There has been a lot of coverage this past week about the Guttmacher Institute's new report "Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress", which shows contraceptive use up and abortion laws becoming more liberal worldwide, and, correspondingly, abortion rates down worldwide. This is great news and shows what family planning advocates have been arguing for years; if you want to lower abortion rates, if you want to lower the rates of women dying and being injured from unsafe abortion, then you need to make contraceptives readily available and abortion legal.

The report also confirms another argument commonly used by abortion rights advocates; abortion rates do not correspond to abortion's legal status- making abortion illegal does not make abortion rates go down, it just puts women at risk.

I'm hopeful, because this report shows a modest trend in the right direction, but I am also tired. None of this is new. Research institutes such as Guttmacher and public health organizations such as the World Health Organization have shown evidence of the need for family planning and realistic policies around abortion for years, and yet this new report made the news as if it was saying something new. I am tired of fighting about these issues and having politics used to undermine facts about women's lives. This report is a confirmation and a call to action to keep fighting for reproductive freedom if we want reproductive health, but it shouldn't be necessary. We should be past this- fighting about how we are going to ensure women's reproductive health, not whether or not women's reproductive health is in trouble.

The Guttmacher Report is fascinating and shows many nuances in reproductive health worldwide, but its frustrating that what it says is controversial news- that women's lives are better and healthier when we can make decisions about our own bodies.

It's been a rollercoaster couple of weeks for men, women and uteruses. I'll start with the bad news:

A new Pew survey shows that support for abortion rights in the US is down significantly from last year. They attribute this partially to Obama's election, with complacency on the side of pro-choicers and fear of Obama's policies among anti-choicers resulting. One bright note: The poll also found that less people see the issue as a game changer (insert quote), meaning maybe abortion is beginning to approach a day where it is not so polarizing.

The Dominican Republic outlawed abortion in every case- meaning no exceptions for life or health of the mother, or rape or incest AT ALL. I'm in agreement with Amnesty International and the UN that this will put women and children's lives at risk

On to the "meh":

An amendment to the health care bill in the Senate Finance Committee was defeated that would tighten language prohibiting federal funds from being used for abortions. This qualifies as "meh", because this leaves the state of insurance for a legal medical procedure in relatively the same flawed place. Good Job Democrats, way to work for my vote.

But on the upside, there are people like Penelope Trunk and Gillian Robespierre.

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It's been a rollercoaster couple of weeks for men, women and uteruses. I'll start with the bad news:

A new Pew survey shows that support for abortion rights in the US is down significantly from last year. They attribute this partially to Obama's election, with complacency on the side of pro-choicers and fear of Obama's policies among anti-choicers resulting. One bright note: The poll also found that less people see the issue as a game changer (insert quote), meaning maybe abortion is beginning to approach a day where it is not so polarizing.

The Dominican Republic outlawed abortion in every case- meaning no exceptions for life or health of the mother, or rape or incest AT ALL. I'm in agreement with Amnesty International and the UN that this will put women and children's lives at risk

On to the "meh":

An amendment to the health care bill in the Senate Finance Committee was defeated that would tighten language prohibiting federal funds from being used for abortions. This qualifies as "meh", because this leaves the state of insurance for a legal medical procedure in relatively the same flawed place. Good Job Democrats, way to work for my vote.

But on the upside, there are people like Penelope Trunk and Gillian Robespierre.

Penelope Trunk twittered about her miscarriage during a board meeting and subsequently owned CNN's Rick Sanchez in the interview at this link. She is willing to take heat for talking about women's bodies, reproductive systems, and abortions as normal and part of life...which they are.

Gillian Robespierre made the following short film (starring Jenny Slate- a new SNL addition) that also puts abortion in a realistic context: not fun, but also not the end of the world.



Women like these make me a bit more optimistic about the future of my uterus.

In 1977, a 43 year old man pushed Champagne and Quaaludes on a 13 year old girl and then proceeded to perform “oral, vaginal and anal intercourse on her despite her demands to keep away”. That sounds pretty much like the definition of a rapist to me, one who should have been sent to jail for a while. But in the case of Roman Polanski, that is not what happened.

The details of this case have been scrutinized by the media many times, so I’ll keep it short. The 13 year old (I am choosing not to use her name, although it is all over the news, because she has asked to be left alone and does not want anymore attention) was introduced to the famous director, by her mother, who was hoping it would further the girl’s acting career. Her talked her into doing a photo shoot at Jack Nicholson’s house involving situations that made her uncomfortable, including topless photos and photos of her drinking champagne. This then progressed to him drugging and raping her while she quietly protested. Anjelica Huston was in the house, but the girl was too scared to tell her what happened. The next day, the girl’s family found out and Roman Polanski was arrested.

Polanski claimed it was consensual, and even Huston claimed that the 13 year old looked like she could have been 25. He took a plea deal of “having sex with a minor” (a lower charge than the original rape charge) and served 42 days of psychiatric testing in prison. When he learned that the judge in the case was preparing to sentence him with more time, he fled the country. Because he had (and still has) French citizenship, he could not be extradited to the United States until this past week.

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Recently, UNESCO and UNFPA issued new voluntary sex ed guidelines that advocate for educating children and young people throughout thier lives in age-appropriate lessons about thier body, sexuality and sexual health.  The UN guidelines for educators, the International Guidelines on Sexuality Education:

are organized around six key concepts: relationships; values, attitudes and skills; culture, society and law; human development; sexual behaviour; and sexual and reproductive health.

They are based on dozens of studies worldwide and are designed to combat the ever-rising rates of HIV and STIs around the world. They follow in the pattern of the International Planned Parenthood Federation's Charter on Sexual and Reprodutive Rights in maintaining that children and young people have an ever evolving capacity to be our own decisionmakers and deserve the information that can help us in developing healthy decisionmaking skills. It is extremely refreshing to me to see UN agencies come out strongly in support for such a realistic approach to giving people the tools they need and deserve.

Naturally, though, the media and the right is seeing this as extremely radical and controversial. A sampling of headlines on the issue:

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Last week 18 year old South African Caster Semenya took the gold medal in the women's 800 meter at the world athletics championships in Berlin. But she was not able enjoy her gold without accompanying public humilation. Why? Because Semenya has a "masculine appearance" - larger muscles, facial features and hair and deep voice- and she run so fast that many people believe she can't possibly be "all woman". So in front of the world, she is now being subjected to complex and invasive tests to check for any chromosomal or genetic variations that may make her more masculine and give her an "unfair advantage".

I'm being liberal with my use of quotation marks because I think that this whole thing is unfair and ridiculous. A silver lining is possibly a true discussion of what it means to be a man or a woman, and what it means to be an athlete. One on side of the debate are some of Semenya's competitors, who identify her masculine features as proof she should not be allowed to compete as a woman, while on the other side are Semenya's fierce defenders in South Africa, who are outraged that being "too good" somehow suddenly makes her ineligible.

The first thing that annoyed me about this story is that Semenya is being forced to go through this now, after winning the gold and the spotlight, in public. Then I got annoyed that so many media outlets are reporting this as "gender testing" and an issue of "gender". Sorry for the caps, but THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE OF GENDER. Semenya identifies as a woman, she lives in our society as a woman- this is her gender. Biological makeup such as chromosomes and genetics do not define one's gender- this is sex. The least media outlets can do is use words correctly.

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I was excited to go to Netroots Nation this year in PIttsburgh, but that excitement was tempered by some unease. Although I write for Amplify and have written blogs for other websites as well, I do not self-identify as a blogger (I know- gasp!), because to me my work online is a direct and necessary extension of the work I do offline. Unlike many of the people at Netroots, I am skeptical of the power of internet to truly be a democratizing and equalizing force- particularly when knowledge of and access to the internet is limited by socioeconomic status.

I found myself in several conversations at Netroots arguing this point, and was frustrated at times with many attendees/bloggers unquestioning acceptance of the power of blogging and online engagement to change the world around us alone. However, the most realistic treatment I saw of the power of online activism and reality of the multifaceted approach to dealing with privelege and social issues was the group that is supposedbly the most "tech-dependent" group- young people.

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I am in Pittsburgh at Netroots Nation with Advocates for Youth, and I just left a panel called "Building A Conversation Across Generations of Progressive Women".  The panel addressed generational divisions that are said to have arisen from the 2008 primary election between then Senator Hillary Clinton and then Senator Barack Obama. This premise is almost exactly the same to panels I've attended at many other progessive and feminist conferences since the '08 election, because apparently we just can't get over these cavernous divisions. I was interested in attending because I both felt some of these "tensions"  when an old boss told me I owed to my mother a vote for Hillary and saw the issue dealt with very well at a panel during Fem2.0, where the discussion focused on hearing different women's stories and decisionmaking processes without judgement.

This panel did not share the good qualities of the Fem2.0 panel, unfortunately, and by the end of the panel I was shaking and fuming to everyone around me. Well, to be honest, I was shaking by the first couple minutes. Here's a short list of why:

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Yesterday, Brian Ackerman from Advocates for Youth held a brown bag lunch to discuss whether or not the Obama administration and others' "common ground" messaging around reproductive health was regressive or progressive. It was a great discussion, focusing on the dangers of compromise, but also its potential.

I came to the discussion skeptical of the "common ground" messaging: as someone who works with abortion providers and women seeking abortions, I see all to well that common ground ideas pioneered in the 90s with the Democrats' "safe, legal, rare" and prevention first messaging often play out by continuing to stigmatize those involved in abortions and keep it a dirty topic. I am also worried by the Obama administration's framing of sexuality as just about reproduction in its naming of sexual education as "teen pregnancy prevention", because that leaves out everyone for whom sexuality is not only about reproduction, and leaves out valuable information (such as STI prevention).

Finally, the ultimate cynic in me thinks this won't work because we are still focusing on reproduction and women's health as something entirely seperate from the rest of health and life issues, and when in that past has that really worked? Obama is right when he said the right to choose is about women's equality- and as long as we keep women's reproductive choices in a seperate category it is only too easy to continue to oppress women through thier reproduction.

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Nicaragua has a ban on all abortion, including in cases of where life and health of a woman is in danger. The ban comes with potential jail time for both women and health professionals and is one of the most extreme in the world.

As someone who works with women and girls seeking abortions everyday it is no surprise to me, then, that Amnesty International recently released a report with a damning critique of the ban, saying that it is hurting and even killing women.

The report has found that health professionals are passing around women whose health are in danger, because they do not want to be liable for providing an illegal abortion, but they do not want to be liable for deaths either. It is a lose-lose situation for all involved and does nothing to help Nicaragua's previous commitment to lower the rate of maternal mortality.

It is classic example of why seeing the abortion issue as black and white is so problematic: abortion is an important piece of healthcare for women, and without proper healthcare, women die. At least 33 women in Nicaraqua have died from pregnancy complications this year (up from last year). This is probably a low number as many of these things do not get reported, and it does not include women and girls who had non-fatal health complications.

Want to fight for the rights of women and girls in Nicaraqua? Amnesty International and Feministing suggest going here to write a letter to the President of the National Assembly in Nicaraqua asking him to lift the ban.

This past week I attended the 80 Million Strong Campaign for Youth Jobs Summit in DC with a bunch of the Advocates crew. It was an...experience. I met very interesting people who came to issue of youth unemployment from very different lenses and I had some extremely stimulating discussions on healthcare, education and ideas for a newer, stronger economy.

Okay, so that was the good part. On to the 'teachable moments', and I use that term loosely, as I'm not sure if much was learned. From the outset of the Summit, it was clear that this was not a safe space. The summit was set up with keypads so that there could be instantaneous voting, with a majority rules-type system on all ideas. The first question we voted on- used to establish a total count for the conference (so everyone had to cast a vote)- was on gender, with 3 options- male, female, or decline to state. When confronted about this, (shout-out Advocates), the person who was running the voting system used the opportunity to brag about how the system is designed so that each question can be changed and revoted. So when there was extra time later, he asked which options should be added and we revoted, told a little anecdote about how this was an interesting question one time when he did this in San Francisco and considered the matter solved.

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At their meeting in Italy, the G8 leaders wrote a full third of thier declaration about Africa and development in African countries. The section focused on development efforts in light of the current financial situation and made some extremely important points, including the disproportionate effects of both the financial crisis and world crises in general (such as climate change) on low-income countries.

The section also made specific mention of the importance of African governments and communities having autonomy over thier own development, but also the need to make sure that development aid from countries like the U.S. reaches those who need it most. One example of this commitment was in the emphasis on education for all:

We continue to paying special attention to countries affected by conflict or crises, girls, children in rural areas, children with disabilities, working children and those living or affected by HIV/AIDS.

The leaders also acknowledged the slow progress that has been made with regard to the global health Millenium Development Goals and recommitted to a more integrated, expansive effort for universal access to health care.

I am excited that the leaders have committed so strongly to working for development aid that reaches the most underserved communities, but I am also skeptical. It is one thing to sign an agreement that sounds nice, and a very different thing to pass a better PEPFAR in the US or get the UK parliament to truly give more money to global health to counteract the financial crisis. What's needed now is citizens in the G8 countries (  Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia. the UK, and the US) to hold thier leaders accountable to thier words and actually make sure that we use our money and powerful world positions to affect real positive change.

26 AIDS activists were arrested in the Capitol Rotunda on Thursday for protesting on the eve of Obama's trip to Ghana. They were looking for congressional action to end the federal ban on syringe exchange programs, increased housing funding for AIDS patients and increases in US international AIDS funding. The group was organized by Health Global Access Project because, in HGAP's words:

We have tried to work through standard advocacy channels,” but were just told to be patient and that there was no money right now. It was time to up the ante and make some noise.”

“We can bailout banks and car companies” but there’s no urgent response to pressing AIDS challenges, she said. “We think that’s untenable"

While I don't know the details of this particular protest, I have worked with the organizing of protests like this in the past, and something struck me about these words and the protest in general. The quote is a powerful one- short, sweet and too the point. It is also one that was most likely planned carefully beforehand to be delivered by the HGAP spokeswoman. The protest was most likely planned well in advance, and carefully, and the three demands fought over by the different groups at length. The location and timing was decided for the best possible press coverage, and the police were most likely notified about the group's plans ahead of time, including when they would be there and how many people planned on being arrested. If not, the group still carefully planned the location and action in order to be arrested.

At the end, all the careful planning worked: there are several news stories referring to the arrests. But from the action to the quotes given to the press, the whole thing seems to me a bit stale. I have worked on these protests for a while, and attended many, and many people will argue that these "civil disobedience" actions are effective. I defintely agree that civil disobedience has been an important part of many movements, most notably the civil rights movement in the US, and that well-executed actions can make a difference still today (like when protestors stood up during a congressional hearing to demand that a single-payer system not be taken off the table in healthcare reform negotiations). 

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China's 1-child family planning law has long been condemned as anti-human rights and an ineffective and harmful way to deal with high population growth. Now there is evidence that the policy is being used in even worse ways.

China recently had to punish six government officials for sending three baby girls to orphanages without properly investigating the babies' background, and the officials have been accused of selling up to 80 babies seized as violations of the 1 child rule.

This is an awful example of coercive laws and corrupt enforcement, and what scares me is that it will be used to impune those fighting for voluntary family planning resources. Already, China's coercive policies have been used as a political talking point for those in the US who want to deny funding to UNFPA and to international family planning generally, even though the UNFPA has fought against China's 1-child policy and coercive abortion, with some success. As stories like this come out, I worry for those that are being hurt directly, but I also worry for those who we will be less likely to help because of the way our work gets tied in with coercive practices like this.

Draft language in a Rwandan reproductive health bill threatens the human rights of many Rwandan citizens. The Human Rights Watch has highlighted several provisions that they say should be struck from the bill, including:

1. compulsory HIV testing
2. sterilization of all individuals with intellectual disabilities

These two provisions are not only counter to human rights, but counter to the interests of better reproductive health.

The HIV testing language is specific to three provisions: it would require all individuals who want to be married to undergo testing first and present a certificate, would force individuals to be tested again later if thier spouse asks, and would allow a doctor to test children or "incapacitated" individuals to be tested without consent or confidentiality.

Both the HIV and the sterilization provisions run counter to human rights and are widely recognized to run counter to interests of public health as well- forcing people to do anything leads to more people taking more risks to get around doing it, and singling out groups and times in a persons life to target stigmatizes people, which makes marginalization even worse. According to Reuters:

Ensuring that all HIV testing is confidential, conducted with informed consent, and accompanied by counseling is widely recognized as integral to effective HIV prevention and treatment strategies.
Systematic, forced sterilization has been recognized as a crime against humanity by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Hopefully, the Rwandan parliament will take out this problematic language and respect the rights of Rwandans.

Recently, the UN and World Bank have expressed concern because family planning funding is falling off the radar of development aid in low-income countries.

“New preliminary figures from the World Bank show that official global development aid for health increased from $2.9 billion in 1995 to $14.1 billion in 2007, or roughly a five-fold increase in 12 years.

During the same period, aid for population and reproductive health made a more modest increase from $901 million to $1.9 billion.”

This is particularly worrying because need has been increasing, and because financial crisis-based cuts at the family planning/reproductive health budgets could make this gap more drastic.

The problem is not that family planning money is not effective towards helping women and girls, and therefore society in general, but because it is not seen as a “necessity” when it comes to development aid. However, the politicization of the issue and the view that women’s health is a secondary matter is deadly- literally. What the UN and World Bank are scared of is even more escalating rates of maternal mortality in the developing world because of lack of reproductive health services. And this will happen, unless reproductive health and family planning are seen as core parts of a society’s health and development.

The US is making steps towards raising our budget, and that is exciting- remind your Senators and Representatives today that international family planning funding  is not about helping people have better sex lives (although it can)- it is about saving lives.

Of all the chains I spend too much money at, Cosi has been my favorite. I love their bread, their cookies, their TBMs, pretty much everything. There is one across the street from Advocates for Youth and I think our office probably contributes thousands a month to that place. I also love the idea that Cosi has free wireless, and I can get work done there.

Except I can’t. A couple months ago, I was doing some research that involved looking up SIECUS, but instead of the organization’s website I got a big “Access Denied: Sex Education” message. Curious, I tried to pull up Advocates’ website. It worked. I was annoyed and confused, but let it pass (after a lot of grandstanding and storming out the door).

Then today, I was trying to catch up on some blogging. It’s been a crazy month since graduation, and I’ve been driving all over the US without much internet. I moved into my new apartment a couple days ago, and still don’t have internet access. Searching for free wireless on a busy Friday morning, I didn’t have many options. So back I went to Cosi. When I went to pull up amplifyyourvoice.org, I again received the “Access Denied: Sex Education” message.

Cosi is a private company and can do what it wants with its wireless. But that choice also means the choice to lose all money I would be spending buying drinks and food while I work.

(ps: Thanks Busboys and Poets for your wireless working. And for being an awesome place!)

Last year, Congress made it clear that the HIV travel ban needed to be lifted in the United States. Since then, not much seems to have been happening to achieve this. Today a step has finally been taken to lift the discriminatory travel ban. The Office of Management and Budget has given the go-ahead today to the Department of Health and Human Services to change the regulation.

The HIV travel ban prevented any HIV-positive non-US citizen from traveling to the US without a permit, and required everyone immigrating to the US to be tested. This has no basis in public health reasoning, is discriminatory based on health status, and puts the US in some pretty bad company.

While the OMB sign-off sounds like a tiny move, the fact that this is moving is heartening. Back in the spring, I had the opportunity to work on this issue with Advocates and learn more about the repeal process from someone in the DHHS. What we learned is basically that the process is long and complicated and it will take some serious pressure and advocacy to keep the ball moving. However, this is a step in the right direction. Now we just need to make sure more steps are taken.

In Kenya's Daily Nation today there are some shocking statistics that make the case for just how ineffective it is to seperate funding streams when it comes to global health. The article, aptly titled "Family Planning? Not for women with AIDS", shares these scary stats:

Between 50 per cent and 90 per cent of the pregnancies among women with HIV in Kenya and other sub-Saharan Africa are unintended

About half of the HIV/Aids programmes in the country lack a family planning component

only 9 considered implants as safe for HIV positive women; five regarded injectables as safe; 18 considered oral contraceptives as safe and only nine regarded intra-uterine devices (IUDs) as safe for HIV positive women

More disturbing was a section of those who considered the contraceptives to be safe, said they would not recommend an HIV positive woman to use them.

So what does this have to do with siloed funding? Right now the US funds HIV/AIDS and family planning seperately in its foreign aid funding, and in fact makes it hard for the already seperated funding to be used in the same clinic at all. This means, that while it is great that the House State-Foreign Ops Subcommitte approved such a high number of funding for international family planning, and it would be great if it passed at that level in both houses of congress, it still wouldn't be as effective as it could be. It means that the money may continue to go to the same family planning places, without being used to educate HIV clinics in the same areas, and vice versa. It means that people are not getting the services they deserve because of misconceptions and politics.

As long as HIV and other sexual and reproductive health issues are treated separately we cannot guarantee that people with HIV will get respectful and knowledgeable reproductive healthcare, or that women going into family planning clinics will get the HIV testing and treatment care they deserve. Clearly,  "integration" is not just an abstract talking point being floated around in the discussion of global health funding reform, but a necessary change that needs to happen if we are to provide people with the services they deserve.

For the past two years, the international family planning community has been working on the $1 billion ask campaign to get Congress to give $1 billion to international family planning each year. Prior to last couple years, international family planning aid had essentially been flat-funded, or taking inflation into account, decreased, for decades. Our work began to pay off in the past couple years, and yesterday there was more good news.

Yesterday, The House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Sub-committee approved funding international family planning at $648 billion for fiscal year 2010 (including $60 billion for the United Nations Population Fund). While this may not be the $1 billion figure we were pushing for, it is a 19% increase over FY 2009, and 9% higher than even President Obama's request! This is even more exciting because the committee was actually given less money over all to work with this year.

Because of the need to pass this in both the full Appropriations committee and on the floor, there are still some things that could not be done, such as a legislative prevention of the Global Gag Rule from ever being implemented or taking off restrictions on UNFPA funding, but Chairwoman Nita Lowey and the rest of the subcommittee deserve a big thanks for standing up for the reproductive rights and needs of people around the world. Make sure to let your congresspeople and senators know that international family planning funding is a cost effective, absolutely necessary and not at all controversial way to save lives!

This past week I represented Advocates at the America's Future Now conference put on by the Campaign for America's Future (formerly Take Back America, but "we took it back"). The conference was put together as an annual "check-in" on the progressive agenda for the US, with the main priorites this year being healthcare, immigration reform, and the employee free choice act, and other discussions focused on civil liberties, student debt, taxation reform, LGBT issues and more.

The conference was an interesting look into the progressive wing of the Democratic party, and I learned a lot at sessions on taxation reform, student debt and healthcare reform. It was also problematic in many ways, one of them being that there were many amazing youth-based groups there, but the groups were mostly marginalized into "youth panels" rather than bein integrated into other discussions and sessions. However, the young people I met there were motivated to change assumptions of "youths" as a seperate and special category with certain special issues (like student debt) but not others (like immigration reform).

I learned about several great groups, both youth-based and non, and will list some below that stood out to me:

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I will write more on this once I have processed my thoughts, but for now I just wanted to update everyone.

I am shocked, I am depressed, I am furious. This morning, Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed on his way into church in Wichita, KS. I have mentioned before that I do some work with the National Abortion Federation, and as a well-respected abortion provider and a NAF member, I had heard his name a lot. Dr. Tiller was one of the only doctors in the US to perform very late term abortions, in the case of fetal anomaly or threat to a mother's life and health. Because of the valuable work he did, he was the target of many attacks, threats and lawsuits.- his clinic was bombed in 1986 and he had been shot before in 1993.

 Violence against abortion providers and clinics was extremely prevalent in the early to mid-1990s, and although it calmed down after the passage of FACE laws in 1994, most abortion providers have constant protection because of threats, and some clinics can feel like the airport because of the security they are forced to have. However, particularly since the late-1990s, most violence has calmed down.

Dr. Tiller was an amazing man who saved lives and helped women every day, and my thoughts are with his family. Sadly, statistics show that violence increases when there is a pro-choice President, and what the murder of Dr. Tiller shows is that protecting reproductive rights for American women, and the people who provide the valuable services necessary to do this, is not something that can be put on the backburner- this must remain a priority.

I sometimes get frustrated with the larger progressive movement, and even the sexual and reproductive health movement when it comes to the topic of abortion. Ever since the 1990s, the mantra in the Democratic party has been "safe, legal and rare", with abortion treated as a necessary evil that no good person would actually choose, but must remain legal just in case. The sexual and reproductive health movement even often cedes abortion as political and complex and when fighting for comprehensive sex education, or family planning funding is extremely careful to stay away from the word. We all call ourselves pro-choice, but If we ever want to win against a virulent, hateful anti-choice movement, we must all be willing to stand strong on one point: abortion is not a dirty word.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, on the basis of current abortion rates, 1 in 3 American women will have an abortion before age 45. Yes, that's right- one in three. The silence around abortion and the political gains made by the anti-choice movement cause people who go through an experience with abortion to think they are a shameful rarity. In reality, if you have not had an abortion yourself, you know people who have, and who have had a whole range of experiences. Abortion may be shrouded in shame, but it shouldn't be- it is a common decision that women make for all sorts of reasons, although often a very painful one.

Despite the nostalgic image conservatives often give of a past where everyone waited for marriage to have sex, women stayed home with happy nuclear families while men worked, and "better morals" ruled the commonness of abortion is not a modern phenomenon. In fact, there are records of abortion being common as far back as in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and China. In the United States it was practiced legally until around 1880 with most states allowing abortion until "quickening" (the women feels the fetus move) and it was common for pills and methods to be advertised in women's magazines under euphemisms. Different cultures have always treated abortion differently, but it has existed in most cultures and societies through out time. The difference is that abortion methods have not always been (and is still not in many areas) safe or effective, particularly in areas where abortion is illegal.

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South Africa broke ground Monday on the first "Football for Hope" center. 20 Football for Hope centers are being built around Africa as part of a World Cup campaign from FIFA. The mission of Football for Hope is

"to bring together, support, advise and strengthen sustainable social and human development programmes in the areas of peace promotion, children's rights & education, health promotion, anti-discrimination & social integration, and the environment. These programmes must be aimed at children and young people, and use football as an instrument to promote participation and dialogue. The aim of Football for Hope is to create a better future through the medium of football."

One of the objectives is to combat HIV/AIDS through a social medium. This first center is in
Khayelitsha, about 15 minutes from central Cape Town and the home to some of South Africa's worst slums. By bringing the spotlight to Khayelitsha and putting in place a program that can approach issues of teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, poverty, etc. through a medium that empowers them, such as football (or soccer for us Americans), this campaign has real potential.

Each center is run in partnership with FIFA by a grassroots organization. The South African center will be run by Grassroots Soccer, which focuses on HIV/AIDS prevention mainly, and will also be funded by the German government. Nocawe Tyali teaches football to 12 to 14 year olds, and sees this new project with hope:

[she] said the new center would make a huge difference in an area with few other after-school facilities. She said it would give teens an alternative to casual sex, alcohol and petty crime, and enable coaches to run more programs demonstrating that it is possible to tackle the AIDS virus and drug abuse just as it is to tackle a football.

 

 

"Soccer is life. Your talent is life. Your talent is your future," she said.

I am excited by the Football for Hope 20 Centers for 2010 project, and the other centers that are planned for Kenya, Mali, Ghana, Namibia, and other countries throughout Africa.

The Solomon Star, the newspaper of the Solomon Islands, reports today that 40 young people, in partnership with Marie Stopes International and Solomon Islands Planned Parenthood, are learning how to be sex educators and condom distributors in thier community.

They are brainstorming ways to market condoms and spread information on safe sex to young people in thier communities and are even preparing to a release a new condom brand: Score.

(Hey...this reminds me of something. Great American Condom Campaign anyone?)

This sounds like an awesome program, and is the kind of thing that there can always be more of.