Reproductive Rights Prof Blog

Proponents Hope Health Care Legislation Will Save Abstinence-Only Sex Education

Wash. Post: Abstinence proponents look for aid from new health bill, by Rob Stein:

Proponents of sex education classes that focus on encouraging teenagers to remain virgins until marriage are hoping that the rescue plan for the nation's health-care system will also save their programs, which are facing extinction because of a cutoff of federal funding.

The health-care reform legislation pending in the Senate includes $50 million for programs that states could use to try to reduce pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease among adolescents by teaching to them to delay when they start having sex.

Under the federal budget signed by President Obama, such programs would no longer have funds targeted for them. . . .

Bill to Liberalize Spain's Abortion Laws is Amended

The Associated Press is reporting that a bill pending in the Spanish parliament that would liberalize Spain's abortion laws has been amended to require parental consent for teens.  The story is available here.

Study Finds ManyTeenagers Have Had Sex Before Parents' Sex Talk

Time Magazine: Parents' Sex Talk with Kids: Too Little, Too Late, by Alice Park:

The sex talk is never easy. It's not comfortable for anyone involved — parents are afraid of it, children are mortified by it — which is probably why the talk so often comes after the fact. In the latest study on parent-child talks about sex and sexuality, researchers found that more than 40% of adolescents had had intercourse before talking to their parents about safe sex, birth control or sexually transmitted diseases.

That trend is troublesome, say experts, since teens who talk to their parents about sex are more likely to delay their first sexual encounter and to practice safe sex when they do become sexually active. And, ironically, despite their apparent dread, kids really want to learn about sex from their parents, according to study after study on the topic. . . .

Report Examines Some Effects of Health Reform on Reproductive Service Providers

Guttmacher Institute news release: Health Reform Encounters Two Long-Standing Challenges: Confidentiality and Health Information Technology:

New Policy Analyses Examine How Sexual and Reproductive Health Providers Might Be Affected

Two new analyses in the Fall 2009 issue of the Guttmacher Policy Review examine how health care reform might affect medical providers—in particular those who provide sexual and reproductive health services—in two important and interrelated areas: confidentiality of services and health information technology.

Confidentiality of Services

Widely used health insurance billing and claims procedures unintentionally but routinely violate basic confidentiality for anyone enrolled as a dependent on someone else’s policy, such as spouses, teens and young adult children of primary policyholders, according to “Unintended Consequences: How Insurance Processes Inadvertently Abrogate Patient Confidentiality,” by Rachel Benson Gold. In particular, the practice of sending “explanation of benefits” forms to a policyholder violates confidentiality for anyone enrolled as a dependent on their policy. This may be especially acute for individuals seeking sensitive services, such as sexual and reproductive health care. . . . 

Health Information Technology

Because of its potential both to improve care and to moderate costs, health information technology features prominently in both current health care reform efforts and the 2009 stimulus bill. But family planning providers seeking to use significant new financial incentives face a host of challenges, including confidentiality issues and difficulties tailoring new technologies—such as electronic health records—to meet the requirements of public health programs like Title X, according to “Family Planning Centers and the Adoption of Health Information Technology,” by Adam Sonfield. . . .

Anti-Abortion Film, "South Dakota: A Woman's Right to Choose," Is Shown to High School Girls

LA Times: Creators of abortion film say they want honest debate, by Robin Acarian:

But some who have seen 'South Dakota' say it leans more toward the anti-abortion side.

It was an unusual field trip for the nearly 1,000 high school girls who spilled from yellow school buses in front of a Westwood theater one recent October morning. They came from all over the county: the tony enclaves of San Marino, Pasadena and Beverly Hills and the grittier reaches of Boyle Heights and South L.A.

The movie they had come to see, " South Dakota: A Woman's Right to Choose," had already been vetted by a handful of their administrators, who were satisfied with the film's depiction of teen pregnancy and abortion.

. . . Isacson said his movie's purpose is to edify, inform and not take sides, but some may view "South Dakota," intentionally or not, as subtly weighted against abortion. The film's emotional highlight, after all, is the rescue of 14-year-old Barb by her boyfriend from an abortion clinic exam room and its grossly insensitive nurses. As for Chris, even the staunchest abortion foes usually concede that abortion is acceptable in the case of rape.

Carol Sanger on Teenage Abortion and Judicial Bypass

Carol Sanger (Columbia Law School) has posted Decisional Dignity: Teenage Abortion, Bypass Hearings, and the Misuse of Law on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Much attention has been paid to the harm women suffer when they are unable to get abortions, or, from an anti-abortion perspective, what women are said to suffer by virtue of having abortions. There has, however, been little discussion of the harms women suffer by virtue of abortion regulation, even when they are, in the end, able to obtain a legal abortion. What is the relation between the detailed regulation of abortion decisions and the right of women to be treated with dignity regarding such decisions?

This Article considers the harms to dignity inflicted on one category of women - pregnant minors - by virtue of their participation the judicial bypass process. Thirty four states now requirement that a minor wants an abortion without first involving her parents must petition a judge and participate in a hearing at which the judge decides if she is mature and informed enough to make an abortion decision herself. By compelling narrative, the hearings produce a distinct sort of harm: the humiliation of vulnerable minors required to testify about their sexual relationships, their pregnancy, and the intricacies of home life that decided them to take their chances in court. I develop the argument that bypass hearings produce a civil version of what Malcolm Feeley identified in the criminal context as “process as punishment.” Several features of the hearings work to bring this about. These include a structure of stealth inherent in the proceedings, and the testimonial demands of a hearing too often focused on the moral misconduct (sex, abortion, general sneakiness) of the petitioners.

Bypass hearings harm the legal system as well as individual petitioners. The Article discusses the problem of sham hearings (akin to fault based divorce proceedings), the problem of forum exclusion and law’s legitimacy, and the relation of dignity to the “luck of the draw” aspect of judicial assignment. The Article focuses specially on the election of judges and the politics of abortion in their selection and performance.

Trinidad & Tobago to Begin HIV/AIDS Education in Primary Schools Next Year

Trinidad & Tobago Express: AIDS education for primary pupils from Jan, by Aabida Allaham:

THERE are more than 200 HIV-infected children attending public schools in Trinidad and Tobago and they are silently shouting out for something to be done about the discrimination they are faced with, chief education officer at the Ministry of Education Peter O’Neil says.

’There are approximately 204 children in our system [who] are currently accessing treatment for HIV/AIDS and that in itself suggests that children are not least affected by this,’ O’Neil said yesterday, while addressing a small gathering of teachers at the Ministry’s World AIDS Day 2009 symposium at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Port of Spain. The event was entitled Let’s talk HIV/AIDS.

O’Neil, who spoke on behalf of an absent Education Minister, Esther Le Gendre, said in addition to the stigma and discrimination these children are faced with on a daily basis, ’some 38 children die every day in the Caribbean from HIV/AIDS’.

As a result, he said, AIDS education will be a part of the primary school curriculum from January.

Should Parental Control Trump Children's Right to Sex Education?

Huffington Post: Whose Right to Sex Education?, by Philip N. Cohen:

The principle of equality for children is fundamentally at odds with the American interpretation of the principle of equality for adults. We defer parenting to parents at the cost of equality for their children. This happens in myriad ways, lots of which involve education. Just as adults are free to donate thousands of dollars to just our neighborhood school's PTA, to benefit our children and evade responsibility for those of our non-neighbors, we may be free to dictate the terms of the education our children receive.

The right of the parents to control their children is great when it's great. And the denial of that right is often egregious when it's taken away from parents who are disenfranchised or oppressed, to the detriment of parents and children alike. But when it's exercised poorly, the right of parental control is too-often protected by law.

Take sex education. Most states let parents "opt" their children out of what little sex education is still offered. A new report from the Guttmacher Institute lists 37 states and the District of Columbia that permit parental opt-outs for education about sexually-transmitted infections (3 more require affirmative consent before any education on the subject may be delivered). And, before you think better of those without opt-out provisions - most of them only teach abstinence anyway. (Even when parents "opt in," what do they get? Teachers may have permission to teach about contraception while being blocked from its "advocacy or encouragement.") . . .

For Children Who Flee or Are Kicked out of their Homes, Sex Is Often the Cost of Survival

NY Times: For Runaways, Sex Buys Survival, by Ian Urbina:

Running in the Shadows

. . . Most of the estimated 1.6 million children who run away each year return home within a week. But for those who do not, the desperate struggle to survive often means selling their bodies.

Nearly a third of the children who flee or are kicked out of their homes each year engage in sex for food, drugs or a place to stay, according to a variety of studies published in academic and public health journals. But this kind of dangerous barter system can quickly escalate into more formalized prostitution, when money changes hands. . . . 

Lawsuit Charges Illinois' Parental Notification Law Is Unconstitutional

Chicago Tribune: Lawsuit Challenges Illinois' Parental Notification Law for Abortions, by Sara Olkon:

A Chicago physician and a Granite City women's medical clinic have filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court charging that Illinois' parental notification law for abortions is unconstitutional and seeking to bock its start.

The law, set to go into effect Nov. 3, requires physicians to notify the parent of a girl younger than 18 before performing an abortion. A provision of the law allows girls to bypass parental notification by going before a judge, who would then have 48 hours to rule on the petition.

Moreover, no notice is required in case of a medical emergency or if the girl declares in writing that she is a victim of sexual abuse.

On Nov. 2, a Circuit Court judge is set to conduct a hearing on a temporary restraining order, said Lorie Chaiten of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, the Hope Clinic for Women Ltd. and Dr. Allison Cowett, director of the Universtiy of Illinois at Chicago's Center for Reproductive Health.In the complaint, the plaintiffs argue that the notification law would harm minors by preventing them from obtaining safe abortions or force them to carry their pregnancies to term.

I wrote an op-ed on this law earlier this year.  See: JURIST: Abortion Parental Notice Laws: Irrational, Unnecessary and Downright Dangerous

Utah Court Rules Teenager Not Criminally Liable for Soliciting a Beating in Order to End Pregnancy

Salt Lake Tribune: Judge: abortion laws protect girl who sought pregnancy-ending beating, by Sheena Mcfarland:

A judge has released a 17-year-old Vernal girl from jail after ruling she did not commit a crime when she allegedly paid a man to beat her in an attempt to end her late-term pregnancy.

The release, which came after the girl's mother obtained a second opinion on her daughter's no contest plea, has incensed some lawmakers who argue the ruling skirts laws governing legal abortions in Utah.

"The judge is absolutely stretching," said Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman. "There's no way the judge believes the Utah Legislature left open this loophole. I guarantee it will be closed this next session."

Eighth District Juvenile Court Judge Larry Steele sided with attorney Rich King, who argued under Utah law and around the country women are not held criminally liable for soliciting an abortion.

Senate Committee Reinstates $50 Million in Funding for Discredited Abstinence-Only Education

The Gaggle (Newsweek): Abstinence-Only Education is Back, by Katie Connolly:

After weeks of railing against the price tag of health care reform, Senate Republicans managed to bond over pumping up the budget for one aspect of health care reform yesterday: abstinence-only education. Proposed by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch the amendment reinstates $50 million in funding for abstinence only education that President Obama had previously removed in his budget proposal earlier this year. Committee Republicans were joined by Blanche Lincoln (D. Ark) and Kent Conrad (D. ND) in voting up the measure, which passed 12-11.

I've been trying to think of a measured way to riff on this, but instead I'll be frank. It's an absolute waste of money. This is the sort of thing Republicans usually wail about - the federal government propping up a program where there is no evidence that said program works. Indeed, there's a mounting body of evidence that abstinence-only education is a categorical failure.

Investing in Girls' Education Would Help to Increase Global Prosperity

Salon.com (Broadsheet): It takes girls to raise a village, by Tracy Clark-Flory:

Developing countries lose billions each year by ignoring girls' potential, a report says

It might seem a bad omen for the release of a report on the global importance of educating girls to coincide with reports of a bomb destroying a coed elementary school Tuesday in Afghanistan. But, while the news comes as a reminder of the extreme challenges facing girls' education worldwide, Plan International's report "Because I Am a Girl: The State of the World's Girls 2009" makes a strong case for why it's a fight worth fighting.

The report found that "there are over 500 million adolescent girls and young women in developing countries who could and should play a crucial part in the next generation's economic and social development -- but many do not have the opportunities for education or worthwhile economic activity. . . .

Conservative Religiosity and Teen Birth Rates

NY Times: Religion’s Link to Teen Pregnancy, by Lisa Belkin:

A report this week in the journal Reproductive Health describes what researchers call “a strong association” between the teenage birth rate of a particular state and its “level of religiosity.”

The correlation is not what you might expect. The more religious the state, the higher the rates of teen pregnancy....

From the study's conclusions:

With data aggregated at the state level, conservative religious beliefs strongly predict U.S. teen birth rates, in a relationship that does not appear to be the result of confounding by income or abortion rates. One possible explanation for this relationship is that teens in more religious communities may be less likely to use contraception. 

ACLU Asks Court to End Government Funding of Overtly Religious Abstinence-Only Program in Mississippi

ACLU press release (9/9): ACLU Asks Court to End Government Funding Of Religion In Mississippi Abstinence-Only Program:

Jackson, MS – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Mississippi today asked a federal court in Mississippi to end government funding of religion in the state’s abstinence-only-until-marriage program.  The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District on behalf of a teen and two community members who attended a state-sponsored abstinence summit in May of this year.

“The state of Mississippi cannot sponsor overtly religious events as part of its abstinence-only-until-marriage program,” said Brigitte Amiri, Senior Staff Attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.  “This is not the first time the state has crossed the line in its abstinence programming, but we hope it will be the last. Instead of preaching, the state needs to start teaching youth how to make responsible and healthy decisions throughout their lives.” . . .

Conservative Groups Oppose United Nations Sex Ed Guide

NY Times: U.N. Guide for Sex Ed Generates Opposition, by Steven Erlanger:

PARIS — A set of proposed international sex education guidelines aimed at reducing H.I.V. infections among young people has provoked criticism from conservative groups that say the program would be too explicit for young children and promote access to legal abortion as a right.

The guidelines, scheduled to be released by Unesco in a new draft next week, would be distributed to education ministries, school systems and teachers around the world to help guide teachers in what to teach young people about their bodies, sex, relationships and sexually transmitted diseases. They would address four different age groups. . . .

But the conservative criticism has already caused one of the key participating and donor agencies, the United Nations Population Fund, to pull back from the project and ask that its name be edited out of the published material. . . .

Scholarship by Michelle Oberman

Michelle Oberman (Santa Clara Law) has posted Thirteen Ways of Looking at Buck v. Bell on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This article is a review essay of Paul Lombardo's THREE GENERATIONS, NO IMBECILES: EUGENICS, THE SUPREME COURT AND BUCK V. BELL [Johns Hopkins Press, 2008]. Using Lombardo's rich and fascinating history of eugenics in the U.S. as a foundation, I propose and then explore a series of implications that stem from Buck v. Bell and are related to eugenic practices in the U.S. in the 1920s and 30s. The themes upon which Lombardo touches may be grouped into three general categories: the state role in regulating fertility; gender, race, and class issues in fertility regulation; and contemporary reproduction-related politics as they pertain to human attributes. The article is written with an eye to a semester-long study of the governmental regulation of reproduction, past, present and future. Among the themes that fall within the first of these three broad categories are issues of fiduciary duty, which grow out of Lombardo's examination of the roles of doctors and lawyers in the Buck case. I also consider the government's role in regulating population more generally, examining the eugenic implications of contemporary immigration and population policies. The themes relating to gender, race and class include the consideration of maternal-doctor-fetal conflicts, as well as historical and contemporary efforts to link fertility control to criminal punishment. Finally, the third set of themes includes a discussion of the eugenic implications of contemporary issues in reproductive technology. Lombardo's book is well researched and fascinating. It deserves a broad readership, and this review provides a mechanism for bringing this rich history to life in the classroom and beyond.

Professor Oberman has also posted Eva and her Baby (A Story of Adolescent Sex, Pregnancy, Longing, Love, Loneliness and Death) on SSRN:

This article is written in the form of a creative non-fiction essay in which I tell the story of Eva, a girl who was convicted of manslaughter in connection with the death of her newborn child. I undertook this mode of story-telling after years of writing in more conventional modes about maternal filicide in general, and neonaticide in particular. (Most recently, I co-authored a book entitled When Mothers Kill: Interviews from Prison (NYU Press, 2008)). The conventions governing standard law review writing and the relatively distant observer's voice I adopted in my earlier writings left me feeling as though I had failed to communicate an important part of the factors underlying neonaticide. This essay, in which I fuse Eva's story with my own, undertakes to tell a fuller truth about the complex factors that underlie this crime. The essay is part of a series of creative endeavors (essays and articles) in which I adopt an ethnographic or quasi-ethnographic approach to considering the nexus of criminal law and women's lives.

Reports Shows Dallas Leading Nation in Repeat Teen Births

The Dallas Morning News: Dallas leads nation in repeat teen births, study finds, by Robert T. Garrett:

AUSTIN – Dallas leads the nation in the percentage of teen births that aren't the mother's first delivery, a nonpartisan national research group finds in a new report.

Dallas had the highest percentage of teen births that are repeat births – 28 percent – among 73 major U.S. cities in 2006, the latest year for which city-level data are available.

Texas has the highest repeat rate of any state – 23 percent of teen births. And five of the 15 worst-ranked cities are in Texas, according to the group Child Trends, in a report to be released Wednesday....

Three Americans Prosecuted Under New International Child-Sex-Trafficking Initiative

Wash. Post: 3 Americans Face Child-Sex Charges, by Ashley Surdin:

Men Held in Cambodia Are the First Prosecuted Under Trafficking Initiative

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 31 -- Three Americans accused of traveling to Cambodia to have sex with children are expected to be charged in federal court here, officials said Monday, marking the first prosecutions under a new international initiative intended to combat child-sex tourism.

The initiative, Operation Twisted Traveler, targets Americans who exploit children for sex in Cambodia, which experts describe as a top destination for child predators. U.S. and Cambodian authorities, as well as nongovernmental organizations, were involved in the effort.

"This level of cooperation is unprecedented," said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, which coordinated the initiative with the Justice Department. . . .

Gov't Study Shows Benefits of Gardasil, and Some Potential Complications

NY Times: Study on Vaccine for Cervical Cancer Finds Benefits Despite Some Risks, by Roni Caryn Rabin:

The new vaccine designed to protect girls and young women from cervical cancer has a safety record that appears to be in line with that of other vaccines, a government report has found. Some serious complications occurred, including at least 20 deaths and two cases of Lou Gehrig’s disease, but they were not necessarily caused by the vaccine, the study said.

The most common serious complications after vaccination with Gardasil were fainting episodes and an increased risk for potentially fatal blood clots, possibly related to oral contraceptive use and obesity, the study found.

The vaccine has been given to more than seven million girls and young women nationwide and there is no way to prove that complications came from the vaccine. . . .