Reproductive Health
Exclusive: Obama’s Epic #FAIL on Plan B
Please read this article, and just as the steam is coming out of your ears, go sign the petition and leave your comment for the president. It’s up to us to hold him, and all politicians, accountable.
Out of patience with Obama Administration betrayals on health issues, a coalition has launched a petition demanding an agenda that is fair to women.
It wasn’t the first time that President Barack Obama played to a right-wing constituency at the expense of women’s interests, but the reversal last week of an expected decision on emergency birth control provoked perhaps the most critical reaction so far toward the administration by women’s health advocates and feminists across the nation…
Read MoreWhat should be the response to the Mississippi “Personhood” proposal?
Arena asked “Should Miss. ‘personhood’ proposal pass?” The answer is NO. And further….please read on to see what else I think about what the proposal means, and what should be done about it.
The Arena Asks: An initiative in Mississippi Tuesday would impose the country’s tightest regulations on abortion and birth control. Initiative 26 would change the definition of a person to include “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.”
Should the ‘personhood’ proposal pass?
My Answer: Everyone who is or has a mother, sister, woman friend, or daughter should vote against any candidate, Republican or Democrat, who fails to support a woman’s fundamental human right to make her own childbearing decisions–including whether to have a child or not. Period.
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Is World Population Day of 7 Billion Scarier than Halloween?
Today, on Halloween no less, the Earth welcomed the baby who tipped world population over the 7 billion mark.
I probably wouldn’t have known much about the topic of world population but for a fluke as I prepared to graduate from the University of Texas Permian Basin the summer of 1974. To my surprise, I was told I needed three more hours of science.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc4HxPxNrZ0&feature=related[/youtube]
National Geographic video showing population growth
It had been a long 12-year road for me, what with three children to care for, a five-year stint teaching Head Start, and other detours along the way. Finally, I thought, I’d be done by the end of June.
Once I got the bad news, I looked for the easiest science course I could find, preferably one without the
Read MoreOn 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:
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreDiscussing Reproductive Health on EmpowHer.com
EmpowHer: Women’s Health asked me to discuss several aspects of reproductive health care, including insurance coverage for contraception, and how to talk to your daughter about birth control. Here’s the video of my interview, which is broken up into several segment. Gloria FeldtGLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9…
Read MoreAniston-O’Reilly Tiff Mirrors Gender Disparities on Women’s Equality Day 2010
Posted today on Truthout:
Jennifer Aniston sparked a classic Bill O’Reilly firestorm when she said a woman doesn’t need a man to have children and a perfectly fine life, thank you very much.
Defending not her personal situation but the character she plays in “The Switch,” her hit movie about a single woman who chose to be impregnated by a sperm donor, Aniston opined, “Women are realizing…they don’t have to settle with a man just to have a child.”
O’Reilly retorted that Aniston trivialized the role of men, saying she was “throwing out a message to twelve and thirteen-year-olds that ‘Hey, you don’t need a dad,’ and that’s destructive.”
Read MoreWhat’s the Best Language: Choice, Freedom, Human Rights, or???
after 35 years, I’m tired of arguing about what is the most persuasive language to bring the most people into what we have for some decades now been referring to as the pro-choice fold. And frankly, I have moved on–or outward, as I prefer to say–to the bigger canvas of women’s equality and power, not just between the navel and the knees but also in politics, at work, and at home.
However, thanks to the perpetual obsession about women and sex by those who want to outlaw abortion, I find myself drawn in once more to the fray over the rhetoric of–well, whatever you want to call it. Historian Nancy L. Cohen started the latest public discussion of the terminology in her Los Angeles Times op ed proposing that we switch from “choice” to “freedom.”
Read MoreHow Many Choices About Motherhood Are There?
Submit your Mother’s Day story to the Women’s Media Center here and help spread the word that there are many choices women make about pregnancy and childbearing over the course of their lives. As a mother, I celebrate our choices as we celebrate Mother’s Day. Gloria FeldtGLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several…
Read MoreGo See Words of Choice and Support Women’s Access to Abortion
If you want to do good for women and see some good theater at the same time, here are some events you won’t want to miss this weekend!
Words of Choice, dynamic pro-choice theater company from New York, is bringing attention to choice this weekend where it is needed most: in the nation’s Capitol.
On Friday, April 23 at 7 pm, Words of Choice will appear in DC in partnership with the amazing DC Abortion Fund for an event that will raise funds to help women pay for abortions. The performance will be in DC at the Lankford Auditorium, 1200 U St., NW, in the True Reformer Building. A brief discussion follows the 70-minute performance.
The DC Abortion Fund (DCAF) is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization that makes grants and no-interest loans to DC women who cannot afford an abortion. “We hope to make choice a reality because we believe that a woman’s right to health care should not depend on her wallet,” it writes.
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