What's New on Future Choices?
Additional 'breaking news' on Reproductive Health issues within Future Choices' scope
News items are listed in reverse chronological order.
Last updated:
September 7, 2008 12:24
- Future Choices editorial: Sarah Palin and the Republican plot against family planning
The Republican nominee for Vice President, Sarah Palin, waxed hyperbolic on a number of occasions during her September 3 speech to the party faithful in Minneapolis, but in one area she did not exaggerate: her vehement and unconditional opposition to contraception. This position – and the horrifying possibility that the Republican ticket might prevail in November...|MORE
- PUBLICLY FUNDED FAMILY PLANNING CLINICS
ARE AN ESSENTIAL SOURCE OF CARE FOR MILLIONS OF AMERICANS. A new study prepared for October 2008 issue of American Journal of Public Health by Guttmacher Institute finds that one in four contraceptive service users rely on these clinics for care. | MORE
{ Future Choices editorial comment 8/21/08: The ongoing viability of these family planning clinics is being threatened by changes in regulations allegedly being drafted by the Department of Health & Human Services. | Read MORE}
- Bush again withholds money from Population Fund |MORE, a decision called "appalling" by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. |MORE
- McCain's Position on Abortion Pushes 'Critical Bloc' of Women Voters to Obama, Poll Finds |MORE
- "After the right went nuts, McCain backtracked and said he did favor the repeal of Roe, adding, however, that it might lead to dangerous illegal abortions." |MORE
- Ipas calls for further investigation of U.S. government censorship of abortion information. |MORE
- Ignorance Is Bliss, And Then You Get an STD |MORE
- Federally Funded Hopkins Database Restored To Accept Abortion-Related Searches After Being Restricted |MORE
- Bush again withholds money from Population Fund
OneWorld.net
- "After the right went nuts, McCain backtracked and said he did favor the repeal of Roe, adding, however, that it might lead to dangerous illegal abortions.
WASHINGTON, June 26 – The Bush administration today said it would withhold $39.7 million authorized by Congress for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, for the seventh straight year.
Congressional critics immediately slammed the long-expected decision as once more based on spurious charges. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) said she was “deeply disappointed, but not surprised,” calling it proof the administration remains in a “retrograde rut” and is “blinded by political extremism.” |MORE
Anna Quindlen
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 12:08 PM ET Apr 19, 2008
What John McCain really stands for came up most recently in light of his position on abortion. Planned Parenthood commissioned a survey showing that more than half of those women polled don't know much about McCain's stance, and a quarter of those who are in favor of keeping abortion legal mistakenly think the senator agrees. [my emphasis] See full article
[April 9, 2008
Ipas press release]
A federally funded Johns Hopkins University project, Popline, made a recent decision to remove an Ipas publication on abortion and human rights from a vast database of publications maintained as an international web-based resource for health researchers and the general public. Administrators further decided to block searches on the term "abortion" for visitors to the website, a decision reversed on April 4th by the Dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health when the issue reached the media. [See earlier article below.] The Ipas publication, the Winter 2008 issue of A: The Abortion Magazine, was not re-instated.
Ipas regards the singling out of this publication for exclusion from more than 26,000 items on the Popline database that relate to abortion as another instance of excessive and politically-motivated government interference in free speech and academic freedom.
"As Americans, we count on decisionmakers at every level in our government to hold the line in protecting basic principles. Countless government-funded programs and publications have been subject to the same intimidation and censorship by this Administration, which has even extended to intrusion in science-based work of the World Health Organization. Such interference must end," says Ipas President Elizabeth Maguire." See further
- Ignorance Is Bliss, And Then You Get an STD
For today's teens, the instinctual quest for sex carries the risk of unspeakable pain. In the age of AIDS, the very act that gives life could end up being a death sentence...
Back in 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed as his surgeon general an African American woman, Joycelyn Elders, who all but predicted the STD epidemic that teenagers now face. And her controversial remedies brought much-needed attention to an impending crisis.
Elders believed in capturing the attention of young people by making sex education fun while keeping it real.
- Federally Funded Hopkins Database Restored To Accept Abortion-Related Searches After Being Restricted
[April 7, 2008]
Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health is once again allowing its federally funded reproductive health database Popline to accept searches containing the word "abortion" after such searches were restricted in February, the New York Times reports (Pear, New York Times, 4/5). Popline, which stands for population information online, is a free database funded by USAID. Popline provides more than 360,000 citations and abstracts of scientific articles, books, reports and unpublished reports on population, family planning and related issues, according to the Baltimore Sun. |MORE
Bloomberg Dean Klag's Statement Regarding POPLINE Database
[April 4, 2008]
"I was informed this morning that the word "abortion" was blocked as a search term in the POPLINE family planning database administered by the Bloomberg School’s Center for Communication Programs. POPLINE provides evidence-based information on reproductive health and family planning and is the world’s largest database on these issues... I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore "abortion" as a search term immediately. |MORE