Repro Health Hub

Today is the seventh annual Back Up Your Birth Control Day and we couldn’t be more excited! Around the country students, activists, and organizations are taking action to help raise awareness for Emergency Contraception (also know as Plan B or the Morning After Pill). EC is a crucial part of reproductive rights because it is can prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex and unexpected birth control failure, and just like other forms of contraceptives it must be kept accessible to women everywhere.

From the campaign website:

“The 2008 Day of Action is dedicated to making EC available to all women regardless of their income, insurance coverage or immigration status. While we celebrate the FDA decision that made EC available over-the-counter to women 18 and older, we know that the high cost of EC over-the counter, usually between $40-70 in pharmacies nationwide, is a continuing barrier to some women accessing EC.”

There are several ways for you to help us celebrate on this important day and throughout the year.

1) Contact your Senator and ask her/him to support the Prevention First Act, which ensures that victims of sexual assault receive accurate information about and full access to EC.
2) Sign the petition provided by the Feminist Majority to demand affordable birth control at colleges and clinics everywhere.
3) Watch this video from Planned Parenthood.
4) Read about global EC availability from the International Consortium for Emergency Contraception.
5) Write an OpEd to spread the word about how unequal access remains a problem among women.
6) Add your organization to the long list of campaign sponsors!

Check out other ways to take action on the campaign website. Happy Back Up Your Birth Control Day!

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Since the spring of 2007, women of New Orleans have had a new place to access much- needed, affordable women’s health services. The New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic (NOWHC), a project of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence New Orleans, opened its doors in May of 2007 with the mission:

“To equip marginalized and underserved women with the means to control and care for their own bodies, sexuality and reproduction through a holistic, community-centered well women approach to healthcare which integrates sexual health and reproductive justice.”

Their opening came in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which left many previously marginalized and underserved women with even less access to basic women’s health services. Not surprisingly, recovery efforts have been slow (one year after the storm, all the public family planning and STD clinics remained closed leaving 15,000 without care). However, the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic has been proactive—not waiting for a previously lacking healthcare infrastructure to be rebuilt. 

Instead, they are challenging the accepted norms of sub-par care and offering an alternative comprehensive model of care to the women of New Orleans, regardless of their ability to pay. Since opening less than two years ago, NOWHC has served over 350 clients, offering a sliding scale for services through their Women’s Health Fund. The sliding scale at NOWHC puts health services within the reach of many women who otherwise could not afford them. Currently NOWHC offers a range of women’s health services including pap smears, pelvic exams, testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy testing, preliminary obstetric visits, and contraceptive services. Recent partnerships with the Latino Health Outreach Project and CAMP ACE have also allowed for Spanish language services as well as free HIV testing at the clinic on a weekly basis.  

In addition to the health services offered, NOWHC is more than a place to access affordable care. As Shana Griffin, organizer with INCITE! New Orleans explained in an August 2006 interview:

“It’s more than providing healthcare services it’s also about challenging the conditions that limit our access and our opportunities, such as poverty, racism, gender-based violence, imperialism, and war. We see it as more than just a clinic, we want it to also be an organizing center that can meet immediate needs while also working for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice.”

If you’re interested in advancing the goals and efforts of NOWHC, send an email to nowhc_info@yahoo.com for more information on ways you can help. 

The Center for Disease Control has just published a new report, and we don’t like the results one bit. According to the CDC, 1 in 4 teenage girls in the U.S. has a sexually transmitted infection. Here is a breakdown of the findings according to the Wall Street Journal: 

“An estimated 3.2 million girls ages 14 to 19, or about 26% of that age group, are infected, and the rate is highest among black girls, the study found. Nearly half the blacks surveyed had at least one sexually transmitted infection, compared with 20% among both whites and Mexican-American teens. The vast majority — about 18% — were infected with strains of human papillomavirus, or HPV, that can cause genital warts and cervical cancer, the CDC said.”

The 2008 National STD Prevention Conference in Chicago, where this important information was officially announced today, provided revealing information about contraceptive use and STI testing among young girls. The CDC released findings from a separate study that showed that even though most (82%) sexually active 15 to 24 year old women received contraceptive or STD/HIV services, only 39% receive both which indicates that many women at high risk are not receiving necessary prevention services. 

So why, exactly, are these numbers so shockingly high?  

What many people, including Planned Parenthood of America, consider the root of the problem is the lack of comprehensive sex education. “The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure and teenage girls are paying the real price,” the organization’s president Cecile Richards said. 

What is probably most staggering is the racial disparity these studies show. Of the total amount of chlamydia cases, young black women were found to make up nearly half of the cases. The director of the CDC’s STD prevention division John Douglas points to limited access to health care as a possible cause, an obstacle that creates delays in seeking care, fewer doctors visits, and is completely unacceptable. 

How do we combat these STI rates? With the help of organizations like the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). The advocacy group has a strong record of providing accurate information and comprehensive education about sexuality, sexual health, and sexual rights. For the past 40 years SIECUS has been pushing for effective public policy in sex-related issues and created much needed (as the CDC has shown) reliable sexual health information for educators, health professionals, and communities around the country.

Yesterday marked the 12^th annual Nation Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers and we’d like to say a very big thank you to all of the reproductive health care providers out there. 

 The day was initiated in 1996 following the beginning of violent attacks against health physicians and doctors who worked to provide American women with safe and accessible procedures. It began as a tribute to the death of Dr. David Gunn of  Florida in 1993, the first of many killings of physicians by anti-abortionists. This sad history of violence and prosecution perpetuated by ideological extremists is a reality that abortion providers still face and risk every day, so we say thank you. 

We’d like to take the opportunity to highlight some organizations and clinics that work hard to provide women with accessible reproductive health services, from birth control to safe abortion procedures. Their efforts and services are the core to making the right to choose possible for women everywhere. 

 California – The Women’s Community Clinic
Colorado – Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center
Georgia – The Feminist Center
Iowa – The Emma Goldman Clinic  
Maine – Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Clinic  
Minnesota – Midwest Health Center for Women   
New Jersey – Women’s Choice Medical Center  
Washington – Cedar River Clinics
West Virginia – Women’s Health Center of West Virginia  

If you would like to show your support for American health care providers, please sign the National Abortion Federation’s online petition.  

Good news for Iowans! Just last week the state’s Governor Chet Culver agreed to reject hundreds of thousands of federal dollars for abstinence only education, which will make the state the seventeenth to reject the federal funding under Title V.  The title provides approximately 40 million dollars in funding nationwide for the ineffective and purely ideological sexual education method, and in the past year there has been a huge trend of rejecting these funds. Culver made his decision following insistence from teen pregnancy prevention organization, FutureNet. 

Rhonda Chittenden, executive director of the organization, said, “Iowa must end this poor fiscal and public health policy now. There is no reliable evidence to date that these abstinence-only programs impact the long-term behavioral outcomes at which they aim, such as the delay of sexual initiation and reduction of adolescent pregnancies and STI/HIV infections.” 

FutureNet’s commitment to progressive change in their state has caught our eye and earned them the title of Hero of the Week! Here is their kick ass mission statement:

The mission of FutureNet is to support within Iowa a leadership network concerned with issues of adolescent pregnancy prevention, parenting, and sexual health.

The organization is not only pressuring Governor Culver to abstain from abstinence-only but also has several other programs that promote positive and effective sex education. Their TxT (Talking Sex Together) campaign merges youth-friendly text messaging with sex education to encourage communication that will help prevent teen pregnancy and inform teens about safe sex. Also worthy of mentioning is the organization’s initiative called Touchstones: Sexual Health Measures that Matter. This multi-year project aims to ensure that by 2012 all sex education in the state of  Iowa will be designed and implemented according to science-based practice.

Great job, Futurenet!

Don’t have plans the first weekend of April? Craving some inspiring talk about reproductive and social justice? Then you should take a trip to Amherst, Massachusetts! Hampshire College (haven for the free spirited, pro-active and socially conscious) is hosting a free weekend conference called From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom.  

The event is part of a project by the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, “a reproductive rights organization that trains, educates, and inspires new leaders, organizers, and supporters nationwide.” The action-packed weekend will be full of great opportunities to participate in workshops, hear some great musical performances, and listen to some awesome discussions about reproductive freedom in the context of other social issues such as racial equality, health care reform, economic justice, and LGBTQ rights (to name a few!).  

From Abortion Rights to Social Justice:
Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom
April 4-6, 2008
Hampshire College, Amherst, MA 

 It’s free, so register now!