Extra credit at Newman High
These young people appear to be on a field trip from Newman High School in Wausau, Wi.
Articles about Policy
An Archbishop’s Rebuke for the Common Good
“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.
Rise in teenage pregnancy rate spurs new debate on arresting it
Wisconsin has taken steps to advance the scope of the sex education our students will receive with the recently passed Healthy Youth Act. Wisconsin State Representative Donna Seidel talks with Dino Corvino in the attached podcast outlining the reasons behind this legislation. Across the nation, the rates of teen pregnancy have increased. The accompanying article from the Washington Post, January 1-26-2010, outlines what has happened and the increases in teen pregnancies in the last few years. Representative Seidel clarifies just why that is a concern for all of us
Exclusion of Abortion Coverage is Brazenly Bare
A glaring absence of the Emperor’s clothing seems to be escaping our attention in the recent House health care reform proposal with the inclusion of the Stupak amendment. The Emperor is naked and while everyone is critiquing, arguing and validating the fabrics, thread and adornment of his new clothes, those of us looking at his bare bottom wonder how everyone became so deluded.
The collective blindness of the Kingdom is truly exposed in the concession of excluding abortion care to pass a House proposal that included a public option. Using women’s health and reproductive justice as the deal breaker once again demonstrates that reform is not intended to address basic issues of health care disparity in our country.
Dixi-land Ban
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.
8th Circuit Decision On Shackling Pregnant Women
In a case out of Arkansas called Nelson v. Correctional Medical Services, 2008 WL 2777423 (8th Cir. 2008), the Eighth Circuit concluded that the shackling of a pregnant inmate laboring to deliver a baby did not constitute an Eighth Amendment violation. The practice of shackling pregnant and laboring prisoners has been criticized by legal commentators. See Geraldine Doetzer, Hard Labor: The Legal Implications of Shackling Female Inmates During Pregnancy and Labor, 14 Wm & Mary J. Women & L. 363 (2008); and Dana L. Sichel, Giving Birth in Shackles: A Constitutional and Human Rights Violation, 16 Am. U.J. Gender Soc. Policy & L. 223 (2007). It also has been denounced by human rights organizations including Amnesty International (AI), which published a 2006 report entitled Abuse of Women in Custody: Sexual Misconduct and Shackling of Pregnant Women. Nonetheless, according to Amnesty International, only two states, California and Illinois, have passed legislation prohibiting the practice, and only five jurisdictions bar such restraint as a matter of department of corrections policy. The AI Report says that 23 states and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons specifically permit the shackling of prisoners laboring to deliver babies. At the time of the AI report, the New York Times ran a story by Adam Litpak, featuring the plaintiff in Nelson, an Arkansas prisoner named Ms. Shawanna Nelson. Adam Liptak, Prisons Often Shackle Pregnant Inmates in Labor, New York Times, March 2, 200. The Amnesty report and Times article described the medical complications and pain that can occur if a pregnant woman is shackled during labor. But the most trenchant critique was by the husband of a Wisconsin inmate, quoted in the Times story, who said: “It is unbelievable that in this day and age a child is born to a woman in shackles. It sounds like something from slavery 200 years ago.”–Giovanna Shay
Abstinence Education DisObeyed
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.
TAKE ACTION TODAY TO OPPOSE THE BAUCUS HEALTH REFORM BILL!
The long-awaited Senate Finance Committee health reform bill has finally emerged from the anti-democratic and painfully extended negotiation process created by Committee Chair Max Baucus of Montana. The Baucus bill is bad for women and bad for our families in many ways. Continue reading this article »
Health Care in Rural America
As we work on future podcasts, we think it is important to share some of the information we are looking at. In the next weeks we shall be doing a series of podcasts about Health Care Disparities. My co worker Sue Kettner shared this report with me, and I thought I would share it with you. Continue reading this article »
STATE LEGISLATIVE TRENDS AT MIDYEAR
(From Guttmacher)
Although state legislatures focused on responding to the current economic crisis, numerous bills on reproductive health have also been the subject of debate and action. In the first half of 2009, 875 measures related to reproductive health were introduced in the 50 states and DC, and a total of 33 laws were enacted in 27 states. Three significant trends have emerged this year:
Sex education continues to garner significant attention at the state level, with 80 bills introduced in 28 states. So far this year, Hawaii, North Carolina and Oregon enacted legislation to promote comprehensive sex education, bringing to 17 the number of states that require information about contraception to be included in their sex education programs.
