Despite the public outcry last week for our government to work together and make progress, the White House steered clear of governing from the middle and bipartisanship in a new staffing move. Today the White House named Eric Keroack, MD as the new government official overseeing Title X, the program that provides contraceptive and other reproductive health services in every state of the nation to those in need. He'll start work on Monday.
This Keroack has had a career dedicated to abstinence-only programs and is an ardent anti-choice Ob-Gyn. He serves on the Medical Advisory Council for the Abstinence Clearinghouse and is a member of the Federal Expert Panel commissioned to define the guidelines for most governmental funding of abstinence education in our public schools -- programs that have grown over recent years and have yet to be proven effective. He is the Medical Director of A Woman's Concern crisis pregnancy centers, an organization that posts only negative -- and in some cases incorrect -- information about abortion. Now, no Title X funds are used to provide abortion services. But is a man who misleads women in crisis pregnancies the kind of person who should be heading a program that is supposed to help people be informed about how they can decide if and when to have children?
The goal of achieving reproductive health equity for women around the world gained currency last week with the release of a World Health Organization-sponsored report citing unprotected sex as the second leading cause of disability and death in the developing world. What was refreshing for many of us in this field was the bold way in which the WHO called it like it is: "declining financial support, increased political interference and an overall reluctance to tackle threats to sexual and reproductive health" are threatening the very existence of strong family planning programs. That trend must end.
During a recent trip to Ethiopia, I heard time and time again just how difficult integration of family planning and HIV services is in light of funding cuts to family planning programs in many African countries. While U.S. support for HIV/AIDS is at an unprecedented level, our decades-long support for family planning is dangerously low and the repercussions for women, men, and their families are deadly. How much have we truly accomplished in a country where HIV infection is coming down if maternal and infant mortality rates are still high and on the rise?
Art Shostak, Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Drexel University.
Over 600,000 males annually find themselves in the waiting rooms of the nation's nearly 400 abortion clinics (about half of all abortion-seeking women are generally accompanied by a man, as the regulations require assistance on leaving after the procedure). I have been there, first in the late 1970s as a perspiring young single man accompanying my nervous lover, and ever since as an applied sociologist drawn to find out more about the guys I sat among for three hours (and thereby, more about myself).
After my own abortion involvement, I helped create the first-ever national survey of males in abortion clinic waiting rooms (an exploratory, rather than a random and scientific study) and co-authored the still only academic book on the subject - Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love (1984). In the 22 years since its publication - thanks to indispensable help from Claire Keyes, director of the Allegheny Reproductive Health Clinic in Pittsburgh, and an outstanding friend of waiting room men - I have conducted three more survey waves and I now have answers and longitudinal data from over 3,000 males in scores of clinics coast-to-coast.
Last Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases challenging the Federal Abortion Ban, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in 2003. More than anything else, the decision to schedule this argument, the day after a now monumental election day, serves as a chilling reminder of what's at stake for women's health and Americans' right to privacy now that the Court has been reconfigured by President Bush and his anti-choice colleagues in the Senate.
What the arguments made clear are two points that[img_assist|nid=1353|title=Special Series|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=89|height=100] everyone who has a wife, girlfriend, mother, or sister ought to care about: This ban reaches abortions as early as the 12th week in pregnancy: So early, in fact, that even the Bush administration concedes that the Court would need to rewrite the statute to find it constitutional. Further, and equally as notable: It contains no exception to protect a woman's health.
For over 30 years, in decision after decision since Roe v. Wade, the courts have made it clear that restrictions on abortion must contain protections for women's health, yet Congress deliberately chose not to include one when it enacted this law.
Bill O'Reilly doesn't scare me. I have been on his show a few times and know that his bark is a lot louder than his bite. He's a bully, in that classic playground sense - he's not nice, unless you play his game. That said, however, when his producer invited me to contribute to a segment about the then impending Supreme Court cases dealing with later-term abortions, and the medical records from two abortion providers in Kansas being turned over to that state's Attorney General after a two year escapade, I was apprehensive. The stakes seemed higher - my other appearances dealt with dating on college campuses and unwed mothers - and abortion is automatically a heated conversation; having that conversation on contested territory seemed pointless. I agreed because I felt I had a few things to offer: exposing the anonymity that was inherit in one's medical records would make patients vulnerable and putting restrictions on "later-term abortions" would jeopardize a woman's health because it would deny her medical expertise otherwise available to her - selling her a lap belt rather than a shoulder strap, with proof that the latter was safer. Plus, when it comes to the disproportionately conservative media, I felt I owed it to viewers to offer them some hope of another perspective.
Despite the appalling amount of funding still being poured into unproven, ineffective, homophobic, sex-negative "abstinence-only" programs, the struggle to ensure young people's access to complete and accurate health information has not been without its victories. Maine, California, and, most recently, New Jersey, have all said no to just-say-no sex ed, and in April 2006 the Chicago Public Schools voted without objection to make comprehensive sex ed mandatory for all public schools in the city, in response to an advocacy effort led by youth activists, with support from the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health. Their decision also came in response to some illuminating research conducted by the Illinois Campaign for Responsible Sex Education, to wit:
66% of Illinois classrooms are not providing students with a comprehensive approach to sex education
30% of those teaching sex education in Illinois are not trained to do so, and 30% of trained teachers feel that they had not received enough training.
92% of Illinois sex education teachers believe that students, whether or not they are sexually active, should receive accurate information on birth control and safe sex in school.
Dr. Joseph K. Ruminjo is the Senior Medical Associate with the Safe Motherhood program at EngenderHealth.
I am writing from the FIGO World Congress of Gynecology and Obstetrics in Kuala Lumpur, where the important issue of traumatic fistula is being addressed on this international stage. In recent years, the international health community has increased its focus on obstetric fistula. This tragic condition, usually the result of complicated childbirth, causes women to leak urine and/or feces, and often makes them social outcasts.
Unfortunately, traumatic fistula - an injury most often caused by sexual violence - has until now received little international attention, perhaps due to its taboo nature or the great shame that women feel as a result. Traumatic fistula appears to be especially common in countries experiencing conflict, although it can occur anywhere.
After undergoing what are often life-threatening attacks, survivors must endure the double stigma of having been raped and then smelling of urine or feces. Sufferers are also more susceptible to HIV and other infections and must wrestle with issues such as unintended pregnancy.
Marianne Mollmann is Advocacy Director for the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.
In French they have a saying: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." (It means something like: "The more things change, the more it's all the same.")
This is the feeling I have as I travel with Verónica Cruz - my Mexican colleague who helps rape victims get access to legal abortion - from New York over Washington D.C., Ottawa and Toronto to Chicago. Women everywhere - and in particular poor, uneducated, young, or non-white women - are ignored and abused. The justice and health service providers charged with helping them, instead insult and mistreat them.
Rewire editor Scott Swenson and associate editor Tyler LePard went to the Supreme Court on November 8 and talked with demonstrators from both sides about the late term abortion cases before the Court.
And think about adding your comments! What do you make of this video? The footage mostly shows comments from anti-choice protesters, including an extended interview with Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition. The ambiguity in these arguments is fascinating.
Reading through the transcripts of the oral arguments heard by the Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood on Wednesday, I couldn't shake the sneaking sensation of absurdity. Who knew Justice Kennedy was so knowledgeable about preeclampsia? As Scott rightfully points out, Wednesday's discourse left me wishing that the U.S. government were as intent on drawing a "bright line" between medical expertise and ideology-fueled congressional "findings" as it is on the one between abortion and infanticide.
Meanwhile, here in Nicaragua, where the National Assembly voted to ban therapeutic abortion (abortion to save a woman's life) on October 26, we're beginning to see what happens when politicians play doctor. Nicaraguan lame duck president Enrique Bolaños has yet to approve the ban on therapeutic abortion, but the medical community has already begun to panic - and, I'm sorry to report, women have already begun to die.
