Today is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, is the GOP’s anti-women, anti-abortion plan backfiring, sex education is needed throughout life, and a high school sets up HIV testing as a class project.

• Today is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “black men are diagnosed with HIV at eight times the rate for white men and black women get diagnosed with the illness 19 times the rate for white women.” (From the Baltimore Sun.)
• Are the GOP’s anti-woman, anti-abortion bills backfiring? Blogs from the Washington Post and Talking Points Memo disparage the bill that would let a pregnant women die in an emergency room rather than require “health care entities” to provide life-saving abortion care, while Rep. Chris Smith’s “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion” bill gets taken to task by writers in the Baltimore Sun, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, and the Houston Chronicle, and a writer for the Boston Globe slams both.
• Sex ed at a sex toy party? A woman who runs such a business takes the sex education portion of her job seriously, by providing training for her employees on creating a comfortable environment for people to ask questions. Older age folks also have questions. The author of “Older, Wiser, and Sexually Smarter” said he spent over three hours talking at a retirement community about sexuality. The reason? Older people are less likely to have had sex education when they were younger. But don’t expect today’s young people to be prepared when they enter the retirement home. Sexuality changes as people age, and continuing education is necessary to understand one’s health needs.
• The senior class at a private San Francisco high school is launching an HIV testing project – with the goal that all members of the class voluntarily get tested. Time asks, however, what if someone is found to be infected? Well, isn’t the point of getting tested to find out one’s status? And including HIV testing as a regular part of health care for sexually active people?