Hillary Clinton: HHS Rule Could Block Care for Women

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Cecile Richards co-authored an opinion piece in the New York Times today warning that an impending HHS regulation could give medical practitioners "a free pass to deny access to contraception:"

Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception.

Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.

The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD’s and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.

The rule would also allow providers to refuse to participate in unspecified “other medical procedures” that contradict their religious beliefs or moral convictions. This, too, could be interpreted as a free pass to deny access to contraception.

Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of “other medical procedures.” Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription?

The Bush administration argues that the rule is designed to protect a provider’s conscience. But where are the protections for patients?

Death in Birth: Over 500,000 Women Die Every Year Giving Birth

Today Time takes a look at the struggle to keep mothers from dying during childbirth.  While the Western world takes safe childbirth for granted somewhere in the world a woman dies giving birth about once every minute:

In some poor nations, dying in childbirth is so common that almost everyone has known a victim. Take Sierra Leone, a West African nation with just 6.3 million people: women there have a 1 in 8 chance of dying in childbirth during their lifetime. The same miserable odds apply in Afghanistan. In the U.S., by contrast, the lifetime chance that a woman will die in childbirth is about 1 in 4,800; in Britain, 1 in 8,200; and in Sweden, 1 in 17,400.

What is truly alarming is that this number has not changed in more than two decades in the world's poorest nations:

For here is the truly ghastly reality of maternal mortality: in 20 years--two decades that have seen spectacular medical breakthroughs--the ratio of maternal deaths to babies born has barely budged in poor countries. To be sure, maternal health has seen advances, with new drugs to treat deadly postpartum bleeding and pregnancy-related anemia. But in many places, such gains are dwarfed by a multitude of problems: scattershot care, low pay for health workers and a scarcity of midwives and doctors.

One of the United Nations' eight Millenium Development Goals was to achieve a drastic reduction in maternal mortality rates by the year 2015.  While the MDGs have led to many laudable achievements in the poorest parts of the world maternal mortality remains at virtually the same level it was when the goals were set in 2000.  

UN Report: Governments Must Do More for Women

The Time article provides an appropriate segue for a report issued by the United Nations yesterday that says women around the world "still face widespread discrimination in areas ranging from politics to health care despite decades of government promises to rectify the inequities." The report specifically mentions the only slightly diminishing rate of maternal mortality:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking at another event promoting the report, called the world's record on maternal health care "dismal."

Globally, the report said, maternal mortality is going down at a rate of just 0.4 percent a year, which means every year more than 500,000 women die from complications of childbirth.

"To fix the problem," Ban said, "all we need is to ensure that developing countries have what developed states provide as a minimum: prenatal health care and skilled attendants to help mothers survive the ordeal of labor."

But maternal mortality was one of many areas in which the report says the world is letting women down.  Blame for continued discrimination against women was placed squarely on a lack of accountability:

The U.N. Development Fund for Women called for stronger measures to ensure that governments are held to account on the commitments they have made to women.

"Discrimination on this scale ... is symptomatic of an accountability crisis," said the fund's biennial report on Progress of the World's Women 2008/2009.

...

The report focuses on five areas where the need to strengthen accountability to women is urgent: politics and government, access to public services, economic opportunities, justice, and the distribution of international aid.

Colorado's Amendment 48 Could Be Used to Outlaw Abortion

Colorado politics website, SquareState.net, says Colorado's ballot measure Amendment 48, known as the 'Definition of a Person' amendment, could more accurately be called the 'Outlaw Abortion' amendment.  The website also asserts that the amendment could be used to outlaw some forms of contraception:

An amendment to the Colorado constitution to define the term "person" to "include any human being from the moment of fertilization"; and apply this definition of person to the sections of the Colorado Constitution that protect the natural and essential rights of persons, allow open access to courts for every person, and ensure that no person has his or her life, liberty, or property taken away without due process of law.

But what this is in fact is an amendment that would outlaw not just abortion at any point, but even any birth control that occurs after the egg is fertilized such as the morning after pill.

Kids Shouldn't Be Learning About Sex from TV

AlterNet.org's Kelli Conlin is concerned about children's futures if they are not taught fact-based comprehensive sex education in schools and instead learn about sex from "sordid teen dramas" that "hardly pretends to provide the important information young people need to keep themselves healthy and safe." 

Public Health is a Hot Field for America's College Students

The Washington Post reports that interest in epidemiology, public health and global health courses has seen "exponential growth" over the past generation:

"Today's students want to contribute, to empower individuals and communities to take charge of their own health," said Ruth Gaare Bernheim, who teaches health policy at the University of Virginia. "I think they also intuitively realize that the world is their community and that the gains of the 21st century will be in global public health."