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#iusebirthcontrol

In the last few days we have seen an uproar over the Department of Health and Human Services’ decision to require religiously affiliated employers to provide health insurance plans that cover contraceptives.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one thinking that this is ridiculous. The media, in its pursuit of “balance,” has been covering this issue as if those in favor of the policy are roughly equal in number to those who oppose it. This is untrue. I’ve said it once and I will say it again:

Contraception. Is. Not. Controversial.

Contraception is basic health care. It is almost universally used. It allows women to control their bodies and plan their families. Access to birth control means fewer abortions, which everyone favors.

The Planned Parenthood Action Center has started an online campaign called “I Use Birth Control” to give the 99% of women who use contraceptives a chance to speak out. Take a picture of yourself with your birth control and send it to Planned Parenthood over Facebook or Twitter. Follow the campaign on Twitter with the hashtag #iusebirthcontrol.

In the meantime, here are some “contraception-is-normal” facts:

• 99% of sexually active American women use contraception at some point during their reproductive years
• 98% of sexually active Catholic American women use contraception at some point during their reproductive years
• A majority of women support requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptives without a co-pay
• The average American woman uses birth control for 30 years of her life
• 28 states already require insurance companies to cover contraceptives
• It would cost employers 15 to 17% more not to offer an insurance plan that covers contraceptives

Obama-Biden 2012: Contraception Facts

Guttmacher Institute: Facts on Contraceptive Use in the United States

Public Religion Research Institute: Majority of Catholics Favor Requiring Employers to Offer Health Insurance Plans that Cover No-Cost Birth Control

image via wikimedia commons

Newt Gingrich has been repeating ad nauseam his claim that Barack Obama is “the best food stamp president in American history.” However, this is not true.

Brooks Jackson of FactCheck.org reports:

Newt Gingrich claims that “more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.” He’s wrong. More were added under Bush than under Obama, according to the most recent figures. [emphasis added]

…To be exact, the program has so far grown by 444,574 fewer recipients during Obama’s time in office than during Bush’s.

In a Businessweek article, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack criticizes Mr. Gingrich’s remarks:

Those who get the federal assistance “are playing by the rules,” Vilsack, whose department administers food stamps, said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg News. “There are misconceptions about this program and confusion” about recipients caused by negative portrayals by some Obama opponents, he said.

Given the program’s importance in keeping working families out of poverty, it also shouldn’t be mischaracterized as a handout for the undeserving, he said.

To start with, “food stamps” is not even the proper terminology. The program’s name has been changed to Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). Contrary to Mr. Gingrich’s insinuations, more whites are on SNAP than African Americans. Here is some demographic information about SNAP recipients:

• Race/Ethnicity
• 35.7% of participants are white (non-Hispanic)
• 22% of participants are African-American (non-Hispanic)
• 10% of participants are Hispanic
• Age
• 47% of SNAP beneficiaries are under 18 years of age
• 8% of SNAP beneficiaries are 60 years of age or older
• Gender
• 56% of SNAP beneficiaries are women
• Single parents (usually a mother) headed more than half of all SNAP households with children
• Income
• 41% of recipients are part of a household with earned income (the “working poor”)
• 85.3% of SNAP households live in poverty

I wrote this post as part of NARAL Pro-Choice America’s 2012 “Blog for Choice Day” – click the link for more entries.

On Friday I attended the St. Louis Freedom of Choice Council‘s celebration of the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The theme was “4000 Years of Choice,” and it made a salient point: though abortion has been legal in the U.S. since only 1973, abortion is not something new. Women have been ending pregnancies for as long as we have been getting pregnant. Regardless of its legal status, women will have abortions.

Part of why Roe was (and is) such an important decision is because legal abortion means safe abortion. Before Roe, countless women suffered injuries and death from undergoing illegal abortions. Unsanitary conditions and untrained practitioners meant that a very safe procedure was quite risky. During the 1950s and 1960s, an estimated 160-260 women died from illegal abortions each year in the US. Thousands more came to emergency rooms with dangerous complications from injuries. This Mother Jones article, “The Way It Was” gives a moving account of life pre-Roe.

While we’ve come a long way since 1973, we cannot be complacent. Anti-choice activists work hard to erode women’s right to choose, and they have been successful. Clinic harassment, 24-hour waiting periods, the Hyde Amendment, the ban on so-called “partial-birth” abortions and pharmacy refusal laws are just some of the ways opponents of choice have infringed on a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. In fact, 2011 saw both Congress and state legislatures wage a “War on Women” with a glut of anti-choice measures being proposed and passed.

As we commemorate the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must renew our resolve to remove these social and legal obstacles so every woman in America can access safe and legal abortion care.

image via ThinkProgress

Fantastic news today: the Obama Administration has ensured that most all employers will have to offer insurance plans that cover birth control!

Per the news release from the US Dept. of Health and Human Services: “the final rule on preventive health services will ensure that women with health insurance coverage will have access to the full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA-approved forms of contraception.” [emphasis mine]

Jessica Arons, Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at American Progress, guest blogging for ThinkProgress:

Today, in a huge victory for women’s health, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that most employers will be required to cover contraception in their health plans, along with other preventive services, with no cost-sharing such as co-pays or deductibles. This means that after years of trying to get birth control covered to the same extent that health plans cover Viagra, our country will finally have nearly universal coverage of contraception.

Opponents of contraception had lobbied hard for a broad exemption that would have allowed any religiously affiliated employer to opt out of providing such coverage. Fortunately, the Obama administration rejected that push and decided to maintain the narrow religious exemption that it initially proposed. Only houses of worship and other religious nonprofits that primarily employ and serve people of the same faith will be exempt.

…Family planning results in better health outcomes for women and their children—a woman who has a planned pregnancy is more likely to be in better health when she gets pregnant and more likely to seek prenatal care, and children who are born at least two years apart are healthier. Family planning is also the most effective tool we have in reducing unintended pregnancy and the need for abortion. [emphasis mine]

It is terrific to get some good news on women’s reproductive rights from this administration. Thank you, President Obama & Secretary Sebelius.

The full statement on the decision from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is here.

Planned Parenthood has petition so you can thank President Obama for standing up for women’s health.

Image via Reuters

The repeal of the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy means that LGBT sailors can celebrate returning home just like everyone else – without hiding who they are.

Finally.

Matthew A. Ward – Reuters

History was made on a Virginia Beach pier on Wednesday when two women sailors, one just home from 80 days at sea, became what was believed to be the first same-sex couple to share the Navy’s traditional first kiss.

At Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, where a crowd had gathered to welcome home loved ones, Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta, 23, stepped off amphibious dock landing ship USS Oak Hill and planted a kiss on the lips of her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citalic Snell, Navy spokeswoman Ensign Sylvia Landis confirmed…

Landis said that, “To the navy, (it was) really just a normal homecoming.”

READ MORE HERE