by Hanna Pennington 

No one ever really wants to take health class; it’s a required course, something people try to get out of the way so they aren’t that about-to-graduate senior who still has to take health. And that’s because at most high schools, health class doesn’t offer much — and everyone knows it.

I spent 80 minutes every other morning in health class during the second semester of my sophomore year, and when faced with an end-of-the-year survey about the class, I realized that the time had not been “spent,” but wasted.

We had not discussed birth control; condoms were the only form of contraception mentioned, and they came up only in the context of preventing STIs. A significant number of high school students are already taking hormonal birth control, like the pill, for a variety of reasons, whether to regulate hormone imbalances that can cause acne, reduce the pain of bad menstrual cramping, or because they are having sex, but the pros and cons of the pill were never addressed.

Through reading “Our Bodies, Ourselves” and other feminist websites and books, I have learned about many types of birth control. But this is because I care about this kind of thing. Most people don’t know what they should have been taught until it’s too late.

Another way in which my health class was insufficient, and also offensive, was that LGBTQ people were only mentioned in the context of HIV/AIDS, which we learned about by watching the film “And The Band Played On.” There was no other discussion.

As a bisexual person, I felt shortchanged. I sought out resources online, much the way I did with birth control, but again, this didn’t make up for the lack of class information. The majority of high school students are straight, but it is important to provide for those who aren’t, or who might be questioning. It is important to learn about how to have safe gay sex, not only safe straight sex; that information is a lot harder to find, unless you know where to look.

Related: A “Real” Sex Ed Story: A Teenager Recalls Lessons From “Our Whole Lives”

Another issue we did not discuss is consent. People need to learn not only that it’s OK to say no, but that enthusiastic consent is the key to happy, healthy sex (in fact, there’s a petition to make consent a mandatory part of sex-ed in public schools).

Abuse, both physical and sexual, should also be discussed. And resources should be provided for everything: where to get help if you’re being abused, where to purchase prescription contraception at a discount, where to get tested for STIs, and the number for the closest Planned Parenthood, for starters.

Finally, we never discussed masturbation. It is important for students to know that instead of it being something unholy or disgusting, masturbation is a perfectly healthy and important way to explore one’s own body and sexuality.

According to research by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), comprehensive sex education is more effective in preventing teen pregnancy than abstinence-only education. In her 2008 New Yorker article “Rex Sex, Blue Sex,” Margaret Talbot analyzed the differences in sexual patterns of teenagers living in different parts of the country, including the prevalence of teen pregnancies and STIs and use of contraception.

In conservative red states, where abstinence-only education is the norm and religion dictates much of the discourse, teenagers have sex earlier, usually without protection. In more liberal blue states, where there is often (but not always) more comprehensive sex education, teenagers wait longer to have sex and use protection more often when they do.

Although I live in blue-state New York, my health class was not all that. It is possible to acknowledge teenagers being sexual without encouraging it, but our teachers didn’t acknowledge any part of it. It is irresponsible to teach the class assuming that everyone is and will remain abstinent until marriage.

The 2009 documentary “Let’s Talk About Sex” examines young people’s attitudes toward and knowledge of sex and sexuality, comparing America’s largely insufficient programs to those of places like the Netherlands, where parents and children talk openly about sex (and which have lower rates of teen pregnancy and STIs).

Although I was briefly tempted to move overseas, there are comprehensive sex-ed curriculums in the United States, even if they can be hard to find.

One of my friends attends Rye Country Day School in Rye, N.Y. A program there encourages underclassmen to ask upperclassmen leaders whatever they want about sex, relationships, and so on. I was really impressed when I first heard about this, as it fosters an environment that removes shame from asking questions, which is how people get the answers they need.

At Manhattan Country School, there is a sex-ed curriculum, designed by Dr. Cydelle Berlin, that involves theater arts and peer education. Trained actors answer questions while in character. There is a box in every classroom in which students can leave anonymous questions.

The Unitarian Universalist Church, instead of strictly discouraging or not discussing sex as other churches often do, teaches a K-12 sex ed curriculum called “Our Whole Lives.” As stated on the website, the program “not only provides facts about anatomy and human development, but also helps participants clarify their values, build interpersonal skills, and understand the spiritual, emotional, and social aspects of sexuality.”

This curriculum is based on SIECUS’ “Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education,” which spans the same age range and includes such important topics as body image, gender identity, masturbation, abortion, and sexuality and society.

When reading this curriculum, I was pleasantly surprised how enlightened, inclusive, and accurate it was. But this should not be surprising; accurate language should be the norm.

It is bad enough that decisions about women’s health are made mostly by male politicians, but it is even more disheartening when you realize that some of them have no idea what they’re talking about. High school students aren’t the only ones who need basic education about reproduction, but it’s a good place to start.

Hanna Pennington is a high school senior in New York whose first foray into feminist activism was at age 7, when she wrote a letter to a children’s magazine protesting the omission of Sacagawea in an article about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 

Erin Thornton, Judy Norsigian, Rep. Jim McGovern, and Christy Turlington Burns

Last fall, following a sex-ed road trip with The Ladydrawers to deliver “Our Bodies, Ourselves” to former Rep. Todd Akin (of “legitimate rape” fame), Our Bodies Ourselves launched Educate Congress, a campaign to deliver the book to all members of Congress and key administration officials.

The basic premise: Everyone deserves access to accurate information concerning women’s reproductive and sexual health — especially those who write the laws.

Today OBOS kicked off delivery of the book, as Judy Norsigian, OBOS executive director and one of the original authors of “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” hand-delivered copies of the newest edition to about 20 legislators and staff members.

The point was made that the problem isn’t just poorly chosen words; rather, a lot more needs to be done to advance evidence-based health policy.

Norsigian walked the halls of Capitol Hill with Christy Turlington Burns, founder of Every Mother Counts, and EMC’s executive director, Erin Thornton. They submitted EMC’s petition to female members of Congress, asking them to support policies that protect the health and well-being of girls and women around the world, especially those that will reduce infant and maternal mortality rates.

Doing this on the day that the House finally passed the Violence Against Women Act made it particularly poignant.

NWHN interns Allyson Reddy and Grace Adofoli with Judy Norsigian and Rep. Chellie Pingree

Thanks to Allyson Reddy and Grace Adofoli, interns at the National Women’s Health Project, the book launch was a success. More books will be delivered in the coming weeks, until every member of Congress has, in their office, up-to-date information they can rely on when drafting bills that have a real impact on girls and women.

A big thank you to the supporters of Educate Congress! And a special shout out to fellow road-trippers Anne Elizabeth Moore, Rachel N. Swanson, Nicole Boyett and Sara Drake; Congress scheduler Christina Knowles; everyone who participated in the making of the Educate Congress video, especially Paul Noble and Anthony Cupaiuolo (bro!); and Malcolm Woods, who helped organize the Educate Congress launch at the National Press Club and kept the word going on Twitter (with the aid of “The West Wing” staff). All of you made this happen!

Erin Thornton, Christy Turlington Burns (holding the film “No Woman, No Cry”) Rep. Gary Peters, Judy Norsigian, Allyson Reddy, and Grace Adofoli

“Makers: Women Who Make America,” the PBS/AOL documentary, debuts tonight on PBS at 8 p.m. (check local listings). If you’re on Twitter, join the discussion during the broadcast at #MAKERSchat.

Narrated by Meryl Streep, the film covers the last 50 years of the women’s movement — the accomplishments and setbacks that followed the publication of “The Feminine Mystique.”

“Most of us have seen the old television commercials before, those 1950s ads that marketed products by telling women how stupid and disappointing they were. So, in the beginning, this program feels like old news (one generation has seen it all before, and the other doesn’t care), but the narrative quickly comes together and still has the power to astound,” writes Anita Gates in The New York Times.

Extended Interviews Online
“Our Bodies, Ourselves” founders Judy Norsigian and Miriam Hawley were interviewed for Makers about the medical and social conditions that prompted a group of women to research, publish and distribute their own findings on women’s health and sexuality. Their interviews are available online.

“You have to understand that back in the late 60s, 98 percent of OB-GYNS were male. About 90 percent of all physicians were male. There was a tremendous amount of condescencion and paternalism,” says Norsigian, who is also executive director of the organization Our Bodies Ourselves.

“I remember one doctor saying to me, dear dear, you’re a smart intelligent woman — you ought to have more children,” says Hawley, later noting, “I kept saying we’re going to sell a million copies. And people kept laughing till we did.”

Produced by filmmakers Dyllan McGee, Betsy West and Peter Kunhardt, the Makers website proclaims to have the largest video collection of women’s stories. It is quite a mix. Browse through the offerings and you’ll find author Alice Walker, food pioneer Alice Waters, racecar driver Danica Patrick, artist/architect May Lin, comic creator Cathy Guisewite, actress Rita Moreno, former college president Ruth Simmons, and coal miner Barbara Burns, who fought sexual harassment in the workplace.

And, of course, Gloria Steinem.

And, suprisingly, Phyllis Schlafly.

Women’s Health Activism
Some of our colleagues in health activism are featured, including Susan Love, who discusses innovative breast cancer research as well as her own coming out story:   “Living out loud really allows you to be who are and to get into the work you need to do as opposed to spending a lot of time trying to protect yourself.”

Byllye Avery, founder of the Black Women’s Health Project (now the Black Women’s Health Imperative) and co-founder of Raising Women’s Voices, discusses access to abortion and opening a women’s health clinic in Florida — and working to “de-medicalize” the interior with shag carpeting, posters on the ceiling, and pot holders on the stirrups (to eliminate the chill). She also addresses the importance of community and self-care on multiple levels.

“Once you can get the emotional stuff straight, then you can start talking about the body,” says Avery. “Because if I’m worrying about someone coming home and beating me, I’m hardly thinking about I haven’t had a pap smear in five years.”

Sharing personal stories, Avery reminisces about her late husband, who died suddenly of a heart attack in 1970. Before his death, he recommended “The Feminine Mystique,” which he thought she would appreciate.

“I hated that I didn’t read it before he died so we could have had some discussions, ’cause I could have confronted him about the dishes,” she said.

New Voices, New Issues
Makers.com is a historian’s treasure trove, yet it also covers history in the making with the inclusion of younger women like media creator Tavi Gevinson, editor of Rookie magazine (Gevinson praised the new “Our Bodies, Ourselves“), feminist organizer Shelby Knox, and youth organizer Maritza Alarcón, whose energy about her work is infectious.

The Makers blog has pulled together quotes around timely themes, such as “5 Views on Job Flexibility” and “5 Views on Women in Film– Past, Present and Future.”

One of Norsigian’s online interview segments addresses finding support, and she concludes with this advice:

“Don’t go it alone, if possible. Get in place the kinds of friends and families around you that will make it possible to be a good parent, a good co-worker, and to contribute to the community around you. I think it’s important that we find space to be part of a larger community, that we don’t just see ourselves as part of a nuclear family.”

Updated to reflect that the OBOS interviews are available online and not in the film itself.

The Selling Sickness 2013 conference is taking place in Washington, D.C. this week, focusing on the idea of “disease mongering,” or defining health and disease in a way that promotes the sales of drugs and other treatments that may be unnecessary.

Discussion topics include a number of subjects related to women’s health, including increased or inappropriate use of drugs for conditions such as osteopenia (NPR did an excellent story a few years back on the creation of osteopenia as a disease and the drugs marketed to treat it); the problems with routine screening, such as using mammograms to detect breast cancer; and a workshop on unanswered questions on HPV vaccinations.

The conference is attracting academics, health journalists, consumer advocates, and others. Today’s line-up includes a roundtable on the women’s health movement chaired by Harriet Rosenberg of York University. From the description:

The women’s health movement that began in the 1960s challenged the status quo of medicine and heathcare across the board: clinical research, clinical practice, treatment approvals, trial conduct, pt-dr relations, patient education, disease funding, patient rights … it was a revolution. this roundtable will bring the Whm up to date and discuss what it has to offer current issues.

Participants include Colleen Fuller, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives; Anne Rochon Ford, Canadian Women’s Health Network; Cynthia Pearson, National Women’s Health Network; Gail Hornstein PhD, Mount Holyoke College; and Kay Dickersin, Consumers United for Evidence-Based Healthcare.

On Friday, Pearson will be joined by NWHN staff members Amy Allina and Kate Ryan to lead a symposium on “Fighting Disease-Mongering with Evidence to Protect Women’s Health.”

You can check in with the conference from afar by following @sellingsickness and the hashtag #sellingsickness on Twitter. Updates are also being posted on the conference Facebook page.

Hey, it’s Valentine’s Day! Seems like a good time to revisit the topic of safer sex and sexually transmitted infections!

The CDC just released a new fact sheet on STIs, indicating that there are about 20 million new infections each year, and that young people (ages 15-24) account for about half of these.

In its report, CDC provided the following recommendations for women for STI screening:

• All adults and adolescents should be tested at least once for HIV.
• Annual chlamydia screening for all sexually active women age 25 and under, as well as older women with risk factors such as new or multiple sex partners.
• Yearly gonorrhea screening for at-risk sexually active women (e.g., those with new or multiple sex partners, and women who live in communities with a high burden of disease).
• Syphilis, HIV, chlamydia, and hepatitis B screening for all pregnant women, and gonorrhea screening for at-risk pregnant women at the first prenatal visit, to protect the health of mothers and their infants.
• Trichomoniasis screening should be conducted at least annually for all HIV-infected women.

Have questions about sex, sexuality, STIs or related topics? Beloved sex-ed site Scarleteen has just launched a new live help feature, providing anonymous live chats with Scarleteen staff and volunteers. The full website, which tackles all kinds of questions about sex, is an amazing resource for young people.

On Feb. 14, One Billion Rising events will take place around the globe marking V-Day’s 15th anniversary and inviting “one billion women and those who love them to walk out, dance, rise up, and demand an end to this violence.”

Why are we rising? The numbers tell the story:

1 in 3 women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime.

1 billion women violated is an atrocity.

1 billion women dancing is a revolution.

Yup, it’s a worldwide dance party, and we like the rationale:

Dancing insists we take up space. It has no set direction but we go there together. It’s dangerous, joyous, sexual, holy, disruptive. It breaks the rules. It can happen anywhere at anytime with anyone and everyone. It’s free. No corporation can control it. It joins us and pushes us to go further. It’s contagious and it spreads quickly. It’s of the body. It’s transcendent.

Check out the map and search tool to find an event near you.

Boston-based Our Bodies Ourselves staff members will be participating in an event at Lesley University, starting at 3:30 p.m. It’s free and open to the public — join us if you can!

It starts with a procession and dance performance followed by a screening of “Power and Control: Domestic Abuse in America.” As the description notes:

This is an opportunity for men and women to form an alliance in ending the violence against women in an act of solidarity and demonstrating to women around the world the commonality of their struggles and our collaborative power to take action and bring awareness through dance! Bring flashlights and glowsticks!

Want to learn the One Billion Rising “Break the Chain” dance in advance? Debbie Allen will teach you!

by Jenelle Marie

When you hear the term STD (sexually transmitted disease) or STI (sexually transmitted infection), what do you think of first?

Grotesque pictures of maimed genitalia displayed on a projector during yesteryear’s sex-ed class geared toward frightening you into abstinence? That scene from ” The Hangover” where Sid says, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas … except for herpes. That shit will come back with you”?

Whatever first comes to your mind is not likely to include your neighbor, professor, or best friend living with an STI, having an incredible sex life, and otherwise prospering. That is, of course, unless you’re also living with an STI and you know better.

I am your neighbor, a professor at a community college, and am enjoying a wonderfully healthy sex life with a man who thinks the world of me and nothing of my STI. I’ve been living with genital herpes for over 14 years now; I’ve also contracted HPV, scabies, and vaginitis throughout the years. And yet not once did an STI hinder my relationships or happiness once I stopped allowing it to dictate my self worth.

Embracing Stigma

At 16, when our family doctor peered at me with a lazy eye, through thick glasses, and accompanied by a partially missing ear to tell me my genital herpes outbreak was the worst case he’d ever seen, I was devastated. Embarrassment coursed through me as he handed me a prescription and sent my mother and me on our way – sans brochures, additional information, and references to resources, support groups or even a mention of the vast number of people living with an STI everywhere. I was a pariah – a leper – even the doctor was disgusted by my condition.

For years, I accepted my fate and considered myself as being punished for having been sexually active before marriage. As a high-schooler, I was called a slut or a whore and “friends” of mine forewarned men who took interest in me that I would merely infect them, hurt them, and they should steer clear entirely. I actually maintained some of those friendships for a period of time, not knowing otherwise about STIs and those who contract them, thinking myself deserving of such treatment.

A Long Overdue Paradigm Shift

It wasn’t until a few years ago I began to see myself for who I truly was: a beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful, and valuable individual who just happened to contract a long-term infection. In fact, my infection had not stopped me from obtaining two honors degrees, getting married, conquering my fear of heights by going skydiving – not once, but three times – or pursuing my dreams by auditioning for “American Idol.”

While I’m not the next American Idol, I learned an invaluable lesson throughout that period of self-discovery: I am not deserving of poor treatment, cruel friendships, or snide remarks; the stigma placed upon those living with an STI is inaccurate, ignorant, and illogical. And I have the power to change that. We all do.

In order to change the status quo, though, one has to first understand where the misunderstandings and wrongful judgments originate. Rather than be angry at my doctor for leaving me with nothing more than a crass diagnosis or at my childhood friends for mistreating our relationship, I am choosing to delve into why those perceptions persist.

Part of the problem came from within. I didn’t challenge what little I knew about STIs, and I embraced the negative opinions for years before I was able to distinguish between the laymen’s view of STIs and the reality behind the array of people who contract them. STIs do not define one’s character; they’re merely a reflection of an experience – an experience that is as individually unique as are the people who contract the STIs themselves.

Consequently, I’m not angry or frustrated by the amount of time it took for me to finally find solace in my infection. Rather, I have a holistic appreciation for the process one undergoes when being diagnosed with any type of taboo condition (infection or otherwise). Not only have I taken great pains to find myself in a place of self-love and self-respect, I want very much for others to have an opportunity to feel the same fortitude after their diagnosis as I do now and over a far shorter time table.

Becoming an Advocate

Hence, I have become an advocate.

Due to the immense stigma behind contracting an STI, most people don’t speak openly about their experiences. However, as people, we learn best through community. Naturally, we are pack animals – we nurture our young for years beyond most other mammals and we develop complex (and hopefully, healthy) relationships with others outside of our family nucleus. It makes sense then we need others to help overcome obstacles and boundaries – in this case, contracting an STI and/or living with an STI.

So, I’m willing to tell you how horrible my experience has been at times, and how I’ve found incredible happiness, love, success, and rewarding relationships despite living with an STD all in hopes you can move through the process with much more clarity, community, and understanding than I once endured.

Join me, and I welcome you.

Jenelle Marie is the founder and administrator of The STD Project, a website geared toward eradicating the sigma associated with having a sexually transmitted infection. This entry was originally posted at BlogHer and is reposted with permission.

If you spend any time reading about evidence-based medicine, eventually you are going to hear someone mention a “Cochrane” review. These reviews take a systematic look at the research on a health topic, and try to provide answers to questions about best practices.

The Cochrane Collaboration is the international non-profit organization that produces these reviews and works to spread the findings to health care providers and patients. There’s a helpful newcomers’ guide to introduce people to Cochrane, and the video below provides some history and context for the organization.

The United States Cochrane Center, one of 14 centers around the world, is based at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. In addition to performing evidence reviews, the USCC also runs Consumers United for Evidence-based Health Care (CUE), a coalition of advocacy groups working to provide consumers with access to evidence-based information about health. Our Bodies Ourselves is a member organization.

CUE offers an online course on understanding evidence-based healthcare topics, such as research design, statistics, and other topics.

The video below offers more explanation, and features Zobeida Bonilla, who works on OBOS’s Latina Health Initiative.

Related: 
Meeting Dispatch: Resources from the CUE/Cochrane/Campbell Colloquium - Links to sources of evidence-based information, critiques of health journalism, info on pharmaceutical company payments to doctors, and more, collected from the 2010 joint meeting of CUE and the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations.

by Carol Sakala, Director of Programs, Childbirth Connection

One of most commonly cited barriers to improving maternity care is the risk of providers and hospitals being held liable for bad outcomes. Whether it is reining in overuse of tests and procedures, honoring women’s preferences, or increasing interdisciplinary collaboration, good ideas often cannot move forward once the issue of liability is raised.

If we cannot make progress toward more evidence-based, woman-centered care because of liability concerns, then the liability system is functioning poorly. But what are the aims of a high-functioning liability system? Is it just to avoid lawsuits and hold liability insurance premiums down?

In our new report, Maternity Care and Liability, we hold 25 possible liability reforms up to a framework that addresses the needs and interests of all of the system stakeholders: those who deliver care, those who pay for care, and most importantly, the women and newborns who receive care.

We developed this framework based on maternity care and liability studies and with the input of clinicians, legal scholars, consumer advocates, policy makers, and others. For each possible reform, we asked whether it does or would likely:

• promote safe, high-quality maternity care that is consistent with best evidence and minimizes avoidable harm
• minimize maternity professionals’ liability-associated fear and unhappiness
• avoid incentives for defensive maternity practice
• foster access to high-value liability insurance policies for all maternity caregivers without restriction or surcharge for care supported by best evidence
• implement effective measures to address immediate concerns when women and newborns sustain injury, and provide rapid, fair, efficient compensation
• assist families with responsibility for costly care of infants or women with long-term disabilities in a timely manner and with minimal legal expense
• minimize the costs associated with the liability system

The proposed framework has the potential to move discourse and policy forward. When options for reform are held up to criteria in the framework, many that have been widely implemented do not appear to meet any of the criteria. Most notably, the best available evidence shows that tort reforms fare poorly against these aims, despite the fact that they are the most widely advocated and enacted liability reforms.

On the other hand, various reforms have the potential to be win-win-win solutions for women and newborns, providers, and payers. Strategies are needed both to prevent harm and ensure that it is rare and to respond appropriately to harm or claims of harm when they occur. For preventing negligent injury and related lawsuits, these reforms include rigorous quality improvement programs and shared decision making initiatives.

A series of recent reports clarifies the “business case” for quality improvement initiatives: successful programs with strong leadership are achieving better care, better health outcomes, and rapid substantial declines in liability claims, payouts, and premiums. Among redress approaches, disclosure and apology programs were the most promising, but have not yet been evaluated in maternity care.

The report includes summary tables with the full list of more promising and less promising strategies assessed and their demonstrated or plausible impact on the various areas addressed in the framework.

To achieve the high-performing maternity care system that stakeholders need, we cannot allow longstanding liability concerns to continue to rankle. By seeking guidance from the best available evidence about the nature of liability problems in maternity care and the effectiveness of possible solutions, we can move constructively beyond belief and entrenched positions.

It is time to pilot and evaluate the most promising strategies and scale up those that are effective, beginning with routine maternity care quality improvement initiatives. They have the potential to transform the quality and value of maternity care, and to ensure that maternity care work offers the joy and honor that draws talented, passionate individuals to the profession and keeps them caring for women, babies, and families.

For the full report, a set of 10 fact sheets, links to three related open-access Women’s Health Issues articles and an invited commentary from legal scholars Sara Rosenbaum and William Sage, and other resources, please visit http://transform.childbirthconnection.org/reports/liability.

This entry was originally posted at Transforming Maternity Care and is republished with permission.

Carol Sakala, director of programs at Childbirth Connection, is a long-time contributor to “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” She has worked on maternity care issues as an advocate, educator, researcher, author, and policy analyst for more than 25 years, with a continuous focus on meeting the needs of childbearing women and their families.

In light of Congress’s recent failure to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, it’s heartening to hear about the ongoing efforts of White Ribbon, a movement of men and boys working to end violence against women and girls.

Here in Boston, the Men’s Initiative Project of Jane Doe Inc., a coalition of community-based sexual assault and domestic violence groups, is gearing up for the sixth annual Massachusetts White Ribbon Day. The event will take place at the State House in Boston on March 7.

The event, which is open to all, aims to change societal attitudes and beliefs that perpetuate and make excuses for violence against women, promote safety and respect in all relationships and situations, and promote the safety, liberty and dignity of survivors.

Men can sign up online to be an Ambassador for the campaign and to participate in other ways.

OBOS Board member and MA White Ribbon Day co-chair Jarrett Barrios spoke about the campaign recently in an interview with New England Cable News’s BroadSide program. Jarrett talks about the negative media imagery about women that young boys receive, and the need for parents and others to take responsibility for actively countering those messages and work to address rather than excuse them.

Jarrett calls for people to wear the white ribbon, to talk to their sons about treating women with respect, and to not “let go” of or overlook the language that is used against women that is part of a culture of violence.

This January 22 marks the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal.

Many local and national pro-choice and reproductive justice organizations will be holding events to mark this anniversary. Here are a couple we know about, including one we’re excited to co-sponsor with many great organizations in our home state. Know of others or want to share your own? Please tell us in the comments!

In Massachussetts, we’re co-sponsoring the Roe v. Wade 40th Anniversary Legislative Breakfast and Lobby Day at the State House on January 14. You can sign up to attend the breakfast, with keynote speaker Paula Johnson, MD, MPH, Executive Director of the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology, and/or the lobby events, a chance for you to meet with elected officials after a brief advocacy training. Please sign up online to participate.

In Manhattan on Jan 14, Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health is hosting “Roe Revealed: Doctors Tell Their Stories on the 40th Anniversary of Legalized Abortion,” with Dr. Willie Parker, Dr. Linda Prine, and a special guest. The event with these abortion providers is $20; additional tickets are required for the reception.

NARAL Pro-Choice America is holding its annual Blog for Choice Day on Jan 22. This year, they’re asking participants to share their own stories of why they’re pro-choice. As usual, you can sign up online to join in.

While there’s plenty of reason to celebrate 40 years of Roe, legislative attacks on reproductive and sexual health and choice continue around the country. In 2011 alone, U.S. lawmakers enacted 92 abortion-restricting provisions in bills designed to curtail women’s rights to health services. According to the Guttmacher Institute, that number shattered the previous single-year record of 34 such provisions enacted in 2005. Such laws make it more difficult, and painful, for women to exercise their legal right to terminate a pregnancy.

What will you do this year to ensure reproductive justice for all? For starters, check out Our Bodies, Our Votes, our resource for fighting back against attacks on women’s health and rights. While you’re there, order a sticker and submit your picture to our awesome Click It, Stick It, Share It tumblr.

Related:
History of Abortion in the U.S. – an “Our Bodies, Ourselves” excerpt
The 40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade: A Teachable Moment, by Linda K. Kerber

If you’re a filmmaker with an interest in spreading the word about female condoms, check out this contest from PATH, a global health organization:

Why does the world need female condoms? How can female condoms enhance your life? Submit a short film (1:00–5:00 minutes) that tells a story about what Female Condoms Are to you and your community. The deadline to enter is March 1, 2013.

First prize receives $5,000. Winning entries will also be screened at the 2013 Women Deliver conference. Full details and rules are on the contest website.

To learn more about female condoms, see our previous posts and this excerpt from the most recent edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”

Women in Udaipur, eastern Nepal with WOREC founder Dr. Renu Rajbhandari (far left) and the OBOS Nepali booklets to which they contributed. Photo / Judy Norsigian

In early October, I had the honor of co-leading a workshop in Kathmandu on the growing popularity of cross-border surrogacy arrangements with two colleagues from the New Delhi-based Sama Resource Group for Women and Health and Dr. Renu Rajbhandari, founder of the Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC).

Already a booming business in India, where estimates suggest that 25,000 couples a year travel to arrange surrogacy contracts and there are about 1,000 surrogacy centers, this practice is soon expected to extend to Nepal, where poor women with limited economic opportunities will likely be attracted by the prospect of earning money by bearing children for others.

In some parts of India, women are now offered fees ranging from $5,000 to $7,000, amounts that represent up to 10 years of earnings for people in rural areas.

The workshop, hosted by WOREC, OBOS’s global partner in Nepal, brought together women’s right activists from across the country to better understand the growing market in cross-border reproductive health care, its implications for Nepal, and the most effective strategies to educate and empower women.

Surrogacy Legislation in India
Participants included two nurses from the Kathmandu-based IUI (intrauterine insemination) clinic, several health counselors, a psychosocial counselor for women with fistulas, a family planning coordinator, the editor of a quarterly women’s magazine, several members of Women’s Human Rights Defenders, a nursing professor, an advocate with Save the Children, and a staff person from a rural women’s radio station in eastern Nepal. Languages used during the workshop were primarily Hindi and Nepali, with English translation offered as needed.

Sarojini and Preeti, our colleagues at Sama, provided an excellent overview of surrogacy in India, including a description of assisted reproductive technology (ART) legislation now being hotly debated in Parliament. One provision in the controversial bill would require that a woman entering into a contract surrogacy agreement undergo an embryo transfer rather than be inseminated with the intended father’s sperm.

Since insemination would be much safer, many workshop participants felt that a choice should be offered. An embryo transfer places the woman at greater risk by exposing her to powerful hormones that prepare her body for the pregnancy and to surgical procedures required to physically transplant the embryo into her uterus.

The proposed law assumes that a woman using her own eggs will be more likely to change her mind at birth and decide she wants to keep the baby than a woman who becomes pregnant with an embryo created with another woman’s eggs. There is poor evidence to support this assumption.

Participants at the Kathmandu workshop on cross-border surrogacy arrangements.

Preparation in Nepal
By their very nature, commercial surrogacy arrangements are created by contracting couples and agencies whose primary interests typically do not reflect the needs and concerns of women recruited as gestational mothers.

This is why groups like Sama and WOREC are advocating for public policies that will protect gestational mothers and ensure they receive evidence-based information about risks and benefits in a manner they fully understand. Policies must also ensure follow-up care and effective recourse if things go wrong.

The women at the workshop want to be better prepared in case a similar bill is introduced in Nepal. Sarojini, Preeti and I shared practical information about the various ART techniques involved in surrogacy and explored, with our Nepali colleagues, ways to preserve the health and rights of women agreeing to be surrogates. Most participants were quite unfamiliar with the whole topic of ARTs and asked many questions about the medical, social and economic impacts.

Why Language Matters
We also screened two documentary films about surrogacy – Made in India, by New York City-based filmmakers Vaishali Sinha and Rebecca Haimowitz, and Would Like to See Baby Bump Please, a new film just released in India by Sama — and discussed the importance of using language sensitive to all the parties involved in a surrogacy arrangement.

For example, the term “reproductive tourism” carries the image of couples vacationing in their pursuit of parenthood. In most cases, these trips are stressful and a far cry from the typical tourist experience. Using alternative language such as “cross-border commercial surrogacy” is one way to avoid such innuendo.

Similarly, referring to a gestational mother as a “surrogate mother” or “gestational carrier” can belittle and objectify her central role as the woman carrying a pregnancy for nine months and then giving birth. Many at the workshop preferred the descriptive, less diminishing term “gestational mother.”

At the end of the workshop, we developed a number of recommendations for moving forward.

Meeting Local Activists
After the workshop, I traveled with Renu to Udaipur in eastern Nepal, where she introduced me to many younger women at the WOREC center, including some who contributed to WOREC’s set of six Nepali health booklets, recently adapted from Our Bodies, Ourselves.

I also visited a group of young women who are the sole staff for a radio station in Udaipur, where egg cartons provide the sound proofing in their recording studio. They frequently address women’s health topics in their programming and invite community conversations about sexuality, domestic violence and the environment.

Although I had met Renu briefly when she traveled to Boston for OBOS’s 40th anniversary symposium in 2011, the many hours of chatting while we drove over mountainous terrain cemented a special friendship I now treasure. I have a new appreciation of her remarkable leadership over the past several decades and was deeply impressed by her efforts to pass the torch to a younger generation.

A trip to a fairly remote mountain village was particularly inspiring. The women had successfully lobbied for village development council funds to create a small multipurpose women’s center. Though a bit run-down, it was getting a lot of use and clearly a sign of how effective some women’s groups have been over the past decade.

The provisional constitution for the country still has not passed, but its contents – including funding for legal abortion – offer great hope for the future of women’s reproductive rights and justice in Nepal.

This article was originally published in the winter 2012/2013 Our Bodies Ourselves newsletter. View the full newsletter.

By Eyitemi Mogbeyiteren

In 2011, three members of our outreach team were kidnapped in the Delta State of Nigeria. We were held captive for several weeks, during which we were repeatedly raped, and only released after a ransom was paid to the kidnappers. Soon after, we learned that all three of us had tested positive for HIV.

My name is Eyitemi Mogbeyiteren, and I work with Women for Empowerment, Development and Gender Reform. Our goal is to ensure that poor grassroots women in the South-West region of rural Nigeria have information on their bodies and health, adapted from the trusted book Our Bodies, Ourselves, so they make choices that protect their reproductive and sexual needs and dignity.

HIV is rarely talked about in our community, and people living with the virus are inevitably discriminated against and cast out by their friends and family. Over the years, our organization has worked hard to unravel myths about the virus — its transmission, prevention and treatment — and fight the terrible stigma and isolation faced by those infected.

But as more people become ill, we continue to see families despair and grieve as their loved ones die without medicines, care and support. Drugs cost approximately $15,000 per person in my community — an amount that is beyond the grasp of many people!

After being diagnosed, I experienced a lot of the same discrimination and isolation. I was shunned in my community and my family stopped speaking to me for a long time. With my own health failing, there were many moments when I felt I could not live, could not stand people saying things about me.

It felt like the end of the road, until I decided to raise my voice and change the fear and shame into something positive.

We are now expanding our HIV/AIDS outreach to include palliative care — care that relieves not only the physical but also the emotional, spiritual and socially generated suffering faced by a person infected with the virus. It is one of the most valuable services that can be offered to someone with terminal illness and their family. Unfortunately, it’s availability in my community is zero!

Using Our Bodies, Ourselves as our tool yet again, our plan is to train ourselves on this holistic and critical model of care, and bring our services to our women via support groups and home visits. We will also develop a training manual for other caregivers, including family and community health workers, so they can comfort their loved ones and clients.

And, to get word out, we will organize an “itinerant exposition” on board a bus. This vehicle — our Anti-Rape, Anti-Kidnap and HIV/AIDS Bus — will carry 12 activists around the country for 18 months, unleashing our materials, our knowledge and our passion. It will allow us to serve women beyond our community, to empower them with information on HIV/AIDS and self-defense skills to protect them from rape and kidnap.

And if we are able to raise the funds, we will distribute the drugs needed to prolong life — drugs that are the right of every human being to access, drugs that are impossible to find in my community.

OBOS is assisting Eyitemi and her colleagues at WEDGR with strategies, promotion and in-kind donations, and by generating funds for this critical work. If you would like to help with this effort, contact Ayesha Chatterjee at ayesha AT bwhbc.org.

This article was originally published in the winter 2012/2013 Our Bodies Ourselves newsletter. View the full newsletter.

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory … all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell.”

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Comments like these are what spurred us to create Educate Congress, a campaign to deliver “Our Bodies, Ourselves“ to every member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Because these comments really were spoken by members of Congress.

And that’s not the only problem. Misinformation is too often used as the basis for crafting bad policy, which is why we’re working to show how Congress can advance evidence-based reproductive health policy, based on science and fact. Reproductive health policy pertains to issues such as birth control, abortion, breast and ovarian cancers, the effects of environmental toxins on women’s health and fetal development, and more.

We’re into our final countdown, with just eight days left to reach our goal of raising $25,000 to deliver books to every member of Congress and key members of the administration and government agencies whose work involves health care policy.

You can select a specific representative or senator to receive the book or donate to the general fund. There are great perks to show our thanks, including stickers, tote bags, signed copies of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” by OBOS founders and Gloria Steinem, and a signed Legitimate Road Trip poster commemorating the drive from Chicago to St. Louis with The Ladydrawers to rush sex-ed materials to Rep. Todd Akin.

Please help us reach our goal — because, really, doesn’t everyone deserve access to comprehensive sex-ed?