Roundup: Domestic Gag Rule?

Rumors that Bush will ban fed funds for U.S. family planning clinics, expanding the reproductive health conversation, Michigan abortion ban, finding an HIV hideout.

Global Gag Rule Coming Home to Roost? Rumors are spreading that the Bush administration will soon change administrative rules, not subject to congressional approval, to deny federal funds to domestic family planning clinics who counsel women and families on abortion options. Apparently staff at the national offices of Planned Parenthood have been told by Republican lawmakers to expect the gag rule to be applied to U.S.-based clinics before Bush leaves office. Anti-choice groups are gearing up for a PR campaign as well, as The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday.

The global gag rule has prevented federal money from supporting family planning clinics in foreign countries since 1984 and has "shut down family planning clinics in some of the poorest nations in the world,
increasing unintended pregnancy and abortion rates, and STI and HIV/AIDS
infection."

Expanding the Conversation Lynn Harris at the Broadsheet
analyzes a Reuters article that tries to foresee how the abortion issue
will play out in the general election. Reuters anticipates that the
issue will help to bring conservatives into McCain’s fold and women
into Obama’s but Lynn goes beyond this tired analysis to so very rightly say:

Well, this analyst also thinks Obama could really up
the ante by expanding the conversation not only to the preventable causes of
abortion — this is where he has demonstrated
appeal
to abortion opponents — but also to all of reproductive justice.

Now, is America actually ready to have a gray-area, beyond-pro-vs.-anti
conversation about this issue? That’s a whole different high-stakes game we’ll
have to see played out.

Michigan Closer to Copying Federal Abortion Ban Michigan is one step closer to sending a copy of the federal ban on late term abortion to Gov. Jennifer Granholm for passage, as Alexa Stanard reported here last month. Gov. Granholm is likely to veto the bill if it appears on her desk because "it doesn’t include an exception for the health of the mother."

Scientists Find HIV Hideout Researchers have discovered that HIV hides in follicular dendritic cells (FDCs), located throughout the body in lymphoid tissues, during drug treatment.