that came down here to washington was to lobby for funding for an umbrella organization for planned parenthood into a national -- planned parenthood international. the idea was that, as the group here in the united states -- the united way is allowed to deduct from paychecks, yes? in order to have their funding, we wanted to have the same kind of thing possible for this international overseas giving program, which encompassed about 10 very worthy groups. we were actually beaten down on that by the united way who did

not want anyone else to have such president, such a privilege, even though the funds -- such a precedent, such a privilege, even though the funds would not be competitive. it would not be going to anybody else in the country but overseas. women's health care is considered in many places a luxury and certainly far down on the list of the imperatives for that nation's funding. >> what should we take away from the virginia state legislators attend to require ultrasound for any women seeking abortions. [laughter] >> you know, it is a good thing my daughter is here.

i woke up this morning -- somebody had brought this up yesterday and i was so bloody angry i said, you know what i am tempted to say and she said, don't say that, mom. so i will follow my daughters advice. i think it is a deliberately humiliating abuse. i think that, if such a thing were comparable for men, it would be unheard of. i am so angry that i will stop right now. [laughter] [applause] she did some may. >> speaking of your daughter, in an essay in the aarp bulletin this spring, you talked about the process of transitioning as the parent of a young adult. he recounted when your mother said you that your choice of profession was only about

yourself and she later apologized. what are examples about yourself -- about your career that shows the actors can touch people's lives? >> my mother said that -- i have an older brother and -- i have an older sister and younger brother. my older sister and is a doctorate of sociology and city planning. i enter brother is a doctor of psychology. i have a doctor of literature. i in your brother is a doctorate in computer and government planning and works for the new zealand government. my mother does have -- my gut -- my mother does love to have a solid the same time and say, i meet myke tyou to children, dr. turner, dr. turner, dr. turner -- [laughter]

it is nice that that came about so well. that came about because she said that my siblings were all serving the community and the people in a way that i was not. my response was that, if i get the kind of work i intend to and the amount of access, you know, to the world, i will have more impact and i will change more .ives than they will pa now, that was a bit of a defensive remark from a 20-year- old kid, ok? [laughter] i was not putting them down. but i think there's a great deal, whether it is the choice of material that i may, whether women who fight, i have never done very well to

choose a victim -- never will. [laughter] i think that the body of work over the years speaks up. ok. [applause] >> a question here on any device on how to let children go. >> that is a tough one. never! never let them go! don't do it! [laughter] you got that from me. it is tough. it is so hard. you know, for 18 years, you know where they are everyday. you know what they are eating. [laughter] you know how much sleep they got and who their friends are. and then, overnight, you don't know who their friends are or if

they're sleeping or what they're eating. i wrote myself a big note and i had it on the refrigerator in my kitchen when rachel first went off to college and said "do not call her every day." [laughter] >> yes. [laughter] >> it is so hard. most of you know. i think would really finally comes around is, after they get through the college period and are starting their real lives, then you become compatriots and you can talk about how your work affects your lives and how that affects each other's lives. and that is really interesting. so it becomes another person in

your life rather than a child. but though, my stars and garters, if the phone rings at 3:00 a.m., you know that your first thought is is the child alright? i cannot imagine that will ever change. >> i start pocket dialing. >> yes, don't pocket dial me anymore. [laughter] >> are people in hollywood into to this election cycle? if not, wire they not interested in president obama? >> first of all, let me be clear that i am not in hollywood. i have always lived in new york city. i have never lived in los angeles longer than it took to complete a film or do a run of a play. the reason i do not live out there and have never chosen to is that, to me, it is a

completely separate and insular society. i like being part of the world. one of the reasons i live to new york is that it is the closest i can get to the rest of the world and still be in the united states. i don't understand these people whose major interests revolve only around themselves. so don't ask me that question because i cannot answer it. [laughter] >> how does our can your advocacy for planned parenthood speak to both liberals and conservatives? >> we have great common ground. i don't believe anyone who is pro-choice -- and i will say anti-choice, not the other term because that is crap. no one thinks of abortion as a method of birth control. we don't choose abortion lightly. the idea is to prevent unwanted

pregnancies. isnned parenthood's stand every child wanted. now where is the problem with these anti-choice people? don't they want the same thing? which is not to have unintended pregnancies, to not have to make that terrible, terrible decision and all that it implies. come together, man. work with us here. we can do this together. i know it. [applause] >> how much of the push to restrict women's reproductive rights do you believe is an attempt by men to exclude women from the executive jobs in the workplace? for example, eliminate the competition driven by economics and greed. >> i'd better preface this by

saying that i believe wholeheartedly that we, the american people, will ultimately always do the right thing. i believe it because of our hearts. i believe it because of our common sense. so saying that, you understand that i do believe that about us. over the years, i have become more and more convinced that men are frightened of women, of our increased ability, of our increasing power, of our increasing position, that they feel essentially threatened as a group. i doubt that you feel that way as individuals. but i think, yes, i think that we scare the hell of you guys. [laughter]