Cristina Page's Blog

My Interview with Congressman Tim Ryan, Part 1 of 2

2009-07-29T18:19:00.003-04:00

I spoke with Congressman Tim Ryan, D-OH, after his press conference announcing the Ryan DeLauro bill, Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act. Congressman Ryan is rarity in Congress, a pro-lifer who is pro-contraception. However, he is far more representative of the American pro-life public, 80% of whom support contraception. He spoke about the difficulty he has had convincing pro-life groups and individuals to support the proven effective approaches to reducing unintended pregnancy and the need or abortion.

CP: You and Congresswoman DeLauro have spent several years working on legislation that both pro-life and pro-choice people can agree on. Can you tell us the purpose of the Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act?

Congressman Ryan: We can all be in agreement to reduce the need for abortion by preventing unintended pregnancies. Four in ten unintended pregnancies end up in abortion and 57% of abortions are with women who live within 200% of poverty. Both sides are in agreement that by focusing on prevention, focusing on family planning, women’s health issues, that we can put a significant dent into the number that we have and not put women in the difficult situation that many find themselves in. There is an agreement there. We can still have fights about other things and that’s perfectly okay, but when you agree on something I feel that we have a responsibility as elected officials and different members of leading groups to try to solve those problems. Today we took a big step in doing that.

CP: Polls show that the vast majority of pro-life Americans support contraception. 98% of Americans use contraception at some point in their lives, including Catholics who favor and use artificial contraception at the same rate as the general public. Yet you are one of the only pro-life leaders who is pro-contraception. Why is the pro-life establishment so adamantly opposed to contraception while its constituents are fine with it?

Congressman Ryan: I think the pro-life groups are finding themselves further and further removed from the mainstream. I think they are finding themselves on the fringe of this debate. When you hear their comments they clearly are seeing themselves as being marginalized on this issue and on the fringe. I think there are number of pro-life democrats who support contraception, support stem cell research, support a lot of different things. But in the abortion debate the fault line, quite frankly, is within the pro-life community: Are you pro-life and support contraception or are you pro-life and you somehow think that contraception increasing the number of abortions, which is where National Right to Life and the Ohio Right to Life and other pro-life groups that aren’t part of this solution find themselves. The new fault line, after this press conference today and the agreements that we struck today, is not pro-life/pro-choice. It’s within the pro-life community—are you pro-life and pro-contraception therefore trying to reduce the need for abortions or are you pro-life and against contraception and you hope that people’s lives improve just by hoping it, wishing it so.

CP: As a result of championing contraception and other policies proven to the reduce the need for abortion you were recently, as you say, “booted” from the advisory board of the group, Democrats for Life of America. What was it like struggling internally to convince a pro-life group to support prevention?

Congressman Ryan: To me, it became very frustrating because it seemed so obvious. I guess we all think our ideas are obviously the right ones. So, you gotta take a deep breath and go out and persuade but after a while you find yourself running into a brick wall and then you say let’s work with groups that are for contraception and are for women’s health and work that way to try to address both of these issues. It was really frustrating to try to convince people that just really didn’t want to hear it. I went to the Democrats for Life of America national board meeting that they had in DC a few years back and there were 50 board members or so and I gave them my pitch: 'If you’re really for reducing abortions you’ve gotta be for contraception.' I gave them all the statistics on unintended pregnancy and 200% of poverty and all this stuff and it just didn’t resonate with them at all and so we had this stark disagreement and I got the boot.

The Breakup of the Pro-Life Movement

2009-07-28T14:32:00.000-04:00

Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH) is, in many ways, a typical pro-life American. He opposes abortion and, because of that, supports every effort to prevent the need for it. Just like most pro-life Americans, Ryan supports contraception -- primarily because it is the most effective way to prevent unintended pregnancy, and thereby abortion. And yet because of this, Ryan no longer qualifies as "pro-life." He was recently banished from the board of a national pro-life group he served on for four years. Ryan, in return, has turned vocal. He's leading the call for common ground and pragmatism, and rallying the no longer silent majority of pro-lifers who support contraception. And he is provocatively trying to fight what he views as an unrepresentative slice of pro-lifers, those who can't bring themselves to support contraception. "The new fault line," says Ryan, "is not between pro-life and pro-choice people. It's within the pro-life community. The question now is: 'are you pro-life and pro-contraception, therefore trying to reduce the need for abortions, or are you pro-life and against contraception and you hope that people's lives improve just by hoping it, wishing it so.'"

Ryan is committed to preventing abortion so much so that he, unlike every other pro-life legislator in Congress, spent the last few years working to identify the policies proven to reduce the need for abortion. This work, which he undertook with The Third Way, a center-left think tank, resulted in the "Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act." It's also called the Ryan-DeLauro bill, named for him and his co-sponsor Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT.) As thanks for his outspoken leadership in trying to make abortion less prevalent, Congressman Ryan was removed from the board of Democrats for Life of America, and with it, disowned by the pro-life movement at large. Pro-life publications have taken to qualifying his pro-life status as "allegedly" pro life or referring to him as someone "who claims to be" pro-life. Because of his support of prevention in 2007-2008 congressional session, Ryan received a "0" rating from National Right to Life Committee. According to the pro-life establishment's new standards, his support for prevention means he no longer qualifies as "pro-life." And that means very few pro-life Americans will either.

It may come as a shock to most pro-life Americans, but there's not one pro-life group in the United States that supports contraception. Rather, many lead campaigns against contraception. As Congressman Ryan explained, "I think the pro-life groups are finding themselves further and further removed from the mainstream; they're on the fringe of this debate." Considering that the average woman spends 23 years of her life trying not to get pregnant, the anti-contraception approach depends on a scourge of sexless marriages or a lot of wishful thinking.

Ryan's legislation increases funding for contraception, expands supports for poor women who wish to carry to term, backs comprehensive sex ed programs that have been proven to work, and creates more incentives for adoptive families. His bill is supported by many prominent pro-life individuals including, Dr. Frank S. Page, Rev. Joel Hunter, and Jim Wallis, and many pro-choice groups including Planned Parenthood and NARAL. Not one leading pro-life group signed onto the bill.

Lucky for Congressman Ryan, his support for contraception places him in a good position with pro-life voters. He is a pioneer in this rich common ground frontier. The vast majority of pro-life Americans, 80%, support contraception. Even among Catholics, followers of the only religion to oppose artificial contraception, 90% support contraception. Of evangelicals, including the most vehemently anti-abortion, the born-again, only 28% support abortion rights, yet 88% support contraception. Indeed, among all religious groups, support for contraception is off the charts: 94% of Baptists, 99% of Presbyterians, 95% of Methodists, 95% of Lutherans, 97% of Jewish want greater access to contraception. And have you ever seen a poll to report 100% support for anything? You can count on the easy-going Episcopalians for that unanimous support for contraception. (Support for puppies and goodness score lower.) Even a cozy majority, 70%, of Republican and Independent voters are strong supporters of expanding access to contraception. What percentage of these voters supports the pro-life establishment's agenda to restrict access to contraception? 2%.

Pro-life Americans favor expanding access to contraception because of the undeniable pro-life results. Unintended pregnancy is the root cause of abortion. We know, when used properly, contraception works. Two thirds of American women on contraception are using it correctly. And from this group comes 5% of the nation's unintended pregnancies. Compare this to the 16% of women who are sexually active, at risk of getting pregnant and not using any form of contraception. That group, though much smaller, represents 52% of nation's unintended pregnancies. Then there's the 19% of women who are using contraception but incorrectly or inconsistently; from that group comes 43% of unintended pregnancies. The greatest opportunity to reduce the need for abortion is to focus the 95% of unintended pregnancies that are highly preventable. The plan is simple: address the lack of and incorrect use of contraception. (Article continues below graphic.)

1. Gold RB et al., Next Steps for America's Family Planning Program: Leveraging the Potential of Medicaid and Title X in an Evolving Health Care System, New York: Guttmacher Institute 2009, Figure 1.2.

To his credit, Congressman Ryan did his best to try to convince pro-life groups of this. I spoke with Congressman Ryan last week after his press conference to announce his bill. He explained, "It was really frustrating to try to convince people that just didn't want to hear it. I went to the Democrats for Life of America's national board meeting that they had in DC a few years back and there were 50 board members or so and I gave them my pitch: If you're really for reducing abortions you've gotta be for contraception. I gave them all the statistics on unintended pregnancy and that most abortions take place for women within 200% of poverty and all this stuff and it just didn't resonate with them at all and so we had this stark disagreement and I got the boot."

The anti-contraception minority, which represents just 20% of pro-lifers, has disproportionate influence and, with it, hopes to derail common ground efforts the public has longed for. It's time for the disagreement over contraception to be addressed by the pro-life community at large. We will have no chance of making a real impact on unintended pregnancy and abortion rates without dramatic, informed strategies on prevention. The pro-life public must demand accountability and representation for their pro-contraception values. Considering that 80% of pro-life Americans support contraception, isn't it time to establish at least one pro-life organization in support of it too?

Congressman Ryan thought that would be a great idea. He predicted such a group would expose those who really aren't interested in reducing the need for abortion. "We have an opportunity here to solve this problem and give pro-life members of Congress and pro-life legislators a common sense approach to this and boy does it marginalize those people who have really beat the drum on the pro-life issue and have not provided any solution to it."

Extreme Facebook Friends

2009-06-13T18:04:00.003-04:00

Can you imagine how much greater the scandal would have been if Bill Ayers was actually a Facebook friend of Obama's? That would have been considered hard proof of a relationship, and a sign of the degree of intimacy and access they granted each other. Of course, they weren’t Facebook friends because, indeed, that wasn’t kind of relationship they had. But it was exactly the sort of tie those making the accusation against Obama were hoping for. It’s telling who we Facebook friend, but it can be a real statement for political leaders.

When PBS asked me to debate Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, I did a little research on him. I discovered his Facebook page and with it proof of his insincerity. Newman has been in the news more than most anti-abortion leaders these days because his organization has been ensnared in the murder of Dr. Tiller. Seven years ago, the group moved its headquarters to Wichita—to focus exclusively on protesting Tiller, his employees and his patients. In the days and weeks before the murder, the alleged assassin, Scott Roeder, was in regular touch with Newman’s second in command at Operation Rescue (who herself spent nearly two years in jail for conspiring to bomb and abortion clinic). A post-it note with her name and phone number was stuck to the dashboard of the Roeder’s get-away car.

After the shooting, Operation Rescue was one of the first organizations out with a statement, condemning and distancing itself from the act. The statement, released within a couple of hours after the murder, read,

“We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning… Operation Rescue has diligently and successfully worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see to it that abortionists around the nation are brought to justice. Without due process, there can be no justice.”

Newman has continued to make strong statements against violence. Most recently, in our PBS online debate, Newman claimed the murder of Dr. Tiller, “was not justice, but vigilantism, which must be abhorred by a society that embraces the rule of law over anarchy.”

But, it appears that those in favor of these abhorrent acts are not disqualified as Facebook friends of Newman’s. He may want to distance himself and his organization from violence against providers, but he doesn’t want to go as far as stopping socially networking with individuals who endorse it. Of the twenty people that Wikipedia lists as associated with the Army of God, described as “an extremist anti-abortion organization that sanctions the use of force to combat abortion in the United States,” Newman is Facebook friends with three. (Keep in mind, of the other 17 listed, three are currently in jail for killing abortion providers, and one is incarcerated for attempted murder.)

Dan Holman is one such friend. Holman told CNN he ‘cheered” when he learned of the murder of Dr. Tiller. Holman, of Missionaries to the Pre-born, has long supported violence against abortion providers. He wrote on the website Army of God, “Those who object to the use of force to protect pre-born children do no truly believe in their humanity and worth!” he continued,

“To condemn the use of force to protect unborn children is a tacit admission that their lives are not worth defending. It is to say that that some have more of a Right to Life than others. It is a frank admission that pre-born children are somehow sub-human. If they truly believe the life of the unborn is worth less than the life of the abortionist than why defend the babies at all?”

About Paul Hill, who murdered abortion provider Dr. Dr. John Bayard Britton and James H. Barrett, a volunteer clinic escort. Holman wrote,

“Most of us are not as courageous as Paul Hill. There are no Christian suicide bombers blowing up abortion clinics. We need to confess and acknowledge our lack of love toward God and the pre-born. It is wrong to vilify the courageous acts of Paul Hill to put our own weakness and cowardice in a better light.”

Another Facebook friend Newman shares status updates with is Neal Horsley. The Guardian UK interviewed Horsley after the murder of Dr. Tiller. Horsley states,

“The thing about Tiller's assassination that was really appropriate is that they killed him in church. While he was there collecting the money, counting the money, his blood poured in to those thick carpets in that church. That was a fitting send off."

Matthew Trewhella, the third of Newman’s pro-violence-against-providers Facebook friends, is a signatory of the infamous 1993 letter supporting the murders of abortion providers and calling for all charges be dropped against Michael Griffin, the assassin of Dr. David Gunn. The letter read,

"We, the undersigned, declare the justice of taking all godly action necessary to defend innocent human life including the use of force. We proclaim that whatever force is legitimate to defend the life of a born child is legitimate to defend the life of an unborn child. We assert that if Michael Griffin did in fact kill David Gunn, his use of lethal force was justifiable provided it was carried out for the purpose of defending the lives of unborn children. Therefore, he ought to be acquitted of the charges against him."

Newman, if he wishes to be taken seriously as an anti-abortion leader who is opposed to violence, should, as a first step, break all ties with the small band of anti-abortion figures who encourage violence. You don’t need a PR genius to tell you that. As I suggest to him in the debate, “You, more than anyone, are poised to help prevent future acts of violence by alienating and condemning these forces or by helping to try to rehabilitate these extremists. Otherwise, all the anti-violence talk is simply meaningless.”

My PBS online debate with Troy Newman is here. They ask you to vote on who won. Please take a look.

Birth Control Can be Natural, Tax-deductible, Consensus-building, and Helpful in Launching Pop Bands

2009-06-10T09:11:00.003-04:00

There’s a bunch of interesting stories about contraception I came across in my news round-up this morning. The first is the announcement of a new and completely natural birth control pill. Lauren Proper at Empowerher reports on oddly-named Qlaira, “the first “natural” contraceptive pill made from a bioidentical hormone.” It’s been developed by Bayer Schering Pharma and is now available in the United Kingdom and several other European countries. Proper explains, “Bioidentical hormones are formulated from plants and produce effects identical to the actual hormone. This could mean decreased chances for cancer, blood clots and other negative side effects that are present with typical contraceptive pills.”

Weighing in with a cure for another potential negative side effect of birth control, the blogger TaxGirl offers advice to those whose health insurance coverage doesn’t cover contraception. She writes,

“You can absolutely deduct the cost of birth control pills as a medical expense…Almost anything that requires the services of a physician would qualify - IUD, Norplant, etc. Additionally, the costs of sterilization for women and vasectomies for men are deductible. What you won’t see on that list are other non-prescription forms of birth control, like condoms. As a general rule, non-prescription drugs and medicines, as well as “personal use items”, are not deductible.”

Of course, contraception should be covered as any other prescription is and not a personal expense great enough to need to involvement of your accountant. If passed, Prevention First legislation, which was introduced in the Senate on the first day of session (a signal its importance,) includes a provision that would require all health plans that cover prescription drugs cover contraception.

Blast Magazine offered some perspective on news that trace amounts of birth control have shown up in suburban water supplies around the country. According to the post, last year studies were conducted of water supplies in nine states and discovered that 85 man-made chemicals, including medications, were slipping through treatment systems and ending up in our tap water. Some claim the amounts present, “a thimble full of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool,” are not enough to do harm. Yet, Blast Magazine continues,

“But others aren’t so sure. Researchers have found evidence that even extremely diluted concentrations of drug residues harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species, and have been shown to labs to impair human cell function. One of the common culprits is estrogen, much of which is inadvertently released into sewers through the urine of women taking birth control. Studies have shown that estrogen can wreak reproductive havoc on some fish, which spawn infertile offspring sporting a mixture of male and female parts. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that human breast cancer cells grew twice as fast when exposed to estrogen taken from catfish caught near untreated sewage overflows. “There is the potential for an increased risk for those people who are prone to estrogenic cancer,” said Conrad Volz, lead researcher on the study.”

The blogger Visinvox offers an interesting account of her weekend tabling for Prevention First legislation and both the pro-life and pro-choice public’s confused response. She writes,

“There were occasions when I would approach somebody who turned out to be a Planned Parenthood supporter and I would explain to them that we were trying to get legislators to focus on measures that would reduce the instances of abortion, they would look at me and say, "Sorry, I'm pro-choice." And I'd have to re-explain that we were with Planned Parenthood and we were also pro-choice, but our goals were to reduce unintended pregnancies etc. My phrasing might have been a little confusing I'll admit, but in my defense this was my first time crowd-canvasing.

There were other times I would approach a group of people who turned out to be very strongly pro-life. They would say things like, "We don't support abortion, sorry." Having taken ques from the pro-choicers who thought we were anti-choice, I went into persuasion mode and explained to them that the goal of the petition was to reduce abortions and that even if we didn't see eye to eye on the matter of choice, it was still important for both sides to focus on preventative measures. Often after reading through the petition, they were often happy to sign on. It's just frustrating how quickly people are to shut down at the mention of Planned Parenthood without taking into account the positive impact we have made that is very much in-line with much of what anti-choicers are trying to achieve.”

In the end, she reports, “the response was overwhelmingly positive.”

Being a part of a marketing campaign for Yaz contraceptive was overwhelming positive for the pop group the Veronicas reports Billboard magazine,

“The partnership between Bayer birth control pill brand Yaz and the Veronicas is considered one of the key factors that broke the Australian electro-pop band in the U.S. market. The advertising and sponsorship deal, now three-plus years strong, was the subject of the final keynote at Billboard and Adweek’s inaugural Music and Advertising Conference in New York.

Before the partnership with Bayer, “Untouched,” the Veronicas’ first single from current album “Hook Me Up,” was in three small radio markets; the single has now sold more than 1.3 million units and has reached No. 17 on the Hot 100. The Veronicas were also invited to tour with the Jonas Brothers last summer, and have just begun a two-month U.S. headlining tour.”

Lisa Origliasso and her twin sister are The Veronicas. Lisa explained, “We thought it was cool. All these Disney acts are sponsored by, I don’t know, My Little Pony or something, and here we are with a birth control pill.” Here's the Yaz ad that made the Veronicas,

This weekend is The International Demonstration Against Birth Contol

2009-06-05T23:00:00.007-04:00

This Sunday marks the 44th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court decision that granted married couples the right to use contraception. It has also become an occasion anti-contraceptive operatives have seized in an effort to scare women from using birth control. This weekend marks the second year of The Pill Kills campaign which has grown to become, the organizers boast, an "International Demonstration Against Birth Control."

The campaign materials explain that,

"Pro-lifers in 21 states and four countries will participate in Protest the Pill Day ‘09: The Pill Kills Women. They will gather at Planned Parenthood, one of the nation’s largest abortion and birth control providers, at pharmacies and at birth control sellers the nation over. They will expose the tragic effects these chemicals have on women including blood clots, heart attacks and strokes."

In its second year, there are notable changes with the campaign. For example, last year's "The Pill Kills" mission was to convince Americans that the most commonly used forms of birth control, like the standard birth control pill, were really abortion methods. This year the campaign is trying to scare women from using birth control by claiming it will kill them. The campaign targets the regular birth control pill in particular.

So, let's, as an exercise, accept their arguments. Hormonal contraception causes abortions and kills women, gotcha. So, then, we're okay using non-hormonal forms of birth control like the diaphragm, condom, cervical cap, and spermicides? Actually, the organizers aren’t on record anywhere in favor of methods that keep sperm and egg apart. In fact, it appears impossible to find a single instance in which any pro-life group has anything good to say about any birth control method except natural family planning—a technique most notable for its high failure rate. Even the lowly condom disturbs them.

So, when they aren’t reorienting the science to claim that birth control is abortion, they're second favorite technique is to promote--with great hysteria--that birth control is unsafe. As Dr. David Grimes, one of the world’s leading experts on contraception, puts it “Some anti-abortion groups describe a subtle blend of fake claims and real, but exaggerated, risks to frighten women. Only those very knowledgeable can tease out which are which. Ironically, the net effect of this campaign to discredit contraception is more unplanned pregnancies and, of course, more abortions.”

A classic example is the website for Physicians for Life which lists not one positive item about birth control in its numerous sections devoted to the subject. Instead, its headlines read: “The Pill Puts Women at Much Higher Risk of HIV and Other STDs”, “Gel to Stop STDs Holds Empty Promise”, “Negative Effects of Vasectomy”, “New Research Shows Dangers of Condoms in HIV Prevention”, “Oral Contraceptives May Reduce Sense of Smell”. The homepage for Pro-Life America.com proclaims: “Condom Warnings—They Don’t Work!”

The American Life League, the lead organizer of "The Pill Kills" day, distributes scare pamphlets on every form of birth control. They are designed to look and read just like the ones you’d find in your doctor’s office. Each explains why you shouldn’t use a birth control method. One entitled “Answers to your Questions about Condoms and Spermicides” only lists the potential and rare negative side effects of both methods and offers no description of the benefits of either. The pamphlet ends with this message “Condoms and spermicides fail to prevent the conception of babies, and they are potentially harmful! Be good to yourself. Don’t use condoms and spermicides.” The only three sources they cite in the endnotes section of the pamphlet are 1.) A pro-life book opposing every birth control method 2.) An outspoken pro-life physician 3.) A condom fact sheet produced by themselves.

ALL is unapologetically against every single form of birth control, claims the most commonly used forms cause abortions, and defines its legislative goal to include “a legal ban on abortifacient birth control.” They led a campaign which defeated federal contraceptive coverage legislation. In their efforts to prevent federal employees from receiving contraceptive coverage, Judie Brown, A.L.L. President, explained “we have been working for over a year to prove that prescription contraceptives have nothing to do with a woman’s health and well-being but are recreational drugs that prevent fertilization and abort children”. She elaborates, “Depo-provera, Norplant, the IUD and the pill can kill tiny boys and girls and it is imperative that the government get out of the deadly birth control business and take action to protect all innocent human beings equally—without discrimination.” In 1996, A.L.L. picketed Searle Pharmaceutical Company just because it manufactures the standard birth control pill. One can safely say the American Life League’s desire to ban birth control is equally intense as its campaign against legal abortion. Not only does ALL promote, along with most other right wing pro-life groups, that birth control is abortion, they also put forth that any attempt to prevent pregnancy during sex is tantamount to having an abortion. They explain in Chapter 97,

“The connection between artificial contraception and abortion is crystal clear. Once we break the connection between sex and procreation, we have denied God's will. Once we have denied His will once, it becomes easier and easier to ignore His plan for our lives. When we use artificial contraception, any pregnancy that results will be viewed as a "contraceptive failure," a stigma that is passed on to the child. He or she is no longer a precious gift from God, but a failure, and, in our society, failure cannot be tolerated…Contraception cannot be separated from abortion. In fact, anyone who debates on the topic of abortion will inevitably be drawn to the topic of artificial contraception over and over again, especially in the post-Roe era of pro-life activism. Therefore, every pro-life activist should understand the many relationships between abortion and artificial contraception. How does contraception lead to abortion? Quite simply, they are virtually indistinguishable in a psychological, physical, and legal sense…Those individuals who use artificial contraception take the critical step of separating sex from procreation. Contraception not abortion was the first step down the slippery slope.”

According to ALL, trying to prevent a pregnancy is indistinguishable from trying to end one. They believe that avoiding an abortion is somehow the first step in having an abortion.

Each of these sermons and all of their national campaigns serve an objective which is, at its heart what the right wing pro-life movement believes sex should be all about. And the never shy Mrs. Brown, is eager to lay that out by explaining,

"Healthy women do not need to be immunized from their own children. Rather, men and women who participate in sexual intercourse need to know that children are an intended purpose of intercourse, and parents should therefore act to responsibly care for and protect their pre-born children."

This is the ideological prism through which to best understand the anti-contraception campaigns. In actuality, these efforts punish people for having the type of sex they define as contrary to God's wishes. Pregnancy is, according to them, what sex is for.

The New Pro-lifer

2009-06-05T13:27:00.001-04:00

In our pain, anger and profound sadness over the murder of Dr. Tiller, pro-choice people risk losing an opportunity to see a better day as a country and a movement. In the wake of our loss, it is tempting to continue to categorize in one fixed way all who oppose abortion. To do so would be easy but also foolish. We must admit and accept that not all who are opposed to abortion are the same. Especially since a new movement of pro-lifers has extended a hand in search of a better way.

Yesterday offered a unique opportunity to make this distinction. Alexia Kelley, co-founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, was appointed Director of Faith-based and Community Partnerships at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Each of the eleven federal agencies has an Office for Faith-based and Community Partnerships that reports to the White House Office of Faith-based Initiatives. Kelley has been appointed as the liaison for HHS.

Moments after the announcement, John O'Brien, president of the pro-choice group Catholics for Choice, released a statement calling the Kelley appointment "a defeat for reason and logic." He continued, "The administration has talked a lot about reducing the need for abortion, and progressive groups like my own are totally with the administration in doing that," but "to have someone working in HHS who oversaw an organization that is anti-abortion... really beggars belief."

HHS has been called "ground zero in the culture wars" for good reason. Its policies strike at the heart of our most heated social disagreements, particularly those between pro-choice and pro-life groups. HHS oversees the FDA, which approves new contraceptive and abortion methods; the CDC, which promotes disease prevention initiatives on STDs including HIV; and Title X, the nation's contraception program for the poor, among others. One of the hallmarks of the Bush administration was the influence it granted the anti-abortion, anti-contraception movement on HHS policy and functions.

O'Brien's complaint is that the choice of Kelley, given her previous role overseeing a Catholic, anti-abortion organization, puts important social policies in danger of being hijacked by those same Bushian forces. But Kelley is not the Bush-styled pro-lifer of yore. Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which Kelley founded, is a progressive organization that has also played a primary role in instigating a nationwide discussion of common ground on abortion. Her group has championed policies aimed at preventing the need for abortion, policies that have been identified as those pro-choice people can support too. It would be a mistake to group Kelley among anti-abortion operatives who snub opportunities to improve the relationship between pro-choice and pro-life communities, and who refuse to do anything to reduce the need for abortion. Her group has worked for policies that can reduce the need for abortion, work that has offended many hard-line anti-choice groups and individuals. To date, she has dedicated her career to finding shared solutions and minimizing this debilitating national conflict.

In November of 2008, Kelley's group, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, released its study, "Reducing Abortion in America: The Effect of Socioeconomic Factors," which found that "Analysis of nationwide data suggests that the economic status of pregnant women factors prominently into their abortion decision. Public policies that provide assistance and support to low-income families are rarely framed as ways to reduce the incidence of abortion. However, the findings from this study suggest that a two standard deviation increase in economic assistance to low-income families is correlated with a 20% lower abortion rate in the 1990s. Across the entire United States, this translates into roughly 200,000 fewer abortions. Further, higher male employment in the 1990s was associated with a 21% lower abortion rate; and lower poverty rates were correlated with 10% reduction in the abortion rate."

The report concluded, "Elected officials can utilize effective and appropriate socioeconomic public policies to reduce abortions. These include: promoting policies that increase male employment; lower the poverty rate; provide funding for child care for working women; and increase economic assistance to low-income families. Legislation aimed at these goals can effectively reduce abortion in America."

This is a revolutionary leap in pro-life thought, a dramatic break from the 36-year-long drumbeat by the right-wing anti-abortion movement; that segment has single-mindedly focused on restricting and illegalizing abortion. In fact, the Catholics in Alliance report admits, "Our analysis finds that state laws regulating abortion had little systematic impact on the abortion rate in the 1990s. The one exception may be Medicaid funding. Our analysis consistently finds that Medicaid funding for abortions increases the abortion rate - a finding consistent with earlier research - though this effect is never statistically significant. If Medicaid funding does in fact increase the abortion rate, this result is nonetheless consistent with the main the implications of our study suggesting that the abortion rate is sensitive to economic factors."

Kelley is a new style pro-lifer, one who believes a progressive agenda will produce pro-life results. In January 2009, she wrote in an op-ed published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "Voters are looking for a new path forward. The question is, do we have the political and moral will to make it happen? People of faith have a particular responsibility to both collaborate with and challenge the new administration. It's long past time for all of us to move from rhetoric and division to results."

Make no mistake, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good is a Catholic organization that accepts the Church's position on abortion and contraception. But under Kelley's leadership, its efforts were spent exploring an array of policies that succeed at reducing the need for abortion. The organization has taken a notably passive role towards the church's dictates. It has not worked to restrict abortion or make contraception less available, approaches most other anti-abortion and Catholic groups focus on exclusively.

But unlike some of the loudest voices in that movement, she believes the solution rests at the end of a new path that can be entered together. Even if some way along that path we revisit conflicting convictions. The White House has indicated that HHS will be the department that will enact many of the common ground policies that the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, working with the White House Council on Women and Girls, is currently helping to identify. And while Kelley's new focus is not exclusively on reducing the need for abortion - the Office of Faith-based Initiatives is also focused on poverty reduction, health care reform, and encouraging responsible fatherhood - Kelley will help shepherd, not set, the White House's common ground agenda on abortion through HHS. It's fitting that, as someone who helped spark the common ground effort, she will now help see it through to safety.

Pro-choice people need to improve the national dialogue on the abortion issue. We can lower the vitriol. We can expose the anti-abortion groups that oppose all the proven ways to reduce the need for abortion. We must isolate those that only stoke the coals of hatred in this conflict and, especially those who create the inflamed environment that inspired Dr. Tiller's murderer. The vast majority of self-described "pro-life" Americans abhor the violence, want to move past the conflict and have both sides work together to find common ground. The American pro-life public has longed for leaders like Kelley and, the truth is, so have we.

My response to Will Saletan

2009-06-04T19:48:00.003-04:00

Today, Will Saletan took a shot at me in his Slate column, Human Nature, lecturing me on common ground in the context of the Tiller murder. Below in my response...

Dear Will,
First off, very glad to know that common ground is here to stay, the proof of which is that you're finally on the bandwagon, and, let's face it, you only jump on wagons once the entrance gets crowded. As another example let's consider your realization several months ago that the pro-life movement is really about fighting contraception now. Those of us whose work you've been skimming for years now have been arguing that for at least five years, see in this regard my book, How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America. In fact, I know you've seen it since you recommend it. I have been disappointed that you chose this moment to finally cite a stray comment by me rather than refer to the ideas in my book which, I have long noted with pride, you have ably popularized.
Indeed, Will, you have been for a long time an able popularizer of others' original thinking. Your deficit as a writer on this subject has long been an inability to connect emotionally, to feel one way or the other the closeness and the poignancy of important events. Perhaps one disadvantage in making a personal connection is that you primarily quote, refer to and seemingly write for the brotherhood - andrew sullivan, russell douthat, etc., all talented pundits, though I've often wondered why a woman never made it into your reflections on abortion.
Let's leave aside the cheap shot that you have made above - and you know it. As one who's actually been working on the issue of common ground for years, I welcome you to the fold. Just as a point of future reference, in 2003, long before it became the issue de jour, I co-wrote an op-ed with an pro-lifer for the New York Times, entitled "The Right to Agree." I have been calling for common ground loudly ever since.
In this regard, I have what I hope will be an important announcement. Beginning next week, I will be moderating an ongoing common ground forum on RHRealitycheck.org. This is something that has been in the works since before the election. Here we will actually bring together important voices on both the pro-life and pro-choice sides. We will discuss, despite the real pain that it causes both sides, the possibility of coming together on at least some difficult issues. Here we will be addressing the issues from inside our two communities not, as you do, from a stony remove - I'm tempted to say from on high, but won't. And just so you know my common ground work has put me in touch with the most capable and thoughtful people on the pro-life side, those who are as aghast as we are by the Tiller murder.
In any case, I invite you to visit our discussion on. I'm sure you will find fertile ground to till.
And while speaking about you and fertile ground, I need to point out the important point you miss is that the murder of Dr. George Tiller is a deep, and perhaps abiding wound for the pro-choice side. Since you may not communicate with many intimates in that movement perhaps you've missed the profound rage that this senseless act has sown across the pro-choice spectrum. And in fact risks returning us to more comfortable, long established battle lines. My intent in that LA Times article was to express what many are feeling in the pro-choice community, not to endorse it. I spoke to the reporter for over an hour and am not pleased that that was the line that he chose - but the media is the media. The larger point is that your homilies about thinking bigger thoughts are just the kind of abstractions that deprive your work of an edge and a resonance that might extend its influence beyond the small band inside the beltway. Given your talents as a writer I urge you to take the plunge and try to understand the emotions that have been stirred as well as their consequences.
Cristina Page

The Murder of Dr. Tiller, a Foreshadowing

2009-05-31T23:11:00.001-04:00

For those who would like to think today's murder in church of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, is an isolated incident, here's the horrifying news: You are wrong. The pattern is clear and frightening.

In March 1993, three months into the administration of our first pro-choice president, Bill Clinton, abortion provider Dr. David Gunn was murdered in Pensacola, Florida. That was the beginning of what would become a five-fold increase in violence against abortion providers throughout the Clinton years.

Today's assassination of Dr. George Tiller comes 5 months into the term of our second pro-choice president. For anyone who would like to believe that this is a statistical anomaly, a coincidence that doesn't portend anything, again, you are wrong.

During the entire Bush administration, from 2000-2008 there were no murders.

During the Clinton era, between 1994-2000 there were 6 abortion providers and clinic staff murdered, and 17 attempted murders of abortion providers (one of these attempts was on Dr. Tiller who was shot in both arms.) There were 12 bombings or arsons during the Clinton years.

During the Bush administration, not only were there no murders, there were no attempted murders. There was one clinic bombing during the Bush years.

One can only conclude that like terrorist sleeper cells, these extremists have now been set in motion. Indeed the evidence is already there. The chatter, the threats, the hate-filled rhetoric are abundant.

In the last year of the Bush administration there were 396 harassing calls to abortion clinics. In just the first four months of the Obama administration that number has jumped to 1401.

And so the execution of Tiller, 67, is not only tragic but ominous. He was born into an era when being an abortion provider meant saving women's lives. And the cold-blooded murder in church and in front of his wife of this stalwart defender of women rights and beloved physician, comes as a message for others, as well as tragic deja vu.

Battered women are at greatest danger of being killed by their abusers when they are most strong -- that is, when they muster the courage to leave. The same phenomenon may be true in the abusive political abortion debate. The pro-choice movement, specifically our abortion providers, are in the greatest danger of violence when we take power. When the anti-abortion movement loses power, their most extreme elements appear to move to the fore and take control. The murder of Dr. Tiller suggests that violence against abortion providers may be far more linked to the power, or lack thereof, anti-abortion groups have politically than to laws designed to increase penalties against such acts.

History has another disturbing lesson for us. The escalation of anti-abortion rhetoric plays a direct role in instigating violence. When anti-abortion groups ratchet up the rhetoric, they know exactly what they're doing and the results it will have. Even if they maintain deniability, as Operation Rescue recently did saying, in effect, we wanted Tiller gone, but didn't want him murdered, they have inflamed the rhetoric. And suddenly people Like Dr. Tiller's murderer become inspired.

Eleanor Bader, author of Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism, in an article in March for RHRealityCheck.org about clinics bracing for an uptick in violence after the election of Obama wrote, "immediately after Obama's election, Douglas Johnson, Legislative Director of the National Right to Life Committee, called him a "hardcore pro-abortion president." The American Life League dubbed him "one of the most radical pro-abortion politicians ever," and Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life warned that Obama will "force Americans to pay for the killing of innocents." Americans United for Life, the Family Research Council and Operation Save America quickly joined the chorus."

Bader interviewed clinic staff -- many seeing a direct relationship between the pro-choice victory in November and increased aggression against them and their patients. Claire Keyes, of Allegheny Reproductive Health in Pittsburgh, explained:

Right after the election we saw a small upsurge in anti-abortion activity. But since the inauguration, things have gotten measurably worse. There's been an increase in picketing by students from Franciscan University in Ohio. On Saturdays there are 60-plus protesters and there's been an increase in screaming and aggression. We don't have a parking lot so people park on the street. The antis have surrounded cars, trapping the women inside, and in several cases the antis jumped into vehicles and touched or grabbed at them. The police were called but so far they don't seem to be responding appropriately.

Bader also quotes Elizabeth Barnes, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Women's Center, who explained, "When the pendulum swung in the direction of protecting women's rights, we expected something. The way the antis are reacting has changed, they're taking more liberties, pressing the boundaries of legal, civil protest."

Many in the pro-choice movement believed that the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) law, passed in 1994 in response to Gunn's murder, was responsible for reigning in violence against abortion providers. Clearly that is not the case. Based on statistics on violence against abortion providers compiled by the National Abortion Federation, even after the passage of FACE in 1994, there was still considerable violence and threats against clinic personnel, including six murders. As appears clear, the pro-choice movement has looked through rose-colored glasses, assuming or hoping that legalities can restrain terrorists.

In fact, it didn't abate after FACE, as we've seen. It was not until a comforting anti-abortion president did they calm down and stop the murder, bombing and harassment spree.

As we are witnessing now, Bush policies resulted in a surge in abortions. That has failed to inspire introspection from anti-abortion groups. That Clinton presided over the most dramatic decline in abortion rates in the recorded history of our country left them unmoved. That Obama has assigned his senior-most staff to the task of finding ways to reduce the need for abortion has not protected clinics nor providers nor Obama. Holder and his Justice Department should take note of the chatter and move aggressively against this form of domestic terrorism. The hate-filled rhetoric against Obama from the anti-abortion movement is at unprecedented levels, even for this reflexively inflammatory group. They refer to him as the "Most Pro-Abortion President Ever" ignoring the fact that he is the first to extend an olive branch in hopes that together we can make abortion more rare.

Anti-abortion groups will put out carefully worded press statements condemning the murder of Dr. Tiller, as became routine for them during the Clinton years. But unless the rhetoric they choose from now on becomes careful too -- they may be the enablers of murder and terror.

Considering Common Ground and our new Supreme Court nominee

2009-05-27T00:49:00.006-04:00

A colleague who was invited to the White House announcement of the nomination of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court today asked me to fill in for her on a radio interview about common ground. Here's a link to the broadcast. It's not very often that I, or anyone for that matter, have the opportunity to discuss this subject with a pro-lifer who is reasonable and looking for solutions. David Gushee, who was also on the show, is such a person. Listening to him gives me faith in this new and albeit small movement of pro-lifers who genuinely want to support policies that help reduce the need for abortion. We, as a nation, have much to gain from creating a more civilized and productive dialogue about abortion. But, as I hope you agree after listening to the interview, women are poised to be the greatest beneficiaries of the common ground effort.

On a related note, I noticed in Sonia Sotomayor's bio that she served on the board of Childbirth Connection (formerly known as Maternity Centers Association.) I called them today to find out more about the organization and what it possibly says about our new Supreme Court nominee. Childbirth Connection takes no policy position on abortion but it is very much a proponent of women's rights during childbirth.

Carol Sakala, their program director, explained to me what she thought Sotomayor's affiliation with the organization may say about her as a person. Sakala said,

"Today, in her acceptance statement, Sotomayor showed she is very much indebted to the people who have supported her and she showed a good deal of gratitude. Being raised by a single mother, she knows what it takes to support a family under challenging circumstances, to be in it for the long haul and the importance of having warm family connections and relations. Our organization is all about the foundation of those families and relationships; giving women the opportunity to make good decisions and build healthy relationships. People need to be informed, need to have the time to be able to make informed decisions, need to be respected and have options to make the best decisions for them and their families. The abiding theme of our organization is high quality maternity care for all woman and their families—it's family centered maternity care that serves the needs and best interest and their family."

Her interest in this organization, albeit several decades ago, stands out on Sotomayor's resume. It really is the only entry that does not have a purely legal focus. Considering Sotomayor is not a mother herself, it makes it all the more interesting of volunteer activities. To me, it's an important sign and one from which pro-choice and women's health advocates can derive some comfort. Childbirth Connection is an organization dedicated to identifying and promoting best practices in women's health based on rigorous scientific evidence. If Sotomayor's connection to the group is any indication of the value she places in science and her respect for the field of medicine, her nomination is good news for women's health.

Skill the Messenger

2009-05-21T14:40:00.005-04:00

A dream spokesperson is someone who has the media hanging on every word. Of course, she or he needs to actually be able to speak on the subject too in order to fill the “spoke” part of the job description. Bristol Palin, the newly chosen spokesperson for Candies Foundation’s teen pregnancy prevention campaign, has, yet again, harnessed the immense media interest in her to draw attention to the problem. This week she landed the cover of People magazine, appearing in graduation cap and gown, beaming with her baby Tripp in her arms. On the cover also appears a quote from her. It reads, "If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody."

Before Bristol gets the cover of another mass market magazine or sits down with Larry King, someone needs to arm her with the tools to convey her message most powerfully. When it comes to teens having sex, “trust me” is not the most convincing argument against it (more likely it’s the phrase used to convince someone to go for it.) Bristol’s style as a spokesperson seems decidedly uninformed. The Candies Foundation may feel Bristol has the media Midas touch and that having her out there basically saying “Teen Mom...Hard” is enough as long as she draws attention to the issue. But what would be much more interesting and have a greater impact is if she strayed beyond her personal experience to help inform the national discussion with some compelling facts about the teen pregnancy problem which happens to be near epidemic proportions in the US. With a national platform comes a responsibility to rise to the occasion, become informed about the issue, and be a true leader.

Just a couple of weeks ago I observed Bristol in person for several hours at a her debut press event. It’s probably safe to say she hasn’t gotten the much needed media and message training between then and the People interview. For advocates like me, the cover of People magazine is the Holy Grail. And so, it’s particularly painful to have Bristol squander the massive opportunity to educate by not being fully educated herself on the issue. It's especially unfortunate since so many of the facts about teen parenthood underscore the points she is trying to make. For example, Bristol appears on the cover in cap and gown, to signify her recent graduation from high school. Becoming a mother and a high school graduate in the same year is a true achievement, not to be minimized. But it’s also an opening for Bristol to point out that it’s tremendously unusual too. In fact, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, teen pregnancy is the leading cause of school drop out among teenage girls. Less than half of the mothers who have a child before they turn 18 ever graduate from high school. Bristol hopes to go to college, but she could point out that it’s going to be much more difficult for her to complete college than it will be for her peers. Less than two percent of mothers who have children before age 18 complete college by the age of 30. These facts would have made her message all the more sobering and given her another chance to use her life to point out the most severe outcomes of premature parenthood.

Interviewers always ask her about her strained relationship with Levi too. This has provided awkward moments for Bristol who clearly doesn’t want to go there. Yet, these questions provide a great opening for her to get to a more important point. She could say, “Here’s another problem with teen pregnancy. Levi and I are like most other teen parents in that we aren’t together. Eight in ten teen fathers do not marry the mothers of their first children. Levi will play an important part in Tripp’s life, because I’m committed to that and believe every child needs father. But it’s far from the ideal arrangement. But it will be the arrangement we’ll all have to struggle with for the rest of our lives.” If she wants to use her experience as an example, well then let’s do that. The facts, again, offer her an easy way to be a powerful messenger.

The outcomes of teen parenthood are too serious to be ignored by someone who is now the most prominent messenger on the issue. The impact is not just on the teen mom's and dad’s life either. In fact, the greatest effect is on the children of teen parents. They are more likely to be born prematurely at low birthweight compared to children of older mothers, which raises the probability of infant death and disease, mental retardation, and mental illness. Children of teen mothers are 50 percent more likely to repeat a grade and are less likely to complete high school. The children of teen parents also suffer higher rates of abuse and neglect (two times higher). Not only can Bristol use her experience to dissuade others from falling into the same fate, she can be a model for those who do.

Bristol has so much opportunity to make an important impact in these areas and with just a little guidance from the experts she can. Hopefully, she’ll seek out that help. It’ll make her a much more interesting figure who, while keeping the fickle media engaged, can educate those at greatest risk. There are many people ready to help because the experts know it takes a village to raise a spokesperson too.

One in Ten Women Worries About Her Ability to Keep Paying for Contraception

2009-05-14T09:35:00.001-04:00

At the recent conference of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the organization released findings from a recent Gallup poll it commissioned. The survey results reveal as alarming news about women's reproductive health in a declining economy.

Here's the takeaway: Women say that using birth control is extremely important to them but, increasingly, they can't afford it.

Gallup found that six percent of women using a hormonal form of birth control, such as the pill, said they had abandoned the method because they could not afford it. Ten percent of women said they were worried about their ability to keep paying for contraception. Some women said they had switched birth control methods because of cost. Women reported that, on average, having a reliable method of contraception is extremely important to them (a "9" on a scale of one to 10). Women who said that they have been affected a great deal by the country's economy are more than twice as likely to report that they have decided to limit the size of their family (29% vs. 13%); are more than twice as likely to talk to their partner about having an unintended pregnancy (26%
vs. 12%); and are more than three times as likely to postpone a planned pregnancy (15% vs. 5%). While family planning in tough economic times is no doubt a reasonable path there's another alarming finding: women are sacrificing their health when their pocketbooks are pinched.

Fourteen percent have postponed their annual Ob/Gyn check-up.

Given this, the Obama adminstration could not have had better timing with the report they released today, "Roadblocks to Health Care: Why the Current Health Care System Does Not Work for Women."

The report explains that "Women are more vulnerable to high health care costs than men," and that, "Women's reproductive health requires more regular contact with health care providers, including yearly pap smears, mammograms, and obstetric care." We're paying for these biological differences too: Women are often charged higher premiums than men during their reproductive years. According to the report, keeping other factors constant, a 22-year-old woman can be charged one and a half times the premium of a 22-year-old man. This difference largely disappears well after our fertility does--by age 64.

The cost disparity has a cascading effect. Almost half of women report problems paying medical bills, compared with 36% of men. One in three women were "forced to make a difficult trade off such as using up their savings, taking on debt, or giving up basic necessities." Increasingly, as the Gallup poll shows, the necessities they are forced to give up include contraception.

Lucky for us, the Obama administration is approaching the health care crisis with the understanding that women and men might not have equal access to the care they need. They identify the actual problem before designing a solution. This is heartening after so many years of an administration that viewed the solutions as the problem e.g., Bush’s opposition to birth control. The new approach is to view women's health and rights as critical pieces of our nation's recovery plan. Beginning to feel better already.

Why We Need Bristol (and Levi)

2009-05-07T23:51:00.002-04:00

This week, appearing in a Town Hall-styled press event, Bristol Palin debuted as a teen “ambassador” for the Candies Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Candies shoe brand that raises awareness of the teen pregnancy crisis. It was an unsteady first step, which pleased those cynical about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s politically expedient version of her daughter’s pregnancy: Remember? Bristol and boyfriend Levi are in love and will marry soon after the election. Bristol and Levi are now broken up and seem to be doing much of their communicating, even seem to subtly be negotiating custody/visitation arrangements for their son Tripp, on prime time TV. Now that no one any longer has to pretend that the pre-election fictions are true, there is a valuable lesson to learn. And, oddly, the quiet girl thrust into the public spotlight as a result of a most private of mishap might just help teach it. That is if Levi is invited along.

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On the morning of the Town Hall appearance, Bristol also appeared on ABC and NBC, broadcasting maddeningly mixed messages about teen pregnancy prevention on the nation’s most widely watched news shows. She seemed to emphasize the abstinence-only approach to pregnancy prevention on Good Morning America (“It’s important for me to get involved just to advocate and promote abstinence and send my message out…abstinence is a hard choice but it’s the safest choice and the best choice”) only to appear on the Today show minutes later to admit that abstinence can be unrealistic for some teens and, if so, they should use contraception (“If you’re going to have sex I think you should have safe sex.”)

I recognize I’m trained to listen for nuances in the sex ed debate. I’m also twice Bristol’s age. And so it’s easy for me to slip into the Simon Cowell role. No, she’s not polished. Hers is a kind of witness-cross-examined-style speech—short statements which leave you wondering what she isn’t saying. I’m not even sure Bristol realizes that she’s been contradicting herself.

So at first listen, her message sounds way off-key. On a second closer listen though, I started to hear something else. It sounded more like a new, albeit unrehearsed and out-of-the-studio, style. In truth, if her televised appearances this week are cobbled together, there is definitely a message worth listening to. Even comprehensive sex ed proponents should be fine with what she’s actually saying. People who favor comprehensive sex ed have reflexively shunned her. She has seemed at times brainwashed by the group which still believes abstinence is the only form of contraception a teenager needs to know. But in her roundabout way, Bristol is in fact voicing the core message of comprehensive sex ed which is: there’s no better protection against pregnancy and disease than abstinence, teens should postpone becoming sexually active, but those that are having sex need to use to protection.

But prevention is not Bristol’s area of expertise. (That’s for sure.) Bristol is much more interested in warning teens about premature parenthood than putting herself forth as an expert on teen pregnancy prevention. That, I think, is part of the reason why she sounds confused when discussing what teens should or should not be doing. Being a teen mom is her new expertise. This is where she becomes clear: she wants to use her experience to help other teens avoid the same fate. She explains, “If I can prevent even one girl from getting pregnant, I will feel a sense of accomplishment.” It’s on this point where Bristol and the Candies Foundation (which supports both abstinence and safe sex approaches) have a truly shared perspective, one that gets overlooked by the traditional teen pregnancy prevention messengers. Bristol’s and Candies’ shared message to teens is: you don’t want to become a teen parent.

The traditional pregnancy prevention messages have often missed this. They have assumed teens don’t need convincing on that issue. They assumed teens just need to know how not to get pregnant. But statistics provided by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy indicate that about one in five pregnant teens was trying to conceive. For this demographic, messages about abstinence and/or contraception are useless.

And so Bristol may be reaching an emerging demographic. Candies may have found a powerful messenger in her. And let’s give her credit, hers is possibly the most difficult of messages to impart. She loves her baby, Tripp is a blessing in her life, though if she could have done it over she would definitely have waited to become a parent—it would have been better for her and her son. There are difficult emotional acrobatics here, seeming contradictions that, to her credit, she manages to present in a way that feels honest and understandable.

But there is one thing very important missing from the Candies campaign. Lucky for them, the opportunity to fix that is standing right before their eyes. What their campaign needs is Levi Johnson. And Levi has something to say. Few have noticed that Levi has been trying to get in on this important conversation. It may seem like he is just trying to spoil Bristol’s day now that he is persona non grata in the Palin household. Whenever Bristol is backed into pushing abstinence, Levi pops up with a wry smile and a disclaimer: “It’s unrealistic.” Levi has been taking to the airwaves himself. In fact, on the morning of the Town Hall he got himself on the Early Show, in an unofficial capacity, to discuss their unplanned pregnancy. He quite diplomatically praised Bristol for encouraging teens to abstain but, based on his first-hand experience, he encouraged consistent condom use.

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What this national conversation desperately needs is for teen boys, like Levi, to be involved. How can we expect them to take responsible steps to prevent teen pregnancy if we act as if they play no part? Levi brings with him a great chance to make boys the stakeholders they inevitably are. He also offers a unique perspective on the difficulties of being a teen father, one that will resonate with boys in a way Bristol’s point of view will not. It’s also worth noting that Levi is as sought-out by the media as Bristol. He has the same humble, and winning, way of delivering a simple message. He can balance out Bristol’s warnings about Saturday nights changing diapers with a pragmatic strategy for avoiding that fate. And, let’s not forget, he needs a job. He’s also handsome enough (New York Magazine calls Levi, a hockey player, “sex on skates”) to get girls to pay attention to his pro-protection message.

These two are never gonna be slick, media trained, celebri-teens with talking points and agents (Bristol’s entourage in New York was her aunt, baby and Dad.) No doubt, Candies is taking a risk with Bristol and would extend that risk even further by giving Levi an equal voice in the discussion. But with great risk comes the possibility for great gains too. The United States is suffering from a teen pregnancy scourge—we have the highest teen birth rate of any other developed country, and by a long shot. Teen parents are less likely to complete the education necessary to qualify for a well-paying job -- in fact, parenthood is the leading cause of school drop out among teen girls. College then becomes the remotest of possibilities. Less than two percent of mothers who have children before age 18 complete college by the age of 30.

Too often heartbreaking sacrifices are also foisted on the children of teen parents. These children are more likely to be born prematurely at low birthweight compared to children of older mothers, which raises the probability of infant death and disease, mental retardation, and mental illness. Children of teens are 50 percent more likely to repeat a grade and are less likely to complete high school. The children of teens also suffer higher rates of abuse and neglect (two times higher).

Teen parents and their children are not the only ones paying dearly. Premature parenting in the United States costs taxpayers (federal, state, and local) approximately $9.1 billion each year. Most of the costs are associated with services to address the negative consequences detailed above.

Bristol and Levi are bravely offering their intensely personal misstep up for others to learn from. They may be at odds with each other (another statistical likelihood they realized) but they are united in their message about the not-so-glamorous life of teen parents.

Obama Ends Funding for Abstinence-Only Programs, Gives Title X a Modest Increase

2009-05-07T23:46:00.002-04:00

Big News...here's the press release about the Obama's 2010 budget from Planned Parenthood...

PLANNED PARENTHOOD STATEMENT ON PRESIDENT OBAMA’S 2010 BUDGET
Ends Ineffective Abstinence-Only Programs,
Provides New Funding for Evidence-Based Comprehensive Sex Education —
Missed Opportunities to Strengthen Title X
And Ensure Women’s Access to Full Range of Care

“As our nation works to strengthen women’s health care, there is both good and bad news in this budget. While the budget is a step in the right direction toward reducing alarmingly high unintended pregnancy rates and helping ensure that young people have the information and health care they need to become healthy and productive adults, it misses an opportunity to build on one of the nation’s most effective programs in reducing unintended pregnancies,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA).

Notable items in the Obama FY2010 Budget include:

—Ends funding for ineffective abstinence-only programs (CBAE and Title V program)
—Provides $178 million for evidence-based comprehensive sex education programs that prevent teen pregnancy
—Provides a modest $10 million increase in the Title X family planning program, to a total of $317 million
—Extends access to basic health care to millions more women through the Medicaid State Option Family Planning Waiver
—Does not remove onerous restrictions on women’s ability to access the full range of reproductive health care

SEX EDUCATION

“President Obama’s budget makes clear that the government won’t waste federal dollars on programs that don’t reduce the number of teen pregnancies or keep teens healthy and safe. We applaud the president for rejecting failed abstinence-only programs that have cost our government more than $1 billion and, instead, invest in evidence-based sex ed programs that have proven to help prevent teen pregnancy,” said PPFA President Cecile Richards.

President Obama’s budget completely eliminates funding for the Community Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) program and the Title V Abstinence Education program for states, saving the federal government $149 million. In addition, the president’s budget includes $178 million in new funding for “evidence-based” teen pregnancy prevention programs. Of that, $75 million is designated for "programs that replicate the elements of one or more teenage pregnancy prevention programs that have been proven through rigorous evaluation to delay sexual activity, increase contraceptive use (without increasing sexual activity), or reduce teenage pregnancy”; and $25 million is slotted for research and development of new and innovative strategies for preventing teen pregnancy.

FAMILY PLANNING

“We commend the investment in women’s health and the commitment to make family planning and basic health care services, including lifesaving cancer screenings, more accessible and affordable to millions of low-income women and their families,” said Richards. “Yet, at a time when health centers like ours are seeing an increase in the number of women seeking basic preventive care, the president’s budget misses an opportunity to further invest and strengthen the Title X program. Title X is a vital component of the health care safety net and one of the most effective programs in reducing the number of unintended pregnancies. We will continue to work with President Obama and Congress to ensure that Title X and women’s health are priorities as they move toward reform of our health care system.”

President Obama’s budget provides a modest $10 million increase in the Title X program, the nation’s family planning program, for a total of $317 million. The Title X family planning program provides basic health care to more than five million women and families. Six in 10 clients consider a family planning center their main source of health care. However, funding has not kept pace with inflation, and more than 17 million women are in need of publicly funded family planning services. Investing in the Title X program also saves money. According to the Guttmacher Institute, taxpayers save $4 for every $1 dollar spent on family planning.

President Obama’s budget also includes a provision to expand family planning under Medicaid, which would extend family planning coverage to millions more women.

Expanding family planning under Medicaid has been one of Planned Parenthood’s top priorities under our Prevention First Agenda. Also known as the Medicaid Family Planning State Option, it would simply allow states to expand their Medicaid family planning services, including cancer screenings and other preventive care, to more women in need, without having to go through the burdensome Medicaid waiver process.

The Medicaid Family Planning State Option would have a significant impact on women’s health and is vital to expanding care to the millions of women who are losing their jobs and/or their health insurance in this economic downturn. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this provision would provide coverage to 2.3 million low-income women by 2014. A study by the Guttmacher Institute finds that this flexible option would help 500,000 women avoid unplanned pregnancy.

ABORTION RESTRICTIONS

An additional aspect of concern is that the president’s budget does not remove government funding restrictions on abortion services. Restrictions on public funding for abortion services have severely hindered access to safe abortion care for women, disproportionately affecting poor women.

“We are disappointed that the budget did not remove restrictions on women’s ability to access the full range of reproductive health care services,” said Richards. “Placing onerous restrictions on women is not effective public policy. We look forward to working with the president and Congress to remove these restrictions.”

“As the nation’s leading advocate and provider of women’s reproductive health care, every day we see that the best way to prevent unintended pregnancies and promote healthy families is to invest in family planning programs and ensure more women have access to affordable, quality reproductive health care,” said Richards. “The president’s budget is a step in that direction.”

On what issue does the US rank between Thailand and Rwanda?

2009-05-05T10:08:00.004-04:00

Today is The National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and, so, there's no better time to reflect on a few startling statistics about teen pregnancy.

In 2001, UNICEF conducted a survey of teenage birth rates in the industrialized world--it wanted to figure out why some rich countries have teenage birth rates that are ten or fifteen times higher than others. The United States ranks number one for teen moms, far outpacing the rest of the industrialized world--four times the European Union average and 60 percent higher than the rate in the United Kingdom, which came in second. In the 28 countries reviewed, there were 760,000 births to teenagers, two-thirds of which occurred in the United States. The United States is so bad at preventing pregnancy that it is the only rich nation smack in the middle of the Third World block for teen births--ranking just behind Thailand and directly before Rwanda.

Some countries have successfully reversed this trend. The Netherlands, for example, has reduced its teenage birthrate by a staggering 72 percent in thirty years while also having the lowest teenage abortion rates in the industrialized world. UNICEF reports “In general, studies of the Dutch experience have concluded that the underlying reason for success has been the combination of a relatively inclusive society with more open attitudes toward sex and sex education, including contraception.” For example, young people in the Netherlands “feel comfortable discussing sexuality in a warm, mutually supporting atmosphere” in which “requests for contraceptive services are not associated with shame or embarrassment” and in which “the media is willing to carry explicit messages designed for young people about contraceptive services.” The result is that teenagers who are having sex in the Netherlands see using of contraception “as ingrained as not going through a red light.” Interestingly, the Dutch approach hasn’t led to a sex-indulgent teenage culture, but rather, as the report concludes to a “higher average age at first intercourse.”

Another example of a country that had found a solution is Sweden. Beginning in 1975 Sweden radically reviewed its school sex-education curriculum. UNICEF reports, “abstinence and sex-only-within-marriage were dropped. Contraceptive education was made an explicit part of the school curriculum, and a nationwide network of youth clinics was established to provide confidential advice and free contraceptives to young people.” The Swedes took a practical, non-judgmental, approach their teenagers’ sexuality considering it “neither as desirable nor undesirable, but as inevitable—this being the case, teenagers’ use of contraceptives is viewed as highly desirable because it will prevent both childbearing and abortion.” As a result of these changes, Sweden has nearly half the teen abortion rate than that of the United States (17.7 vs. 30.2 per 1,000 teens).

Now that we have an administration not opposed to evidence-based solutions, we can once again consider the strategies proven to work to reduce teen pregnancy. We may not have to look far for them either. We witnessed a dramatic decline in teen pregnancies and births during the Clinton administration, a 36% drop, and that positive trend continued until just recently when CDC researchers discovered a spike in teen births in the Bush years, beginning in 2006 and continuing through 2007 (the latest year data is available.)

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has the "What If Project" which explores how different the U.S. would be today if the dramatic decline had not happened. The organization reports,

"Declining teen birth rates have significantly improved overall child well-being in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to a new state-by-state analysis released by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Specifically, declines in the teen birth rate have had a direct impact on improving child poverty in all 50 states. That is, child poverty would have been worse in 2002 if state teen birth rates had not declined between 1991 and 2002."

In fact, they calculate that 8.3% more children would be living in poverty today as a result of being born to teen mothers if this decline had not taken place. More tax-payer dollars would have had to be devoted to services related to teen births too. In fact, the steady decline in the teen birth rate saved taxpayers an estimated $6.7 billion just in 2004 alone. Over the 13 years of decline, the number of years the National Campaign calculated the cost-savings, the American tax-payer saved $161 billion in estimated public costs associated with teen childbearing.

However, despite a one-third decline since the early 1990s, the United States still has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and birth among comparable countries. In fact, 3 in 10 girls in this country become pregnant by age 20. The financial costs associated with teen parenthood appear to be the least of our concerns. According to the National Campaign,

"Early pregnancy and childbearing is closely linked to a host of other critical social issues, including poverty and income disparity, overall child well-being, out-of-wedlock births, and education, to name just a few. Simply put, if more children in this country were born to parents who are ready and able to care for them, we would see a significant reduction in a host of social problems afflicting children in the United States, from school failure and crime to child abuse and neglect. If more children in this country were born to parents who are ready and able to care for them, we would see a significant reduction in a host of social problems afflicting children in the United States, from school failure and crime to child abuse and neglect."

Lucky for us, the Obama has made the reduction of teen pregnancy a priority of his administration. Time to dust off the book of proven remedies and get back to work.

Out of Touch at the Taxpayer's Expense

2009-05-01T20:00:00.007-04:00

This week, the Missouri and Montana state legislatures took steps to scale back access to contraception for the citizens who need it most, those confronting difficult economic times. The lawmakers seem to have missed the thousands of articles penned in the last few weeks about a flood of Americans turning to birth control as a way to insure their economic survival in uncertain times.

In Missouri, state legislators approved an amendment that would let pharmacies refuse to stock "morning-after" emergency contraceptives. This should come as no surprise, Missouri lawmakers have been in the vanguard of restricting access to pregnancy prevention for years. For example, Missouri is one of only five states to attempt to deny abortion providers public funding for contraceptive services.

The recent scale back in access to contraception will likely come with its costs too. For example, between 1991 and 2004 there have been more than 141,600 teen births in Missouri, costing taxpayers a total of $3.3 billion in services over that period.

In Montana, Republican legislators decided to scale back contraceptive access and targeted teens, the very population that as Missouri shows, need it most. They eliminated coverage for birth control in the state insurance programs for adolescents because, as Rep. Penny Morgan a Billings Republican explained, "[Republicans] don't feel that government should be paying for children to have contraceptives. The dollars and cents, I don't think, have anything to do with it,"

Tell that to the tax-payers who will be footing the bill.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported, "The Republican-led push to remove contraceptive coverage from the Children's Health Insurance Program would save the state about $70,000 and cost it $233,212 in matching funds from the federal government."

This decision is not only bizarre given the fiscal climate (what state can get away with refusing federal funds for such basic preventive health services?), it's also crazy given recent trends in teen pregnancy in the state. Recent data show a significant increase in the Montana teen birth rate for 2006, enough to alarm officials at the state's Department of Public Health and Human Services. The state teen birth rate increased 9 percent in 2006, the biggest single year increase since 1990.

It's looks like legislators are hoping to break that record.

The Prevention President

2009-04-29T11:49:00.000-04:00

For those in favor of women's rights, the first 100 days of the Obama administration has been like a honeymoon. We've continually been reminded why we fell in love in the first place. Coming off an eight-year abusive relationship (to put it mildly), none of Obama's kindnesses are lost on us. He seems to be the kind of guy who does what he says he's going to do, another relief. And his gifts have not just been for the pro-choice movement either. Nearly all of Obama's actions on reproductive rights to date have focused on preventing the need for abortion, one of his "common ground" issues. And while he's won no fans in traditional pro-life groups, it's an approach the majority of pro-life Americans want.

Here's a report card of the Obama administration's work on reproductive rights in the first hundred days.

International:

Obama's first gift was global. In his first month in office, with a stroke of his pen, Obama lifted the Global Gag Rule, a Reagan-era policy that withheld funding from any group that referred a woman for an abortion, most of which were family planning providers.

Lifting the funding ban will restore these NGO's access to USAID-supplied condoms and other forms of contraception and result in dramatic improvements in women's health for those living in the most desperate regions on earth. Despite anti-abortion operatives claims, the policy change will not increase abortion rates since the funding was never used to provide abortion services in the first place. In fact, we expect just the opposite. Johns Hopkins researchers estimate that every million dollars spent on contraceptive care prevents 150,000 abortions, 360,000 unintended pregnancies, 11,000 infant deaths and 800 maternal deaths .

The Stimulus Package:

There was, to continue the honeymoon metaphor, our first lover's quarrel too. Obama quickly folded once the Republicans picked a fight over inclusion of a family planning provision in the stimulus package. In Obama's defense, passage of the package was too critical to hold up for a minor provision that could be included elsewhere. But the concession came easily, a little too easily. Why not stand up to the bullies who happened also to be lying to the American public about what the contraception provision was? Obama could have pointed out that, despite claims to the contrary, there was no $200 million budget line for contraception in the stimulus package. That figure represented the projected cost savings to the states if a simple administrative, non-budgetary proposal were adopted. It gets complicated, but sadly the unchallenged final message was "contraception has nothing to do with economic recovery." The last few months have certainly proven otherwise. There's been a surge of American's getting contraception, and long-acting methods at that. Clearly, pregnancy prevention has a lot to do with individual economic stability. It's also proven that Republicans are deeply out of touch with what struggling Americans need to protect themselves during tough times, as if we needed more evidence.

Appointments:

With the key positions that impact women's health and rights most, Obama has appointed wisely. Hillary Clinton overseeing foreign policy will impact women's health worldwide. She is the possibly the strongest pro-choice advocate we've ever had in government and there was no better display of her pro-choice backbone than an exchange she and anti-abortion/anti-contraception Senator Chris Smith from NJ had last week.

Without question, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the most important federal agency for American women's health issues. That's one reason why the chief of staff to one of Bush's heads of HHS, Tommy Thompson, described it as "ground zero for the ideological wars in this country." HHS includes the FDA (approves new reproductive health drugs), the Title X program (nation's contraception program for the poor), the Office of Medicaid (pays for 1/3 of all US births and the largest health payer of contraception services for the low-income;) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (oversees STD prevention programs.) For this post Obama chose Governor Kathleen Sebelius who was confirmed yesterday. During her confirmation hearings, the anti-abortion movement, in true Rove form, attempted to portray the exceedingly moderate Sebelius as an extremist on abortion. Very little of what HHS does has to do with abortion rights, though, so the charge was not only false but irrelevant. Sebelius, through her role, is likely to make contraception more available, implement the most effective sex education programs, and focus on preventing the spread of STDs: all strategies the traditional anti-abortion establishment has historically opposed. Of course, it was better for them to say she's an abortion nut than a prevention nut.

Common Ground:

But not all pro-lifers were opposed to Sebelius' nominaton. One of the most revolutionary and inspiring events to emerge from the election of Obama's has been real common ground partners in a growing segment of the pro-life movement. These are people who while disagreeing on some fundamental issues have agreed to seek points of agreement with pro-choice activists. Catholics United is one such pro-life common ground group. Among many of their cutting edge campaigns was Catholics for Sebelius, which defended her nomination by arguing that her policies have led to dramatic declines in the unintended pregnancy and abortion in Kansas. Several other pro-life groups, like Pro-Life Pro-Obama and Realabortionsolutions.org, as well as a handful of pro-life leaders, have risen to answer Obama's common ground call. These groups and leaders believe that rather than focusing on banning abortion, which has never had a significant impact on abortion rates, Obama's prevention policies hold the greatest promise for those seeking tangible pro-life results.

Obama has committed his administration to finding common ground in the abortion conflict. He's assigned his Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to work with his Council on Women and Girls on the task. Last month, the White House hosted its first conference call of leaders on each side and presented a broad strokes common ground agenda. It's decidedly straightforward and hard to argue with from both pro-choice and pro-life perspectives. The focus will "look at how we support women and children, address teenage pregnancy, and reduce the need for abortion." Both sides of the abortion debate have much to gain from this common ground effort. If it results in any success, which is still no certainty, the American public, particularly women, and our political discourse will be the greatest beneficiaries.

Plan B:

One of the greatest examples of the abuses of the Bush administration was the very transparent derailing of the Plan B, emergency contraception (EC), over the counter application at the FDA. Bush appointed anti-contraception ideologues to the panel reviewing the application. The majority of the panel wound up recommending over-the counter access to EC for all women and the application had support from all women's and adolescent medical groups. Still the Bush FDA denied minors over the counter access to emergency contraception. This decision is held up as a one of the greatest examples of Bush's attacks on science and the administration's misuse of agencies for purely ideological aims. Obama has set about restoring confidence in our scientific agencies. One step in that direction was sending the Plan B decision back for review and demanding the agency base it's decision on over-the-counter access solely on scientific evidence. In the meantime, Obama directed the agency to establish immediate over-the-counter access for 17 year-old women to the highly effective contraceptive method.

Obama also restored affordable birth control for college-aged women. After Bush removed college health centers from discounted drug programs, contraceptive costs increased as much as 900% for college women. Obama signed legislation to restore access to affordable birth control for college-age women who, statistics show, are most in need of it: they're the demographic with the highest rate of unintended pregnancy, the highest rate of abortion, and little disposable income.

HHS Regulations

In the final days of the Bush administration, Christian Right just about went looting. They tried to walk away with a regulation allowing healthcare workers' religious beliefs to override patient's medical decisions. One HHS regulation, which went into effect literally moments before Obama took office, was so broad and would cause such chaos in medicine establishment that even Bush's own EEOC came out against it. It would have would allowed any healthcare worker for practically any "conscience-related" reason to deny a patient any type of medical care. The healthcare worker wouldn't have had to inform the employer beforehand of the care he or she objected to and couldn't be fired for refusing to provide the service. Patients did not have to be informed of the healthcare worker's objection or that they were being denied information about their medical options. In the service of protecting "conscience objectors," the regulation threw patient rights out a window. Since ample protection already exists in law for those who don't want to take part in abortion services, it was widely understood that the goal of the HHS regulations was to give cover to those who wish to obstruct women's access to contraception. Obama rescinded the HHS regulations.

At the end of the Bush administration and ever since, as a result of its mismanagement and commitment to proven to fail approaches, abortion and teen pregnancy rates have been spiking. Obama has, in the first 100 days, reversed course in favor of the policies that have proven, wherever tried, to result in dramatic declines in unintended pregnancy and abortion rates. It'd be wrong to say only pro-choice people have reason to rejoice from this stellar first hundred days.

Restoring Reason at the FDA

2009-04-22T23:06:00.003-04:00

It's official. Seventeen year-olds now get a second chance to prevent pregnancy as easily as older women do. The FDA, per order of the White House, extended over-the-counter access to emergency contraception, also known as the morning after pill, to 17-year-olds today.

We'll have to wait until tomorrow, the morning after, to find out whether society as we know it ends. That's long been the prediction of groups like the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America who view the move to make contraception more available as something like a mandatory draft for Girls Gone Wild.

Wendy Wright, President of CWFA, wrote in USA Today in 2005 supporting a widely lambasted decision by the Bush FDA to reject all scientific arguments about the effectiveness and safety of the drug. Instead the Bush FDA sided with ideological and religious extremists to deny over-the-counter access to EC for every woman. (The decision was later revisited and EC access OTC was granted for adult women but denied for minors). In the piece, Wright accused women’s health advocates of conspiring to promote a culture of promiscuity with the intent of boosting sales of emergency contraceptives. She wrote, “In pursuit of more sales, advocates encourage multiple sex partners and frequent use, without concern for putting women at risk of STDs.”

Of course, emergency contraception has been widely available in other countries for years and so we have ample experience on which to evaluate Wright’s predictions. A 2005 study published in the British Medical Journal found “Making emergency hormonal contraception available over the counter does not seem to have led to an increase in its use, to an increase in unprotected sex, or to a decrease in the use of more reliable methods of contraception.”

Behind all of the arguments against EC over-the-counter access lurks a persistent notion that women, and now in particular teens, are engaging in irresponsible behavior. Wright and her anti-contraception colleagues, though, talk themselves into a corner (the problem when you reject reasonable answers). On one hand they appear to view teens as completely unable to make responsible decisions for themselves i.e. the availability of contraception will make them run wild. At the same time, teens apparently have it so together that they will be both determined and quick-acting in order prevent an unintended pregnancy. Seems like those teens most likely to use emergency contraception are, by definition, taking responsibility for their actions.

In a statement released today, Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood of America summed up that view perfectly, “The US has the highest rate of teen pregnancy among the most developed countries in the world. Providing birth control, including emergency birth control, to young women helps them make responsible decisions and avoid unintended pregnancy.”

Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council have clearly huddled on talking points. Another thematic in their press statements about the Obama decision is emergency contraception is unsafe. Yet, the 2003 application to the FDA to grant the over-the-counter access to Plan B won unanimous support from all leading medical groups, including the most prestigious medical groups representing adolescents such as from The Society for Adolescent Medicine, the American Pediatric Association not to mention all women's health groups. Even Bush's own FDA panelists noted that Plan B was the safest drug they had ever considered to grant to over-the counter status. No matter. According to Concerned Women for America, in a statement released today, "Parents should be furious that the FDA is putting their minor daughters at risk." The Family Research Council continued the refrain, "Furthermore, the FDA-approved label for Plan B gives no clear indication that repeated use of Plan B in a short period of time is not safe."

The era during which the likes of the religious Wright (pun intended) held sway on what should rightfully be medical and scientific decisions are, thankfully, over. And no group seems more relieved than the non-ideological researchers who’d watched years of hard earned effort for scientific integrity wasted in a matter of months. It’s telling that no one at the FDA has voiced a problem with the unprecedented mandate from the President Obama to overturn the decision. Conversely, senior staff resigned from the FDA over the political/ideological handling of the application during the Bush years and the Christian right’s destructive influence on agency policy.

A new day is at hand. Vindication is the order of business. Today we have prevailed and 17 year old women are the victors. We’ve always known Wright is wrong. The sweetest victory is her new found irrelevance.

Proudly Part of the Problem

2009-04-16T14:44:00.002-04:00

Last week, a leading “pro-life” blogger Jill Stanek made a cameo appearance in the comments section of a blog of mine, “The Call for Common Ground on Abortion,” on Huffington Post. My post basically reported on, and offered perspective about, a conference call the White house organized for pro-life and pro-choice groups. It took the opportunity to announce the administration’s intent to explore common ground in the abortion conflict. In my post, I pointed out that it’s clear Obama’s team wants to make progress on an issue that has divided and damaged us as a country for too long. They had explained the areas they hoped could unite pro-choice and pro-life people: reducing unintended pregnancy, including teen pregnancy, making adoption a more accessible choice for women confronting unintended pregnancy, and supporting struggling families with wanted pregnancies. They want to move forward, and have set up a common sense framework to do so. It’s hard to demean such earnest intent.

But many veteran leaders in the “pro-life” movement are immovably stuck in their positions. They appear deeply invested in rehashing the same, seemingly eternal arguments, in continuing what even to a staunch pro-choicer like myself seems like a tedious fight. The natural inclination of rational Americans pining for common ground, as most of both persuasions on the abortion issue are, might be to zone out the heckling. But listening to this increasingly out of the mainstream arguments by people like Jill Stanek helps to understand the reason we have suffered from intransigence for so long. Too many of the most committed people, and here, the pro-choice side is not immune, feel that anything the opponent agrees to must be suspect. Bloggers like Stanek, those speaking into the echo chamber, are apparently so invested in continuing the fight that they won’t budge. One suspects their incalcitrance is based not just on morality, but self-interest as well. If the vitriol isn’t high enough they worry their base might drift away.

Jill is the perfect example of the unbending culture warrior. The one committed to fanning the flames of the ethereal, abstract side of debate and belittling or ignoring the common sense, brick and mortar proposals for problem solving. Jill is no doubt a smart chick. Her posts are always engaging even for those of the pro-choice persuasion like myself. If only she used her abilities not to undermine common ground efforts. Obama’s common ground pledge (and my piece about it) did not muster any interest in Jill in finding a solution. It did inspire her to return for the billionth time to the well-worn arguments. She writes,

“Cristina, the basic questions: Why care about reducing the need for abortion? What's wrong with it?”

I answered,

“Hi Jill, nice to hear from you. I think it's the same reason to reduce teen parenthood and to reduce the need to place a child for adoption. If any woman in one of those circumstances were to be asked, "if you could go back in time and avoid being in this predicament, would you?" nearly all would say yes. I think we should reduce teen parenthood and the need for adoption too. These are each often tremendously difficult choices that ideally no woman should have to face. Adoption, abortion, and parenthood are all the results of unintended pregnancy and I believe women should have access to each of these options legally and safely. But it’s unintended pregnancy that's the real problem here. That's what we need to work to avoid.

“Sorry to not give you the "gotcha" moment you were looking for. For Huffpo readers, Jill Stanek is a leader in the anti-abortion movement and probably the most popular blogger on that side of the issue. Jill, here are my questions for you: Why are you opposed to preventing unintended pregnancy and access to contraception as one vehicle toward that end? Why do you pursue the outlawing of abortion even though it has failed to reduce abortion rates wherever it's been tried? Why not institute the policies that result in the lowest abortion rates on earth? So what if it's the most pro-choice countries that have the lowest abortion rates, aren't "pro-life" results what you're after?”

She replied,

“Christina, seriously, thanks for the kind words on my credentials.

But you didn't answer me. You may consider my question a "gotcha," but it's foundational. How can we devise solutions when we haven't defined the problem? What exactly is the problem with abortion? Why is it "a tremendously difficult choice[ ] that ideally no woman should have to face"?

“What is wrong with abortion? Is it or is it not morally neutral or even superior, as new Cambridge Episcopal Divinity School pro-abort President Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale tagged it - "a blessing" and "holy work"?”

I replied,

“Well, actually, if you read what I wrote again, you'll see I was referring to adoption and teen parenthood as "often tremendously difficult choices." Sure, abortion can be a difficult choice for some women too (though or some women it is accompanied by no grief, though, just relief) and studies show that the more religious a woman is the harder struggle she has with it. So possibly, it's the culture she's in that creates guilt with her decision.

“Regardless, my point is that all choices accompanying an unintended pregnancy can be (but aren't always) difficult, but that's no reason to outlaw any of them. Based on your logic, it's grief that is the measure of what the "right" decision is. Then a woman who suffers grief after placing a child for adoption made the wrong choice, an immoral choice, right? Why not ban adoption then? Why not tell her that the reason she's feeling bad is because she made the wrong decision, one that God does not condone? That would be a terrible thing to do with women choosing adoption, and it's a terrible thing to do to women choosing abortion too.

“I've attempted to answer your question twice. You have not answered my questions even once. Please do. Why can't we agree to try to help women avoid having to make these decisions in the first place? Tell me Jill, honestly, what do you think are the areas we can agree on? Because I think there's a bunch.”

In the end, Jill never once attempts to answer any of my simple questions, which is typical. I’ve noticed this tactic used often by those pro-lifers who work in the movement. Whenever the discussion gets off ethereal principles and onto the problem solving, they revert back to airy lectures. They continue to want to talk about the morality of abortion and are desperate to change the subject when it’s about solving what they consider a moral crisis. They’re the ones who have a problem with abortion. Why is the pro-choice camp the only side trying to come up with solutions, often successfully, to their problem? President Bush didn’t promise to attempt to reduce abortion rates during his Presidency and, early indicators suggest, he lived up to that disinterest. The decline in abortion rates slowed during his administration, teen birth rates spiked, and the economic nightmare he left us in seems to already be causing an uptick in abortions. All that is traceable to Bush policies and mismanagement.

Meanwhile, the dramatic declines in abortion rates brought to us by President Clinton and the Obama administration’s promise to deliver the same results elicit sneers and ire from the “pro-life” movement. (I put “pro-life” in quotes because you can’t really be pro-life if your actions create more of the abortions you profess to hate.) Bill Clinton, if based on results alone, was the most pro-life president we’ve ever had and the pro-life movement hates him for it.

This is why the Obama team needs to look past the old-guard culture warriors. People like Jill Stanek approve of the rhetoric of the “culture of life” but are not interested in reducing the need for abortion. She’s seems more interested in attracting eyeballs to her site. Looking for common ground solutions from operatives like her is like turning to Michael Vick for dog-training tips.

The common ground movement Obama is hoping to advance will come about because of people who want real solutions, whose livelihoods don’t depend on the conflict continuing, people who believe we deserve a better national dialogue and better leadership on this issue. We’ve finally got an administration willing to moderate a productive discussion. It’s time to get the hecklers out of room, and get on with the work.

Coincidentally, the definition of contraception is "dangerously broad" for those who think broads on contraception are dangerous.

2009-04-09T12:54:00.004-04:00

Anti-contraception extremists are again putting confusion to good use in trying to trick the public into supporting their cause. Fresh off a decisive defeat of their "Personhood" bill that would have granted fertilized eggs full constitutional rights and set the groundwork to ban the most commonly used forms of birth control, Colorado's anti-family planning operatives are it again. Since the personhood bill attempted to reclassify common contraceptive methods as abortion, women's health advocates this session introduced a bill that would clearly define what contraception is and what it is not based on actual science and fact. Even though the bill explains that RU-486, mifepristone, or “any other drug or device that induces a medical abortion” are not contraceptive methods, the anti-birth control folks claim that the bill is "dangerously broad." What exactly is dangerously broad about it? It does not reclassify contraceptive methods as abortion. "Dangerously broad" was how their personhood bill was described because it would have laid the groundwork for banning not only abortion and contraception but stem cell research and IVF treatment. The anti-contraception crew know an effective talking point when they're defeated by it and so, voila, the category formally known as "contraception" is now suddenly "dangerously broad."

It was also revealed this week that researchers at the University of Iowa feel good about the chances they will soon develop a birth control pill for men. According to news reports, researchers are studying a mutation in a gene critical for normal sperm movement. The mutation has been found in at least two families with fertility problems. Researchers believe blocking this gene might be one way to create a contraceptive for men. In a related story, anti-birth control researchers are hard at work designing an argument that this yet to be developed contraceptive method for men can cause an abortion.

A Virginia high school student, with the full consent of her parents, took her birth control pill at school last week. As Kerry Howley at Slate points out, she might as well have been free-basing. In fact, had she instead been doing illegal drugs on school grounds she would have only gotten a five day suspension. For some bizarre reason, the penalty for taking a controlled substance, like birth control, at school is far worse, considered equivalent to bringing a firearm with you. The prevention-minded student was given a two-week suspension and was also "recommended for expulsion." This wasn't a situation where school bureaucrats were beholden to enforcing some broad and generic regulation while recognizing the inappropriateness of such punishment in this instance. Apparently, the Washington Post reported, a "long table full of school officials weighed her case at a hearing." Wonder if the officials would react the same way if a pregnant girl had taken a prescription pre-natal vitamin at school. Considering the strong message they've now sent discouraging diligent contraceptive use, we may just get the chance to find out.

By the way, my interview with Dr. Ted Green, of the Harvard School of Public Health, about the Pope's anti-condom comments is in the final stages of being transcribed (it was a loooong interview.) I'll be on vacation next week and so expect to see it here sometime the week of the 20th. In the meantime, here's another take on the Pope's anti-condom stance:

The Call for Common Ground

2009-04-07T10:00:00.001-04:00

Some historic moments are short and sweet. That was the case last Friday with a call the White House organized on common ground in the abortion conflict. In a never before attempted event, the Obama administration merged dozens of leaders from the pro-choice and pro-life movements onto one conference call line and, wisely, muted us.

The team to which Obama has assigned the task of shaping a civil discussion and exploring common cause within the abortion conflict enthusiastically laid out a profoundly sensible plan forward. Melody Barnes, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, kicked off the call explaining that their goal is not to change minds on the dug-in issue of abortion. Rather, she explained, the intent is to focus on the areas in which, theoretically, both sides share a common interest. And there are many: preventing unintended pregnancy (including teen pregnancy), reducing the need for abortion, strengthening supports for struggling families with wanted pregnancies, making adoption an option as accessible as any other, and saving lives by improving maternal and child health.

Barnes introduced the team that will help recruit people to the common cause: Tina Tchen, Executive Director of the Council on Women and Girls (she is also Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Public Liaison at the White House) and Rev. Joshua DuBois, Executive Director of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Tchen explained that they would take the next few months to meet with leaders on both sides to discuss various common ground proposals and to gather new ones. They will focus on projects that can be funded in the 2011 budget, as well as legislation and grassroots efforts that could be duplicated elsewhere.

The 15-minute call concluded with Barnes explaining that the President believes in common ground. This is the post-rant and, supposedly, post-culture war president. Common ground has become his way of framing his approach, a fundamentally optimistic view that if people of goodwill come together they can find ways to work together. Only the future will tell if that will be. But clearly the eminently rational Obama is betting that if reasonable people use reason they can get somewhere.

They promised to be in touch. The nasal-y conference call operator voice came on to signify the end of the call and the culture warriors retreated to their bunkers, awaiting further contact.

Certainly the surveys show that American public pines for the kind of common ground effort Obama seems to believe in. And in the brief but pointed call the No Drama Obama team seems to have figured out where to begin. It's put off limits the dogfight issues, like restrictions on abortion. The Obama team has chosen to narrow the scope. It's a call-your-bluff moment. You say you want to reduce unintended pregnancy? Well, then here's a common sense way to move forward. There has historically been deep resistance on the right to many of the approaches Obama favors, and even some in the pro-choice community, which has largely supported the Obama agenda, appear to wonder about the wisdom of making common cause with groups seen as part of the problem. The Obama team must have wondered whether it will find willing partners for what's meant to be a shared journey. Luckily, for the moment, the mute button was pushed.

And that gave the Obama team a chance to lay out its focused definition of common ground, a vague term which had understandably been open to wide interpretation. Last Friday, in its signature all-business style, the Obama team came to the call with a meaningful, common sense agenda. They're not planning to solve the abortion conflict, and they're not pretending to be miracle workers. But they are hoping to find that, with some good will, there are the solutions to such fundamental issues as unintended pregnancy about which both sides ought not to disagree.

"Most of the time" safe sex can get you kinda pregnant...

2009-04-03T23:42:00.003-04:00

Just a couple of months ago, so-called “pro-life” Congressmembers stood before the press corps on the lawn of the White House snickering over the inclusion of family planning in the stimulus package. They successfully removed the non-budgetary provision—claiming it had nothing to do with helping families in tough economic times. Now, we're seeing the very real impact the economy is having in American’s reproductive lives and how meaningful greater access to pregnancy prevention would in fact be. The Denver Daily News reported this week that: “Abortion rate spikes: Some say 10% rise in Colorado may be due to bad economy.”

And if we needed more evidence of the failed policies of the pro-life camp, on Monday, Bristol Palin's baby Daddy Levi Johnson will appear on the Tyra Banks show with his sister and Mom to discuss the “most of the time” safe sex strategy he and Bristol used which led them to become teen parents and his belief abstinence-only champion Governor Palin knew they were sexually active all along.

Here’s the teaser,

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

In related news, some school districts are taking pro-active measures the protect teens from pregnancy and disease. In Florida, the Beacon online reports, “The [Volusia County] school system is working with the Volusia County Health Department to develop programs to teach parents how to talk with their children about sex, abstinence and contraception. Parents will be able to take evening classes at the schools. “The whole theme of this is education, to prevent pregnancies and STDs,” the county’s school health director explained.”

It’s great for sex education to finally be getting an education theme. The ignorance theme, while daring, produced some unexpected results. Just ask Levi.

Ceding Ground is not Common Ground

2009-04-01T14:48:00.005-04:00

Lots of news in the 'which way is up' category this week. Coming on the heels of continued debate about what "common ground" on abortion is and whether we need it, was two great examples of what it is not.

Some politicians thought to be pro-choice may be using the new framework of "common ground" abortion as a cover to appease a more right wing constituency. "Pro-Choice" Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, in the week before her confirmation hearings to head the Department of Health and Human Services, for example, signed into law a superfluous anti-choice bill that would mandate clinics offer women the chance to view an ultrasound image of the fetus before the abortion procedure. Of course, women are already allowed to view the ultrasound. The bill also requires clinics to post a notice that women cannot be forced into having an abortion. The irony was lost on the legislators and media that those championing the bill would happily force women into bringing a pregnancy to term. This bill is designed to create an atmosphere of distrust within the clinic setting. We're all in favor of women having thorough information about all of their choices--but the intent of this bill is to question women's decision-making abilities and to infer that clinics would not furnish patients with this information unless mandated by law. Sebelius should have used this opportunity to explain that women need accurate information about all of their choices. She could have, while vetoing the bill, explained that not only was the bill superfluous it was misdirected. What is in desperate need of policing are the crisis pregnancy centers that mislead women about their choices. She could have said "Bring me a bill with that included and I'll sign it."

Another example of "not common ground" was provided to us courtesy of Virginia Governor and DNC Chair Tim Kaine. This week he signed into law a "Choose Life" license plate bill which uses the state to funnel money to nefarious crisis pregnancy centers. This concession is not common ground. The mechanics of the state agencies shouldn't be used to help hoodwink women and supplant medical information with ideological propaganda. This was an easy one to veto, instead Kaine betrayed the party he now leads, the pro-choice voters who won him the election.

People speak often of “common ground” these days, since it is one of the Obama hopes. Betraying pro-choice supporters for political expediency is not what Obama is talking about. Figuring out smart solutions that people from both sides can get behind is. It’s been a bad week for women and common ground for sure.

Coming soon: This week I interviewed Edward Green, of the Harvard School of Public Health, who has recently been getting lots of attention for his comments in support of the Pope's anti-condom policy to fight HIV transmission. This past Sunday he published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled The Pope May Be Right. Once the transcribing is complete, hopefully by later this week, I'll post my interview with him here. So stayed tuned...

Vasectonomics

2009-03-27T15:59:00.001-04:00

"Why are we suddenly having an explosion in guys asking for vasectomies?" This is a question Dr. Steven Jones' staff asks him a lot lately, the Cleveland Urologist told CNN. Dr. Marc Goldstein, a New York-based urologist in practice for over thirty years, told the network, "I have never seen anything like this. When things started to go south in the stock market, then the vasectomy consults went north." The folks over at vasectomy.com no doubt were pleased for snagging that most awesome domain name. Little did they know a bad economy would provide their payday; the number of appointment requests through their site spiked 30 percent in January.

It's not just men who are suddenly concerned about their family's future. Consumers are spending more money on all types of contraceptives, according to the Nielson Company. Indeed, the embrace of family planning appears to be a critical step in financial planning. Nielson said sales of over-the-counter contraceptives jumped a dazzling 10.2 percent in the first two months of the year. The company reports that, while other retail sales slip, condom sales jumped up 5% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 6% in January, compared with the same time periods last year. Sales of Essure, a non-invasive, irreversible birth control method for women were up also, 28% over last year's sales.

Planned Parenthood clinics, the leading provider of contraception in the country, also report increased traffic over the past several months, according to Tait Sye, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "There's no question we're seeing increased traffic at most clinics, and many clinics report an increase in new patients as well," Sye said. A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa told the local TV news the number of women in the state asking for access to birth control is up nearly 40 percent.

So much for contraception being a non-sequitur in discussions about the economy. Just a couple of month ago, Congressional Republicans, fresh from their first meeting with Obama, stood snickering before the press about the inclusion of a family planning provision in the president's emergency economic plan. What does birth control have to do with the economy? they chided, suggesting Obama might be trying to sneak a liberal social program by them. Minority Leader Representative John Boehner protested, "Regardless of where anyone stands on taxpayer funding for contraceptives and the abortion industry, there is no doubt that this once little-known provision in the congressional Democrats' spending plan has NOTHING (emphasis his) to do with fixing the economy and creating more American jobs. " It was lost on the Republicans, many of whom oppose contraception for ‘moral’ reasons, that rational people facing hazardous economic times need to control the number of children they have to support. And, by the way, that kind of responsible behavior is good for the economy which can hardly afford the social programs to support families who can't make it on their own. (Republicans are supposedly for responsibility except...when they're not.)

Boehner might want to check in with that Joe the Plumber demographic who, if recent trends are any indicator, not only considers contraception a great form of protection against uncertain times but is opting for the permanent form at that. (And for any Joe without insurance that vasectomy will cost between $500-$1000, probably twice as much as his tax cut. The contraception provision in the stimulus package would have extended coverage for this kind of contraceptive and others to those earning 200% above the federal poverty level. So Joe, when you lay out that stack of cash don't forget to thank Boehner who thinks your decision to prevent an unaffordable pregnancy is too silly to cover.)

The Salt Lake Tribune recently interviewed a local couple in their twenties who see pregnancy prevention as key to their family's survival. They have two kids, 2 years old and 3 months, and were attending a state insurance fair to sign up for health insurance. He works two part-time jobs and she stays at home caring for the kids. Money is a constant worry-- he foregoes medications to pay for diapers and the electric bill. She explained that they are being "way more careful" about preventing pregnancy. The couple is hoping to qualify for government insurance in order to get birth control. "I just worry if the economy is going to get worse. I would starve myself before my kids [go hungry]. What if it gets so bad I don't have food for them?" Cut to eye-rolling Congressional Republicans.

Family planning is nothing less than a foundation on which many Americans build sturdy, responsible lives. Regardless of political affiliation, that's exactly what many are struggling to do right now. Those who have lost their jobs and health insurance are in great need of family planning. They're also, alarmingly, the ones with the least access to it. Meanwhile Republicans openly mock attempts to include family planning as a part of the economic recovery, actively work to defund Planned Parenthood, promote policies that encourage health care workers to deny patients access to contraception, and defend programs that withhold basic information about contraception to sexually active teens. (Then they're baffled to find the number of teen parents spiked during the Bush years.)

Family planning is an American family value and, as national data indicate, something we rely on in our greatest times of need. Attacks on our right to plan our families shred the social safety net. The Republicans are welcome to titter and heckle the next time a proposal to support family planning crosses their desks. Doing so will only reveal how astoundingly out of touch they are from American's real lives and needs.

How Much Does it Cost to Save the World? Less Than a Penny a day

2009-03-25T11:40:00.002-04:00

It's poetic that the most effective solution to the world's greatest problems is giving people more control of their lives. It's also, amazingly, the least expensive choice. Check out this great new 3for1 campaign launched this week by EngenderHealth.

In the Parking Lot of Morality, Pope Gets Handicapped Spot

2009-03-20T20:53:00.002-04:00

It's been a busy few weeks for the Vatican. First, it staked out a new frontier of creepiness by picking on a nine-year old for having an abortion after being raped and impregnated by her step-father. The Vatican supported the excommunication of her doctors and mother by her local bishop. According to the Telegraph UK, the girl's pregnancy and abuse were revealed "when the girl complained of stomach pains and told officials she had been abused since the age of six."

It must have been a familiar reflex for the Vatican, reprising its rich history of protecting pedophiles while heeping ignominy on the victim, in this case a little girl. While the Vatican sanctions the ex-communications of mothers of rape victims and the doctors who care for them, it's telling whom it spares. Pope Benedict recently lifted the ex-communication of Richard Williamson, a British bishop who has used his high station in the Church to broadcast denials of the holocaust. He claimed historical evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed." According to the Jerusalem Post, "Williamson has said that only 200,000-300,000 Jews died during World War II and that gas chambers were a fiction."

Early this week, the Vatican, once again, planted its flag in the nation of Crazy. Pope Benedict took advantage of his trip to Africa, home to the world's highest HIV/AIDS rates, to discourage condom use and suggest that condoms help spread HIV. For several years now, Bishops in Africa have pleaded with the Vatican to reconsider its inexplicable opposition to condom use, even for married couples, to protect against the disease. The Pope finally put all hopes to rest, becoming the first pope in thirty years to speak out publicly against the use of condoms to prevent HIV infection. Sixty percent of the world's population living with HIV/AIDS is in Africa. Pope Benedict explained the spread of HIV/AIDS "cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems," mystifying scientists, medical professionals, HIV/AIDS experts, as well as all people with common sense.