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

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

Not the Governor who pushed for the move, apparently.

Earlier this month, I wrote about how Republican-led efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in Tennessee will affect women in Nashville – one of two TN cities where the state usually gives federal family planning and cancer prevention money to Planned Parenthood. In Nashville, that money will now go to the local health department, which explicitly said that it doesn’t expect to serve the same number of women for the money.

Planned Parenthood made up the gap between the federal funds and what it takes to actually serve Nashville’s women by raising funds from donations. The health department does not expect any additional funds to make the shortfall, and would need local tax increases to make up the difference.

As at least one Twitter friend observed, the irony of Republicans causing health care to be shifted *to* the government – and needing to raise taxes if the same level of service is to be provided – is just too bitter to appreciate.

Jeff Woods has additional follow-up on this story for the Nashville City Paper, where he writes, “Told that health officials fear thousands of women might lose services once Planned Parenthood is denied federal money…the governor wouldn’t acknowledge the problem.”

“It’s news to me if that’s true,” he said. “Nobody’s told me that.

Oh, really?

As I pointed out in the previous post, the letter from the Metro Public Health director accepting the money was pretty damn explicit that the same number of women would not be served.

Perhaps Governor Haslam never saw that letter. Perhaps State Health Commissioner Susan Cooper, who reportedly pressed Metro to accept the funds at Haslam’s urging, didn’t tell her boss that this political “win” came with a downside for women seeking health care. Perhaps nobody on the Governor’s staff reads the news and not a single person involved in the political pressure to move the funds either thought of or worried about the implications and was willing to say so. I’ll pause here so we can all ponder whether that seems likely, and what it means if it is.

Notice that the quote Woods got from the Governor doesn’t say, “That’s news to me, and we’ll make sure the same level of preventive care and family planning services is provided, because the health of Tennessee’s women, including vulnerable low-income women, is important to me.” There is no “we’ll check on that” addendum, at least in Woods’s reporting. What this suggests is that the Governor Haslam may not have known – which is problematic on its own – but doesn’t especially care. “Nobody’s told me that” is a brush-off, one that doesn’t commit Haslam to any future worrying about or follow-up on this issue.

I also wrote in my previous post that I am troubled by public health officials accepting this money knowing that doing so, in addition to playing a part in a ridiculous political agenda, would mean fewer women getting the same services for the same money. In Woods’s piece, Metro Health Director Bill Paul weakly defends this move with the excuse that he thought the state legislature might kill the funding altogether if he didn’t. “I honestly was quite concerned that the money would go away completely,” he said.

I’d like to know how Paul thinks that would have worked out given that the funds are federal, and would have put Tennessee in basically the same position as Indiana. The state trying such a move might actually have worked out better for Nashville’s women, because the federal funding agency might have stepped in at that point as they have in Indiana – which was already happening when Paul accepted the funds in Nashville.

Paul reportedly told Woods he hopes nonprofit family planning providers will fill the unmet need caused by Metro taking the funds. Uh, again, nonprofit family planning providers LIKE PLANNED PARENTHOOD? Paul played a role in solidifying that gap in services by accepting funds that would have been supplemented by private donations if they had one to Planned Parenthood. And now he hopes some unnamed non-profit family planning provider – presumably through private donations – can make up the gap? Who does he think is likely to do that? Is this really just a way of saying, “We took the money because of political pressure, but we really hope Planned Parenthood can keep providing those services, because we know and have acknowledged that we don’t have the capacity?” Maybe Paul’s secretly a great guy in a tough position, but I’m pretty sure being complicit in this situation was not the best way to protect or promote the public’s health.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Cancer, Contraception, Ethics, Government, Health, Sex & Sex Education, Vaginas & Vulvas, Women’s Health

I posted on Friday about Nashville’s Department of Health deciding to accept the funds that would normally go to Planned Parenthood for family planning services, and stating when they did so they were taking the money on the condition that they did not have to serve the same number of people. A commenter here – who appears to be close to the issue – pointed out that the county would probably need more local tax dollars to provide the same amount of service that Planned Parenthood provided with a combination of those federal funds and private donations.

I saw a few news items today that don’t make a coherent whole, but that I felt were related to the issue.

1. State Health Commissioner Susan Cooper reportedly sent a letter to the Metro Public Health Department urging them to take the federal funds that would normally go to Planned Parenthood. According to the Tennessean, her letter urged the department to “‘think creatively and consider working with community partners’ to deliver family planning services.”

Um, there’s already a community organization that is well-equipped with appropriate expertise for delivering family planning services. It’s called Planned Parenthood.

2. I have never really thought of Susan Cooper as a bowing-to-political-pressure, in-line-with-social-conservatives-instead-of-public-health sort of health commissioner. But we have a new Republican governor, and a newly more Republican state legislature. And then I ran across this news piece from January stating that she’s still in the position on an “interim” basis under said new Governor.

So I just assume that “interim” means “as long as the folks in charge are accomplishing political goals.” Which apparently include providing less care to fewer women, at least in the undefined short term.

3. That new Governor, Bill Haslam (R), was summed up just a week or so ago as proclaiming that “‘Unless Tennesseans make an effort to improve personal health, they could see more budget cuts in their children’s education as health-care costs continue to drain the state budget,’ Gov. Bill Haslam said Thursday.”

So, um, your kids might get even worse educations if we don’t all get healthier in Tennessee. But maybe “we” don’t seem to include women who need birth control, cancer screenings, or other family planning and reproductive health services, and especially not those women who struggle to afford such care. Those people can just pay more, somewhere else, as long as it serves the social conservative agenda.

4. I’ll just be over here banging my head against the wall.

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

Tennessee’s recent budget included a provision to strip family planning funds from Planned Parenthood. These are non-abortion funds that paid for women to receive care such as birth control. There was a bit of political drama about it; I’ll refer you here to catch up.

Today, in the wake of this drama, it was announced that the Davidson County (Nashville) health department would take over the $335,000 federal grant that used to go to Planned Parenthood for family planning.

Honestly, I can’t even come up with a coherent response to this right now.

Except.

If I’m reading correctly the letter from William Paul, director of the Metro Public Health Department of Nashville/Davidson County, the Nashville area health department is accepting the funds that would have gone to Planned Parenthood with the understanding that they will not serve all of the women/patients who were previously being served.

The Memphis and Nashville departments have reportedly already stated that they did not have the capacity to absorb all of the patients who were covered via the funds to Planned Parenthood. That seems to be the entire point of the relationship, of having the family planning funds go through Planned Parenthood, leaving the local health department to focus their efforts and limited capactiy elsewhere. As explained in the news:

County health departments in all 95 counties provide similar services with Title X funding but in Shelby and Davidson counties, the health departments have told the state they cannot serve everyone who needs them. So the state contracts with Planned Parenthood in the two counties to supplement the public agencies’ work.

The letter reads, with my emphasis added:

This acceptance is based on our understanding that the increased funding is not linked to a specific number of additional clients, as per your letter of June 3rd. It was our understanding earlier that the funding was tied to a specific caseload, and the proposed additional funding would represent only partial funding for the required caseload. As you know, we do not have local tax dollars available to expand this program. This combination of factors precluded us from accepting the full amount of funding available to Davidson County as it was offered in previous years.

We are confident that over time we can serve nearly the same number of clients that are currently served, and we will do what we can to ensure that these important services are not lost or adversely affected in Davidson County by this realignment.

What this sounds like to me?

We’ll take the money into the local health department because we understand that you find putting any money through Planned Parenthood icky, even if it’s to help women actually prevent unwanted pregnancies. We hope you understand that we’re not going to serve all of those women who are currently being served. We hope to get there eventually. Please to give us the money now.

Right. Because it’s a decent public health solution as long as we can stick it to Planned Parenthood, even if fewer women actually receive public health services.

@#$%!

[hat tip to B]

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

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

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

The Now@NEJM blog posted a new item in its Clinical Practice series, Streptococcal Pharyngitis. This seemed particularly relevant after a worker fixing a light on Friday – after about 20 minutes in my office – told me all about how his current case of strep throat. The NEJM piece doesn’t seem to address people like me, though – I have a penicillin allergy!

Acquaintance Ilissa has a diary up at Daily Kos on her first morning as an abortion clinic escort. I particularly liked one of the comments: “There is not room in one skin for two people with full rights.”

At the New York Times, Study of Breast Biopsies Finds Surgery Used Too Extensively. This would be the kind of harm people were talking about when they talked about what happens when we do too many mammograms on low-risk women.

Ema at the Well-Timed Period says it clearly with regards to the South Dakota bill that could have made it legal to murder abortion providers, and how any changes they make to the bill now don’t make up for it:

Bottom line: Just because Rep. Phil Jensen and his cohorts were caught in the act of trying to legalize domestic terrorism and, when called on it, made some changes to the bill doesn’t mean they are absolved of responsibility.

Relatedly, over at Our Bodies Our Blog today I have The State-Level War on Choice: Updates from South Dakota. Note: I’m no longer even considering the possibility that Republicans “didn’t mean it that way” when they propose egregious legislation.

Over at The Unnecesarean, emajaybee writes about a 1940s experiment at the larger workplace in which pregnant women were given radioactive iron as part of an experiment. As I mentioned there, I first learned of this a few years ago when helping some students look for materials for a project on these studies. Over the weekend, I went to use the Nashville Banner (local newspaper) archives at the Nashville Public Library and pulled a news item on the experiments, if anyone would like to see it.

In the midst of the House vote to defund Title X (which funds family planning health services, including those non-abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood), I’ve picked up on some comments on Twitter stating that Planned Parenthood is anti-trans. While I support Planned Parenthood’s provision of low cost health services and tireless support of choice, those are serious allegations that deserve attention. I’m in the process of trying to learn more, but haven’t found much online – I’ve run into comments like this one and this one, but would like to find out more about how much this involves individual screw-ups vs. organizational policy, and if PP staff are held accountable by their employers for anti-trans statements and practices. If anyone has insights into how/whether PP folks are trained to provide services to trans women and men, or how PP is failing trans women individually or systemically, I would like to hear about that. There need to be clear consequences for PP staff members who discriminate against *any* women.

That said, I do believe PP provides crucial access to abortion services and other family planning and health services for so many women, and defunding Title X further disadvantages poor women who rely on their services.

Relatedly, in my searching, I found this post: Promoting and Protecting the Sexual and Reproductive Rights and Health of Transgender People: What We Can Do, which outlines actions to be taken by the public, donor agencies, and states.

Not really health related, but some bills have been introduced in Tennessee that are similar to the union-busting bills in Wisconsin. The Tennessee Education Association is having a rally in Nashville on March 5th.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Government, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Women’s Health