For Privacy’s Sake, Taking Risks to End Pregnancy By JENNIFER 8. LEE and CARA BUCKLEY Published: January 4, 2009 via nytimes.com Amalia Dominguez was 18 and desperate and knew exactly what to ask for at the small, family-run pharmacy in the heart of Washington Heights, the thriving Dominican enclave in northern Manhattan. “I need to bring down my period,” she recalled saying in Spanish, using a euphemism that the pharmacist understood instantly. It was 12 years ago, but the memory remains vivid: She was handed a packet of pills. They were small and white, $30 for 12. Ms. Dominguez, two or three months pregnant, went to a friend’s apartment and swallowed the pills one by one, washing them down with malta, a molasseslike extract sold in nearly every bodega in the neighborhood. The cramps began several hours later, doubling Ms. Dominguez over, building and building until, eight and a half hours later, she locked herself in the bathroom and passed a lifeless fetus, which she flushed.   Read more on For Privacy’s Sake, Taking Risks to End Pregnancy posted 5 January 2009   2008 Top Ten Wins for Women's Health Wednesday 24 December 2008 by: Beth Fredrick, RH Reality Check 1) New US Administration Offers Hope for Women and Girls The election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States provides an opportunity to uphold human rights, promote health for all, and change the future of millions. Women's health and rights advocates in every corner of the world expressed excitement and hopefulness. What's next: For many, the most urgent issues facing the United States are the financial crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but achieving global peace requires securing every woman's right to a just and healthy life. The International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC) was among the first to outline an agenda for women's rights and health for the new administration and is working with the transition team and other advocates to promote priorities for women and girls. 2) A New "Mexico City Policy" Leads the Way on Comprehensive Sexuality Education Prior to the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City in August, health and education ministers from throughout Latin America and the Caribbean pledged to invest in comprehensive sexuality education and increase access to health services to strengthen the region's HIV/AIDS response. The resulting Mexico City Declaration on Sex Education in Latin America and the Caribbean was unanimously endorsed.? What's next: Advocates, including IWHC, are working with the Pan American Health Organization to assist countries in fulfilling their commitments, including dramatically increasing the number of schools that provide comprehensive sexuality education by 2015. 3) U.S. Citizens Turn Back Attempts to Restrict Abortion Access Read more on 2008 Top Ten Wins for Women's Health posted 3 January 2009   A Parting Shot at Women’s Rights Published: December 25, 2008 Editorial, nytimes.com Undermining women’s reproductive rights and access to health care has been a pervasive theme of the outgoing administration. On his first full day in office, President Bush imposed the “global gag rule,” which prohibits taxpayer dollars from going to international family-planning groups that perform abortions using their own funds or that advocate for safe abortion laws. So it was unsurprising, but still dismaying, that the secretary of health and human services, Michael Leavitt, chose to extend that dismal record at the last minute with yet another awful regulation. A parting gift to the far right, the new regulation aims to hinder women’s access to abortion, contraceptives and the information necessary to make decisions about their own health. What makes it worse is that the policy is wrapped up in a phony claim to safeguard religious freedom. The law has long allowed doctors and nurses to refuse to participate in an abortion. Mr. Leavitt’s changes elevate the so-called right to refuse beyond reason to an increased number of medical institutions and a broad range of health care workers and services — including abortion referrals, unbiased counseling and provision of emergency contraception, even to rape victims. The impact will be hardest on poor women who rely on public programs for their health care. Read more on A Parting Shot at Women’s Rights posted 26 December 2008   Bush's Last-Minute "Conscience" Rules Cause Furor by Julie Rovner, NPR News Thursday 18 December 2008 via truthout.org Health care workers, hospitals and even entire insurance companies could decline to perform, refer or pay for abortion or any other health care practice that violates a "religious belief or moral conviction" under new rules issued by the outgoing Bush administration. "This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience," said Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt. But opponents of the rule, now set to take effect Jan. 19, say it could threaten patients' health. Read more about Bush's Last-Minute "Conscience" Rules Cause Furor posted 20 December 2008 Advocates Weigh In on FDA Leader By ALICIA MUNDY DECEMBER 18, 2008 online.wsj.com - Wall Street Journal Health groups, some backed by the drug industry, have joined the heated lobbying battle in Washington over the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, sending a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tom Daschle urging him to pick a person familiar with the industry. The letter follows signs that two outspoken critics of drug makers and the FDA -- Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic and Baltimore health chief Joshua Sharfstein -- are candidates for the top FDA job. Dr. Sharfstein is leading President-elect Barack Obama's team assessing the agency. Read more about Advocates Weigh In on FDA Leader posted 19 December 2008 Bush-Era Abortion Rules Face Possible Reversal Wednesday 17 December 2008 by: Laura Meckler, The Wall Street Journal via www.truthout.org Obama team looks at regulation set to be finalized this week letting medical staff refuse to take part in practices they oppose. Washington - The outgoing Bush administration this week will finalize a regulation establishing a "right of conscience" allowing medical staff to refuse to participate in any practice they object to on moral grounds, including abortion but possibly birth control and other health care as well. In transition offices across town, officials in the incoming Obama administration have begun considering how and when to undo it. Read more about Bush-Era Abortion rules posted 17 December 2008 Memo To General Mills: Quit Sugar-Coating Your Toxic Pink Yoplait Campaign Feminist Peace Network November 12th, 2008 For the second time this week, it appears that we need to talk about the toxic commodifying of women’s breasts for corporate gain: There aren’t too many things I like less than companies that sell toxic pink stuff to raise awareness about breast cancer. But when those of us who they are trying to con into thinking they are such good little corporate doobies complain and they respond with a letter suggesting that we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads and then try to confuse the facts, then I’m seeing red. Read more about General Mills lack of response posted 14 December 2008 FDA Holds Meeting on New Female Condom By Molly M. Ginty Run Date: 12/11/08 WeNews correspondent (WOMENSENEWS)--It's squeaky, squishy, baggy and bunchy. And it could help save women's lives. That's the word on a new female condom that a Food and Drug Administration committee may recommend for market approval today. Like the other version of the female condom--the "FC" approved by the FDA in 1994--the second-generation "FC2" is made by the Chicago-based Female Health Company. Just as effective as its predecessor at preventing unwanted pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, the new version is made of nitrile, a cheaper material than the older version's polyurethane, and is 30 percent less expensive. Cost estimates range from $1.40 to $2.10 for consumers and about half that for health care organizations that distribute it. The new condom has won support from women's advocates for its reduced price and because women can insert it without a sexual partner's help. Read more about the new female condom posted 14 December 2008 Severe Heart Attacks Deadlier for Women Monday 08 December 2008 by: Roni Caryn Rabin, The New York Times Women who suffer a type of severe heart attack were less likely than men to survive the first 24 hours in a hospital, a new study has found. Female heart attack patients overall were less likely to receive timely treatment with aspirin or certain heart drugs, therapy to restore blood flow, or angioplasty to open blocked arteries, the authors also reported. The study appears in today's issue of the medical journal Circulation, which is published by the American Heart Association. Read more about heart attacks and women posted 11 December 2008 When a Job Disappears, So Does the Health Care By ROBERT PEAR Published: December 6, 2008 The New York Times The crisis is on display here. Starla D. Darling, 27, was pregnant when she learned that her insurance coverage was about to end. She rushed to the hospital, took a medication to induce labor and then had an emergency Caesarean section, in the hope that her Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan would pay for the delivery. ... Ms. Darling [is] among 275 people who worked at an Archway cookie factory here in north central Ohio. The company provided excellent health benefits. But the plant shut down abruptly this fall, leaving workers without coverage, like millions of people battered by the worst economic crisis since the Depression. About 10.3 million Americans were unemployed in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of unemployed has increased by 2.8 million, or 36 percent, since January of this year, and by 4.3 million, or 71 percent, since January 2001. Most people are covered through the workplace, so when they lose their jobs, they lose their health benefits. On average, for each jobless worker who has lost insurance, at least one child or spouse covered under the same policy has also lost protection, public health experts said. Read more about the need for health care posted 8 December 2008 Putting Another Anti-Abortion Myth to Bed Cindy Cooper on December 3, 2008 - 8:00am Cindy Cooper's blog RH Reality Check Don't look now, but another anti-abortion myth was put to bed in this election. The defeat of state anti-abortion ballot measures marks the buckling of an underlying girder of the anti-abortion movement. For years, anti-abortion adherents have insisted that the U.S. Supreme Court wrongly took the matter of abortion out of the hands of the voters in 1973 with the decision in Roe v. Wade and, willy-nilly, imposed the right to choose on an unwilling public. Read more about decline of anit-abortion posted 7 December 2008   For Women, AIDS Day Comes With Dose of Frustration Run Date: 12/01/08 By Molly M. Ginty WeNews correspondent For 280,000 HIV-positive women in the United States, new treatments have revolutionized care, making it possible to live on for decades and to bear children without transmitting the disease. That's the kind of victory that HIV-AIDS activists will be celebrating today at a World AIDS Day meeting at the Women's Resource Center at the University of Oregon in Eugene; at a benefit featuring jazz singer Loretta Holloway in Greenville, S.C.; at a "Girls Night Out" discussion forum in Augusta, Ga.; and at a Black AIDS Institute gala featuring actress Sheryl Lee Ralph--and honoring five female HIV-AIDS activists--in New York City. But at the same time, women's health advocates are marking the 20th annual World AIDS Day with more than a hint of frustration. "Key scientific questions aren't even being asked," says Dazon Dixon Diallo, president of SisterLove, an Atlanta-based HIV-AIDS advocacy organization for women. "The disease's impact on female fertility and reproduction is barely being addressed." Read more about AIDS Day from a Woman's perspective posted 4 December 2008   Broader medical refusal rule may go far beyond abortion By David G. Savage December 2, 2008 LA Times Reporting from Washington — The outgoing Bush administration is planning to announce a broad new "right of conscience" rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable, including abortion and possibly even artificial insemination and birth control. For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that <http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2008pres/08/20080821reg.pdf>healthcare workers also may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion. It also seeks to cover more employees. For example, in addition to a surgeon and a nurse in an operating room, the rule would extend to "an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments," the draft rule said. Read more about the "right of conscience" rule posted 3 December 2008   'Conscience Rule' Creates Quandary for Hospitals Run Date: 11/20/08 By Iulia Anghelescu WeNews correspondent (WOMENSENEWS)--Now that Sen. Barack Obama is president-elect, some pro-choice activists don't think it's so dire that President Bush is on the brink of signing a health-policy rule that could restrict access to contraception and abortion. Gloria Feldt, for one, sees it as the flutters of a lame duck. "I suspect the 'conscience rule' will be the last gift of the Bush administration to the anti-choice groups," said Feldt, an author, activist and the former director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York. "The good news is that President-elect Barack Obama can change it by executive order when in office." But for as long as it lasts, the rule--issued as a draft proposal by the Health and Human Services Department in August and under public review through late September--could complicate legal and financial life for any federally funded institution, said Adam Donfield, senior public policy associate at the New York-based Guttmacher Institute. Read more about the problem more than 580,000 federally funded institutions would face posted 22 November 2008 Industry, Feds Entice Black Mothers to Bottle Feed Run Date: 11/17/08 By Molly M. Ginty WeNews correspondent ... "Since 1999, infant formula advertising increased from 7,000 print and television ads to 10,000 per year," says Mishawn Purnell-O'Neal, founder of the Chicago-based Breastfeeding America and author of "Breastfeeding Facts Over Fiction: Health Implications on the African-American Community," published in 2001. "With this aggressive marketing, it stands to reason that breastfeeding rates across all races, and particularly rates among African American women, do not meet government health objectives." In April 2008, a report from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated black women are less likely to breastfeed than white or Latina women. Only 65 percent of African American mothers had ever tried breastfeeding. And only 20 percent were following government recommendations and exclusively nursing when their infants were six months old, compared to the 40 percent of white women who did so. "The same health problems that are common in the African American community--asthma, obesity, diabetes and childhood infections--are problems that could be reduced through more breastfeeding," says Miriam Labbok, a professor of maternal and child health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Read more about the industry targeted campaign posted 18 November 2008 Anti-Abortion Terror Tactics Take a Toll by: Eleanor J. Bader, On the Issues Magazine Fall 2008 Issue To the anti-abortion movement, standing outside clinic doors and bellowing at patients and staff that they are murderers and whores is simply an effort to "stop the war against America's children." Like most wars, this one has included a host of tactics, from picket lines to blockades, and has gone so far as to include arson, property damage, kidnapping and the murder of providers. The antis call it collateral damage, the end product of a campaign that has for 36 years worked doggedly to undo Roe v. Wade. From state houses to Congress, from clinics to providers' homes, their relentless hammering has had marked victories. Since 1982 the number of providers has dropped 37 percent; 87 percent of U.S. counties have no abortion facilities, and the procedure itself is shrouded in stigma. A morass of legislative restrictions - parental consent and notification laws and pre-surgery "counseling" meant to sway women into keeping their babies - are now routine. On a more positive note, the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) has reduced overt violence against clinics and clinicians. Yet, it is important to remember that it has not made it extinct. In disparate places - Allentown, Pennsylvania; Charlotte, North Carolina; McAllen, Texas and Wichita, Kansas - taunts by shrieking picketers are a daily event. Read more about the Terror Tactics posted 16 November 2008   Catholic bishops warn Obama they'll fight on abortion By Michael Paulson Globe Staff / November 12, 2008 BALTIMORE - The nation's Catholic bishops decided yesterday to fire an opening salvo at the incoming Obama administration, pledging to work with the new president on issues such as immigration and healthcare but also warning that the Catholic Church will do everything it can to oppose his support for abortion rights. Meeting a week after Democrat Barack Obama, a strong supporter of abortion rights, won a majority of the Catholic vote en route to a relatively easy victory, the bishops were clearly agitated by the prospect of eased restrictions on abortion rights over the next four years. Read more about the Catholic bishops' position posted 14 November 2008 Dangerous Masquerade by: Elizabeth Zwerling, Ms. Magazine Fall 2008 Issue On a mission to eliminate reproductive choice, so-called crisis pregnancy centers are taking in millions of government dollars - and unsuspecting college students. When Nina Lopez, 19, a student at Santa Monica College in California, learned that her school routinely referred students concerned about possible pregnancies to a "pregnancy resource center," or "crisis pregnancy center" (CPC), she was concerned. She knew basically what these centers are all about: They offer only limited options to pregnant women while purveying a strong anti-abortion message, although this mission is not always clearly disclosed in their advertising or by their names. According to an investigative report on federally funded pregnancy resource centers prepared for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), they are "virtually always pro-life [anti-abortion] organizations whose goal is to persuade teenagers and women with unplanned pregnancies to choose motherhood or adoption. They do not offer abortions or referrals to abortion providers." Yet, as the Waxman report pointed out, these centers-there are an estimated 2,500 to 4,000 in the U.S., many affiliated with evangelical Christian ministries-often mask their mission with tactics such as advertising under "abortion services" in the yellow pages or representing in their ads that they provide pregnant women with all of their options. Read more about the Masquerade posted 8 November 2008 Voters Turn Back Anti-Choice Ballot Measures Run Date: 11/05/08 By Iulia Anghelescu WeNews correspondent (WOMENSENEWS)--Voters in South Dakota, Colorado and California turned back efforts to curtail reproductive rights by rejecting anti-choice ballot initiatives. Colorado Amendment 48 and South Dakota Measure 11 represented direct challenges to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that guaranteed abortion rights and took precedence over state laws that imposed restrictions. Colorado's Amendment 48 granted a fertilized egg the same legal and constitutional rights as an adult, and would have outlawed any kind of abortion without exceptions. Opponents also warned of its far-reaching implications that jeopardized most forms of birth control, stem cell research and in vitro fertilization procedures. With 58 percent of the precincts reporting, the Denver Post projected that Amendment 48 failed 73 percent to 26 percent. Read more about the Voters and the Anti-Choice Ballots posted 7 November 2008 An Urgent Sexual and Reproductive Health Agenda for a Pro-Choice President and Congress Marilyn Keefe on November 5, 2008 - 10:15am RH Reality Check They said this would never happen again. They said choice was a losing issue. They said pro-choice Democrats should avoid the issue, and pro-choice Republicans should hide their views. They said this day would never again come. Here it is. One day after an historic election and we can say, conclusively: The naysayers were wrong. A supporter of reproductive health and rights will occupy the White House come January. The ranks of pro-family, pro-choice legislators in both the House and Senate are slated to grow significantly. On January 20, at least five new pro-choice/pro-family planning senators will take office along with 15 or so new choice/pro-family planning members of the House. Make no mistake. The pro-choice gains were not incidental; nobody won in spite of being pro-choice. The overwhelming defeat of four anti-choice ballot measures across the country, including the key swing state of Colorado, tells us that. So does the fact that "right to life" groups were as active as ever this year, and that the issue was discussed in the last presidential debate. Read more about the Sexual and Reproductive Health Agenda posted 7 November 2008   Quickly Vetted, Treatment Is Offered to Patients By REED ABELSON Published: October 26, 2008, NY Times After a surgeon removed a cancerous lump from Karen Medlock’s breast in November, he recommended radiation, a routine next step meant to keep cancer from recurring. But he did not send her for the kind of radiation most women have received for decades. Instead, the surgeon referred her to a center in Oakland, Calif., specializing in a newer form of treatment where radioactive “seeds” are inserted in the tumor site. It could be completed in only five days instead of the six weeks typically required for conventional treatment, which irradiates the entire breast using external beams. To Ms. Medlock, it seemed an obvious choice. The newer treatment — given through a system called MammoSite — has been performed on about 45,000 breast cancer patients in this country since the Food and Drug Administration cleared it for use in 2002. Only when Ms. Medlock, 49, sought a second opinion did she learn a startling truth: MammoSite is still highly experimental. Read more about the questions around MammoSite posted 28 October 2008 THe Extreme Team Behind Amendment 48 by: Cristina Page, RH Reality Check Friday 24 October 2008, TRUTHOUT Earlier this month, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter announced his opposition to Amendment 48, which seeks to grant a fertilized egg the status of a human being, complete with equal rights. The groups pushing the amendment advertise it as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide, but it targets far more than that. In fact, even those opposed to legal abortion, like Ritter, have good reason to reject the proposal. The creators of Amendment 48 have been coy since the start. They haven't fully explained the implications of their plan and with good reason-it's extreme. Amendment 48, if passed, would undermine our right to have a baby by establishing the legal groundwork to outlaw IVF treatment. It threatens our right to plan a family by adding the most commonly used forms of birth control alongside abortion to the list of banned procedures. The state, under this proposal, could intervene in a woman's life, even a woman with cancer and deny her life saving medical treatment if it could endanger a fertilized egg. This constitutional amendment is not about protecting life. Amendment 48 does nothing less than rob us of the ability to make many of life's most important decisions. Read more about the group behind Amendment 48 posted 26 October 2008 What Is Terror To Women? by Susan Faludi ON THE ISSUES Back in 1986, when the media was busy scaring unwed career women with tales of a looming man shortage, Newsweek famously declared that a 40-year-old single woman was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than marry. One didn't need a degree in actuarial science to know the claim was ludicrous, but it instantly instilled fear in the unmarried female populace. There was probably no more repeated line in the backlash '80s. And no wonder: the formula had such resonance. For American women, the threat of terror and submission to second-class status historically have gone hand in hand. Never mind the well-established fact that an American woman is far likelier to be attacked or killed by a loved one than a stranger. Terror is invariably depicted as violence from alien invaders, a violence that can be evaded only by surrendering to the yoke of domestic male protection. Read more about Terror To Women posted 23 October 2008 Check out ON THE ISSUES' special Fall 2008 issue on What is Terror to Women and What can we do about it Study Finds That Increased Federal Aid for Low-Income Women Can Lower Abortion Rates Sept. 17, 2008 "Increased federal assistance for low-income women can significantly reduce abortion rates, according to a new study from Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, the Tennessean reports. Co-author Joseph Wright said the study aimed to understand a drop in the U.S. abortion rate that began in the 1990s. According to statistics from the Guttmacher Institute, abortions in the U.S. peaked at 1.6 million in 1990 but dropped to 1.31 million by 2000. In 2005, the last year for which statistics are available, the number was 1.2 million. Wright said states that provided more generous assistance to families had a 20% lower abortion rate than other states. "This is not a call for more social spending in the aggregate," Wright said, adding, "It's a call for more targeted assistance. That's a very different framework than saying, 'just throw more money at the problem.'" Read more about the study posted 1 October 2008 Blocking Care for Women September 19, 2008 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR By HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON and CECILE RICHARDS "LAST month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women's rights and women's health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing &emdash; whether it's a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government &emdash; certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable. Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception. Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services". Read more about the Bush administration undermining women's health care posted 21 September 2008