The Guttmacher Institute yesterday released a new report detailing the number of new provisions states have enacted this year related to reproductive health and rights.

In the first half of 2012, states enacted 39 new restrictions on access to abortion. Guttmacher notes:

Although this is significantly lower than the record-breaking 80 restrictions that had been enacted by this point in 2011, it is nonetheless a higher number of restrictions than in any year prior to 2011. Most of the 39 new restrictions have been enacted in states that are generally hostile to abortion. For example, 14 of the new restrictions have been enacted in just three states—Arizona, Louisiana and South Dakota—that already had at least five such restrictions on the books. Fully 55% of U.S. women of reproductive age now live in one of the 26 states considered hostile to abortion rights.

On family planning funding, the news is somewhat more encouraging, as fewer states (compared to 2011) seem interested in efforts to defund family planning providers:

In 2011, eight states moved to disqualify at least some family planning providers from receipt of state family planning funds; so far this year, only three states (Arizona, Kansas and North Carolina) have done so. A court has blocked enforcement of the Kansas measure.

In an unequivocal gain for reproductive health, five states have moved to expand eligibility for family planning services under Medicaid.

As for sex education, however, we seem to be sliding back even further into abstinence-only land:

So far this year, Wisconsin and Tennessee have adopted measures promoting abstinence-until-marriage education. In April, Wisconsin rolled back its 2010 law mandating comprehensive sex education and substituted a measure requiring information about the benefits of abstinence until marriage; the 2012 law does not even identify discussion of contraception as a recommended topic.

Get more information on these trends and other specific legislative acts via the new report, “Laws Affecting Reproductive Health and Rights: State Trends at Midyear, 2012.”

Below is the text of President Obama’s remarks at Barnard College’s commencement ceremony (as provided by the White House Office of Communications). Let us know what you think! 

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much. (Applause.) Thank you. Please, please have a seat. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you, President Spar, trustees, President Bollinger. Hello, Class of 2012! (Applause.) Congratulations on reaching this day. Thank you for the honor of being able to be a part of it.

There are so many people who are proud of you — your parents, family, faculty, friends — all who share in this achievement. So please give them a big round of applause. (Applause.) To all the moms who are here today, you could not ask for a better Mother’s Day gift than to see all of these folks graduate. (Applause.)

I have to say, though, whenever I come to these things, I start thinking about Malia and Sasha graduating, and I start tearing up and — (laughter) — it’s terrible. I don’t know how you guys are holding it together. (Laughter.)

I will begin by telling a hard truth: I’m a Columbia college graduate. (Laughter and applause.) I know there can be a little bit of a sibling rivalry here. (Laughter.) But I’m honored nevertheless to be your commencement speaker today — although I’ve got to say, you set a pretty high bar given the past three years. (Applause.) Hillary Clinton — (applause) — Meryl Streep — (applause) — Sheryl Sandberg — these are not easy acts to follow. (Applause.)

But I will point out Hillary is doing an extraordinary job as one of the finest Secretaries of State America has ever had. (Applause.) We gave Meryl the Presidential Medal of Arts and Humanities. (Applause.) Sheryl is not just a good friend; she’s also one of our economic advisers. So it’s like the old saying goes — keep your friends close, and your Barnard commencement speakers even closer. (Applause.) There’s wisdom in that. (Laughter.)

Now, the year I graduated — this area looks familiar — (laughter) — the year I graduated was 1983, the first year women were admitted to Columbia. (Applause.) Sally Ride was the first American woman in space. Music was all about Michael and the Moonwalk. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do it! (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: No Moonwalking. (Laughter.) No Moonwalking today. (Laughter.)

We had the Walkman, not iPods. Some of the streets around here were not quite so inviting. (Laughter.) Times Square was not a family destination. (Laughter.) So I know this is all ancient history. Nothing worse than commencement speakers droning on about bygone days. (Laughter.) But for all the differences, the Class of 1983 actually had a lot in common with all of you. For we, too, were heading out into a world at a moment when our country was still recovering from a particularly severe economic recession. It was a time of change. It was a time of uncertainty. It was a time of passionate political debates.

You can relate to this because just as you were starting out finding your way around this campus, an economic crisis struck that would claim more than 5 million jobs before the end of your freshman year. Since then, some of you have probably seen parents put off retirement, friends struggle to find work. And you may be looking toward the future with that same sense of concern that my generation did when we were sitting where you are now.

Of course, as young women, you’re also going to grapple with some unique challenges, like whether you’ll be able to earn equal pay for equal work; whether you’ll be able to balance the demands of your job and your family; whether you’ll be able to fully control decisions about your own health.

And while opportunities for women have grown exponentially over the last 30 years, as young people, in many ways you have it even tougher than we did. This recession has been more brutal, the job losses steeper. Politics seems nastier. Congress more gridlocked than ever. Some folks in the financial world have not exactly been model corporate citizens. (Laughter.)

No wonder that faith in our institutions has never been lower, particularly when good news doesn’t get the same kind of ratings as bad news anymore. Every day you receive a steady stream of sensationalism and scandal and stories with a message that suggest change isn’t possible; that you can’t make a difference; that you won’t be able to close that gap between life as it is and life as you want it to be.

My job today is to tell you don’t believe it. Because as tough as things have been, I am convinced you are tougher. I’ve seen your passion and I’ve seen your service. I’ve seen you engage and I’ve seen you turn out in record numbers. I’ve heard your voices amplified by creativity and a digital fluency that those of us in older generations can barely comprehend. I’ve seen a generation eager, impatient even, to step into the rushing waters of history and change its course.

Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama on Monday said he was “confident” the Supreme Court will uphold the Affordable Care Act, adding that overturning it would be an “unprecedented, extraordinary step.”

I think it’s important — because I watched some of the commentary last week — to remind people that this is not an abstract argument. People’s lives are affected by the lack of availability of healthcare, the inaffordability of healthcare, their inability to get healthcare because of preexisting conditions.

The law that’s already in place has already given 2.5 million young people healthcare that wouldn’t otherwise have it. There are tens of thousands of adults with preexisting conditions who have healthcare right now because of this law. Parents don’t have to worry about their children not being able to get healthcare because they can’t be prevented from getting healthcare as a consequence of a preexisting condition. That is part of this law.

And, as of 2014, adults would also be protected. Women could no longer be denied coverage based on pre-existing conditions such as pregnancy or domestic violence. The law would also eliminate gender rating, in which women end up paying more than men for insurance coverage.

And there’s more, via Raising Women’s Voices: A top 10 list of benefits for women under health care reform; specifics on how the law is already helping young women; and more details on how it supports women of color.

Back to Obama’s remarks:

Millions of seniors are paying less for prescription drugs because of this law. Americans all across the country have greater rights and protections with respect to the insurance companies, and are getting preventive care because of this law.

So, that’s just the part that’s already been implemented. That doesn’t speak to the 30 million people who stand to gain coverage once it’s fully implemented in 2014.

And I think it’s important, I think the American people understand and I think the justices should understand that in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to ensure that people with preexisting conditions can actually get healthcare.

We have to wait until sometime in June to find out if Obama is right, but there’s been no shortage of guess work underway to determine 1.) whether the Supreme Court will uphold the individual mandate requiring almost every American to buy health insurance; and 2.) what will become if health care reform if it does not.

Writing in The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin notes that the “heavy burden” of justification for the mandate — which Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked Donald Verrilli, the solicitor general, to address — should instead be placed on the law’s challengers.

“The involvement of the federal government in the health-care market is not unprecedented; it dates back nearly fifty years, to the passage of Medicare and Medicaid,” writes Toobin. “The forty million uninsured Americans whose chances for coverage are riding on the outcome of the case are already entered ‘into commerce,’ because others are likely to pay their health-care costs.”

“Acts of Congress, like the health-care law, are presumed to be constitutional,” he later adds, “and it is—or should be—a grave and unusual step for unelected, unaccountable, life-tenured judges to overrule the work of the democratically elected branches of government.” Toobin then demonstrates how the justices’ questions reflected a troublesome meddling in policies set by Congress.

The Individual Mandate – A Not-So-Brief History
The individual mandate, as explained in this NPR story, has Republican roots dating back to 1989. Rachel Maddow discussed the party-line history during a recent segment, summed up as: “When Republicans proposed it — great idea, a conservative solution. When a Democrat has the idea, it’s socialism, tyranny and unconstitutional.”

Though Republicans circa 2012 would like Americans to believe the individual mandate is indeed “unprecedented,” Linda Greenhouse, who covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times for 30 years and who now writes a column on legal issues, applies the description to the politics of this debate:

What’s unprecedented is the singular determination of the Republicans both on Capitol Hill and in the statehouses to deprive President Obama of his major domestic achievement. Republican officeholders in all 26 states joined together in the case now known as United States Department of Health and Human Services v. State of Florida. In 22 of those states, the officeholder was the attorney general. In four states with Democratic attorneys general (Nevada, Wyoming, Iowa and Mississippi), Republican governors filed in their own names. If any of them noted any irony in the fact that not so long ago, the individual mandate was an idea cooked up by conservative policy wonks to counter more fundamental reform sought by the Clinton administration, they offer no sign.

The countless unprecedented things that Congress has done over the centuries were not, for that reason, unconstitutional. Social Security, Medicare, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (Erisa), and the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, the 1986 law passed to prevent hospitals from refusing to care for uninsured patients in acute distress, all come to mind. (From the perspective of today’s toxic politics, it’s a miracle that any of these laws actually got passed, but that’s a separate issue.) So there must be some problem with the Affordable Care Act other than “never before.”

There are other federal mandates involving health care already on the books, including the Medicare payroll tax on workers and employers, and the 1996 Newborns’ and Mothers’ Health Protection Act, which requires plans offering maternity coverage to pay for at least a 48-hour hospital stay (96 hours following a c-section).

Isn’t It Ironic (Don’t You Think)
Some Republicans who can’t help but fly into an apoplectic rage upon hearing the term “mandate” in the context of health care reform remain surprisingly calm when mandating medical procedures for women.

Yes, I’m referring to government-mandated ultrasounds. Currently, seven states — most recently Virginia — mandate that an abortion provider perform an ultrasound on a woman seeking to have an abortion. These states, along with more than a dozen others, also require the provider to ask the woman if she’d like to view the image.

The Guttmacher Institute notes: “Since routine ultrasound is not considered medically necessary as a component of first-trimester abortion, the requirements appear to be a veiled attempt to personify the fetus and dissuade a woman from obtaining an abortion. Moreover, an ultrasound can add significantly to the cost of the procedure.”

Once again, Maddow breaks down the Republican hypocrisy:

The Road Ahead
The question of whether other parts of the Affordable Care Act can proceed without the individual mandate will continue to be debated until June. If the mandate alone is struck, insurance premiums would likely increase because insurance companies won’t have the built-in benefit of a broader insurance pool.

“Republicans would blame Obama for making health insurance more expensive. Democrats would blame insurers for the higher premiums. In other words: Déjà vu and total gridlock,” writes Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico. Her story explains what’s likely to happen if the Supreme Court strikes just the mandate, or the mandate and insurance reforms, along with the political fall-out if most of the law falls or is upheld.

Josh Gerstein, also of Politico, looks at the effects beyond health care reform: “If the justices knock out key parts of the law or bring down the whole thing, the reverberations could be felt across the legal landscape for generations to come, radically reining in the scope of federal power, according to supporters of the law and others who closely track the high court. And if the justices decide the individual mandate is a constitutional overreach, these observers say, federal labor and environmental laws could be the next on the firing line.”

If you think that seems too dire a prediction, consider Dahlia Lithwick’s reaction to comments made by the court’s conservative justice’s last week: “[A]s the justices pondered whether the individual mandate—that part of the Affordable Care Act that requires most Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty—is constitutional, we got a window into the freedom some of the justices long for. And it is a dark, dark place.”

Those who would welcome the disintegration of health care reform include The Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon. He told NPR that if the entire law were to go away, “we would have just dodged this whole nasty debate over religious freedom and abortion.”

Meaning: There would be no increased access to preventive health care such as contraception, breastfeeding support, and screening for breast and cervical cancers and HIV. But hey, women’s health is so darn offensive when you get down to it, better to just cast it off. Thanks, but we’ve been there.

On the other hand, maybe a defeat at the hands of the Supreme Court will open new doors, for everyone.

* * * * * * * * *

Additional Resources
- The National Women’s Law Center posted a short video explaining the legal challenges, why it thinks the law is constitutional, and what women could lose if the law is struck down.
- Jessica Gonzales-Rojas of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health explains more here.
- Kaiser Health News coverage of the two-year anniversary of health care reform, from all angles. Plus, a timeline of major implementation milestones and the legal questions involved in the Supreme Court’s review.
- Audio excerpts of arguments challenging the constitutionality of the 2010 health care law are posted on the NYT website, along with reporters’ analysis.

Recent coverage of healthcare reform has focused on contraceptive coverage, but another aspect of the Affordable Care Act also deserves our attention as a potential benefit for women everywhere – attention to environmental issues that may contribute to illness.

The healthcare reform legislation included a requirement that a council on prevention be created, and that the council develop a national prevention and health promotion strategy.

The resulting strategy was released last summer, and includes a section on healthy and safe community environments, which recommends attention be paid to pollutants in our air, land, and water, and points out disparities in pollution exposure. Lead exposure, environmental triggers of asthma, safe neighborhoods for walking, and job-related hazards are all noted as environmental hazards that can make people less healthy.

From the report:

Safe air, land, and water are fundamental to a healthy community environment. Implementing and enforcing environmental standards and regulations, monitoring pollution levels and human exposures, and considering the risks of pollution in decision making can all improve health and the quality of the environment. For example, air quality standards, improved fuel efficiency and use of cleaner fuels, and transportation choices that reduce dependency on automobiles all improve air quality and health…Monitoring and research to understand the extent of people’s exposure to environmental hazards, the extent of disparities in exposures and risks from environmental hazards and the impact of these exposures on health, and identifying how to reduce exposures, especially among vulnerable populations, will inform future efforts.

Mary Ann Swissler wrote about the prevention strategy recently for the Fort Worth Weekly, including more detailed discussion and her suggestions for making environmental prevention work.

For further reading, see our Environmental and Occupational Health pages.

This week, Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury strip is taking on abortion, Texas-style – the state’s forced ultrasound bill has taken effect, to much less national attention that that of the recent Virginia forced ultrasound bill.

Because the law requires providers to describe the fetus and play the heartbeat, physicians have indicated that “they almost always must use the transvaginal probe to pick up the heartbeat and describe the fetus in the early stages of pregnancy.”

Trudeau is expected to refer to these non-medical, forced vaginal probes as rape – a sentiment many women have expressed in regard to such bills – and stood up for this position in an interview with The Washington Post:

Texas’s HB-15 isn’t hard to explain: The bill says that in order for a woman to obtain a perfectly legal medical procedure, she is first compelled by law to endure a vaginal probe with a hard, plastic 10-inch wand. The World Health Organization defines rape as “physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration — even if slight — of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object.” You tell me the difference.

Although Doonesbury has a long history of tackling political issues, focusing on abortion was apparently “too much” for some newspapers – the LA Times is moving the strip to the op ed section, and The Oregonian is among the papers that have refused to run it.

The Center for Reproductive Rights is asking supporters to send a quick message of thanks to newspapers who are carrying the abortion-themed installments of the strip, which should run from today through Sunday. The Center has previously filed a lawsuit challenging the Texas requirement.

The strip can be viewed online; today’s installment greets a woman seeking abortion at a Texas clinic, and invites her to wait in the “shaming room,” where “a middle-aged, male state Legislator” will be with her in a moment.

Meanwhile, Texas is expected to lose federal funding to its Medicaid Women’s Health Program which provides family planning and health screening services, because the state has moved to exclude Planned Parenthood from receiving any funding to provide those services.

See also:

Just when we think Rush Limbaugh couldn’t possibly sink lower, he takes on Georgetown University Law student Sandra Fluke for testifying about the importance of insurance coverage for contraceptives. During his radio show this week, Limbaugh used the most offensive language he can get away with on-air: He called Fluke a slut.

The good news is at least two advertisers so far (Sleep Train and Sleep Number) have pulled their commercials off Limbaugh’s show (a petition is underway to get ProFlowers to do the same). Faculty, administrators and students from Georgetown and other law schools released a statement applauding Fluke’s “strength and grace” in the face of the attacks (really: Fluke is unflappable in every TV appearance, consistently taking the high road). President Obama called Fluke to thank her for speaking out on behalf of women — adding that her parents should be proud.

And we had the pleasure of reading Jen Doll’s take on Limbaugh, published at The Atlantic Wire:

If Rush Limbaugh slut-shames you, you’re doing something right, because he is pulling out what he imagines to be his most hurtful, vicious, full-barreled defense strategy against a woman. If you call a woman a “slut,” you see, she will cower in a corner and hide because that is akin to calling her ugly, or worthless. At least that’s what small-thinking men (and sometimes women) assume; women would rather die than be dubbed such a thing! Slut-shaming is a tool of cowards who want to make women feel bad because, truthfully, they’re afraid of what those women might do given a platform like, say, the floor of Congress. And this means Limbaugh is not just a bully, but also an über-troll, exploiting his own drummed-up outrage and the Internet’s eagerness to amplify it. Which only makes Sandra Fluke, and all of the thoughtful people out there fighting for women’s contraceptive rights — who, for the record, aren’t resorting to name-calling or troll tractics — look even better.

Since 1994, when the Violence Against Women Act was first signed into law, support for this law to combat domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking has usually been a bipartisan issue. Not so in 2012, when not a single Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted in favor of a re-authorization last month.

At issue are provisions that call for protections for LGBT individuals, expand the availability of visas for undocumented immigrants who are victims of domestic abuse, and provide limited jurisdiction to Native American tribes to prosecute Indian and non-Indian offenders.

As we wait for Congress’s next steps on VAWA, it’s worth noting the work being done at the state level in Massachusetts. This week, Jane Doe Inc., held its fifth annual White Ribbon Day, a men’s initiative that pledges to be part of the solution in ending violence against women.

As the website for White Ribbon Day notes:

We’re taking our cue from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that speaks to how violence against women is a human rights violation and how these abuses around the world are obstacles to efforts for peace and gender equality in all societies.

In addition, we link importantly with The United Nations Secretary General’s new campaign UNited to End Violence Against Women, which is celebrated on International Women’s Day, March 8th.

More than 300 people attended the White Ribbon Day event on March 1 at the State House. Phallacies, a UMass Amherst student group that challenges notions of masculinity and works to end violence against women, took part.

“I always felt like I was forced to act a certain way, even if that was against the way I actually felt,” said UMass Amherst sophomore Chris Lowe. “Like why do I have to treat women [negatively] to be accepted by society?”

“My father, so he was abusive to my mother,” Lowe added. “But the lesson is to break out of the social roles that we’re put in as men.”

UMass “Phallacies” men against violence: wwlp.com

By a close vote of 51 to 48, the Senate today blocked a measure that would have allowed employers and health insurance companies to deny coverage for contraceptives and other medical services for any religious or moral objection.

The vote was on an amendment proposed by Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, who sought to insert the largest political wedge possible between an individual and her doctor. The amendment would have allowed employers and insurers to refuse to cover “specific items or services” if coverage would be “contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer or other entity offering the plan.” Here’s how that proposal could have played out, as well as the effect it may have had on the LGBT community.

The amendment was in response the current debate over the president’s plan to mandate coverage, with no co-pay, for health services the independent Institute of Medicine categorizes as “preventive” — including contraception.

Republicans balked at the compromise President Obama put forth last month in an effort to address concerns, raised loudly by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, that nonprofit church-affiliated organizations, such as hospitals and universities, shouldn’t be forced to provide birth control coverage to employees — even though those organizations receive public funding and employ people of all faiths. (Churches and other explicitly religious organizations were already exempt.) Under the work-around, insurers would directly cover contraception. Critics were not appeased.

According to a tracking poll released today by Kaiser Family Foundation, 6 in 10 Americans, including Catholics, support requiring health plans to supply free contraceptives as a preventive benefit for women.

The debate today was heated, with many Democrats displaying frustration that the country seems stuck in a half-century old debate about birth control. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont summed up the crux of the problem quite well:

“This attack is grossly unfair, and I hope that men will stand with women in the fight to protect this very basic right. Let me add my strong belief that if the United States Senate had 83 women and 17 men rather than 83 men and 17 women that a bill like this would never even make it to the floor.”

Plus: Some Republicans seem shocked (shocked!) that contraception is considered a preventive health care service. For an in-depth look at why this is the case, take a look at this article by Adam Sonfield that appeared in the Spring 2010 edition of Guttmacher Policy Review. Here’s an excerpt:

[...] Healthy People 2010, describes the importance of family planning services in terms of preventing the social, economic and medical costs of unintended pregnancy. In this context, it is the medical costs that are most relevant: “Medically, unintended pregnancies are serious in terms of the lost opportunity to prepare for an optimal pregnancy, the increased likelihood of infant and maternal illness, and the likelihood of abortion.…The mother is less likely to seek prenatal care in the first trimester and more likely not to obtain prenatal care at all. She is less likely to breastfeed and more likely to expose the fetus to harmful substances, such as tobacco or alcohol. The child of such a pregnancy is at greater risk of low birth weight, dying in its first year, being abused, and not receiving sufficient resources for healthy development.”

The CDC cites similar reasons for its own work to prevent unintended pregnancy and for labeling family planning as one of the top 10 public health achievements of the 20th century. And, indeed, there is clear evidence that contraception is effective preventive care. For example, publicly funded contraceptive services and supplies alone help women in the United States avoid nearly two million unintended pregnancies each year. In the absence of such services (from family planning centers and from doctors serving Medicaid patients), estimated U.S. levels of unintended pregnancy, abortion and unintended birth would be nearly two-thirds higher among women overall and nearly twice as high among poor women. The evidence is just as clear internationally: In 2008, use of modern contraceptives helped women prevent 188 million unintended pregnancies and, by doing so, prevented some 1.2 million newborn deaths and 230,000 maternal deaths and saved tens of millions of years of productive life (related article, page 12).

It is no surprise, therefore, that family planning was one of the five priority areas listed under “preventive health services” in the first Healthy People in 1979 and has been a focus area in every edition.

The link contained within this excerpt leads to another excellent article, “Family Planning and Safe Motherhood: Dollars and Sense,” that provides more of a global overview. For a concise summary of the key benefits worldwide, view Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony this week on U.S. funding for international family planning.

Here’s the key takeaway from Clinton: “Global estimates indicate that by helping women space births and avoid unintended pregnancies, family planning has the potential of preventing 25 percent of the maternal and child deaths in the developing world. Family planning is the best way we have to prevent unintended pregnancies and abortion.”

You know when you’re feverish and you overhear bits and pieces from the news and it all swirls together in headache-fueled song? That’s how I spent a good part of February. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that covering prenatal testing has been called into question, or that Virginia legislators thought it would be cool to mandate transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions — at least until Gov. Robert McDonnell saw his VP hopes sink lower every time the word “transvaginal” was mentioned (the Virginia House passed an amended bill today requiring external ultrasounds instead).

At one point I assumed Komen must be behind all of this — a PR maneuver to distract from the Planned Parenthood blowback — but that, too, was the fever talking. Reality was far harsher: Republicans had set the cultural clocks back to 1950.

Consider this bit of political history, courtesy of Ann Gerhart:

“We need to take sensationalism out of this topic so that it can no longer be used by militants who have no real knowledge of the voluntary nature of the program but, rather, are using it as a political stepping stone,” said George H.W. Bush. “If family planning is anything, it is a public health matter.”

Title X, the law he sponsored that still funds family planning for the poor, passed the House by a vote of 298 to 32. It passed the Senate unanimously. A Republican president, Richard Nixon, enthusiastically signed it.

That was 1970.

Cable news channels played into the time warp, inviting almost twice as many men as women onto news programs to discuss women’s access to contraception — a huge topic thanks to a very small group, the U.S. Conference of Bishops. Jennifer Pozner, executive director of Women in Media and News, gives those media figures some depressing context:

The twitterverse seemed shocked to learn that female experts were sought out as commentators only 38 percent of the time on a story about women’s health. As a media critic, I was surprised, too—because that’s actually a higher percentage of women’s voices than typically heard across all news categories, not just in stories involving women’s bodies.

To understand institutional sexism within the media, look no further than the systematic sidelining of women’s perspectives in corporate news and public affairs programming. Women are a paltry 14 percent of all guests on influential, agenda-setting Sunday morning news shows on ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and CNN—more than half of whose episodes feature no female guests at all (White House Project). The disparity is just as stark in nightly news, where women are 19 and 27 percent of cable and network news sources, respectively (Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism).

A new report from the Women’s Media Center paints a similarly bleak picture.

I’ve been frustrated, too, by the lack of useful information. Often (mostly) male anchors and guests ruminate over the politics of women’s health without bothering to fact-check the pompous statements and accusations, letting misinformation sit uncontested.

But there are signs of relief. While print/online publications and public radio are doing a better job than television at presenting the facts (see Erika Christakis’s smart column in Time magazine on the birth control debate and the rise of unintended pregnancies, and Irin Carmon’s longer analysis in Salon), TV news has shown some improvement.

In the wake of GOP candidate Rick Santorum’s harmful claims, I was grateful to see Marjorie Greenfield, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University Hospitals Medical Group and a longtime contributor to “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” address the importance of insurance coverage for prenatal testing Tuesday on MSNBC. She explained the difference between routine screening tests, such as ultrasounds, and more specific diagnostic tests, such as amniocentesis, which can determine whether a fetus has certain genetic conditions. Most women who are offered amniocentesis are carrying healthy fetuses, she said, so in the vast majority of cases, testing provides reassurance.

Greenfield noted that when she discusses amniocentesis to her patients, some are certain they would terminate a pregnancy if the fetus has a genetic anomaly such as Down Syndrome; others are sure they would not. In the middle are women who don’t have a clear position but who want more information so they can decide, with their families and physicians, the best course of action. Families may turn to support groups or specialists to learn how to prepare for a child with particular health challenges, or, if the genetic anomaly is fatal, arrange for hospice care.

Amniocentesis is expensive, often costing several thousand dollars. If it were not covered by insurance, many women would be unable to obtain the facts they need to make informed decisions.

That brings us to class issues that are rarely discussed, even though the intersections of race, class and gender are unavoidable in most any discussion about women’s health. So let’s cheer for Melissa Harris-Perry, a gifted debater, who is now hosting her own two-hour news program Saturday and Sunday mornings on MSNBC. Harris-Perry made her public intellectual name as frequently the only pundit to complicate solely political horse-race debates by providing a broader social context.

Additionally, Pozner notes that Harris-Perry is “the first black progressive woman to ever solo-host her own news and politics show on a major corporate TV news outlet.” And she isn’t giving up her day job — the Tulane professor is also “the first scholar to teach a full course-load during the week, and grill politicians and pundits on live TV over the weekends.”

This past weekend featured a discussion of gender roles and positions of power in religion and in Congress. Harris-Perry started with a wonderfully nerdy look at how schema affects our attitudes and expectations of who gets to be a leader — and the importance of changing the picture. And it might be good to start with our House — and Senate. Consider: Women comprise only 17 percent of the U.S. Senate and 16.8 percent of the House membership.

Harris-Perry also took on Virginia’s anti-women push — three bills that deal women a losing hand, including the aforementioned transvaginal probes for women seeking to have an abortion; Medicaid restrictions that would force poor women to carry pregnancies to term when the fetus has an incapacitating deformity or mental deficiency; and personhood legislation that could criminalize contraception and outlaw abortion.

There is quite a good amount of organizing going on against these and other attacks on women’s rights and health — including a silent protest this week at the Virginia state capitol and this-just-in news about a march on Washington on April 28.

A number of women’s health groups have formed the Coalition to Protect Women’s Healthcare. It’s new, and it will be interesting to see where it goes. Member groups are organizing visibility events this week at the district offices of members of Congress — especially those who have been promoting religious employer exemptions. You can visit the site for facts about contraception and sign a pledge calling for insurance coverage of birth control, no matter where women work.

Visit Pinterest much? Check out The War on Women page, started by Hello Ladies, for a running catalog of stories and images (love the description: “Ladies, we are under attack. Stay informed. Stay vocal. Run for office.”).

And there’s much needed humor, and not just from the typically awesome Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. See The Second City’s Network take on contraception hearings below.

Laughter really is the best medicine.

This past week has been an absolute whirlwind of “What the….?!?” with ongoing attempts by Republicans to push back against women’s access to contraception and choice. If you’re catching up now, here’s some good reading:

At ThinkProgress, Democratic Women Boycott House Contraception Hearing After Republicans Prevent Women From Testifying. Right, who needs women at a hearing about women’s health and access to medications?

The Democrats wanted to have one woman testify about the effects on women of lacking access to contraceptive coverage, but Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa refused to let her. You can view the intended testimony online.

Pelosi got it right when she asked in frustration: “Five men are testifying on women’s health. Where are the women? Imagine having a panel on women’s health and they don’t have any women on the panel. Duh?”

Santorum supporter Foster Friess told Andrea Mitchell that “back in (his) day,” women put an aspirin between their knees and that worked pretty well for contraception — the implication being that women could just keep their legs together (or feign a headache?). He’s since tried to say it was just a bad joke, but I think we know where that sentiment comes from — the insistence that women should not have sex if they don’t want to get pregnant (which also completely ignores the non-contraceptive uses for hormonal birth control).

At Slate, Virginia’s Proposed Ultrasound Law Is an Abomination. That state’s legislature passed a law requiring that women seeking an abortion undergo ultrasound imaging showing the fetal heartbeat and gestational age prior to the abortion. There is no medical purpose — just a shaming one. And since most abortions are done within the first trimester, the information required would necessitate a transvaginal ultrasound in which a condom-covered probe is inserted in the vagina. Thus, Virginia has mandated that women seeking abortions must be forced to have an object inserted in their vaginas for no medical reason.

RH Reality Check also covered this Virginia law, in State-Sanctioned Rape: Trans-Vaginal Ultrasound Laws in Virginia, Texas, and Iowa. I would just change this to “State-Mandated,” because I think it lets the legislature off too easy with “sanctioned” — they are explicitly demanding it. The story has a useful illustration of what it really means to get a transvaginal ultrasound.

Have other links we should read? Leave ‘em in the comments.

Last night, Rachel Maddow took on Republican anti-birth control, anti-abortion efforts around the states, including really egregious legislation in Virginia that would force women to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds if they want an abortion. This would be the state mandating that women have an object placed in their vaginas, for no medical purpose, with no opportunity to refuse consent if they wanted an abortion, and no opportunity for their healthcare provider to decide if the imaging was necessary.

Just check out the clip:

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A transcript is available on the website.

Today, the White House released a document addressing recent controversy over one preventive service covered under the Affordable Care Act – birth control. Under the Act, insurance plans are required to provide coverage for contraception without charging a co-pay, co-insurance or a deductible. U.S. Catholic bishops objected to the coverage, claiming it was a violation of their religious beliefs.

The statement indicates:

The policy also ensures that if a woman works for a religious employer with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide, pay for or refer for contraception coverage, but her insurance company will be required to directly offer her contraceptive care free of charge.

In other words, Catholic or other religiously affiliated organizations get to say they selected health insurance plans for their employees that do not cover contraception, while those employees can still receive no-cost contraception directly via the insurance providers. Whether these costs will be covered by the insurance companies directly, or perhaps reimbursed to those companies via Medicaid, is not clear, and we’ll need to watch the implementation to make sure this ends up working for women.

The provision already had exemptions for religiously-focused organizations like churches. At issue were the religiously affiliated organizations such as Catholic hospitals and universities, which typically employee people from a variety of (or no) faith traditions. Many such organizations already offer contraception coverage to employees, and a number of states require employer-based plans to provide this coverage.

According to one recent survey, the majority of Catholic Americans (52%) say religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals should have to provide coverage that includes contraception. A 2011 Guttmacher report indicated that, “Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same, 98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women.”

Here’s Rachel Maddow talking about the issue on Wednesday, placing it in the context of the current elections:

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by Ellen Shaffer and Judy Norsigian

This week, we all learned a lot about Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and Planned Parenthood, and breast cancer. Now that Komen has caved (sort of; Planned Parenthood’s response), we might start to learn what it will take to mobilize an outcry to really stop the attacks on women’s health.

As Komen was committing a huge PR failure, it became clear via Facebook, Twitter and a new Tumblr site, Planned Parenthood Saved Me, that many women value and rely on Planned Parenthood for breast cancer exams and other preventive health services. A slam-dunk week for Planned Parenthood.

We need to make it a slam-dunk month. What Komen, and the evangelicals, and Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns, who launched the pointless political inquiry, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are really mad at Planned Parenthood about is this:

Part of what they do is help people plan. Parenthood. You know. They support birth control. In some cases, they provide it. Like your corner drugstore, but better.

And this week, the bishops are howling about it because the Obama administration refused to grant a broad religious exemption to contraception coverage.

Never mind that virtually all Catholics use birth control, that the Church itself only began to oppose it in 1968, that the Pope recently conceded that condoms are useful, and approved condom use for stopping the transmission of AIDS.

Never mind that most Catholic-affiliated hospitals, schools and charities cover birth control in their health plans — health plans that come out of the wages employees earn themselves.

Never mind that undergraduate and graduate students are fighting for coverage — and are still being denied, even for medical reasons.

Close to every cent the Church has not spent settling lawsuits against priests who sexually molested children has gone into this week’s media campaign to rile up opposition to covering birth control.

So far they’re doing a pretty effective job of it. The Obama administration is standing firm, but Congress is still on the warpath.

You can send a message that you stand against attacks on birth control and with Planned Parenthood. The organization just launched a TV ad campaign in support of contraception coverage (watch below).

And learn more about the men behind the war on women. They’re not going away anytime soon.

Ellen Shaffer is co-director of the Trust Women/Silver Ribbon Campaign, a project of the Center for Policy Analysis. Judy Norsigian is co-founder and executive director of Our Bodies Ourselves.

The fallout over the decision by Susan G. Komen for the Cure to stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood affiliates reflects a growing anger across the country over the intrusion of political ideology in matters concerning women’s health.

It’s fair to say the well-funded foundation had not thought through, or vastly underestimated, the criticism it would receive for making a thinly veiled political decision to cut off funding for breast-screening exams for low-income women. And based on the level of disapproval it’s facing, it may be sometime before Komen can recover.

In the meantime, its decision may well be remembered for activating people who, up until now, may not have given much thought to the right-wing influence on women’s health care.

It’s surprisingly easy for people to separate politics from their own lives. While they might believe certain political decisions are not very smart, they are unlikely to speak up if it does not affect them. But the breast cancer community, comprised of women recently diagnosed, survivors, family members and advocates of more research funding, has long been portrayed as one big family — largely by Komen, which sponsors the very popular and very pink fundraising walks.

For Komen to cut out some of that family — because of pressure from anti-abortion activists who refuse to acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s delivery of vital health care services — simply strikes too close to home.

Deana Rohlinger, an associate professor at Florida State University who studies women’s groups, said on NPR’s “All Things Considered” this week, “It’s not a secret by any stretch of the imagination that Planned Parenthood does abortion. That’s not brand new information. But for some people, that Komen is getting politically involved is.”

The truth is that Komen has been politically involved for some time. OBOS Executive Director Judy Norsigian, in an interview on “Morning Edition,” noted that Komen’s founder and CEO Nancy Brinker has been a longtime Republican supporter and fundraiser, “and on many occasions has supported policies that most supporters of Komen probably wouldn’t approve of.” Some of those policies are outlined in this posting at Daily Kos.

But it took pulling money for breast cancer screening from one of the most popular organizations serving women of all backgrounds to blow open Komen’s politics.

According to news reports, Komen’s president, Elizabeth Thompson, told Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a phone call in December that it would not be renewing its grants. The funding totaled around $680,000 in 2011 and $580,000 in 2010 for breast-cancer screening and other breast-health services offered at 19 Planned Parenthood affiliates.

The reason given was that the charity had adopted new rules barring grants to organizations under investigation by local, state or federal authorities, and Planned Parenthood was under House investigation. It is, of course, very easy to open an investigation without merit. In this case, Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida launched an inquiry last fall to determine whether Planned Parenthood spent public money on abortions, which is prohibited by federal law. The inquiry was seen as a far-reaching political ploy to discredit the organization, after Republicans failed to cut off Planned Parenthood funding.

Reps. Henry Waxman and Diana DeGette, both Democrats, sent a letter to Stearns questioning the basis for the investigation, noting in part that federal audits “have not identified any pattern of misuse of federal funds, illegal activity, or other abuse that would justify a broad and invasive congressional investigation.”

It struck some as no coincidence that Komen had recently hired a new senior vice-president for public policy, Karen Handel. During her failed run for governor of Georgia in 2010, Handel described herself as “staunchly and unequivocally pro-life” and pledged to eliminate grant funding for breast and cervical cancer screening at Planned Parenthood.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reports that the no-investigations rule was, according to “three sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process,” created specifically as an excuse to dump Planned Parenthood, and that decision was driven by Handel. A former employee talked on the record about the resignation of Mollie Williams, Komen’s top public health official, who left the organization in protest:

John Hammarley, who until recently served as Komen’s senior communications adviser and who was charged with managing the public relations aspects of Komen’s Planned Parenthood grant, said that Williams believed she could not honorably serve in her position once Komen had caved to pressure from the anti-abortion right. “Mollie is one of the most highly respected and ethical people inside the organization, and she felt she couldn’t continue under these conditions,” Hammarley said. “The Komen board of directors are very politically savvy folks, and I think over time they thought if they gave in to the very aggressive propaganda machine of the anti-abortion groups, that the issue would go away. It seemed very short-sighted to me.”

Lessons on Media Strategy

From a PR perspective, it’s been a disaster for Komen. Previously, the foundation has had to deal with a small number of anti-abortion activists who dismiss all of Planned Parenthood’s vital healthcare services (pdf) out of hand because a small percentage of its work is abortion-related (3 percent of services in 2010 — cancer screening and prevention accounted for 14.5 percent) and who don’t understand how grants work. Some of them erronesously believe abortion raises a woman’s risk of breast cancer, though numerous studies and the National Cancer Institute have affirmed it does not.

Now Komen must confront the wrath of its own supporters, many of whom have raised thousands of dollars for Komen over the years and won’t stand for political shenanigans. Based on interviews and comments left on Komen’s discussion forum and elsewhere online, many of those women who have developed strong ties with the breast cancer community are looking to send their money elsewhere.

Kivi Leroux Miller, a nonprofit communications strategist, told Politico that Komen “pretty much cut their fundraising support in half.”

“I don’t think they meant to make a huge political statement, but it was extremely naïve of them to think this wasn’t hyper-political,” Miller continued. “They have dove head first into the abortion debate — in fact, they fell into the pool — and whoever is doing their communications doesn’t know how to swim.”

Miller has more media analysis on her site in a post titled “The Accidental Rebranding of Komen for the Cure.” Social media consultant Beth Kanter has written a good summary of online responses, “Komen Kan Kiss My Mammagram, PinActivism, and Newsjacking for a Cause.” Kanter also set up a Pininterest board, “Komen Kan Kiss My Mammogram,” named after Allison Fine’s fundraising campaign for Planned Parenthood. Kanter invited other women to contribute, and the result is fabulous collage of pro-Planned Parenthood posters, videos and news.

In another brilliant stroke of online activism, media technologist Deanna Zandt yesterday launched a Tumblr site for people to submit stories about how Planned Parenthood literally saved or changed their lives by providing birth control and affordable preventive health care. Here’s one of the many stories you’ll see:

I had gone back to school in my late 20s and was temporarily uninsured. I went to Planned Parenthood in Manhattan for my yearly checkup and contraceptives. They detected abnormal cervical cells that were precancerous, and soon afterward they performed cryosurgery to remove the cells. The fee was something this temporarily poor college student could afford. I remained loyal to PP for my annual checkup. Several years later, they found a breast lump and guided me to further screening (by then, I was insured again). I was fortunate that it turned out to be nothing, but my knowledge that PP would be there for me no matter what put my mind at ease during that week between tests.

Planned Parenthood has benefited greatly, in funding as well as good will. It received nearly $400,000 in donations in the first 24 hours after the Komen news broke. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday he would personally give Planned Parenthood a $250,000 matching gift, donating $1 for ever new dollar Planned Parenthood raises up to $250,000. For more donation and activism opportunities, Katha Pollitt has a nice round-up at the end of her wonderfully titled column, “The Komen Foundation Pinkwashes Anti-choicers, Punks Planned Parenthood.”

Critiques Against Komen Go Beyond Political Bias

Komen seemed to completely misjudge the extent of the fallout, refusing to make spokespeople available Tuesday and failing to respond quickly on Facebook or Twitter. Brinker, Komen’s founder, finally appeared in a video posted to YouTube late Wednesday, terming the criticisms a “dangerous distraction.” She said the decision resulted from a review of grants and standards and pledged that the changes in grantmaking would enable Komen to ultimately help more women. Brinker also said Komen would “never turn our backs on women who need us the most.”

That remains debatable. While the public outcry stems from learning that Komen currently is not acting in the best interest of women’s health, its critics have long questioned whether the enormous amount of money Komen raises is put to good use. For instance, Komen only recently decided to start looking at the environmental causes of breast cancer — something groups like Breast Cancer Action and Silent Spring Institute have long advocated for.

In recent years, there’s been growing criticism of Komen’s ties to companies that don pink ribbons each year while developing products that contain carcinogens and increase cancer risks. (Remember the mocked “Buckets for the Cure” hookup with Kentucky Fried Chicken?) This practice, known as pinkwashing, sparked BCA’s Think Before Your Pink campaign. As Barbara Brenner, former BCA director, told NPR in 2010: “If shopping could cure breast cancer, it would be cured by now.”

In addition, Komen’s screening guidelines are at odds with recommendations put forth in 2009 by the U.S. Preventive Services Taskforce — guidelines that OBOS explained in detail back then and fully supports. Komen’s promotion of certain drugs used to treat breast cancer has also come under scrutiny.

“In the past, they’ve let women down by insisting that the FDA should continue to approve Avastin as an effective treatment for breast cancer when new evidence sadly showed, that it’s not,” Cindy Pearson, executive director of the National Women’s Health Network, said on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” “They’ve also insisted that screening for breast cancer start at a young age and be very frequent when evidence shows it’s not that much of a slam dunk anymore.”

Writing in The Atlantic, Linda Hirshman raises another question:

In a ghastly coincidence, the same day Komen pulled the money from Planned Parenthood because Stearns thought they were spending federal funds on abortions, the Journal of the America Medical Association published a damning study that almost half of women receiving second surgeries after lumpectomies didn’t need the procedure. Painful, disfiguring, unnecessary surgery. At least three of the four sites studied in the JAMA report — the University of Vermont, Kaiser Permanente Colorado, and the Marshfield Clinic — has a relationship with the Komen Foundation. Kaiser Permanente is a “corporate campaign partner,” the University of Vermont received a research grant, the Central Wisconsin Komen affiliate sponsors programs at the Marshfield Clinic. Maybe Komen should concentrate their granting criteria on whether the recipients are actually helping cancer patients.

But for now, the spotlight is on Komen’s politics.

The AP’s David Crary spoke with Patrick Hurd, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia, a recipient of a 2010 grant from Komen. His wife, Betsi, has participated in several Komen for the Cure fundraising races and is currently battling breast cancer.

“We’re kind of reeling,” Hurd said. “It sounds almost trite, going through this with Betsi, but cancer doesn’t care if you’re pro-choice, anti-choice, progressive, conservative,” Hurd said. “Victims of cancer could care less about people’s politics.”

Unless those holding the purse strings play politics with cancer.

Our Bodies Ourselves is one of 42 partners in the Trust Women/Silver Ribbon campaign, a project to increase the visibility of pro-choice messages.

This week, the campaign has placed banners along Market Street in San Francisco to “spark conversations and to help build momentum and solidarity among supporters of women’s rights, equality and autonomy and access to comprehensive health care, including reproductive health care services.”

The banners display messages like “Reproductive Rights are Human Rights,” “Her Decision, Her Health,” and “U.S. Out of My Uterus,” and include related banners from the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights, SisterSong/Trust Black Women, Catholics for Choice, NARAL-ProChoice California, and Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific. More photos of the banners in place around San Francisco are online, and more coverage is provided at Our Silver Blog.

Look for more activity later this month – during Trust Women Week, January 20-27, a virtual march will be held with MoveOn to express support for reproductive health, rights, and justice, and to send pro-choice messages to Washington.