Of all the creepy things I don’t want to see in my campus newspaper, up around the top of the list is advertisements lying to and shaming rape victims who choose to have an abortion.

In a series on RH Reality Check, Robin Marty looked at anti-choice advertising by the Human Life Alliance (a Crisis Pregnancy Center). Marty reports that the “advertising supplement” is riddled with lies, starting with the Table of Contents, where it claims that abortion in America “is legal through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason.” Seriously, if that was true, pro-choicers wouldn’t have any work to do.

From there the insert pursues further common anti-choice deceptions, such as breast cancer scare tactics; inaccurate conflation of birth control with abortion; and gory, frightening, but completely false descriptions of abortion procedures and side effects. But what really takes the cake is the shaming and manipulation of rape and incest survivors, who are told they will feel they’ve “conquered” their assault by giving birth.

The advertising supplement informs students, “In the only major study of pregnant rape victims ever done, Dr. Sandra Mahkorn found that 75 to 85 percent chose against abortion” (underlying message: so if that is your choice, something is clearly wrong with you). What was the “major study”? Why, it was the decisions of 37 women who came to the study’s author for advice. Besides the fact that this is not enough women to be scientifically significant, gee, I wonder if the biases of the rape counselor against abortion had any impact. The medically unsound ad further takes it upon itself to tell doctors to advise against the trauma of abortion for rape victims, without consideration of the unique situation facing each woman.

Oh, and in case of incest, according to the insert, abortion has never ever had a positive impact for the victim. It’s just the abusive parent who wants it; “the incest victim is more likely to see the pregnancy as a way out of the incestuous relationship because the birth of her child will expose the sexual activity.” Really, incest victims should hope they get pregnant as a means of escape? And it won’t be clear to anyone unless she give birth? There are better ways to address incest than saddling a child — since most incest victims are minors — with a child she can’t take care of, and her immature body might not be prepared to give birth to.

The Human Life Alliance has particularly targeted University of Wisconsin schools, with at least seven papers in the system agreeing to disseminate their lies (kudos to the student newspapers who have rejected these ads). Many students are upset at seeing the deceptive ads, however, and are speaking up; in a Letter to the Editor in the Student Voice at UW-River Falls, Nikki Shonoiki denounced the inaccurate “ads”: “Nothing was being advertised here; instead, you [the editor] contributed to the dissemination of 12-page tasteless booklets of disinformation designed to denigrate and shame women who receive abortion care.” And at Stony Brook University, where a campus paper also ran the ads, the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance began a campaign against these problematic inserts and Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

Insist on truth in advertising by signing this petition telling student newspapers running HLA inserts to join their peers who have rejected these inaccurate, agenda-driven ads.

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.

 Coincidentally, Tara Malone of the Chicago Tribune took a look at the issue in Illinois which ranks fourth in receipt of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage funds.  Her article, Sex ed: Abstinence-only programs under review, is a great read on the tough challenges that state faces.  As we see increasing numbers of teen pregnancies, births, and sexually transmitted infections, more communities are discussing the sex ed programs in their communities.  In my community, I know we have a curriculum for sex ed, but it’s hard to find out if it is being taught district wide.  What’s happening in your community?

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.

The Female Condom – where the girls – AND boys – are

Please join IRMA, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC) and the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) for the first IRMA global teleconference of 2009.

Get the skinny on the NEW female condom and discuss its implications for anal sex.

Featuring presentations by Serra Sippel, CHANGE Executive Director, and Mitchell Warren, AVAC Executive Director. Slides and other materials will be made available on the IRMA website in advance of the call.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Kuala Lumpur – midnite
Mumbai – 9:30pm
Nairobi – 7pm
Cape Town – 6pm
London – 4pm
New York – 11am
Lima – 11am
Chicago – 10am
Los Angeles – 8am

The conference ID # is the same for both international and domestic participants.
If you are calling from outside the US or Canada, please send a note to jpickett@aidschicago.org as soon as possible to receive the appropriate dial-in number.

Listening to the spokesperson for Pro-Life Wisconsin as he defended the new ‘right of conscience’ regulations on Wisconsin Public Radio last week reminded me of the wisdom of the tale.

For 30 years, regulations and federal laws have struck a delicate balance between the rights of patients to receive health care and the rights of health care providers. The new regulations, issued by Health and Human Services Secretary Leavitt, expand the rights of health care providers so extensively that the rights of the patient to receive care are obliterated. The new regulations give the right to refuse to provide health care to all virtually all employees for any health care service they might ‘morally object to.’

Matt Sande, speaking on behalf of Pro-Life Wisconsin, defended the broadest possible right to refuse saying: “These rights aren’t qualified in any way. That’s as it should be. We just have to work around it. We may not understand or agree with an individual’s objection, but we must protect and defend them. . . If we pick and choose which rights we protect, then we won’t have rights for anyone.”

Would this right to refuse apply to physicians who provide abortion services in South Dakota who have been required by state law to inform their patients that terminating a pregnancy is ending a separate, unique human life and that consequences may include depression and suicide? These physicians certainly have moral objections to the content of that message. Health and Human Services Secretary Leavitt has said that, where state laws and the rights of conscience regulations are in conflict, the federal government will help “bring the state into compliance.”

Would volunteers at federally funded abstinence-only “crisis pregnancy centers” have federal civil rights protection for refusing to give out inaccurate and incomplete information [Waxman Report] about the effectiveness of condoms to prevent pregnancy and HIV transmission? As he described patients who ‘may have to go somewhere else,” Mr. Sande said; “One person’s convenience should not trump another person’s right of conscience.”

The moral of the fable is that we are often the source of our own destruction.

The first weakness of the ‘rights of conscience’ regulation expansion is an assumption that only anti-abortion and anti-family planning advocates have moral convictions. The probability that health care employees will refuse to comply with anti-choice or anti-contraception requirements has been overlooked.

The second weakness is a faith-based denial that absolute rights do not exist on this earth. Individual rights require constant, vigilant, rational and empathic balancing. Whether it is the right of a patient to informed consent or the right of the state to protect a fetus, purity is an impossible standard.

The Obama administration must immediately refuse to enforce these regulations and Congress must immediately begin the process to rescind them. In this case, ideologues have given their enemies the means of their own destruction and the regulations must be brought to earth.

As the global community marks World AIDS Day on December 1, advocates and policy experts welcome the promise by the incoming Obama administration to put sound scientific evidence at the forefront of the U.S. global AIDS program (PEPFAR). President-elect Obama’s campaign Web site states that the “first priority is…to ensure that best practices—not ideology—… drive funding for HIV/AIDS programs.” And indeed, both the new administration and the incoming Congress will have opportunities next year to do just that.

In August 2008, the U.S. government reauthorized the PEPFAR program, committing $39 billion over five years to the global fight against HIV. The new PEPFAR law features many improvements over the law that guided the program’s first five years; however, it, too, falls short in terms of HIV prevention policy.

What PEFPAR will actually look like on the ground later next year will depend largely on the new administration. In 2009, the incoming administration will develop a plan to implement the reauthorized PEPFAR that could remedy or at least mitigate some of the law’s shortcomings. It will make a host of crucial decisions, from how best to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV to how to better integrate HIV prevention and reproductive health services.

Backed by a growing body of evidence, policies at the global level already recognize the importance of linkages between HIV and reproductive health services. But the United States remains a major obstacle to effective integration, and the PEPFAR law is silent on the importance of linkages. That the U.S. government has failed to join and actively support the global integration consensus is exacerbated by the erosion of U.S. support for international family planning programs.

The issue of better integrating HIV and reproductive health services is especially important in countries with high rates of HIV infection, which often are impoverished and have poor health infrastructures. It makes eminent sense to offer women the services they need—whether related to HIV or to reproductive health—in settings they already frequent. For instance, PEPFAR should pay for HIV testing, counseling and referral at sites that women already visit regularly to obtain family planning services. In turn, women should be able to obtain contraceptives to avert pregnancies they themselves don’t want at sites they already visit to receive HIV services.

Embracing proven interventions that promote HIV–reproductive health service linkages, along with promoting needed increases in international family planning assistance, would allow the United States to begin reclaiming its role as a leader in international sexual and reproductive health.

Click here for more information on:

Making crucial changes to U.S. global HIV prevention policy

The urgent need for better HIV–reproductive health service linkages

The role of contraception in preventing HIV

The role of reproductive health providers in preventing HIV

Meeting the sexual and reproductive health needs of people living with HIV