This past Friday, World AIDS Day 2006, I took a moment to reflect on the impact AIDS has had on my own life. I was born a year after the "discovery" of HIV. I have never known a world without it. I have seen it go through all of the myths from something only gay people get, to something you could get through casual contact, to what we know today: that you get it through certain body fluids, like blood and semen. Although I learned about HIV/AIDS in school (before the times of abstinence-only), I didn't know what the disease meant for me.
The first time I realized the seriousness of HIV/AIDS was through Pedro Zamora by watching the 1994 season of the Real World on MTV. It was the first time I "knew" someone with HIV. Watching someone on a day to day basis live with HIV helped to squash my misconceptions about the disease.
Today the House of Representatives will vote on the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, sponsored by reproductive health advocates' good buddy - Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ). This is the act that would require women seeking abortions be offered anesthesia for fetuses of 20 weeks or more and told that there is substantial evidence of fetal pain at that stage. Rev. Haffner discusses this latest attempt to mandate bad information and Marcy Bloom examines the science and politics behind this issue. And that's exactly what's going on - politics.
This is just another example of abortion counseling requirements that are medically inaccurate. Fetal pain legislation is a common tactic used by abortion opponents to try to force women to continue their pregnancies. In fact, five states already include counseling materials on fetal pain, despite credible scientific evidence that fetal pain is unlikely before the third trimester. (And third trimester abortions are illegal - in fact, so called "late-term" abortions occur in the second trimester and "partial-birth" is not even a real medical term... but now we're getting off-topic.)
This bill puts politics in the doctor's office, without regard to sound science - so why isn't this bigger news?
Marcy Bloom does U.S. advocacy and capacity building for a Mexico-City based organization GIRE - El Grupo de Informacion en Reproduccion Elegida/The Information Group on Reproductive Choice.
Today, the lame duck House of Representatives will vote on a scientifically biased and deceptive bill that is yet one more attempt to drive women away from making the choice of abortion in an atmosphere of compassion and respect. Instead of real information and support, the inaccurately named "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act" forces doctors and health care providers to give women seeking an abortion at 20 weeks or more of pregnancy inflammatory and manipulative misinformation written by anti-choice legislators. The express intent of this last-ditch restrictive attempt by the current Congress is clearly to extend the concept of rights to the fetus, to frighten women, and to distort information that might truly be helpful in allowing women to make the best decisions possible when faced with an unplanned pregnancy.
The House of Representatives this week is scheduled to vote on a bill titled the "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act of 2006." Republicans are hurrying to have this bill considered before the new Congress takes over.
The bill requires that every woman in America who is having an abortion after 20 weeks receive a pamphlet that says that abortion causes pain to the fetus and that they have been offered fetal anesthesia.
The problem? Well according to a review article by the American Medical Association, "Evidence regarding the capacity for fetal pain is limited but indicates that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester," and there is "little or no evidence" of the effectiveness of fetal anesthesia and "limited or no data" on the safety of administering it.
This year, three large international bodies that have great influence on global reproductive health searched for new leaders. The selection processes for new heads of the United Nations, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and the World Health Organization have evolved in unique ways - often involving back-room politicking and intrigue - requiring our scrutiny on many levels.
The Christian Coalition has proven to me once again that their freaky fixation on women's bodies and what we do with them goes beyond simple morality-mania. It extends to a genuine fear of women's bodies and the power we have to do nothing less than destroy the world with them. Why else would they continue to fight against any attempts to re-adjust their focus away from reproductive rights and towards the truly scary issues of poverty, global warming and HIV/AIDS? Clearly, women's bodies are dangerous to these people.
So, is it any surprise that on Tuesday, November 28th The Christian Coalition voted to accept President-elect Reverend Joel C. Hunter's resignationbefore he started because he wanted to expand their core issues beyond the confines of an anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality agenda?
Today Rewire bids farewell to one person that each of us would happily describe as the most important part of our team. He is our new media wizard, an outstanding writer and thinker, brilliant teacher, good friend. Twenty years my junior, he and his generation are why I am so optimistic about the future of this country and the world. They are turning away from the politics of old and inventing something unlike anything we have seen, something they may not fully appreciate until much later in their own lives, perspective being what it is. Some of us have just enough perspective to glimpse it. The embrace of global diversity, interwoven acceptance of faith and science, not simple belief in true equality for all, but the real possibility of seeing it in their lifetimes as no one on the planet has ever before experienced it.
As you can tell, we're going to miss him and there simply are not enough superlatives to capture him.
Rewire would like to introduce Eesha Pandit as a regular weekly writer. Most recently, Eesha served as Associate Director of Programs at the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program (CLPP) which is a reproductive rights organization that trains, educates, and inspires new leaders, organizers, and supporters nationwide. Prior to joining CLPP, Eesha worked with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University and with Amnesty International USA's Women's Rights Program. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Chicago.
Last week, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard an appeal of a 2005 federal court ruling that mandated Union Pacific Railroad to cover contraceptives in its health insurance plan.
Planned Parenthood and two female employees of Union Pacific filed a lawsuit that would require the company to provide coverage for FDA-approved prescription contraceptives for female employees, as well as female family members of male employees covered by the company's health plan. Judge Pasco Bowman, who sits on the appeals court panel, says that if the ruling sticks, it could mandate ALL companies to cover birth control in their health-care plans. Let's hope.
November 25 is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and December 10 is International Human Rights Day. In 1991, the Center for Women's Global Leadership declared the 16 days between the two events "16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence." The campaign seeks to link violence against women - long seen as a "private matter" - to the public, global struggle for human rights.
A quick review of international news in the past month confirms what the world already knows - violence against women knows no borders, and despite progress made in the past few decades, there is still a "massive culture of neglect and denial" surrounding the issue. We know that violence against women takes many forms-from femicides in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, to hate crimes committed against women and girls in the United States, to street harassment in Egypt, to rape used as a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We know it's everywhere, but we also know that conflict, stress, and poverty make it worse.
Accountability, for you, for me, for us. That's the theme for World AIDS Day 2006 and there couldn't be a more appropriate time to spread a more important message. Twenty-five years into the HIV/AIDS pandemic, infection rates are at record levels and are still rising. We must hold ourselves accountable and we must take action.
The numbers are sobering, and worth repeating: Forty million adults and children are currently infected with HIV/AIDS around the world - that's the entire population of Spain. And in the last year alone, more than four million men, women, and children were infected, and three million died.
HIV/AIDS does not discriminate - that much we know. But it does destroy families, weaken communities, and affect economic growth and security. And right now, the rates of HIV infection are spiraling higher in certain populations, particularly women and youth, the most vulnerable among us. In countries such as Thailand or Uganda, where HIV/AIDS was thought to be on the decline, the epidemic is resurging. This is unacceptable, especially because we can prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
