I spent part of my childhood in pain and not talking about it. It was better to have a cracked rib than make my mom spend her hard-earned money to take me to the doctor and get it x-rayed.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn gave in to relentless pressure from unions, community groups, and the Working Families Party and agreed to pass a bill that will ensure that almost no New Yorker can be fired for taking a day off due to illness.
As we celebrate International Human Rights Day, there are still those around the world who think that reproductive rights are not human rights. For me, it is a simple concept: every person should be able to make decisions about her or his body.
Looking ahead to the next four years, this strengthened “marriage” between Obama, Democrats generally, and non-white and women voters could help carve a path to genuinely progressive economic policy.
Now that we’ve had a month to celebrate the triumph of No Copay Day, it is important to look forward and carefully consider what comes next on the advocacy agenda for effective implementation of the ACA’s reproductive health measures.
Sometimes I wonder if we are not missing the larger picture. Perhaps instead of talking about preventing STDs and treating an illness, maybe we could talk in terms of promoting sexual health.
At the most basic level, human rights are not dependent on who “deserves” them: we have a right to access to abortion, health care, work, and freedom and movement because we are humans, not because we deserve it.
I suggest that that these doctors’ statements point to a paradox of the abortion conflict in the United States; whether abortion provider or supporter, engagement with this issue introduces these clinicians to a diverse group of allies, with a shared sense of mission, that is rare elsewhere in medicine.
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The Democratic Senator calls the proposal to allow employers to veto health coverage they morally object to “a deeply worrying case of one person’s hand meeting another’s face.”
The distinction between church and other institutions is a fair one. Churches are primarily for those of that particular faith. But universities and hospitals exist for a wider public. If they do not require their employees to practice their religious faith, they should not expect those employees to live their private lives by the standards of that faith.
