The primary care physician leading the "personhood" ballot measure campaign in Montana is under multiple investigations for Medicaid fraud.
In a one-sided news story published in the Daily Inter Lake, Dr. Ann Bukacek confirmed that state and federal investigators launched the probe after allegations were raised about the Kalispell, Mont., doctor's billing practices and related complaints that she submitted Medicaid reimbursements for time spent praying with patients.
Bukacek told the newspaper that fraud investigators asked "How much time we spend on it, how we decide how to pray, how we pray with non-Christians."
She blames a disgruntled former employee for the most recent investigation which marks a string of four earlier inquiries that began in April over other unspecified complaints about billing issues. State and federal authorities declined to comment or even verify the existence of the probes.
Bukacek is no stranger to controversy — the seriousness of the current charges aside.
She is president of the Montana ProLife Coalition which is again fronting the state's "personhood" amendment to codify constitutional rights for fertilized eggs. Their first attempt in 2008 failed to qualify enough petition signatures to make the ballot. The group has also agitated for conservatively-allied state lawmakers to sponsor "personhood" amendments and repeal privacy clauses related to abortion care. Though the measures passed the state Senate they were ultimately defeated in the House.
Bukacek also claims to be on the steering committee of the anti-health reform astroturf group, Coalition to Protect Patient Rights, that is managed by the Washington, D.C., lobbyist firm the DCI Group, best known for its pro-tobacco smokers' rights campaigns.
Though her leadership in CPPR could not be confirmed by independent sources, Bukacek's husband Roland Horst appeared in a video for the fake grassroots organization. Horst was billed as a "medical billing specialist and massage therapist."
Bukacek's well-established conservative religious beliefs and opposition to federal health care reform, which she derides as "Obamacare," are regularly splashed in newspaper guest editorials and a seemingly endless stream of letters to the editor.
Planted in the Nov. 8 Daily Inter Lake story are unsubstantiated allegations by unnamed anti-choice advocates that Bukacek is being targeted because she is an outspoken advocate for right wing political views.
However, a less sinister reason may come from another Daily Inter Lake sop story printed March 2 that notes a previous professional dispute over her inappropriate conduct with patients:
Bukacek spent five years at Kalispell Diagnostic Service but was told she'd have to stop praying with patients or leave the physician group. She wouldn't compromise her faith, so she broke away and began her own practice.
From a practical standpoint, many cash-strapped states are redoubling their efforts to sniff out Medicaid fraud. Unlike Medicare, the federal health care entitlement program that covers people over the age of 65 and those with certain disabilities, Medicaid is a joint state-federal funded program for low-income people.
The Montana Medicaid fraud unit has recovered $7.8 million since 1993 from convictions for improper billing, false claims and illegal kickbacks paid to physicians by medical device and pharmaceutical companies.
If Bukacek is charged and eventually convicted of Medicaid fraud, she could face up to 10 years in state prison and a fine not to exceed $50,000.
Ironically, an amendment to the Senate health care reform bill under debate this week aims to strengthen Medicaid and Medicare fraud enforcement. The very bill Bukacek dismisses as unnecessary government interference.
]]>In a statement that could only charitably be summed up as "We've got things under control here. Butt out." Nevada Life, the Nevada Eagle Forum and Nevada Families issued a statement that the personhood petition language is "so vague and general that it may not even apply to abortion at all."
The trio was joined by the Nevada Independent American Party, a political group formally affiliated with the Christian paleoconservative Constitution Party. The latter of which has attracted the likes of radical, absolutist anti-choice activists Matt Trewhella and perennial political candidate Alan Keyes among other hard-liners.
Don Nelson of Nebraska Life complained, "This bill has no chance of ending abortion in America or in Nevada. And the effect of this could add more precedence to supporting Roe v. Wade."
The ultra-conservative stand off could pit tens of thousands of ideologically-driven Nevadans against one another at the ballot box next year.
Membership figures were not available for the anti-choice groups but the Nevada IAP boasts 49,000 registered voters and reportedly employs five lobbyists to represent its interests in the state legislature.
The surprise announcement, at least figuratively, joins the groups on the side of Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada which filed a Nov. 12 lawsuit to block the petition process.
Similar to an unsuccessful Colorado Supreme Court lawsuit intended to halt the first ever 2008 personhood state ballot measure, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU argue that the Nevada petition violates the single subject rule and is misleading to voters.
"It utterly fails not only to mention it will ban all abortions -- even in the case of rape and incest -- that it will prevent much fertility treatment and birth control, but that it conflicts with a prior vote of the Nevada electorate and it conflicts with the U.S. Supreme Court," said Lee Rowland of the ACLU of Nevada. "Voters need to understand what a monumental change they would be making should they vote for this initiative."
Predictably, Personhood Nevada backer Richard Ziser, a colorful character in state politics and wielding a Masters Degree in Christian Apologetics, fired back.
He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that since the plaintiffs understood what his measure intended voters would too.
A hearing has not yet been set by the Carson City district court.
Unlike Colorado's ballot supporters who were overwhelmingly rejected 73-27 by voters, Ziser is no political neophyte.
In 2000, Ziser successfully headed a state initiative to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Though local politicos grumbled the measure was simply designed to boost Ziser's future ambitions, he was resoundingly defeated 60-30 in his 2004 bid for U.S. Senate against democratic incumbent and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The recently launched multi-state personhood movement, with the backing of well-heeled national groups with millions of dollars at their disposal, signals his political comeback.
But there's still quite an uphill climb.
Besides the legal hoops, Nevada has a unique ballot structure that requires two successive votes to change the state constitution.
According to the Las Vegas Sun: Ziser needs the signatures of 97,002 voters to qualify for the 2010 election ballot. And if passed, the ballot measure would have to be approved again by the voters in 2012.
]]>Describing the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate as "a candidate whom many pro-lifers want to support, her actual abortion record and rhetoric is shocking to the conscience." ARTL proceeds to whack Palin over 17 bullet pointed, heavily footnoted and repetitive complaints about her lack of anti-choice street cred.
And a veritable cornucopia of personhood movement slights it is with references to all the standard abolitionist, Holocaust, creationist and God-given rights imagery they can summon.
The critique basically boils down to not opposing contraception or abortion in absolute terms with no exceptions, appointing an Alaska Supreme Court justice who once served on Planned Parenthood's board and palling around with Sen. John McCain.
Though it seems like Palin's biggest failing was not bringing her right wing star power to the state or national personhood amendments publicity campaign while she stumped with McCain to become leader of the free world in waiting.
So confident in its sourcing, the Web site offers a cool $100 and a public acknowledgement to anyone who can refute their research. Typos, errant links and errors of omission don't count, however.
This isn't the first time ARTL has picked a fight with a conservative standard bearer for not drawing an absolute line in the sand.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney got a big dose of ARTL stink eye in 2008. The group claims to have derailed Romney's presidential primary campaign with a series of ads and an email crusade denouncing him for lying about his commitment to the cause and urging Christian conservatives to support other candidates.
But as Right Wing Watch astutely notes, "claiming credit for Romney’s losses is somewhat analogous to the American Family Association’s constant boasting that its anti-gay boycott is the cause of the Ford Motor Company’s rust-belt woes."
The group promises more exposés on anti-choice weaklings Libertarian-esque 2008 presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, controversial pundit Ann Coulter, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and conservative justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito.
But the granddaddy of ARTL actions that launched the group into the national spotlight was spurred by national anti-choice groups praising the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding restrictions on late-term abortion.
And with it the group published its first salvo in the war between the absolutist faction and the more establishment incrementalists who favor stacking Congress and the courts with a reproductive choice foes.
The "Open Letter to James Dobson" published as full page newspaper ads in the Washington Times and the Colorado Springs Gazette attacked the Focus on the Family founder for embracing "moral relativism" — serious fightin' words in fundamentalist evangelical circles.
Radio talk show host and Denver Bible Church pastor Bob Enyart signed the letter along with Colorado Right to Life president Brian Rohrbough, Operation Save America director Flip Benham, Human Life International president Rev. Tom Euteneuer and Judie Brown, the president of American Life League.
Coincidentally, the anti-Dobson letter signatories are the only ones listed as top tier defenders of personhood on ARTL's self-produced ProLife Profiles. Circular back scratch, anyone?
]]>
Wendy Norris, a freelance reporter and editor in Denver, writes regularly on assignment for RH Reality Check.
The justifiable anger at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for lobbying on the Stupak-Pitts amendment overshadows what is possibly the bigger motive for the Vatican: the billions of dollars at stake for the church's hospitals.
The scale of the church's involvement in the rapidly growing $2.5 trillion dollar American health care industry is staggering.
What the Stupak-Pitts amendment does for the Catholic health care system is omit a competitive advantage secular and other religiously-affiliated hospitals without doctrinal restrictions can use to simultaneously market their services to both the expected influx of newly insured patients and the outpatient medical professionals who will treat them.
By restricting insurance coverage of women's reproductive health care, the competitive barriers faced by Catholic institutions will be eliminated — provided the amendment is not stripped out of the final bill that emerges from House-Senate health care reform conference committee. Which is why pro-choice advocates should expect nothing short of a full-frontal attack by the Vatican on conservative Senators.
And in the case of an industry that accounts for 18 percent of the gross domestic product and is expected to double in less than 10 years, it's absolutely critical to follow the money.
One in six patients are cared for in 624 Catholic hospitals scattered throughout the U.S. in 2006, according to the Catholic Health Association. The church also operates more than 800 post-acute care, senior living and skilled nursing centers across the nation. All told, $84.6 billion was spent on Catholic church-affiliated care.
The Denver-based Catholic Health Initiatives is now the largest of the church's hospital systems in the country with 78 hospitals and 40 long-term care facilities in 20 states and operating revenues exceeding $9.6 billion ranking it sixth among all for-profit and charity health care networks.
Now consider that there are 60 some Catholic-affiliated hospital systems in all 50 states — representing 13 percent of the nation's entire in-patient health care system. That's easily tens of billions of dollars flowing through the business arm of the Catholic church that continues to grow through mergers with private and other religiously-affiliated hospitals.
Congressional health insurance reforms promise the prospect of 36 million uninsured Americans — who are currently self-rationing care, paying on sliding fee scales, or not paying at all — flowing into hospitals, clinics and outpatient facilities via subsidized insurance, mandated policies and more affordable options in the proposed insurance exchange.
Conservatively, those newly insured people will not only add millions of dollars more to hospital coffers in the short term but the potential for trillions in billable services over their lifetimes.
So why would the bishops risk the House health reform bill collapsing under the weight of a bitter abortion debate? It appears to be a fairly brazen attempt to kneecap their health care industry competitors while knowing the president's top domestic agenda would be passed in some way, shape or form.
Catholic institutions are uniquely bound by religious directives on care, effectively eliminating key reproductive health and end-of-life treatment that other institutions will provide to patients and bill to their insurance carriers.
Add those restrictions and compound it with two simple facts: 73 percent of the now uninsured are of reproductive age and the leading cause of death among people aged 15-44 is accidents.
In essence, the people most likely to benefit from the proposed public option and insurance exchange will undoubtedly be seeking the type of care Catholic hospitals refuse to provide as a matter of religious principle. And these prospective patients are young and will conceivably need care for many decades to come.
For the business arm of the Catholic church it's a theological and economic two-fer.
The bishops can extract abortion care from the private insurance benefits of millions of American women that are federally subsidized ten ways to Sunday (with the blessing of conservative lawmakers' corporate welfare earmarks) and they level the competitive playing field without having to revise its medical doctrine to modern standards of care.
Analyzing the bishops' lobbying efforts from a cold, calculating green eyeshade perspective adds a very different dimension to their motives that may help spur secular business interests to protect both a woman's right to choose and their own bottom line.
The pro-choice community should raise holy hell with lawmakers for passing the discriminatory Stupak-Pitts amendment. But while you're grabbing your pitchfork look to some new allies in unlikely places where the password is money.
]]>According to video captured by protesters accompanying Randall Terry, who leads the newly dubbed Operation Rescue Insurrecta Nex, Weslin was initially seated inside Pelosi's suite in the Cannon House Office Building clutching a stack of papers in his lap. Meanwhile, anti-abortion protesters shouted "kill the bill" slogans and ripped up pages of the Democrats proposed health care legislation in the hallway.
Police arrested the demonstrators for disorderly conduct and refusing to leave Pelosi's secondary office around 2:15 p.m. EST. Approximately, 100 people filled the concourse alternately shouting anti-abortion slogans and demanding the police release the protesters.
While law enforcement futilely attempted to clear the hallway of on-lookers, press and five bill supporters who donned hospital gowns and faux plastic bare buttocks, Weslin suddenly appeared in the doorway and stumbled across the office threshold.
The Catholic priest, dressed all in black, a clerical collar and black rubber Crocs, fell hard on his back on the floor in the hallway. A Capitol police officer attended to Weslin and was soon joined by colleagues who carried the uncooperative 78-year-old veteran protester outside.
During the hullabaloo, Pelosi was in the Speaker's office inside the Capitol and not in her California congressional district suite where the protest took place.
Talking Points Memo reporter Christina Bellantoni captured video of Weslin's detention and escort into a waiting ambulance outside the Cannon House Office Building. A crowd milling in the area following the anti-health care reform Tea Party rally organized by House Republicans began singing an off-key and lyric-mangled version of "God Bless America":
Then, they began heckling the police:
Weslin is best known as the founder of the Lambs of Christ, a nomadic paleo-conservative network of activists that stage clinic invasions and general mayhem goading police to arrest them.
The group has long been linked to violent extremists in the anti-abortion movement. Early Lambs members include James Kopp, who is serving a life sentence in the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, and Shelley Shannon, who is imprisoned for a series of arson and acid attacks on clinics following her 1993 shooting of Dr. George Tiller.
This latest public folly marks nearly 80 arrests for Weslin.
]]>This article was originally published in the Fall issue of Ms. magazine, available on newsstands or by joining the Ms. community at www.msmagazine.com. The article was developed in partnership with RH Reality Check.
Shortly after pioneering Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was murdered on May 31 and his Wichita clinic subsequently closed, other abortion physicians bravely stepped into the breach. Among the most public was Nebraska-based Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who for 11 years had traveled to Wichita monthly to perform late abortions at Tiller’s clinic. Carhart quickly announced he would continue Tiller’s work either at his Nebraska clinic in Bellevue or in Kansas.
And just as quickly, anti-abortion forces switched their campaign against Tiller to focus on Carhart. In an eerie similarity to Tiller’s struggle to defend himself against relentless legal attacks by former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, Nebraska’s attorney general Jon Bruning spoke about Carhart in a disparaging manner that signaled possible future legal action.
In a June 11 interview with Omaha’s KETV, Bruning said of Carhart, “I’m disgusted and I’m saddened, and I hate it that he’s here in Nebraska and I hate it that he’s in America. I mean, this guy is one sick individual."
Shortly after that opening salvo, Troy Newman, head of the Wichita-based Operation Rescue—which had moved to Kansas from Southern California in 2002 to focus on closing Tiller’s clinic—announced a “Keep It Closed” campaign to prevent Carhart from opening a late-abortion clinic. This campaign is a coalition effort by Operation Rescue along with Nebraska’s Rescue the Heartland, which has been publicly harassing Carhart and his staff for years, and Nebraskans United for Life.
In August the trio of groups, along with the Christian Defense Coalition, filed a formal complaint with Bruning, alleging “illegal activities” by Carhart and supposedly backed by affidavits from disgruntled ex-employees. The attorney general passed the complaint to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, assuring Operation Rescue’s Newman in a letter that his office “will continue to monitor the progress of their [the Health Department] investigation.” The Nebraska Attorney General’s office did not return repeated calls for comment.
The anti-abortion groups then made a national call for a demonstration against Carhart’s Abortion and Contraception Clinic of Nebraska on August 28 and 29. But national pro-choice groups led by NOW, Feminist Majority Foundation, NARAL Pro-Choice America and The World Can’t Wait organized even greater numbers in support of Carhart. About 200 clinic defenders, from across Nebraska and 15 states, assembled in Bellevue in late August, dwarfing the 65 anti-abortion protesters.
Carhart assured supporters at a press conference conducted by the pro-choice groups that he would not be intimidated and would continue to see patients. He wore a button saying “Trust Women”—one of Dr. Tiller’s guiding principles. Terry O’Neill, president of NOW, outraged by Bruning’s intemperate remarks, reflected, “I think a lot of people are now beginning to rethink the vicious smear campaigns by elected officials and authorities in Kansas against Dr. Tiller that created an atmosphere in which Scott Roeder [allegedly] felt empowered to commit murder.”
In reaction to the “Keep it Closed” campaign’s targeting of Carhart, a flood of new pro-choice volunteers are now offering their help, says Nebraska NOW president Erin Sullivan, who coordinated the pro-choice response: “People who had never been involved before drove to the clinic after seeing us on the evening news to offer their help and support.”
Although the number of “Keep it Closed” protesters was relatively small, the militancy of some who participated in Bellevue is troubling. A major player was Norman Weslin, founder and leader of the Lambs of Christ, a notorious anti-abortion group linked to violent extremists. Weslin has traveled to protest besieged clinics and has been arrested more than 70 times for clinic invasions, including twice at Carhart’s clinic. His followers once chained themselves to junk cars they dumped in the driveway of Tiller’s Wichita clinic, an event former clinic employee Linda Stoner remembers as chilling. “It was just chaos,” Stoner said. “The women would come in and they were traumatized.”
Larry Donlan, director of Omaha-based Rescue the Heartland, has traveled and been arrested with Weslin for clinic blockades. Donlan drives one of Operation Rescue’s “Truth Trucks,” two of which were parked along one of the Bellevue streets closed off by police during the demonstrations.
Operation Rescue’s policy advisor, Cheryl Sullenger, also came to Bellevue from Wichita. Sullenger served two years in a federal prison for conspiring to bomb a San Diego abortion clinic in 1987. And according to press accounts, Sullenger admitted to providing information to Scott Roeder concerning Tiller’s church; Sullenger’s name and phone number were on a handwritten note in Roeder’s car when he was arrested for Tiller’s murder.
Finally, another Wichita follower of Operation Rescue who demonstrated in Bellevue was Jennifer McCoy, who served prison time for attempted arson at Virginia abortion clinics in the 1990s. She reportedly attended Roeder’s July 28 preliminary hearing and has visited him in jail several times as he awaits trial.
The “Keep it Closed” demonstrations appeared to be coordinated with A Woman’s Touch Crisis Pregnancy Center, located across the street from Carhart’s clinic. At one point during the day, Troy Newman held up a sonogram of a woman he claimed was a patient of Carhart’s who had come into the CPC instead.
“We’ve long believed that CPCs such as this one function as staging grounds for these anti-abortion extremists groups,” says Katherine Spillar, executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, who came to Bellevue to support Carhart.
Bellevue Police took the potential for violence at the demonstration seriously; Capt. Herb Evers coordinated with 10 state, local and federal agencies to ensure the safety of Carhart, his staff and clinic. U.S. attorneys from Washington, D.C., were also on hand as monitors, and federal marshals provided protection for Carhart.
But the threat of harm has not deterred Carhart even in the face of continued local protests. He announced plans to open a new abortion clinic in Kansas by year’s end in defiant testament to his late friend and colleague. “Dr. Tiller was willing to fight back and so am I,” Carhart said.
]]>Wendy Norris is a freelance writer based in Denver, Colorado, and covers the Rocky Mountain West for RH Reality Check.
One doesn't often encounter political campaigns that take a vow of poverty but Colorado "personhood" supporters have blazed virgin trails before. But that pledge may already be as tarnished as a forgotten purity ring.
At an Aug. 25 press conference at a Denver area post office, ultra-conservative religious activists kicked off another state ballot measure as a thinly veiled attempt to ban abortion, hormonal contraception, in-vitro fertilization and stem cell research by amending the state constitution to provide legal rights to fertilized eggs. Supporters boldly proclaimed Personhood Colorado would be the first all-volunteer campaign in the state's history.
That low-rent promise was delivered in the group's third quarter campaign finance report filed with the Colorado Secretary of State on Oct. 9.
The campaign's cash-on-hand balance was a modest $864.93 after paying a non-itemized expenditure of just $2.55 over the three months when the group was preparing for its ballot hearing and cranking up its petitioning process.
To place the constitutional amendment on the November 2010 ballot Personhood Colorado must collect 76,074 valid signatures by Feb. 15. A steep order for a group that has raised very little money and spent less than the price of a fancy pants cup of coffee.
More curiously though, the third quarter expenses racked up to mail call-to-action letters and petitions to a reported thousand campaign volunteers who previously worked on the defeated 2008 personhood ballot measure at the much-ballyhooed summer press conference remain unknown and undisclosed.
There was no record of photocopying, envelope purchases or postage expenses on the financial report. Though the group's Web site and subsequent news stories are replete with photos of volunteers happily collating packets and hauling tubs brimming with stamped envelopes into the post office.
Attempts to reach the 2010 ballot co-sponsors Gualberto Garcia Jones, director of Personhood Colorado, and Leslie Hanks, a long-time Colorado Right to Life activist, to determine who covered the estimated $1,000 cost of the mailing were not successful.
The peculiarities on Personhood Colorado campaign's recent financial disclosure form may very well be an oversight by fledgling activists. Or it could point to a much more cynical attempt to thwart public accountability by a well-oiled theocratic political machine.
If, in fact, the undeclared outreach effort expenses were an oversight, it wouldn't be the first time personhood activists have failed to fully report their financial activities.
Personhood Colorado's predecessor, Colorado for Equal Rights, amended half of its 13 total reports filed during the active campaign season to account for omitted donations and expenditures. The 2008 group led by Kristi Burton, a then-19-year-old law student who launched the first-in-the-nation ballot measure, was levied a small fine for campaign finance violations for skirting the rules after a Colorado blogger lodged a formal complaint.
In addition to the reporting snafus, the parallels between the two groups are remarkably similar. Both were founded in June — Burton's campaign launched in 2007 and Garcia Jones teamed up with Hanks in 2009. And while both got off to a slow fundraising start, Burton raised $2,400, or four times more than Garcia Jones by the end of third quarter reporting period.
Garcia Jones, a former legal adviser to the anti-abortion fundraising powerhouse American Life League, was recruited to the renewed Colorado effort by Hanks and anti-abortion activists Keith Mason and Cal Zastrow.
Mason, from Wichita, Kan., and Michigan resident Zastrow moved to Colorado to work on the 2008 campaign with Burton. Following a 73-27 electoral drubbing at the polls, the duo founded Personhood USA in June 2009 to launch multiple state efforts to pass constitutional amendments in 2010. Burton is not officially involved with the renewed effort but has been feted by American Life League as a rising star in the movement.
The new suburban Denver-based national group is organized as a 501c4, an advocacy-oriented federal tax-exempt nonprofit organization, and is not required to report its financial backing until January 2011 — months after the election. A loophole in Colorado law does not require this particular strain of political nonprofit to report its activities to state compliance officials. When state legislators cracked down in 2007 on campaign abuses by IRS-designated 527 nonprofit organizations that ranged from allegations of money laundering to deceptive advertising, political activists flocked to the less monitored c4 organizations.
And it's this uncoordinated nature of federal and state campaign reporting rules that creates fertile territory for shadowy activities and less than timely accounting to the public.
Luis Toro, senior counsel for Colorado Ethics Watch, explained that state campaign finance rules on expenditures for issue campaigns are murky at best. A new law to clamp down on petition circulation abuses by issue committees was closely monitored by the statewide watchdog group after allegations were raised in court that a variety of 2008 ballot groups were defrauding voters on the actual intent of the proposed law in order to compel them to sign petitions.
But serious transparency problems remain.
There is no legal requirement to either acknowledge or track funds from so-called "friendly allies" outside the confines of the state-based ballot groups' own books.
Rich Coolidge, spokesman for the Colorado Secretary of State, confirmed that issue committees are not subject to the same disclosure laws as candidates, who face much more stringent rules on reporting independent expenditures made by outside groups that can affect an election. Likewise, there are no monetary limits on the amount of contributions issue committees, such as Personhood Colorado, can accept from donors.
Case in point: Twelve days before Election Day 2008, the lobbying arm of the American Life League dumped $200,000 into the Colorado for Equal Rights campaign to push Amendment 48. Yet, other than an obscure major donor report, the contribution never appeared on any of the campaign's financial reports.
The lack of accountability on who is truly financing the reinvigorated personhood ballot efforts raises concerns that money could again pour into the state from well-heeled national anti-abortion groups without full disclosure to the voting public.
It goes without saying that national activists are again using Colorado and other states as electoral proving grounds to challenge Roe v Wade since federal legislative efforts have been fruitless.
"Now with Personhood Colorado, affiliated with Personhood USA, we're again seeing national interests at play," said Monica McCafferty, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, a leading opponent of last year's attempt to pass the first state personhood measure.
]]>"Coloradoans should question if Personhood Colorado really has the state's best interest in mind. Access to affordable health care is already tough enough for Colorado families. If the initiative makes it on the 2010 ballot, Colorado voters will once again be asked to weigh in on a deceptively worded ballot measure – written by extremists with ties beyond Colorado – that would restrict or threaten access to health care."
Wendy Norris is a freelance reporter living in Denver, Colorado and on also on at RH Reality Check.
Before Anglicans can cash-in the Vatican's new express pass to convert to Catholicism the two faiths must bridge one of the biggest schisms between them: birth control.
Days after the Pope's approval of the expedited transformation for Anglicans, religious thinkers are split on how to smooth over this gaping ecumenical divide.
The Catholic News Service shrugged off the churches' dissent on contraception as just a diversity of opinion in its Oct. 16 report on a religious ethics conference. That's an astounding admission after brow-beating generations of Catholics to forsake all contraception methods save for the unreliable "rhythm method" of abstaining from sex during predicted ovulation days.
The re-unification of the two church communities has been decades in the making by conservative forces in London and the Vatican even while the Anglican Church modernized its teachings, including the formal acceptance in 1958 that married couples could use birth control methods without fear of excommunication or eternal damnation.
At the same time of the Anglican enlightenment, the late 20th century popes and current Holy See Benedict XVI have issued encyclicals condemning "artificial" contraception causing millions of Catholics to leave the church or simply ignore church doctrine.
Cathleen Kaveny characterizes the news as the makings of "an interesting social experiment."
Her post at the religion and politics blog Commonweal spurred a spirited conversation about the practicalities of ex-Anglican married couples without birth control pills and condoms.
As far as I am aware, however, the morality of contraception under certain circumstances has been more or less a settled issue among Anglicans–even traditionally minded Anglicans. How will this change work out? Are Anglican priests prepared to balance the demands of a big family with the demands of a big parish? What about the wife of the priest? ... Are wives willing not only to convert, but to convert on the matter of contraception? Are Roman Catholics willing not only to see, but to support financially and in other ways, married priests with six, seven, or eight children?
As Kaveny notes conservative Anglicans and their American Episcopal counterparts, who have historically opposed contraception, abortion and the elevation of women priests and gay bishops, have long aligned themselves and their rituals with the Catholic Church. So not much is expected to change for congregants since the Vatican apparently won't insist on mass divorces and celibate lives for married Anglican clergy.
Meanwhile, hard line Catholic anti-choice activist Fr. Tom Euteneuer of Human Life International can barely contain himself over the promise of bringing the 77 million Anglicans back into the "One True Church."
Says Euteneuer, "Anglicanism is basically committing doctrinal suicide, much the same way that England's population is about to implode due to their excessively high abortion and contraception rates and their hedonistic culture."
And what an interesting coincidence that 39 million or half of the worldwide Church of England members now reside in Africa, where the paleo-conservative Euteneuer operates programs in 26 nations.
In keeping with Catholic dogma on contraception, Euteneuer boasted on the HLI Web site of destroying 10 million condoms to thwart family planning efforts in Tanzania — an impoverished country where 1.4 million people are HIV-positive and 970,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS.
Euteneuer's fundamentalist beliefs appear to be matched by Archbishop Peter Akinola, the head of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, who is rumored to be a leading candidate for a new role in the blended Catholic-Anglican hierarchy.
The archbishop has called for the imprisonment of gays and lesbians and has been linked to a 2004 massacre of 700 Nigerian Muslims. Akinola was also at the center of a widening rift between several high profile Virginia-based churches that split from the official Anglican Church and joined the Nigerian sect after Eugene Robinson was ordained as the first openly gay Episcopal bishop in 2003.
Akinola who presides over a flock of 18 million Nigerians is said to be weighing the Pope's invitation to convert.
Despite the ultra-conservative social perspectives by some congregants, both Kaveny and the New York Times note on the papal invitation to Anglicans, mainstream Americans Catholics have been remarkably resilient in their embrace of contraceptives.
A 2008 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 61 percent of mainstream Catholics believe contraception use is a personal issue despite church teachings and 51 percent said abortion should be legal in most cases.
Perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury should offer a two-for-one conversion special for disaffected Catholics.
]]>"Shifting roles change dynamic in bedroom" shouts Thursday's lead story on MSNBC.com, a media partner in the year-long study of workplace trends led by California First Lady Maria Shriver and published by the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.
Instead of a thoughtful series on very real gender inequities in wages, unfair gender-rating of health insurance and antiquated employment policies that could truly elevate the public debate it now appears Cosmopolitan is advising the Shriver Report publicity team.
A fat check is the new heaving bosoms, so they say. There were no women making big bank that were actually interviewed for the story.
The piece subtitled "When she earns more, he aims to please" is an excruciating exercise in sexuality-fueled relationship politics that utterly destroys the report's giddy assertion that the "battle of the sexes is over."
"Derrick Hayes's wife, an oncology nurse, makes twice the money he does in his job as a juvenile corrections officer in Columbus, Ga.
And he since she brings home much of the bacon, he wants to make sure he's offering her some perks too. He leaves affectionate notes around the house for her and tries to keep the house tidy. And he wants to make sure he shines in one special area.
Since she is "handling certain areas of the relationship" like making most of the money, he said, “you've got to handle your business." By "business," Hayes means sex. "You’ve got to be creative. You’ve got to be good!"
Lovely. Good to know the unnamed Mrs. Hayes is getting some action.
Especially after a hard day's work in an incredibly stressful profession where she is likely exposed to dangerous chemotherapy toxins and radiation — a concern the study devotes an entire section to the workplace risks in female-dominated occupations.
Even more despicable is Chris Matthews' tittering "sex as reward for housework" interview with Shriver on his MSNBC show Hardball and his lecherous insinuations about her marital relations with husband, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger:
The most infuriating aspect of this media debacle is the Shriver Report is a well-sourced study on gender inequities in the workplace and at home — though its policy prescriptions on telecommuting and family leave policies focus far too heavily on improving circumstances for affluent, white mothers than the more intractable problems facing single women without children, low income women and women of color. I'm almost relieved that NBC News concludes this banal week-long series on the report Friday. Though I can only imagine we're in for a searing exposé on the new pickup line for middle-aged women on the prowl for younger men: "Hey, baby, what's your insurance co-pay?" ]]>Unless, of course, you're among the millions of women who still earn 23 percent less on average in wages, pay 38 percent more for gender-rated health insurance or fear losing their jobs while trying to juggle disproportionate family responsibilities without flexible work schedules and reasonable family-leave policies.
The year-long study initiated by California First Lady and former NBC News correspondent Maria Shriver and published by the Center for American Progress, has generated celebratory headlines in the media about women's advances in the workplace while ignoring the many stark realities in the report.
And what is all too true of complex and contradictory issues, the joint investigation is being whittled down by the media both to factoids lacking in context and to emotional anecdotes, though many of the statistics packed into the 454-page report are hair-raising.
• Women spend 68 percent more on their health care than men during their prime childbearing years.
• Women who suffer domestic abuse spend 42 percent more on their health care than non-abused women.
• Employers lose 3 billion to 5 billion dollars annually from the lost worker productivity of domestic violence survivors, perpetrators and colleagues.
• One in five women delay seeking medical care because they can't get time off from work.
• 53 percent of college graduates breastfeed their babies, while only 29 percent of high school graduates do so.
One citation not likely to see the light of the day on your favorite morning show is the third rail of women's health issues — the effects of class and race discrimination on childbearing:"Popular culture tends to blame women for “selfishly” focusing on their careers when they delay having children, but a complex set of incentives pressures white, affluent women to reproduce more and work less—among them the “opt-out” myth, the “mommy wars” debate, and the celebration of multiple births by white, married women—while pressuring low- and middle-income women and women of color to reproduce less and work more.
Women of color in particular are concentrated in low-wage occupations at the bottom end of the labor market that intensify the work-family tension. The low-skilled jobs most commonly occupied by women offer few benefits, irregular hours, and minimal time off, rendering them the least conducive for care giving."
Shriver gets credit for being willing to make such an unabashedly frank statement on an enormously controversial issue in the report. But that and its equally important findings on health disparities are undermined by several breezy and unsupported claims that "the gender war" is over and women's equality has magically been achieved merely by reaching 50 percent parity to the number of men in the workforce. This notion is being happily parroted by a sound bite-driven news media to the exclusion of other relevant data.
That's not to say that there isn't good news in the study.
An exclusive public opinion poll conducted by TIME magazine and the Rockefeller Foundation offers an encouraging glimpse of historically more enlightened personal views on gender relations.
• 77 percent of Americans believe the rise of women in the workforce is a net positive for society
• Women who have children are just as committed to their jobs as women who do not have children, 83 percent of women and 73 percent of men agreed, respectively.
• 85 percent of women and 79 percent of men said that compared to previous generations, it is now more acceptable for men to be stay-at-home dads.
• 78 percent of women agreed that it is possible for a single woman to have a fulfilling life, while two-thirds of men said so.
• 89 percent of men and women are comfortable with women earning more money than men in a household.
Unfortunately, few of these modern work-life perspectives have penetrated either the private workplace or the public institutions which continue to perpetuate unfair work practices, advance multitudes of other disparities that create barriers to true equality between men and women and seriously compromise women's health.
For all of the fanfare arising from Shriver's recent media blitz, starting with a plum appearance on the venerable political show, "Meet the Press" as part of NBC News' week-long series of feature stories, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the practical realities of transforming outdated workplace and public policies, especially on the hottest topic in the nation right now — health care reform.
The study details the usual workplace barriers to obtaining affordable health insurance, routine policies of charging women higher premium costs and rationing coverage, and chemical and toxic hazards in the workplace that can affect reproductive health, fertility and fetal development.
The American Association of University Women takes a stab at making a broad range of health care, workplace and educational policy suggestions to complement the report.
Of particular note are AAUW's calls to ban gender-rated health insurance premiums, increase Title X funding for reproductive health care, expand prescription drug coverage for contraception services and end ineffective abstinence-only sex education programs.
But while the ongoing health insurance reform debate in Congress is at the forefront of the public's mind, the complete media blackout on women's health disparities in the report is troubling.
Print and broadcast news gleefully reported the enormously ignorant statements about maternal health, abortion funding and end-of-life care that nearly derailed the recent U.S. Senate discussion on health care reform.
But not one major news outlet has covered the Shriver Report's section on reproductive health disparities, since its Oct. 16 release, with the exception of TIME, which made a passing mention in its most recent issue.
All the while, the American public remains in the dark about the stark new realities of health care — women, as a greater proportion of primary breadwinners, have difficulty securing insurance, their workplace risks are largely unaddressed and their medical care is overtly politicized.
But one thing is certain, the remaining publicity tour over the course of this week will either elevate the Shriver Report as a critical tipping point in history to help pass needed health care reforms or, as Gloria Steinem notes in her essay at the Women's Media Center, it will meet "the dusty fate of so many other reports and opinion polls."
The so-called "personhood" law is the latest gimmick by anti-abortion activists to overturn Roe v Wade by focusing on zygotes' due process and equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment. This time, however, advocates are tweaking the ballot language and dropping the controversial "life begins at conception" argument for the more amorphous "at the beginning of biological development" in order to rally for fertilized eggs, clones and in-vitro embryos.
What the anti-choice groups may lack in serious constitutional law scholarship they make up for with sophisticated charitable fund raising campaigns to fuel state initiatives and a nationwide barnstorming tour to build local support for what its own proponents admit is a last ditch effort to outlaw abortion and curb comprehensive reproductive care according to fundamentalist Christian religious beliefs.
The biggest national driver in the state-led battles is the ultra-conservative Catholic anti-choice group, American Life League, a group that long-split with National Right to Life over what the more radicalized ALL and its allies considered was taking a too timid approach to federal legislation to ban abortion.
Schisms within the anti-choice movement are fairly typical and have spawned a series of like-named organizations tromping on well-worn political territory and jostling for the attention of like-minded donors.
And there are hints that the Montana conference could be an early sign of the latest breach in the high stakes game of anti-abortion supremacy.
Personhood USA is conspicuously absent from the three-city Oct. 16-18 tour hosted by the Montana Pro-Life Coalition, the primary sponsor of CI-102, the official name of the state's personhood constitutional initiative.
The Denver-based group was founded this year from the ashes of Colorado's first-in-the-nation personhood ballot measure that went to state voters. Though the 2008 initiative was thoroughly drubbed by a 73-27 margin, the Colorado supporters recast themselves as a national organization to ostensibly lead dozens of state efforts in 2010 and beyond.
The Montana group's first attempt to reach the 2008 ballot failed after collecting less than two-thirds of the 48,000 petition signatures needed. Which makes the Personhood USA snub even more curious since its founders were actively involved in the Colorado petition process and exceeded the state's signature threshold by 70 percent.
Organizers with Personhood USA couldn't be reached for comment.
But then again how does one compete for face time in a state with a high number of Catholics when Montana confab headliner and ALL president Judie Brown is billed as "an adviser to the Pope himself."
Though it's unclear whether ALL's "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy" signs and its campaign to derail health care reform will affect future Papal audiences after American Catholic groups denounced the effort as "failing the most basic test of human decency" and the Vatican had publicly expressed support for the president's initiative.
Joining Brown on the personhood stump through Great Falls, Missoula and Helena are two African-American anti-abortion activists who have repeatedly referred to abortion as a "black genocide." Rev. Walter Hoye from Oakland, Calif., who is sponsoring the personhood initiative in California, and Dallas-based Pastor Steven Broden are steeped in the confrontational clinic protest tactics first initiated by ALL in the 1980s.
What's a bit harder to bridge in the personhood confab strategy is the simple truth that Montana's political culture is world's apart from urban centers, like Oakland and Dallas. The entirety of Montana's black community consists of 6,200 people, or less than one percent of the entire state population. While residents are nearly evenly divided between urban centers and rural communities they are singularly united by a uniquely Western pseudo-libertarian "stay out of my business" perspective on all things political.
And that voter sentiment, and emerging 2010 ballot opposition strategy, was clearly noted by Allyson Hagen, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Montana.
"We will not allow extremist organizations to use our state constitution to play games with women's health," said Hagen. "These groups are not interested in the real-world implications that eliminating our privacy rights and restricting access to abortion care and birth control will have on the health and safety of the women in our lives."
Yet, the state is likely to remain as one of the more fertile epicenters of the anti-choice movement with a coterie of paleo-conservative state lawmakers pushing multiple legislative bans on abortion, an unencumbered citizen initiative process that mainlines radical ideas onto the ballot and a relatively inexpensive media market to campaign statewide.
Just the kind of out of the way place for religious political activists to go barnstorming on a states' rights cram session to find the mythical silver bullet to repeal women's reproductive rights.
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Marking the doll's 50th anniversary with a series of couture-inspired fashion, luxury shoe and handbag designer Christian Louboutin's restyled Barbie will undergo the ultimate plastic surgery — slimmer ankles to accentuate the custom-made stiletto kicks for her freakishly small feet.
“He found her ankles were too fat,” a Louboutin spokeswoman told WWD.
This latest controversy comes as Barbie manufacturer Mattel recently introduced a new African-American-styled doll with fuller lips, wider noses and a hair straightening kit because beauty apparently can't be obtained without smooth tresses.
Sadly, these body image and racial gaffes join a long line of Barbie's culturally tin-eared controversies:
1959: "Plantation Belle Barbie" donned a Civil War-era gown as a slave-owning southerner during the height of the American civil rights movement.
1965: "Sleepy Time Gal" decked out in pink pajamas came equipped with a scale pegged to 110-lbs and a dieting book that reportedly had one page of advice: "Don't eat."
1975: Barbie's little sister sprouted breasts as "Growing Up Skipper" by spinning a dial embedded in her back as if that solely defines maturity.
1985: "Heart Family Midge" revealed a secret compartment in her belly that sports a fully-formed fetus igniting a firestorm for misinforming children about childbirth.
1992: "Teen Talk Barbie" declares "math class is tough" reinforcing the bone-headed notion that girls aren't predisposed to understand facts and figures.
1997: In a fit of jaw-dropping product placement, "Oreo Barbie" was a white-featured black doll paired with the popular chocolate cookie and, as some critics charged, was a subtle nod to the racial slur to "act white."
2002: Preggers Midge is restyled as a teenager fueling outrage by parents and causing stores to pull the doll from its shelves for glamorizing teen pregnancy.
2009: "Totally Stylin' Barbie" gets a "Ken" tattoo on her lower back, derisively referred to as a "tramp stamp," though Mattel inexplicably announced five years earlier in 2004 that the long-time pair had broken up but remained friends.
It would be easy to dismiss the shockingly out of touch Barbie culture as an anachronism of a bygone era but as we reported Monday the influence of toys on small children's adoption of gender stereotypes is as strong as ever.
Fortunately, some teen-aged girls aren't buying it.
The New York Daily News reports the that the new black Barbie dolls are getting mixed reviews.
Many of the city girls liked the dolls — Grace, Kara and Trichelle — but some felt the Mattel toy company went too far with the rap-inspired details.
"Not all black people like hip hop," said Barbara Mootoo, 15, of Manhattan, looking at Kara's silver rope chain necklace. "They gave her a chain like a 50Cent video."
Tyaine Danclaire, 15, of the Bronx, liked Trichelle's straight, long hair because it looked like "a weave," but she thought the idea "was sorta racist."
"They say black girls are ghetto with the gold earrings, with the big bling; I don't agree with that," she said.
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Wendy Norris is a freelance writer from Denver, Colorado now working on assignment for RH Reality Check. She was previously a New Journalist Fellow for the Center for Independent Media and managing editor of The Colorado Independent. She is editor/founder of Unbossed.com.
They're marketed as "extremely funny" but the underlying message is much more disturbing — baby shoes resembling stilettos and "ima shopper" embossed on hot pink-colored rubber teethers designed as mock credit cards.
Sadly, girls, even at infancy, are being subjected to messages, both direct and subtle, that their worth is inextricably linked to attractiveness and stereotypical feminine behaviors.
One would hope after decades of social progress in the workplace, at school and home that the gender stratification of toy stores, clothing racks and extra-curricular activities would be relegated to the dustbin of history.
Not so. And according to some experts in cultural studies and biology the influences that perpetuate gender stereotypes are as pervasive as ever.
The pink and purple princess mafia
Melissa Wardy became so frustrated with the clichéd "ubiquitous pink and purple princess-diva-drama queen" clothing options for her pre-school-aged daughter that she founded Pigtail Pals, a T-shirt company to redefine the term "girly."
"I've done many amazing things in my life but I've never met a princess. I've never met a real ballerina," said Wardy, who was a cold case homicide investigator before deciding to become a stay-at-home mom. Her designs promote girl-affirming messages about non-traditional career options, healthy body images and being brave, intelligent and independent.
But it's not just girls that are being bombarded with formulaic identities ripe for Madison Avenue exploitation. Wardy, who now has a son, also finds that boys clothing is as fixated on unattainable muscle-bound physiques, sports and macabre figures.
Navigating the local discount super store makes it even tougher for parents trying to raise confident, socially-aware children. The friction between families' urging their children, especially girls, to pursue their dreams is directly contradicted by the virtually inescapable consumer-culture mores of prescribed clothing styles, overtly gender-based entertainment and the annual onslaught of holiday toy commercials that reinforce strict role expectations.
Try as we might to avoid these mini-Men are from Mars/Women are from Venus dichotomies, there's growing evidence that we're actually inadvertently hard-wiring some of these stereotypes into our kids' brains.
Nature versus nurture or both?
Until about age two, most young children are unaware of gender roles and exhibit no toy preferences between trucks and dolls until cultural pressures kick in.
Neurobiologist Lise Eliot argues that despite conventional wisdom, "We don't have evidence that the brain is different at birth but we do know that the brain is strongly affected by learning."
In Eliot's new book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain, she also posits that if there are behavioral differences between boys and girls there must be a correlated neurologic difference — ones that are frequently incited by cultural influences.
For instance, Eliot's research confirms that certain play activities favored by parents and schools for young children help to create neural pathways that magnify minute biological differences between boys and girls that augment learning stereotypes. Encouraging boys to play with building toys, sports and video games improves visual-spatial acuity that is linked to math and science performance. Diverting girls to language dominant and small motor activities, such as reading and coloring, builds another set of skills more commonly associated as feminine.
While the strides made by the implementation of Title IX to ensure equal access to academic and extra-curricular educational activities, most notably female athletics programs, are undeniable in their benefit to girls' spatial skill development there still exists cultural manifestations of gender-restrictive toys and play that curb such learning.
The complex duality of nature and nurture's affects on children's gender identity and embrace of stereotypical behavior, says Eliot, creates as an intersecting and self-perpetuating Venn diagram rather than two distinct ends of a spectrum.
That new thinking stands in contrast to the bookstore shelves that groan with tomes on raising boys and reviving Ophelia. To which Eliot takes aim at the stacks of popular parenting guides which she warns are too often "simply making stuff up" to substantiate preconceived perspectives on differences between boys and girls that are not supported by scientific research.
Taking sides in the 'pink wars'
While parents suffer conflicting messages about how to best raise their children, Elline Lipkin thinks that girls are encountering their own complicated set of social expectations that's engendering contradictory behaviors.
Lipkin, an author and researcher at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, mentions that the groundbreaking study, "Packaging Girlhood," by Lyn Mikel Brown and Sharon Lamb deconstructs the "selling of pink" or mass clothing marketers attempts to sexualize young girls based on the intensity of a pink hue chosen for clothing — light pink connotes the innocent good girl while hot pink signals a sexy diva.
"That's a very confusing conundrum for a lot of people who don't realize it," said Lipkin. "And girls are often left feeling these pressures coming at them from all sides but they can't articulate the disconnect. It's really confusing and really, really frustrating."
In her forthcoming book, Girls' Studies, she examines the impact of pop culture and media on young women. One effect of those pressures is the trend toward revealing, age-inappropriate clothing and cosmetics for pre-teen girls designed to attract male attention, that evokes the derisive term, "prostitot."
"From birth onward we are being shepherded along a gender spectrum and there's very little choice involved," said Lipkin about the unrelenting cultural mixed messages that assail girls.
And that moment now seemingly begins as infants when they slip on their first pair of high heels.
]]>Wendy Norris, a Denver-based freelance reporter, is a regular contributing writer working on special assignment to RH Reality Check.
Just a month into the fall semester and news outlets are already reporting dozens of alleged sexual assaults on college campuses across the nation.
Every year, more than 71,000 American college students between the ages of 18 and 24 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape, according to a 2005 Boston University research study. And upwards of 110,000 male and female students reported being too intoxicated to know if they consented to having sex.
Yet, experts say the full extent of the problem is largely underestimated since fewer than 10 percent of sexual assaults are ever reported to police.
Which makes the national rape and non-consensual sex incidences among college students all the more shocking.
To Jane Curtis the challenge is not to convince young people not to partake in drinking but to heighten LGBT and straight students' personal knowledge about risk-taking behavior and awareness of non-alcoholic campus activities
Last year, Curtis, who heads the University of Colorado-Boulder's Alcohol and Other Drugs Program, convinced school officials last year to take part in AlcoholEdu, confidential online alcohol awareness for incoming freshman that integrates information about sexual assault risks.
A Boston-based public health company developed the program in 2000, and today reaches more than 500,000 students at 500 American colleges and universities each year — or about 20 percent of the total private nonprofit and state-backed four-year degree granting schools. The modules also anticipate the students' educational needs. As respondents reply to questions, teetotaling students take a different curriculum than those who admit to some, heavy or binge drinking. Curtis notes that the online segments can also be customized to embed information and links to campus-specific resources.
The sexual assault section begins in chapter two. The module runs the gamut from reading student-generated questions in an advice column format, busting common myths, discussing consent and boundary-setting, and providing tips on how to intervene in situations that could lead to unwanted sexual contact.
In just its second year of implementation at CU-Boulder, more than 3,500 students, or nearly 70 percent, of first-year students participated in the voluntary program this semester. And Curtis said it's already having a dramatic effect.
"There is a greater understanding that the person who is sexually assaulted is less responsible for the event," said Curtis since students learned that both perpetrators and victims have frequently consumed alcohol prior to the incident and that giving true consent is unlikely when under the influence.
She also noted another encouraging trend: 260 students asked to get more information from student organizations advocating for sexual assault prevention on campus.
To Nathan Wickstrum, AlcoholEdu is decidedly not like D.A.R.E., the anti-drug and alcohol program ridiculed by kids as a modern-day "Reefer Madness" scare tactic favored by local police departments. Instead, it's geared toward interactive game-savvy young people with a blunt, no holds-bared reality television sensibility.
The Ojai, Calif., native and CU-Boulder freshman was impressed with the sexual assault module. "It was one of the main focuses of the program. They [explained] very specific forms of it and how to be okay before you do anything with anyone," said Wickstrum who participated in the program before he arrived on campus in August. "When we got to school, we covered it again in an actual class setting and most kids were taking it very seriously."
Obtaining thoughtful responses is critical to the science-based Web tool because it feeds the world's largest database on college student drinking behavior.
Those responses, segmented by campus respondents, are provided to schools to improve specific policies on alcohol use and enhance personal safety for students.
Based on first year data, CU-Boulder is already expanding alcohol-free student activities, like the Sobriety Weekend Challenge, coed-intramural sports and events that integrate students into the Boulder community at-large, that challenge the campus party culture that frequently lead to risky situations.
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The Family Research Council's report Wednesday commemorating 40 years of crisis pregnancy centers inadvertently confirms a dirty little secret of public health: $200 million per year is being spent on reproductive health care provided by amateurs.
Between the soothing tones of lavender pages and key words punctuated in a lovely stylized script, the FRC and four partner anti-choice groups claim that among the 2,300 nationwide anti-choice centers affiliated with its tight-knit conservative religious network, the average clinic sees 300-350 women annually— or less than one woman per day.
Crisis pregnancy centers were founded in the pre-Roe v Wade 1960s to dissuade women from seeking abortions by giving them blatantly false information and relying on scare tactics about cancer risks and infertility. In recent years, the centers expanded their services as the Bush Administration's faith-based federal grant program grew and restrictions decreased on Medicaid provider reimbursement rules.
Factoring in the centers' latest lucrative cottage industry, federally-supported abstinence-only education programs, the FRC notes its networked "pregnancy resource centers reach some 1.9 million people each year."
And it's here where a little back-of-the-napkin math tells the real story: the document cites a conservative estimate of $200 million in annual taxpayer and philanthropic funding for the crisis centers aligned with FRC, Life International, Heartbeat International, CareNet and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates. That equals a misplaced public health investment of $105.26 per client to push wildly inaccurate, non-scientific and biased information on pregnancy and contraception in schools and at facilities staffed almost exclusively by volunteers.
The FRC cheerfully explains that it further minimizes the public cost burden of unplanned pregnancies because "29 out of every 30 people engaged in pregnancy center work are volunteers."
In other words, people with a clear theo-political agenda are operating ultrasound equipment and providing intimate information to women and teenaged girls about sexuality, prenatal development and medical issues outside the scope of public regulation or expert supervision.
This logic is especially troubling when one considers that no other health care service is delivered under the guise of lay people without medical training.
The report also unwittingly reveals another curiosity of the faith-based crisis pregnancy center movement — it's lack of public credibility as a fair broker of evidence-based health information and comprehensive care.
In an apparent tactic to portray a sense of legitimacy, the 60-odd page report contains 41 individual references to the accuracy, honesty, trustworthiness or similarly-termed descriptions of its services. Yet, that flowery language stands in stark contrast to decades of peer-reviewed research, public health analysis and investigative reporting that debunk the clinics' deceptive claims about abortion and contraception.
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