Planned Parenthood Launches Know McCain Campaign … In addition to strongly endorsing Barack Obama yesterday Planned Parenthood launched its Know McCain campaign. The campaign is aimed at informing the "51 percent of women voters in battleground states have no idea what
John McCain’s positions are on women’s reproductive health issues."  John McCain has earned a 0% rating for his consistent votes against reproductive rights as opposed to Barack Obama’s 100% rating on reproductive rights.

India Unveils Public Sex Info Hotline … The Indian government has teamed up with private funders to pilot a public sexual health and family planning hotline: 

A team of executives and a doctor will answer questions about sexual
health concerns, breast-related problems, sexually transmitted
infections, contraception, pregnancy, infertility, abortions, menopause
and puberty and explain the functioning of the reproductive systems of
males and females in the context of queries.

…

The target audiences are from the small and medium towns in the
Hindi heartland states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya
Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

 

"These are the states where the rates of fertility, infant
mortality and maternal deaths are very high and awareness about sexual
health abysmally poor owing to a combination of socio-economic factors
and scant access to information," the fund’s executive director
Shailaja Chandra said.

 

British Study Aims to Improve Sex Ed for Deaf Students … A study by the University of Manchester’s Audiology and Deafness team is trying to pinpoint the cracks through which deaf students fall in Britain’s sex education program.  

Teaching SRE to deaf children brings additional challenges, as deaf
pupils don’t ‘overhear’ and may miss comments and discussions that
inform hearing children. In addition some deaf children have
a very literal understanding of words and may have difficulty
understanding the many terms in SRE that require subtle interpretation.
They may understand the textbook terms but not the euphemisms that also
arise in such discussions. It is important we address these
issues as children who do not get a good SRE are more vulnerable to
abuse because they may not recognise inappropriate behaviour or that
their boundaries are being crossed.

15 Year Old Student Educating Peers About Sex … The Los Angeles Times is running a great story about Andreina Cordova, a high school student in LA who has been a Planned Parenthood peer education since she was 13.  Definitely give the article a read as it is another great example of young students trying to fill in the gaps that bad federal sex education policy has created over the past 7 years in this country.

Lieberman Unlikely to Get VP Nod Due to RH Policy Stances … Despite sharing a close relationship with John McCain, not to mention hardline stances on Iraq, Iran and other foreign policy issues, Joe Lieberman is a long shot for a VP nod writes Hans Nichols. His pro-woman and pro-choice reproductive health votes will even further alienate the already shunned social conservatives in the GOP.  No doubt McCain will choose a staunchly anti-choice politician for the VP slot to try and shore up the voting bloc that has put every republican president in office since 1980. Perhaps, as Scott Swenson notes, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin?