Blogs Comment On Family Planning During Economic Downturn, EC For Military Service Members, Other Topics

Main Category: Women's Health / Gynecology
Also Included In: Pregnancy / Obstetrics
Article Date: 01 Apr 2009 - 5:00 PDT

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

~ "Vasectonomics," Cristina Page, Huffington Post blogs: Recent sales data showing that consumers are spending more money on all types of contraception -- including more requests for vasectomies -- indicate that the "embrace of family planning appears to be a critical step in financial planning," Page writes. She continues, "So much for family planning being a non-sequitur in discussions about the economy," reminding readers that a few months ago Republican opposition to the inclusion of a provision in the president's economic plan to expand access to family planning services kept it from remaining in the final bill. "Family planning is an American family value and, as national data indicate, something we rely on in our greatest times of need," she continues, adding that "[a]ttacks on our right to plan our families shred the social safety net." Page writes, "Family planning is nothing less than a foundation on which many Americans build sturdy, responsible lives. Regardless of political affiliation, that's exactly what many are struggling to do right now." According to Page, "Those who have lost their jobs and health insurance are in great need of family planning. They're also, alarmingly, the ones with the least access to it." Although members of the Republican Party "are welcome to titter and heckle the next time a proposal to support family planning crosses their desks, ... [d]oing so will only reveal how astoundingly out of touch they are from American's real lives and needs," she says (Page, Huffington Post blogs, 3/27).

~ "Gardasilliness," Meghan O'Rourke, Slate's The XX Factor: O'Rourke writes that she is "amazed (if not surprised) by how different the rhetoric surrounding boys getting" the human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil is from earlier arguments that vaccinating girls against the sexually transmitted infection would condone promiscuity. "The libertarian in me at times resists the idea of making any vaccine mandatory," O'Rourke writes. However, "this vaccine will save women's lives," and "it would be awful if our squeamishness about female adolescent sexuality meant that this vaccine never became as effective as it could be," she continues. The "great irony" is that after decades of research for a cancer vaccine, "we found one" and "no one wants to use it," O'Rourke writes, concluding, "Is teen sexuality that scary?" (O'Rourke, Slate's The XX Factor, 3/27).

~ "Female Troops Still Lack Access to Plan B Despite Its Legality," Nancy Northup, The Hill's Congress Blog: A federal judge's order last week for FDA to allow nonprescription access to the emergency contraceptive Plan B for 17-year-olds and to re-evaluate age restrictions on the drug's over-the-counter sales is "an important victory for all Americans who expect the government to safeguard their health, not undermine it," Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, writes. Nonetheless, EC remains "difficult to access for many groups of women, including the more than 200,000 women serving in the Armed Services," as Plan B is "excluded from the list of what military facilities, including the primary stores where families shop, are required to stock," Northup says. This exclusion is "particularly challenging for women and families who are based overseas and rely solely on those facilities to buy over-the-counter drugs," she adds, continuing that this is "undoubtedly another example" of former President George W. Bush's administration "playing politics with women's health." She notes that the Department of Defense initially approved stocking EC at all military treatment facilities, but the decision was overturned "when it reached the radar of political appointees." A 2007 DOD report found that there were 2,688 reported sexual assaults involving military personnel that year, Northup writes. She asks, "Why would the government limit these women's ability to prevent unintended pregnancies?" She urges readers to send a message to President Obama calling on him to direct Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to make Plan B available to service members and "ensure ... broader access to important, necessary health care and help ensure that those serving our country receive the same standard of care that the rest of us receive" (Northup, The Hill's Congress Blog, 3/30).

~ "Wrong Message from the Pope," Katherine Marshall, Washington Post's On Faith: "Even the Vatican's most ardent admirers have to wonder how the pope's communications team could have allowed his comments about condoms ... to convey such an insensitive image," Marshall writes. She adds that a cartoon in the French newspaper Le Monde "highlights the dual narratives" of the pope's visit -- "one story inspired (or consumed) by condoms, the other by Africa, its estimated 130 million Catholics and the host of issues the visit addressed." The cartoon "showed the pope speaking to a group of African leaders, the word corruption forming in his mouth; his listeners' response was that he should stick to condoms." Marshall writes that Pope Benedict XVI's visit is "a story of a tragic missed opportunity, because it just reinforces the views of many in the development community that the Church is out of touch." It has "taken far too long to put Africa's HIV/AIDS pandemic high on the world's agenda," Marshall says, concluding that the "condom wars are only a distraction that gets in the way of meaningful action -- on AIDS as well as the continent's other problems" (Marshall, Washington Post's On Faith, 3/28).

~ "Outrageous Reallocation of Planned Parenthood Funding," Danielle Cavallucci, Huffington Post blogs: Recent reports that California-based Birth Choice Health Clinics -- an advocate for abstinence-only sex education -- is expected to receive funding Orange County, Calif., supervisors stripped from Planned Parenthood are "outrageous," Cavallucci writes. She continues that "in a nation where freedom of religion is a cornerstone ... this blatantly misinformed decision on the part of those who would like to impose their moral and religious views on the general populous, ignoring overwhelming evidence proving that abstinence-only education does not work, is abhorrent." According to Cavallucci, "Denying women access to every tool legally at their disposal in favor of imposing an idealistic set of options wrought of those who concern themselves more with fetal rights than the rights of the living children of our nation holds none of our democratic principles in reverence, and acts in a dictatorial fashion to shove the belief system of the few down the throats of the rest" (Cavallucci, Huffington Post blogs, 3/27).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

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