What will Hillary Clinton do next? Doris Kearns Goodwin has some ideas. (Sneak preview: most of them involve another run for the White House.)
What do doulas assisting women giving birth in prison do? As Salon's Lynn Harris points out, they aren't around to "hold mothers' hands and offer lavender-scented hankies during contractions." Instead, doulas from the Birth Attendants, an Olympia-based group of doulas assisting births in Washington state, meet regularly with mothers prior to the birth, discussing women's anxieties about labor and about parenting in a challenging environment (at the Washington Corrections Center, where doulas can assist women in labor, some inmates can keep their children with them behind bars until the child is 2½). Doulas also provide sex ed and information about birth control. The Birth Attendants' Christy Hall has written for RH Reality Check on the challenges of mothering from behind bars.
Population Action International is on the Michael Gerson Watch. This time, Gerson is taking issue with Yale University President Richard Levin's suggestion that (in Gerson's words) "religious Americans who support pro-life restrictions on international family planning aid are as doctrinaire and exclusionary as Saudi extremists." Gerson goes on: "Pro-life Catholics and evangelicals? Wahhabi extremists? What's the difference?" PAI's Craig Lasher responds:
This hollow complaint is from the President Bush's former chief speech writer, who equated those who would advocate for providing contraception to HIV-positive women -- those who wish to avoid pregnancy and spreading HIV to their babies -- with those who would use abortion to prevent cleft lip, clubfoot, and bed-wetting and "'solve" the problems of poverty and disease by eliminating the poor and sick.
You might recall that Michael Gerson has been a thorn in the sexual and reproductive health advocate's side on more than one occasion. He's one of the only mainstream media voices paying any attention to PEPFAR; too bad the part he's playing in this drama is to further muddy the waters between family planning and abortion (reminder: no, PEPFAR money would not support abortion; yes, PEPFAR money would pay for contraception). And then there were his accusations that Obama doesn't "display a welcoming attitude to new life." Because Obama is in support of comprehensive sexuality education. Yes, that's logical!
Finally, Miriam at Feministing covers the debate within the American Psychological Association about whether to remove gender identity dysphoria from the DSM-V. Feministing's commenters note that while a diagnosis can be helpful in obtaining insurance coverage for the medication and medical procedures involved in transitioning, diagnosis is still pathologizing and should not be required for appropriate, sensitive and covered treatment. For more background context, check out this nuanced and thoughtful NPR story on therapeutic approaches to gender dysphoria in young children.
