Previously, the pill required a prescription for girls aged 16 or under. In 2011, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius made a controversial move, blocking an FDA recommendation that the pill be available over-the-counter to anyone.
North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple on Tuesday signed a measure giving the state the most restrictive abortion law in the United States, a bill banning the procedure in most cases once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks.
Dalrymple also said the constitutionality of the measure was an open question and said state lawmakers should appropriate money to a litigation fund for the state attorney general to defend against any possible challenges to the law.
“Although the likelihood of this measure surviving a court challenge remains in question, this bill is nevertheless a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade,” Dalrymple said in a statement.
Considering many women don’t even receive confirmation that they’re pregnant until four to six weeks after conception, the decision essentially gives women roughly fourteen days (if they’re lucky) to decide whether or not they’d like to be a mother. Because forcing people to rush important decisions, like whether or not somebody wants to be a parent, is always a good idea, right?
We ask for forgiveness that for nearly 50 years we didn’t find a way of reaching out to you from human being to human being. We ask that you regard our long silence as a sign of the shock that your fate caused in us.Gruenenthal Group CEO Harald Stock • Apologizing to thousands of mothers for the congenital birth defects caused by the mothers’ usage of the company’s drug thalidomide over 50 years ago. The drug was pulled from the market in 1961, though it was never sold in the United States. The German company, however, literally took decades to respond to anger over the issues caused by the medication, which caused babies to be born with shortened limbs — or in some cases, without limbs at all. To correspond with the apology, the company created a statue of a child born without limbs, in an effort to bring attention to the issue — despite the fact that most victims are now adults.
martj42 asks: So what is the % of rape victims who get pregnant from the rape?
» SFB says: While definitive statistics for this sort of thing are difficult to come by, they’re not impossible to figure out. An estimate from RAINN puts that number at 5 percent of all victims, on average — a number matched by a 1996 study of the matter. — Ernie @ SFB
In a Louisiana public school, female students who are suspected of being pregnant are told that they must take a pregnancy test. Under school policy, those who are pregnant or refuse to take the test are kicked out and forced to undergo home schooling.
Welcome to Delhi Charter School, in Delhi, Louisiana, a school of 600 students that does not believe its female students have a right to education free from discrimination. According to its Student Pregnancy Policy, the school has a right to not only force testing upon girls, but to send them to a physician of the school administration’s choice. A positive test result, or failure to take the test at all, means administrators can forbid a girl from taking classes and force her to pursue a course of home study if she wishes to continue her education with the school.
Charter school or not, this seems like a pretty open violation of what should be an obvious example of a person’s right to privacy.
We are all here today because we want to bring about that moment when we stop adding names. When we can come to a gathering like this one and not talk about the fight against AIDS, but instead commemorate the birth of a generation that is free of AIDS.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton • During a speech at the International AIDS conference on Monday, announcing that the United States would increase AIDS research funding by $80 million. The money will go to a variety of research and clinical projects, including new projects focused on treating pregnant women with HIV and increasing the availability of volunteer circumcision services for men. source (via • follow)
This, on the one hand, should really be none of our business. And on whatever level the news may be even a tiny bit our business — the human family, the public eye — it should be worth a congratulations to Mayer and her husband, nothing more. On the broader level, though — of the human family, of the public eye — Mayer’s pregnancy means something. How she handles it, publicly, will mean something. “My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I’ll work throughout it,” Mayer said in announcing the news. And that, too, will mean something.
Because here, finally, is Perlman’s “pregnant CEO.” A female chief executive who was hired while she was pregnant — and who will give birth just a few months into her tenure — is a symbolic turning point. As The Verge’s Tim Carmody put it of the pregnancy news, “This is big. This is about our families, our values, our commitment to the people who work in our industry, about what’s said and whispered.”
An interesting take on incoming Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s announcement that she is also expecting her first child.
» About 350,000 born per year: A solution that’s given parents everywhere a second chance has gone far beyond just being a medical novelty. Now it’s a commonplace procedure, one that’s gone far beyond the birth of Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby (now a mother herself). But, in vitro fertilization experts warn, it’s not a cure-all for pregnancies late in life. ”The subtext is that if people delay childbirth they may view IVF as an insurance policy that they can access at any stage,” says Stuart Lavery of London’s Hammersmith Hospital. “Unfortunately the facts still suggest that IVF success rates in women as they get older are not fantastic.”
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» And the sex-ed laws are about to get stricter: The “no holding-hands” bill would be a continuation of Tennessee’s pro-abstinence education; teen pregnancy rates dropped in the state when abstinence-focused curricula was introduced in the ’90s, but critics think they’re going in the wrong direction. ”This bill ties the hands of educators in Tennessee and will prevent them from providing the comprehensive education that students want and need and their parents expect,” said Barry Chase, president of Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region.
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We ask that you share with us your specific rationale and the scientific data you relied on for the decision to overrule the FDA recommendation [to increase access to Plan B].Fourteen Democratic Senators • In a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who last week overruled an FDA recommendation that Plan B, the emergency contraception, be available without prescription to minors. In the words of Greg Sargent, who reported the story, “it isn’t every day that 14 Senators aggressively call out their own party’s Health and Human Services Secretary.” Then again, a lot of Senate Democrats are up for re-election next year, so there is an element of realpolitik at play. source (via • follow)
In her last days, my mother occasionally became confused....
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#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
» Time for Plan C: The manufacturer of the drug, Teva Women’s Health (unrelated to the sandal manufacturer), had requested FDA approval to allow unrestricted, over-the-counter sale of Plan B One-Step (currently, girls below the age of 17 must obtain a prescription before purchasing the drug). The FDA approved it, but Sebelius, citing “significant cognitive and behavioral differences between older adolescent girls and the youngest girls of reproductive age,” ordered the FDA to revoke its approval.
Yeah, why isn’t Natalie Portman sleeping in a gutter somewhere, turning her big doe eyes up pitifully at every passing stranger, begging for government handouts and then giving birth to a sick baby, to be realistic? Doesn’t she know what kind of message it sends to the youth of America, her not being super poor and miserable at the Oscars?Mike Huckabee Trashes Natalie Portman’s Sinful Pregnancy (via bbook) • Guess he isn’t running for president after all. Don’t #*(@ with Natalie, OK?
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