Reproductive Rights Prof Blog

Arizona Senate Sends Abortion Restrictions To Governor's Desk

The Arizona Republic: Senate OKs abortion restrictions, by Casey Newton:

Senate Bill Condemning Anti-Choice Violence Faces Opposition

The Minnesota Independent: Klobuchar bill condemning Tiller murder faces GPO opposition, by Andy Birkey:

Weeks after Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in his Kansas church, the U.S. Senate is debating a resolution condemning violence against abortion providers. But abortion politics has made even the simple task of passing a resolution denouncing violence into a contentious battle. The words “reproductive health care” could be a deal breaker with some Republicans and anti-abortion senators.

NY To Pay Women for Eggs for Stem Cell Research

Wash. Post: New York to Pay Women to Give Eggs for Stem Cell Research, by Rob Stein:

New York has become the first state to allow taxpayer-funded researchers to pay women for giving their eggs for embryonic stem cell research, a move welcomed by many scientists but condemned by critics who fear it will lead to the exploitation of vulnerable women.

The Empire State Stem Cell Board, which decides how to spend $600 million in state funding for stem cell studies, will allow researchers to compensate women up to $10,000 for the time, discomfort and expenses associated with donating eggs for experiments....

The little-noted decision two weeks ago puts New York at odds with policies in every other state that provides funding for human embryonic stem cell research and with prevailing guidelines from scientific organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences.

Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Upholds Virginia Abortion Ban

Daily Women's Health Policy Report: Federal Appeals Court Upholds Virginia Abortion Ban: 

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in a 6-5 decision on Wednesday upheld Virginia's 2003 law banning what abortion-rights opponents call "partial-birth" abortion, a procedure known medically as intact dilation and extraction, the AP/Hartford Courant reports (O'Dell, AP/Hartford Courant, 6/24). In 2005, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled 2-1 to strike down the Virginia law on the grounds that it does not include adequate exceptions to protect a woman's health. The U.S. Supreme Court two years ago ordered the appeals court to revisit the issue when it upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, a federal law similar to the Virginia law (White, Washington Post, 6/25). The three-judge appeals panel again struck down the law in 2008 (AP/Hartford Courant, 6/24). The Virginia law permits women to choose various abortion procedures but makes it a crime for providers to perform an intact dilation and extraction, which involves crushing a fetus' skull to ease removal (Washington Post, 6/25).

See also: Blogs Comment on Appeals Court Ruling on Virginia Abortion Ban

Gender Differences in Processing the Appearance of Babies

Time Magazine: Is an Ugly Baby Harder to Love, by Jeffrey Kluger:

Moms might want to hang on to those Mother's Day cards they got last month. There may not be much more familial goodwill forthcoming — at least not after kids get wind of a new study released by Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital and published in the online journal PloS One. Turns out that your mother's feelings for you may not be the unconditional things you always assumed. It's possible, researchers say, that the prettier you were when you were born, the more she loved you.

It's never been a secret that beautiful people get more breaks than everyone else, nor that the bias may start in the nursery. An oft cited — and deeply disturbing — Israeli study once showed that 70% of abused or abandoned children had at least one apparent flaw in their appearance, which otherwise had no impact on their health or educability. McLean psychiatrist Dr. Igor Elman and postdoctoral student Rinah Yamamoto devised a study to explore that phenomenon more closely.

Elman and Yamamoto recruited 27 volunteers — 13 men and 14 women — and sat them at computer screens where they were randomly shown pictures of 50 healthy and attractive babies and 30 others with distinct facial irregularities such as a cleft palate or a skin condition. The volunteers were told that each picture would remain on the screen for four seconds but they could shorten that time by clicking one key or prolong it by clicking another. What the researchers wanted to learn, Elman explains, is how much effort people were willing to exert to look at pictures of pretty babies or avoid pictures of less pretty ones — and, importantly, what that implies.

Research Article is Available on PLoS One

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Obama Plans to Meet with Pope

Daily Women's Health Policy Report: Pope, Obama to Hold Meeting After G-8 Summit: 

Pope Benedict XVI has agreed to meet with President Obama at the Vatican on July 10, according to White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs, the AP/Boston Globe reports. The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesperson, on Wednesday said that the pope will hold an afternoon meeting with the president and first lady Michelle Obama after the conclusion of the Group of Eight industrialized nations summit meeting, a break with a Vatican tradition of holding midday meetings. The AP/Globe reports that the Vatican "clearly sought to accommodate" the president's schedule, an indication that Benedict is interested in meeting with Obama despite his support for abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.  

Some U.S. bishops have publicly attacked Obama's support of abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research, which has fueled anticipation of a meeting between the president and the pope. 

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Commentary on Motherhood

The New York Times: Insult and Injury, by Judith Warner:

I recently went to a girls-only dinner that was organized in honor of a friend who not long before had begun a prestigious new job. . . . . [and] on the evening in question, I was quickly put at ease as the conversation at my table somehow turned to the petty humiliations of motherhood.

You know what I mean: the nasty little looks, tones of voice, gestures, subtle and not-so-subtle criticism and even insults that so often seem to come the way of mothers. Harsh words delivered in all apparent innocence, innocuous-seeming observations made in a tone that cuts to the bone, odd little interactions, generally, that manage to make a mother feel condemned in the court of world opinion. 

Beyond their entertainment value, these incidents point to an interesting question I’ve puzzled over many times, without resolution: Why do people so often permit themselves to dump — verbally, emotionally, with a surgically precise ability to wound viscerally — on mothers? Why do they so easily dare, not just to judge, but to give expression to their disdain, disapproval, smug superiority? And why — perhaps most to the point — do we put up with it?

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Generic Version of Plan B

The Wall Street Journal: FDA Approves Generic Version of Plan B, by Brian Kalish:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a generic version of the controversial Plan B morning-after contraceptive.

For now, the generic version, made by a unit of Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc., is available by prescription only for women 17 years old and younger, the FDA said in a press release.

The generic version will become available for women 18 and older without a prescription on Aug. 24, the date the marketing exclusivity for nonprescription use held by Duramed Pharmaceuticals Inc., subsidiary of Barr Pharma, maker of the original Plan B pill, ends.

The Plan B contraceptive has been shown to reduce the risk of pregnancy if taken within 72 hours after sexual intercourse.

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Human Rights Watch on the Consequences of Immigration Policy on Women's Health and Families

Human Rights Watch: US: Immigration Policy Harms Women:

Immigration detention is the fastest growing form of incarceration in the United States. On any given day, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holds 33,000 immigrants in detention, about 10 percent of them women. Detainees include asylum seekers, victims of trafficking, survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, pregnant women, and mothers of children who are US citizens.

A March 2009 report by Human Rights Watch found that while current standards allow for emergency medical care and treatment for detained immigrants, they are insufficient to cover women's unique physical, social, emotional, and health care needs. These include gynecological exams, pre- and post-natal care, and treatment for those who have been victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

In fact, the advocates point out, women are being separated from their children, permanently in many cases, at great cost to society. In some cases, mothers are detained and taken to detention facilities hundreds of miles away without being given the opportunity to make the most basic arrangements for the care of their children. While in detention they are denied access to telephones and the legal materials necessary to locate their children and communicate with family courts to preserve their parental rights.

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Dissuading Women from Seeking an Abortion

Guttmacher Policy Review:  All That's Old Is New Again: The Long Campaign To Persuade Women to Forego Abortion, by Rachel Benson Gold:

Just days after assuming office, prochoice President Barak Obama laid out his vision for a public policy agenda that would respond constructively to the ongoing national debate over abortion. . . . Within weeks, the administration announced an initiative to seek the advice of a wide range of individuals representing a diversity of views on how to move forward on this presumed common ground.

Leading abortion opponents reacted quickly with alarm. Concerned Women for America President Wendy Wright, for one, requested a meeting with the White House, to protest how the administration's initiative was being framed. Calling concepts such as the need for abortion and unintended pregnancy "completely subjective," Wright argued instead for an explicit goal of reducing abortions. 

Indeed, the organized antiabortion movement has never thrown its weight behind efforts to address abortion by helping women avoid unintended pregnancies in the first place. On the contrary, most national "profamily" and antiabortion organizations are either actively hostile to or, as in the case of the National Right to Life Committee, resolutely "neutral" on contraception and family planning service programs. Instead, they have worked to eliminate abortion altogether, by trying to ban the procedure outright. Failing that, or as a way of laying the groundwork, they have promoted a wide range of policies aimed at deterring as many women as possible from having an abortion. Many of these policies, at their heart, are premised on the notion that women who intend to have an abortion (and, to some extent, the public at large) do not fully understand what an abortion really is—and that, if they did, they would behave differently. . . .

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

New Information on Nixon's Position on Abortion

The New York Times: On Nixon Tapes, Ambivalence Over Abortion, Not Watergate, by Charlie Savage:

On Jan. 23, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down state criminal abortion laws in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But privately, newly released tapes reveal, he expressed ambivalence.

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”

Those disclosures were among the revelations in more than 150 hours of tape and tens of thousands of pages of documents from the Nixon administration made public on Tuesday by the National Archives. The audion flies were all posted online, as were a sampling of the documents, the rest of which are available in reading rooms.

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

More on Common Ground

Daily Women's Health Policy Report: Antiabortion Group's National Convention Focuses on 'Common Ground' in Abortion-Rights Debate: 

The National Right to Life Committee last week held its national convention in Charlotte, N.C., attracting as many as 1,300 antiabortion-rights advocates from around the U.S., according to event organizers, the Charlotte Observer reports. According to the Observer, a large part of the convention focused on President Obama's appeal for "common ground" in the abortion-rights debate, with many participants arguing there is not much in common to be found between abortion-rights supporters and opponents.

NRLC Political Director Karen Cross said that Obama is "the most pro-abortion president" in U.S. history, telling convention delegates, "Look at the devastation brought by the first 100 days" of his administration. Cross was referring to Obama's decisions to ease restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, lift the "global gag" rule and his intentions to repeal the Bush administration's provider "conscience" rule.

Although Obama has sought to achieve common ground on abortion by promoting adoption and methods of preventing unintended pregnancies, his "view of common ground is not common ground at all" for "people with very strong pro-life positions," John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said.

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Scholarships for Proving Virginity

Salon.com: Scholarships for Virgins?, by Frieda Klotz:

Girls living in a small province of Sierra Leone called northern Biriwa are being offered scholarships to college -- but only if they can prove they are virgins, an African news website has reported. A community nurse will perform the test, and if the girls pass, they may receive “a lucrative scholarship … for girls between 12 years to 16 years and they could even go to universities with all expenses paid,” said Samuel Kamara, administrative secretary of the Biriwa Youth Alliance for Development Organisation.

This comes on the back of another local ruling from March 2009 that if a girl becomes pregnant, both she and the boy who impregnated her should drop out of school. The aim of these decrees is to combat Sierra Leone’s extremely high child pregnancy and HIV-infection rates. 

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Reduced Pregnancy Rates and Supervised Foster Care

Daily Women's Health Policy Report: Closely Supervised Foster Care Linked With Reduced Pregnancy Rates for Delinquent Teens, Study Says: 

Teenage girls with a history of delinquency who were placed in individualized foster care programs were less likely than their peers to become pregnant, according to a study in the June issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, HealthDay/Forbes reports. Teen girls in foster care have an elevated risk for pregnancy, according to HealthDay/Forbes. For example, an earlier survey of teens in three states found that nearly half of girls in the foster care system reported a pregnancy by age 19, according to David Kerr, an assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University and lead author of the new study.

For the study, researchers followed 166 girls ages 13 to 17 with court orders to receive treatment for criminal behavior in either specialized foster care or a group-care facility. The specialized programs, known as Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care, were created in the 1980s. Under the programs, foster parents who are trained in behavioral management provide one-on-one care to severely delinquent youths, and the parents receive consultation, support and crisis intervention services from program supervisors. One of the most important aspects of the program is that, unlike group care, the teens are isolated from other troubled youths. There are 51 such programs in the U.S.

After two years, 26% of the girls in MTFC became pregnant, compared with almost 47% of those in group care, according to the study. The MTFC group also showed lower levels of criminal activity and arrests, and increased school engagement.

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Daddy on Board

Salon.com: Daddy on board, by Katharine Mieszkowsk:

Today's fathers spend more time with their children than ever. One of them talks about why that's a good thing

As a father, Jeremy Adam Smith has played many roles. The 39-year-old editor and writer from San Francisco has been a working dad with a stay-at-home wife, a stay-at-home dad with a working wife, and half of a two-income couple. The kicker: His son, Liko, is just 4 years old.

In his new book, "The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family," Smith argues that fatherhood in America is changing as it comes to encompass taking care of kids, as well as providing for them. And as the recession throws so many men out of work, he contends that fluid family arrangements like his own are becoming more common.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are just 159,000 stay-at-home dads in the country, but Smith suggests that those numbers undercount many fathers, including him, who have served as their children's primary caregivers by day and continued working part-time at night or in the early morning.

In his book, Smith profiles a number of "reverse-traditional families," in which mom's at the office while dad's on diaper and playground duty. Yet, Smith argues that stay-at-home dads are just the most extreme form of a broader trend in which fathers, even those with full-time, BlackBerry-tethered jobs, are getting much more involved in their kids' lives. 

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Staying Together 'For The Sake Of The Kids' Doesn't Necessarily Help Them, Says Study

ScienceDaily: Staying Together for the Sake of the Kids Doesn't Necessarily Help Them, Says Study, by Susan Lang:

The research is clear: Adolescents tend to fare better -- academically and behaviorally -- when they live with both biological parents. But when their parents frequently argue, young adults are significantly more likely to binge drink than other teenagers. They also tend to smoke, and their poor school grades are similar to those of their peers who don't have both biological parents at home.

"Our findings suggest that exposure to parental conflict in adolescence is associated with poorer academic achievement, increased substance use and early family formation and dissolution, often in ways indistinguishable from living in a stepfather or single-mother family," said Kelly Musick, Cornell associate professor of policy analysis and management.

Musick is the lead author of a study that looked at how teenagers in 1,963 households in the National Survey of Families and Households fared from their teens to early 30s. She compared those who lived with married parents who often fought with those living in stepfather or single-mother households. Musick and co-author Ann Meier of the University of Minnesota looked at such outcomes as school success, substance abuse and childbearing out of wedlock. 

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Teens are Less Likely to Use Contraception

Guttmacher Institute news release: No Crystal Ball Needed: Teens are Heading in the Wrong Direction: 

Just as Likely to Have Sex, But Less Likely to Use Contraception Than They Were A Few Years Ago

Between 2003 and 2007, the progress made in the 1990s and early 2000s in improving teen contraceptive use and reducing teen pregnancy and childbearing stalled, and may even have reversed among certain groups of teens, according to “Changing Behavior Risk for Pregnancy Among High School Students in the United States, 1991–2007,” by John S. Santelli et al. Between 1991 and 2003, teens’ condom use increased while their use of no contraceptive method declined, leading to a decreased risk of pregnancy and to declines in teen pregnancy and childbearing. These new findings paint a very different picture since 2003.

Using data from young women in grades 9–12 who participated in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the authors estimated teens’ risk of becoming pregnant based on their sexual activity, the contraceptive method they used and the effectiveness of that method in preventing pregnancy. The authors found no change in teen sexual activity between 2003 and 2007, but did find a small decline in contraceptive use.

“After major improvements in teen contraceptive use in the 1990s and early 2000s, which led to significant declines in teen pregnancy, it is disheartening to see a reversal of such a positive trend,” says lead author John Santelli, M.D., chair of the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Guttmacher Institute senior fellow. “Teens are still having sex, but it appears many are not taking the necessary steps to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections."

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Health Policy Report Shows a Decline in Childbirth-Related Injuries

Daily Women's Health Policy Report: Childbirth-Related Injuries Decline, Linked with Use of Instruments, AHRQ Report Finds:

There were nearly 158,000 potentially avoidable childbirth-related injuries to women and their infants in 2006, a significant decline from 2000, according to a report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, HealthLeaders Media reports. The report used data submitted for 15 million discharges by 1,900 hospitals in 25 states, including the largest states -- California, New York, Florida and Texas. Between 2000 and 2006, the rate of potentially avoidable injuries during vaginal childbirth without the use of instruments, such as forceps, declined by 30%, according to the report. The injury rate declined by 21.3% for vaginal childbirth using instruments and by 16.7% for women undergoing caesarean sections. Report author Roxanne Andrews of AHRQ said that the report did not examine factors that might have contributed to the declining injury rates but added that it is an area for further study.

The report found that rates of injury were higher when instruments were used during childbirth. For instance, trauma to the woman during vaginal delivery with the use of instruments occurred 160.5 times per 1,000 discharges, compared with 36.2 times when instruments were not used. The report said that the most common injuries to women were perineum tears[.] 

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

New Poll Examines Public Opinion on Obama, Sotomayor and Abortion

The New York Times: Obama Poll Sees Doubt on Budget and Health Care, by Jeff Zeleny and Dalia Sussman:

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whom Mr. Obama nominated to the Supreme Court three weeks ago, is still widely unknown to the public, the poll found. A majority of people surveyed, 53 percent, said they did not know enough about Judge Sotomayor, who would be the first Hispanic justice, to say whether she should be confirmed. But 74 percent said that it was either very or somewhat important for the Supreme Court to reflect the country’s diversity.

Before the Senate votes on her confirmation, 48 percent of people said her positions on issues like abortion and affirmative action were very important to know about.

The nomination of a Supreme Court justice, as well as the fatal shooting of an abortion doctor in Kansas late last month, injected a fresh dynamic into the national abortion debate. But the poll found essentially no change in the public’s views of abortion in the last two decades, with 36 percent saying it should be generally available, 41 percent saying it should be available but under stricter limits than are now in place and 21 percent saying it should not be permitted....

The issues of abortion and affirmative action sharply divide voters in each major political party. Among Democrats, 71 percent oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, while Republicans are closely divided. And 67 percent of Democrats support affirmative action programs for minorities, while 60 percent of Republicans oppose them.

Julie Graves Krishnaswami

Baby Gender Test: Parents File Suit

New York Post: 'Boy Blunder ' Gender Test, by Dareh Gregorian:

Congratulations -- it's a boy! Or a girl!

A group of New York moms has filed suit against the makers of a "99.9-percent accurate" baby-gender test, claiming the results they got were 100 percent wrong.

The product was advertised as "infallibly accurate in foretelling the gender of a healthy baby," and its Web site said the "prediction of your baby's gender is unmistakably correct or we will double your money back."

The Baby Gender Mentor is touted as allowing women as little as five weeks pregnant to tell if they're expecting a boy or a girl, the suit says.

That's nine to 13 weeks sooner than parents normally find out from a sonogram or amniocentesis and typically the cutoff point for abortions -- although no one suggested in the court papers that was the reason they took the test.

In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, six New York women claim they were given incorrect results from the $275 test, and claim the company, Acu-Gen Biolab, Inc., made them jump through hoops to get their refunds . . . .

Julie Graves Krishnaswami