Baby, You’re Home
The New York Times has an excellent, lengthy feature on home birth today. The piece focuses on several women who have decided to birth their babies at home New York City but discusses many of the broader issues surrounding home birth. Including the fact that home birthing is gaining populartity, and quickly, albeit from a very low percentage of births:
But local midwives say they have been swamped with calls and requests in recent months, in some cases increasing their workload from two, three or four deliveries a month to as many as 10. (New York health department statistics for this year will not be available until 2010.) Several certified nurse midwives who have home-birth-only practices said they had gotten so many more requests in recent months that they have begun referring pregnant women to midwives in Rockland County, Long Island and New Jersey.
Erica Lyon, the founder of Realbirth, a five-year-old childbirth education center with three locations in the city, said 20 percent of the 160 couples who take her classes each month are planning home births, twice as many as six months ago. YourWaterBirth.com, one of the biggest online purveyors of birthing pools — deep inflatable tubs with a specially designed built-in seat and handles — said its sales have doubled since last year, with more than 20 percent of its customers in New York City; Waterbirth.org, another outlet, said it has sold more than twice as many pools this year as last, 25 percent of them to New Yorkers and Long Islanders.
An Open Letter to President-Elect Obama About Abortion: From a Pro-Obama and Pro-Life Leader
One of the fathers of the pro-life Evangelical movement, Frank Schaeffer, has come to believe that abortion should remain legal but advocates agressive policy development to help reduce unintended pregnancies and, thus, abortion. He supported President-elect Barack Obama during the campaign and now has written this open letter to the President-elect with advice on how to sieze this moment to begin repairing the damage and division caused by 35 years of nasty partisan politics surrounding the issues of abortion:
So here is my advice:
1) If in the early days of your presidency you waive a red flag in the face of the pro-life movement -- and I'm not talking about the fringe crazies, I'm talking about the decent humane thoughtful pro-life folks who would have voted Democratic were it not for this one issue -- you will confirm the worst paranoid fantasies of the people who have tried to use this issue to block out all other considerations. Perception is important. If you start with some sweeping gesture striking down local and state ordinances that ask for parental notification before a minor can obtain an abortion, and make that one of the first expenditures of your political capital you will have initiated the next round of the culture war.
2) On the other hand if some of your early initiatives are boldly proclaimed as specifically aimed at reducing the number of abortions, for instance initiatives to help facilitate adoption, provide care for pregnant women and children, of a kind that will make it easier for women with troubled pregnancies to keep their children, introduce sex education curriculum that teaches responsibility and the sacredness of sex that you have talked about in your campaign... everything could change.
3) Start with bold programs to reduce the number of abortions, while keeping abortion legal, and while protecting Roe, and you'll be surprised at how many Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics who would have voted for you except for this issue, will be won over. You will calm the waters and defuse the situation.
4) Put real substance into programs to reduce the number of abortions, and combine that with talking about the fact that this is a moral issue upon which reasonable and honorable people can disagree, and you will have taken a giant step towards bringing this country together.
If you follow my advice you will find that you have some new and unexpected allies rooting for you on the issues of the economy, service and sacrifice, for instance all those millions of Evangelical young people ready to follow your call. Some of them already voted for you in bigger numbers than for any Democratic candidate for the presidency post-Roe. They already believe in your vision of service, responsibility and compassion. Give them some hope that you have also heard their moral concern on the issue of life.
In the first point Schaffer is referring to the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), a piece of legislation that would enshrine a woman's right to choose in law and remove all state-level barriers to abortion. Obama has stated he would support FOCA as President. Indeed many anti-choicers were up in arms about Obama's support of FOCA during the campaign and while the legislation would be wholeheartedly welcome by the pro-choice community, it would certainly antagonize the pro-life movement and perhaps, as Schaffer suggests, ruin any chances at developing the nascent middle ground that began to emerge during the campaign.
On a related note the Asheville Citizen-Times today published an article about a group of pro-choice and "pro-life" activists who have been meeting since 2002 in an effort to reduce the chance of violence in our community around the issue of abortion. But the group has also found ways to work together to promote adoption and to try to reduce the number of abortions in Asheville.
Feminists Say the Work Has Just Begun
Women's rights activists are energized about the election of President-elect Barack Obama. Byllye Avery, founder of the Black Women's Health Imperative, said that now "is the time to finish the unfinished revolution."
"For eight years, we have suffered under the yoke of an administration that has suppressed science to the detriment of health and has done damage to constitutional and human rights values. Decades of hard-won progress have been eroded," said Nancy Northrup, president of the Centre for Reproductive Rights, in a letter to Obama, sent the day after he was elected.
Bush has stripped funding for hundreds of health clinics worldwide, restricted sex education and birth control to young women, provided government money to religious fundamentalist organisations for moral teachings on sexual abstinence, and nearly halted scientific research that involves reproducing human cells that are four days old, called embryos.
"We ask that you work toward a nation and world in which all women are free to decide whether and when to have children, where all women have access to quality reproductive health care, where all women can exercise their choices without coercion or discrimination, and where all women can participate with full dignity as equal members of society," Northrup said.
Obama aides have already said that on his first day in office, the new president will allow scientists to use federal funds for embryonic stem cell research, and that he will repeal what is known worldwide as the "global gag rule". This Bush rule prevents any health clinic worldwide from discussing or administering abortions if the clinic receives any USAID funds.
Poor nations rely on the funds to provide health care to women, and the gag rule, imposed by Bush on his first day of office in 2001, has proved anything but healthy, says the Centre for Reproductive Rights.
Migrant Workers in Asia Especially Vulnerable to HIV/AIDS
The Straits Times reports on a joint ASEAN-UN report that says millions of migrants across Southeast Asia are vulnerable to HIV infection as they lack access to AIDS-related services and legal or social protection:
In Thailand, which has more comprehensive data, migrant fishermen showed HIV infection rates of up to 9.0 per cent, according to the report published here by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and the United Nations.
In the Philippines, 35 per cent of registered people living with HIV were returning migrants. In Laos, the figure reached 30 per cent.
'Migrant workers are a vital force to national economies in Southeast Asia, yet when it comes to protecting their rights and ensuring HIV prevention and treatment, they are often among the forgotten,' United Nations Development Programme regional director Ajay Chhibber said.
