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Speaking Up about Health Care...
Because not to be political about personal health can make you sick.
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Access to health care is like the weather-everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it. Well, what could be a better moment than now to do something, when the candidates for president are duking it out over what their policies on health care will be?
On my health page, you'll find examples of what people are doing to turn what affects them personally about health care or the lack of it into political action, and how you can learn more or get involved. Some of these commentaries are cross posted on my Heartfeldt Politics Blog where you can send your comments.Under the umbrella of health care access I also discuss the public health imperative of making sexual and reproductive health care available and accessible to all. This is easy to say, but hard to accomplish because of the "War on Choice" that I detail in my book by that name. Too many compromises have been made over the years by the Democrats as well as the Republicans in an attempt to appease the rght. It's time for a whole new approach, and you'll find it here.
100th Anniversary of Mothers Day and the 48th Anniversary of the Pill are both May 11!! How appropriate is that?
Thanks to Elizabeth Gregory, who has written a book called Ready about the benefits of later parenthood and blogs about it at www.readymoms.com, for sending me her blogpost on Huffington Post, entitled "Mothers Day Born Yesterday: A Quick Century of Big Change", and for pointing out this interesting and entirely apropriate juxtaposition.
Here's an excerpt-it's definitely worth reading the whole article:
As we celebrate the Mother's Day centenary (and the 48th birthday of the birth control pill, also on May 11th!), those of us whose families have benefited from access to birth control (dads as well as moms) can commit to guaranteeing it to the next generation, by passing legislation that makes birth control affordable and available to all who seek it (as in the Prevention through Affordable Access bill), and that offers kids real information about all their options (through repeal of abstinence-only education laws). Just as essentially, the centennial Mother's Day offers us an occasion to look back at the transformations the world of motherhood has undergone since the holiday's start, and to reposition for the next century to best serve our dovetailing national and personal interests.
"Smashmortion" and the Slippery Slope
If you saw the movie "Knocked Up", you might recall that instead of actually mentioning one of the three options a woman has when faced with an unintended pregnancy, a character in the film refers to the verboten word as "smashmortion". Now we have life imitating art, as reported in this article from the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals Blog:
Abortion and the Slippery Slope
The POPLINE Controversy, Language, and Scientific Integrity
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Call it censored, call it buried, call it lost—the search term “abortion” was all of the above for approximately a month on POPLINE—a publicly-funded database that its administrators describe as “Your connection to the world’s reproductive health literature.”
The incident simply points to a larger problem: Federal policy regarding comprehensive reproductive health care is inadequate.
Last week, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, uncovered this ironic situation while trying to “connect” to “reproductive health literature.” Health care providers, researchers, and advocates around the country were alarmed to learn that POPLINE (POPulation information onLINE), had rendered the search term “abortion” a stopword—which directs the database to ignore the term when used in a search. UCSF librarians discovered this deliberate restriction when they were unable to find a single document containing the word “abortion” in POPLINE’s database, and contacted the administrators at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to ask them why. Simply put, the UCSF librarians were told that “abortion” was eliminated as a search term by the POPLINE administrators so that the latter could examine the database for information “that might not have been consistent” with guidelines from a government agency that funds the project. And our UCSF colleagues were then given some mystifying, convoluted search term suggestions for finding medical literature on the subject, including “fertility control, post-conception” and “pregnancy, unwanted.”
By Friday morning, news of the self-censorship had spread like a virus...
Read the rest of the article here. I guarantee you'll be shocked at this most astonishing but quite common example of self-censorship because of Bush administration policies. Or if you just want a picture worth a thousand words, here's what people searching for information--any kind of information--about abortion on the government reproductive health database found: nothing except this message!
Sexual and Reproductive Health Resources
Watch me and Maria Luisa Sanchez Fuentes discuss Mexico's advances and U S.'s backward steps for reproductive rights at the Women's Media Center. Here's Maria Luisa--her message is so compelling, and very much in keping with the direction I believe the United States must go to make reproductive self-determination a fundamental human and civil right under the law.
Here are two books that are tremendous resources for different aspects of reproductive health. I had the privilege of contributing to both of them so I'm not unbiased, but I think you'll find each of them useful.
Abortion under Attack: Women and the Challenges Facing Choice, edited by Krista Jacob and published by Seal Press, is another terrific book with first person stories.
HERE"S AN EXCERPT FROM THE AFTERWORD:
Abortion isn’t about abortion. Perhaps it seems odd to say so in the Afterword of a book in which women have looked prismatically at abortion. Yet I’m telling you—now that you’ve read this marvelous book, chock full of diverse and thought-provoking essays about abortion written by some remarkable women—that the issue of abortion is about so much more than abortion.
Just as Michel Foucault’s painting, playfully named “This Is Not a Pipe,” is a canvas covered with representations of pipes, abortion itself is not the thing that sticks in the craw of its zealous opponents. Abortion is a symbolic representation, merely a stand-in for the real thing...First, abortion is merely the tip of a huge ideological iceberg for both pro- and anti-choice movements. It’s code for a bigger agenda than we ever talk about in polite company.
You'll definitely want to read this book; it shows that Rights Without Access Are Meaningless!
Our Bodies, Ourselves Menopause is almost as groundbreaking as its "mother", the unparalleled women's health compendium Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Remember when you first saw Our Bodies, Ourselves? For me, it was in the women's center at the University of New Mexico in the early 1970's when I was visiting my sister and her friend there. It was a life-changing experience.
Readers familiar with will Our Bodies, Ourselves find the same comprehensive, balanced and empowering approach in this volume. The authors consider menopause within the totality of women's health and as a natural process, not a medical problem. They detail typical menopausal symptoms, mainstream and alternative treatments, and risk factors for such conditions as osteoporosis, heart disease, cancer and diabetes as women age. They explain the biology of menopause; provide up-to-date perspectives on hormone replacement therapy (HRT); discuss sudden and early menopause due to surgery, medical treatments or genetic risk factors; and offer personal reflections by individual women. The sections on how to evaluate research findings; make wise health-care decisions; understand the social, cultural, economic and political frameworks in which women's health care is viewed and formulated; and nurture the self—mind, body and spirit—during years of change on all levels will prove most useful. As a general reference on menopause, this volume will be embraced by a wide female audience.
I co-authored the last chapter, called "Finding Our Power and Organizing for Change".
HERE ARE TWO EXCERPTS, BOTH COMMENTS FROM FRIENDS WHO WROTE TO TELL ME HOW THEY APPROACHED MIDLIFE:
"I made a values reassessment at midlife…I had spent a lot of years making money and now I wanted to be with a socially responsible company. The skills I had developed in the business world applied to nonprofits too. I joined a not-for-profit organization where I feel like I can make a difference. A bonus to making this change was the freedom of making decisions for one reason alone—what is the best for the organization and its mission. …. I realized I was not willing to compromise and if it didn’t have that social responsibility, I was not willing to go there.
I was 40 years old before the idea of my having any power at all to determine anything at all occurred to me. For the first 18 years, I responded to my parents’ power; for the next 22, I responded to a husband's power. Little by little over the years I came to realize that I was a marionette, my limbs jerking to whatever strings someone else pulled. Then one fateful day, I cut those strings, fled from a life of privilege but quiet desperation, financially broke, but swelling with my own power to direct my life for the first time. I entered my 40s and began the most productive, satisfying period of my life.