Top 10 Things that Various Branches of the U.S. Government could have done with their Time this Week…

Instead of Wasting it on Another Ridiculous Attempt to Ban Gay Marriage.

In no particular order…

  1. Address the fact that 43 million Americans are without health insurance.
  2. Pass any of the following bills: the Responsible Education About Life Act, the Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act, The Unintended Pregnancy Prevention Act, the Best Help for Rape Victims Act, the Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage Act, and countless others.

Instead of Wasting it on Another Ridiculous Attempt to Ban Gay Marriage.

In no particular order…

  1. Address the fact that 43 million Americans are without health insurance.
  2. Pass any of the following bills: the Responsible Education About Life Act, the Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act, The Unintended Pregnancy Prevention Act, the Best Help for Rape Victims Act, the Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage Act, and countless others.
  3. Reinstating funding for UNFPA, the world’s largest multilateral provider of reproductive health services.
  4. Initiate a congressional inquiry into the content of federally funded “abstinence-only-until-marriage” programs, based on this report.
  5. Initiate a separate congressional inquiry into the inappropriate use of federal “abstinence-only-until-marriage” funds, based on this report.
  6. Ratify the Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the UN Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. The U.S. and Somalia are the only UN member states that haven’t ratified the CRC, and the U.S. is one of only 17 countries that haven’t ratified CEDAW.
  7. Find the time to approve emergency contraception for over-the-counter use, after over three years’ and countless unintended pregnancies’ worth of unjustified delays.
  8. Lift the Global Gag Rule, which stifles civil society and leads to the denial of reproductive health support and information for women worldwide.
  9. Eliminate the damaging and counterproductive prostitution provision from the President’s Emergency Plan for HIV/AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Bush’s 5-year, $15-billion dollar global HIV/AIDS initiative.
  10. BONUS: Issue an apology for the highly un-presidential language uttered at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg.