PsychCentral.com has launched a new body image blog called Weightless. From the site description:

Weightless is about well-being, not weight; about fostering body image, regardless of your size. It’s about exposing women’s magazines, other mediums and so-called experts, when they’re touting unhealthy tips and promoting restrictive standards.

The goal of Weightless is to help women develop a better body image and work toward accepting themselves as they are, while being healthy and happy (fad diets and skinny-mini standards prohibited!); and to become sharp consumers, who can pick apart a commercial or magazine article and know which advice is helpful or harmful.

In one of the site’s first posts, writer Margarita Tartakovsky identifies seven signs you may be suffering from a poor body image and suggestions to help readers be less self-critical. In the aptly titled “Minding Women’s Magazines: Asinine Advice,” Tartakovsky pulls out “tips” from magazines including Women’s Health, Self and Cosmopolitan and deconstructs the messages. To wit:

3. “Your fear: ‘I overeat at parties.’ Celebratory spreads make it easy to stuff yourself. But obsessing over every bit will ruin your night. ‘Ask yourself, How do I want to feel tomorrow? Bloated and disappointed or proud and healthy?’ Beck says. Strap your watch on the wrong wrist as a visual reminder of your goal; you’ll automatically eat less.” {Self, November 2009, pg. 87}

As I was reading the first few phrases, I found myself nodding in agreement — especially the part where we shouldn’t be obsessing about food — up until the value judgments rolled in. So what if I do enjoy one too many appetizers at a holiday party, instead of saying to myself how delicious the food was and acknowledging that I did overeat and will try to avoid that next time, I should feel like a bloated, disappointed failure. Thanks Self!

Since women are often made to feel like they’re overeating anytime they’re enjoying their food, I wish the response first questioned why we think we’ve crossed the line. For some, overeating at a party might mean consuming more than one tiny appetizer.

But though it sidesteps this question, I appreciate that a popular and respected website on mental health considers body image a topic worthy of its own blog. And I’m glad  Weightless launched in time to confront  the holiday weight smack-down.

Plus: Last month, Randy Cohen, who writes The Ethicist column for The New York Times, asked whether ads using electronically altered images of models — making them ridiculously skinny — should  be banned or come with a warning label. The model pictured here was digitally altered for a Ralph Lauren window display in Sydney, Australia.

Speaking of Australia, a federal government advisory group comprised of educators, psychologists and media folks have put together a national strategy on body image (pdf).

One of the group’s members, Danielle Miller, writes about the recommendations, including the proposed educational curriculum and voluntary code of conduct for advertisers and fashion companies. In this frank discussion, Miller acknowledges the shortcomings of the proposal and the difficulties that lie ahead.

A new, freely available, open-access journal that launched this month reflects a position Our Bodies Ourselves has long held: Healthcare is better, and people are healthier and more empowered, when individuals are informed and can actively participate in their own care.

The Journal of Participatory Medicine, launched at last week’s Connected Health Symposium in Boston, will publish online peer-reviewed articles that “explore the extent to which shared decision-making in health care, and deep patient engagement, affect outcomes.” The inaugural issue includes articles from all stakeholders, including patients, healthcare providers, payers, and others.

The journal’s significance is underscored by the fact that current or former editors of three of the most prominent medical journals – JAMA, BMJ, and the Annals of Family Medicine – also contributed to the first issue. As Amy Romano at Science & Sensibility points out, even the journal’s peer review process is participatory and values the input of all stakeholders, especially patients themselves.

The journal is being published by the relatively new Society for Participatory Medicine. The organization also has a blog, e-patients.net, which focuses on and includes stories from patients becoming informed, connecting with other patients, finding support, and exploring potential treatments for their healthcare concerns.

The existence of this organization and its publications reflect a growing trend toward patient involvement in health care that has been inspired and enabled by the internet. The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report earlier this year indicating that 61 percent of American adults look online for health information, and that “six in ten e-patients … say their most recent search had an impact, mostly minor, on their own health or the way they care for someone else.”

More than half said information they found online lead them to ask their physician new questions or to get a second opinion on their care.

The internet is also enabling access to personal health records and new ways of collecting and sharing health data. The Society and the Journal will promote efforts to encourage these developments while protecting patient confidentiality.

As one physician wrote of the e-patient phenomenon in 2008:

Patients want information, ideally tailored to their needs. They want to discuss this with their physicians without being shooed away, and would appreciate getting pointers. They even want access to their test results and medical records. Although many physicians feel threatened by all this, engaging the patient as a partner in her own care can be quite gratifying, improves patient satisfaction, and may even lead to better outcomes.

As an organization that has long held that women can become their own health experts and that women, as informed health consumers, are catalysts for social change, we agree.

Last week we heard that Roman Polanski’s rape of a 13-year-old girl wasn’t “rape-rape“; the media downplayed the crime; and celebrities petitioned for Polanski’s release.

Comedian Chris Rock’s disbelief over the reaction captured our own. During an interview on The Jay Leno Show, Rock cut through the messy rhetoric and exclaimed, “Rape! It’s rape!”

“People are defending Roman Polanski because he made some good movies?” Rock continued. “Are you kidding me? He made good movies 30 years ago, Jay! Even Johnnie Cochran don’t have the nerve to go, ‘Well, did you see O.J. play against New England?’”

Jezebel has the clip:

Latoya Peterson writes:

As Rock says at the end of the clip: “The United States, we want to capture Osama Bin Laden, and murder him. We don’t want to rape him – that would be barbaric!”

Rape is a barbaric act.

And I’m amazed it took a comedian to say it outright.

So am I. Yet while I want to cheer Rock on, a quick search shows that in 2001, when a woman accused Rock of rape (after first claiming she was pregnant with Rock’s child, which proved to be false), Rock turned to Anthony Pellicano, one of Hollywood’s sleaziest private detectives.

Their conversation, which came to light during Pellicano’s 2008 trial on charges of wiretapping and racketeering, was excerpted on Gawker. Pellicano describes how he would ruin the woman, and his comments are pretty ugly. As for Rock, Ryan Tate sums it up at Gawker: “For most of the call, Rock sounds annoyed and aloof, if shifty about his story. But however annoyed he might sound, he is the one who hired this guy.”

More good reads:

“Roman Polanski Has a Lot of Friends,” by Katha Pollitt

“Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child,” by Kate Harding

Last week, the Today Show aired a segment initially titled “The Perils of Midwifery,” which despite the title was not about occupational hazards for midwives (ha), or even about midwifery in general, but about home birth specifically. Although it has since been recaptioned “The Perils of Home Birth” on the NBC website, the original titling as aired to many viewers can still be seen on various websites, including Hulu.

The piece itself tends to gloss over the variety of personal reasons women choose home birth, treating it as a simple lifestyle matter or consumer trend, with one interviewee quoting an unnamed doctor as saying that “home birth had become almost the equivalent of a spa treatment for women.” A montage of photos of celebrities who have had home birth is also provided. The story calls the tragedy experienced by the featured couple “the dark side of an increasingly popular trend.”

The 7-minute piece focuses around the story of a couple whose baby did not survive after what is reported as four days of laboring at home. The couple had CNM Cara Mulhahn as their midwife, who has gained recognition after being featured in the film The Business of Being Born. Mulhahn was profiled by Andrew Goldman (interviewed for the segment) for a recent New York Magazine piece. In that piece, she is framed as a risk-taker, with BOBB director Abby Epstein saying, “She’ll put herself on the line way more than most people, like taking on a birth that’s a little more high risk that most midwives wouldn’t take… She puts her ass on the line in a huge way every time she kind of steps out of bounds to help somebody. That’s just who she is.”

Given this assessment, it’s unfair to hold Mulhahn and her approach and outcomes up as representative of all home births and/or midwifery. Rather than providing women with information on the various types of midwives, their education and credentialing, or questions to ask to determine whether the woman and provider might be of different minds with regards to safety thresholds and approach, the piece simply includes a recommendation from Goldman to ask about malpractice insurance and back-up physicians. No representative of a professional midwifery organization or midwifery educational body was included in the segment, who might have addressed some of these concerns and factors.

The Today Show did feature an ACOG representative, who spoke about unpredictable emergencies and the organization’s position against home birth. The piece also cites unnamed doctors as claiming that it is “impossible” to compare home and hospital birth because of the higher risk cases hospitals tend to see, but this is simply not true. Although a randomized, controlled clinical trial will never be possible, there are good data, especially the recent British Columbia study (.pdf), that compare low risk, uncomplicated pregnancies among women choosing a hospital birth or a home birth. There are many areas in medicine where good data, although imperfect, can guide policy setting, and ACOG fails to appreciate that this is one such example.

Conveying this information, however, requires more detail and nuance than typically provided in a morning news show. As the ACNM concludes: “Women and health care professionals need to be making decisions that are informed by evidence-based medicine—not reactionary interventions and unbalanced investigative journalism. Women deserve better.”

Forget everything you’ve heard or seen about the healthcare debate. OK, not everything — just the lies and misinformation.

Feel better? Want to do something with that positive energy? The Media Consortium (TMC), a network of progressive, independent journalism organizations, explains how you can change the debate with your own reporting:

Your story is getting lost in the shouting and political posturing. But it’s these stories that can make the difference in how health care is covered in the national media and how politicians will vote. We’re asking you to join us in this exciting citizen journalism project to help uncover the the health care stories of real people, including your own.

TMC goes on to suggest that you videotape a health care town hall; interview community members about their healthcare stories; or tell your own personal story. Then all you have to do is upload your video at MyRapidReport.com, which even provides interviewing tips.

All submissions are reviewed by The UpTake, a video news gathering organization that encourages citizen journalists. The videos will be available for the public to view, and TMC’s network will look through them for stories that “help identify the needs and hopes of everyday citizens around the future of our healthcare as they continue to monitor, report and organize around this critical issue.”

Live in New York City? Lucky you. You can tape your story in the studio at GRITtv. Space is available starting Friday, Sept. 11, and every Friday afterward. Email gritv@grittv.org to reserve a time.

In the meantime, go check out MyRapidReport.com, where some sample videos have already been posted. The site is also going to become a source for healthcare news — starting today, reporter Lindsey Beyerstein will file daily posts on healthcare reform issues and media coverage.

And be sure to tell us when you upload a video. We’d love to link to it and help amplify your side in the debate.

Watch Dr. Aaron Carroll, a board member of Physicians for a National Health Plan, talk about single payer health care tonight on The Colbert Report.

The program airs at 11:30 p.m. (EST) and will be rebroadcast on the Comedy Central network on Wednesday, July 22, at 2 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 2 p.m., and 8:30 p.m.

Carroll, an associate professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research, wrote a paper on growing physician support for national health insurance in 2008.

Our Bodies Ourselves last month endorsed single payer as the best health care plan for improving women’s health and providing affordable, universal coverage.

As a medical librarian by day, I spend lots of time evaluating health information. Through my work,  I’ve learned that the media does not always cover medical “breakthroughs” and study findings accurately or clearly.  Luckily, there are several resources available that can help correct this problem.

One example is Health News Review, which provides ratings and critiques of medical reporting. Media reports are evaluated by a number of criteria, such as whether they review the evidence, discuss potential harms, quantify potential benefits, compare with existing alternatives, or appear to rely solely on a news release. The site also provides a toolkit for journalists to help improve their reporting. It’s also a useful read for others wanting to understand the important issues and potential pitfalls of medical reports in the news.

Similarly, NHS Choices – Behind the Headlines from the National Health Service in the UK provides evaluations and summaries of health-related stories in the news, including the type of and citation for the study a story is based on, what the existing research says, and the implications of the finding being reported. Media Doctor Canada and Media Doctor Australia are similar services that may be of interest to international readers.

Relatedly, I recently learned that the National Press Foundation is offering a four-day “fellowship on cancer issues” for selected U.S. journalists which will provide an “in-depth look at cancer, current research, and controversies related to screening and treatment.” While many journalists covering medical topics could probably use some continuing education on finding and interpreting the evidence, this session is unfortunately underwritten by Pfizer – a pharmaceutical company which makes money by promoting and selling its treatment and screening products.

If you have access to the journal BMJ, there’s a great article, Who’s Watching the Watchdogs, which looks at exactly this type of conflict of interest in industry sponsorship of medical journalism training. I may be a bit biased toward librarians, but I’d personally much rather see journalists build their knowledge through less biased information sources, such as this fellowship training opportunity being offered by the Association of Health Care Journalists with the National Library of Medicine.

[Hat tip to David Rothman, a fellow library geek, for his post pointing to some of these resources.]

Picture this: You walk up to a magazine rack at your favorite bookstore and you’re confronted with numerous self-improvement suggestions: “10 Easy Ways to Lose Weight” … “Exercises to Get a Bikini Body” … “Fashion Tips to Look More Like [Someone Else] … OK, you’ve been here before. You know exactly what this looks like.

Now imagine that instead of walking away frustrated, you reach into your Super Activist Bag and pull out a new, empowering cover — it rereads: “BEAUTIFUL just the way you are.”

You slip it in front of one of the make-over-you magazines and walk away, satisfied for having spread a new message.

This newly launched “art action” is more than a good story. It’s the brainchild of Massachusetts artist Lillian Hsu, who created the website www.bjtwya.com to protest the objectification of girls and women — and to do something about it.

Hsu encourages placing one of the BJTWYA posters “over every stack of magazines that uses the female body to sell something — to sell the magazine, or to sell an article, or to sell a product, or to sell a lifestyle, or to sell a promise, or to sell the idea that you need to match your body to the picture. You decide which covers qualify. You place a poster over them. Then you walk away. That’s it.”

All you need to participate is a supply of posters, which you can get by emailing “bjtwya AT yahoo DOT com” with your name, mailing address, contact information, and number of posters needed. The posters are printed on 8.5×11″ paper, heavy enough to stand up on a magazine rack.

If you have a color printer or can’t wait for delivery, print your own copies of the poster (PDF).

Either way, be sure to visit bjtwya.com to learn more about how Hsu came up with the art action. You’ll also find links to organizations and activists that address media and body image issues. And if you’re anywhere near Gloucester, Mass., an exhibition related to Beautiful Just The Way You Are is at the Jane Deering Gallery through Aug. 3. The opening reception is this Thursday, July 9, 6-8 p.m.

Here’s an excerpt from Hsu’s smartly worded and compelling statement:

The magazine rack is only one of many locations where we are taught the lessons of our culture, but it is one that is ubiquitous throughout our towns and cities and reaches every stratum of the population. At the magazine rack words and pictures work together seamlessly, like a good children’s book, to teach and tell a story of who we are. The covers shout their messages with surprising confidence that we will know these commands are for us. Before we are ten, and then without pause throughout our lives, we internalize the lesson that our bodies are how we will be first judged as individuals, and that there is a body type that we must attain to be judged worthy of attention. We learn that the female body can be used to sell anything — tangible or intangible — to women, men, and children. The use of a motorcycle, a deodorant, a vacation, a necktie, or a beverage implies ownership of the woman’s body pasted into the advertisement. Although all humans are born with beauty and power, our early unquestioned self is quickly corrupted. We adopt an anxiety in navigating a path towards a culturally dictated state of beauty and power.

BEAUTIFUL Just The Way You Are seeks to intervene in the space between all who stand before the magazine rack and the engine of advertising and mass culture. In that space of daily life it places an alternative.

Last month, NOW on PBS aired “Abortion Providers Under Seige,” a look at how the murder of Dr. George Tiller is affecting other abortion providers and whether violence against doctors who perform abortions should be prosecuted as domestic terrorism.

It was a straightforward, highly praised report — which means that PBS came under siege from right-wing groups. These groups tend to object — quite loudly — to factual coverage that raises important questions about their activities.

In response to the right-wing outcry, the Women’s Media Center sent an alert and created a letter that you can send to PBS, thanking the network for airing this important program and voicing support for NOW on PBS and Maria Hinjosa’s reporting.

You can watch the program online, and also check out additional features, such as a “Gallery of Rage,” featuring images from anti-abortion websites, and an online debate between Operation Rescue President Troy Neuman and reproductive rights activist and author Cristina Page.

*I’m late with announcing this action, but it’s not too late to let PBS know what you think.

RH Reality Check launched a new forum today for discussion related to finding “common ground” on abortion and reproductive health.

The forum moderator is Christina Page, author of “How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex.” Contributors will include Rachel Laser of Third Way; Kirsten Day of Faith in Public Life; Steven Waldman, editor of Beliefnet; Chris Korzen of Catholics United; and Sarah Stoesz, CEO of Planned Parenthood of North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota.

The section was created in response to President Obama’s challenge to those with divergent views about abortion to find opportunities for identifying common ground. In her introductory post, Christina Page writes:

Shortly before Dr. Tiller’s murder, President Obama had just begun to usher this movement through the White House doors. His appointees had started calling together leaders from both sides to sit at the same table. His argument has been that the two sides can disagree sharply on a fundamental issue and yet still find areas of agreement on which they can work together.

The brutal murder of Dr. Tiller threatens to poison the nascent dialogue Obama initiated. More pervasively, it threatens to make cynicism about another’s motives acceptable even rational. After such a heinous act it is easy to grow remote, to give up on efforts of understanding, to believe the worst of one another.  The violence perpetrated against Dr. Tiller is an attack on common ground, too, whether intended or not.

But, especially in the aftermath of the murder, a common ground movement must persist, and grow stronger. If not, we surrender reasoned and civil debate at gunpoint. If we retreat to our respective corners, we cede control of the dialogue to extremists, and with it any hope for a better and a different, more constructive way of reconciling, and living with differences.

Initial posts include:

• My Common Ground Fantasy, by Steven Waldman of Beliefnet.com
• Pax Populi, by Katie Paris of Faith in Public Life
• Common Ground Rules, by Rachel Laser of the Third Way
• Courting Common Ground, by Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy
• Seeing Red is Not Always What Youd Think, by Sarah Stoesz of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota,
• Should Sex Be Sacred?, by David Gushee, Mercer University
• Education and Pregnancy: Mutually Exclusive?, by Serrin Foster of Feminists for Life

Check it out …

Far be it from us to add to unfriendly female fodder, but does it really make sense to call out “Our Bodies, Ourselves” for not focusing more on female consciousness raising parties — or for the book cover being pink?

Granted, most modern activism doesn’t involve mirrors, but has the author read feminist blogs or seen Twitter and Facebook? There’s plenty consciousness-raising happening, and plenty of feminist media critiquing our all-too critical culture.

Plus: Speaking of a consciousness raising party, if you’re lucky enough to be in New York on June 12, go celebrate Feministing’s 5th Anniversary. Happy early birthday, ladies!

There’s so much important policy analysis and moving stories about Dr. George Tiller that we wanted to try to bring you a snapshot of it all here. We’ll continue to add to this post — please also leave suggestions for additional reading, or your own thoughts, in the comments.

In our previous post on Tiller’s murder, we included Tiller’s own story about becoming an abortion provider. He learned his father had provided medically safe abortions for women who had no place else to turn prior to Roe v. Wade only after taking over his father’s practice. Tiller decided to continue to provide the service for women, despite great risk to him and his family. If you haven’t already, read the whole piece, published at Physicians for Reproductive Choice & Health.

Since then, Judy Norsigian, Our Bodies Ourselves executive director, expanded on her blog post about how to show support for abortion providers with three things everyone can do. And we continue to support the efforts of IAmDrTiller.com and the George Tiller Memorial Abortion Fund.

Analysis & Public Policy

Abortion Wars, the First Time Around: On The New York Times op-ed page, Kate Manning writes: “Dr. Tiller is just the latest in a line of brave people who have died for providing abortions. Perhaps the most infamous of these was a midwife named Ann Lohman, who killed herself in New York in 1878 after decades of harassment.”

The Legacy of George Tiller: Carole Joffe, author of “Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us” (Beacon Press, forthcoming January 2010), writes that another response to Tiller’s murder “must be to demand that the mainstream medical community acknowledge the reality that there will always be some women who need abortions later on in pregnancy. Local medical institutions must make provision for these cases — especially since these women can no longer be sent off to Kansas, out of sight and mind of ‘respectable’ doctors and hospitals.”

Anti Abortion Rhetoric Still Strong: Journalism professor Cynthia Gorney, author of “Articles of Faith: A History of the Abortion Wars” discusses the state of the abortion debate on NPR.

A History of Violence on the Antiabortion Fringe: Excellent overview by Richard Fausset in the L.A. Times of the degree of violence against abortion clinics and providers.

Abortion Provider George Tiller Murdered at Church: Writing at Religion Dispatches, Frances Kissling ponders the likely outcomes “when people are treated to an unrelenting barrage of religious claims that abortion is murder, that doctors who perform abortion should be charged with crimes and sent to prison, and when pickets outside clinics pray the rosary and display mangled fetuses on crosses as if they were Jesus Christ himself.”

In Memory of Dr. George Tiller: A Tireless Supporter of Women’s Dignity: “I am tired of a public debate that treats seriously the claim that pregnant women, mothers, and the people who support them are killers,” writes Lynn Paltrow, executive director of  National Advocates for Pregnant Women. “I am tired of a debate that trivializes genocide by saying that what women do to deal with their reproductive lives is worse.”

Why Clinic Violence is Obama’s Problem: Ann Friedman at The American Prospect calls Tiller’s death “a wake-up call to the fact that our existing laws and regulatory bodies to protect against clinic violence aren’t working as well as they should. As written, FACE provides a lot of protection for reproductive health providers. But we need an active task force — or some other means of accountability — to make sure the law is fully enforced.”

George Tiller Needs More Than Candlelight Vigils: Former Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Gloria Feldt has written a powerful piece remembering past acts of clinic violence and explaining why “candlelight vigils alone will never be enough.”

The Murder of Dr. George Tiller, A Foreshadowing: Cristina Page at RH Reality Check writes: “For those who would like to think today’s murder in church of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, is an isolated incident: here’s the horrifying news: You are wrong. The pattern is clear and frightening.”

Who killed George Tiller?: Jill Filipovic of Feministe writes: “… this latest act of terrorism is, sadly, not an anomaly. It is part of a clearly-established pattern of harassment, intimidation and violence against abortion providers and pro-choice individuals.”

I Write Letters: Melissa McEwan at Shakesville’s open letter to President Obama, including this direct response to his statement on the matter: “Mr. President, if you had been paying the slightest bit of attention to the realities of the front line of the fight to protect women’s bodily autonomy, you would not be shocked. This wasn’t even the first attempt on Dr. Tiller’s life; it was the merely the first successful one.”

What Should Change in Wake of Tiller Murder: GRITtv with Laura Flanders hosts a discussion about the media coverage. Guests include Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, Jennifer Pozner of Women In Media & News (WIMN),  and Sunsara Taylor, a writer for Revolution Newspaper and an abortion provider.

What Happens Next

News coverage and updates from the Wichita Eagle: kansas.com/tiller

Tiller Family: Clinic Will Close: The family’s lawyers said in a statement that the clinic, Women’s Health Care Services, will be permanently closed, effective immediately.

Sad News in Closing of George Tiller’s Clinic: “Who can blame George Tiller’s family for declining to re-open his clinic?” asks Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist. “But the clinic’s closing means the killer has achieved his objective. That’s a thought akin to an open wound. The decision also means, for Kansas women in crisis, a yawning gap between abortion clinics in the Kansas City area and Denver.”

Closed Clinic Leaves Abortion Protesters at a Loss: “Over almost 20 years, a vocal, diverse constellation of anti-abortion forces has grown up in this conservative city with an intensity rarely seen elsewhere, converging around Dr. Tiller’s practice. With his death, its future suddenly seems uncertain, too,” writes Monica Davey at The New York Times.

Why I Plan to Emulate Dr. George Tiller: Rozalyn Farmer Love, a third-year medical student, writes at the Atlanta Journal Constitution about her plan to become an obstetrician-gynecologist. “I dream of delivering healthy babies, working with families and supporting midwifery. But as part of my practice, I also envision providing abortions to women who need them.”

The Circle Continues: “Dr. Leroy Carhart, a physician who provides abortions for women in need and who for many years provided later term abortions in his home state of Nebraska, will temporarily take over Dr. Tiller’s medical practice in Kansas,” reports Amie Newman at RH Reality Check. “Dr. Carhart, still a practicing provider, is most well known for his involvement in two Supreme Court cases, Stenberg v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Carhart, which challenged and then upheld the ban on the politically termed “Partial Birth Abortion.”

The Compassion of Dr. Tiller: “There are two other clinics that do late-term abortions, but neither are known for taking patients regardless of their ability to pay or for ministering so comprehensively to their emotional needs. Tiller’s murder leaves a void that could imperil women across the country,” writes Michelle Goldberg at The American Prospect.

Attorney General Directs U.S. Marshals to Protect Women’s Health Clinics, Providers: “U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder dispatched the U.S. Marshals Service to protect “appropriate people and facilities around the nation” in the wake of the killing Sunday morning of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas,” reports Ernest Luning.

Recollections From Tiller’s Patients

The George Tiller I Knew: A diary entry at Daily Kos.

A Friend Recalls Her Visit to Tiller’s Clinic and Another Memory of Visiting Dr. Tiller: Both posted at DoubleX.

Where Will Women Go Now?: Over at Salon’s Broadsheet, Kate Harding quotes from a number of personal narratives posted online.

A Heatbreaking Choice: Kansas Stories

Legacy.com Guest Book

Statements from Reproductive Rights Groups

Planned Parenthood Federation of America; Planned Parenthood is also excerpting additional statements from groups and public officials.

NARAL Pro-Choice America

Association of Reproductive Health Professionals

Women’s Health Matters (Canada) has created a guide to finding and evaluating health information online, “Women Wading Through the Web: A Health Toolkit,” [PDF] intended “to assist the many women who have asked us for help in navigating this often confusing maze of health information on the Web.”

The online document provides a good basic introduction to searching for information, judging website and information quality, interpreting medical research, and understanding media and web-based reports on health topics.

In addition to the guidance provided, the document includes links to a number of useful resources throughout, including various search engines, tutorials on searching the web, guides to evaluating health information online, sites for accessing medical news or literature, guides to understanding medical research, and other recommended websites.

For more on this topic, see the OBOS article  How to Evaluate Health Information on the Internet.

Looking for Supreme Court news? See our separate post on discussions surrounding Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination and an interview with Georgetown University Law Professor Emma Coleman Jordan.

Conservative Groups Protest Health Care Reform; Progressives Fire Back: A 30-minute documentary-style advertisement titled “End of Patient’s Rights — The Human Consequences of Government-Run Health Care” is scheduled to run on Washington’s NBC affiliate on Sunday morning, following “Meet the Press.”

The SEIU and other progressive groups are urging NBC not to air the infomercial because of false and misleading claims by Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, the group behind the video. Factcheck.org, run by the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, called CPR’s previous advertisement “misleading.”

Some background: CPR is led by ex-hospital CEO Rick Scott, who is, well, kind of sleazy. Scott was head of Columbia/HCA healthcare company, the largest for-profit U.S. healthcare company, until the board of directors ousted him in 1997 amid a  government fraud investigation. Columbia/HCA Healthcare ended up pleading guilty and paid a record $1.7 billion in fines. Scott was never charged; today his investment firm owns a chain of walk-in urgent-care clinics in Florida, among other ventures.

“Having Scott lead the charge against healthcare reform is like tapping Bernie Madoff to campaign against tighter securities regulation,” Christopher Hayes wrote in The Nation earlier this month.

In other words, the current health care system works just fine for him.

Plus: Political Hotsheet reports that the nonprofit Americans for Prosperity Foundation launched a new campaign called Patients United Now “to educate citizens about the threat of government controlled health care.”  Media Matters fact-checks those claims. The group previously enlisted Sam “Joe The Plumber” Wurzelbacher in its campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act, a pro-union bill.

Kennedy to Unveil Health Care Bill on Monday: “Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) is circulating the outlines of sweeping health-care legislation that would require every American to have insurance and would mandate that employers contribute to workers’ coverage,” writes Ceci Connolly at the Washington Post.

The plan in the summary document, provided by two Democrats who do not work for Kennedy, closely resembles extensive changes enacted in the senator’s home state three years ago.

In many respects it adopts the most liberal approaches to health reform being discussed in Washington. Kennedy, for example, embraces a proposal to create a government-sponsored insurance program to compete directly with existing private insurance plans, according to one senior adviser who was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Split Between Democrats: The New York Times looks at the split between Kennedy, who is championing a public health plan, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who will probably play down the public option in favor of bipartisan support.

One possible compromise is what has become known as the trigger option — the public plan kicks in only if private insurance companies fail to make affordable coverage available to all Americans within a certain timeframe. It’s kind of difficult, however, not to argue that the timeframe has already expired. Robert Pear writes:

Passage of comprehensive health legislation this year is a top priority for Mr. Baucus and Mr. Kennedy, the chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. So they may be able to resolve their differences, aides said.

The split reflects not only political differences between the two men but also differences between their committees, racing to write the most ambitious health care legislation in the nation’s history.

Over all, Democrats on the Finance Committee tend to be more moderate than those on the health committee, which includes more Democrats who identify themselves as liberals or progressives. The two Senate panels are drafting separate bills that are to be merged before going to the Senate floor.

Meanwhile, on the House side, Rep. Charlie Rangel, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, said earlier this week, “It’s my political judgment a plan without the public option would not be able to pass the House.”

The Root of the Problem: Atul Gawande’s New Yorker story on the high cost of health care, told through the lens of a small Texas town, is drawing high praise.

American Prospect-turned-Washington-Post-blogger Ezra Klein calls it “the best article you’ll see this year on American health care — why it’s so expensive, why it’s so poor, what can be done.” Commenters seem to agree.

(Side note: Congrats to Klein on the move, but I’m sorry that his blog tagline went from “Momma said wonk you out” to “Economic and Domestic Policy, and Lots of It.” Nothing better at WaPo?)

Wonk on This: Health Wonk Review is a bi-weekly compendium of health policy blogs. This week’s round-up is posted at Boston Health News, a new-ish blog by freelance health and science writer Tinker Ready (I’m already in love with her name). Want to participate? Look here.

The FDA as Public Health Agency: Scott Hensley at Covering Health points to a New England Journal of Medicine article by new FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein. Hensley notes that this public health manifesto is supported by a single footnote — “a reference to a Supreme Court decision in 1969 that affirmed the FDA’s broad authority and its constant  ‘overriding purpose’: the protection of public health.”

Insurance That Comes With a Cost: “Is your medical insurance bad for your health? If you have a high-deductible plan, the answer may be yes,” begins this New York Times Patient Money column on the pitfalls of high deductibles. Walecia Konrad continues:

The investment firm Fidelity recently surveyed employees at various companies who had opted for a high-deductible health plan linked to a health savings account. About half of those workers said they or a family member had chosen not to seek medical care for minor ailments as many as four times in the last year to avoid paying the out-of-pocket expenses.

As any doctor will tell you, small health problems left untreated can become big problems, warns Kathleen Stoll, director of health policy at the health care advocacy group Families USA. “This is just one of the many high-deductible pitfalls consumers need to watch out for,” Ms. Stoll said.

Read on for more.

Being “Maddy”: Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote a beautiful piece about her relationship with her sons as she transitioned from male to female. Published as a New York Times “Modern Love” column, the essay was adapted from “The Book of Dads,” to be published in May by Ecco.

Determining Which Medical Therapies Work: “Good luck trying to learn what medical treatment works best to relieve low back pain, alleviate depression or prevent the spread of prostate cancer. The information isn’t available — to you or your doctor — because studies comparing potential treatments and how effective they are haven’t been done,” writes Judith Graham at the Chicago Tribune.

The story looks at the government’s plan to invest $1.1 billion in “comparative effectiveness” research and evaluate potential therapies head-to-head. Four medical experts weigh in on conditions they consider most deserving of research on comparative effectiveness. Rachel previously wrote about public input sought on research priorities.

The War Against Women: Writing at The New York Review of Books, Hilary Mantel discusses the four volumes of “From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World,” by Marilyn French. The collection is published by Feminist Press.

Words Matter: Feminist Peace Network has posted useful tips for reporting about domestic violence and sexual assault. It’s a good resource for bloggers, journalists and anyone writing about these issues.

Sticker Shock: “A new national poll, conducted by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, shows that what most uninsured people are willing to pay is a long way from what insurance really costs,” reports NPR’s “Morning Edition.”  “Two out of three uninsured Americans say they’d be willing to pay no more than $100 a month for coverage. But, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average individual health plan costs about $400 a month, and a family policy costs more than $1,000.”

When Accidents Happen: According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than half the pregnancies in the United States each year are unintended; poor women are four times as likely to have an unplanned pregnancy compared with higher-income women. NPR’s “Morning Edition” looks at the use of and access to contraceptives. Reporter Brenda Wilson notes that “the health system often throws up barriers to contraception, especially for young women who are the most vulnerable.” The story, however, focuses more on one woman’s situation.

Call for More Family Planning Aid: Dominique Soguel writes at Women’s eNews about a report released Tuesday calling for aggressive investment in family planning to curb population growth, poverty and maternal mortality. Five former directors of the population and reproductive health program of the U.S. Agency for International Development recommend the United States increase its spending to $1.2 billion in the next year’s funding round from $475 million in 2008.

Also from Women’s eNews: Five women will be recognized this week for their scientific discoveries.

“There is still a very big glass ceiling for women in science,” said Milbry Polk, director of Wings WorldQuest, which runs the awards. “You don’t find them in the history books. Women are left out. Their projects aren’t.”

Search Me: One of my favorite reads last week was Dahlia Lithwick explaining how Supreme Court justices can act like total dingbats:

When constitutional historians sit down someday to compile the definitive Supreme Court Concordance of Not Getting It, the entry directly next to Lilly Ledbetter (“Court fails utterly to understand realities of gender pay discrimination”) will be Savana Redding (“Court compares strip searches of 13-year-old girls to American Pie-style locker-room hijinks”). After today’s argument, it’s plain the court will overturn a 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion finding a school’s decision to strip-search a 13-year-old girl unconstitutional. That the school in question was looking for a prescription pill with the mind-altering force of a pair of Advil — and couldn’t be bothered to call the child’s mother first — hardly matters.

Read the rest.