Blogs Comment On Health Reform Legislation, Maternal Mortality, Other Topics

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

~ "'Operation Rescue' Founder Warns of 'Violent Convulsions' if Health Bill Doesn't Ban Abortions," Ian Millhiser, Think Progress: Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry is "probably the first public figure to raise terrorism as a potential response to a health bill which allows Americans to keep the same access to reproductive care that they currently enjoy," Millhiser writes in a blog post responding to Terry's warning "that his supporters may engage in violent acts of terrorism unless Congress prohibits abortion services from being covered in the new health reform legislation." According to Millhiser, Terry recently said that there are some people "'who will be tempted to acts of violence'" and that "'history will hold those in power responsible for the violent convulsions that follow'" the legislation. Millhiser writes that many conservative policymakers are "pushing a poison pill amendment" to Congress' reform bill that would prohibit the coverage of abortion services in plans offered within a national health insurance exchange. He notes that 71% of U.S. residents oppose an amendment that would "cut off women's access to reproductive care" (Millhiser, Think Progress, 7/20).

~ "Gestation Is a Life-Changing Experience for Women," Jessica Grose, XX Factor: Grose's post responds to Francis Kissling's recent Salon opinion piece discussing the "'new pro-lifers.'" According to Grose, this movement "seeks to make bearing and raising children easier, and reducing abortion that way." She continues, "It almost sounds reasonable to pro-choice Kissling, except for one thing: making bearing children 'easier' doesn't acknowledge how gestation can change a woman's life." According to Kissling, the "'new pro-lifers barely acknowledge the difficulties of childbirth,'" and the movement "'denies the reality that even in modern Western culture, in the high-tech U.S., every woman who agrees to be pregnant still risks dying if the pregnancy goes awry.'" Kissling also wrote that the "'new antiabortionists want to use their rosy view of pregnancy as the frame for public policy, and that is where they become indistinguishable from the old antiabortion movement. For both groups, women are passive participants in gestation.'" Grose writes that "many of the new pro-lifers don't support efforts to bring contraception to women who don't have access to it," an issue that is "likely to come back in a big way in the next few months as the administration's new health plan is debated" (Grose, XX Factor, 7/20).














~ "Thanks, Abstinence-Only Education!" Feministing: "Thanks to a decade of misinformation and masquerading as sex education, teens are having the same amount of sex, using contraception less and getting pregnant more," a Feministing blog entry states. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that trends in reproductive and sexual health of U.S. teens and young adults "'have flattened, or in some instances may be worsening.'" According to the blog entry, "We're reaping what we've sowed." Although President Obama's 2010 budget proposal includes cuts in abstinence-only education funding, "de-funding these programs is not enough," the blog says. It adds, "We have to undo the damage that's been done to young people and support real solutions." The blog concludes, "The purity-pushers are not going anywhere, but this is about more than politics, ... it's about our health and futures" (Feministing, 7/20).

~ "Human Rights Resolution Spotlights Disparities in Maternal Health Care in the U.S.," Ximena Andion Ibanez et al., RH Reality Check: A "vast majority" of pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths are "preventable and can therefore be understood to reflect widespread indifference to the rights of the world's poorest women," Ibanez writes in a blog post co-authored by Center for Reproductive Rights Deputy Director Laura Katzive and Michelle Movahead, an attorney at the center. This "great global injustice is also evident, on a smaller scale" in the U.S., which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world, according to the blog. The Human Rights Council's Maternal Mortality Resolution recognizes that maternal deaths "occur in all countries of the world and that there is a collective responsibility to eliminate it," the blog continues. It adds that U.S. involvement with the resolution is a "heartening step towards putting women's human rights front and center" and a "welcome shift towards positive and constructive engagement" with HRC. However, "[w]hat is needed now is to transform this commitment into concrete action to eliminate preventable maternal death and disease worldwide," the blog states, concluding that the U.S. "has an opportunity to be a leader on this front, both at home and around the world" (Ibanez et al., RH Reality Check, 7/21).


Reprinted with kind permission from nationalpartnership. 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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