I've been following the stem cell issue and first ever veto from President Bush in a couple of previous posts, because for social conservatives the issue is linked to abortion. But in the Senate debate, and at the veto ceremony, the issue moved even closer to reproductive health with the introduction of "snowflakes."
Snowflakes refers to frozen embryos, ten percent of which are adopted by infertile, largely white, legally heterosexual, mostly Christian parents, and the other 90% are discarded ... instead of being used for life saving research for diabetes, Parkinson's, spinal cord injury, alzheimers and the list could go on and on.
President Bush was literally adrift in a blizzard of snowflakes at his veto signing, surrounded by the blinding whiteness of parents and children who participated in this ..... amazing triumph of science.
Microbicides are one of the most promising technologies ever for preventing HIV/AIDS. They could do more to stop the virus -- especially for women -- than any other prevention tool besides a vaccine.
A briefing on the status of microbicide research was held in Washington, D.C. this week, entitled "Microbicide Reseach, A Promising Prevention Strategy for HIV/AIDS: Can It Save Women's Lives?" A videocast of the entire presentation is available from the Kaiser Network.
Your tax dollars are being used to spread those lies.
Ideological conservatives are endangering the lives of young people, especially women, by replacing provable public health data with their beliefs, and pretending they are facts.
In health care, the ideological quagmire surrounding conscience gets deeper with each forward step.Unprecedented changes in medicine are creating a crisis in conscience at many levels, both in terms of technological and scientific advances, and in terms of the ethical pressure placed on a system that is failing economically at every level.
Today's health care system makes a clear conscience a challenge for many, no matter what you believe.
So when it comes to conscience clauses, I have to ask, should this really be the issue that it has become?
The National Council of La Raza, the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy group in the United States, recently published what promises to be an important report for sexual and reproductive health in America.“Entre Parejas: An Exploration of Latino Perspectives on Family Planning and Contraception” takes a comprehensive look at issues of access and attitude toward family planning and contraception among Latino women and men.
Considering that half of Latino Americans are under age 30 – many in prime reproductive years – and that Latinos are rapidly becoming the largest ethnic minority in the United States, this report comes at a critical time to help develop better and more culturally sensitive sexual and reproductive health services and strategies aimed at Latinos.
Apparently the American-supported government of Afghanistan has begun the process of reinstituting its “Vice and Virtue Ministry.”Under the Taliban, this official government Ministry employed 32,000 people to enforce stringent religious rules that tilted heavily toward repressing women.Horror stories have been told about harassment and imprisonment faced by women for offenses including wearing socks that were too translucent, allowing their wrists to show in public, and homeschooling their daughters.
In this new manifestation, the identically-named ministry – a “symbol of the brutal regime” of the Taliban in the eyes of the Afghan people – will be focused on eliminating the vices of drugs, alcohol, and crime.President Hamid Karzai has tried to assure the public that it will not be a rebirth of the old program that so affected the lives of women, but we have to ask, why give it a rebirth at all?
There is a significant backlash brewing against the ill-conceived and dangerous "abstinence-only" policies of the Bush Administration, and the best news is that it is bubbling up from those most impacted, parents who are frightened for their children's health and well being.
An excellent new report from the Sexuality Information and Education Coalition of the United States (SIECUS) is out today, updating their annual stats on Abstinence-Only policies state-by-state. You can read thier press release here. Also, the New York Times reports on an effort stalled in that state to promote improved comprehensive sexuality education, and the Providence Journal opines about social conservatives and their Deadly Obsession with Virgnity.
There was an interesting piece in the Washington Post this Sunday about the recent increase in doctors, pharmacists, and other health workers who decline to provide the full range of care and information to their patients based on their political or religious beliefs. Funnily enough, women’s health issues seem to evoke a disproportionate number of these so-called crises of conscience. For example, check out the lead:
In Chicago, an ambulance driver refused to transport a patient for an abortion. In California, fertility specialists rebuffed a gay woman seeking artificial insemination. In Texas, a pharmacist turned away a rape victim seeking the morning-after pill.
Steve from The Carpetbagger Report took a look at the new report from the Minority Office of the House Committee for Government Reform exposing the misinformation distributed by federally-funded crisis pregnancy centers, and he does a good job pointing out that this is yet another case of the same old news from the Bush administration – bad science being used to support an ideological agenda.It might be one thing for them to believe differently than the next person about the issue of abortion, but to spread widely debunked claims with federal funds in the name of their agenda is plainly irresponsible.
One thing that should be emphasized in addition to what Steve wrote: these programs are being funded with money meant for abstinence-only education.Where is the connection here?
For years now, the HIV/AIDS advocacy community has been aware that the “abstinence-only” funding earmark in PEPFAR is hindering HIV prevention work on the ground.A few months ago, the GAO confirmed those concerns with an extensive report.Now, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have introduced legislation – the HIV Prevention for Youth Act – that would clarify the stipulations of the funding in order to help service providers succeed in their communities.
