Quote of the Day - Choice and Healthcare

"Denying a woman her right to choose is sex discrimination: Burdening women with unplanned pregnancies leads to systemic economic, social and psychological gender inequalities."

Yeah, I never thought I'd link to DoubleX either, but that is concise and accurate.

Back Up Your Birth Control Day!

This is all kinds of awesome:

Tell the FDA to Act on Emergency Contraception from Center for Reproductive Rights on Vimeo.

Your Friday Awesome: Nuns are Awesome

You know the stereotype of the Catholic nun with a ruler? While I'm sure they exist, I've never actually met one of those nuns. But, the nun who stood with my college's Women's Resource Center to say "rape is not about sex, it is about violence," - I met her. The nuns who turned their backs to the Pope (John Paul) because the of the Vatican's stance on condoms? Met those. So, while totally awesome, I wasn't too surprised when the Catholic Sisters came out in favor of healthcare reform. From a letter, they sent to every member of Congress:

We have witnessed firsthand the impact of our national health care crisis, particularly its impact on women, children and people who are poor. We see the toll on families who have delayed seeking care due to a lack of health insurance coverage or lack of funds with which to pay high deductibles and co-pays. We have counseled and prayed with men, women and children who have been denied health care coverage by insurance companies. We have witnessed early and avoidable deaths because of delayed medical treatment.

The health care bill that has been passed by the Senate and that will be voted on by the House will expand coverage to over 30 million uninsured Americans. While it is an imperfect measure, it is a crucial next step in realizing health care for all. It will invest in preventative care. It will bar insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. It will make crucial investments in community health centers that largely serve poor women and children. And despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments – $250 million – in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it.

Way to be awesome, sisters.

via, Shakesville.

Your Friday Awesome: Be Awesome

That beautiful and awesome woman on the right, Kara, is a dear friend who is among the first group of Peace Corps volunteers to return to Rwanda after the genocide. She is a braver woman than I will ever be.

2010 has already seen enormous devastation and the resulting amazing philanthropic response to the earthquake in Haiti. Unfortunately, the needs of Haitians (before and after the earthquake) are similar to the needs of people all over the world year in and year out.

It wasn't until Kara had been in Rwanda for six months that she mentioned off-handly on IM that she didn't have plumbing. It took a minute for that fact to register. She had been in country for six months, but there was so much to do and learn that not having an indoor toilet or shower didn't seem worth mentioning.

But, private residences aren't the only places without indoor plumbing. Heath centers do not have it either.

The Musha Health Center Water Project is working to bring reliable indoor plumbing to a health center that serves over 15,000 people outside of Rwamagana:

Musha Health Center is a small health center that provides many services to the people of Musha and surrounding areas. These include maternity and delivery services, surgical and wound care, consultations, hygiene practices, and laboratory capabilities.

There is no running water in the consultation, pharmacy, surgery and pediatrics rooms. The lack of water is a hindrance to the quality of services that the health center can provide to its patients. Currently water must be brought in buckets by health care staff from the water pump in town for use in the clinic.

Take a moment to think about that. Surgeries in rooms without a reliable water source. The only thing standing between the faucets and running water? $500.

Whole Foods: The Skinny Shall Be Rewarded (with more food)

Granted, the price point was already enough to limit my shopping at Whole Foods - even though it is so pretty and right on my way home from work.

Now, Whole Foods employees who are skinny with good lab results are being rewarded with larger discounts than their larger or less genetically elite counterparts.

Quote of the Day

The problem with leaving the decision up to the states, he says, is that it doesn’t go far enough. “I think states should leave the abortion question up to the counties,” he explains. “Then I think counties should leave the abortion question up to municipalities. Then the neighborhoods should leave the abortion question up to each block.” And each block, as you might have guessed, should leave the abortion question up to each household.

Via Feministe.

Your Friday Awesome: Breast Cancer Awareness

This is how you use pink to generate awareness about breast cancer. No October-specific bedazzled products dipped in peto-bismol that give 1% of proceeds to research. Instead, the entire team of people that care for patients, including janitors, cafeteria workers and admins. Awesome.

via Feministing.

Veteran's Day

If only we gave as much thought to veterans during the rest of the year as we do to the pomp and circumstance of the holidays we set aside, we would not have this:

"A research team at Harvard Medical School estimates 2,266 U.S. military veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they lacked health insurance and thus had reduced access to care. That figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001."

Dr. David Himmelstein, the co-author of the analysis and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, commented, “On this Veterans Day we should not only honor the nearly 500 soldiers who have died this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the more than 2,200 veterans who were killed by our broken health insurance system. That’s six preventable deaths a day.

He continued: “These unnecessary deaths will continue under the legislation now before the House and Senate. Those bills would do virtually nothing for the uninsured until 2013, and leave at least 17 million uninsured over the long run. We need a solution that works for all veterans - and for all Americans - single-payer national health insurance.”

While many Americans believe that all veterans can get care from the VA, even combat veterans may not be able to obtain VA care, Woolhandler said. As a rule, VA facilities provide care for any veteran who is disabled by a condition connected to his or her military service and care for specific medical conditions acquired during military service.

Lets do more than yellow ribbons and watered down legislation for all citizens.

Image via the Daily Mail.

Your T-eeww-sday Not Awesome

Thanks, Viagra. Thanks for reminding us to celebrate your role in the cultural cannon of making sure that boners still trump birth control.

And, um, eeww...

Women's Liberation: The History of Birth Control

Newsweek has a pretty good (and sometimes terrifying!) slideshow on the evolution of birth control. It makes me thank science that I hit puberty in the decade that I did.

Below is one of the slides on the Dalkon Shield.


Mother Jones (where I also sometimes blog) exposed the dumping of the product in developing countries in 1979, calling it "The Corporate Crime of the Century."

But, Who Will Look Out For the Insurance Companies?

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

"They need to make big profits so that they can afford to give their employees health insurance."

Genius.

Pwned!1! - Barney Frank Refuses to Engage the Crazies

Its about damn time. We need to see more members of Congress calling this out for what it is. It is not a conversation. It is not free speech. It should not be engaged.



Crazy: Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy, as Obama has expressly supported this policy, why are you supporting it?

Barney Frank: When you ask me that question, I am gonna revert to my ethnic heritage, and answer your question with a question. On what planet do you spend most of your time?...You want me to answer the question? As you stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler, and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is as I said before, it is a tribute to the 1st Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table - I have no interest in doing it.

Thanks to Pandagon for the transcript.

Sit Down and Shut Up

With the end of the Bush administration, I had really hoped the days of just spouting outright lies and nonsensical streams of consciousness were over. I was wrong. The news about mobs for hire at health care Town Halls is everywhere now, but not surprisingly, Rachel Maddow has a really good run down of just what exactly is going on:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The 2000 election was the first presidential election I was able eligible to vote in. I was in college, and by the time my classes were done for the day, the election had already been called, so I dejectedly cast my ballot that would never be counted.

Then, in the 2004 campaign, I worked 17 hour days, seven days a week, for six months hoping that this time we would have an election decided by an informed electorate who had their ballots counted. Again, we did not. And again, it seemed no one really did anything about it.

But, to the point: I thought I was an informed citizen, I worked in electoral politics and in the progressive media, and yet, I never once heard about the mobs for hire that had stopped the Florida recount.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Make sure you watch the section where she identifies every single person in the "mob" as a Republican staffer. Strangely it makes me feel a little better to know that people didn't do that because they were idiots, but because they were paid to be idiotic.

It really is about time that we stop letting this crap slide. It is time that we started teaching people how to think rationally, and not allow for this kind of behavior. Not only is it ignorant, it is threatening to the people in attendance and members of Congress. It is time we take people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh an Bill O'Reilly off the air once and for all.

Crap, They Figured Out Our Evil Plan...

Yes, we want to kill the old people and the fetuses in order to cut health care costs and that pesky overpopulation problem:



It is crap like this that makes me afraid to start conversations with strangers in the airport for fear that my only reaction to a completely illogical argument based on scare tactics created by people who use others' religious beliefs to increase their own wealth and privilege, will be a sincere desire to punch someone in the mouth.