Editor's Note: Today we welcome Masimba Biriwashi, a Zimbabwean writer and journalist, writing from Thailand. He has experience with Health & Development Networks and will be covering HIV/AIDS issues on the continents of Africa and Asia.
Male circumcision (removal of the foreskin of the male penis) is increasingly gaining currency as an alternative method to reduce HIV-infection. In sub-Saharan Africa, the worst affected region in the world, male circumcision (MC) could prevent six million new infections, researchers say.
Editor's Note: Today we welcome Rupert Walder, writing from the United Kingdom. He has experience with reproductive health, women's rights and HIV/AIDS prevention and will be covering these issues throughout Europe.
The Cyprus Government recently announced measures that might include paying couples who have three or more children as much as $45,000 in an attempt to reverse the country's declining population. Over the last decade, similar proposals for birth incentives have been made in other European countries—including Italy, which has one of the world's lowest fertility rates. Is this a progressive approach to a (very real) problem? Or is it population control back to haunt us in another guise.
Using membership dues paid in part by federal tax dollars, the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA) hired the Washington, DC, public relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, best known for the 2004 "Swift Boat Veterans" ads against John Kerry, to launch a public relations effort supporting the failed and unpopular abstinence only education policies.
Without a proven proactive program of their own to reduce STDs and unintended pregnancies, NAEA is likely to attack supporters of successful public health methods, like comprehensive sexuality education. While progressives are promotiong Prevention First and Responsible Education About Life, social conservatives once again will use fear and smear to distract voters, evidenced in the hiring of Creative Response Concepts (CRC), to exagerate the influence of the fewer than 1-in-5 voters who support failed abstinence education efforts.
In the third and final installment of my coverage of From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building a Movement for Reproductive Freedom, a conference hosted by the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program (CLPP), I had the opportunity to sit down with Shana Griffin. Shana works with INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and is the Interim Director of the Women's Health and Justice Initiative in New Orleans.
In May 2006, Colombia's Constitutional Court handed down a historic decision, voting 5-3 to decriminalize abortion in cases where a pregnant woman's life or health was in danger, in cases where the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest, and in cases of severe fetal malformation. The decision, which came in response to a case brought by Colombian lawyer Monica Roa, was a watershed for Colombia—one of the few countries in the world where abortion had been illegal under any circumstances up until then, despite the fact that between 350,000 and 400,000 Colombian women still sought clandestine abortions every year.
First, it grounded the decision in the norms established by a number of international and regional human rights instruments to which Colombia (among others) is accountable. And second, it placed women's human rights, with a particular emphasis on their sexual and reproductive rights, at the center of its justification for decriminalizing abortion. Which makes it, like, 80 times more progressive than Roe v. Wade, by the way. Women's Link Worldwide, the organization that supported Roa's case, has recently translated the most groundbreaking excerpts of the Court's 600-page decision into English, and posted the document on their website together with an excellent foreword by Rebecca J. Cook, a feminist and human rights scholar at the University of Toronto. Highlights follow.
Two major resignations from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in under a week! Wade Horn, considered the point man on abstinence education for the Bush Administration, resigned today as Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at HHS. (Abandon ship, anyone?)
This week, I break from regularly scheduled blogging to bring you some first-hand coverage from Massachusetts.
This weekend I left the bustle of Chicago to retreat into the lovely lair of western Mass. for the From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building a Movement for Reproductive Freedom, a conference hosted by the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program. I've just retuned from the conference having been challenged, energized, inspired and exhausted in the best ways possible.
Over 1000 activists came together to forge a path towards reproductive freedom by learning, strategizing and networking for reproductive rights and social justice. There were more than 60 speakers from organizations and communities all over the U.S. and around the world. The speakers addressed a broad range of social justice issues by relating them to reproductive rights and health. They spoke about issues of economic justice, immigrants rights, health care, racial justice, anti-war activism, youth liberation, LGBTQ rights, civil liberties and freedom from violence.
Last Friday, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published their long awaited congressionally mandated report evaluating the implementation of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). For weeks, advocates have been anticipating the findings of the report with little rumor of its outcomes. We were not disappointed. The 314 page report, PEPFAR Implementation: Progress and Promise, was well worth the $37.50 download fee. The IOM found:
The Committee has been unable to find evidence for the position that abstinence can stand alone or that 33 percent is the appropriate allocation for such activities even within integrated programs.
There is, however, little evidence to show that ABC when separated out into its components is as effective as the comprehensive approach.
