News, Views, Facts & Herstory

Kaiser Network Reproductive Health News, Updated Daily

RH Reality Check - news, analysis, opinion, blogs

Website allows women to share positive aspects of abortion by Eleanor J. Bader, 7.21.03. "Patricia Beninato spent January 22, 2003, the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, in an Internet chat room, discussing the ruling's significance. During the course of the exchange, something struck her. Virtually every participant became uneasy when asked to acknowledge the positive aspects of abortion..."

Abstinence-Only Sex Education Programs 'Threaten' Health of Young People - 2002 Report by Human Rights Watch .... Abstinence-only sex education programs are "threatening" the health of young people by excluding information on condom use and other methods of preventing HIV transmission. The report, titled "Ignorance Only: HIV/AIDS, Human Rights and Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Programs in the United States," analyzes several abstinence-only programs and ad campaigns in Texas. Texas was selected as the case study for the report because a substantial share of federal funding for abstinence-only programs is allocated to the state and because Texas has actively promoted abstinence-only programs statewide. [Hmmm, could it have anything to do with Texas being President Bush's home state.]

Joining with Extremists: Bush Balked on Funds to UN Family-Planning Agency by Trudy Rubin: "President Bush is supposed to be a compassionate conservative. He claims he wants to fight global poverty. He dislikes abortion. So there is only one word for his decision this week to withhold $34 million that Congress had budgeted for the United Nations' family-planning agency. That word is hypocrisy. This decision will deprive thousands of poor women around the world of health and family-planning services, which in turn will lead to more abortions."

Hormone Replacement Therapy - What the experts are saying now, by Kathleen O'Grady. July 2002

European Parliament Committee on Women Adopts Report Calling For Universal Access to Contraception, Abortion. From Kaiser Network.

Bush's Global Gag Rule

Teen Health issues: abstinence-only education, teen pregnancy, teen sexuality news from Kaiser Network.

Katha Pollitt in The Nation: "Just think of the damage religious mania (combined, as it tends to be, with nationalism and patriarchy) has wrought around the globe this year, the first of the new millennium--the World Trade Center attack, the Taliban, suicide bombers in Israel versus yet more settlements on the West Bank. And that's not even mentioning our own home-grown fanatics, like the recently apprehended fugitive Clayton Lee Waagner, who threatened to murder forty-two abortion clinic workers and who is the main suspect in some 550 anthrax-hoax letters to clinics, or the mainstreaming of conservative religious views, as in the explosion of abstinence-only sex education and theologically motivated restrictions on stem-cell research."

Terrorism by Any Other Name by Dr. Barbara Santee.

"You don't have to go to Northern Ireland to find people familiar with daily terror. Abortion providers have lived with it for decades." by Laura Flanders

Give to Feminist Women's Health Center and your contribution can underwrite an abortion for a woman in need.

"Also in October, eight clinics in four states received letters that the writers claimed were contaminated by anthrax. Although none of the letters proved to be contaminated, 31 people at an Indianapolis clinic were decontaminated and treated with antibiotics." Article from CNN

What is the Global Gag Rule and who does it affect?

Afghanistan's Treatment of Women by Adriene Sere. "The nature and range of crimes perpetrated against Afghan women has no precedence in modern history."

Dr. Tiller's Outpost of Freedom Pro-Choice activists defend Wichita clinic from the Anti-Choice harassment. (Summer 2001)

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Emergency Contraception Hotline - How to prevent pregnancy within 120 hours after sex. Most effective when taken sooner rather than later.

Fat and Feminist - Large women's health experiences, bigotry in a health care setting.

Self Help Clinic Celebrates 25 Years - The early women's health movement.

Women, HIV & AIDS in 1998 - Death rates for AIDS among men are down, but for women the epidemic is rising. Washington state and national HIV/AIDS Resources.

Women and Sex - "For society to sanction research on sexual function in women, people would have to view women's sexual desire as an important issue." A recent report in the New York Times.

Women's First Global March - by Doris Olivers

Views & Opinions

What does Pro-Choice mean to You?

Abortion is OK - Let's de-stigmatize abortion, to ensure true freedom of choice.

Power of Pregnancy - What if abortions were solely a woman-defined experience?

Women Versus Babies by Ann Furedi. published February 22, 2000 in The Guardian. Ann Furedi is director of communications, British Pregnancy Advisory Service.

Facts

Two new publications about welfare - from The Institute for Women's Policy Research

• "Marriage Promotion and Low-Income Communities: An Examination of Real Needs and Real Solutions," a Briefing Paper by Avis Jones-DeWeever
• "Disabilities Among Children and Mothers in Low-Income Families," a Research-in-Brief by Sunwha Lee, Gi-Taik Oh, and Melissa Sills

Computers & Women - Did you know the first-ever computer programmers were six women?

Equal Pay for women.

Global Village - A summary of the world - if we could shrink the earth's population to a village of 100...

History of Women's Bodies - cultural views and laws, from Aristotle to the present.

Initiative 120 - The Reproductive Privacy Act - the current abortion law in WA state.

Right Wing Watch - almost unbelievable statements from religious and political extremists.

Roe v Wade - complete text of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

Roe v Wade Anniversary on Jan. 22 - Celebrating 25 years of Freedom of Choice.

WorldWide Statistics on the Status of Women

Herstory

Herstory of the Feminist Women's Health Center in Washington State.

Herstory of Abortion and Politics in Washington State.

Twenty Years at A Woman's Choice Clinic in Yakima.

Firebombs and Violence: FWHC's Everett Clinic Destroyed.

Herstory of FWHC Expansion: Cedar River Clinic and Cascade Family Planning

Concentric Media - Independent filmmaker, Dorothy Fadiman's important documentaries collectively called "From the Back Alleys to the Supreme Court and Beyond."

When Abortion Was Illegal: Untold Stories,
From Danger to Dignity: The Fight for Safe Abortion,
The Fragile Promise of Choice: Abortion in the U.S. Today,
Spanish-subtitled versions of the above trilogy,
Dear Dr. Spencer: Abortion in a Small Town

Jane - the story of an underground safe abortion network when abortion was illegal.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, Women Make Movies is proud to announce the availability of the documentary THE PILL by Erna Buffie and Elise Swerhone. Special prices for groups involved in Reproductive Rights work.

January 22 is the anniversary of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision making abortion legal.

Women in History

For Women Only: Your Guide to Health Empowerment - book by Barbara Seaman and Gary Null - includes a long section on the history and revolutionary significance of self-help gynecology. Published in 1999.

Selected Articles from pastnewsletters:

Fall 2000 - FWHC's 20th Anniversary Issue: Proud to Provide Abortion, Self Help, Yakima Clinic History, Clinic Violence, Expanded Services.

Spring 1999 - Remembering Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, announcing a new book called "Pride and Joy: The Lives and Passions of Women Without Children.

Pro-Choice and Anti-Choice on the Same Street - Operation Rescue pickets in Yakima. (June 1996)

Fire Bombs, Clinic Closed, Federal Court Lawsuit - What happened when FWHC's Everett clinic was hit by 3 firebombs in 1983-84. Firebomb photo album

4th World Conference on Women / NGO Forum - A first-hand report on this incredible gathering of women in Sept. 1995 in China. By attendee Beverly Whipple, FWHC's founder.

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