Blogs Comment On Obama Faith-Based Initiatives, State Reproductive Health Developments

The following summarizes women's health-related blog entries.

~ "Faith-Based Initiatives Office To 'Address' Teen Pregnancy? Let's Reduce It," Frances Kissling, RH Reality Check: Last week, President Obama "unveiled his plans for the new White House Office on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and signed an executive order authorizing it and naming the first 15 of the eventual 25 council members who will advise him," Kissling writes in a blog entry. There was "little change in the council's core mission -- helping faith groups get government funding for social services, education and humanitarian efforts," Kissling writes, adding, "More alarming was the planned incursion of the Faith based Office into reproductive health and rights. Suddenly, one of the four top priorities for the office is to examine 'ways to support women and children, address teen pregnancy and reduce the need for abortion.'" According to Kissling, the "very wording of the mandate makes clear the conservative bias of the office." She adds that although the "goal is clear" in terms of abortion, where "teen pregnancy is concerned, we have no idea if addressing teen pregnancy means more abstinence-only programming or high schools in which teens who carry pregnancies to term get day care." This is "one of those issues the women's movement and the reproductive health movement cannot ignore," Kissling writes, adding that there are "10 seats left on this committee, and we need to insist that those seats be held by religious and secular leaders ... who are both anti-poverty and pro-choice." She concludes, "After we get those names to the president, we need to let the president know that it is the women's movement and the reproductive health movement that he needs to look to on our issues. When we are ignored on these issues, the president is not on common ground, he is on shaky ground and is bound to stumble" (Kissling, RH Reality Check, 2/9).

~ "Faith-Based Teen Pregnancy and Abortion Reduction?" Amie Newman, RH Reality Check: It was "startling" that Obama decided to "maintain the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Initiatives," Newman writes, adding, "Reducing teen pregnancy is a virtuous and appropriate goal for the federal administration -- as is reducing unintended pregnancies." However, it is "unclear ... why these issues are being placed under the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, or how faith-based organizations that receive federal funds will use said funds to 'reduce the need for abortion' or reduce teen pregnancy," according to Newman. She adds that when Obama "declares that the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives is going to take on the reduction of teen pregnancy and the need for abortion, one has to ask, how exactly? With such a mission at the heart of an office expressly formed to funnel federal funds to faith- and neighborhood-based programs, there is cause for concern. This office could very well continue to support abstinence-only programs via faith-based organizations that make a case for the continued funding." In addition, "'abortion reduction' or 'reducing the need for abortion' is a poor excuse for a goal," Newman writes, adding, "For one thing, most women do not 'need' an abortion -- they decide to have an abortion based on a variety of personal and private factors." According to Newman, the goals should be to improve "women's access to health services, including family planning for women and their partners, contraception and overall sexual and reproductive health services; and to improve "every young person's sexual and reproductive health and well-being by providing comprehensive sexual health education that teaches them how to protect and care for their health, how to navigate their own sexuality, ... and how to engage in healthy relationships." Newman adds that she is "cautious about the ways in which the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives is going to tackle critical health care issues like the reduction of teen pregnancy and the need for abortion, considering the larger issues of access to family planning, contraception, comprehensive sexual education and more that have yet to be addressed" (Newman, RH Reality Check, 2/6).














~ "Abortion, Contraception and Sex Ed in the States in 2008," Rachel Gold/Elizabeth Nash, RH Reality Check: Although social issues such as reproductive health were not the "top priority" for state legislators in 2008, there were 1,001 measures introduced in 44 states and Washington, D.C., related to reproductive health and rights, resulting in 33 new laws in 20 states, Gold and Nash write in a blog entry that examines several of the new laws. They write that none of the 17 abortion-related laws expand access, but a few states passed laws that "promote reproductive health by requiring hospitals to provide information on emergency contraception" to victims of sexual assault, lay the "groundwork" for expanding Medicaid coverage of family planning services and require insurance coverage of the human papillomavirus vaccine. Gold and Nash continue that Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota and Oklahoma passed laws requiring abortion providers to perform or offer to perform an ultrasound, bringing the total number of states with ultrasound laws to 16. According to Gold and Nash, Oklahoma's new law requires abortion providers to "verbally describe the image to the woman and position the monitor so she is able to see it" but is not yet " in effect pending the outcome of a legal challenge." They continue that Oklahoma and Idaho passed laws that address "coerced abortion," which "are the result of efforts by [abortion-rights] opponents to characterize abortion providers as often being complicit in forcing women to have abortions, despite the absence of data to substantiate their claims." Six states, including Maryland and Iowa, addressed funding for abortion or abortion alternatives. According to Gold and Nash, Oklahoma's omnibus abortion law contains two provisions not found in any abortion-related measure enacted in 2008, including one that "prohibits a woman from suing a medical provider who does not give full and accurate information about her pregnancy if the misinformation results in her carrying the pregnancy to term" and a second that "greatly expands the ability of health care professionals and facilities in the state to refuse to provide or refer for abortion." Gold and Nash write that three new laws in Wisconsin, Colorado and Iowa "were designed to improve access to contraception and other preventive services," while a second law in Colorado and a similar one in Michigan "continued existing restrictions on state family planning funds." According to the authors, the issue of sexual education "did not elicit significant attention in 2008," with the only related measure enacted in New Hampshire to permit "a student to be excused from health or sex education for religious reasons" (Gold/Nash, RH Reality Check, 2/10).

Antiabortion-Rights Blog

~ "Obama, Stem Cells, Mexico City and More," National Right to Life blog: According to an antiabortion-rights National Right to Life blog entry, President Obama's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast last week was an example of "unintentionally inclusionary language." NRLC reports that Obama said, "'There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know.'" The blog entry continues, "Still another batch of good news on the alternative-to-embryonic stem cell front" is the news that Northwestern University researcher Richard Burt is publishing a study that "showed improvement in four in five multiple sclerosis patients by using bone marrow stem cell transplants to 'reset' their immune system," in the journal Lancet-Neurology. The blog entry continues that Bishop Joseph Francis Martino of the Scranton, Pa., diocese wrote an open letter to Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) that "criticized the freshman senator for failing to vote in favor of an amendment that would have made the 'Mexico City' policy permanent." According to NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson, the effect of reversing the Mexico City policy is "to put hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of organizations that aggressively promote abortion as a population-control tool in the developing world" (National Right to Life blog, 2/9).


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