Here's an international abortion item you won't read about in LifeSiteNews: after reflecting on it for five minutes, a range of Nicaraguan decision-makers from both the Church and the State have suddenly decided that criminalizing abortion to save a woman's life might not be such a great idea after all. Would that they had been captured by the spirit of reflection back in October, when they joined together in an unholy alliance to yank the 130-year-old therapeutic abortion provision from the Nicaraguan Penal Code in the space of a few weeks, thereby rendering the procedure illegal under any circumstances, including health- and life-threatening pregnancies.
We've had an overwhelming response to Andrea's post last Thursday exposing Eric Keroack's ridiculous assertions about oxytocin and premarital sex. (You remember him, don't you—the one in charge of the federal family planning program who believes birth control is "demeaning" to women?) Well, thanks to all of you who read Andrea's witty commentary or watched the slideshow, it has quickly become one of our most popular posts!
However, we realize that some people may not have wanted to wade through even one of Keroack's slides, let alone 68. So today we're giving you the trimmed version with Flickr notes. Check out our "Keroack Slideshow" photo set on Flickr (click on a slide picture then scroll over it with your mouse to see the notes). You can post comments under each picture to add your own commentary. Get creative—what do you have to say about this presentation?
Marcy Bloom does U.S. advocacy and capacity building for GIRE - El Grupo de Informacion en Reproduccion Elegida/The Information Group on Reproductive Choice.
As the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade was approaching last week, I was both intrigued and surprised by the extensive January 21st New York Times Magazine cover piece entitled "Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome?" To a certain extent, the article did attempt to cover both sides of the issue on whether or not this syndrome actually exists. However, the "star" and true centerpiece of the article is a 53-year-old woman named Rhonda Arias who describes herself as an "abortion recovery counselor." Her work began fifteen years ago when she had "what she describes as a revelation from God...she decided that her own pain and unhappiness were rooted in the abortion she had...when she was 19...it was like I'd done the worst thing I could possibly do...a piece of evil had entered me."
Those two words—I'm pregnant—are uttered by young women around the country millions of times over; the amount of teen terror as they try and muster up the courage to tell their parents is ocean-sized. And even if a young woman gets up the guts to talk to her parents; even if a young woman feels that her parents would understand, there are still mountains yet to climb. What are the options? How does one access those options? What if the young woman is pregnant as a result of a rape? What are the laws in her state around abortion? Adoption? What if she wants to keep the baby? Are the resources out there to help a teen care for her child?
The Abortion Conversation Project (ACP) has answers. In their new web site, MomDadImPregnant.com , teens and their parents will find "communication advice for family crisis" in the form of resources, referrals, guidance, help and mostly information presented in a loving and compassionate manner, devoid of the political statements or angry judgements that seem to permeate other resources for pregnant teens and parents.
Presidential candidate announcements in the U.S., like the sunrise, seem to come just about every day. The positioning of the consultants, advisors and chattering classes is proving as interesting as the announcements. Case in point, Former NARAL CEO Kate Michelman is interviewed today on Salon about her position as a Senior Advisor to John Edwards. Check out the interview here.
Attention to the lives of orphans and vulnerable children has increased with celebrity adoptions of African children by Madonna and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and the opening of an elite school for girls in South Africa by Oprah Whinfrey. For decades children (defined as children under the age of 18) have been targets for acts of charity by celebrities, focusing on their special needs: food, education, vaccinations, and health care. But rarely addressed, if at all, are the very real sexual and reproductive health needs of orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs).
In a perfect follow-up to my post from last week about the demographic dividend and population control policies, the Federal Minister for Population Welfare in Pakistan, Chaudhry Shahbaz Hussain, has said that national development is linked to the controlled population in the country.
In a response to the "country's high birth rate" the Minister Hussain wants to create awareness about family planning among the "uneducated segments of the society." That is all well and good—education about sexual health and family planning is certainly critical in many nations in South Asia—yet here again we see the burden for national development placed on the backs of poor people. All too often these people are poor women and policy aims to regulate their reproductive lives based on certain beliefs about their fertility, rather than to interrogate any other practices and policies affecting sustainable development.
Two million Americans are currently living inside prisons, and although less than 10 percent of them are women, that statistic belies the fact that women are the fastest growing prison population in the United States—since 1980, the number of incarcerated women has risen by almost 500 percent. The steady increase in women's imprisonment rates is just one aspect of our culture's obsession with incarceration (we currently hold the dubious title of world leader in locking up its own citizens), fueled by an aggressive for-profit prison industry and a disturbing reluctance to engage in an honest national conversation about poverty, mental illness, drugs, and systemic discrimination, among other things.
Thank you, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, for making a joke of abstinence-only programs. The show returned from its mid-season break on Monday, with two storylines relevant to reproductive health. The first dealt with Matt (Matthew Perry) and Harriet (Sarah Paulson). Her devout Christian character enters a date auction to raise money for teen abstinence programs. She does this to get back in the good graces of a conservative women's organization (that disinvited her to a previous event because she wasn't anti-gay enough), though Harriet admits that she has no problem with premarital sex.
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.
68. So today we're giving you the trimmed version with