Author Archive
April 12th, 2010 • Contributed by Lon Newman
(Printed in the Juneau County Star Times – Saturday April 10, 2010)
Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth wrote area school districts a letter which may intimidate teachers, administrators, and school board members from developing or teaching a comprehensive community-based human growth and development curriculum.
The unfortunate consequence of his action will not be to delay first sexual intercourse by Juneau County teens. It is more likely that those teens, when they do become sexually active, will not have the information they need to protect themselves from unintended pregnancies or sexually transmitted infections. Many people do not get any sex education after high school, so it is also likely those teens will not have the health information they need to make informed health care and family planning decisions when they marry and/or become sexually active as adults.
District Attorney Southworth’s statement that schools teach about sex for pleasure or that sex education is analogous to teaching people ‘how to mix drinks,’ makes it obvious that he either was not in a reputable sex education program or he wasn’t paying attention. Although there are always a few examples of highly publicized unacceptable behavior that opponents of sex education point to, there is no accepted pre-college program that teaches human sexual response to minors and I know there is no Juneau County school district curriculum that teaches techniques of sexual pleasure.
What do reproductive health educators teach young people?
- They can prevent cancer by being vaccinated against HPV.
- Consistent and correct use of condoms can prevent sexually transmitted infections.
- Testicular and breast self-examinations are important preventive health care regimens.
- Folic acid is important to pre-pregnancy planning.
- Coercive sexual touching is illegal and destructive.
- Hormonal contraception can prevent pregnancy.
- . . . and other information that helps people make informed decisions to protect their health.
None of the material is erotic and none of it could be considered in a court of law to be “encouraging young people to have sex.”
Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) is a private non-profit corporation with a mission based on the ideal that information is better than ignorance when it comes to sexual health. When we are invited to participate in any classroom, our presentation respects school district standards. We strive to be age-appropriate and medically accurate. Our first concern is always the health and well-being of community families.
District Attorney Southworth has gained a lot of media attention and there will be controversy and fund-raising on all sides of this issue. Through that turmoil, FPHS will continue to provide the community with access to family planning services and education that is responsible and professional. We support Juneau county school districts who educate our young people and we promise to support any district or local teacher who provides lawful sexuality education as described in The Healthy Youth Act and who is charged with a crime by District Attorney Southworth.
No Comments • Posted in: Sex Ed
April 6th, 2010 • Contributed by Lon Newman
“We Gotta Move”
The author of an opinion letter printed in the Wausau Wisconsin paper this morning was reacting to a reader’s letter that was supporting family planning. She said: “If by preventing unplanned pregnancies, he is referring to dispensing contraception, how does that prevent unplanned pregnancies?’
Like the majority of states, Wisconsin has a Medicaid Family Planning Waiver that expands access to routine preventive contraceptive and STD care. Overall, our program has been successful at reducing geographic gaps in access. By providing contraception, we are reducing unintended pregnancies, reducing teen pregnancies, and reducing the need for abortions – all at substantial savings to taxpayers. Wisconsin’s estimated five-year savings was $487 million. Best of all, for states with budget shortfalls, Medicaid Family Planning expansions provide $9 in federal funds for every $1 in state funds.
There is an enormous national opportunity before us and very little time to waste on efforts to reason with the irrational. Primary preventive health care delivery is changing and if we are to move closer to universal access to reproductive health care, reproductive health care providers and supporters must seize the opportunity. Federal health care reform law provides the 27 states with these expansions with an opportunity to strengthen their existing programs by requesting a permanent state plan amendment from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). For the other 23 states and the District of Columbia, there is a parallel opportunity to begin providing these services.
In Wisconsin, we must move quickly to strengthen our program and solidify the gains we have made under the Doyle administration and we don’t need legislative action. In eight months we will have a new governor and a new legislature. Even with a supportive administration, coordination and approval is not instantaneous. So it is time to move ahead and get to work. Here are the terms with which we will approach our Department of Health Services:
A successful Medicaid family planning program must contain these eligibility and coverage essentials:
- Enrollment must be convenient
- Presumptive eligibility must be available for provision of immediate (same day – same site) contraceptives and STD services.
- Full eligibility must be processed in a timely manner to avoid gaps in coverage and gaps in care.
- Income eligibility must be broad.
- Covered comprehensive services must include most contraceptive methods and Emergency Contraception.
- Services must be confidential.
- Eligibility for students and minors must be based on their own income.
A successful Medicaid family planning program must contain these structural essentials:
- A formally established state department-level workgroup or council that brings key leadership in public health, family planning, and primary preventive health care together in an advisory capacity .
- A written commitment to integrating and normalizing sexual health care and education by fostering public-private partnerships.
- A clear commitment to the principal that all participants receiving Medicaid-paid health benefits have a right to choose a willing and qualified provider (including out-of-plan) for the reproductive health services they need.
- A written assurance that reimbursement rates to reproductive health care providers will be sufficient to maintain statewide access to family planning services.
We are moving ahead right now to expand, improve, and strengthen our family planning program by negotiating a permanent state plan amendment based on what we have learned over the past seven years. That federal contract will protect and solidify our program’s gains. With that protection, we will continue to answer the question “How does dispensing contraception relate to preventing unwanted pregnancies?” not so much with rhetoric, but with results.
No Comments • Posted in: Policy
March 9th, 2010 • Contributed by Lon Newman
We recognize that the “Forty Days for Life” protests in front of our clinic bring us a lot of attention that can be put to good use. The picketing has resulted in many expressions of community support for Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) as well as a much higher level of visibility for the health care services we provide. On the other hand, the anti-abortion signs persistently misrepresent what FPHS actually does – confusing the public about whether FPHS provides abortion (we do not and we are prohibited by our grant contracts from even making referrals). FPHS provides contraceptive services, provides all-options information, and we are prochoice. That seems to be enough to draw the sanctimonious “prayer bullies” to our street corner . . . and soon they’ll be on yours.
These protests take place on the street corners of our nation, not just in our Central Wisconsin community, and it is important that the public and other health care providers know that they are opposed to contraception as well as abortion – that’s why they are picketing in Wausau.
Understanding that there is a need to connect the local to the state and the state to the national, FPHS is proudly supporting the newly launched “Forty 4 Forty” joint fund raising campaign of the Wisconsin Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and Pro-Choice Wisconsin. FPHS, because we are clearly not an abortion provider, can play an important role for all primary health care providers that the picketers are anti-contraception as well as anti-abortion.
The Forty4Forty campaign begins this week. A sign to solicit pledges for Forty 4 Forty will go up on our Wausau building tomorrow morning.
Last week, when one of the protestors said to me; “If they’re intimidated, that’s their problem,” he told me all I need to know.
Lon Newman
Executive Director
Family Planning Health Services
2 Comments • Posted in: Action
February 16th, 2010 • Contributed by Lon Newman
“A defender of the church,” proclaimed the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel headline for an extensive story about the new Archbishop-designate, Jerome Listecki. The subtitle for the article was: “Archbishop designate Listecki vows collaboration, but unafraid of debate.” The subtitle was probably derived from the bishop’s description of how he planned to participate in the political process. He said: “If we don’t challenge one another’s statements, then we’re relinquishing our responsibility to the common good.”
The following month, young Catholics for Choice (yCFC – a Washington D.C. based organization) and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS – an agency with family planning clinics in eight Wisconsin counties) formed a unique sectarian-secular advertising partnership, produced informational ads for broadcast, and then embarked on a two-day Wisconsin “road-trip” to draw media attention to their campaign and to build public (including the Catholic public) awareness and knowledge about emergency contraception.
The purpose of the joint media campaign was two-fold; 1) to inform the public about how Plan B works so they would have it on hand in advance of need and, 2) to inform Catholic women of reproductive age that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops health care directives permit the use of emergency contraception to prevent pregnancies resulting from rape.
In the January 2010 issue of the Journal of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, Ron Hamel, Ph.D., makes it very clear that the ethics of access to emergency contraception for Catholics needs to be fully examined and explained. Professor Hamel’s article and the YCFC/FPHS EC campaign are an effort to fulfill that responsibility when there is significant resistance.
The campaign succeeded in getting a response from the Archbishop-designate and thus succeeded in its secondary purpose. The headline on the Christmas Eve edition of the La Crosse Diocesan newspaper is: “Bishop Rejects Young Catholics for Choice Message.” The front page column ran adjacent to the departing bishop’s message. But what he rejected so prominently: “ . . . that Catholics can disregard Church teaching on contraception, abortion, and human sexuality in general and remain Catholics in good standing,” was only weakly connected to the message that yCFC and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) were promoting.
Bishop Listecki, like most of the Catholic protestors in front of the FPHS clinic, will allow “no room for interpretation,” once the bishop’s authority has been invoked. Many within the church see the bishop’s pattern of authoritarian rebukes, condemnations, and admonitions as futile efforts to suppress dissent and they understand they are not the views of other Catholics or even the other American bishops. Just as importantly, the denials and condemnations are not solely inflicted on the faithful. The prayer vigil protestors’ and Bishop Listecki’s efforts to eliminate access to emergency contraception, if they succeed, would apply to women regardless of their faith.
Erik Cieslewicz and Brooke Sperry have produced a documentary about the joint campaign that will be released February 17th, 2010. The web-posting will occur on the same day that another Lenten prayer vigil outside an FPHS clinic (which does not provide abortion services) begins in central Wisconsin. The video shows the challenge as well as the fun of the effort to educate the public in the face of consistent efforts to suppress and to misinform. Earlier, “40 Days for Life” prayer vigils played a large part in motivating FPHS and yCFC to cooperate in the advertising effort to correct misinformation being spread by their opponents.
Enjoy the video!
No Comments • Posted in: Action, Birth Control, Emergency Contraception, Family Planning, Policy
November 30th, 2009 • Contributed by Lon Newman
The belief that contraception is intrinsically evil, though sincere, does not make it true. The belief that it is “written in everyone’s heart as “natural law” is no more persuasive. If true, it seems there would be no disagreement.
Catholic leaders know they have not persuaded one another, the public, or their own laity, to agree that contraception is evil. So when it comes to public policy, rather than engage in dialogue and debate, they seem to make a statement and end it with a “Dixi” (Latin for “I have spoken”) as though that is all that should be necessary.
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No Comments • Posted in: Birth Control, Emergency Contraception, Policy
September 22nd, 2009 • Contributed by Lon Newman
Taken from The Huffington Post and RH Reality Check
In the politics of abstinence-only education, we have a lot to learn. With the full Senate poised to vote this month on the $163 billion Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (FY10 Labor-HHS) appropriations bill, advocates of evidence-based comprehensive sexuality education programs don’t have very much time for study.
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No Comments • Posted in: Policy
July 14th, 2009 • Contributed by Lon Newman
After thirteen years and more than a billion dollars, the budget axe is raised over abstinence-until-marriage programs. The President and the Speaker of the House have passed judgment. Appropriations Chair, David Obey (D-WI), may deliver the last reading of the final sentence. I won’t be among those asking him for a stay.
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No Comments • Posted in: Action, Policy
April 15th, 2009 • Contributed by Lon Newman
O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.
(O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us.)
Robert Burns, Poem “To a Louse” – verse 8
Scottish national poet (1759 – 1796)
For almost a year now, Pro-Life Wisconsin (PLW) has maintained a protest campaign at our family planning and WIC clinics in Central Wisconsin. PLW activities have included a ‘verbal hijacking’ of our Raising Women’s Voices “Speak Out” on women’s health care so that those who wished to speak on issues unrelated to abortion or contraception were by-and-large unheard in the auditorium. Over the Lenten season, PLW and its local supporters participated in the “40 Days for Life” national campaign — conducting a ‘continuous’ prayer vigil outside our clinic offices. When asked by local reporters why they were participating in this effort, they said it was to stop abortion. We do not perform abortions at any of our facilities. As the 40 Days effort has come to an end, we want to share what we have learned.
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No Comments • Posted in: Abortion, Action, Family Planning, Policy
April 13th, 2009 • Contributed by Lon Newman
Patrick McIlheran, a conservative columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, startled me with a ‘quick hit’ that was printed in the Easter Sunday edition. The columnist trumpets a letter to the Washington Post by Harvard School of Public Health HIV/Aids researcher, Edward Green, where, according to McIlheran, Green said: “The pope is correct.” Katherine Kersten, blogging for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune also is amplifying Green’s assertion that current evidence on condom use in Africa supports the Pope’s position. My thoughts are: “Get ready, there’s a whole lot more where that came from and there will be a lot more for a long time.”
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No Comments • Posted in: Abstinence, Birth Control, Family Planning, Policy
March 24th, 2009 • Contributed by Lon Newman
For the President and Congress to achieve solid reproductive health care policy as a part of health care reform, the Obama administration will need to sideline a few of the professional wrestlers and sports announcers in the abortion rights contest. The ongoing face-off between the “Medical Right” and my pro-choice colleagues over access to contraception, comprehensive sex education, and legal access to abortion provides a dramatized competition that does not reflect the real lives of Americans. In their personal choices, citizens have accepted and embraced the right to informed consent on reproductive health issues. In this case, public policy should reflect private behavior.
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No Comments • Posted in: Action, Family Planning
