If abortion is criminalized, what should the punishment be for women who have one? Anna Quindlen examines abortion opponents' refusal to confront the logical endpoint of criminalization.
A crisis pregnancy center in St. Paul, Minn. announces plans to purchase a building next to a Planned Parenthood. Manipulation or calculated anti-choice strategy?
Not since the appointment of Dr. W. David Hager to the FDA's reproductive health drugs advisory committee have Americans been so abuzz about an anti-family planning zealot appointed by the Bush administration to a federal body responsible for providing family planning information and services. Just over two months into his tenure as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (where he administers $283 million annual budget of federal family planning grants), we are still uncovering evidence of "Doctor" Eric Keroack's staggering lack of credentials. The latest exhibit is "OXYTOCIN: Is thisNANO-PEPTIDE a chemical type of HUMAN ‘SUPER-GLUE'?" (emphasis most definitely NOT mine),the PowerPoint presentation that sealed his infamy in the eyes of self-respecting scientists, physicians, and non-crazy people everywhere.
Last week New Jersey became the fourth state to pull itself out of the federal scheme to distribute abstinence-only-until-marriage money. New Jersey, like Maine and California before it, decided that in addition to never having been proven effective as a broad strategy, the federal abstinence-only-until-marriage programs ran contrary to its own state's laws regarding sexuality education. If the state chose to accept the nearly $1 million of federal funds it was entitled to, it would not only have had to follow strict federal rules, it would also have had come up with a match of three state-raised dollars to every federal dollar. New Jersey's decision was therefore not just principled, but fiscally responsible as well.
While watching Match Point on DVD the other night, I was dismayed to encounter one of my least favorite movie cop-outs of all time: a conversation about abortion where the characters refuse to say the word abortion. Lame, lame, lame.
Dian Harrison is the President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate. This is the first of a series of posts about California's Parental Notification Ballot Inititiative.
October is "Let's Talk Month." It's a great opportunity to let the young people in your life know that you are there for them and ready to help, even when they are facing issues that can be tough to talk about, like sexual health.
Research has shown that teens that have good communication with their families are more likely to delay becoming sexually active and are also more likely to be safe if they do become active. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, "Teens who are close to their parents and feel supported by them are more likely to abstain from sex, wait until they are older to begin having sex, have fewer sexual partners, and use contraception more consistently."
Melinda Gates (yes, that Gates) writes in Newsweek about the big wrench in entrenched thinking about abstinence-only education: increasingly, women in the developing world are at greater risk contracting HIV within marriage than from any other source. The best solution? In her mind, microbicides. Behavior change would be great, but in the meantime, microbicides would save the lives of millions...
