New research shows boys can also benefit from getting the HPV vaccine.

A government medical advisory panel said Tuesday that boys should receive the vaccination protecting them from the human papillomavirus virus.

The controversial vaccine was originally only given to girls to help prevent cervical cancer and genital warts.

Now, area health experts are offering the HPV vaccine to boys and men.

“We do have services for the Guardisil vaccination for 18 and over,” Kathy Buyeske with Family Planning Health Services said. “If they’re younger than 18, they can go to the local health department for the Guardisil vaccination.”

Research has shown more than 80 percent of anal cancer in men is related to HPV.

“The HPV vaccine is really being promoted for males ages 9-26 to help reduce their risk of contracting genital warts,” Buyeske said. “It also can protect them from penil cancer, or anal cancer also.”

The vaccine costs around $140 for each shot, but doctors say most insurance companies will cover it.

We are all in this together; the American public may have more access to services than men and women in developing nations, yet we all need the education and services so families and women all have a chance at a healthier life.

Yesterday, on World Population Day, the United Nations Population Fund officially launched 7 Billion Actions — a campaign to raise awareness and action around our planet’s growing population, which is set to reach 7 billion later this year.

The campaign is a wake-up call to the health, environmental, and social challenges associated with rapid population growth. It is also a wake-up call to the importance of voluntary family planning.

In 2011, more than 200 million women worldwide are still denied access to desired family planning services due to unavailable resources or lack of support from their husbands and communities. As a woman, I believe it is time to make universal access to family planning a global priority. And as a woman, I believe it is essential to welcome men into the conversation.

Why Family Planning?

According to World Health Organization statistics, approximately 1,000 women die every day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Over 99 percent of these maternal deaths occur in the developing world, in countries where a mother’s death can leave children — and entire families — in a perilous scenario.

Many, if not the majority, of these women want smaller families but often do not know how to prevent pregnancies. During my travel as Global Ambassador for the public health organization PSI (Population Services International), I have personally met some of these women.

I remember Therese, a woman in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who was so desperate after having given birth to six children that she ingested poisonous herbs to terminate three different pregnancies — leaving her in agonizing, life threatening pain. Her husband, Victor, watched each time in helpless fear. Like his wife, he had never been given information on family planning methods that could protect his wife and his family.

Their story is all too common and is a reminder that family planning communication must incorporate men into the equation.

Men and Family Planning

Research shows that men have a significant influence over women’s reproductive health decisions in the developing world, especially in Africa. Men who receive education on sexual and reproductive health are far more likely to support their partner’s decision on family planning.

Despite these facts, many family planning programs continue to follow the traditional woman-focused model, excluding men from research, service provision, and information campaigns.

A program in the Democratic Republic of Congo is addressing this problem, tailoring communication to reach men. Moreover, it uses an innovative and remarkably simple avenue to do so: the cell phone.

Reaching Men in the DRC

In 2011, 70 percent of worldwide cellular phone users live in developing countries. The World Bank has identified mobile phones as one of the most powerful ways to deliver health services and information to people living in remote areas, particularly in largely rural countries like the DRC.

PSI and its local partner, Association de Sante Familiale, saw a unique opportunity within these statistics and, in 2005, launched a family planning hotline in the DRC called Linge Verte.

Open 5 days per week, 8.5 hours per day, Ligne Verte provides free, accurate information on family planning and refers clients to family planning clinics across a wide geographic range.

Most importantly, Ligne Verte provides a safe, confidential zone for Congolese men and women to ask sensitive questions about family planning, as well as other sexual health concerns such as HIV.

To date, 84 percent of Ligne Verte callers have been men. Parallel PSI hotlines in other countries reflect similar statistics. In Benin and Pakistan, men make up 77 percent and 78 percent of callers, respectively, to national PSI family planning hotlines.

These numbers speak for themselves.

Family planning is not a gender specific issue. Men, as much as women, are interested in learning about ways to protect the physical and economic health of their families. They are asking questions and seeking answers.

It is our responsibility to listen and respond to them.

For more information on family planning:

2011 International Conference on Family Planning, Dakar, Senegal, November 29- December 2

7 Billion Actions Campaign

For some who can’t afford contraception and reproductive exams, the state and federally funded programs provide coverage for these services. These programs save a phenomenal amount of taxpayer dollars by preventing unintended pregnancies. They reduce the numbers of abortions because there are less unintended pregnancies. They reduce poverty for women, children and families.

The “straight white-guys” who oppose these programs want to deny the cost-savings and health enhancing outcomes of these programs. Don’t let them do it. Call them on it each time you hear or see them attacking family planning services.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on RH Reality Check.

By Amanda Marcotte

When it comes to the world of feminist writer/activists, I definitely fall on the “writer” side of the line. Most of my life is researching, conducting interviews, pitching pieces, and, of course, staring at my computer, trying to think of a verb that’s dynamic but not pretentious. I love giving speeches, but they’re usually of the 20-60 minute long variety meant to educate, analyze and entertain (and there’s always a Q&A), and I’m always on a roster with journalists and academics. So how was it that Saturday afternoon, I found myself standing outside with feet growing numb in the cold amongst actors, musicians, organizers and oodles of politicians, trying to think of what I could say in 120 seconds that would be meaningful to the crowd of thousands of people waving signs and periodically erupting into chants?

Well, mostly I was there because Planned Parenthood of New York City graciously asked me to speak at a rally in support of Title X funding, which has been zeroed out by the House of Representatives in the continuing resolution to fund the government, a move that can be stopped by the Senate and President. I said yes because while drum-beating and sign-waving is really outside of my comfort zone, I consider this issue too important not to grab opportunities to speak out. For years I’ve been writing about something that most of the media tragically ignores, which is the growing radicalism of movement conservatism regarding women’s sexual health. Anti-choice is also about resisting birth control and any other health care that relates to sexual activity, on the grounds that women who have sex should face “consequences”, i.e. be punished. (As a good example, I saw my friend Katie Halper fighting some guy on Twitter over whether or not Planned Parenthood offers breast exams, something anti-choicers are trying to deny because, as Katie put it, “I guess even the most heinous distortion of punitive conservatism can’t make breast cancer a woman’s fault.” Notice that they’re not trying to deny that Planned Parenthood does a million cervical cancer screenings a year, but I guess they don’t care about those lives, since cervical cancer is usually caused by HPV, and they can convince themselves those women brought their deaths on themselves.) Even though we’ve seen evidence of the anti-choice movement pushing for abstinence-only education and fighting the HPV vaccine and emergency contraception, in most of the media, the discussion is still incorrectly framed as fetus-centric.

And now the anti-choice has scored a major victory in the war on women’s health, amongst many other programs that help people that conservatives disapprove of, such as people who want to have more energy-efficient homes and women who have to work for a living and therefore can’t play unpaid preschool teacher to their kids. So I had to speak out. Conservative activists are dropping the word “abortion” a lot, because it performs well as a conversation-stopper that allows them to continue working against women without suffering too much investigation into their real aims, but this time, people aren’t fooled. Pap smears and condoms aren’t abortion. The anti-choice resistance to them makes it clear that the concern for fetuses is actually a concern that women are having sex without facing sadistic punishments that, in the past (and sadly still today) left them traumatized, mutilated, and often dead.

That era isn’t far enough in the past that women today really can take for granted all that we have, but I thought the best way to speak out against the encroachments on women’s rights was to talk about all the ways our lives have been quietly saved by doctors, nurses, and educators who give us the tools to be, as women always have been before us, sexually active without giving up our health and dreams. For most of us, having to live without birth control would have meant drastically different, sadder lives. How better than to highlight the radical nature of this move against Title X than to instigate a speak-out about how the biggest target — Planned Parenthood — helped us, usually in ways that the vast majority of the country finds completely non-controversial?

For this purpose, I started the Twitter hashtag #thanksPPFA, where people could talk about how Planned Parenthood had improved their lives. And for this purpose, when I stood up at the rally Saturday, what I did was tell a (very short) story: I had gone to a Catholic university, and the health center didn’t offer birth control. (Boooooo!, said the crowd, surprising me and then making me laugh.) So I went to Planned Parenthood, where I could afford it, and that clinic basically was my doctor for the next five years. And I spoke briefly about the stories that came out on Twitter, 140 characters at a time: women who finished school, married the right guy, had kids when they were ready, all because of Planned Parenthood. Women who are still with us, because their cervical cancer was caught by Planned Parenthood’s routine screening. Lives are saved every day, and it’s usually not remarked on, because most of us expect it will always be there.

But if the conservative movement gets its way, it won’t be there.

While Planned Parenthood is the touchstone for this outrage, people are standing up for more than just this one large organization. We’re standing up because we believe that women, gay people, poor people, people of color, young people, and people who fall outside the gender binary are just as much people as the rich straight white guys that dominate the ranks of those trying to shut down access to sexual health care. And as people, we have the same rights as those rich straight white guys to our health, to our hopes and dreams, to our relationships, and yes, to our sexual pleasures as they do. Planned Parenthood offers substantial services that save lives every day, but they’re also a symbol in this war over who gets to decide if The Rest Of Us are people, too. In the 21st century, are we going to expand the rights of man to all of us, or are we going to slide backwards to a time when only the few got access to what we all deserve?

GRAND FORKS — Like Rod Lammer, I too have noticed the 40 Days for Life campaign’s signs urging North Dakotans to “pray and fast to end abortion” (“Advice for the faithful: Trust but verify,” letter, Page A4, Sept. 30).

I found myself asking how prayer and fasting compares to proven means of reducing abortions.

Unlike comprehensive sex education and access to birth control, neither prayer nor fasting has been shown to prevent abortion. Instead of depriving one’s self of nourishment or mentally soliciting supernatural intervention, individuals opposed to abortion should make contraceptives available and ensure that consumers know how to use them correctly.

But it’s no secret that access to contraception and complete sex education programs face the greatest resistance from Catholics and other religious conservatives.

Presumably, most people who display these “pray and fast” signs would like elective abortion to be illegal. But outlawing abortion doesn’t “end” it. A 2007 comprehensive international study by the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute found that women undergo abortions at a comparable rate in nations where abortion is outlawed. The only effect of outlawing abortion is a greatly increased number of women who are maimed or killed from unsafe attempts.

The data from this and countless other studies shows that the best way to reduce abortions is through greater access to birth control.

Correctly using contraception almost completely eliminates the risk of unplanned pregnancy, but contraception and information won’t stop abortion if it isn’t made available. Randomized controlled studies have shown that abstinence-only programs lead to higher percentages of unplanned pregnancy and sexually-transmitted infections among teens.

Religious conservatives are doing a great disservice to their sons and daughters by keeping them uninformed.

We can all agree that unplanned pregnancies must be reduced to “end” abortion. Let’s invest our precious energy only in the most effective ways of doing so: sex education and birth control, not prayer or fasting.

Meg Brown

By DAVID WAHLBERG | dwahlberg@madison.com | 608-252-6125 | Posted: Monday, October 4, 2010 5:10 am

Family planning advocates hope Wisconsin’s bid to make permanent its expanded birth control services under Medicaid is approved before the Nov. 2 election so the program will be harder to cut if Republican Scott Walker becomes governor.

Whether Walker or Democrat Tom Barrett wins the governor’s race, opponents say they will fight the program, especially its inclusion of teens as young as 15. Federal officials are reviewing Wisconsin’s application, submitted in June before any other state.

The proposal, allowed under the new health care reform law, would let the state provide free birth control pills, vasectomies and other contraceptives to more low-income people than some states without having to periodically reapply as the state must do now.

The state also wants to start giving the services to men and women 15 and older who make as much as $32,940 a year, up from the current annual income limit of $21,660.

Wisconsin’s proposed start date for the permanent program is Nov. 1. “It has nothing to do with the election,” said Marlia Moore, a benefits policy administrator for the state Department of Health Services. “It’s just a coincidence.”

But advocates say they hope the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approve the bid by then to codify the program before the election.

“There is definitely an advantage to getting as much done as we can while we still have (Democratic) Gov. (Jim) Doyle in office,” said Nicole Safar, legal and policy analyst for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin.

Getting approval by Nov. 1, or at least before January when Republicans could take control of the governor’s office, would “hopefully ensure that the program will continue,” said Lon Newman, executive director of Wausau-based Family Planning Health Services.

Wisconsin is one of 27 states that provide family planning services — which also include Pap smears and testing for sexually transmitted diseases — to more people than required by Medicaid, the state-federal health plan for the poor. The state’s expanded program started in 2003, and men were added this year.

Wisconsin spent $18.4 million to provide the services to 65,000 people in 2008, saving $139.1 million in costs from unintended pregnancies, according to the state health department.

“It’s good for the public health, and it’s good for the public purse,” said Clare Coleman, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. She praised Wisconsin’s leadership in being the first state to pursue a permanent program.

But Julaine Appling, president of the conservative group Wisconsin Family Action, said spending more money on birth control when the state faces a budget deficit makes no sense. “That’s an unwise and irresponsible use of taxpayer money,” she said.

Matt Sande, director of legislation for Pro-Life Wisconsin, questioned the state’s claim that birth control saves money. Like Appling, he vowed to fight the program and at least get the qualifying age moved from 15 to 18.

“Government-funded birth control, liberally distributed to young women and girls, increases and encourages sexual promiscuity,” Sande said. “What comes at the end of that? Abortion.”

Pro-Life Wisconsin and Wisconsin Right to Life have endorsed Walker. In a debate in August, Walker said BadgerCare Plus, Wisconsin’s main Medicaid program, has become too large and should be cut.

“Scott supports returning BadgerCare to its original purpose,” said his spokeswoman, Jill Bader.

Barrett supports the state’s application to make the expanded family planning services permanent, said his spokesman, Phil Walzak.

Shinie Tho, a 19-year-old student at UW-Madison, said she has been getting the NuvaRing birth control for free through the program at Planned Parenthood in Madison.

“Most college students are broke,” she said. “This helps a lot.”

The city of Baltimore, together with the Center for Reproductive Rights, is asking that the court dismiss the lawsuit filed by the Archbishop of Baltimore and the Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns, Inc., claiming that the city ordinance asking crisis pregnancy centers to have truthful signs outside their centers constitutes a denial of their freedom of speech.

From a Center for Reproductive Rights press release:

Today, the City asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that the Archbishop’s claims against the ordinance are not supported by the facts or the law.  The ordinance protects women from deceptive advertising and ensures that women seeking birth control or abortion services have prompt access to those services.

“These facilities have a long documented history of misleading and manipulating women seeking abortion or contraceptive services.  It’s about time that they were required to tell women the truth,” said Stephanie Toti, staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Anti-choice advocates are upset with the ordinance stating that they must post signs declaring that they are not medical centers, and that they neither dispense nor provide referrals for abortions or birth control services.  According to the Archbishop, the ordinance is a form of religious harassment.

“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 17^th, 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!

Rise in teenage pregnancy rate spurs new debate on arresting it
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The pregnancy rate among teenage girls in the United States has jumped for the first time in more than a decade, raising alarm that the long campaign to reduce motherhood among adolescents is faltering, according to a report released Tuesday.
The pregnancy rate among 15-to-19-year-olds increased 3 percent between 2005 and 2006 — the first jump since 1990, according to an analysis of the most recent data collected by the federal government and the nation’s leading reproductive-health think tank.
Teen pregnancy has long been one of the most pressing social issues and has triggered intense political debate over sex education, particularly whether the federal government should fund programs that encourage abstinence until marriage or focus on birth control.
“The decline in teen pregnancy has stopped — and in fact has turned around,” said Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, the nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in New York that conducted the analysis. “These data are certainly cause for concern.”
The abortion rate also inched up for the first time in more than a decade — rising 1 percent — intensifying concern across the ideological spectrum.
“One of the nation’s shining success stories of the past two decades is in danger of unraveling,” said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “Clearly, the nation’s collective efforts to convince teens to postpone childbearing must be more creative and more intense, and they must begin today.”
The cause of the increase is the subject of debate. Several experts blamed the increase in teen pregnancies on sex-education programs that focus on encouraging abstinence. Others said the reversal could be due to a variety of factors, including an increase in poverty, an influx of Hispanics and complacency about AIDS, prompting lax use of birth control such as condoms.
“It could be a lot of things coming together,” said Rebecca Maynard, a professor of economics and social policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It could be we just bottomed out, and whenever you are at the bottom, it tends to wiggle around. This may or may not be a sustained rise.”
The report comes as Congress might consider restoring federal funding to sex-education programs that focus on abstinence. The Obama administration eliminated more than $150 million in funds for such groups, but the Senate’s health-care reform legislation would reinstate $50 million.
The new findings immediately set off a debate over funding. Critics argued that the disturbing new data were just the latest in a long series of indications that the focus on abstinence programs was a dismal failure.
“Now we know that after 10 years and over $1.5 billion in abstinence-only funding, the U.S. is lurching backwards on teen sexual health,” said James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth, a Washington advocacy group.
Supporters of abstinence programs, however, said the findings provided powerful evidence of the need to continue to encourage delayed sexual activity, not only to avoid pregnancy but also to reduce the risk for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
“Research unmistakably indicates that delaying sexual initiation rates and reducing the total number of lifetime partners is more valuable in protecting the sexual health of young people than simply passing out condoms,” said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association, who blamed the increase on several factors.
“Contributors include an over-sexualized culture, lack of involved and positive role models, and the dominant message that teen sex is expected and without consequences,” Huber said. The Obama administration is launching a $110 million pregnancy prevention initiative focused on programs with proven effectiveness but has left open the possibility of funding some innovative approaches that include encouraging abstinence.
The rate at which U.S. teenagers were having sex rose steadily through the 1970s and 1980s, fueling a sharp rise in teen pregnancies and births. That trend reversed around 1991 because of AIDS, changing social mores about sex and other factors, including greater use of contraceptives, which pushed the U.S. teen pregnancy rate to historic lows.
The U.S. rates still remained higher than those in other industrialized countries.
The decline in teen sexual activity had leveled off starting about nine years ago, and the teen birth rate began to increase in 2005. It wasn’t known before if the increase was due to more pregnancies or fewer abortions and miscarriages. For the first time, the new analysis uses those factors in calculating the teen pregnancy rate.
The analysis examined data on teenage sex and births collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics and data on abortions collected by the CDC and Guttmacher — the two best sources of such data.
The abortion rate among teenagers rose 1 percent in 2006 from the previous year — to 19.3 abortions per 1,000 women in that age group, the analysis found. Taking that and miscarriages into account, the analysis showed that the pregnancy rate among U.S. women younger than 20 in 2006 was 71.5 per 1,000 women, a 3 percent increase from the rate of 69.5 in 2005. That translated into 743,000 pregnancies among teenagers, or about 7 percent of women in this age group.
“When birth rates go up and down, it could be the result of kids getting fewer abortions,” said John Santelli, a professor of population and family health at Columbia University. “This shows that it’s a true rise in pregnancies.”
The rate increase was highest for blacks. Among blacks, the rate increased from 122.7 per 1,000 in 2005 to 126.3. For Hispanics the rate rose from 124.9 per 1,000 women to 126.6. Among whites, the rate increased from 43.3 per 1,000 women to 44.0.

It appears Baltimore has found a solution to an issue that affects women seeking reproductive care across the United States. A disclaimer law would be a start at reducing the number of women who are unable to get the care they seek at a CPC.  Service agencies should not dupe the people who come to them seeking comprehensive care. This law would address just that issue.

This post first appears on RH Reality Check.   From Jenny Blasdell and John Nugent’s blog.

Imagine a friend of yours, a pregnant woman, walks into an office seeking information about her pregnancy. Only, it’s not a doctor’s office and they’re not going to tell her the truth.  Unfortunately, this happens every day across the United States.

Everyone can agree that women seeking information about pregnancy, birth control, abortion, or sexually transmitted diseases should receive timely and accurate information, not false political propaganda.  But there are facilities out there that spread misinformation about abortion and birth control in an effort to dissuade women from exploring those options.   These are known as limited service pregnancy centers or crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs).

In Baltimore and around the country, many facilities have neutral sounding names like “Center for Pregnancy Concerns.”  Sounds like a place you could get information or services for your pregnancy concerns, right?  Wrong.  Volunteers who visited these centers were told falsehoods like abortion increases your risk of breast cancer, that natural family planning is as effective as the pill, and that condoms do not protect against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).  CPCs are concerned alright, but not about what’s in the best interest of women’s health.  They’re concerned with preventing women from exploring their full range of options to protect against unplanned pregnancy and STDs.

CPCs do not always disclose information about the limitations of services or their anti-choice agendas in their advertising, particularly their beliefs about birth control.  Low-cost birth control has been proven to be the most effective way to decrease the need for abortion, yet CPCs give false information about the safety and effectiveness of contraceptives.  Moreover, not a single CPC in Baltimore City contacted by NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland Fund volunteers would provide a referral for comprehensive birth control.

That’s why this week Baltimore City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake introduced the Limited-Service Pregnancy Centers Disclaimer Bill.  Co-sponsored by ten other council members, this bill is a common sense measure that will ensure that women visiting a Baltimore CPC are informed that they will not receive comprehensive birth control or abortion services or referrals.  The measure does not ask CPCs to provide services they find objectionable.  It only asks them to be honest and straightforward with the women, so that they know up front whether the facility will suit their needs.  Having a more complete picture about the services that are and are not offered will also help provide a context for information they do receive.   The goal of this bill is to empower women to make decisions about their care, and decide if a so-called “Center for Pregnancy Concern” is, well, concerned about the same things as they are.

This bill is an exciting step in Maryland.  Although Maryland introduced a statewide bill to regulate CPCs in 2008, the bill, like all pro-choice bills in the last eleven years in our state, did not move forward.  But localities around the country have been enacting laws and policies to strengthen the reproductive rights of women.  For example, Pittsburgh enacted a buffer zone protecting patients entering reproductive health care facilities.  And Madison, Wisconsin created an ordinance requiring pharmacies to let customers know when emergency contraception is not available.

NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland and Planned Parenthood of Maryland are committed to ensuring that every woman has the best medical care possible – from birth control to prenatal vitamins, from pre-conception care to labor and delivery.  We have no objection to a center that offers women who have decided to carry their pregnancies to term any help they like.  But lines are crossed when a CPC is not up front about their services, or when a center misleads women. 

The Limited Service Pregnancy Centers Disclaimers Bill simply asks that Baltimore CPCs disclose what is true – that they do not provide or refer for comprehensive birth control services or abortion so that women know up front whether the facility suits their needs.   We believe this bill to be a common sense approach to a goal we all share – getting women the care they need. 

From Jenny Blasdell and John Nugent’s blog

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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.

The 10 Suggestions:

I.    Publicly express sincere concerns about patient and public safety.
We wrote an editorial which focused on traffic conditions near the clinic and how patients had been affected by the protestors. After the editorial was printed, the protestors stopped harassing patients and obstructing visibility for drivers.
II.    Leave the religious debate to religious organizations.
We spoke with supportive local parishioners of many denominations and asked for their help. The Wisconsin Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice held a news conference that received front page coverage and many church leaders explained that their religious traditions do not oppose family planning or, in many cases, abortion.
III.    Respect the rights as well as the responsibilities of the protesters.
We consistently and publicly expressed our respect for the right to protest, but we also reported any obstruction of clinic entrances or exits (a violation of federal law).
IV.    Maintain Security and Surveillance.
We used digital cameras and recorders to record video covering the entrances and exits at all time.  We also took routine photographs of the protesters. We reported the minor acts of vandalism, entrance and exit obstruction, and harassment to local law enforcement and were able to provide the computerized records as well.

V.    Act don’t React and have a sense of humor.
We hung three large red, white, and blue banners with one word on each one: Condoms Save Lives. When the local newspaper took photos of the protestors, the banners provided a public health message. We also ran general awareness ads on television talking about the services we provide and the value to women’s health. I put up a shadow box with a stone inside, a mallet on the side, and had the glass inscribed “The First Stone – John 8:1-11.” Someone in a hooded sweatshirt stole the mallet, but they left the stone where it was.
VI.    Keep your eyes on the majority.
Quantity matters in the political world, where public policy is decided.  Support for contraception and sex education is growing, even within the parishes recruiting protesters. There is no need to belittle our opposition or demean ourselves.
VII.    Stay focused on facts, evidence, and your mission.
We resisted temptations to be diverted from scientific evidence, provable facts, and the mission of our organization.  Ours is a health services mission of universal access to maternal and child health including reproductive care.  The mission of our opponents is theological and political, so we invited others to speak from those perspectives whenever possible.

VIII.    Follow the law and enforce the law.
One of the opponents complained to city zoning officials that the “Condoms Save Lives” banners intruded over the public right-of-way. We moved them to comply and showed the officials photographs of protestor signs placed in violation of the same ordinance. We asked for equal enforcement.
IX.    Thank contributors and supporters.
You can never express too much appreciation to your supporters, contributors, and your employees.  Use the opportunity to express appreciation and to network.

X.    Let them speak!
The opposition has been unsuccesful persuading even their parishioners(Catholics and Choice) on contraception and sex education. Since their position is fundamentally faith-based and authoritarian, it is unlikely to look rational from other perspectives. At the Women’s Health Speak Out, at our news conferences, in web-postings, in letters-to-the-editor, and even standing in front of our clinics, they communicate quite clearly.  Most people see them as they are and most people disagree with their beliefs and with their tactics.

As Pope Benedict boarded a plane to Yaounde, he said: “”You can’t resolve it (Africa’s HIV/Aids Epidemic) with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

Dr. Green’s research and his public presentations, by contrast, state that condoms are seldom used consistently and correctly in general populations and for many reasons, most of which are unknown, condom distribution programs in those areas of Africa have failed to show positive results on a population basis.  He explains that condoms are 80-90% effective at HIV transmission prevention when used consistently and correctly by individuals.

In fact, even in the Washington Post letter that is generating the public attention, Green says: “Don’t misunderstand me; I am not anti-condom. All people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship.”

Although Dr. Green’s research findings overlap with Pope Benedicts moral position that reducing multiple concurrent partners and promotion of fidelity and abstinence have been successful strategies for many people, we cannot ignore the distinction between the proven effectiveness of consistent and correct use of condoms by individuals at risk and our inability to show condom distribution program effectiveness in certain parts of Africa on a population research basis.

Dr. Green supports universal access to condoms and consistent and correct use by individuals at risk of sexually transmitted disease infection.  Pope Benedict XVI does not.

It is pointless to speculate on Dr. Green’s motivations for writing a letter to the Washington Post that minimizes the distinctions between the Vatican’s point-of-view and his own as a Harvard School of Public Health HIV/Aids researcher.  I am no Harvard epidemiologist, but I know that confusion resulting from Dr. Green’s letter will be used to oppose public health policies and programs that Dr. Green supports.  I know that opposition puts the lives and health of millions in Africa and across the world at risk.

 On Friday, April 3, at the conclusion of the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, the international community pledged to ramp up efforts to improve women’s health and reduce poverty in the developing world.  And for the first time in eight years, the United States was front and center in advocating an increased global commitment to reproductive health and rights.

Add this new U.S. stance to the recently resumed American support for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the repeal of the infamous “global gag rule” that barred overseas organizations that so much as provided abortion information from receiving U.S. family planning assistance, and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s unequivocal endorsement of women’s rights as human rights, and it is safe to say: The U.S. is back!

The social and financial return on these investments is great, added Cohen, citing Guttmacher and UNFPA evidence. Meeting targets set in the Cairo Programme for Action and in UN Millennium Development Goals will require strong commitment and increased cooperation. For this to work, the United States must maintain a clear leadership role and European donors cannot back away now just because the United States has returned to the scene.

Vasectonomics

by Christina Page

“Why are we suddenly having an explosion in guys asking for vasectomies?” This is a question Dr. Steven Jones’ staff asks him a lot lately, the Cleveland Urologist told CNN. Dr. Marc Goldstein, a New York-based urologist in practice for over thirty years, told the network, “I have never seen anything like this. When things started to go south in the stock market, then the vasectomy consults went north.” The folks over at vasectomy.com no doubt were pleased for snagging that most awesome domain name. Little did they know a bad economy would provide their payday; the number of appointment requests through their site spiked 30 percent in January.

It’s not just men who are suddenly concerned about their family’s future. Consumers are spending more money on all types of contraceptives, according to the Nielson Company. Indeed, the embrace of family planning appears to be a critical step in financial planning. Nielson said sales of over-the-counter contraceptives jumped a dazzling 10.2 percent in the first two months of the year. The company reports that, while other retail sales slip, condom sales jumped up 5% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 6% in January, compared with the same time periods last year. Sales of Essure, a non-invasive, irreversible birth control method for women were up also, 28% over last year’s sales.

Planned Parenthood clinics, the leading provider of contraception in the country, also report increased traffic over the past several months, according to Tait Sye, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “There’s no question we’re seeing increased traffic at most clinics, and many clinics report an increase in new patients as well,” Sye said. A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa told the local TV news the number of women in the state asking for access to birth control is up nearly 40 percent.

So much for contraception being a non-sequitur in discussions about the economy. Just a couple of months ago, Congressional Republicans, fresh from their first meeting with Obama, stood snickering before the press about the inclusion of a family planning provision in the president’s emergency economic plan. What does birth control have to do with the economy? they chided, suggesting Obama might be trying to sneak a liberal social program by them. Minority Leader Representative John Boehner protested, “Regardless of where anyone stands on taxpayer funding for contraceptives and the abortion industry, there is no doubt that this once little-known provision in the congressional Democrats’ spending plan has NOTHING (emphasis his) to do with fixing the economy and creating more American jobs. ” It was lost on the Republicans, many of whom oppose contraception for ‘moral’ reasons, that rational people facing hazardous economic times need to control the number of children they have to support. And, by the way, that kind of responsible behavior is good for the economy which can hardly afford the social programs to support families who can’t make it on their own. (Republicans are supposedly for responsibility except…when they’re not.)

Boehner might want to check in with that Joe the Plumber demographic who, if recent trends are any indicator, not only considers contraception a great form of protection against uncertain times but is opting for the permanent form at that. (And for any Joe without insurance that vasectomy will cost between $500-$1000, probably twice as much as his tax cut. The contraception provision in the stimulus package would have extended coverage for this kind of contraceptive and others to those earning above 200% of the federal poverty level. So Joe, when you lay out that stack of cash don’t forget to thank Boehner who thinks your decision to prevent an unaffordable pregnancy is too silly to cover.)

The Salt Lake Tribune recently interviewed a local couple in their twenties who see pregnancy prevention as key to their family’s survival. They have two kids, 2 years old and 3 months, and were attending a state insurance fair to sign up for health insurance. He works two part-time jobs and she stays at home caring for the kids. Money is a constant worry– he foregoes medications to pay for diapers and the electric bill. She explained that they are being “way more careful” about preventing pregnancy. The couple is hoping to qualify for government insurance in order to get birth control. “I just worry if the economy is going to get worse. I would starve myself before my kids [go hungry]. What if it gets so bad I don’t have food for them?” Cut to eye-rolling Congressional Republicans.

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. 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. Meanwhile Republicans openly mock attempts to include family planning as a part of the economic recovery, actively work to defund Planned Parenthood, promote policies that encourage health care workers to deny patients access to contraception, and defend programs that withhold basic information about contraception to sexually active teens. (Then they’re baffled to find the number of teen parents spiked during the Bush years.)

Family planning is an American family value and, as national data indicate, something we rely on in our greatest times of need. Attacks on our right to plan our families shred the social safety net. The Republicans are welcome to titter and heckle the next time a proposal to support family planning crosses their desks. Doing so will only reveal how astoundingly out of touch they are from American’s real lives and needs.

Even American Catholics practice a fundamental, and not fundamentalist, right to reproductive self-determination. During the 2008 campaign, most Catholic voters ignored the sacramental threats of shepherds like Reverend Jay Scott Newman, who told his parishioners that their souls were at risk if they voted for pro-choice candidates. (Catholics voted for Obama with a 54 to 45 percent margin.) As Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Patrick Whelan pointed out, voters may have noticed that abortion rates declined more under the Clinton administration’s policies than under Reagan’s or under either of the two Bush’s. Voters may have decided that there are higher priority pro-life issues; such as economic desperation, unending war, and global environmental degradation.
For some, positions on abortion and birth control are simply not susceptible to earthly persuasion. More than forty years ago, when a majority of a Vatican commission on birth control seemed ready to support a reversal of the church’s ban, Father Marcelino Zalba fervently asked the members what would happen “with the millions we have sent to hell” if previous teaching was invalidated. Commission member Patty Crowley responded: “Father Zalba, do you really believe God has carried out all your orders?”
Nancy Belden, a Washington-based public opinion researcher, recently showed that one side of the abortion debate is unlikely to change the hearts and minds of the other. Her polling demonstrated that support or opposition to legal abortion has moved a few polling points one way or the other in the last thirty-five years, but in 2007 56% favored legal access and 40% opposed – a return to 1973. American families have made up their minds and for the most part, they ignore the arguments and the arguers on the other side.

President Obama frequently demonstrates a pragmatic and realistic approach to reproductive health policy: rescinding the theological stem-cell federal funding restrictions; removing the ‘Global Gag Rule’ (Mexico City Policy) that penalized international family planning agencies for supporting reproductive rights, and; rolling back the Bush administration’s ideological 11th hour “conscience protection” regulations. While the President has reached out to listen to fundamentalist members of Congress and to interest groups who disagree, most of the time he has tried to set policy based on practical scientific decision-making instead of partisan crowd noise.
The new Congress and the new Administration must continue on this course of providing leadership on the principle that reproductive health care policy will be based on two foundations of American democracy – reason and science. We must not be distracted from that principle by battles over who holds the high moral ground. Instead, we must keep our attention on developing reproductive health care policy that is down to earth.

Today we had to ask one of the protesters to move his truck out of our parking lot. I understand that it’s inconvenient to have to walk a few blocks, but I’d rather inconvenience him than the parents coming into our WIC clinic who need to negotiate strollers and car carriers. This time of year, you never know when the temperature is going to change and the sidewalks will suddenly turn into skating rinks. I’m very grateful that to date this is the largest inconvenience we’ve encountered. I’m hopeful things will continue to be respectful.

It is somewhat surprising the number of families we’ve seen praying outside the clinic. Prior to the campaign, we saw one family on a regular basis, but now there are a few. I’m a little challenged when it comes to the issue of the kids. This summer one of the children was quite adamant about not wanting to be protesting (praying) because it was boring. These kids seem to be praying, but I have to repress the desire to bring them some hot tea and a basketball.

A young mother visiting our Women Infants and Children’s nutrition clinic in Central Wisconsin was frightened by a male picketer as she came into our clinic a few weeks ago.  Other women, sometimes our patients, sometimes our employees, have felt threatened by the “40 Days for Life” anti-birth control demonstrators leading a Lenten protest that began yesterday in front of our clinic in Central Wisconsin and in 131 other communities across the nation.

I haven’t asked the clients if they are visiting our clinic to get food for their infants or prenatal nutrition education. I haven’t asked whether they use natural family planning, or condoms, or hormonal birth control pills, or the patch, or an IUD.  I don’t ask whether they are married or faithful or abstinent.  I don’t ask whether they are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist or non-believers.  Neither do the demonstrators who intimidate them.

My agency is a non-sectarian health care provider with a mission to prevent unintended pregnancies and to improve maternal and child health.  We’re proud to support access to safe, legal voluntary reproductive health care as a human right. More than 95% of all American women use modern contraceptive methods. The women who come to us do not come to get an abortion or an abortion referral.  We prevent abortions, we do not provide them.

The 40 Days for Life demonstrators know that women and men come to us for birth control. Other local clinics also provide confidential birth control.  Unlike us, they may make medical referrals for pregnancy termination when necessary.  Walgreens and Wal-Mart deliver hormonal birth control pills and every hospital emergency room in Wisconsin is now required to give out emergency contraception to rape victims.

No theological or political issue is going to be resolved by frightening the women who come to us for health care.  We have been providing high-quality affordable and confidential health care for 36 years and we will continue to provide that care as long as there are women who choose to come to us to receive it.

Publicly funded family planning programs save the U.S. billions of dollars each year though the prevention of about 1.94 million unintended pregnancies, including nearly 400,000 teenage pregnancies, in the U.S., according to a report released Tuesday by the Guttmacher Institute, the AP/Miami Herald reports. The report estimates that the unintended pregnancies prevented each year would have resulted in 810,000 abortions, 270,000 miscarriages and 860,000 unintended births. The report states that without publicly funded family planning programs, the U.S. abortion rate would be nearly two-thirds higher than the current level and nearly twice as high among low-income women.

More than nine million women, including almost two million younger than age 20, received publicly funded contraceptive services in 2006. Six in 10 women who use a family planning center consider it to be their basic source of health care. The centers provide services such as breast and pelvic exams, reproductive cancer screenings, HIV testing, treatment for diabetes and high blood pressure, and a source of referrals to other health providers. In 2006, public expenditures for family planning totaled $1.85 billion, with 71% of the funds coming from the joint federal-state Medicaid program. In addition, 27 states have expanded eligibility for family planning for low-income women who would not otherwise qualify for Medicaid.

Rachel Benson Gold, a co-author of the report, called publicly funded family planning “smart government at its best.” She said that every dollar spent on the programs saves taxpayers $4 in costs associated with unintended births to women who are eligible for Medicaid. Gold said that obtaining a waiver from HHS to expand family planning services is a “cumbersome and time-consuming process” for states but that it is a “popular policy because it helps women while saving public dollars” and “more than pays for itself.” The report recommends that Congress do away with the waiver requirement for extending family planning and instead allow states to use the same income criteria that they use for determining eligibility for pregnancy-related care. The report also endorses family planning coverage for legal immigrants who have been in the U.S. less than five years. Additionally, the report supports pending legislation in Congress that would increase funding for Title X family planning.

Condoms have been around for a very long time. A brief summary of the history of condoms:

1000 B.C. – Condom use can be traced back several thousand years. Images from around 1000 BC show the ancient Egyptians wearing linen sheathes. It’s unclear if they wore these condom-like sheathes for protection or for ritual. Very likely they were used to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

100-200 A.D. – The earliest evidence of condom use in Europe comes from scenes in cave paintings found in France.

1500s – In Italy, research by Dr.Gabrielle Fallopius (for whom, coincidentally, the female fallopian tube was named) found that linen sheath condoms used to protect against syphilis, a deadly epidemic at that time in history, also helped prevent pregnancy.

1600s – Reports say farmers in Condom, France began using sheep guts as condoms, possibly the origin of the lambskin condom.

1700s – The naming of the condom is a bit of a mystery. Some believe it was named for “Dr. Condom,” who supplied King Charles II of England with animal tissue sheaths.  Most likely it came from the Latin word “condom,” which means “receptacle.”

1844 – Goodyear and Hancock began to mass-produce condoms made out of vulcanized rubber, which is a stronger and more elastic material. Men are advised that these rubber condoms can be washed and reused until they crumble.

1861 – The first advertisement for condoms was published in an American newspaper when The New York Times printed an ad for “Dr. Power’s French Preventatives.”

1873 – The Comstock Law was passed. It prohibited the advertising of any sort of birth control, and it also allowed the postal service to confiscate condoms sold through the mail.

1880s – The first latex condom was produced and condoms became a single-use product.

Early 1900s – Social hygienists fought to prohibit the use of condoms by Americans, resulting in U.S. troops in World War I having the highest rate of STDs — over 70%! By World War II, a more realistic attitude had emerged and the government aggressively promoted the use of condoms.

1980s – HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was identified, and the Surgeon General stated that other than abstinence, the most effective way to protect against HIV is to use a latex condom each and every time you have sex. Once a source of embarrassment and absolutely forbidden from being advertised in print or on television, the emergence of HIV as a sexually transmitted disease takes condoms into the mainstream.

1990s – The 1990s saw the introduction of a large number of different types of condoms, including colored condoms, ribbed condoms, studded condoms, flavored condoms, glow-in-the-dark condoms, and large condoms, as well as the first polyurethane condom.

2006
Condom sales reach nine billion worldwide.

It isn’t Speaker Pelosi whose thinking is seriously out-of-date. Inclusion of Medicaid family planning access in the economic stimulus package does not imply a belief that “more people mean less economic growth,” as the WSJ assumes. Equally unsubstantiated and even internally contradictory, is the editorial board’s rather medieval argument that we must produce more children to support us in our retirement (Although, after last year’s stock market crash, maybe children are the only pension plan we have left.) Although the editorial suggests that contraceptives as a part of an economic stimulus plan are ‘loopy,’ the editorial’s assertion that we need to have more children to maintain domestic consumption is clearly the all-out loopiest – tracing its roots, perhaps, to the ‘go shopping’ response to terrorist attacks. “Larger families have more credit cards, so have a larger family.”

Access to contraceptive care enables women to meet their educational goals, to participate fully in society, to time pregnancies for health as well as to achieve career aspirations.  Family planning is voluntarily prevention of unintended pregnancies — meaning women and their families are able to determine for themselves whether and when to have children. The human capital connection is that the cost of unintended pregnancy is also borne by employers in the form of higher insurance premiums, more family medical leaves, substitution expenses, rehiring/recruitment costs, retraining costs, and lost productivity.

CNN – Amid Protests, Obama backs ‘right to choose’ on Roe Anniversary

New York Times – Obama Resverses Rules on U.S. Abortion Aid

New York Times Editorial – Women’s Health, Ungagged

For more information, check out RHRealityCheck.org or Change.org.