TresSugar

Healthcare Bill Restricts Coverage For Abortions

TresSugar — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:00:00 -0800

If you thought Democrats were pro-choice, you might want to think again. The recently passed healthcare bill coming out of the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives could significantly decrease access to abortion even for Americans on private insurance plans.

After a 290-194 vote, the House passed an amendment Saturday that bans the use of federal funds to cover abortion for anyone using the public healthcare plan. The amendment also prevents private insurers from covering abortions for anyone getting a tax credit to help pay premiums. The amendment is being called the biggest victory in years for abortion opponents.

Under the bill, there will be many more Americans receiving tax credits to help pay for insurance - any family of four making less than $88,000 a year will be eligible for the subsidies, and if they take the credits, they will not be allowed to use them to purchase a plan that covers abortion. Pro-choice advocates argue that the new legislation will lower access to abortion coverage even for those receiving no tax aide because private insurance companies will have an incentive to drop abortion coverage from their plans so they can compete for customers receiving federal subsidies. The implications could be substantial since right now 90 percent of insurers cover abortion to some extent.

Pressure from conservative Democrats and the pro-life lobby helped get the amendment passed. While I'm not surprised abortion isn't being treated like every other legal medical procedure, I am a little shocked that the bill's implications go so far to limit abortion coverage for women who are not receiving any federal funding. Do you think the House did the right thing?

70,000 Women a Year Die From Unsafe Abortions

TresSugar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:00:00 -0700

After three years of research, the New York-based Guttmacher Institute has concluded that although contraceptive use has lowered the number of abortions worldwide, unsafe abortions still account for a staggering 70,000 deaths a year, particularly in the developing world. More than half the deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with the lowest rates of contraceptive use and the highest rates of unintended pregnancies.

"In much of the developing world," said the Institute's president Sharon Camp, "abortion remains highly restricted, and unsafe abortion is common and continues to damage women's health and threaten their survival."

The report calls for easing developing nations' abortion laws, citing that laws banning or restricting abortion don't keep it from happening, they just make abortion unsafe and either self-induced or performed by unskilled people in any unhygienic conditions.

The Guttmacher Institute's recommendations: expand access to family planning and modern contraceptives and to legal and safe abortion, and improve the coverage and quality of post-abortion care.

Their recommendations have been criticized by Deirdre McQuade, a policy director for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Pro-life Activities who also castigates priests or nuns who make referrals to family planning services, which she says veers from church policy. "We need to be much more creative in assisting women with supportive services," she said, "so they don't need to resort to the unnatural act of abortion."

Oklahoma Prepares to Put Abortion Details Online

TresSugar — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:00:00 -0700

Starting Nov. 1, any woman who has an abortion in Oklahoma will have to fill out an extensive questionnaire that will subsequently be posted online. Supporters of the law say that the information will help healthcare officials reduce the number of abortions. They also reason that the answers must be posted online so academic researchers can access the data.

As you can imagine, the logic behind these assumed advantages, along with the entire premise of posting extensive information about individual abortions online, is flawed for various reasons. Here are a few:

Even though the questionnaire does not ask for name or address, the first eight questions alone most likely would be enough to identify a woman in a town of 200 or less.
The data will not be suitable for academic research because of the way it is collected. Since a woman could fill out a questionnaire each time she sees a doctor about seeking an abortion, her data could appear to represent more than one patient.
The questionnaire contains loaded language, such as: "Was there an infant born alive as a result of the abortion?"

Luckily, those opposed to the questionnaire and database have filed a lawsuit that will hopefully prevent the dubious law from going into force. What do you make of all this?

Dominican Republic Bans Abortion, No Exceptions

TresSugar — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0700

As support for legal access to abortion in the US drops (with only 47 percent of Americans thinking it should be legal), the Dominican Republican has decided to go one better: they want to constitutionally ban the procedure altogether.

With support for the Catholic Church and the country's Catholic population, lawmakers recently ratified an amendment that makes it illegal for women to terminate pregnancy in all cases. Abortion is now constitutionally forbidden even if the mother or fetus's life is at risk. And there is no exception for incest or rape.

It is very taboo to discuss abortion in the Dominican Republic, but some bloggers are speaking out against the new amendment. One such blogger writes:

A string of hypocrisy, and those that think they voted for life, when a woman needs to abort because her life is in danger and they do not, THE WOMAN AND THE FETUS DIES. What ignorance! Death will now be 2 for 1 in the Dominican Republic.

Could you imagine something like this happening in the US?

Tweeting Your Miscarriage or Abortion: Good For Women?

TresSugar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:00:00 -0700

When Penelope Trunk, a blogger who shares almost every detail of her life over the Internet, had a miscarriage, she decided to tweet about it. She wrote:

I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a f**ked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.

Writer KJ Dell'Antonia over at Double X thinks Trunk did women a favor with this TMI tweet. She reasons that Trunk should not give her miscarriage, or would-be abortion, different treatment than other events that happen to her. In fact, Dell'Antonia thinks all women should be more open to talking about these issues because pretending that they never happen reserves "a special layer or shame and condemnation for the bodily functions that happen only to women."

So Dell'Antonia says: "go ahead, tweet your abortion" because it's good for womankind. Do you agree?

E-Health Records Raise Privacy Concerns About Sexual Health

TresSugar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0700

In February, the US government mandated that doctors and healthcare providers create an Electronic Health Record (EHR) for every American by 2014. This new system, which healthcare providers and government officials can access when authorized, promises to make health care more efficient and less expensive. But there's a growing concern that the adoption of a central, online system could compromise patient privacy.

Some people worry that private information, such as someone's sexual health history, could get in the hands of the wrong people if health information becomes too centralized. One congressman, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, was recently asked specifically if information about STDs and abortion would be included in a person's record. He said that patients would be able to opt out of including such personal information in the electronic file.

Life is always easier when you swap out a paper-intensive system for searchable, sortable electronic databases. But when it comes to health records, there are risks to consider. Would you choose not to include sensitive information about your sexual health in your official e-file?

Violence Works? Would-Be Abortion Providers Reconsider

TresSugar — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:00:00 -0700

Some medical professionals opt out of performing abortion because of religious objections, but after the recent murder of Dr. Tiller, personal safety concerns are prompting medical students to reconsider their decision to become abortion providers.

The Washington Post interviewed students this week who say they "took a step back" after an alleged antiabortion activist murdered the late-term abortion provider. Devin Miller, 23, is the leader of her school's "Medical Students For Choice" group. She planned on becoming an OB-GYN and expected to terminate pregnancies from time to time. Now, she says, "It's very hard to be confronted with the constant negative energy and constant fighting."

Abortion is one of the most common procedures in American medicine: statistics suggest that nearly one-third of American women will have an abortion by the age of 45. But if the fear of violence or stigmatization continues, there won't be anyone to provide the procedure. Already, 87 percent of US counties have no abortion services, and in a country of 300 million people, there are only 1,787 doctors who perform abortion.

If you were a medical student, do you think you would consider becoming an abortion provider?

Front Page: Abortion Key Issue in Healthcare Debate

TresSugar — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:00:00 -0700

Abortion is the new front in the battle for healthcare reform. - Wall Street Journal
President Obama is set to deliver the eulogy at Ted Kennedy's funeral. - AP
Scientists have come up with a new plan to cut carbon emissions using artificial trees. - BBC News
Via her Facebook page, Sarah Palin is telling supporters to watch Glenn Beck. - Huffington Post

More Indian Women Casually Using Emergency Contraception

TresSugar — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:15:43 -0700

Widespread access to family planning medication can come with some negative side effects. Gynecologists in India are reporting a sharp rise in medical complications, such as excessive bleeding or incomplete abortions, due to women's casual use of over the counter emergency contraception and abortion pills. Doctors say that women commonly look up the dosages on the Internet and then buy the pills themselves, never consulting a doctor. . . until something goes wrong.

Based on anecdotal evidence from doctors and patients, women appear to be increasingly relying on these medications as their first line of contraception. One woman told the Times of India that women turn to the morning after pill because "when you’re with your boyfriend, you don’t want to use condoms." Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned daily birth control pill?

While it's important for women to have access to emergency contraception or the abortion pill, it seems like there are plenty of medical reason to avoid using it as the main form of birth control.

Source: Flickr User gregor_y

China Airs Its Abortion Problem

TresSugar — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:31:16 -0700

Each year there are 20 million births in China and 13 million abortions. Each year in the US, there are four million live births and fewer than one million abortions. Chinese authorities are admitting that poor sex education and a lack of knowledge about contraception are reasons for the high rate.

Without the protection of proper contraception, pregnant women who have already had the legal number of children turn to abortion. But China's strict family planning laws, which limit women to one child unless the first child is a girl born to a family in a rural area, aren't solely to blame for terminated pregnancies. Single women, often between the ages of 20-29 and without children, are the most likely to seek an abortion.

The high rate of abortion is making front page news in China, even though it's not the highest rate in the world according to UN figures. Russia takes that prize, with an abortion rate more than double that of China's.