Reproductive Rights Blog

Things you should know - science

Not like you haven't heard it before (especially if you were hanging out with me this weekend) but vasectomies are totally safe.  And because this is my blog, I'll tell you my opinion on vasectomies: I'm all for them.  No one really wants me to go into it, but here's a quick rundown, from my perspective.  Heterosexual women have menstrual cycles, and all that brings.  They also bear the brunt of contraception, from what I gather.  Further, they are the ones carrying and birthing children, often breastfeeding them.  I don't feel it's an outrageous request for men involved with these women to consider vasectomies as fairly painless and totally reversible procedure.  The article talks about how men are squeamish about their boy parts, a concern for which I have little sympathy.  Somehow testicles became sacred, while women's fallopian tubes, uterii & etc became medically available.  It's a procedure that Jamaican men, for example, do not use.  You've heard it before.

Speaking of uteri, you may know my obsession with this from my previous posts, but the Picture of the Day from DCist a few days ago was a woman carrying three fetuses in her two uterii.  Awesome!

Gardasil, the HPV vaccine, hasn't been cleared for use in women 27 to 45.

Generic Yasmin available; Planned Parenthood going upscale, and that little Romanian girl finally got her abortion.

New way to freeze unfertilized eggs is better than the old way, in that eggs are more usable with this new method.  And scientists are saying they will be able to create sperm and eggs from stem cells in the next two decades.

And the animal story: coating birds' eggs with vegetable oil to keep them from hatching is a new method of population control in New York.

Today's News - Still catching up

Of course there's stuff going on, but none wackier than this.

State News:
Illinois has a law requiring pharmacists to dispense emergency contraception (Plan B).  This law is being challenged in Illinois Supreme Court.  According to the article, this may become a procedural issue, one of standing, rather than on on the merits.  Nonetheless, it will have ramifications on similar state laws, or on state legislatures considering similar laws. 

Kansas is considering some restrictive laws, New Hampshire is looking at mandatory counseling for teens, 

Foreign News:
Abortion rates in Australia are declining.  The abortion debate in Jamaica continues.

That's all I'm going to post for today, and every day I'm going to try to post a bunch more stories that I have bookmarked for y'all.

Abortion in the News

The papers are all abuzz with the recently-released study showing that abortion is down in the United States - at the lowest rate since abortion was Constitutionally protected.  Since 1990, surgical abortions are down 25%.  The decline in abortion could be positive (more access to contraception, fewer unplanned pregnancies) or negative (less access to abortion, less access to contraceptives) and part of it could be a substitute to RU-486 - we really don't know what's causing the decline.  Read the full report (.pdf).

However, we do know that the US has higher fertility rates than other Western countries, due to "a decline in contraceptive use, a drop in access to abortion, poor education and poverty." 

In other countries, the stigma of abortions, even legal ones, has led to a rise in illegal abortions, which, as you all know, are not safe.  Both medical staff and patients feel this societal sting, and don't want to take part in it.  "It is poor women who cannot countenance another mouth to feed."  The women who have the lowest access to medical care and education are the ones hardest hit by the criminalization of abortion. 

News Round Up (Jan. 15)

Reproductive Rights:
So, I guess this comes as a surprise, but women who have abortions think about the kind of life they could provide for a child, and the lives they want to provide for their existing children.  I'm not sure how I feel about this report.  I think it's still in that vein of "abortion is a hard decision" and tries to un-demonize women who have abortions.

I can't find the original article, but a letter to the editor in a Massachusetts newspaper criticizes a man whose girlfriends had four abortion for his "conversion" to anti-choice advocacy.  The author writes that the man should have been responsible then, not now, and includes being responsible to mean sticking around.  The author seems to imply that if men would stay with women more, they would continue their pregnancies, which I'm not so sure about.  I do, however, agree that anti-choice advocates could emphasize the role of men in unplanned pregnancy as much as the abortion itself. 

Kentucky is considering a bill that would require women seeking abortions to have an ultrasound.  At my old clinic, every woman had an ultrasound, at the least, to measure fetal size/age.  I would think that's important for knowledge of the type of abortion needed, the amount of drugs, etc.  But I also am not a doctor, so I don't know.  Nor is Senator Jack Westwood, so I don't know why he's bringing this up. 

For information on what it's really like to be an abortion doctor, read "This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor" by two doctors from Montana.

In other state news, Tennessee is thinking about amending its Constitution to shrink abortion rights.  The Constitution has been interpreted to provide greater abortion rights than the U.S. Constitution, and therefore invalidated a law requiring a waiting period.  The amendment would read that nothing in the Tennessee Constitution protects a right to abortion. 

Of course, reproductive rights are about more than just abortion - parenting, birth control & etc.  In that vein, the Alaska Pro-Choice Alliance has renamed itself the Alliance for Reproductive Justice.

The American College of Ob-Gyns has released a new ethics opinion on doctor refusals, calling for limits on conscientious refusals, especially those that impose religious or moral beliefs, or are not scientifically based. 

Science & Health:
Following a Mediterranean diet when pregnant lowers the risk for the babies to have asthma.  That could be better worded, but it's not.

I'm reading this book called The Humble Little Condom, and I'm learning a little more about syphilis, which, apparently, Christopher Columbus brought back to Europe with him.  The New World syphilis wasn't fatal, I guess, but it mutated somewhere along the way to a potentially deadly disease.

International:
Illegal abortion "clinic" found in South Africa.

Kids Today: 
A state representative in Wisconsin would like to end Wisconsin's family planning waiver to 15, 16 & 17 year old girls, which pays for their birth control.

Generally, we know that young college-educated women are waiting to have children, and, often putting less emphasis on romantic relationships.  Additionally, the idea that couples in love must get married is no longer a given, as almost half of Americans say they don't need a marriage certificate to prove their love.  The Post writes about those who aren't waiting to have kids - but these are still women in their late 20s.  My friend RJ & I wonder if the model of college/graduate school/marriage/family really works for women.  We're in our 30s by the time we're having kids, with fertility issues, less energy, and a body that doesn't bounce back as easily.  I wonder if the college/marriage/family/graduate school model wouldn't be better?

After all, teens start having sex at 15 nowadays (wow, I sound old) and reaching sexual maturity earlier.  So we have an increase in the time between sexual maturity and marriage, making the idea of abstinence, frankly, near to impossible. What's also interesting in the cyclic nature of abortion for teens, showing that opportunity, especially in the form of school vacations, not much to do, and no parental supervision. 

And, lastly: elks on birth control.

New Round Up (Jan. 10)

The big news, I guess, is that Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire primaries, and most of the women's groups are pretty happy about that.

International:
Did y'all see this new Always campaign about young women in Africa?  I saw the ad on TV, and the website is through the Canadian affiliate.  Anyway, it's been well-documented that the lack of access to toilets is a barrier for girls going to school in Africa.   This does, then, affect the ability to care for oneself during menstruation.  So while I'd like to be more skeptical, I'm totally eating this up.

Italy is considering restricting abortions, which is now only available until the 90th day of pregnancy (that's about 12 weeks). 

There is an effort to increase circumcision among boys in developing countries in order to reduce the spread of HIV.  Some compare female circumcision to male circumcision, which I think is crap.  They do so based on the thought that male circumcision, like female circumcision, takes away from sexual pleasure.  Read and weep, jerks.

Regardless, I don't think you should go around circumcising people by force, which is apparently going on in Kenya.  One group circumcises, the other doesn't, so to see who your enemies are in this chaotic region, the penis has been a target.

I think we've seen this before, but the Beeb is reporting that a British fertility clinic is offering reduced price fertility treatment to women who donate eggs for research.  These eggs will be fertilized and the embryos will be used for stem cell research.

Spanish abortion clinics are on strike.  This is in response to increasing anti-activity, including government inspectors.  While this will decrease access for many women, I really do admire this.  We would have women come into our clinic so ashamed, and disrespectful, and it's just baffling.  Not only because so many women have abortions, but because we lived in an anti-choice state, which continuously put forth anti-choice laws.  If the women, partners, and families actually voted, protested, whatever, things could be so different.

Oy.  Full-term, forced abortion alleged in China.

Science:
The mess in Texas over mandating the HPV vaccine has actually been a good thing, as it has piqued the interest of many parents and teens in the state, leading to an increase in vaccination.  In other news, the American Cancer Society has a press release on the vaccine (from May 2007) and screening guidelines (on the bottom).  The CDC also has guidelines on cervical cancer screenings, in light of the fact that there is an HPV test, which reduces the frequency of screenings for those who have both normal Pap results and a normal HPV test.

Speaking STIs, there's a mutated strain of chlamydia  that is causing some serious problems.  The article indicates that the problems are in men's rectums, which I guess means this might be somewhat isolated to the gay male population?  In any case, LGV seems to be different than the average garden-variety chlamydia which is easily treated with antibiotics.

Speaking of, did you know that the CDC tracks numbers of STI infections, but not genital herpes or HPV?

More news on what hurts you during pregnancy.  Not moderate coffee intake, a new study shows.  I feel so badly for pregnant women, what with all the physical changes, plus a list a mile long of restrictions on food, behavior, drinks.  And it turns out some of it is bunk.

There are a bunch of animal stories, but this one is just so odd: unemployed youths in India are going to be taught to sterilize monkeys.  It sounds like the makings of a horrible situation.

Next time we'll have a whole lot on population, teen pregnancy, and related issues.

News Round Up (Jan. 4)

I'm not going to blog too much right now - I'm really not feeling well.  Here are a few things to tide you over until Monday.

United States

• AGI released a report on family planning (.pdf) services in the United States.
• Missouri is really swinging anti on abortion: The governor has created a task force to study abortion, and a ballot proposal that would outlaw most abortions.
• A Montana pharmacist will stop dispensing birth control pills, meaning that women will have an 80 mile drive to the nearest pharmacy, or mail order their pills.
• North Carolina may be implementing comprehensive sex-ed.  The Boston Globe runs a strong op-ed against ab-only programs, calling them a waste of money.

Foreign

• The Chief Rabbinate of Israel has apparently come out against abortions, calling abortion a "grave sin."  According to the Torah, the fetus is not a full-fledged person. Interestingly, while the fetus isn't considered a person for the first 40 days, a boy is not a member of Jewish society until he's 8 days old, and a girl at 30 days.
• Malawi may be liberalizing abortion laws.

Gender Roles
The Beeb covers the whole Female Chauvinist Pigs thing, asking if flashing is really empowering?  The Economist talks about the value of beauty, saying the intelligence may be linked to beauty.  ScienceDaily is also running the same information, I think, but a few weeks later.

Science
Glaxo's cervical cancer vaccine, Cervarix, is on hold for the time being as the FDA has requested more information.  Speaking of cervical cancer, the NCI has said that not having a clean margin after cervical surgery raises the risk of recurrence.  Which I thought was old news.  I thought the point of cancer surgery was to remove as much cancer as possible...no?  How we screen for cervical cancer is changing, as we learn more about HPV.  Oh, by the way, the AP decided to run a story saying that the cervical cancer vaccine, a shot, hurts.  Ground breaking reporting: shots can hurt.

And your animal story: sterilizing dogs in Kathmandu

Happy New Year

It's a new year, and a new legislative session, not to mention that a whole bunch of laws go into effect this week. 

As for me, I'm getting over a cold which had me on the couch watching the History Channel's marathon The History of Sex, which has a few errors in it, but was overall an enjoyable quick tour through the ages.  My New Year's resolution is to cut out dairy, and start eating more organic food.

So anyway, what do you need to know for this upcoming year?  First, vote (make sure you are registered to vote in your state).  Today are the Iowa Caucuses, then the New Hampshire primaries, and February 5th is Super Tuesday.   Do I really have to tell you what's at stake (like, Roe)?

So let's talk about local laws:

• Virginia will hear about increased penalties for domestic violence offenders and repealing the requirement that women take lie detector tests when they report a rape.
• Oregon's contraceptive equity act goes into effect this week.
• The Montana initiative regarding life beginning at contraception may be voted on this year.
• New Jersey just started testing all pregnant women for HIV (it's an opt-out law)

For more on state issues, see Who Decides?

Federally, we'll be working on a fix for the cost of contraception on college campuses, again, hopefully led by Mr. Crowley (D-NY) and Mr. Obama (D-IL).

We'll see more about jurisprudence for civilians serving overseas, as more stories like this one come to light.  Congressman Poe's office tells me that the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act is the law on the books that would cover this, but many others have said the law is too narrowly crafted to create any kind of legal punishment.

And now for part one of this week's News Round Up:

Science
An enzyme naturally found in semen may aid in the furtherance of HIV infection.  There's also a marker on the sperm that inhibits the female's body from attacking the sperm as foreign invaders, which will be useful to study in combating infections and cancer.

Abortions & miscarriages may indicate a higher risk of future miscarriage.  While TIME runs the full on headline, only a few sentences down it admits that the study has numerous flaws.  Speaking of procreation issues, children of obese mothers have higher rates of infant mortality. 

The Times reviews a book on a fertility diet, and not very favorably.  I guess people are more interested in fertility, as it seems birth rates are on the rise in the US.   The article says that more affluent people are having more children, and calls children a luxury good.  I'd be curious to see more about the rates related to income, and if the US has a higher rate of fertility than many other industrialized nations because of our immigration policies.

Schizophrenia may start in utero, and may be linked to maternal diseases like the flu.

Foreign
Teen will have access to birth control over the counter in Britain.  Meanwhile, South Africa is taking the opposite tactic, and outlawing teens kissing in public.  (The actual law, all 80 pages of it, is here as a .pdf.  I didn't read it, so I don't know the exact language used.) 

You all, I'm sure, have been following the rape case in Saudi Arabia.  Slate asks why there isn't more of an uproar over how Saudi (and many other countries) treat women, generally.  The article references the huge boycotts of South Africa regarding its policy of apartheid.

Syphilis is back in Europe.   

Tomorrow I'll have more on birth control and abortion.  But today I'll end with the animal story: Pigeons in Hollywood on the Pill.

News Round Up (Nov. 25)

So I'm watching the post-Thanksgiving morning news shows, debating with myself whether or not it would be a good thing if Roe fell, as many Presidential candidates hope for. On one hand, Roe being overturned would certainly be bad for access to abortion. On the other hand, if voters continuously choose to elect anti-choice legislators, why should they be immune from the consequences of those bad choices. Were Roe to fall, voters as well as legislators would have to walk the walk. Right now, for example, there's a man in Ohio that continuously gets re-elected, and his only issue is abortion. The people of Ohio are insulated by his election in part by the other Ohio legislators, but also, to a large extent, by the federal judiciary, upon whom we too greatly rely on for the protection of our rights. It's probably a little Old Testament of me, but I'm wondering if actually giving these anti-choicers more leeway won't actually mean that people eventually vote against them, once they have to deal with the consequences of the vote...

Anyway, the news:

U.S.
Denver, due to its high teen pregnancy rate, is considering making birth control available in high schools.
The Guardian explores the seeming change in Hollywood's depiction of abortion. A sociologist who writes for the Huffington Post, Lisa Wade, said that "It is as if all decisions to have an abortion are fraught with internal conflict, and then follow all women around like a dark cloud until the day they die." This is something we've discussed on this blog repeatedly: abortion isn't always a hard decision, and it's not always the wrong decision, and we don't have a lot of room in our discussion to admit that abortion can be easy, happy and/or freeing.
No surprise to most of us, but a good article on the strategy of the anti-choice movement that involves expanding the definition of "personhood". A good example is the Texas feticide law, which was upheld in a recent court decision regarding the killing of a women and her 4 - 6 week old fetus. On a more insidious note, Colorado is considering adding a provision regarding life beginning at conception that would make abortion illegal.
There's been a lot more coverage of the Crowley/Obama solution to the line in the Deficit Reduction Act that has raised the cost of birth control on college campuses. Make sure your legislator supports these efforts through ChoiceUSA or Planned Parenthood.

Parental Rights
In Kansas, a gay man agreed to donate sperm to a friend for artificial insemination. She filed papers to terminate his parental rights, which is appears is the default for Kansas sperm donors. He is fighting, and wants to be involved with the children and pay child support.
In the UK, a woman has received court permission to keep her pregnancy a secret from the man who impregnated her, as it was a one-night stand. The court ruled that she alone has the decision-making power regarding the adoption she seeks.

Foreign:
Regardless of the fact that abortion is legal in the UK, there is nonetheless a black market for herbal abortifacients. Speaking of, a website is selling what I think is RU-486 to Irish women; the drug is, as are abortion procedures, illegal.
RHRealityCheck has a whole section on one of our topics of conversaion, sex selective abortions.
I wish I had a better news source, but it appears that Sweden will allow foreign women to get abortions, up to 18 weeks gestation.

Science:
I hope you all have heard, by now, that scientists have created embryonic stem cells through adult cells. I wonder what will happen to the legal status of those cells, especially if they are pluripotent and could become a fetus...or maybe I just need someone to explain this all to me. In any case, it looks like scientists will no longer need embryos to do research on embryonic stem cells!
Totally useless news: sleep helps new moms lose baby weight. New moms would love to get more sleep anyway, but thanks for the information.
Apparently Chinese doctors have come up with a new form of male birth control that blocks sperm from travelling to the penis. It is totally reversible, and only takes 10 minutes. On a similar note, it looks like there's a new FDA-approved device that is a permanent method of female birth control. The device is inserted into a woman's fallopian tubes, and within three months the tubes are completely blocked.

There's a whole lot more out there right now, so I'll post again shortly.

News Round Up (Oct. 31)

Happy Halloween!  As the end of the year approaches I'm filled with thoughts of what I need to do, want to do, and have to do before the calendar rolls over.  Such an arbitrary date, but it means something to me nonetheless.  And what about the feminist movement?  What have we actually accomplished this year?  What's my role in all of this?  What do we have left to do?  And what can we get done in the next 8 weeks?

In spite of all of this, here are some news stories:

United States:
In Kansas, the investigation of Dr. George Tiller was blocked. Dr. Tiller performs abortions, and has been the target of much anti-choice maneuvering.  A report by the Denver Public School system recommends that birth control be available at schools in order to reduce the teen pregnancy rate and STI rate.  AGI publication on the role of Medicaid in family planning (.pdf)  The LA Times debunks the idea that women will substitute adoption for abortion if given information and access to services.  Teen pregnancy rates in DC dropping.

George Will has a column about abortion in America, including the make-up of SCOTUS, the Presidential election, and the majority's support for abortion.   

Foreign:
Abortion illegal in Northern Ireland.  Cardinal Corman Murphy-O'Connor pens an article about abortion in England and Wales.  He writes that he supports decreasing the time limit after which abortion is banned (from 24 weeks to 22 weeks, is the current proposal.)  Access to abortion, even in Canada, is limited.  The Pope is calling on pharmacists to stop dispensing RU-486.  Latin American abortion bans don't stop women from having abortions. 

Science/Medical:
Cellcept, an immunosuppressant drug used for transplant patients, may cause miscarriage and birth defects, warns the FDA.  Skipping the stirrups?   A study was done in Georgia on about 200 women who had pap tests either using stirrups or not; the accuracy of the pap was not affected.  Pre-cancerous lesions indicate high risk for cervical cancer up to 25 years after the lesion is removed.  Twins separated at birth for experiment reunite.

Requisite animal story: birth control for pigeons on Staten Island.

News Round Up (Oct. 26)

It's Cleaning-Out-My-Inbox time, in anticipation of the weekend, and possible crab fest, and being a Cara & Karen Cloud on all things festive.  DC Feminist Happy Hour planning in the works for an end of the year bash.

In the news:

Schoolgirls in Britain will get the HPV Vaccine.  While the vaccine has great results in clinical trials, we still don't really know how long it works.

J&J settles lawsuit over Ortho-Evra (The Patch) death.  Massachusetts is looking at wider clinic buffer zones while Oakland is thinking about instituting them in the first place.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer runs an absolutely amazing column on abortion in the UK (originally in The Independent)   It covers the idea that women "deserve" going through an abortion for "irresponsible behavior", the fact that the delay in access to abortion by anti-choice, misogynistic lawmakers contributes to later-term abortions, and the need for better information and access to contraception.  Joan Smith is my crush of the week.  Month, maybe.

Some weird news out of Florida: a surrogate mother has been told by the courts that she can keep the baby.  This is unusual, because it's my understanding that the intentional parents are usually the legal parents (e.g. those who intended to be the parent, regardless of the biological materials used) although there's no national policy.  Anyway, very interesting, and each state handles the issue differently.

Condom testers wanted.  Sex lessons part of health lessons for miners in Australia.  The influence of the Catholic Church's ban on condoms is helping HIV spread in Latin America.  South Africa is recalling million s of condoms.

Take Action on Title X Family Planning and Ovarian Cancer research.