Blogs Comment On Women's Health Disparities, Sotomayor Nomination, Other Topics

Main Category: Women's Health / Gynecology
Also Included In: Abortion
Article Date: 17 Jun 2009 - 7:00 PDT

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The following summarizes selected women's health-related blog entries.

~ "Report: Higher Rates of Unintended Pregnancy, Abortion Among Women of Color," Sharon Camp, RH Reality Check: A new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation on health disparities between white women and women of color "provides further stronger evidence debunking claims" from antiabortion-rights advocates who "have long argued that high abortion rates among minorities are the result of supposed aggressive marketing by abortion providers to minority communities," Camp, president and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, writes. In addition to identifying disparities in conditions like heart disease and cancer, the report documents "widespread disparities in access to health insurance and health screenings" and explores growing evidence of the association between social factors and health behaviors, access and outcomes, according to Camp. She continues that research from Guttmacher has consistently demonstrated that "rates among racial and ethnic minorities -- especially blacks and Hispanics -- are directly linked to their higher rates of unintended pregnancy, which in turn reflect pervasive health disparities more generally." Camp writes that the "fundamental question policymakers should be asking is not why women of color have high abortion rates, but rather what can be done to help them have fewer unintended pregnancies and achieve better health outcomes more generally," such as improved access to affordable contraception. Women's dissatisfaction with health care providers, quality of service and the contraceptive methods themselves also are factors in contraceptive use, as are "[u]nstable life situations," which can make consistent use a low priority for some women, according to Camp. She writes, "By continuing to label abortion providers as 'racists' and refusing to support expanded access to contraceptive services, antiabortion-rights activists are by no means part of the solution -- to high rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion among racial and ethnic minorities or to persistent and tragic disparities in health care generally" (Camp, RH Reality Check, 6/15).

~ "What's Next for Women's Legal Rights in the Supreme Court?" Amy Matsui, Womenstake: Matsui, senior counsel for the National Women's Law Center, examines several women's rights issues "that we see peeking around the corner" of the next Supreme Court session. Matsui writes that "increasingly draconian abortion restrictions have begun to work their way through state legislatures." These restrictions include giving personhood rights to fetuses, mandates on the information women are given prior to abortion procedures and "outright abortion bans," she writes. Challenges to laws that expand protections for providers who deny health care services also "are likely to come before the courts," Matsui writes. Challenges to health care reform proposals also are likely, "specifically, the interaction of the federal statute that governs employee health care and pension plans ... and any new requirements for employers to provide health care coverage," according to Matsui. The Supreme Court has "obviously considered the underlying legal doctrines in these cases (the constitutional right to privacy, federal anti-discrimination statutes, Equal Protection guarantees and federal benefits statutes) in the past; some might say that there is a clear roadmap of where the Court should go in some of these cases," Matsui writes, concluding, "But when every vote counts on the Supreme Court, women should be watching what cases come next" (Matsui, Womenstake, 6/12).

~ "Antiabortion Groups' Case Against Sotomayor," Dan Gilgoff, U.S. News & World Report's "God and Country": "With no clear evidence for a pro-abortion-rights position in her judicial decisions, antiabortion groups' case against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor can be summed up in eight words: the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund," Gilgoff writes. From 1980 to 1992, Sotomayor sat on the legal advocacy group's board, Gilgoff writes. He adds that the period was "a stretch during which the antiabortion group Americans United for Life says [PRLDEF] 'filed at least six briefs in prominent abortion court cases,'" one of which "argues that abortion is a 'fundamental right.'" According to a New York Times article cited by AUL, Sotomayor and the group's board "'monitored all litigation undertaken by the fund's lawyers, and a number of those lawyers said Ms. Sotomayor was an involved and ardent supporter of their various legal efforts,'" Gilgoff reports. He writes that observers should "[w]atch for questions about Sotomayor's involvement with PRLDEF's briefs in abortion cases to play a big role in her confirmation hearings next month." Gilgoff concludes, "In the meanwhile, her involvement in [PRLDEF] very likely provides a window into her general views on abortion. But it's far from definitive evidence of a specific position" (Gilgoff, "God and Country," U.S. News & World Report, 6/15).

~ "Common Ground: Are We Expecting Too Much?" Frances Kissling, RH Reality Check: Although "good things happen" when individuals "who disagree passionately on something important to them take the time to sit down and engage each other, ... rarely do such efforts culminate in common ground on public policy and then only after years of very hard work," Kissling, former president of Catholics for Choice, writes in a blog entry discussing President Obama's call for "common ground" in the abortion-rights debate. "Even the convening power of the White House, which is holding a series of meetings with advocates and opponents of a woman's right to choose, may come up short on results," Kissling says. According to Kissling, one problem "is that too small a group decided on the components of common ground and is now trying to get others to 'buy in' to a prepackaged conclusion." According to Kissling, "Recognizing that they probably won't succeed in making abortion illegal, the Democrats' faith-based allies decided that they could still use their moral disapproval to shape policy." She writes that these groups "asserted that the number of abortions that take place in America constitutes a moral tragedy and called for initiatives that would reduce the number of abortions. According to their mind-set, this was common ground, an abortion-neutral prescription for ending the culture war." However, "the common ground they had found was among themselves and themselves only; they just expected everyone else to agree," Kissling writes. She adds that "[h]ad they bothered to consult people who know something about common ground, they might have actually found a way not to go to war even if they could not find a way to agree." Kissling describes a program called the Public Conversations Project that she participated in during the late 1990s after the murder of two Boston clinic workers. Although "[n]o one changed their mind about abortion" as a result of the program, it helped reduce "[i]nflammatory rhetoric on both sides of the debate," she says. Kissling continues that participants in the ongoing White House meetings report "that they are not structured in ways that enable people to say what is on their minds and safely pursue disagreements or really engage the 'other.' This is an enormous lost opportunity'" (Kissling, RH Reality Check, 6/16).

~ "Higher Ground," Cristina Page, RH Reality Check: The murder of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller "threatens to poison the nascent dialogue" President Obama initiated through White House meetings with advocates on both sides of the abortion-rights debate, Page writes. She writes that in the wake of Tiller's death, a "wound has been inflicted on the pro-life side, and in particular on those moderates who dislike abortion, but don't tolerate violence, which includes most of the pro-life movement and public." Page adds, "Now they are sometimes treated as if they, too, are extremists." Therefore, "in the aftermath of this senseless attack we risk losing something else dear, the momentum of the growing common ground movement; the search for a different, more constructive way forward in the abortion debate," according to Page. She continues, "There are many people on both ends of this issue who are justifiably critical and suspicious of common ground; they suspect these are code words for concession and compromise on deeply held and long-fought-for convictions." Common ground "isn't a panacea, and it isn't supposed to be," Page writes. Nor is it "an attempt to find the lowest common denominator," she says. According to Page, "The best answer to this hateful murder is to build a national conversation focused on progress, a national dialogue on common ground." She concludes, "If reasonable people from each side bring even a sliver of the passion to the search for common ground that they have dedicated for their causes, we can be hopeful about the possibilities" (Page, RH Reality Check, 6/16).

~ "Protection Denied: Condoms Under Lock and Key at CVS," Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check: Drugstore CVS' decision to lock up condoms as an effort to prevent theft could imply to teenagers that it is illegal for minors to purchase condoms, therefore increasing the chance that they will participate in unprotected sex, Marcotte writes. She continues, "Unfortunately, this situation is an all-too-likely danger, which is why the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) has started a petition to ask CVS to put its condoms on the regular shelves instead of locking them in cabinets." She continues, "Unsurprisingly, ... people who live in lower-income neighborhoods are more likely to face a locked cabinet when they go to CVS to buy condoms." She cites a recent Change To Win report that determined that CVS' "anti-theft measures signal distrust of people of color," as "hundreds of stores across the country in communities of color, CVS displays condoms in locked cabinets that require customers to summon CVS staff to unlock them and monitor customers while making their selections." Marcotte continues, "Right now, it's very fashionable, especially in the 'common ground' discourse, to claim that women living in poverty are more likely to abort than women who aren't because they can't afford to have children." She adds, "That may be so, but let's face it -- the fact that they have all these obstacles to access pregnancy prevention is why they're more likely to find themselves facing an unintended pregnancy." She writes, "In addition to prejudices about shoplifting, I'd suggest that another reason that condoms get locked up in certain neighborhoods goes back to the tendency of condoms to be marketed, at least in the U.S., as luxury items like fancy liquor or cigarettes are marketed." According to Marcotte, "This desire to feed luxury associations to brands like Trojan or Durex only encourages the practice of locking them up in cabinets in lower-income neighborhoods" (Marcotte, RH Reality Check, 6/16).

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