Thankfulness–but not complacency
This Thanksgiving season, I am thankful for feminist men.
I am thankful for the state of South Dakota’s rejection of its latest near-complete abortion ban initiative. This editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune highlights how opponents of the ban ran a “different and highly effective campaign…It not only connected with voters, but it suggests that future debates in South Dakota and elsewhere can and should move beyond absolutes and old rhetoric.”
I am thankful for an administration that is on our side and ready to work to overturn the new anti-choice HHS rules that the lame-duck Bush administration wants to push through by December 20th. And I’m thankful for a Secretary of State who has been a champion of women’s rights.
I am thankful for pro-choice religious leaders who recognize that the best way to reduce abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
But although there’s a lot to be thankful for this year, yesterday was not so much a day of thankfulness but a day to recognize that we’re a long way from a world of sexual and reproductive health. Some World AIDS Day facts from Racewire:
• Around 95 percent of people with HIV/AIDS live in developing nations.
• More people than ever before are living with HIV worldwide and new infections continue. According to UNAIDS estimates, there are now 33.2 million people living with HIV, including 2.5 million children.
• During 2007 some 2.5 million people became newly infected with the virus. Around half of all people who become infected with HIV do so before they are 25 and are killed by AIDS before they are 35.
• In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report estimating 56,300 new HIV infections in the U.S. in 2006 – much higher than the previous annual estimates of 40,000 new infections.
• Black Americans were seven times more likely than whites to become newly infected with HIV, according to the report, and “blacks are more heavily and disproportionately affected by HIV than any other racial/ethnic group in the U.S.” Blacks are one in eight Americans, but approximately half the people living with HIV in the U.S., according to the CDC.
• AIDS remains the leading cause of death among black women between 25-34 years and the second leading cause of death in black men between 35-44 years. Black women in the U.S. were 23 times more likely than white women to be diagnosed with AIDS in 2005, according to the CDC.
We have an incoming administration that’s made a lot of promises regarding health care in general and reproductive health specifically, and there’s great potential for better AIDS prevention policies both at home and abroad. With the economic woes facing the country, however, some have predicted that other concerns will take a back seat to keeping key industries afloat and creating jobs. If that’s the case, we’re going to have to work hard to remind our leaders that economic troubles are no excuse for the continued marginalization of the nation’s and world’s most vulnerable populations–and that reproductive health is a human right.