In Tennessee, our legislators this session have promoted and pushed bills to intimidate women seeking abortions and terrorize their doctors, to enact restrictions on abortion providers in the name of “safety” that have nothing to do with women’s actual safety, to subject women and other welfare recipients to needless drug tests rooted in racism and classism, and to potentially violate the privacy and even make criminals of women who are victims of crime or who have miscarriages.

All over the country, it’s the same story. Instead of working to improve education, the economy, and other issues that could benefit the whole country, the mostly-Republican-led legislators have focused their agenda on enacting laws to strip rights from women, from voters, from workers.

This Saturday, protests are going on around the country to object to the part of that agenda that is focused primarily on the reproductive rights of cis women, in the Unite Women demonstrations taking place in many, many states around the country.

In Tennessee:
Saturday, April 28
Rally on the North Lawn at the Belvedere. Rally for Women’s Rights, HealthCare, and Equality. There will be Speakers, Music, and protesting! Come Join Us!
Keynote Speaker: Ms. Park Overall
There’s an event page on Facebook.

Other state events may also have Facebook pages, and events across the country can be found at UniteWomen.org

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

HB 3808, the so-called “Life Defense Act,” would have threatened the safety of women and abortion providers by releasing identifying information and potentially making them targets for anti-abortion extremists. The bill has since been amended and passed in the House, and is currently on the Senate Judiciary Committee calendar for the coming week, April 10. Tennessee folks, write your state Senators now.

The bill was amended by removing the requirements related to collecting and releasing information on the women getting abortions and their providers. However, it has the following, problematic provisions as passed:

(1) A physician may not perform an abortion unless the physician has
admitting privileges at a hospital licensed under title 68 that is located:
(A) In the county in which the abortion is performed; or
(B) In a county adjacent to the county in which the abortion is
performed

Admitting privileges bills have been introduced across the country as a means of restricting abortion access. As is often the case with bills intended to restrict abortion access, the typical claim is that it’s needed for women’s safety. The frequency of such complications and mortality with early abortions (the majority of them), is extremely low, and is much lower now that Roe is in effect and the procedure is legal. No compelling evidence is available that women in Tennessee are suffering medical harm because of the status of individual abortion providers and their hospital admitting status.

When a need for emergency hospital care arises, there are two ways to get admitted to get that care – 1) your provider has admitting privileges to a certain hospital and checks you in that way, and individually continues your care; 2) you go through the emergency department. Nothing about the potential complications of abortion requires the specific abortion provider to be the one to follow up, or to be able to admit you directly to a specific hospital.

Like many ob/gyn complications, it is normal practice for women to follow up via the closest emergency department – if you have an ectopic pregnancy, complication of a home birth, or other abnormal vaginal bleeding, you go to the emergency department, and they and their associated hospitals should either have the expertise to treat you, or the ability to stabilize you until they can transfer you to a more advanced hospital. In none of these cases is the expertise of a single, identified-in-advance provider necessary in order for a woman to receive appropriate medical care.

Additionally, other “ambulatory surgical centers” in Tennessee are not required to have their providers individually have admitting privileges. They have to have a “transfer agreement” in place with a hospital, meaning that the clinic has a general agreement in place with a local hospital that they may send patients there. This is different from requiring individual providers to have admitting privileges, in that it puts a plan in place for any transfers between the clinic and the hospital, without having to set arrangements for every possible provider.

It’s particularly notable that Tennessee abortion clinics are now being held to a higher standard than outpatient surgery facilities, because one recent approach to trying to restrict abortion has been to try to implement the standards for ambulatory surgical centers, that may not be appropriate or necessary for the type of care provided at abortion clinics. These are called TRAP laws (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers), and that HB 3808 meets the characteristics of a TRAP law is another tip-off that it’s about abortion restriction, not women’s health.

In some parts of the country, there are no providers so one from another state flies in on certain days to provide this legal medical service to women. It is very unusual for a hospital to grant admitting privileges to a provider who is based out-of-state. HB 3808, then, is partially meant to keep women in Tennessee from having access to an abortion provider who might come in from elsewhere if the state succeeds in reducing our access to this degree. An example of the effect is happening right now – in Mississippi, where only one clinic in the whole state provides abortion, a similar hospital admitting law may cause that clinic to shut down completely.

As Representative Gary Odom observed:

“I think it’s intended to do one thing and one thing only, and that is to place another requirement on a physician that makes it more difficult for a woman to seek out the services that they want that are legal in the state of Tennessee.”

It’s clear what this is about, and it’s not about women’s safety. As Representative Jeanne Richardson concluded:

We have made it painfully clear to the women and men in Tennessee who is in charge of women’s bodies and their health care decisions, and the decisions ultimately about their lives

Tip: it’s not the women themselves, according to the Tennessee state legislature.

See Also:
Tennesee House Passes Bill Requiring Admitting Privileges for Doctors Who Perform Abortions – Robin Marty at RH Reality Check.
Red State Round Up: Tennessee – at Trust Women
Thanks to both national sites for bringing attention to this bill.

Another update: I previously sent an open letter on the bill to all of the House Health and Human Resources Committee members and officers, including my own Representative, Mary Pruitt. I also sent it to my Senator, Douglas Henry, who could be expected to support the bill. I did not get a response from any of them, including my own representatives.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

Here’s the letter I’m sending to relevant politicians in Tennessee regarding a bill to collect very specific abortion data, with little consequence for those who disclose it illegally, and creating targets for violence out of women, their children and spouses, and providers, their families, coworkers, and other patients.

I am writing to express my opposition to HB 3808, the so-called “Life Defense Act,” which requires the collection and reporting of detailed data about women having abortions and their providers.

Data is already collected about the number of abortions provided in the state. It is reasonable to make that data available in aggregate, as the state already does. Reporting more specific data by the county level is much more likely to allow identification and targeting of specific women and their families, as Tennessee has many rural counties in which crossing the categories of race, education, age, and other demographics can get you close or exactly to a specific woman if you have an interest in terrorizing her. Such identification is a violation of privacy, and likely to incite harassment of women and their families.

Although the proposed law includes some provisions that are superficially intended to protect privacy, it also makes clear that the consequences of disclosing such data is simply a misdemeanor, a relatively mild consequence when we’re talking about people whose plans may include harassment, stalking, and violence. The barrier between collection and disclosure is thin, and the consequences for any leaker of the data are small. Regardless of the final form of the actual data reporting, though, the law will serve the purpose of intimidating women seeking a legal medical procedure with implied threats of these consequences.

Publishing the names of all providers is also likely to result in violent consequences. Just in case you think that people who provide abortions are bad, made a choice, and deserve whatever consequences they suffer – these are not “shunned at the church supper” consequences. These are “shot in the face at home” consequences.

Anti-abortion extremists are well-known to have threatened, stalked, kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered providers and have committed crimes against their homes and family members. They make online hit lists of providers to make it easier for anti-abortion terrorists to target, harass, and murder doctors throughout the country.

These expected violent consequences will not just affect abortion providers themselves – they will affect spouses, children, and other loved ones. The children of known providers have been barricaded into their homes, stalked at school, and subjected to other harassment and threats, and this bill endangers them, their friends, and their families. While supporters of bills like this often claim to be protecting “babies,” HB 3808 could in reality incite a threat against the born children of both women choosing abortion and their providers.

It would also not just affect the much-demonized providers at Planned Parenthood. When a woman experiences a pregnancy complication, in some cases a non-clinic provider will perform a necessary abortion out of compassion for and duty to the patient. This might occur in a hospital or private medical practice. These are providers who have not elected to life a life of wearing bullet-proof vests and constantly worrying about threats of violence. They are physicians who provide a legal service to a single woman in a time of need. Making their names potentially public will cause some of these providers, their spouses, their children, their everyday non-abortion patients, and their coworkers to be subjected to the same threats of and actual violence.

This is of course the point of this provision in the bill – to intimidate doctors into not providing needed medical care, and it is unacceptable. When a physician is deciding how to best provide care for a woman with a pregnancy complication, his or her first thought should never be, “If I provide needed and legal medical care, that my patient and I both agree is the best course of action, will I be putting myself and my family in danger because of the Tennessee state legislature?”

There are other problems with this bill. Because threats of violence have so limited the number of providers in the first place, many areas of the country only have providers who travel in to perform this legal medical service. The admitting privileges provision is not for a medical purpose, as facilities and providers capable of handling unexpected complications exist throughout the state. This provision is specifically designed to prevent such providers from offering legal abortions to under-served areas.

I urge you to reject HB 3808. Let’s be clear – the intent of this bill and bills like it has never been to collect better data about abortion. It has always been to intimidate women and providers making personal, legal choices with implied threats of privacy violation and violence. The Tennessee state legislature should not be in the business of harassing its citizens and making them targets for anti-abortion terrorists. Vote no on HB 3808.

I’ll be sending this letter to the members of the Health and Human Resources Committee, who are expected to consider it tomorrow (including bill sponsor Matthew Hill), as well as my own House reps. Find your TN legislator here.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Ethics, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

Here’s my note to the local Nashville, TN newspaper, The Tennessean, which decided not to run this week’s Doonesbury strips that focus on forced ultrasound for abortion. I’m sending a copy via email in addition to posting here.

I am writing to express my disappointment that you chose not to publish this week’s Doonesbury strips in the print edition of the paper. You explained that the Wednesday strip was not published due to “graphic wording,” but it is baffling as to what the supposedly offensively graphic word might have been. I can only assume it was “transvaginal,” but The Tennessean has previously permitted this word in at least three previous articles, including a recent one on papers electing not to carry the strip.

Tuesday’s installment, in which a woman is called a “slut,” was obviously not too provocative to carry in print, yet the proper name of a medical procedure being forced upon women seeking abortion apparently offended your sensibilities. It’s okay to call women seeking abortion disparaging names, but it’s not okay to mention their vaginas?

Doonesbury is meant to be provocative, political, and satirical, something you surely realize in carrying the strip. Many papers place it in the opinion section for this very reason. There is an argument to be made, I think, about not carrying Thursday’s strip in the comics sections, given the concluding line about rape. Many people believe that rape should never be a punchline. There is legitimate debate to be had about whether its use in this instance is inappropriately meant to be “funny” or is simply a reflection many women’s expressed perspective – that being forced to have an object inserted in one’s vagina for non-medical purposes to serve the agendas of anti-abortion politicians is indeed a form of rape or assault.

The Tennessean did not choose to run the strip and allow it to foster debate about this question or questions of abortion, politics, or the ethics of forced ultrasound. Instead, The Tennessean decided it was important to protect print readers from being exposed to medical terminology and a real rights issue facing women who choose to terminate pregnancies. When our local newspaper is deciding that its readers can’t handle the subject of a national debate, concerning itself more perhaps with advertisers sharing space with even slightly provocative content, and determining that “slut” is okay but “transvaginal” is not, it simply reinforces the perception that real Tennesseans are not being served by the newspaper sharing their name.

You can see the strips over at Slate, write your paper with thanks if they’re carrying it or complaints if they’re not. The Center for Reproductive Rights, which has been fighting the Texas forced ultrasound law, is asking people to sign a letter of thanks to papers that are carrying the strip, and to let them know about papers that aren’t.

I also have a post on the Doonesbury controversy over at the Our Bodies Ourselves blog.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Ethics, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

and if you don’t like abortion
don’t have an abortion!
and teach your children
how they can avoid them
but don’t treat all women
like they are your children
compassion has many faces, many names
and if men can kill
and be decorated instead of blamed
then a woman called upon to mother
can choose to refrain

This is from the newest album, ¿Which Side Are You On?. The full lyrics of this song have some women-as-mothers stuff that the Little Folksinger has been on about since she had her own child, and which I’m not particularly fond of. Regardless, I think this is still her best album in years.

The post title is a nod to “Feel Good Friday,” for which some people post music.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances

First, some recent posts at Our Bodies Our Blog:

Pink Ribbons, Inc. – A Closer Look at Breast Cancer Marketing – I’m really looking forward to seeing this film, especially after all the recent Komen/Planned Parenthood controversy. It’s going to show in several U.S. cities at various events this spring. Pink Ribbons, Inc. people, if you’re reading this, you totally want to hook me up with the showing at the Nashville Film Festival.

Christine also covered Komen and Planned Parenthood and stupid, sexist “barstool sports,” and Judy has something on Planned Parenthood and the Catholic bishops.

Finally, Good Vibrations selected Our Bodies Ourselves as one organization it’s supporting during February and March. If you buy something from their website or in stores, select OBOS during checkout to make a donation that goes entirely to the organization. Go on and buy yourself a Valentine’s present. Or, hey, buy me something, since I don’t otherwise have a tip jar.

Now, onto to other things:

Judy Stone has a great guest post at the Scientific American blogs, Molecules to Medicine: Plan B: The Tradition of Politics at the FDA. Stone ultimately looks at Kathleen Sebelius’s decision to override the FDA’s approval of over-the-counter access to Plan B, but also provides a review of past political decisions and appointees at the FDA, and U.S. government interference in sexual health care and information generally.

Soraya L. Chemaly has something at The Feminist Wire in response to that ridiculous recent piece in the New York Times about girls and “hysteria.”

Flanagan closes with the particularly ironic advice that what girls need is “protection from the most corrosive cultural forces that seek to exploit her when she is least able to resist.”…What girls really need is not to be characterized as inherently mad or inclined to the irrational.

Nick Baumann at Mother Jones writes about The Republican War on Contraception:

…in the past six months, social conservatives have widened their offensive, and their new target is clear: Not satisfied with making it harder to obtain legal abortions, they want to limit access to birth control, too.

I’m pretty sure a lot of women have seen this coming for a while.

I don’t agree with absolutely everything in Nicholas Kristoff’s NY Times piece, “Beyond Pelvic Politics,” but let me just highlight this:

A 2009 study looked at sexually active American women of modest means, ages 18 to 34, whose economic circumstances had deteriorated. Three-quarters said that they could not afford a baby then. Yet 30 percent had put off a gynecological or family-planning visit to save money. More horrifying, of those using the pill, one-quarter said that they economized by not taking it every day.

and this:

If we have to choose between bishops’ sensibilities and women’s health, our national priority must be the female half of our population.

Rachel Maddow has a piece on the birth control nonsense as well.

Nationally, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan has introduced a national forced ultrasound bill, which I think I’ll start calling a “forced vaginal insertion of an object” bill. We should require all members of Congress to participate in a simulation display of a transvaginal ultrasound, although I’d be kind of afraid of their reactions.

A national forced 24-hour waiting period for abortion has also been introduced, this one by South Carolina’s Jeff Duncan.

Neither of these things is based on medical evidence; both are purely for the purpose of making it more difficult for women to obtain safe, legal, timely abortions. Dr. Jen Gunter talks about what happens to women exposed to inexpert abortion attempts when safe and legal isn’t an option.

And in Tennessee, Planned Parenthood has sued the state, which previously awarded the organization grants for STI and HIV prevention, but in December yanked the funding without providing an explanation, or an alternative route for those services. One of the affected Memphis sites was reportedly the only place around to get HIV testing done after daytime work hours. Pressed on the issue, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam refused to provide any real explanation of the decision, saying, “The commissioner felt like there were other people who could provide that service just as well.” There was no explanation about why, if that were the case, those others didn’t get the grant during the competitive process last year, and as far as I know, none of those other “just as well” services have actually been awarded the funding.

Mary at Hoyden About Town has a cool post on soliciting research participants, with a lot of good points on what should be communicated to potential study participants and what researchers owe them for their participation.

And completely unrelated to anything, I cannot stop looking at these underwater dogs.

[note: I modified the title after I realized a possible mis-reading of it]

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Cancer, Contraception, Drugs, Government, HIV/AIDS, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education

Recently, TN state rep Richard Floyd declared he would “stomp” any transgender woman who happened to be around him and his family. This past week, he complained mightily about the reaction he’s getting, and declared,

I never said anything about violence. I said what I would do personally if my family was involved, and I meant every single word of it….Do I regret saying it? No, I don’t regret saying it. Would I do it? Yes I would.

No, you don’t get to threaten to “stomp” a segment of your constituency just for being around, then claim you “never said anything about violence.” You did, on the record, to a reporter. And then you immediately reiterated that you would in fact attempt violence and don’t regret saying so.

I’m also extremely bothered by the silence from other politicians on this matter. I sent a message to leadership folks in *both* parties encouraging them to denounce his statements, which read in part:

It should not be controversial in the least that politicians should expect rebuke when threatening physical violence against our citizens simply for existing. When an elected state Representative declares publicly his plans for violently attacking certain types of Tennessee residents because of his own discomfort with how they are, that should be an obvious target for disapproval, from either side of the aisle… all people deserve to be free of threats of violence from the people who are expected to represent them.

Here’s who hasn’t bothered to respond:

• House Speaker Beth Harwell, Republican
• TN Republican Party Chair Chris Devaney
• TN Democratic Party Chair Chip Forrester
• House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh
• House Republican Leader Gerald McCormick

That would be everybody who received the message in the first place.

I see that someone has also put a petition online asking that Floyd resign.

Meanwhile, state senator and misogynist-in-chief Stacey Campfield (R) claimed that it’s “virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex” (among other misinformation he spread while speaking on the topic).

Let me be clear: this is absolutely, demonstrably false. In our own state, heterosexual transmission is thought to account for nearly a quarter of AIDS cases, and if you look at women living with HIV/AIDS specifically, it accounts for 65% of cases among white women and 74% of cases among black women. While men having sex with men have been disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, transmission via men and women having sex is a significant and growing category, one that puts women and especially non-white at risk when we ignore it. Or, as B notes, “Oh, I See. ‘You’ Doesn’t Include Women.”

Campfield has been called on it by local public health and AIDS education folks – people who know HIV/AIDS and know the stats.

In the face of being corrected by experts, Campfield responded: “I didn’t say I was a gay/AIDS historian. I didn’t say I know the facts backwards and forwards I just said what I’ve heard and the facts back me up.”

Well, actually the facts don’t back him up. That’s the whole problem.

Send ‘em a letter:
Campfield’s contact info
Floyd’s contact info

In other state issues, I’ve been mulling over how to prevent a bill barring telemedicine for abortion from taking effect early, and then how to overturn the already-passed law doing this. See my Blog for Choice Day post for background and why I think this law is a bad idea. Are any of you readers part of medical, nursing, reproductive health, telemedicine, informatics, or other health or technology organizations (either in Tennessee or nationally) that might sign on to a letter framing it as inappropriately stifling technological innovations in healthcare delivery and inappropriately interfering with clinical practice?

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Government, HIV/AIDS, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, News Round-Ups

The theme for this year’s Blog for Choice Day is: “What will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?”

I have to confess, I’m extremely bad about helping people get elected. I will write blog posts and letters to elected officials all day long, but have not historically been very active in either donating to candidates/causes or taking actions like canvassing on their behalf. This year, taking in-person action might be even more difficult due to living car-free, but I’m alarmed enough by the apparent uptick in anti-choice legislative activity that I think I need to do better and more.

I’m also going to need to focus some of that attention more specifically at the local level. It seems somewhat easier to get the word out about national threats, and there’s a bigger pool of people who can raise objections. So many serious effects on choice happen at the state level, though. This is where waiting periods, forced ultrasounds, forced delivery of medically inaccurate warnings, and other unnecessary restrictions happen.

In my own state of Tennessee, a bills is in a subcommittee to require any abortions past “viability” to occur in a hospital. There’s also a bill to move up the effective date of a law that would forbid the use of telemedicine for abortion. An obvious question is “how do you do surgery without your hands on a patient?” The answer is that this is already being researched and done for other surgeries.

But what we’re really talking about for abortion right now is something more like having a videoconference, with a patient who is getting a medication abortion, and using that technology to talk to them about their wishes and consent, how to properly take the medicine, and any potential complications to watch out for. It’s something a doctor or nurse practitioner can do from any connected location, potentially having other nurses, medical students, etc. do any needed vital sign checking and form-signing in person. It’s something that’s considered very safe.

It’s something that could really help women in rural/remote locations, and across states with few abortion providers, by increasing the geographic range a provider might be able to reach. In some states, a single provider has been known to fly in from out of state one day a week; telemedicine could seriously relieve this logistical problem and relieve provider shortages for the cases in which medication abortion is appropriate and desired.

And the state legislature is the place to prevent it, if you don’t want providers using new technologies to provide women with increased access to legal medical care.

The bill to forbid telemedicine for abortion in Tennessee passed last year. I pay attention to these things, and I’m pretty sure I missed it. And now they’re trying to make it take effect this year instead of next year.

They’re making it illegal for your physician, if he or she thinks it’s appropriate, to advise you on taking a pill via a videoconference. Where you can talk to and see one another, and your provider can use her/his judgment about your care while talking with you. And it’s only abortion that is being targeted; nobody is trying to forbid providers from delivering other legal care in this way.

So, Tennessee, can we start here? Let’s make sure the bill to move up this interference doesn’t pass, and then we can see what we can do about getting rid of the original, and supporting in real ways politicians who stand against such nonsense.

See my Blog for Choice day posts going back to 2007, and NARAL’s list of participating blogs for this year.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

HHS Affirms Contraception as Covered Preventive Service – I’m glad I didn’t have to take back this post, although the Plan B bullshit was probably more responsible than a successful appeal to reason.

Participate in the Virtual March for Trust Women Week – Think reproductive rights are an important human right? Sign on to the virtual march to send a pro-choice message. More than 9,000 people already have.

Webinar: New Report on Breast Cancer and the Environment – Breast Cancer Action is holding a couple of webinars next week to talk about the IOM’s recent report on breast cancer and the environment.

See also Ayesha and Judy’s Can We Choose to Move Forward on Reproductive Justice? And How? and get details from Christine on how you can help a midwife get to Haiti to help with obstetric emergency preparedness – an interview with the midwife is provided.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Contraception, Government

Over the last couple of weeks, many women’s health, feminist, and reproductive rights-oriented organizations have been running campaigns and articles urging people to contact the White House to preserve the no-cost coverage of birth control as part of the preventive services covered under the Affordable Care Act.

I understand why they’re worried.

The Roman Catholic Bishops met with the President, and one of them came away saying, “I left there feeling a bit more at peace about this issue than when I entered.” The big worry, and what people are supposedly hearing, is that Obama might back off on birth control coverage requirements, and that’s why the Bishops feel better now.

Obviously this would be a bad thing and would generally piss me off.

Now let’s take a few minutes for optimism:

The CDC released its 2008 abortion surveillance data. These reports are full of info on who has abortions at how many weeks of pregnancy and after how many previous live births, but I want to highlight this rather long Public Health Implications section of the Discussion. I’ve removed reference numbers, added some breaks for ease of reading, and bolded some key points (see the original):

According to the most recent national estimates, nearly one fifth of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion. Multiple social, cultural, economic, and political factors are known to influence the incidence of abortion: the availability of abortion providers; the adoption of state regulations, such as mandatory waiting periods and parental involvement laws; increasing acceptance of nonmarital childbearing; shifts in the racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. population; and changes in the economy and the resulting impact on fertility preferences and access to health-care services, including contraception.

However, in spite of these multiple influences, efforts to reduce the incidence of abortion need to focus on preventing unintended pregnancy. Indeed, nearly all abortions are preceded by an unintended pregnancy, with most recent estimates suggesting that intended pregnancies account for <5% of all abortions, including those which presumably are performed for maternal medical indications and fetal abnormalities. Providing women with the knowledge and resources necessary to make decisions about their sexual behavior and use of contraception can help them avoid unintended pregnancies. However, efforts to reduce unintended pregnancy in the United States have been challenging. Findings from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), the primary national source of data on unintended pregnancy in the United States, suggest that unintended pregnancy decreased during 1982–1995 in conjunction with an increase in contraceptive use among women at risk for unintended pregnancy. However, data from the 2002 and 2006–2008 NSFGs suggest that no additional improvements have occurred: contraceptive use among women at risk for unintended pregnancy has decreased; only small gains have been made in the use of the most effective forms of reversible contraception, such as intrauterine devices and hormonal implants; and no additional progress has been made toward reducing unintended pregnancy.

As part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the U.S. Department Health and Human Services charged the Institute of Medicine with identifying which preventive services are important to women’s health and should be covered at no cost to patients. Following the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation, the full range of FDA-approved contraception methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for women with reproductive capacity will be covered without cost sharing in new health plans beginning in August 2012. The removal of cost as one barrier to correct and consistent contraceptive use might contribute to a reduction in the number of unintended pregnancies and consequently the number of abortions that are performed in the United States.

What if this is the message the Bishops got, and they feel better not because the birth control coverage is going away, but because they were sold on an argument that the provision would reduce a stalled out abortion rate?

I have huge, huge problems with my argument here. Most of the folks currently advocating to keep no-cost contraception coverage are about a million times more politically connected than I am. They’re more likely to have inside information, and also more able to mobilize on delivering voters in response to either a birth control win or loss. I’ve read some stuff on the internet and thought about it, and decided not to be completely cynical in this one case. To be even more explicit: I’m in a position of knowing less than people I’m disagreeing with.

Also, the CDC report is attributed to a bunch of MPHs, people who in my experience tend to be very practical about public health in a way that gets read as “liberal.” They have their own opinions, and may have expressed them in this surveillance report with absolutely no input from the Administration. The 2007 abortion surveillance data was the subject to political scrutiny even before it was released, so there must be an awareness that this simple government report has become politicized and more widely known, but that doesn’t suggest there was any high-level coordination on it’s content.

And sure, the Bishops are against birth control. They’re against abortion, too, but also against birth control. A “let’s increase use of birth control” argument is a hard one to win with them, even though most women, including Catholics, do use birth control at some point. They’ve specifically campaigned against the birth control coverage provision.

But.

I think it’s just *possible* that what made that Bishop come away feeling more at peace is a clear argument that increasing access to contraception has the effect of reducing abortions. I could see the case being made that, “Look, abortion is no longer declining. Contraception use is. These are women who would use birth control anyway, they don’t share your perspective, and this way we get them birth control instead of abortions.” And the Bishops were reasonable enough understand and agree to some mutually beneficial politically expedient course of action once the “we’re keeping birth control” announcement is made.

Whew.

Okay, my supplies of optimism and willingness to make a possibly absurd argument have been exhausted for about the next two weeks. Later.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Contraception, Government

Some things that caught my attention this week, with bonus “this week in misogyny” content.

I don’t know how many people noticed, and I assume it won’t go anywhere, but Michele Bachmann introduced a forced ultrasound for abortion bill in the House. It’s been sent to the Subcommittee on Health.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has launched a new website, Bedsider, about birth control and says it’s intended for women ages 18-29 years. I haven’t looked through it thoroughly, but it includes comparisons of different methods of preventing pregnancy by factors like cost, immediacy, STI prevention, ease of getting and using the method, ease of hiding it from a partner, and degree of mistake-proofed-ness. It is focused through a pregnancy prevention lens, so the site is focused on penis-in-vagina sex, not other forms of sex or prevention. I haven’t reviewed the site thoroughly, but let me know what you think. Some of the language seems a little, uh, teen magazine-y for my tastes and for a target audience that is actually made up of adults, but perhaps it’s my advanced age talking there (early 30s).

Over at OBOS, between C and I we’ve covered Mississippi, personhood, and reproductive justice, and new research on in vitro fertilization and ovarian cancer risks.

The CDC released the final data on 2009 births [PDF] in the United States. It’s full of data on the number of births, birth rates by things about women, like their age and marital status, and rates of cesarean (another all-time high), low birth weight, preterm, and out of hospital births. [hat tip to Jill]

Jaclyn Friedman, who I met briefly at the Our Bodies Ourselves 40th, has a new book out, What You Really, Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety. I haven’t read it yet, but there’s a Twitter chat happening at 9pm Eastern tonight using the hashtag #shamefreesex.

B points out the ridiculousness of news coverage taking the “vodka-soaked tampon” story seriously. Notably, liquid-soaked tampons expand and are not exactly convenient for insertion. Aside from which, alcohol+mucous membranes would probably hurt. And the likelihood of it being widespread for teenage boys to be inserting said vodka-soaked tampons rectally is just absurdly small. And then there was the follow-up to B’s post, which takes a quick downward spiral in the comments to “if we take your picture without permission but link to you, you should be glad of the traffic”-land.

The FDA released a new statement on Makena, a drug intended to help prevent preterm birth. It has been the subject of controversy because versions of the same ingredient in Makena has been available for pretty cheap through compound pharmacies for a long time. FDA’s approval of Makena with it’s extremely high price, have generated strong reactions and concerns about access. The FDA’s new statement basically says, “The company that makes Makena says those vastly cheaper compound pharmacy products vary in their strength and purity, so we’re going to look into it.”

The agency also approved the first therapy derived from cord blood cells.

Jill at Feministe had a note left in her suitcase by the TSA when she checked what she’s referring to as a “personal item.” A note that read, “get your freak on girl.” Jill follows up that the TSA agent who left that note has been suspended, and Jill responds to the lack of response to the real problem here: “…I get no satisfaction in hearing that someone may be in danger of losing their job over this. I would much prefer a look at why ‘security’ has been used to justify so many intrusions on our civil liberties, rather than fire a person who made a mistake.”

This week, the CDC is running a campaign focused on the smart and appropriate use of antibiotics. Go to the website to learn more about why you don’t always need antibiotics and why it’s bad for all of us to use too many.

Transgender Day of Remembrance is coming up on November 20th.

The Abortioneers ask when to speak up, when to keep your mouth shut, and how to know the difference.

The fact that women prisoners often get shackled during labor is discussed at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, in an interview with a fiction writer who covered this practice in a book.

Sometime this week, I stumbled across #occupyhealthcare and the accompanying website. The contributors seem to be mostly healthcare providers and adjacents, focused on increasing access to healthcare.

The government has issued a “Leading Health Indicators App Challenge,” soliciting developers to create apps that promote the use of key measures of health (“indicators”) to improve the health of communities.

The Census released new data with the headline, “Half of First-Time Mothers Receive Paid Leave, Census Bureau Reports.” Before you get too excited, “paid” leave included not just official paid maternity leave, but using up your own existing balance of paid sick and/or vacation leave, if you’re fortunate enough to have that. They also noted that women who got some type of paid leave were *more* likely to return to work within 3-5 months, making me wonder if they are often returning to work when they exhaust their reserves of paid sick or other time. Then there’s this limitation: “Given that FMLA and other leave policies in the United States do not allow for leave for more than 12 weeks, it is not entirely surprising that new mothers return to work relatively soon.”

ePatientDave writes about how impossible to understand an “explanation of benefits” document can be and how we’re prevented from stopping errors and reducing costs because of this lack of transparency.

This week in misogyny:
Rick Perry’s “departments I would close” gaffe has received most of the news coverage, but in the same GOP candidate debate, Herman Cain referred to Representative/former Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “Princess Nancy.” He or his team reiterated this remark on Twitter, before offering the fauxpology that he “probably shouldn’t have” made the remark, but “was trying to make a point.” A point that required a gendered diminishing and dismissal of a powerful woman politician, apparently. I guess he thought he had built up too much goodwill with women over the course of his sexual harassment scandal.

Using the #mencallmethings hashtag (which Sady Doyle apparently started), feminist women bloggers took to Twitter to talk about some of the vile things that have been said to them in the course of their writing, including rape and death threats. I contributed a rape threat I received through the comments here because I had the temerity to dislike a rape joke on tv. Just another humorless feminist who deserved threats of violence because of it, right? @metalmujer and others pointed out that the hashtag itself would be better focused on misogyny rather than “men.” Yes, most of the excessively hateful and threatening remarks I’ve been subjected to have been made by men, but the problem is not something about all men, it’s the misogyny these particular men have carried out and a culture that encourages them to do so.

I also keep seeing this image on Facebook intended at a critique of dubstep and its fans. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other about the actual quality of dubstep or its fans over time, but I do know that when the main critique is presented as “it was good when it was a bunch of men standing around, now it sucks and is by/for little girls,” that’s misogyny.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Contraception, Drugs, Events & Observances, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education, Web Resources

For the clinical folks among you, I wanted to pass along that the new, 40th anniversary edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves is available at a 70% discount to clinics and other groups providing health counseling services.

As detailed on the clinic discounts page, “The discounted price is currently $7.80 per copy plus plus applicable tax and shipping. Orders must be for 12 or more copies.”

There are some additional details online about how you can pay, and what documentation is needed to get the clinic or non-profit discount. There are also discounts on some of the other books, including OBOS: Pregnancy and Birth and OBOS: Menopause.

Note: I contributed to some pieces of the book and am a blogger for OBOS but do not receive any direct payment from sales of the book.

Filed under: Abortion, Adolescent Health, Body Image & Eating Disorders, Contraception, HIV/AIDS, HPV, Menstruation, Mental Health, Pregnancy, Sex & Sex Education, Vaginas & Vulvas, Women’s Health

Update: the ballot initiative was defeated, 58% to 42%. Kudos and thanks to everyone who worked in Mississippi to defeat this measure.

Today and tonight, Mississippi voters will go to the polls to determine whether a fertilized egg is a “person.” Initiative 26 would:

…amend the Mississippi Constitution to define the word “person” or “persons”, as those terms are used in Article III of the state constitution, to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.

There are any number of problems with this approach, among them:

• It would make abortion illegal. Women will have abortions anyway, so either women or doctors or both could become criminals, women will have to go out of state even more than they already do (in a state with one abortion provider) – disproportionately affecting poor women, and/or women will have unsafe abortions in these kinds of conditions.

• Emergency contraception, some IUDs, and even some “regular” oral contraceptives could become illegal if they prevent implantation of fertilized eggs. Most oral contraceptives *don’t* work mainly by preventing implantation, but they *hypothetically* could.
• Potentially subjecting women who have miscarriages (also extremely common) to additional scrutiny, perhaps even including criminal investigation. I worry that women with citizenship issues or other legal concerns, or simply women who belong to groups routinely targeted for oppression, will forgo medical care during miscarriage for fear of such investigation. This is not far-fetched.

This is all aside from the fact that a *huge* percentage of fertilized eggs never implant, and there is no way to actually detect a fertilized egg. The medical definition of pregnancy involved an implanted, fertilized egg because a) implantation is *required* to establish and continue a pregnancy, and there are no detectable bodily changes (because there’s no pregnancy…) until implantation.

Similar efforts in Colorado and by a former HHS leader have already failed. Honestly, even if it passes, I don’t think it will hold – lawsuits are pretty much guaranteed, and the Center for Reproductive Rights has pledged to take it to court.

Loretta Ross points out that the initiative is likely to punish women of color much more so than white women, in Race, Class, and Rights in Mississippi: How A Reproductive Justice Campaign Can Save the Pill and Save the Vote:

Women of color will be the first and majority of the casualties of the Personhood Initiative if women are investigated for miscarriages. Mississippi already has the highest rate of infant mortality in the country. If the Voter ID Initiative passes, it is highly likely that the voters most affected will be voters of color. We know this in our guts. Now we have to believe it with our higher reasoning brains.

Loretta also asks, “To be heard, do black women have to bring Nina Simone back to sing her famous song about Mississippi?” I have to say, that’s the song that’s been running through my head ever since I heard about the initiative.

Further reading:
What Happens If the Mississippi Personhood Amendment Passes? – The Atlantic
A ton of coverage at RH Reality Check
What the Mississippi Personhood Amendment Can Teach Us About Organizing Around Reproductive Rights and Justice – Christine at Our Bodies Our Blog
Why a Fertilized Egg is Not a “Baby” – A Gardener’s Analogy – yours truly

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Contraception, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Pregnancy

First up, links on the Memphis/family planning situation I wrote about last week. As a brief reminder, Title X family planning funds have been assigned to a Christian religious organization that has expressed an intent to deny services, information, and referrals to women based on the organization’s religious beliefs.

LeftWingCracker points out that three Democrats voted for this nonsense. Also: CCHC is going to need more than prayers; CCHC is talking out of both sides of their mouth.

Aunt B, in Early November is in Two Weeks, looks at Christ Community *complaining* because patients are being sent to them and they don’t have the capacity to deal with them yet.

At the DowntownMemphisBlog, Planned Parenthood Responds to the CCHS Debacle – includes suggestions for action.

Wendi Thomas at the Commercial Appeal: “Poor patients seeking family planning care have lost access to free services at the familiar agency that had been federally funded to provide them for more than 35 years, and the new, evangelical one isn’t yet able to help.”

On to the rest…

Look, I think we all said profoundly obnoxious, ill-informed things as young people. Some of us continue to say profoundly obnoxious, ill-informed things well into adulthood. If you’re a nursing student, though, you probably ought to think twice about expressing extreme animosity towards women and their healthcare needs in a public forum. Ema at the Well-Timed Period covers the case of Ben Cochrane, ECU nursing student who wrote that women getting birth control through the campus student health clinic should “Go read your Redbook in the lobby of a specialist as you wait to get your lady-bits inspected. Leave Student Health for those of us that are in actual need of medical attention.” See Ema’s two posts.

Birthing Beautiful Ideas makes a list of What Pregnant Women Want, and Deserve.” I’d add a lot more race, justice, and privilege-related things to it.

On that note, Miriam Zoila Pérez writes about work to stop women prisoners from being shackled during labor.

HealthNewsReviews critiques recent coverage of a mammography/false positives study.

A baby health thing: the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that parents should not use any type of crib bumper pad: “Bumper pads should not be used in cribs. There is no evidence that bumper pads prevent injuries, and there is a potential risk of suffocation, strangulation or entrapment”

Wal-Mart is reverting back to providing no and shitty health insurance coverage for its workers. Hey, if people can’t find other jobs, might as well screw ‘em, right Wal-Mart?

Gender Focus lays out some reasons Why Abortion Care Needs to be Fully Funded.

From Latoya Peterson at Racialicious: The Tits Have It: Sexism, Character Design, and the Role of Women in Created Worlds – “And there it was, the truth about character design that so many players know but most designers wouldn’t usually articulate: most of the egregiously sexist character designs are based on fuckability, rather than playability.”

Renee at Womanist Musings points to a calendar in which men are posed in ways that women are stereotypically posed as objects for viewing. It’s easy to see how awkward, unnatural and ridiculous these poses are when you see men performing them. She also has a great post on a controversial, bullshit poster from one of the SlutWalk events.

It’s about time: “The subcommittee recommends a broader definition, to include anal and oral rape, as well as rapes involving male victims.” – FBI may expand its definition of rape.

On the abysmal state of LGBT curricula in medical schools: “The median reported total time dedicated to LGBT topics in all four years of medical school was five hours. 76 percent of programs self-rated their curriculum as “fair” or worse.”

This week’s edition title: After going to Boston for Our Bodies Ourselves’s 40th anniversary shindig, I caught a cold/respiratory infection that has left me feeling awful for the past two weeks. I actually took sick time from work, which I’m lucky to have but almost never use. I skipped my drawing class, wouldn’t drink coffee, and sat around complaining about how I couldn’t hear out of my right ear. Things are mostly back to normal now.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Body Image & Eating Disorders, Contraception, Government, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy

In Memphis, TN, Title X family planning funds have been awarded to Christ Community Health Services, a religious health provider which has indicated that it may refuse to provide information, referrals, and some kinds of health care to Shelby County’s women.

Title X funds have historically gone to Planned Parenthood in Memphis; the move to give the funds to an anti-choice organization is part of nationwide efforts to defund Planned Parenthood because PP provides abortions. Existing laws already clearly prohibit Title X or other federal funds from being used for abortion services – the money goes to provide necessary services like contraception and cancer screenings.

Reports indicate that Christ Community has no intention of providing referrals to women who choose to have abortions, whether that is for personal or medical reasons. From a report by a Memphis newspaper (emphasis added):

[Christ Community CEO] Waller initially said the clinic refers patients to abortion providers if they request it, but he and Dr. Rick Donlon, a founding physician at the clinic, later called the newspaper to change that statement.

“We really try to provide women with other options and make sure they have those possibilities. And if they at the end still want a pregnancy termination, we know they know where to go,” Donlon said.

“They know where to go.” That doesn’t exactly sound like a professional provider of medical services to me. The clinic leaders obviously made a point of contacting the newspaper to make sure it was clear that they would *not* provide referrals, demonstrating a clear intent to put religious belief ahead of the medical care of women who may consider or require abortions.

Christ Community has also said it will not provide emergency contraception, only doing so through a third party. No details are available about how this will happen in practice, and how much additional time, travel and cost women may be subjected to in order to access this legal, previously available, and non-abortifacent medical care. This change clearly creates an additional burden for women seeking emergency contraception, and the women of Memphis currently have no guarantees that the third party provision will happen in a timely way, while timely administration of emergency contraception drugs is absolutely crucial for them to work.

I have not seen this discussed elsewhere, but it is also not readily apparent to me whether Christ Community would or could ever decide that any other forms of birth control are off-limits because of purely theoretical possibilities of preventing fertilized egg implantation. If we’re already providing the Title X money to a provider who can pick and choose services because of religious beliefs, I don’t see that refusing other forms of contraception is completely out of the question.

The organization also is reportedly working to install “crisis pregnancy centers” at its locations; these centers are well known for providing false and misleading information about abortion and exist to convince women not to choose abortion. Title X rules require “nondirective” counseling about abortion, and Planned Parenthood and other reputable providers who do provide abortions (using other, non-federal money) have processes and counselors in place to check whether women are certain of their decisions without pushing them in either direction.

Given the interest in installing deliberately biased in-house counseling and the stated intention to refuse to refer women out to other providers for abortion, it seems unlikely that Christ Community will be able to or has any intention of meeting the rules requiring factual, nondirective counseling. Women who cannot afford to access family planning care elsewhere will be subjected to a provider who clearly wishes to influence women’s choices, rather than providers who are committed to medical accuracy and offer women a full range of choices, supporting their right to individual decision-making about their bodies.

One woman reports that “Christ Community provides high-quality medical services, but that they sometimes come with a ‘sermon.’” She says she was told by a Christ Community provider, “If only my relationships with people and God were right, I would have fewer health problems.”

You have got to be f***ing kidding me.

In addition to these concerns, there may be other issues with Christ Community’s administration of the Title X funds. I’m not personally familiar with CCHS’s existing health clinics and services on the ground. A Memphis local informed me Christ Community does not take appointments – patients must show up first thing in the morning and wait to be seen, and may even have to come back the next day if too many people show up. This is obviously not a good model for providing family planning services, especially when emergency contraception or other urgent services are needed or when women must take time off from jobs, school, or childcare in order to wait around for care. Although the organization’s website does have an “appointment line,” it indicates that this is to find out which clinics provide which services; I’d like to hear from others about whether this matches their experience at Christ Community clinics.

Another serious concern is that Christ Community’s proposal to provide these services clearly indicated that they would provide less care to fewer women than would Planned Parenthood. Steve Ross, of Memphis and blogging at Vibinc, has an excellent series chronicling the whole debacle, from the Tennessee state government pressuring the Memphis health department to take the funds despite their lack of capacity for family planning through to the current funding of Christ Community (parts 1, 2, 3, and 4). In part 2, he lays out the numbers and apparent relative deficiencies of the Christ Community proposal, including their lower numbers for proposed services and inconsistencies in how the proposals from Christ Community and Planned Parenthood were scored by local officials.

In Part 3, Steve points to the questions asked by the potential providers – Christ Community, Planned Parenthood, and a third non-religious applicant. Although they are unattributed, we can only assume that the following questions were asked by Christ Community, the only applicant with an explicit religious mission and on the record about refusing services because of beliefs. I think these are very telling about the intentions of the leadership of the organization that asked these questions, and how they plan to approach women’s health:

In providing information about pregnancy termination, is it sufficient to have the referral information in writing? [My interpretation: In other words, do we even have to bother to actually have a conversation with women about this?]

If the information about pregnancy termination is provided, is the contractor allowed to indicate in wiriting (NOT coerce) – on a referral sheet or in the office that it does not provide that service because of its beliefs.

If a contraceptive method is not provided on site by a provider because of the provider’s ethical beliefs, can the provider refer the client to another Title X provider who offers this method? If so, does the referring provider have to pay for the service?

The answers to these questions explicitly state that emergency contraception must be provided, the organization cannot choose not to provide forms of contraception because of its beliefs, and they are not allowed to talk about refusing abortion and referrals because of beliefs. Yet everything we’ve heard – as mentioned above – indicates that Christ Community plans to do exactly that.

As Steve writes:

To be honest, these three questions left me flabbergasted. Certainly individuals and associations of people are allowed to hold their own beliefs. Certainly, different physicians and networks of physicians have different preferred treatment plans. There’s plenty of room for this diversity out there in the private sector. However, when you choose to enter the public sector by seeking a contract for public dollars, you are bound by the requirements those public dollars place on you. If those requirements are unpalatable to you, then perhaps you shouldn’t seek them.

Honestly, I’m sure this whole thing will end in lawsuits, and I wouldn’t be unhappy if HHS would intervene. In the meantime, poor women suffer.

I will leave you with this excellent rant from Sig at DowntownMemphisBlog:

Public policy needs to be based on reason and fact, not feelings and faith. Abortion is a legal medical procedure. Any organization that aspires to hold a government contract in the area of family planning needs to present all options and perform all medical procedures, not just the ones it agrees with or likes. Not just the ones that make them feel warm and fuzzy inside. Not just the ones that fit into the narrow world view defined by their archaic religious beliefs.

See also: Aunt B

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Contraception, Ethics, Government, Women’s Health

I know I’ve been posting infrequently when I get an email from a reader saying they thought I might be on vacation. I’m not. That message was about updates in the Juana Villegas case, which I’ll post about separately later this week. In the meantime, here are some things that have caught my attention recently:

New York City is going to make sure middle and high school students get at least a little sex ed as part of their health education classes. Good.

Maternal mortality for Black women got a bit of attention at BET.

The New York Times explores the issue of pregnancy reduction when there are twins/two fetuses. “Selective reduction” is pretty well accepted (but not uncontroversial) when there are many fetuses, but it apparently seems more complicated to some folks when there are fewer/two.

More race-focused anti-abortion billboard crap (via Trust Black Women). The billboards offer a link to a site that Jesse Jackson has betrayed Black people by supporting abortion rights and implying that something is necessarily wrong *about abortion* when Black women have a higher percentage of the abortions in a state than their percentage of the population (i.e., if Black women are 15% of the state’s population but have 30% of the abortions). Of course, nothing on the site explores the systemic reasons Black women might choose *for themselves* to have abortions.

From Wisconsin’s Journal Sentinel: “Wisconsin’s attempt to ban hormone therapy for transgender prison inmates is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.” It was apparently the only state with such a ban on this specific medical treatment for prisoners.

NPR covered birth control and religion in Pakistan.

In Murfreesboro, TN (where I used to live), two women were arrested and charged with reckless endangerment after their babies were born with opiates in their system and needed special care for opiate withdrawal. I feel pretty strongly that – while drug use in pregnancy can have negative affects on both woman and child – criminalization of pregnant women with drug use/addiction problems may cause these women to actually avoid medical care, making the situation worse for everyone involved. I think treatment is a much better option. National Advocates for Pregnant Women is a great resource on this issue – see their website for further exploration of the topic.

This item at Microaggressions reminds those of us who ever have input into website creation to think about what we’re doing when we force people to select a gender to participate, and only give them the binary choices.

At Queer Musings, “How to Be a Friend to Trans Folks Without Putting Your Foot in Your Mouth: A Short Guide for Cis People” (via Womanist Musings).

Renee at Womanist Musings also has an important post, “A Forced Eugenics Survivor Speaks Her Truth.”

I recently watched the documentary, “12th & Delaware” – the title is a reference to the Florida corner where a “crisis pregnancy center” sits across from an abortion clinic, the focus of the film. Anybody else seen it?

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Birth, Contraception, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education

This week, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and other organizations have been observing the second annual Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice:

This year’s theme is Caminamos: Justice for Immigrant Women. We’re inviting everyone to join us in moving toward a brighter future for immigrant women and their families. Mean-spirited enforcement, workplace exploitation, and the criminalization of basic rights like education and health care are just a few of the challenges that have forced immigrant women into the shadows and ignored the crucial, positive role we play in our communities.

Action items for the week include calling for a review of the 287(g) program and online discussion on the theme, “what’s the real problem behind the targeting of immigrant women?” – including a blog carnival with lots of great posts worth reading, and NLIRH’s posts at their blog Nuestra Vida, Nuestra Voz.

I haven’t read all of the posts yet myself, but one I particularly liked is at Abortion Gang, where the writer talks about appropriate reproductive health care requiring more than just Spanish-language services:

…if we want to provide “culturally competent” health care services (and I’m not just talking about abortion care), we need to be constantly learning from and with our patients. We have to be more than “culturally competent.” We need to be culturally fluent…a lack of understanding of the diverse Latina/o cultures keeps immigrant women from getting the care they need. Lack of cultural understanding breeds intolerance and scapegoating. We need to speak more than Spanish; we need to comprehend the language of experience.

Another good one is What’s the Real Problem? Some families are valued while others are demonized at the NLIRH, blog, which criticizes devaluing of families of color generally and my least favorite libertarian Ron Paul specifically, for his views on protecting fetuses and denying citizenship to American-born children of immigrants via the 14th amendment:

The two different approaches to the Fourteenth Amendment reveal a subtext of whose children are wanted and valued. The fetuses of white women are offered constitutional protection, while the lives of immigrant women of color are dismissed and demonized. In the United States, immigrants are denied benefits while being blamed for environmental degradation, the recession, and lack of jobs. They are also portrayed as coming to the United States solely for the purpose of having children who are then raised to be terrorists. Anti-immigrant advocates are the same people who spout pro-life rhetoric and claim to be protecting family values.

Go check out the blog carnival for more.

While not reproductive justice-focused, Aunt B points to and remarks on this 287(g)-related story out of Nashville, in which a teenage girl just about to graduate from high school was taken to jail and spent almost 3 days there for driving without a license (which I don’t believe she could have obtained under state law). The 18 year-old, who was brought to the U.S. by her parents as a child 9 years ago and has hopes of attending college and med school, may be deported. The local implementation of 287(g) has been criticized for being heavy-handed in targeting Latino/a immigrants for deportation for such non-violent crimes as driving without a license.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Ethics, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Women’s Health

I haven’t done one of these in a while, having been distracted by the heat, the carless situation, dad’s cancer, mom’s hip replacement re-replacement, work, leveling my first character in Warcraft (now a level 71 undead frost mage – I don’t want to duel you!), and life in general. Tonight, though, I’m at my parents’ house (sitting with mom after said re-replacement), in a town with <30 thousand people that gets really, truly dark at night, World of Warcraft won't run on this computer, and I think I've reached the end of the internet. Might as well do something.

The FDA has issued a warning not to use emergency contraception labeled as Evital. The agency says,

These products may be counterfeit versions of the “morning after pill” and may not be safe or effective in preventing pregnancy. Evital has not been approved by the FDA for use in the United States. This potentially ineffective and suspect counterfeit emergency birth control may also be in distribution in some Hispanic communities in the United States.

The FDA announcement linked above has an image of the packaging for the drug in question and further details.

The FDA is also proposing guidelines for mobile medical apps (like you use on a smart phone). I haven’t fully parsed the implications of the proposal yet, but public comment is being accepted through October 19.

CNN has a piece on breast ironing in Cameroon. This is not a custom I know much about, and I’m always hesitant to jump in where I know so little, but I feel comfortable saying that this must be a painful procedure that doesn’t achieve the apparently desired goal of preventing sex ad pregnancy.

The New York Times talks about Title IX, the law requiring that women and girls have equal access to participation in school sports, focusing on a lack of investigation and enforcement when schools are thought to not be following the law.

Washington became the first state to specifically provide for offspring from donated eggs and sperm to access the donors’ medical history and names once the offspring turn 18. This is an issue I’ve written a tiny bit about at Our Bodies Our Blog.

Shockingly, Bill O’Reilly is kind of an uninformed jerk about unintentional pregnancy and birth control. The professional blowhard stated that “Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex and are not going to use birth control anyway.” Right. Half of all pregnancies in this country are unplanned, and it’s obviously just because women are too drunk and high to use contraception. A lot of attention has been paid to this comment, but O’Reilly also stated in the same segment that HHS should pay for “everybody’s birth control, all the women in the world, or here in the United States, or maybe both.” Yeah, we’re going to pay for birth control for *all the women in the world* – even those women in the many countries with lower rates of teen and unplanned pregnancy. Sure, that seems likely and logical and fact-based, doesn’t it? *headdesk* Media Matters has more, including response from the National Women’s Law Center.

C-section rates apparently hit an all-time U.S. high of 34%. I feel like “new high” is the news we get every year now on c-sections.

Al Jazeera English has a short piece on the ethics of clinical pharmaceutical research in India, where research participants may not clinically benefit from drugs being tested and may be vulnerable to exploitation.

Max Barry has a nice piece about gender through the lens of how we gender animals and the gender of Smurfs.

Kari Paul at the Ms. Blog explores the topic of sexual assault on campuses and the lack of arrests or serious addressing of this problem.

Connecticut added gender identity and expression to the state’s anti-discrimination laws. Good job, Connecticut!

Anita Sarkeesian talks about the “mystical pregnancy trope,” especially in sci fi/fantasy, in which women are used for their reproductive capacity and often forcibly impregnated. I hadn’t really noticed it as much as I should, maybe you haven’t either – check out the video (via Sociological Images).

Hey, it’s World Breastfeeding Week.

Honestly, I can watch True Blood as a bit of fluff and as somebody who likes to see on-screen adaptations of books. There are a lot of problems with it. Watching tonight’s episode, I really wondered how many gratuitous rape scenes one show can possibly have, especially after Alan Ball’s comment on the serial rape of Jason that he’s basically getting what he deserved for his sexual history. Feminist Frequency also has some TB commentary and links to more.

Relatedly but not surprisingly, the blogger at The Frisky wrote critically today about how True Blood handles rape, and the very first comment is of the “relax/don’t watch then” variety. Don’t worry your pretty little head! *predictable-but-disappointing-argh*

I’m proud of our Nashville students who came out to protest stupid, offensive, and mean “don’t say gay” legislation in Tennessee.

Apparently one place in Minnesota has similar “don’t say gay” rules in its schools; CNN covered the issue and the National Center for Lesbian Rights has a letter you can sign onto to express your support for students in the affected school district who are trying to change the policy.

The CDC is talking about antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.

Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail into a Planned Parenthood of North Texas clinic. The clinic provides health care, including birth control and screenings, but doesn’t even provide abortions. Alex Pareene at Salon’s War Room points out that nobody seems to care about this form of domestic terrorism.

Last but not least, everybody wish Hilary luck on her last board exam and subsequent residency application process.

1) It’s the attack kitty edition because, in noting on Facebook that I am away from home, I told the Internet not to get any ideas – the house is guarded by the spouse, attack kitties, and weirdly commandable suits of armor.
2) Yes, I suspect there are some conversations we could have about gender and Warcraft. If you want to talk about that, we can do so in the comments.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Breastfeeding, Contraception, Drugs, Ethics, Events & Observances, Global Issues, Government, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Products, Technology, & Devices

With blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and the like, I think we all have a tendency to surround ourselves with people like us, who share many of our core beliefs. In the feminist blogosphere, we can feel like we’ve already had a discussion 100 times, already settled a matter, and we’re all kind of operating with the same definitions and understandings (even if that isn’t really the case). I know I can feel like, “I’ve already covered that topic” – like whether “life begins at conception” – but a comment thread at Kat Coble’s* made me want to revisit an issue when a commenter all-caps declared a fertilized egg to be “a BABY.”

Medical people do not consider having a fertilized egg alone to mean that you are pregnant. Pregnancy tests, even if they were much more sensitive than they are now, would not detect just having a fertilized egg, because there is no chemical change to detect. Despite this, many anti-abortion folks consider a fertilized egg to be, not just equivalent to, but actually a baby.

It’s easy, though, to imaine that a fertilized e is “life,” is a “baby.” After all, all of the information, the stuff from mom and dad, is there. As emotionally invested as we can be in the process, it’s natural to want to think of that moment as the moment when prenancy began. Sure, the joining of egg and sperm kicks off the process toward creating a baby, but it can never, without implantation, actually become one, and a woman is not considered pregnant until implantation successfully happens.

Because these distinctions matter, especially when politicians and others are arguing over women’s bodies, rights, and access to birth control and abortion, we need a way to understand this distinction. One that makes intuitive sense, because the image of a sperm penetrating an egg and making a baby as if by Disney magic is so firmly entrenched in our minds. We need a way to visualize the difference in a way that allows to separate our human feelings from the reality of what is going on in our bodies at these vastly different stages of having a fertilized egg and having that egg implant for us to become pregnant. How can we find such a way?

Imagine a seed.

Imagine a tomato seed, which you may plant and nurture. That seed has all of the necessary information from its parent tomatoes in order to become a tomato plant. It’s much like a fertilized egg – all that is required is the addition of the proper environment and care. If you provide the right resources, and have a little bit of luck, you will end up with a tomato plant. If a fertiized egg implants, and everything else goes right, you will end up with a baby.

Now imagine a seed in a sealed stainless steel box.

That seed still has all of the information it needs to become a tomato plant – just like a fertilized egg has all of the information from mom and dad – sperm and egg – to become a baby.

But that seed will never become a tomato plant. It needs light and food and air and chemical reactions in order to grow from a seed into a tomato plant, materials it has no access to in our sealed stainless steel box. Alone in its cold box, it is only a seed, only the potential for a tomato plant. If we don’t plant it, it will never progress beyond being a seed, and we will never think of it as a tomato plant.

Likewise, a fertilized egg that does not implant is only the potential for a baby. If it does not implant, it will simply pass from the body, undetectable by any modern tests, and unnoticed by the woman it passes from. In fact, a good-sized percentage of fertilized eggs dopass from the body in this manner, without notice.

No birth control method is 100% effective. If you believe that every fertilized egg is equivalent to, or is, a baby, you’re pre-menopausal and fertile and having penis-in-vagina sex with a fertile partner, then you must acknowledge that you may be creating and expelling many “babies” in your lifetime along with your menstrual period. If simply fertilizing an egg were all it took to become “pregnant,” most of would need to add a few more pregnancies – ones we never even noticed – to our lifetime total.

This doesn’t feel right, does it? To wonder every month (assuming the conditions above are met) whether you are passing a baby every time you get your period? But why not? If a fertilized egg is life, then this is likely to happen on more than one occassion, and you’ll never know for sure.

I understand that many people feel that a fertilized egg is a “life,” or “baby,” and that this is not necessarily coming out of a logical or scientific perspective – it’s a belief. No matter how much I believe that a tomato seed is a tomato plant, though, it never will be. It’s easier to understand with the seed analogy – we don’t really think of seeds as “alive,” and we clearly grasp that more is needed for us to end up with tomato plants.

If you throw away your leftover tomato seeds after you fill up the room you have for planting, you likely won’t feel that you’ve killed or thrown away tomato plants. We plant extra, and we don’t feel like a bunch of tomato plants have died when some seeds don’t sprout. Despite those seeds having everything necessary to grow beautiful and nourishing tomoato plants, there’s a difference you can sense between a tomato seed and a tomato plant.

You may feel that you have an obligation to plant every tomato seed, to not waste the potential at hand. That’s fine – that’s a belief about the proper use of your gardening supplies. Likewise, you may feel – as Kat does – that if you allow the possibility for an egg to get fertilized, you have an obligation not to interfere with its implantation, to the extent that you can control. Therefore, you may believe that any contraceptive method that might even possibly interfere with implantation is inappropriate for you, which is also fine and a personal choice. That too is a belief. As the saying goes, however, you’re entitled to your own beliefs but not your own facts. Belief does change a seed into a tomato plant or a fertilized egg into a baby. The right conditions must still be met, or there is no possibiliity for the one to become the other.

One thing I find interesting in thinking about this is that the argument about implantation – whether people acknowledge it explicitly or not – puts the role of a woman’s body in developing a fetus squarely in the center. Acknowledging that a fertilized egg absolutely has to implant in and draw resources from a woman’s body in order to have even the slightest chance of becoming a baby highlights the fact that pregnancy places a strain on women’s bodies and requires and benefits from their cooperation.

Sure, there’s in vitro fertilization, but even then the fertilized egg must be placed in a uterus, and implant there, in order to ever become a baby. You can sprout some seeds in a damp paper towel, but you have to keep an eye on them so you can get them into the right medium for growing as soon as possible. You can have a surrogate carry your fertilized egg, but there will be no baby unless the surrogate is succesffully implanted with that egg. A woman’s body is required, just as as our tomato seed needs to be placed in the proper soil and get water and light to row.

Acknowleding these requirements means acknowledging the burden put on a woman’s body, just as we understand that nutrients must continuously be supplied to a tomato plant, and the soil must be renewed if we intend to keep planting in the same dirt. If we gloss this over, if we pretend that a seed and a tomato plant or a fertilized egg and a baby are essentially the same, we ignore the tremendous amount of resources and work that grow one into the other, and demands on the environment – in this case, the environment of a woman’s body.

I am explicitly, 100% pro-choice in part because of my belief that as long as a fetus must demand my resources and body to grow, as long as it may potentially harm or kill me through its every existence, my right to my body trumps its need to make use of it. I acknowledge the ethical conflict between an implanted fetilized egg or fetus and myself, and simply declare that I am the one with the right to arbitrate that conflict because its my environment – my body – that incurs the risk and draining required for growth. I get to decide if the sun, water, air, soil and labor is available to turn my packet of seeds into a garden full of tomato plants. Any gardener will tell you that there’s a world of work and difference between the two.

*Kat’s actual post, in response to an ill-informed Twitter comment, is a fine one, even though I had a couple of nitpicky comments to make about it.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Pregnancy

I haven’t been very good recently about linking from here to my posts at Our Bodies Our Blog, where I write about twice a week. Here are some recent posts there:

Access to Abortion as a Health Disparities Issue – Highlighting a recent commentary in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, in which the authors call for not just expanded access to prevention of unwanted pregnancies, but the treatment of them – and access to that treatment through reducing barriers to abortion access.

“Reel Grrls” Empowers Young Women to Create Videos, Take on Corporate Giants – a bit about what happens when Comcast picks on a bunch of girls learning media skills

Vermont Passes Law Providing for Insurance Coverage of Home Births and Midwives, Birth Certificate Changes for Transgender Individuals – information on a new law in Vermont that reduces certain barriers, as you could already tell from the post title.

Judge Set to Hear Arguments in Indiana Planned Parenthood Funding Case – Indiana passed a law to deny Medicaid funds for non-abortion care at Planned Parenthood, which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services responded to by sending a letter explaining that states are not allowed to pick and choose which qualified providers can be paid for services through Medicaid. Let’s be clear – this is not forbidding federal funds for abortions, which is already forbidden in several different ways. It’s prohibiting women who get care – such as cancer screenings and birth control – through Medicaid from choosing Planned Parenthood as the place they want to get that care, and prevents Planned Parenthood from getting paid through Medicaid for providing that care to poor women.

On the day of the post, a hearing was set to happen to consider halting enforcement of the law; the judge has since said she will decide by July 1. Several Senate Republicans, led by Orrin Hatch, have sent a letter to HHS saying that the law should be able to stand, and calling it “an important model for every state.”

New Guttmacher Video Tackles Misconceptions About Women Who Choose Abortion – exactly what it sounds like, with the video embedded. I don’t *think* there’s a transcript.

Health Literacy Resources for Providers – several useful resources I learned about at a recent health literacy conference.

Filed under: Uncategorized

The local newspaper is covering genetic tests for breast cancer, privacy, gene tests patents, cost, and the fears some people have about getting tested.

Iris Carmen at Jezebel has a piece, “The Fight For Abortion Access For Military Women,” that is really about barriers in the military that prevent women from reporting sexual assault, the institutional difficulties faced by women servicemembers who become pregnant, and their lack of access to abortion coverage and providers.

Via the CDC’s National Prevention Intervention Network (@cdcnpin)

Follow @CDCNPIN@CDCNPIN
CDC NPIN

#30years ago today, @CDCMMWR reported on 1st cases of what became known as #AIDS. http://ow.ly/59vq3

June 5, 2011 8:31 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

The link in the tweet goes to the actual June 5, 1981 MMWR reporting 5 cases of Pneumocystis Pneumonia in Los Angeles. It’s sort of a punch in the gut to read the opening passage of the editorial note – where the MMWR tries to explain what might be going on – knowing what was coming, what these 5 cases were the canary for. Warning for reference to a “homosexual lifestyle.”

Editorial Note: Pneumocystis pneumonia in the United States is almost exclusively limited to severely immunosuppressed patients. The occurrence of pneumocystosis in these 5 previously healthy individuals without a clinically apparent underlying immunodeficiency is unusual. The fact that these patients were all homosexuals suggests an association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact and Pneumocystis pneumonia in this population.

Via a librarian attending the Biomedical Informatics course at Woods Hole (#bmispring2011), I learned about the Office of Research Integrity’s page of summaries of closed research misconduct investigations. The cases seem to consist primarily of researchers making up or faking data or figures.

Thought Catalog (with which I’m unfamiliar) has “Tale of an Abortion,” one woman’s story of her choice to have an abortion.

Some Indiana politicians voted to defund Planned Parenthood, which received federal Medicaid/Title X funding for non-abortion health care, like cancer screenings and contraception. In response, HHS sent the state a letter explaining that they could not “exclude qualified health care providers from providing services that are funded under the program because of a provider’s scope of practice.” In other words, you can’t keep somebody from providing Medicaid-funded care just because they also provide non-Medicaid-funded abortions. Apparently it’s going to court.

The Feminist Majority Foundation reports in their feminist daily news that Yale Faces Possible Fines for Failure to Report Sex Crimes.

People.com associate editor Janet Mock writes for Marie Claire about her life as a transgender woman. She also was interviewed for NPR’s Tell Me More; a couple of the commenters note the inappropriate headline given the piece, which used “transgender” as a noun.

Notes from Libraryland:
The Wall Street Journal has a commentary that shouts “you kids get offa my lawn” at current YA fiction, which is apparently too dystopian, depressing, dark, and dangerous for young folks. There’s been a pretty awesome outpouring in defense of (YA) books on Twitter, using the #yasaves hashtag, with many reporting how alone, uninformed, afraid, sheltered, isolated, etc. they would have been if not for YA fiction, which can particularly be a lifeline for people who find that they are different in some way.

Also? It’s pretty hilarious that alongside an article decrying dystopia, darkness, and destruction in current YA fiction, and looks approvingly at efforts to keep those bad, bad YA books out of the hands of kids, a recommended, apparently-officially-okay title is Fahrenheit 451. Excuse me while I step away for a giggle break.

Here’s a 1971 letter from Isaac Asimov to future patrons of a new library. The Troy, MI library in question is in danger of closing if local folks don’t vote this August to fund it.

Apparently there will soon be swag for the National Library of Medicine’s 175th anniversary. This appeals to a special type of library geek.

Via searching on the #yasaves topic, I found this list of YA book recommendations, and have added several of these to my to-read list. Worth checking out.

The title: It has been 95 degrees here for the last week. I’m still walking 2.5 miles outside every day and have a broken a/c at home. If this is May, I might have to move to Antarctica in August.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Cancer, Funny, Government, HIV/AIDS, Libraryland, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy

Ugh. The air conditioner at my place has been broken for the last few weeks, and it’s been a pretty constant 85 degrees in here. I have no idea how people tolerate the south without a/c on a regular basis – the persistent heat is making me whiny and angry and just generally unpleasant. It also has the effect of making it less pleasant for me to focus the energy to post about whatever nonsense our state legislature is up to related to women and their bodies.

If the heat didn’t make me cranky enough, Senator Stacey Campfield (R, duh), added an item to the state budget to “cut off $747,900 a year in federal money for non-abortion family-planning and women’s health services to Planned Parenthood in Memphis and $335,000 to Planned Parenthood in Nashville.”

None of this money pays for abortions, and the health departments in Memphis and Nashville have said they are not able to absorb the patient load of 13,000 low-income residents annually who receive exams, cancer screenings, STI tests and treatments via the state’s contract with Planned Parenthood.

This would all be par for the anti-choice Republican course, but has been a little more interesting than usual due to the measures taken somewhat surreptitiously to keep Campfield’s measure from surviving the budget process. Additional language made it into the budget to say that Campfield’s section “shall not be construed to supersede applicable provisions of federal and state law.” Uh, like Title X. Which provides the funding for the services provided through Planned Parenthood. Effectively wiping out Campfield’s “defund Planned Parenthood” measure.

And then, as Aunt B points out, there is drama about who put the additional language in, and who is keeping that knowledge from Campfield and voters. Because best guesses are that a higher ranking Republican put it in, preventing inevitable lawsuits or vetoing of the whole state budget.

I have to laugh a little that somebody’s BS political maneuver was outmaneuvered by somebody who might have seen actual consequences to the stunt Campfield was pulling, somebody who might also have been a Republican. As such, B has the best grin-inducing headline of the whole thing: Somehow, in Campfield vs. Planned Parenthood, Campfield Lost. I didn’t expect it, but I’ll take it.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Cancer, Contraception, HPV, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Pregnancy, Sex & Sex Education, Vaginas & Vulvas

Rachel Maddow put together a montage of videos featuring Republicans talking about two things – 1) not wanting bureaucrats between people and their doctors, and 2) wanting less regulation overall – and contrasted that with what they’ve been up to on abortion, including legislature-driven, medically inaccurate consent scripts and TRAP laws.

WordPress won’t let me embed it, but it’s online at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#43103392 (with a transcript).

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Government

Rachel Maddow put together a montage of videos featuring Republicans talking about two things – 1) not wanting bureaucrats between people and their doctors, and 2) wanting less regulation overall – and contrasted that with what they’ve been up to on abortion, including legislature-driven, medically inaccurate consent scripts and TRAP laws.

WordPress won’t let me embed it, but it’s online at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#43103392 (with a transcript).

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Government

SJR127, a joint resolution in the Tennessee legislature to “provide that nothing in Constitution of Tennessee secures or protects right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion,” has passed through the legislature. It will go to a public vote on the 2014 state ballot. The resolution has been raised for years, but never made it through both arms of the legislature until now.

Supporters argue that the change would Tennessean’s abortion rights in line with those in the rest of the country by making our state Constitution neutral on the matter. Voting in the change could allow further restrictions, and in the (presumably unlikely) event of a total Roe overturn, it would allow a state ban on abortion.

Naturally, I’m not too enthused about this move to make the bodily autonomy and individual decisions of all of my state’s women a matter for a popular vote. One in three of us have abortions in our lifetime and slightly more than half of Tennessee’s population are women, but I’m going to go on record now predicting that – barring a hugely successful campaign between now and 2014 – this measure is going to pass in the popular vote.

Here’s what Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee had to say about it.

TENNESSEE GENERAL ASSEMBLY APPROVES CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO MAKE ABORTION ILLEGAL
Passage of SJR-127 is attack on the women of Tennessee

Nashville, TN — Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee (PPMET) criticized the Tennessee General Assembly for passage of SJR-127, a proposed constitutional amendment would make abortion illegal in Tennessee.

“SJR-127 is dangerous to health and lives of women we all know and love – our wives, daughters, sisters, friend and neighbors,” said Jeff Teague, President and CEO of PPMET. “This proposed amendment to our Constitution is about banning abortion. To say otherwise is insincere and, frankly, dishonest. It will allow for the gross intrusion of government into the privates lives and personal medical decisions of women in Tennessee.”

While a number of restrictions and regulations on abortion are already in place, supporters of the proposed amendment say that it is necessary to allow for “common sense” restrictions of abortion and because abortion is largely unregulated. Among the current restrictions on abortion are a ban on later-term abortion, parental consent for minors and informed consent.

“The number of abortions in Tennessee is declining – everyone agrees this is a positive trend – but SJR-127 does nothing to reduce unintended pregnancies or to help eliminate the need for abortion in Tennessee,” Teague states. “What we need are common sense prevention measures like comprehensive sexuality education and broader access to family planning services like low-cost, affordable birth control. We should all focus on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies and how to offer women who have unplanned pregnancies the resources and support they need.”

The contact for PPMET on the press release is as follows, in case you’re interested in drawing more attention to this issue:
Jeff Teague, President & CEO, (615) 345-0952

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

This post is late because I was busy taking the bus to get here.*

I wrote several times in 2008 about the case of Juana Villegas, an immigrant in Nashville who was arrested as the result of a traffic stop and ultimately ended up shackled to a hospital bed during labor, separated from her newborn for two days without seeing him, and denied a breast pump or cream for lactating women. This past week, a federal judge ruled in her favor that the shackling during labor and after delivery violated her civil rights. I have a full post up at Our Bodies Our Blog on this topic.

I also have a full post up at the OBOS blog on the Skin Deep database, which provides info on the safety and ingredients of skin care and cosmetic products.

I spent the last few days at the IHA Health Literacy conference. I intend to post on this separately later, including a list of a lot of good resources I learned about, but Siobhan has a few things up at her place. One thing I need to think about is the level at which this blog is written, and whether it is useful and helpful to make some adjustments so posts are more readable for a wider audience, and whether there would be interest in that.

The National Resource Center on LGBT Aging, which I think I also found out about from Siobhan, has information and guidance for providers, patients, and organizations on a number of topics, including ageism, HIV and aging, housing, legal support, Medicare, homelessness, and more.

Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check (which has a new look) asks, “What does it mean to be pro-choice?“

NPR, on Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation, aired several pieces on the local Magdalene/Thistle Farms, a residential program in Nashville, TN for women who have experienced violence, sex work, and addiction, and a bath and body products enterprise through which the women work and earn money. You can buy from them online at http://store.thistlefarms.org/.

A question at Good: Why isn’t birth control getting better?

Relatedly, I talked briefly with a representative of the California Family Health Council at the health literacy conference, and was told that they are trying to promote some longer term methods of birth control. This is among their other work, which includes the development of patient education materials on contraception, violence, cancer prevention, pregnancy, STIs, and other sexual and reproductive health topics. I always kind of get the willies when people talk about “promoting” long term contraception, because of the problematic history of how it has been used to assert control over the reproduction of women of color and poor women – regardless of what may be good methods, ethics and intent from whoever is talking about it. I’ll have to contact them and find out what the motivation for this is and how they are approaching it, because I didn’t have time to follow up at the event. In the meantime, anybody familiar with this group?

In the comments at Aunt B’s place, the topic of “gender parties” comes up. I have an appeal to saucy bakers to incorporate the message, “Now you know the sex, not the gender” into the design of these ill-conceived “gender party” cakes.

Here in Tennessee, Stacey Campfield has been pushing his “don’t say ‘gay’” bill, which – despite an intro that talks generally about home being the appropriate place for discussions of sexuality – provides specifically that “no public elementary or middle school shall provide any instruction or material that discusses sexual orientation *other than heterosexuality*” – which is not at all the same as “teachers shouldn’t be discussing sexuality in schools at all.

I picked up a weekly paper in Orange County this week and noticed that Dan Savage mentioned the bill in his 5/4 column, pointing readers to wesaygay.com, a site ostensibly set up by a couple of teenagers opposing the bill and gathering petition signatures in opposition – it’s nice to see students being active in this way.

The bill passed the House committee and is scheduled for a full Senate vote on May 9, although it has been reported that the state Senate will not take it up this year.

The wonderful Rev. Chris Buice of Knoxville argues in a commentary on the bill that prohibiting teachers from discussing homosexuality in school hinders them in acting against bullying and prevents them from having many educational discussions related to current events and legislation.

Apparently this coming week is National Women’s Health Week.

From the FDA:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today announced a joint effort to remove products from the market that make unproven claims to treat, cure, and prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Among the products targeted in today’s action are Medavir, Herpaflor, Viruxo, C-Cure, and Never An Outbreak.

The Harper Collins controversy has escaped the boundaries of libraryland. tigtog at Hoyden notes it, and Andy’s change.org petition got sent out on a huge scale. Short version of the controversy – Harper Collins wants to make libraries buy new copies of ebooks after they’ve been read 26 times. You know, because libraries are rolling in money and typically discard books after 26 reads. *eyeroll* There’s a ton of writing on this in the library blogosphere, just google it with some combination of Harper Collins, libraries, 26, ebooks.

The Abortioneers are talking about the stigma of multiple abortion, and there is some really good discussion in the comments, including from those gently pushing back against the OP for certain attitudes expressed in the post.

The Utah AIDS Drug Assistance Program is closing to new applicants due to a funding shortfall; supporters of the program are encouraged to contact their state and federal legislators.

This week’s title: I was in a car accident a couple of weeks ago, car three in a five-car wreck. I’m fine, although I was a little rattled and had a seatbelt bruise for about a week. The car, which is older and was in a previous accident, is totaled. The spouse and I are planning to go without a car, at least for the next few months. Tips and strategies for doing so are welcome. Depending on my mood, the situation gets framed as “car free” or “carless.”

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Birth, Contraception, Drugs, Ethics, Government, HIV/AIDS, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Libraryland, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Sex & Sex Education, Women’s Health

This post is late because I was busy taking the bus to get here.*

I wrote several times in 2008 about the case of Juana Villegas, an immigrant in Nashville who was arrested as the result of a traffic stop and ultimately ended up shackled to a hospital bed during labor, separated from her newborn for two days without seeing him, and denied a breast pump or cream for lactating women. This past week, a federal judge ruled in her favor that the shackling during labor and after delivery violated her civil rights. I have a full post up at Our Bodies Our Blog on this topic.

I also have a full post up at the OBOS blog on the Skin Deep database, which provides info on the safety and ingredients of skin care and cosmetic products.

I spent the last few days at the IHA Health Literacy conference. I intend to post on this separately later, including a list of a lot of good resources I learned about, but Siobhan has a few things up at her place. One thing I need to think about is the level at which this blog is written, and whether it is useful and helpful to make some adjustments so posts are more readable for a wider audience, and whether there would be interest in that.

The National Resource Center on LGBT Aging, which I think I also found out about from Siobhan, has information and guidance for providers, patients, and organizations on a number of topics, including ageism, HIV and aging, housing, legal support, Medicare, homelessness, and more.

Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check (which has a new look) asks, “What does it mean to be pro-choice?“

NPR, on Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation, aired several pieces on the local Magdalene/Thistle Farms, a residential program in Nashville, TN for women who have experienced violence, sex work, and addiction, and a bath and body products enterprise through which the women work and earn money. You can buy from them online at http://store.thistlefarms.org/.

A question at Good: Why isn’t birth control getting better?

Relatedly, I talked briefly with a representative of the California Family Health Council at the health literacy conference, and was told that they are trying to promote some longer term methods of birth control. This is among their other work, which includes the development of patient education materials on contraception, violence, cancer prevention, pregnancy, STIs, and other sexual and reproductive health topics. I always kind of get the willies when people talk about “promoting” long term contraception, because of the problematic history of how it has been used to assert control over the reproduction of women of color and poor women – regardless of what may be good methods, ethics and intent from whoever is talking about it. I’ll have to contact them and find out what the motivation for this is and how they are approaching it, because I didn’t have time to follow up at the event. In the meantime, anybody familiar with this group?

In the comments at Aunt B’s place, the topic of “gender parties” comes up. I have an appeal to saucy bakers to incorporate the message, “Now you know the sex, not the gender” into the design of these ill-conceived “gender party” cakes.

Here in Tennessee, Stacey Campfield has been pushing his “don’t say ‘gay’” bill, which – despite an intro that talks generally about home being the appropriate place for discussions of sexuality – provides specifically that “no public elementary or middle school shall provide any instruction or material that discusses sexual orientation *other than heterosexuality*” – which is not at all the same as “teachers shouldn’t be discussing sexuality in schools at all.

I picked up a weekly paper in Orange County this week and noticed that Dan Savage mentioned the bill in his 5/4 column, pointing readers to wesaygay.com, a site ostensibly set up by a couple of teenagers opposing the bill and gathering petition signatures in opposition – it’s nice to see students being active in this way.

The bill passed the House committee and is scheduled for a full Senate vote on May 9, although it has been reported that the state Senate will not take it up this year.

The wonderful Rev. Chris Buice of Knoxville argues in a commentary on the bill that prohibiting teachers from discussing homosexuality in school hinders them in acting against bullying and prevents them from having many educational discussions related to current events and legislation.

Apparently this coming week is National Women’s Health Week.

From the FDA:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today announced a joint effort to remove products from the market that make unproven claims to treat, cure, and prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Among the products targeted in today’s action are Medavir, Herpaflor, Viruxo, C-Cure, and Never An Outbreak.

The Harper Collins controversy has escaped the boundaries of libraryland. tigtog at Hoyden notes it, and Andy’s change.org petition got sent out on a huge scale. Short version of the controversy – Harper Collins wants to make libraries buy new copies of ebooks after they’ve been read 26 times. You know, because libraries are rolling in money and typically discard books after 26 reads. *eyeroll* There’s a ton of writing on this in the library blogosphere, just google it with some combination of Harper Collins, libraries, 26, ebooks.

The Abortioneers are talking about the stigma of multiple abortion, and there is some really good discussion in the comments, including from those gently pushing back against the OP for certain attitudes expressed in the post.

The Utah AIDS Drug Assistance Program is closing to new applicants due to a funding shortfall; supporters of the program are encouraged to contact their state and federal legislators.

This week’s title: I was in a car accident a couple of weeks ago, car three in a five-car wreck. I’m fine, although I was a little rattled and had a seatbelt bruise for about a week. The car, which is older and was in a previous accident, is totaled. The spouse and I are planning to go without a car, at least for the next few months. Tips and strategies for doing so are welcome. Depending on my mood, the situation gets framed as “car free” or “carless.”

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Birth, Contraception, Drugs, Ethics, Government, HIV/AIDS, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Libraryland, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Sex & Sex Education, Women’s Health

Actually, the round-up is not a joke – but I have been cracking up at Stephen Colbert’s response (and the resulting tweets) to Republican John Kyl’s way, way off statement on the Senate floor that >90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion (it’s more like 3%), and his spokesperson’s response, when Kyl was called on the error, that it “was not intended to be a factual statement.” [more via Know Your Meme]

At Our Bodies Our Blog, some discussion of “opiate babies” as the new “crack babies,” with all of the problematic media coverage and decentering of women’s stories and experiences that implies.

Also, OBOS is looking for individuals who might want to be on the cover of the 40th anniversary edition of the book, which will use images of real readers/fans rather than generic pseudo-diverse stock imagery (yay!). Get details here.

The National Partnership for Women and Families has discussion of a study on medication abortion and whether ultrasound is needed. I haven’t read the paper it reviews yet, but thought I’d share.

The Maddow blog has some discussion of how efforts to restrict abortion rights really go beyond abortion, including anti-contraception perspectives that seek to limit women’s ability to prevent pregnancy.

Relatedly, social conservatives may be barking up the wrong tree if they think religious folks will support measures to reduce contraceptive/family planning services – per new results out from Guttmacher, which surprised nobody – “Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same among Catholic women (98%).” Although, almost 15% of women getting abortions apparently describe themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, so possibly the believe vs. do connection is not so strong after all.

A Maine bill that would have interfered with the ability of transgender people to choose the appropriate restroom for themselves and have legal resource if they were prevented from doing so was defeated (that’s a good thing, for safety for and decency to trans people).

Trans Respect vs. Transphobia tallies up an awful number of murders of trans people around the globe.

If I haven’t pointed to it before, Retraction Watch is a pretty cool resource on retractions of papers from medical journals and the ethics (or lack thereof) and bad scientific practices involved.

Kevin MD has a guest post on data overload and genomic medicine.

Honestly, I think the idea of a flash mob at Walgreens is an ineffective and unfortunate action in response to the Fox claim that we don’t need Planned Parenthood because you can get pap smears (and other services) at Walgreens. Nobody at Walgreens made that claim, and you don’t need a flash mob to document that – you need one person getting a statement from one Walgreens official. What a waste of effort.

Via Siobhan at BHIC, the CDC’s new health literacy site.

Random note: the most frequently found posts here have to do with “lost” tampons; as a librarian, I’m absolutely fascinated by all the ways people find to search the web for this topic.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Contraception, Government, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Women’s Health

In this morning’s Nashville, TN newspaper:

Tennessee’s abortion protections are scheduled to come up for debate in the legislature today, in a critical vote that could determine whether the issue goes before voters in 2014.

What’s meant to go before voters – if/when it clears the state legislature – is an amendment to the state Constitution to say that “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion.” Supporters plan to implement waiting periods, legislated scripts for doctors, and other restrictions if the amendment is passed.

Naturally pro-choice folks -including me – are concerned about: a) amending the Constitution to suggest fewer rights for women; b) putting it up to a popular vote in a conservative, religious state – 1 in 4 women have abortions in their lifetime, but realistically women are only about half the vote and many women who have personally exercised their right to an abortion in this state are unlikely to vocally oppose the measure where others can hear it; c) implementation of restrictions that will make it harder for women to access abortion and the possibility of medically/scientifically inaccurate consent scripts; d) the clearing of the way for a total statewide ban on abortion in the unlikely event of an overturn of Roe.

You can pretty much guess how this is going to turn out in the state legislature.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

This week I added one more lecture to the list of lectures I need to write up for posts here; this week it was Kevin Pho, better known as KevinMD. I’ll have more detail and commentary later, but I particularly appreciated his closing remark that patients *are* going online for health information, and physicians can either roll their eyes and resist or get on board – I’ve made the same argument in various posts here.

One more example of the Tennessee state legislature being up to utter hateful bullshit: Legislature moves quickly to nullify council’s newly adopted nondiscrimination ordinance. Nashville passed an ordinance basically meaning that businesses contracting with the metro government have to have nondiscrimination policies in place that include protections against workplace discrimination to sexual orientation and gender identity, which were not included in Nashville’s nondiscrimination policy until just recently. The state legislature is basically trying to override this Nashville rule. The “Christian conservative Family Action Council of Tennessee” put out a video in support of the state law (and against the nondiscrimination policy) – “In the video, a little girl goes into a women’s restroom at a public park followed by a sinister looking man.”

There is so much wrong with this – the overall intent to discriminate, hateful message about gender, gender essentialism, and implied transphobia (whenever you have the “bathroom” gambit). That’s a lot of wrong right there. There’s also the implication that all men are such monsters, if they’re allowed into more of the same spaces with women and children, they will automatically attack them, the framing of “women” as “unsupervised little girls” combined with the “oh!we must protect the ladies!” move, and the restroom in the video being clearly marked “women” – so apparently that didn’t stop the guy in their imaginary scenario. Grrrrrr.

Smithsonian.com explores the question, When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?, and notes changing social signifiers of masculinity and femininity. A good read for anyone who thinks it’s some kind of natural law for all little girls to like pink and all little boys to like blue.

The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals released an update on emergency contraception, with overview information on methods, effectiveness, mechanism of action (i.e., how it works), safety, barriers to use, and other topics.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced an action plan to address health disparities. That is good. The plan is almost exclusively focused on racial/ethnic disparities – not gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, age, geography, or other categories linked in the evidence to poorer health outcomes and services. That is bad.

An interesting/useful way to phrase a framing in the abortion debate: “We have many areas in medicine in which patients and their families consider questions about the nature of life, but only with abortion do we legislate waiting periods, morality counseling and insurance bans.”

Microaggressions….I wish this site wasn’t necessary, but I think it is, to provide a window to all of the ways people are harmed because of who they are on a daily basis.

An xkcd installment for data/stats nerds. [discussion at explain xkcd]

Transmeditations talks about the transphobic problems with Maryland’s HB235 nondiscrimination bill.

The FDA announced that they’re trying to make it easier for the general public to keep up with information on recalls and safety alerts for foods, drugs, devices, and animal health and biologic products.

From the CDC, teen pregnancy trends from 1991 to 2009.

National Advocates for Pregnant Women covers a case in which a woman attempted suicide by rat poison; she survived, but her 33-week fetus did not. She is being held in jail without bail on murder charges. NAPW writes, “This prosecution flies in the face of all medical and public health recommendations regarding the most effective ways to address suicide attempts, drug dependency problems, and health problems pregnant women experience.” The woman’s attorney states, “Criminal justice is not the place where you take care of these things.”

Via Nerve, Sex Advice from Girls Women With Underarm Hair.

Random – the lineup for the National Storytelling Festival has been announced.

And from libraryland, Duke has a neat exhibit of anatomy flap books.

And, re: the heat, the A/C at home is not working. It was 91 degrees outside yesterday, and 85 in the house. Booooo!

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Body Image & Eating Disorders, Contraception, Drugs, Government, Mental Health, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy