This year’s topic: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?

I have so many hopes…and it’s almost strange to have more hope than fear.

Of course the first and most urgent is the big clean-up job: rolling back the new HHS regulations permitting providers to “conscientiously” object to the reproductive health needs of their patients. That should be at the top of the administration’s agenda.

But I’m also letting myself hope for:

–Changed international and domestic policies surrounding reproductive health and sexual education. I.e. funding HIV prevention programs that distribute condoms and talk about safe sex, shifting the focus from the non-effective abstinence-only model, and lifting the Global Gag Rule on abortions for providers.

–Passage and signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, currently in the Senate and looking good. Protecting women’s earning potential is important and while it doesn’t relate directly to reproductive rights, it contributes to autonomy and self-sufficiency and should help protect the rights of mothers, who are so frequently the target of disparate treatment in the workplace.

–LGBTQIQ-friendly policies in health care and hopefully at a national statutory level. I’m not hoping for national marriage rights just yet, but I really hope to see some movement on this issue and am looking to the President to be a strong leader and ally.

–Speaking of health care, I’m not really daring to hope for a complete overhaul of our severely screwed up system, but I would like to see some major steps taken towards decreasing the power of insurance companies in dictating U.S. policy and ensuring health care for those most in need, including reproductive health services. Also, it would be really great to see the SCHIP expansion finally passed.

–More funding for reproductive health clinics; legal protections for clinics and doctors who perform abortions. With our current financial state of the nation, this may be too much to ask for, but hey, may as well reach for that brass ring, right? And with things like this breaking news going down, a focus on protecting providers is crucial.

What are you hoping to see from our new leadership in the next four years?

Today marks the 36^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and for the fourth time bloggers all over the nation are participating in Blog for Choice.  We have been asked to answer the following question: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?

After eight years of Bush, it was a difficult task to choose just one thing.  I decided that my top pro-choice hope for President Obama, and the new Congress, is for the elimination of federal funding for abstinence-only education.  We have to start using our tax dollars to provide comprehensive sexuality education that teaches prevention and tolerance—and that does not rely on sexist attitudes about boys and girls, marginalize gay youth, or insist on using ideology to educate.  The new Congress should pass the Prevention First Act, and President Obama should eliminate funding for abstinence-only education programs in the federal budget and instead resolve to only approve funding for comprehensive sex ed programs.

$176 million a year is spent on abstinence-only education.  In order to receive federal funding, state grantees’ sex ed curriculum must adhere to a strict eight-point definition of abstinence-only education.  For example, abstinence-only education must teach “that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity” and that “sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”  Abstinence-only programs may only mention contraceptives in terms of failure rates.

Abstinence-only education has been rightfully criticized for containing medically inaccurate information, its reliance on sexist stereotypes, and for failing to require educating teens about sexual assault.  Back in 2004, a study was commissioned by Rep. Harry Waxman on the content of federally funded abstinence-only education programs.  The study found that 80% of commonly used sex ed curricula contains false, misleading, or inaccurate information about sex and reproductive health.  Curricula commonly stated factually inaccurate information about the risks of abortion and consistently relied on sexist stereotypes, presumably in an effort to teach kids that girls and boys deal with sex differently.  For example, the Waxman study found that one curriculum listed “financial support” as one of women’s “5 Major Needs” and “domestic support” as one of men’s “5 Major Needs.”  Several curricula continue to refer to a now-discredited study that erroneously found that condoms fail to prevent HIV 31% of the time.

More recently, a 2008 study found that abstinence-only education is particularly harmful to girls by undermining social ideals of gender equality and by denying life-saving information about reproductive health to girls, who are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of unprotected sex (with respect to both STIs and unplanned pregnancies).   And, a 2009 report on virginity pledges—many of which are included in abstinence-only curricula—concluded that the sexual behavior of teens who took a virginity pledge did not differ from that of non-pledgers, but that pledgers were less likely to use protection when they did have sex.   (This is worse than what the same researchers found in 2001, which was that virginity pledgers did actually delay the first time they had sex compared to non-pledgers, but were less likely to use birth control when they did.)  Basically, virginity pledges don’t work—and teens who take them don’t have the information they need to protect themselves when they do have sex.

So, why are we still funding programs that portray girls as helpless gatekeepers and boys as uncontrollable bundles of hormones?  Both depictions are unfair, stripping both teen girls and boys of their sexual agency.  Why are we funding programs that place a problematic emphasis on the socially constructed concept of “virginity” rather than giving students the information and tools they need to make healthy choices? And what is the point of teaching kids that men need “domestic support”? Of course, the answer is ideology.  But it is a commitment to a radical ideology that prioritizes misinformation, scare tactics, sexism, and homophobia over science at the expense of teens’—and disproportionately teen girls’—health, safety, and self-determination. 

So, that is my number-one hope for the Obama administration and the new Congress.  Congress should pass the Prevention First Act, reintroduced on January 13, 2009, which aims to reduce unintended pregnancies, including by ensuring that all federal programs provide medically accurate information.  I hope that President Obama does not ask for any funding in his budget request to Congress for abstinence-only education.  I have high hopes that we will move into a new era where sex ed is science-based and, yes, sex-positive; where sex ed doesn’t teach kids that girls are responsible for denying boys’ sexual advances or tell bald-faced lies about contraception.  We need to as a society explore what it means for kids to have a right to information—and adjust sex ed curriculum accordingly. 

-Amanda Allen

2009 is here, and I think many of us are grateful to say goodbye to the old year–a year of economic catastrophe and, for those supporting progressive causes, a frustrating final hurrah of a lame duck administration inimical to many areas of human rights, including reproductive rights. As LSRJ members prepare to start school again, our eyes turn unavoidably towards January 20th–the day we hope to see a new era of reproductive justice allies in the U.S. executive branch. With Democratic Senator Tom Daschle as the new Cabinet head of Health and Human Services, the Obama administration’s most pressing task in the reproductive health department will be to repeal the damaging new regulations promulgated by the outgoing regime that give a “right of conscience” allowing providers to refuse health services. We’ll be watching closely to see whether our new leaders make this important repair job a priority.

Here’s a short round-up of links for this first week of January:

– The Vatican, continuing to maintain their hard-line position against reproductive freedom, has adopted an environmental argument against the use of contraceptives. While feminizing hormones in the water supply is certainly a serious health concern, the Catholic Church’s ingenuous statement that the pollution derives chiefly from birth control ignores a much more significant, better established source of synthetic estrogen: industrial pollution, particularly from pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and plastics. It’s clear that the Church’s official position has less to do with genuine concern for the environment than with a continued effort to undermine women’s rights and health.

– Logan Kelly of RH Reality Check outlines the success of Death with Dignity campaigns, pointing out the similarity of right to death laws to abortion rights:

It’s fall of 2008, and a ballot measure is up for popular vote in Washington state. Supporters say the measure would expand choice and individual autonomy, while opponents warn voters to “protect the vulnerable.” Catholic dioceses across the country pour money into the opposition campaign, and the measure’s supporters warn of the encroaching power of one religious group to mandate morals for all. Then the opposition ramps up fears that an individual would not even need to notify their spouse to undergo a medical procedure. Sounds like a typical abortion campaign, right? In fact, this ballot measure legalized aid in dying in Washington state.

– An article in the New York Times focuses on the use of misoprostol and other non-medical methods of abortion among the urban Dominican-Latina community. Because of cultural stigma against abortion, many women choose less safe alternatives rather than risk being seen entering a clinic–but may risk their own health in the process.

– To end today’s blog entry on a positive note, RH Reality Check lists 2008′s Top Ten Wins for Women’s Health, including triumphs for reproductive rights both here in the US and abroad. 2008 was not without its bright spots–and I for one am looking forward to an even brighter year for reproductive justice in 2009.