Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Congresswoman Nita Lowey have introduced the Resolution to Strengthen Family Planning Services for Women. From their letter asking for co-sponsors:
There's a quiet war going on in America – against the most basic rights of Americans to make their own personal decisions about family planning. Dozens of state and federal reproductive health programs have been cut or restricted in recent years. The so-called "Deficit Reduction Act of 2005" actually stripped away the promise to cover family planning for all Medicaid enrollees, further reducing access for those who need it. Low-income women, denied access to contraception, are having more unwanted pregnancies -- four times as many as those for higher income women. And almost half of all unwanted pregnancies end in abortions. It's time to find out if Congress is serious about reducing unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Our resolution will ask Congress to go on record for programs and policies that make it easier for women of all incomes to obtain contraceptives and use them correctly.
You can express your opinion on these issues by contacting your senator or representative here.
While the news about this may have gone without notice, the lack of women to be found in Saudi news won’t.
Yesterday, the King of Saudi Arabia “… asked newspaper editors to cease publishing pictures of women because such photos could 'lead men astray'.”
The state-owned media recently began including pictures of women as they relate to stories, but “always wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf.”
Taking women out of the picture, so to speak, seems a rather backwards step for a country that is attempting to address such fundamental women’s rights, like the right to vote and the right to an education without a man's permission.
Rather ironically, the country has delayed “plans to replace male sales assistants in lingerie shops.”
The current Administration has given us more than enough cause for concern that they consider science to be simply another opinion. From global warming to emergency contraception, the views of those who know best have been tossed aside to placate the warped and self-serving appetites of constituencies that wield power, money, and votes. In fact, in Washington these days, public health doesn’t just take a back seat to this reality—it is gagged, hog tied, and tossed in the trunk. Think about promoting marriage as a means of HIV prevention in places where marriage is actually a risk factor for acquiring HIV and you’ll understand the mindset. Don’t try to be reasoned and logical, just go with it….
Today we feature our “Tribute to Rep. Mark Souder” with a blog from recently ousted CDC panelist and SIECUS VP William Smith, and we note that the Congressman is holding a hearing on Mifeprex (RU-486), the prescribed abortion medicine. The medicine has been linked by opponents and in the media to the deaths of seven women, though recent information indicates that two bacteria have caused similar deaths in several women who have not taken the medicine.
The Washington Post quotes former FDA official Susan Wood, who will testify at the hearing, "The deaths are clearly serious and tragic, but the overall rate of adverse reactions is actually low," said Wood, who is to testify at today's hearing. She said that although serious side effects are often underreported with many drugs, strict reporting requirements required for RU-486 resulted in a full accounting.
A minor note to add to previousposts: Jackie Jadrnak’s blog for the Albuquerque Journal included an interesting bit of news today.You’ll recall that recently politicians overrode the scientific peer-review process and censored a panel on abstinence-only education at a conference focused on sexually transmitted infections.Supposedly, Centers for Disease Control spokesperson Mark Skinner told Jackie that in light of the “conflict”, the CDC would revisit its policy of using a peer-review process to accept papers and panelists for future conferences.
If scientists and doctors are no longer qualified to formulate discussions on science and medicine, who is?The politicians who censored this most recent panel?Could the CDC be serious?
Considering that the heat has been on CDC for bowing to political pressure and failing to be faithful to its medical mission, one would think they’d be affirming the peer-review process as the best way to avoid such conflict in the future.Apparently not.
Wisconsin’s decline in abortions should be good news. The Wisconsin State Journal points out, the reason is not because birth control is more accessible or the number of unintended pregnancies in the state is on the decline.As abortion numbers drop, the unintended pregnancy rate among under-educated minority women is climbing due to politically-restricted access to reproductive health services, sex education, and publicly-funded contraception.As the editors of the paper write, “When the most vulnerable groups young women and low-income women account for a lower number of unwanted pregnancies, then it will be cause for a true celebration.”
As demonstrated in Wisconsin, restrictive laws against abortion don’t stop unintended pregnancies, yet access to birth control and sex education can.
Once again, the far right has gotten it all wrong. Lifesite.net writes about a letter from Ron Weddington to President Clinton in 1993, unearthed by Judicial Watch in a recent batch of papers made public at the Clinton Library. The letter has been dredged up as part of an effort to suggest that RU-486 was rushed to market by the Clinton Administration. Never mind the letter, nor Weddington, have any bearing on that issue.
The Weddington letter is reprehensible in its discussion of using abortion for "eliminating" the "barely educated, unhealthy and poor." But the Lifesite article is, at best, a stretch, even for people who are accustomed to stretching things pretty far. They take this one nutty letter, written by someone with an unfortunate link to a famous case (he was at one time married to Sarah Weddington, lawyer in Roe v. Wade), and try to make it into some manifesto for every person who believes in individual liberty, privacy and reproductive choice.
Mr. Weddington's letter and the far right activists have one thing in common: they both want to remove choice from the equation. Weddington would enforce reproductive health policies on women and families in the same way right wing activists would. Both are wrong.
Blogger Connecticut Bob reports that Joe Lieberman supports the approach of the Catholic hospitals when it comes to contraceptives for rape victims (as reported in The New Haven Register, by Gregory B. Hladky on 03/13/2006, via KissJoeGoodbye.Com).
Lieberman said he believes hospitals that refuse to give contraceptives to rape victims for "principled reasons" shouldn't be forced to do so. "In Connecticut, it shouldn't take more than a short ride to get to another hospital," he said.
Lieberman is losing NOW’s endorsement over the issue of conscience clauses that allow individual doctors, pharmacists and hospitals to refuse service if they do not believe contraception, or other services, are appropriate. It [img_assist|nid=159|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=98|height=100]may be a short drive in small Connecticut, but in the rest of the country Lieberman once wanted to be Vice President for, the drives can be many hours because of the reach of networks of Catholic hospitals providing service (or not) in some small communities. Ideology triumphs over common sense once again. Joe – remember – the goal here is to reduce unintended pregnancies.
The Washington Post has a don’t miss special report on Teens and Sex comparing attitudes in the U.S. with those of teens abroad, where healthy attitudes mean fewer unintended pregnancies, abortions, and STDs than in the U.S. They will also feature a live online chat Q & Asession with Dr. Robert Wm. Blum from Johns Hopkins Department of Population and Family Health Sciences, or if you can’t be online then, ask a question here now and read the transcript later. The Post doesn’t quite expose the whole story though …
