On International Women’s Day, Tell Congress to Fund International Family Planning


Check out today’s guest post on 9 Ways. It comes to us from The Population Institute. I highlight it because the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day is being celebrated at events around the world today. The best way I can think of to celebrate IWD is to petition the U.S. Congress and other world leaders to make good on their commitments to fund international family planning. In No Excuses, I show why reproductive self-determination is essential for women to have any other kind of power. But the Republicans are trying to eliminate or drastically cut family planning funds in the U.S. and globally. The political and social justice consequences of such a short sighted policy are stunning.

Even if you don’t have time to read the whole post, please click here to sign the petition now. You’ll be saving women’s lives.

Watch this video called “Empty Handed” to see just some of the reasons why you’ll want to join me in signing the petition and become one of a million for a billion–telling Congress to fully fund international family planning:

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The Pence Amendment and Planned Parenthood: Do More Than Sign a Petition

My inbox is choking with urgent appeals. Write your Congressperson. Sign this petition. Forward this video. Send money.

Social media is atwitter with people shocked about the “Republican war on women.” Or outraged at the Pence Amendment to defund Planned Parenthood and the move to eliminate the entire Title X family planning program that helps low-income women get health care and prevent abortions, for heaven sake.

The histrionics reach ever higher decibels, escalating shock and fear. From friends, I hear, “I’m speechless. What are we going to do?” From uninformed reporters, “But should taxpayers be forced to pay for abortion?” From frustrated activists: “We need to march.”

Much as I hate to quote Ronald Reagan, “There you go again.”

Ironically, Reagan threw this phrase at President Jimmy Carter who in a debate had made the case for national health insurance. That conflict still rages today, just like right-wing politicians and women’s advocacy groups are still caught in a never-ending Kabuki drama about what on the surface appears to be abortion, but in reality is a much broader assault on family planning, birth control, and underneath it all, women and our role in this world.

No one can change that narrative but us, and we must do it quickly. The good news is we already know how and have the tools at our disposal.

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The Yanks Are Coming–Back–Now What?

The road to the international agreements forged in Cairo and Beijing was long and fraught with cultural potholes, but nothing like the challenges that our own government placed in the path of women’s reproductive self-determination. Now, there’s been a 180 degree turn back to the future, and the world is relieved. But other countries have moved forward, so what’s the next step for the U.S.?

Linda Hirshman, author of Get to Work and columnist for Slate’s new XX among many other accomplishments, and I wrote this commentary. After we were rejected by the New York Times and the Washington Post (what else is new?), we decided it was too important an issue not to see the light of day. So we’re publishing it on RHREalityCheck, Huffington Post, and here on good ol’ Heartfeldt.

At the very moment the Obama administration’s decision to seek a U.S. seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council grabbed headlines, the United States quietly took the reins on the most important human rights issue for humanity’s future: sexual and reproductive rights. On March 31, State Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration, Margaret Pollack, told delegates to the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, meeting in New York, that America was back.

Marking a 180 degree turnaround from Bush administration policies that fought international efforts to enable people to control their own reproductive fate, the U.S. will once again defend the “human rights and fundamental freedoms of women” and support “universal access to sexual and reproductive health.” Abstinence-only sex education, the bête noir of health providers attempting to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, was Kung-Fu kicked aside. Human rights apply to all regardless of sexual orientation. The U.S. commits to ratify CEDAW, the women’s rights treaty already signed by 185 nations, and even endorses “equal partnerships and sharing of responsibilities in all areas of family life, including in sexual and reproductive life.”

The global sigh of relief was palpable. For with all its money and diplomatic resources, the U.S. is the 10,000 gorilla in international reproductive policy. Now the question is, while this is certainly change we can believe in, is it all the change we need?

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Reality Checking Ignorance Only Education

If the excellent website RH Reality Check isn’t on your bookmark or Google Reader list, it should be. Every day it brings me up to date on the good news, bad news, and interesting takes people are talking about concerning the big picture of reproductive health, rights, and justice. Not to mention handy information about things like how to knit a condom amulet, which would be much more useful than the abstinence only (non) sex (non) education that has been promoted by the (non) religious (non) right for the past decade or two.

Today, there’s Scott Swenson’s report on the encouraging trend by states to turn down funding for the now-discredited Federal abstinence only program, which never made any sense. I mean, ignorance has never really been bliss. That’s especially so when silence about sexual health and decision making is exacerbated by inaccurate teaching concerning the consequences of not just saying “no”, while failing to tell young people what “yes” means. Here’s Scott’s summary:

The Associated Press is just out with a major story about how in tough economic times, cash-strapped states are refusing federal tax dollars for abstinence-only programs. The story is one more in a long line of damning pieces of evidence about the failures of abstinence-only programs, the waste of tax dollars they represent, and should be a wake up call to Congress.

AP reporter Kevin Freking writes:

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