Carole Joffe is a professor at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco. NOTE: The views and opinions of the participant expressed here on this site do not necessarily state or reflect those of the Regents of the University of California, UCSF, UCSF Medical Center.
Rick Perry had a vasectomy. But in his relentless attacks on contraception, and of course, abortion and comprehensive sex education, Perry is doing all he can to reassure his base that many of his fellow Texans will not have the same opportunity to control their childbearing as the Perry family had.
Dr. Tiller’s murder and the closing of his clinic brought renewed national attention to the problems facing women who need abortions late in pregnancy. While he was viciously attacked by anti-choicers, one of whom eventually killed him, he was beloved by his staff and his patients for compassionate care in extraordinary circumstances.
What’s at stake in the HHS decision around the IOM recommendations on contraception? First, the health and rights of women who will benefit from easier access to contraception. And second, the IOM’s action draws attention to the extent to which contraception has become yet another front in the nation’s unending culture war.
Betty Ford’s tenure as First Lady was the last time in American politics someone in that role could inspire bi-partisan admiration—even while expressing her own political views. Her passing reminds us of what has been lost in our political culture.
Norway, where abortion is not politicized, has a better record than the United States with respect to teenage pregnancies and births, but also has a lower abortion rate—a reflection, among other things, of Norwegians’ better access to contraception, its comprehensive sex education policies, and its generally more mature attitude toward human sexuality.
This war on providers has been going on so long it has become essentially “the new normal,” with significant public attention only when a provider is murdered.
Nebraska’s new abortion law forced Danielle Deaver to give birth to a baby she and her doctors knew would die minutes later, fighting for breath that would not come.
Gov. Scott Walker: “(I am proud of) trying to defund Planned Parenthood and make sure they didn’t have any money, not just for abortion, but money for anything.”
How did Planned Parenthood come to be so demonized? This after all, is an organization once so mainstream that former presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower agreed to be co-chairs of an honorary advisory board in 1965.
To me, the most interesting question posed by the brazen contempt for women contained in H.R.358, is whether the antiabortion movement has finally gone too far.
