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

A few things that have caught my attention over the last couple of weeks:

Over at Nature, which is *supposed* to be a respectable publication, Ed Rybicki wrote some utter unfunny bullshit in Parallel Processing, in which men hunt, women gather, and HA HA, WOMEN are so good at SHOPPING because they can ACCESS A PARALLEL UNIVERSE. Because of how women and men are just so inherently different in a binary, unknowable-to-men way. LOLLERSKATES. Christie Wilcox over at Scientific American’s Science Sushi has the more mature response.

At another Scientific American blog, Kate Clancy talks about menstrual synchrony and why women might not really synchronize their cycles.

Rock Center has a segment on involuntary sterilization in North Carolina that disproportionately targeted women of color.

Health News Reviews takes a look at media coverage of a study on preventive mastectomy.

The draft research review for Closing the Quality Gap Series: Quality Improvement Interventions to Address Health Disparities is online (free) and open to public comment through Dec 15. (via BHIC)

eeshap at the Crunk Feminist Collective writes about diamonds and conflict, and why care in purchasing is not enough – we must make choices that devalue the diamond in society and therefore reduce diamond mining-related incentives to cruelty.

A clear photographic example of the way products for children reinforce gendered steretypes, in the form of magnetic words for boys and girls. Here, boys get the moon, a wizard, and a dragon, while girls get a diamond, perfume, and make-up. Oh, and bunnies.

Lena Chen has a guide to/review of some sex toys. The separate files for this article are totally unwieldy, but there is some good info therein.

I haven’t spent much time on the site yet, but here is the inevitable OccupyHealthcare. One thing they’re talking about is health information and responsibility for health literacy.

Jill Filipovic talks at the Guardian about the long game for personhood amendments.

The FDA revoked its approval of Avastin for metastatic breast cancer treatment.

Kotex has recalled a whole bunch of tampons.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Cancer, Drugs, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education

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

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

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

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

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

The New England Journal of Medicine published a freely available Clinical Practice article, “Care of Transsexual Persons.” It covers hormones, surgery, and adolescents. Note that it does use the problematic gender identity “disorder” language as included in the DSM and it also promotes the standard psychological counseling hoops that transgender persons must jump through prior to obtaining treatment – Julia Serano‘s “Whipping Girl” provides a good primer on why those hoops can be problematic. It might be worth checking out what kinds of materials health care providers are seeing regarding these topics, including how they’re problematic.

Relatedly, there’s a possibility that “gender identity disorder” will be renamed “gender incongruence” in the DSM-V.

Laura Chapin at a US News politics blog asks why anti-choice extremism is so commonplace and continuous threats against providers are considered acceptable:

It’s the acceptance of a level of hatred directed at women, especially poor women, seeking reproductive healthcare and abortions. And it’s the acceptance of threats and violence directed at the doctors, staff, and healthcare workers trying to provide it to them.

The Boston Globe has a very brief story illustrating the problem of giving obesity too much focus and attention when diagnosing a patient.

In The Crocodile Tears of Anti-Choice Billboarders, Gaylon Alcarez outlines the failures and disingenuousness of anti-choice billboards targeting Black women. Just read it.

Relatedly, NARAL and SisterSong have partnered to fight such billboards in Texas.

The CDC notes April as STD Awareness Month (can we get that changed to STI?), including some resources for providers and for finding testing.

Studies presented at meetings always have the caveat that they need to be peer-reviewed and have the methods and data published in order for the public to fully review and understand them. However, I wanted to note this recent news item:

New Orleans residents were found to have three times the rate of heart attacks four years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina than before the storm and levee break that flooded the city, according to a study presented at a major heart meeting on Sunday.

I’ll be interested to see the paper when published; the news item focuses on psychiatric illness, stress, and employment, but I wonder how much people with more financial resources leaving the area and access to care generally play a role.

Via TransTalk, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Recommended Actions to Improve the Health and Well-Being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Communities, which includes a summary of actions taken and recommendations for future actions. What do you think? Will this make a difference? Have they focused the right way?

The Institute of Medicine released a new report, The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding. It’s freely available if you read the PDF online; I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t vouch for how truly inclusive or useful it is.

Note to self: don’t ever move to the Dakotas. Most recently, North Dakota approved abstinence-only sex education.

A worthy rant from tigtog at Hoyden: Don’t mistake expressing contempt for taking offense.

Via Siobhan (who I’ll get to see at a health literacy conference in May – yay!) at BHIC, HHS Launches New Consumer-Focused Immunization Website. The new site is vaccines.gov.

Shameless Self-Promotion: at work, we’re posting staff profiles to our Facebook page leading up to an open house event; here’s mine. I’d appreciate if any personal comments were left here or on my own Facebook page instead of there.

Unrelated to health, except for the insurance aspect: an employer of 500+ people in my hometown is closing. The employees (largely hourly, relatively low wage) of this furniture factory were called together and basically told that – in addition to the upcoming closing – their health insurance was ending effective immediately. If that doesn’t illustrate a major problem with employer-based insurance, I don’t know what does. The county already has an unemployment rate over 10% so I expect those folks will have a hard time finding work; the company had been in town for more than 70 years.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances, Heart Health, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Libraryland, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education, Shameless Self-Promotion, Web Resources

Some things that caught my eye this week; for new folks, the Sunday news round-up tends to focus more on social issues than research or resources, including whatever I’ve noted for later reading from my RSS feeds or Twitter.

First, the English-language site for Al Jazeera has the most complete coverage I’ve seen of what’s going on in Egypt for those who need it in the English language.

I’m woefully behind on the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” proposed by House Republicans, so this first chunk is catching up. It seems to me to be completely unnecessary political posturing on the backs of women (and especially rape victims, as we’ll see), given that there are existing restrictions preventing federal funding for abortion. I know it includes an exception for “forcible rape,” which as far as I know is not a real legal term with an actionable definition. Many folks have expressed concerns would seem to exclude women who are date raped, or drugged, or otherwise not sufficiently otherwise physically abused in the course of being raped. Perhaps those women didn’t suffer enough for House Republicans to be considered for access to the means to make their own decisions about their own pregnancies. *headdesk*

It also fails to mention statutory rape, includes incest only if the victim is a minor, and includes only a “danger of death” exemption, not a health exemption.

Some things that caught my eye this week; for new folks, the Sunday news round-up tends to focus more on social issues than research or resources, including whatever I’ve noted for later reading from my RSS feeds or Twitter.

First, the English-language site for Al Jazeera has the most complete coverage I’ve seen of what’s going on in Egypt for those who need it in the English language.

I’m woefully behind on the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” proposed by House Republicans, so this first chunk is catching up. It seems to me to be completely unnecessary political posturing on the backs of women (and especially rape victims, as we’ll see), given that there are existing restrictions preventing federal funding for abortion. I know it includes an exception for “forcible rape,” which as far as I know is not a real legal term with an actionable definition. Many folks have expressed concerns would seem to exclude women who are date raped, or drugged, or otherwise not sufficiently otherwise physically abused in the course of being raped. Perhaps those women didn’t suffer enough for House Republicans to be considered for access to the means to make their own decisions about their own pregnancies. *headdesk*

It also fails to mention statutory rape, includes incest only if the victim is a minor, and includes only a “danger of death” exemption, not a health exemption.

Some things that caught my eye this week; for new folks, the Sunday news round-up tends to focus more on social issues than research or resources, including whatever I’ve noted for later reading from my RSS feeds or Twitter.

First, the English-language site for Al Jazeera has the most complete coverage I’ve seen of what’s going on in Egypt for those who need it in the English language.

I’m woefully behind on the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” proposed by House Republicans, so this first chunk is catching up. It seems to me to be completely unnecessary political posturing on the backs of women (and especially rape victims, as we’ll see), given that there are existing restrictions preventing federal funding for abortion. I know it includes an exception for “forcible rape,” which as far as I know is not a real legal term with an actionable definition. Many folks have expressed concerns would seem to exclude women who are date raped, or drugged, or otherwise not sufficiently otherwise physically abused in the course of being raped. Perhaps those women didn’t suffer enough for House Republicans to be considered for access to the means to make their own decisions about their own pregnancies. *headdesk*

It also fails to mention statutory rape, includes incest only if the victim is a minor, and includes only a “danger of death” exemption, not a health exemption.

Some things that caught my eye this week; for new folks, the Sunday news round-up tends to focus more on social issues than research or resources, including whatever I’ve noted for later reading from my RSS feeds or Twitter.

First, the English-language site for Al Jazeera has the most complete coverage I’ve seen of what’s going on in Egypt for those who need it in the English language.

I’m woefully behind on the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” proposed by House Republicans, so this first chunk is catching up. It seems to me to be completely unnecessary political posturing on the backs of women (and especially rape victims, as we’ll see), given that there are existing restrictions preventing federal funding for abortion. I know it includes an exception for “forcible rape,” which as far as I know is not a real legal term with an actionable definition. Many folks have expressed concerns that it would seem to exclude women who are date raped, or drugged, or otherwise not sufficiently physically abused in the course of being raped. Perhaps those women didn’t suffer enough for House Republicans to be considered for access to the means to make their own decisions about their own pregnancies. *headdesk*

It also fails to mention statutory rape, includes incest only if the victim is a minor, and includes only a “danger of death” exemption, not a health exemption.