ProgressWomen

By Amanda Marcotte  – Slate.com  |  Posted Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012, at 6:24 PM ET

Planned Parenthood clinical assistant Nicki Bailey discusses the new abortion laws with a patient in Austin. Photo by Eric Schlegel, Texas Tribune

In a shocking move Tuesday afternoon, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the country’s most famous breast cancer charity, pulled its grants for breast-cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood. Komen claims that their reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation from Congress, but as it’s well-understood on both the left and the right that the investigation, headed by Rep. Cliff Stearns, is a nuisance investigation that will almost surely turn up nothing, this excuse sounds lame indeed. The likelier explanation is the one offered by Planned Parenthood, that Komen caved under relentless pressure from anti-choice activists who oppose Planned Parenthood for offering abortions as well as low-cost contraception and STD prevention and treatment. In addition, Komen has a history of not playing nice with other women’s health organizations. Planned Parenthood has created an emergency fund to replace the Komen grants, to keep the breast-cancer screening service from being interrupted.

The existence of breast-cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood has always been a thorn in the anti-choice side. Most of Planned Parenthood’s services are related to the choice to be sexually active—contraception, STD screening and treatment, cervical cancer screening—making it easy to write off those services as unnecessary if you follow the strict abstinence-only prescription the Christian right has for women. Breast cancer, however, can strike the lifelong virgin, the married woman who only has sex for procreation, and the dirty fornicator (i.e. the vast majority of American women) alike. Because of this, anti-choicers have tried to create a rift between women’s health advocates who focus on breast cancer and those who focus on reproductive health concerns below the waist. Today, they had a victory with Komen’s act of cowardice.

No matter how much anti-choicers wish otherwise, it’s not feasible to create an approach to women’s health that separates good girl concerns from bad girl concerns. For instance, many women land in gynocologist’s offices seeking contraceptive services and cervical-cancer screenings, and doctors use that opportunity to teach the art of breast self-exam. As noted inmy previous post on the Santorums’ pregnancy troubles, even the world of the hated abortion provider and the much-vaunted obstetrician can’t be so easily separated, as the latter is often called upon to have knowledge of pregnancy termination in case of a medical emergency.

In the end, the grant money is less important than the symbolism of Komen buying into the conservative myth of good-girl health care vs. bad-girl health care. In reality, women’s health care can only work if it’s comprehensive health care. Komen has already been under serious scrutiny by those who argue that the organization cares more about shoring up their image than making real progress in the fight for women’s health, and with this move today, they proved their critics right.

Click here for more information.

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.

courtesy of drpinna.com

by Amanda Terkel, Huffington Post

Fourteen Democratic senators, led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), sent the Obama administration a letter  on Tuesday asking for the scientific basis behind its decision to limit access to emergency contraception.

Last week, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rejected  the Food and Drug Administration’s conclusion that the Plan B One-Step pill was safe enough to be placed on pharmacy shelves without an age limit. The decision raised eyebrows because HHS has never before overruled the FDA on a drug recommendation. Many reproductive rights groups openly questioned whether the Obama administration was putting electoral politics above sound science ahead of next year’s election.

“We are writing to express our disappointment with your December 7, 2011 decision to block the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recommendation to make Plan B One-Step available over-the-counter,” wrote the senators in their letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “We feel strongly that FDA regulations should be based on science. We write to you today to ask that you provide us with the rationale for this decision.”

The senators asked Sebelius to share the “specific rationale and the scientific data” she relied upon when overruling FDA experts.

“On behalf of the millions of women we represent, we want to be assured that this and future decisions affecting women’s health will be based on medical and scientific evidence,” they concluded.

Besides Murray, the Senate Demorats who signed the letter were Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Daniel Akaka (Hawaii), Carl Levin (Mich.), John Kerry (Mass.), Tom Harkin (Iowa), Al Franken (Minn.), Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.). Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also signed on.

HHS did not return a request for comment on the letter.

Sebelius has stated that she rejected the FDA’s conclusion because she believed the pill’s effect  on girls in the 11-12 age range needed to be studied further.

Yet as Susan Wood, a former FDA official who resigned in 2005 to protest what she saw as the Bush administration’s politicization of Plan B, has noted, “[T]his type of age restriction, and worries about the use of medicines by teenagers, have not been applied to other products . Apparently there is no problem in allowing younger teens to purchase products such as acetaminophen, and others with known and serious risks, over the counter.”

Murray has been a leading voice on Plan B access in the Senate. In 2005, she and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) announced they were blocking the nomination of Lester Crawford, President George W. Bush’s choice to head the FDA, until the agency made a decision about whether to make Plan B available over the counter without a prescription.

Credit - The Washington Times

This past week HHS Director Kathleen Sebelius disagreed with the FDA’s decision – as did President Obama –  to approve over-the-counter emergency contraception (Plan B) for girls under 17.

“The president shamefully uses his daughters to justify limiting the healthcare options of America’s young women”

by Rebecca Traister – Salon.com   

When will Barack Obama learn how to talk thoughtfully about women, women’s health and women’s rights?  Apparently, not today.

On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius unexpectedly overruled  the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation that emergency contraception be sold on drugstore shelves and made available without a prescription to women under the age of 17. The move came as a surprise blow to healthcare and women’s rights activists, the kinds of people regularly counted as supporters of the Obama administration.

Today, Obama doubled down  on his disregard for the concerns of these groups, claiming that while Sebelius made her decision without his counsel, he agreed with it. Obama pooh-poohed the findings of the FDA, which had concluded that Plan B pills posed no medical hazard and supported Sebelius’ official argument, citing a lack of confidence that “a 10-year-old or 11-year-old going to a drugstore would be able to, alongside bubble gum or batteries, be able to buy a medication that potentially if not used properly can have an adverse effect.”

The logic expressed today by the president, and yesterday by Sebelius, is ludicrous: Medicines like Tylenol – which have been proven to have adverse effects in high doses – are available by the truckload on drugstore shelves, at prices far cheaper than the $30 to $50 it would cost a preteen to purchase just one dose of Plan B, let alone go wild with it.

Read more here.