Naina Dhingra is the Director of International Policy at Advocates for Youth and serves on the Developed Country NGO Board Delegation of the Global Fund.
I remember the night of January 28, 2003 well. For days prior, there had been a flurry of emails speculating that President Bush might perhaps mention global AIDS and that he just might announce a major new U.S. government initiative to tackle the pandemic in his State of the Union. At the time, I was a college AIDS activist with the Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) at George Washington (GW) University and a member of the International Youth Leadership Council with Advocates for Youth. I lived and breathed the global AIDS movement. SGAC had formed just a few months earlier on the passion and commitments of a small group of students from Harvard, GW, University of Maryland, Yale, and several other universities. We were young, inspired, and believed that we could change the world.
The effects and politics of the population debate have been flaring up around the world as the stakes, like the distribution of global resources, get higher and higher. So, when we get the chance to demystify the political and economic lingo about demographic changes, I say we should jump at it.
The Population and Development Program at Hampshire College has recently published a paper by Anne Hendrixson, as part of their series DifferenTakes, that aims to shed some light on what seems at first glance to be a very complicated argument about demographic changes. The theory recently propounded in the IMF's September 2006 issue of Finance & Development is called the "demographic dividend."
Willful Ignorance is Courtney Martin's insightful analysis of the true consequences of abstinence-only zealotry (because abstinence-only "education", once and for all, is NOT education). Martin's hypothesis states, "If we want to change the toxic sexual culture on our nations' college campuses, we need to start looking at the sex education our high-schoolers receive." And it's got progressive bloggers buzzing. But is Martin's theory enough to explain away some of the more vicious offenses on college grounds?
Thirty-four years ago the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the right to an abortion. While this certainly was a milestone and victory for women in the United States, we also must understand how this decision impacts women from all backgrounds and communities.
The Latina community is incredibly diverse. Many of us are immigrants or our parents were immigrants, while others have been here for generations. We come from many different places: Caribbean Islands, Mexico and more recently from South and Central America. Our cultural diversity, varied immigration status and personal experiences in the United States all contribute to how a Latina will perceive her right to an abortion and her understanding of this right.
At first glance, the state of reproductive rights looks better on the 34th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade than it has in the past few years—last fall voters in South Dakota and California rejected anti-choice initiatives and the makeup of the new Congress is more favorable towards reproductive health. Yet despite these gains, Roe is far from safe and we must not take its protection for granted. From the U.S. Supreme Court to the state capitols, opponents of a woman's right to choose whether and when to have a child are continuing to introduce legislation that restricts that right throughout the country. Here's a roundup of recent abortion legislation news.
In honor of the 34th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade today, NARAL Pro-Choice America is sponsoring Blog for Choice Day. So go ahead and celebrate your personal right to freedom and privacy - and let us know why you are pro-choice. Please post comments below.
Sex and the Single-Minded by Stacy Schiff indicates that as much as things may be different at the eastern end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Bush Administration continues to placate extremists downtown.
Disappointing news from Chile: on Friday, the Constitutional Court voted 6-4 to shut down a program that made the morning-after pill available free of charge to all Chilean women over 14. The Court's ruling came in response to a petition sent by 32 right-wing legislators who claimed that the pill violates parents' right to educate their children and fetuses' right to life. Their proposed plan for addressing the fact that 14 in 100 Chilean adolescents are sexually active by the age of 14, and 130,000 unsafe, illegal abortions that take place every year? Oh, wait, that's right. They don't have one.
In her post yesterday, Andrea included a link to 34 Million Friends of UNFPA. Its founder, Jane Roberts, wrote a poem which was then set to music by Odetta. Check out this music video featuring beautiful women around the world and have a happy Friday.
Robert F. Kennedy once said, "Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not." I like this quote because it challenges those of us working in the reproductive health field to ask the vision question - - the question that begins with "why not?"
Why not a society where young people are valued rather than stereotyped, prized as assets rather than discounted as liabilities? Why not a society where sexuality is viewed as a normal, positive aspect of being human, of being alive, rather than as forbidden fruit to be locked away in a fortress of shame, fear, and denial? [img_assist|nid=2088|title=Watch the Video|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=144|height=93]Why not a society where public policy is based on science and research rather than politics and ideology? Why not a society where values, morality, and character are used to infuse sexuality with meaning - with its truly human dimension - rather than misused to deny young people information that could one day save their lives.
