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

The last few weeks have seen Tennessee on several “worst of” lists for women. The popular iVillage ranked us #40 among the “worst states for women” – for our lower rates of college degree completion, lower earnings, low levels of representation of women in state government, poor health, attacks on women’s rights, and other factors.

This week, Forbes named Knoxville, TN (home of Stacey Campfield) #3 in its list of Most Unfair Cities To Be A Working Woman because of disparities in pay between men and women.

And I missed this last month, but the blogger at Lavender and Cheese writes about another embarrassing finding that got basically no media attention here – Black women die more from breast cancer than white women, and that’s more true in Memphis, Tennessee than in any of the nation’s other largest cities. In Memphis, a Black woman is more than twice as likely to die as a white woman.

As that blogger explains:

We know what these numbers mean: black women are not getting the same access to cancer treatment that white women are. This is not a genetics problem; it’s a care problem, it’s an education problem, and it’s a socioeconomic problem.

And it’s exactly this kind of care inequality that the healthcare reform bill is supposed to alleviate.

The fact that this study has gone unreported and apparently unnoticed in Tennessee has to be a result of two things: laziness and cowardice.

I was born and raised in Tennessee. I chose to come back here after college. Like B, there are absolutely things I love about this state, from the big beauty of the landscape to smaller pleasures of local businesses and institutions and people. It’s not all about politics – but our politics are seriously messed up here right now.

We have Democrats in power who can’t bring themselves to denounce a State Rep when he publicly threatened to “stomp” any transgender woman he encounters. We have bills specifically trying to shame and intimidate women getting legal abortions and their providers, transformed into a bill to limit access in another dishonest way.

We have serious economic problems and disparities, a long list of problems that are getting us on other people’s “worst of” lists that we could tackle. Meanwhile, our state legislators are focused on saggy pants, making sure it’s okay for creationism to be discussed seriously in science classes, and pushing the racism and classism of trying to drug test all welfare recipients. And our Governor, Republican Bill Haslam, had the nerve to blame the media for covering this nonsense, instead of doing his job as a leader and taking on the state legislators for introducing and pushing said nonsense.

Welcome to Tennessee. Although we need you here, if you’re a woman, or poor, or not white and straight and cis and Christian, or you have a decent handle on science, you might want to pass on through, unless you have a lot of energy and patience for the fight. At least for now.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Cancer, Ethics, 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

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 couple of weeks ago, I posted that I sent a letter to various Tennessee state Democratic and Republican leaders asking them to publicly denounce the comments made by state Rep. Richard Floyd, in which he threatened violence against transgender women.

I noted at that time who had received the message (sent Jan 22), and am repeating them now simply to illustrate who has not bothered to respond – which was all of them, Democrat and Republican alike. I would count a dismissive email from a staffer as a response, although I’d probably post that here. Here’s who still couldn’t be bothered:

• 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

The silence is deafening. There is something seriously wrong when not one of these folks can manage to state publicly that having our Reps threaten segments of our citizenry is egregious. It’s even worse when it’s the Democrats doing it.

It’s no wonder we keep losing ground on women’s rights in this state, when an explicit threat to harm transgender women doesn’t even merit a strongly worded “this is unacceptable” message, and Dems in charge can’t find a way to spin *explicitly threatening violence against constituents* into an example of dangerous Republican narrow-mindedness they can use for political gain.

Filed under: Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Government

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

Tennessee State Representative Richard Floyd has introduced a bill that would make it a crime for people to be in a sex-specific bathroom or dressing room (i.e., one designated for men or women) that doesn’t match the sex given on their birth certificate.

Tennessee does not allow transgender people to have their birth certificates changed, so if the bill were passed, there would actually be no legal bathrooms for transgender men and women to use in any state government building. (It’s unclear to me whether this might also apply to other public restrooms in non-governmental buildings)

Practical people have noted other problems with this bill. It would be impossible to enforce, because there is no chance we’re going to set up checks outside of restrooms. It could hypothetically criminalize parents who need to take a child into a restroom, other caregivers in similar situations, maintenance workers, and others.

But let’s be clear – mom taking her male-appearing son into a women’s restroom is not the target of this bill. Transgender men and women are, because of the small-minded bigotry of Floyd and others like him.

To make that point perfectly clear, Floyd said this, clearly illustrating his bullshit fears and hatred of transgender women:

I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry.

You know, because transgender women are really all predators out to harm cis women, a belief Floyd emphasized by continuing, “Now if somebody thinks he’s a woman and he’s a man and wants to try on women’s clothes, let them him take them into the men’s bathroom or dressing room. Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk.”

This is not a secret email remark made by Floyd. It’s not a comment he thought was off-the-record, between friends. This is what he said on-the-record, for public consumption.

So, Chattanooga, who are you going to run against this asshole this year? And if this nonsense is not quickly withdrawn or defeated, who wants to go pee in the “wrong” bathrooms in the state capitol building with me?

[Note: it looks like the Senate version of the bill has already been withdrawn after public reaction began; it could potentially be reintroduced by someone else, and Floyd's House bill remains. Here's Floyd's contact information if you'd like to let him know what you think of him and his bill.]

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

Yesterday, Tennessee’s Governor instituted new rules limiting public demonstrations in Legislative Plaza (state public land) to specific hours and requiring daily approval of permits which will cost $65. After stating that the permit process would not be in place until this morning, the government sent police in in the middle of the night to remove Occupy Nashville demonstrators under the guise of a newly implemented curfew. 75 state troopers were sent to arrest 29 protesters. Below is the text of the letter I just sent to the Governor’s office in response:

Governor Haslam,

I am writing to express my concern about the sudden implementation of limited demonstration hours in Legislative Plaza and insistence on permits and curfews in this public space. While many areas do require permits for large events in public spaces, the creation of these rules mid-event suggests a desire to specifically interrupt Occupy Nashville efforts. It is profoundly disturbing to consider whether permits may be required or denied based upon whether the demonstration’s focus finds favor with state government, especially when the focus of dissent is the government itself. The suggestion by Bill Gibbons that others using or traveling through the Plaza outside of curfew hours would get a pass depending on their circumstances further suggests an intention to enforce the new rules inequitably.

I am also disturbed by the contradiction between clear reports that enforcement would not happen until today, and the frankly sneaky manner in which the curfew issue was employed to provide cover for removing people who had a reasonable belief that they would not need to clear out of the public space until today, and to do so when the least possible media would be present.

I’ve already viewed elsewhere the generic response sent to others who have written on this issue, the meat of which is:

“While this administration wholeheartedly supports freedom of speech, assembly and petition, it is our responsibility to keep people safe on state property. Abiding by these hours allows for a safe event, while ensuring the people’s right to peaceably assemble.”

I am certain you don’t mean to imply that it is only possible to keep people safe on state property during the hours of 9am to 4pm, the hours for which permits may ostensibly be approved. If so, I would expect that safety should also be a concern during the additional non-curfew hours,* 4pm to 10pm and 6am to 9am. There is no apparent rationale for the failure to align these hours and allow permits for assembly during the full 6am to 10pm time frame. The most charitable reading of this mismatch is a governmental unwillingness to provide for the proper security during some hours for those in exercise of their Constitutional liberties on public land. A less charitable read of this mismatch would suggest that it is the specific intent of the Governor’s office to limit the exercise of free speech and assembly by forbidding such activities on state land during the hours which most people have off work, thereby reducing the numbers of people who may participate in such activities.

Free speech and assembly are perhaps the most sacred rights of Americans, the tools which provide for all other rights to be acquired and defended. Interfering with these rights in such a manner is unconscionable. I urge you to rescind this misguided action and restore the exercise of constitutional freedoms to Legislative Plaza.

Regards,
Rachel R. Walden
Nashville, TN

*Added: above, where it says, “during the additional non-curfew hours, 4pm to 10pm and 6am to 9am” – I don’t think my wording was clear initially. Those are the hours in which people are allowed to be in the Plaza and not under curfew, but demonstrations are not being allowed.

I’d like to also offer my thanks and kudos to Night Court Magistrate Tom Nelson who refused to sign criminal trespass warrants for the protesters taken into custody.

Here’s what some other folks have had to say. I am particularly enjoying Aunt B’s writings on the subject.

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

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

Via Lindsey at The Memphis Blog, I learned of a report of a woman told by security at a Memphis, TN area Social Security office that she could not breastfeed her eight-month-old baby while waiting in line at the office. When she told the officer that she had the right to breastfeed where she was, the officer and then a manager tried to shuttle her off to a conference room, and was allegedly told that the office as a federal facility has its own rules.

Problem is, there is apparently a law specifically authorizing women to breastfeed on federal property where they are otherwise allowed to be – and it’s been law for more than a decade (see section 647).

Tennessee law is also quite clear, stating that “A mother has a right to breastfeed her child who is twelve (12) months of age or younger in any location, public or private, where the mother and child are otherwise authorized to be present,” and is specifically exempted from charges of indecent exposure (see title 68, chapter 58).

Even that 12-month age limit will be removed this year; a bill doing so was signed into law in April and will take effect July 1.

To be clear, I don’t know the blogger reporting this experience and have no firsthand knowledge of the report. However, I haven’t seen any news outlets (aside from Lindsey) pick up on the story and investigate it further, so I thought I’d give it a signal boost, and also use the opportunity to remind people of the law.

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

Via Lindsey at The Memphis Blog, I learned of a report of a woman told by security at a Memphis, TN area Social Security office that she could not breastfeed her eight-month-old baby while waiting in line at the office. When she told the officer that she had the right to breastfeed where she was, the officer and then a manager tried to shuttle her off to a conference room, and was allegedly told that the office as a federal facility has its own rules.

Problem is, there is apparently a law specifically authorizing women to breastfeed on federal property where they are otherwise allowed to be – and it’s been law for more than a decade (see section 647).

Tennessee law is also quite clear, stating that “A mother has a right to breastfeed her child who is twelve (12) months of age or younger in any location, public or private, where the mother and child are otherwise authorized to be present,” and is specifically exempted from charges of indecent exposure (see title 68, chapter 58).

Even that 12-month age limit will be removed this year; a bill doing so was signed into law in April and will take effect July 1.

To be clear, I don’t know the blogger reporting this experience and have no firsthand knowledge of the report. However, I haven’t seen any news outlets (aside from Lindsey) pick up on the story and investigate it further, so I thought I’d give it a signal boost, and also use the opportunity to remind people of the law.

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

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

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

Today marked the release of the 2011 Tennessee Women’s Health Report Card, a publication which provides a snapshot of the health status of women in our state, and the disparities they experience. It’s a handy resource for anyone interested in making a case – or understanding the need – for improved health services and community programs, and includes statistics that clearly illustrate some of the challenges we face.

Among them:

• 18.4% of us – or almost 1 in 5 – smoked while we were pregnant. The rate is highest (21.4%) among white women, and lower among African American (10.3%) and Hispanic (2.4%) women.
• African American women experience tremendous disparities in their infant mortality rate, with 16 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to 6 for white women and 6.6 for Hispanic women.
• About a third of us have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, are obese, and do not “engage in leisure time activity,” or exercise.
• 16.9% of us live below the poverty line, with disparities here as well – 13.9% of white women, 28.2% of African American women, and 42.1% of Hispanic women meet this depressing criteria.

I would encourage to take a look at the full report [PDF], especially if you are interested in working to improve the health of women and Tennesseans. Just browsing the statistics on reproductive health, sexually transmitted infections, causes of death, risky behaviors, preventive health practices (like cancer screening), and barriers to health care is sure to give you ideas for possible actions to take in your family, neighborhood, county, and state.

This year, I had the privilege of attending the release event for the report at the downtown branch of the Nashville Public Library, and so got to hear some really smart and engaged folks speak about the report and its implications for our communities. Action, or what we do in response to this report, was a major theme.

First up, Dr. Katherine Hartmann of Vanderbilt made a clear call to action, stating that this must be the year we look at this report and say, this is not just public health data, it’s us and our families, and represents many challenges that we must address.

Next, Dr. Jeffrey Balser of Vanderbilt, noted the responsibility of large employers in contributing to the health of their employees and, by extension, the community. He challenged people in places of authority to do active and visible things to improve the health of those around them.

Third up, Dr. Charles Mouton of Meharry Medical College observed that some of his peers have grown weary of hearing about health diaparities and how we have failed to fully addreas them. He then challenged us all to work to eliminate them, calling it our duty to the women this report card represents to eliminate those disparities. He asked the audience to look at the report card as a roadmap for where we have not done well, and where we can and should work to improve health care and access to care for all Tennesseans.

Next, Dr. Stephaine Hale Walker of Vanderbilt began with a review of the good and bad grades on the report card, noting the good news that deaths from diabetes continue to decline, more than 80% of women over 50 had a mammogram in the last two years, and deaths from colorectal cancer are at a low. She also noted that stroke and heart disease rates are very slowly showing trends toward improvement.

The bad news, as we’ve touched on, is that disparities continue for many health issues, such as our African American women being at a much higher risk of having a very low birthweight infant, having an infant die before its first birthday, dying from cervical or breast cancer, or having a sexually transmitted infection. Likewise, social barriers such as poverty, unemployment, and lack of healthcare coverage continue to challenge us.

From there, Dr. Hale Walker moved to an inspiring discussion of the need to ask ourselves “now what?” We can’t just talk about these problems, she said, we need to ask what we can do to be part of the solution, form collaborations, and act to make change.

As an example of her own committment to acting for change, Dr. Hale Walker spoke about the Full Circle organization which works to connect people with the great organizations in Nashville offering free and sliding scale healthcare resources. She also is married to Bishop Joseph Walker of prominent Mount Zion Baptist Church, where the church has implemented the ChurchFit program to provide access to fitness classes to the member community, and health education programs on a variety of topics, partially inspired by the statistics in the 2009 edition of the report card. I had the opportunity to speak to one of Mount Zion’s congregants at the reception after the report release, and found her attitude, story, and words inspiring and motivating as well. Stories shared by other women in conjunction with the report are available on this page.

Finally, Commisioner Susan Cooper of the Tennessee Department of Health spoke, calling for us to be smarter about how we spend our resources, and to focus them in areas of highest risk. She reminded us that significant improvements are not going to happen overnight or on their own, and require time and dedicated action. She highlighted state programs acting to make a difference, like the tobacco Quit Line, and Get Fit Tennessee, the website of which includes a free healthy cookbook I need to check out.

Cooper asked us to think about small personal changes we can make, but to also think about policy. Her vision of policy extends beyond whatever the legislature is or isn’t doing – we are asked to think about how university, urban design, and other policies affect the health of our community, and to ask for these policies to be formed in ways that promote our health.

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying – I left today’s report card launch inspired, and hope seeing the disparities and room for major improvement of the full report inspires you, too.

*Disclosure: Vanderbilt is my larger place of work, and people I’ve worked with worked on this report.

Filed under: Birth, Cancer, Events & Observances, Heart Health, Infectious Diseases, Mental Health, Pregnancy, Women’s Health

Last week it was announced by Tennessee’s new Republican Governor, Bill Haslam, that three RVs have been bought to address joblessness in this state. From the announcement:

Governor Haslam and the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development today unveiled three vehicles designed to improve outcomes for those looking for work. Three “Career Coaches” were customized with 10 computer workstations with Internet access, printers, fax machines, and flat screen TV’s with SMART Board overlays to facilitate classroom instruction. The intent of these roving offices is to bring job matching and training to rural communities that have limited access to a Tennessee Career Center.

The vehicles will be based in Huntingdon, Nashville and Knoxville in order to cover all areas of the state. Each mobile unit will be staffed with three Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development employees who are trained in career counseling and unemployment benefits.

Those employees will do workshops on job search and interviewing skills, résumé preparation, administer GED Practice Tests, and the like.

In a long state with 95 counties, we are stationing mobile computer labs in RVs in *three* of them (two of which are urban), RVs which will then drive out to rural areas – and let’s remember that is not cheap – carrying equipment that is already on site in pretty much every county in the state, housed in public libraries.

Rather than buying the RVs, the gas required to drive three RVs all over the state, and inviting people to learn about job skills in the confines of said RVs (doesn’t that sound inviting?), the Governor could have elected to have Labor and Workforce Development employees drive smaller, regular cars – consuming less gas – to places where those computers and equipment already exist in more spacious environments with classrooms in place – our state’s many public libraries, already located in every county where these RVs will need to travel.

Some pretty nice efficiencies could have been realized, and they could have taken advantage of the computer skills training already in place in many if not most public libraries, at the same time connecting job seekers to a wealth of other educational resources (such as language learning and literacy resources). Some public libraries have already taken the initiative to provide job search, online application completion, and related training to library users – Haslam’s corps of experts could have supplemented that work by passing along knowledge for reuse, extending the utility of the programs beyond single visits. In some cases, it might have been necessary to provide additional equipment to a county’s public library – putting the money there instead of in fuel-guzzling RVs would have actually provided a benefit to those communities that would last beyond when the RV pulls out of town. Even with grant money funding the nearly $200,000 purchase cost of each RV, the ongoing and opportunity costs here are shameful.

Frankly, Governor Haslam should be embarrassed that somebody on his team didn’t already think of this. Public libraries and their staff could have done it better, for less money, in a way that would benefit residents of Tennessee for more time. Sure, an RV can go directly to the factory that’s shutting down and spend a day or a week there – but our public libraries are there every day in every county, providing the resources to make our communities smarter and stronger. Let’s support them, not the short-term Haslam gas-guzzling express.

[hat tip to newscoma, via twitter]

***************

Added: via a comment by Coble on B’s post, I learned that the idea for what we’re jokingly referring to as “Jobs Party Buses” came from former Governor Phil Bredesen (D). I don’t think that makes it any more sensible – Bredesen was short-sighted in suggesting it, and Haslam was short-sighted in not killing it. B addresses that aspect a bit in a comment over at Pith.

I also appreciated B’s hilarious response to Michael Silence, who suggested the TNDP had done a good job getting out talking points, and that’s what generated the posts.

Listen, I’m a lefty, super pro-choice, feminist. The TNDP has treated folks like me and B like we’re nonexistent in just about every election forever, and couldn’t get talking points out to people like us to blog on them on a non-Friday-afternoon if their lives depended on it. For my part, I never even saw that Ds had said anything about it until Silence himself linked to something, because I don’t really care about their half-hearted press statements that miss the real mistakes of the initiative. I care what they’re doing – and that is using resources in a way I don’t think is very smart or sustainable, as detailed above.

Filed under: Ethics, Government, Libraryland

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

Assorted items of interest collected over the last week or so; as usual, the Sunday round-up is more socially than medically oriented, this week with several items on transgender women and related rights, issues, and prejudices as I’ve been trying to read more about these topics.

Scientific American has an excerpt from a new book, Demand Better! Revive Our Broken Health Care System. It’s a pretty clear explanation of how little doctors apply the best, most current evidence to medical treatment, and might be pretty shocking for folks who are not involved in evidence-based medicine issues. For example:

Even though clinical guidelines exist…physicians get it right about 55 percent of the time across all medical conditions. In other words, patients receive recommended care only about 55 percent of the time, on average…. How well physicians did for any particular condition varied substantially, ranging from about 79 percent of recommended care delivered for early-stage cataracts to about 11 percent of recommended care for alcohol dependence. Physicians prescribe the recommended medication about 69 percent of the time, follow appropriate lab-testing recommendations about 62 percent of the time and follow appropriate surgical guidelines 57 percent of the time. Physicians adhere to recommended care guidelines 23 percent of the time for hip fracture, 25 percent of the time for atrial fibrillation, 39 percent for community-acquired pneumonia, 41 percent for urinary-tract infection and 45 percent for diabetes mellitus.

Friends and family members who I encourage to question your physicians, to find out more, to not accept decisions based on simple authority? See above.

Renee at Womanist Musings calls out Bitch magazine for their focus on middle class white women in an article on “mommy bloggers” and their inclusion of women of color only as (literal) footnotes in the piece. She points out that in general women of color are not thought of when people thing of “mommy bloggers” and “mommies,” and that white women who blog on these topics are much more likely to receive recognition, book deals and other rewards – and it’s not because they’re just inherently better writers or more experienced moms.

Apparently some obstetricians in Tennessee are upset about a plan to have the state’s Medicaid program reimburse cesareans at the same rate as vaginal deliveries, in part to influence physicians to do fewer cesareans that are not medically indicated.

One physician interviewed tries to make a claim that physicians have to do more cesareans now because physicians are doing more cesareans…making a distinction between elective procedures and elective procedures done so physicians can avoid risks without working patients into that equation:

“It is very true that the rate of cesarean deliveries is increasing, but it is not increasing just because of convenience. It is increasing because of the repeat cesarean deliveries that occur…Many doctors now don’t want to face the liability of doing a vaginal birth after a cesarean section.”

Some repeat cesareans are obviously going to be medically indicated, but repeat after me: physician’s desire to avoid potential legal liability /= medical indication.

Becoming Johanna — A Trans Youth’s Story (VIDEO) – video focuses on an adolescent transgender Latina kid Johanna whose mother committed her to a mental hospital in order to prevent her from transitioning. A trailer is available; they’re part of a larger project.

Guest Post: Transmisogyny is Misogyny Against All Women at Transarchism. Includes discussion of what a woman’s body “should” have in order to be considered “woman” by other people:

What the hell does a woman’s body possess that makes it a woman’s body? What does it NEED to have to be female. Did you immediately think of breasts, ovaries, vaginas? Gross. Think about that for more than two minutes and you’ll see why it’s gross. Still don’t get it? Well then go down to the nearest breast cancer walk and tell every single woman with a double mastectomy she’s not a woman. When you’re done with that, go down to your local hospital, ask the nurse where the OR is, and wait outside until you can find a woman fresh out of her hysterectomy surgery, and tell her the news. Yeah, that sounds evil, doesn’t it? Well it’s basically what you’re doing when you’re policing trans women’s bodies. You’re telling all women what they have to have on/in their bodies to be a woman. Which, obviously, is totally gross.

Monica at TransGriot notes that while white feminists called out George Lopez for his body size-related remarks on Kirstie Alley, they were silent about transphobic comments directed at woman of color Wendy Williams. You don’t have to be a fan of any of those three to note the difference in handling.

The blogger at Lollygagging and Lassitude reacts to the reaction to the misogynistic, ableist, and ageist nonsense of Scott Adams of Dilbert by talking to feminists about picking targets – “But do not forget there are women who will die for reasons that have nothing to do with Scott Adams’ words” – including trans women. I have noted my dislike of “shouldn’t you be focused on more important things?” arguments in the past, and they are often cited as a derailing tactic when employed by external parties. In this case, though, it’s worth talking amongst ourselves about whether there are systemic privileges that focus what we talk about as feminists – nobody’s saying we shouldn’t talk about Scott Adams, I think the author is saying that we can talk about Scott Adams but we need to also remember not to use all of our fighting energy on people like him.

Audacia Ray explains that “You” probably couldn’t be arrested in New York City under provisions that allow condoms to be counted as evidence of sex work, that “Policies like this one exist solely to uphold the ability of police to harass people of color, poor people, and often trans women who are profiled as being sex workers or nabbed for ‘walking while trans.’”

Queerty has a bit on challenging the New York City requirement that trans men and women have genital surgery in order to change their birth certificate.

TransTalk points to the “Two Spirits” documentary to be aired by Independent Lens (PBS) in June. The website for the film is at http://twospirits.org/.

Rep. Henry Waxman demands answers from Ther-Rx about Makena – There’s a drug meant to help prevent preterm birth that was approved by the FDA as an “orphan drug” at which point the company that got the approval hiked the price from about $10-$20 a dose to $1500/dose. There is also commentary on the March of Dimes’s response, and a call to boycott Makena in favor cheaper compounded preparations.

AARP has a piece on inaccuracies in translated drug labels, citing a study (I haven’t read yet) that “Fifty percent of all prescription labels translated from English to Spanish are wrong or incomplete.”

The FDA may start regulating mobile medical software/apps.

Women’s eNews has a bit on maternal deaths in New York City.

Ron Paul introduced the Sanctity of Life Act for 2011 (HR 1096), which would define human life and personhood “from the moment of conception.” I hardly need to get into the fetus>woman, miscarriage, detectability of non-implanted fertilized eggs, and gross misogyny issues, right?

Some things from libraryland:
We need to work together to save the Statistical Abstract of the United States.

And the Nashville Public Library is compiling a digital history of our May flood.

For emergency responders, WISER has been updated – it’s “a system designed to assist first responders in hazardous material incidents” from the National Library of Medicine.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Drugs, Ethics, Government, Libraryland, 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

Yesterday was the sixth annual Blog for Choice day – officially, I missed it, but I think the issues raised in yesterday’s post on the Kermit Gosnell abortion clinic atrocities are important ones to discuss. Today (the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade), I’m getting with the official program to attempt to answer this year’s theme question: Given the anti-choice gains in the states and Congress, are you concerned about choice in 2011?

Of course. Of course.

Of course I’m concerned at the national level. Efforts to change provisions of health care reform or penalize people and companies when their health insurance covers abortion may have serious effects, and represent further anti-choice efforts to mislead people about “federal funding for abortion.” I hope that most of these attempts will not only pass the House, though, having little chance for real implementation – although we’d have to count on our Democratic Senators voting pretty uniformly for the pro-choice position, and I don’t think we can count on that.

I’m more concerned at the state level. Here in Tennessee, some of the most egregiously anti-choice and anti-woman legislation used to get stuck in committee. This, I’m afraid, will no longer be the case.

Hell, on November 5, 2008, I wrote that pro-choice advocates needed to start paying attention to what was happening in Tennessee, that we were going to need your attention and help. That is only more true now, as Republicans now control the state House, Senate, and Governor’s office. The new Republican House speaker has reworked the committees, assigning Republicans to head all of them, with Glen Casada selected for the Health and Human Services committee – typically one first stop for any abortion-related bills. Casada is currently working to block a non-discrimination ordinance, opposed gay marriage, and pledges to “work to change Tennessee’s laws so that the most innocent have the same constitutional right that you and I have, the ‘right to life.’”

Tennessee anti-choice politicians have been trying to pass a constitutional amendment to state that nothing in our state Constitution protects the right to an abortion for years – of course I’m worried that this will be the period in which they are actually able to do so.

Forced ultrasounds, death certificates for abortion, more restrictive waiting periods and other regulations – I’m guessing it’s all on the table, that our state Republicans would rather work on these anti-choice political “wins” than addressing jobs, education, infrastructure, or other pressing issues. We already get a “D” grade from NARAL Pro-Choice America, which estimates that 94% of our counties already have no abortion provider.

Welcome to Tennessee. Please check your reproductive rights at the state line.

Other participating blogs are listed at http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/get-involved/online-day-of-action/bfcd11-main.html with links to their sites. I will soon be overfeeding my RSS reader with lots of sites I hadn’t seen until now. A couple of posts I liked (after randomly clicking on blogs with intriuing titles and a few familiar ones):

• Ethiopian Feminist: “I feel that the growing influence of the extreme right and related anti-choice gains at the domestic level will soon thereafter have a spill over on international policy.”
• Shark-fu is concerned *and* encouraged
• The Feminist Librarian – how did I not see this blog before now?? “It’s the responsibility of those of us who are pro-choice on abortion and reproductive health to articulate what people do need to follow through on their choices. Because if we don’t, we might have a ‘choice’ … but not much of a chance to act on it.”
• Also, here are my 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 Blog for Choice Day posts.

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

First things first: the Senate voted on Saturday to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Hurray! The roll call vote for all of the Senators is here, reflecting the 65 votes for repeal and 35 votes against. The votes for repeal came almost exclusively from Democrats, with just eight Republicans voting yes. My own Senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, were unsurprisingly among the Republicans who voted against repeal; I’m disappointed in them for voting their party and their prejudice to be on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of human rights and dignity.

The repeal will not become active for at least 60 days; HRC has a Pathway to Final Repeal document [PDF] that explains the necessary next steps, and warns service members about the interim:

The Human Rights Campaign issues this critical warning to service members: Repeal of DADT is not effective immediately and service members are still at risk of being discharged on the basis of their sexual orientation until certification occurs and 60 days have passed.

Also, as @polerin was clearly pointing out yesterday, the repeal of DADT does not protect trans service members, and passage of ENDA is still needed to protect trans workers everywhere. Trans Talk has a copy of a statement on this issue from the Transgender American Veterans Association.

Of course, the Senate also failed to pass the DREAM Act, which would have provided some avenues to education and citizenship for young immigrants brought here as children. I keep reading the “DREAM Act defeated” headlines as “DREAM Act deferred…”

In other news, Kate Harding has a completely amazing post, Some Shit I’m Sick of Hearing Regarding Rape and Assange. You really just need to read it if you have heard the commentary that Wikileaks’ Assange *just* didn’t use a condom, are tired of that commentary, or don’t yet understand what’s so problematic about that line of Assange defense. It’s a crash course in recognizing and combating rape apology.

Relatedly, Sady of Tiger Beatdown has had some internet drama related to Michael Moore’s reaction to the Assange situation and his minimizing comments related to the rape accusations – Sady has been demanding that rape victims’ stories not be thrown under the bus of Wikileaks worship. It involves a Keith Olbermann Twitter flounce. Thanks to Sady for tirelessly afflicting the powerful. Just go catch up over there. Kate Harding has also posted her support in Why I’m On Board With #mooreandme.

I just finished reading “Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity,” a collection of essays on passing, gender, race, and identity. Some of the essays are better than others, but the whole book is worth a read for an interesting meditation on dominant narratives, the ways in which so many individuals don’t perfectly fit our assumptions about who/what people are, and how we create and convey our identities along the way.

I have issues with this story and the reactions it has generated that probably need to be explored in a longer post. I never saw the “Is She A Hero Or A Danger?” language CNN purportedly used to discuss this woman who had a home VBAC after three cesareans (VBA3C); that’s not the headline now, but I think the answer is probably “neither,” and “these are the very cases against which we test our principles about what a woman can and cannot be compelled to do with her body for the sake of another person’s body.”

New sexually transmitted infection treatment guidelines are out from the CDC; they also include screening and prevention recommendations.

Renee at Womanist Musings shares a video about images of women in advertising.

Cara at The Curvature points to a local story I’d missed: Nashville Police Officers Charged With Domestic Violence Get to Keep Their Jobs. Ugh. This reminds me that I need to contact Nashville police to follow up on an incident of police action I witnessed/reported.

In other local news, the story of Coach Howe’s dismissal from Belmont University because of her sexual orientation made the New York Times. For ongoing coverage, the Belmont Vision student newspaper and Pith in the Wind (blog of the local alt-weekly) seem to be doing the best job.

At Feministe, Hospital saves woman’s life; is told by Catholic leadership not to do it again, Oops, I forgot to have babies!, and two posts related to the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers – It’s not just violent clients who abuse sex workers, and Whore Stigma Makes No Sense.

RHRC is also hosting a series to explore and combat violence against sex workers.

Perhaps I’m entirely too skeptical, but I find it hard to buy this official story that the 36 LGBT books damaged with urine in a Harvard library were “accidentally” damaged by a staff member who just *happened* to spill a nearby open bottle of urine on said books. I’m a librarian, and a spilly/messy one at that, but this really strains my credulity.

As always, please check out Our Bodies Our Blog – this week we’ve been talking about genetic testing and privacy, and Avastin.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Ethics, Events & Observances, Government, Infectious Diseases, Libraryland, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Reviews