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Don't let women's health care rights become merely a privilege of the wealthy simply because a bunch of male Republicans want to impose their out-of-date values on this country.
I was among the thousands, if not millions, of horrified citizens when the Republican led House of Representatives voted to end federal funding to Planned Parenthood yesterday. I try very hard to remain politically neutral on this blog, but not on this issue.
The measure now moves to the Senate, which will ultimately decide the funding fate of this vital family service organization. Thus, it's time to make your voice heard, and reach out to each and every Senator from your state and tell them just how vital it is to maintain funding levels, and that you will remember in November if they vote this funding down!
Planned Parenthood MUST retain its federal funding.
This organization provides health care services to needy women and children. Less than 5 percent of its budget goes to reproductive choices, and NO federal money is used to perform abortions NOW! [See above graphic.]
I have included important information below, the first a letter of appeal from Planned Parenthood, the second a fabulous posting by the non-profit Woodhull Freedom Foundation. I wish I had written Woodhull's post, but since I didn't, I am including it below in its entirety.
Here is the information from Planned Parenthood:
"We've never faced an attack like this in our 95-year history — and we've never needed your support like we do right now. Thank you for standing with us.
We have to raise a massive outcry against this dangerous attack on women's health and Planned Parenthood. Please, tell everyone you know to stand with us today.
Did you hear? The House voted to bar Planned Parenthood from federal funding. They cut funding for HIV tests, cancer screenings, birth control, and more, putting millions of women and families at risk. We can't let it go unanswered. It's time for you and me to stand with Planned Parenthood. Sign the open letter to the reps who voted for this bill — and to the senators who still have a chance to stop it.
This fight will continue as our legislators return to their home districts, and when legislation to bar Planned Parenthood from federal funding heads to the U.S. Senate. Your voice, your strength, and your unwavering support are absolutely critical, now and in the weeks ahead. Thank you so much for standing with us.
Ready to do more?
Help us fight back against ongoing attacks and set the record straight by sharing your story about how Planned Parenthood has been there for you, your family, or your friends. Telling the truth about Planned Parenthood and those we serve is critical to stopping this truly dangerous legislation. Click here.
These attacks on Planned Parenthood are a drain on our resources at a time when we have to work harder than ever to protect and promote women's health. Please consider making a gift to Planned Parenthood Federation of America to help us through this difficult time."
Now, please read this incredible blog posting from Woodhull below, or directly at its website:
War Against Women in Our Own Country
Posted on February 19, 2011 by rlevy
"It’s an inquisition as virulent as any Inquisition. It’s a holocaust with women and children as the targets.
It’s a fear-driven, rhetoric-inspired hysteria.
It’s a war.
It’s a war of words, not guns. And the victims are women and children. The “guns,” the weapons, are the gradual diminishing of our human rights.
We had warnings. We knew the attacks would be coming. In fact, we were promised that our rights would be stripped away if we put certain people in power. Well, we did. They are. And they are fulfilling their promises.
We are at war and we have to figure out what we’re going to do about it.
The latest salvo was yesterday when the House adopted an amendment to the continuing resolution, or C.R., offered by anti-choice Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) that would eliminate funding for preventative-health services, including contraception and cancer screenings, at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country. The House is expected to pass the overall budget measure, which will then move to the Senate.
Note that I said “latest.” This isn’t the first attack against our fundamental human right and it won’t be the last. H.R.3 and H.R.358 are two bills that have sparked intense controversy. Lawmakers finally had to cave to public pressure and remove a provision in both bills that tried to redefine rape, but now a new version of H.R.358 includes a measure that would allow hospitals to refuse to provide abortion care to women who will die without it.
Nancy Keenan, President of NARAL, said that if passed, both H.R.3 and H.R.358 would interfere in women’s personal, private decisions in unprecedented ways. H.R.3, authored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), would effectively block private-insurance plans from covering abortion care in the new health-care system and impose tax penalties on individuals and small businesses that purchase plans that include abortion coverage. Currently, 87 percent of private plans include such coverage.
Just last week a bill in South Dakota would have made it “legal” to murder an abortion provider.
We are a country in the midst of a financial depression. We are a country where millions of people have lost jobs and are unemployed. Shouldn’t those be the priorities Congress is facing? Instead the newly elected Senators and Representatives are manically focused on removing a woman’s right to choose.
Even allowing for editing of the tapes from Planned Parenthood, and imagining how many offices the undercover folks had to go into to get material for their expose, some of what the folks in PP said was wrong. And PP has addressed those individuals and those practices immediately. Did we close down the banks or AIG because someone, some individuals in those corporations screwed up? Well, as a matter of fact we actually increased our support of them and handed them lots and lots of money to fix their “business.”
Why is it so different with an organization that only does good? Why is it a different set of rules for an organization that serves millions of women every year, providing counseling, cancer screenings, testing? I can tell you why. Because it’s convenient for the “right” for the anti-choice war mongers who characterized the issue as one of abortion when that was never the real issue. It’s a weapon the “right” can re-package and use very effectively to strip away our human right to sexual freedom.
THERE IS NO FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ABORTION. Period.
All Pence did was remove health care from women.
The real issue is that Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider. Less than 10 percent of the organization’s services are in providing abortions.
The $317 million that the House eliminated, known as Title X, provides women access to contraceptives and family planning services who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them. No matter your political affiliation, these services should be considered vital.
So what can you do about it? Fortunately, it’s unlikely the amendment will pass in the Senate. In the meantime, hop on over to the Planned Parenthood website and SIGN THIS LETTER, directed toward representatives who signed the bill and senators who can still stop it from passing.
And, if you haven’t been, start paying really close attention to your fundamental human rights and what those elected officials in Congress and at the state level are doing to violate them."
I, too am adding my voice to those who will be reaching out to Congress. I cannot stress how important it is for every citizen, regardless or gender or age, to reach out and make your views known. Don't assume there are enough callers or writers on this issue. Do it for your family, for all families, for the health and welfare of everyone who lives in the U.S.!
— The Curator
It's not just teens who need sex education, their parents and grandparents could use extensive courses in sensuality and pleasuring too, according to an intriguing study.
It is certainly not surprising to anyone who reads and follows sex-related information. In fact, sex educators have been advocating for adult and senior sex education offerings for years.
In a world that focuses on the youth of its generation, the sexual needs of older folks are often neglected. I am a senior, a 54-year-old woman, who is also disabled. The unmistakable message to me from society is that my sex life is o-v-e-r, kaput, fineto.
Well, hell no! In fact, I have a better sex life now than I did 20 years ago, before my disability began to intrude on all aspects of my life.
Sex IS life. To deny that to aging populations is to strip them of their humanity instead of their clothes. They need to know how their bodies work, and how to make them work to receive and give the ultimate pleasure possible.
The following article, from LiveScience, underscores not only the importance of sex throughout our lives, but an unusual venue that some people are getting sex ed: At home parties that sell sex toys
Read the article below in its entirety, or directly at its website. And remember, the only time you're too old to have sex is when you're too old to draw a breath!
Many adults in the dark when it comes to sex ed
Public health educators, hosts of sex toy parties aim to inform 'sexually illiterate' U.S. adults
By Stephanie Pappas for LiveScience
"When Patty Brisben got into sex toy sales in 1983, she promised herself that she'd learn as much as she could about human sexuality. It's a promise that has come in handy over the years, especially since she's launched her own in-home sex toy party company, Pure Romance — and as CEO, has found herself running a fleet of employees who are half-salespeople, half-sex educators.
"I have grown women, they could be 40 and 50 years old, that will come [to parties] and say they don't even know and understand their body parts," Brisben told LiveScience. "That's not good."
Discussions regarding sex education usually revolve around educating teenagers. But increasingly, sexual health researchers say, adults are in need of sex education, too. When Bill Taverner, director of The Center for Family Life Education at Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey, spoke at his parents' retirement community about sexuality and aging recently, the crowd — all older adults — was bigger than the turnout of any other session ever scheduled by organizers.
"They let me keep talking for three hours," Taverner, the co-author of the Planned Parenthood-published book "Older, Wiser, Sexually Smarter" (2009), told LiveScience.
Sexual illiteracy
There are a few reasons why adults have burning questions about an act most have been practicing for years, researchers say. For one, formal sexual education is uneven. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2002, only 22 states and the District of Columbia mandate sex education in their public schools (35 states mandate lessons on HIV and sexually transmitted diseases). Many of those states require an abstinence focus; others leave the nuts and bolts of lesson planning to local districts, where quality varies, according to the Kaiser report.
The result is a "sexually illiterate" population of American adults, said Michael Reece, a professor of health at Indiana University.
"Most adults just don't have the basic education about their bodies, the bodies of their sexual partners, relationships, sexual behaviors," Reece said. "We really have this deficit, I would say, across the country."
Even if every teenager got the best sex education available, Taverner said, it wouldn't be enough. Advice given to teens won't be as useful at age 60 when you're dealing with the physical changes of aging.
'Teachable moments' at sex toy parties
That's where people like Brisben come in. Sex toy parties, it turns out, are what public health educators call "teachable moments." Much like the Tupperware parties of the 1950s, sex toy parties involve inviting a group of women (parties are almost always female-only affairs) into a hostess's home for a combination soiree and sales pitch — but instead of soup mugs and sandwich keepers, the products in question include lubricants and vibrators.
It could be just another example of sexual consumerism, but Brisben doesn't see it that way. She's partnered with Reece and his colleagues at Indiana University to provide online training for all Pure Romance salespeople. The training module, which includes text, video and quizzes, covers the gamut from relationships and communication to STDs and sexual arousal.
The idea, Brisben said, is to create a comfortable environment where women can ask questions and get good answers. The most common questions, she said, tend to be about lack of libido and pain during sex.
Sex ed in the golden years
Other educators are seeking out adults in venues that are rarely associated with sexual education: churches, retirement centers, volunteer organizations such as Kiwanis clubs — even nursing homes. Here, the seminars revolve around later-life dating, physical changes, and the need for intimacy and touch.
"The major sex education for older people is being done by the pharmaceutical community, and we're concerned that that focuses on some pill you take and doesn't get at the major issues, which have to do with relationships and communication," said Peggy Brick, a sex educator who co-authored "Older, Wiser, Sexually Smarter" with Taverner. Brick also founded the Widener University Consortium on Sexuality and Aging, a group dedicated to sex education for older adults.
"My main theme is that people need new expectations," Brick told LiveScience. "If they expect sex to be like it was when they were a teenager, they're going to be disappointed. It's different, and in fact it can be considerably better, but people have to understand the changes."
One example of such a change is what's known as the refractory period for men, Taverner said. The refractory period refers to the time men need after an orgasmbefore they're physically capable of orgasming again. For male teens, the refractory period could last just minutes, while it could take days for older men.
"If no one has ever sat down with a man to talk about this important change, he would very understandably think that something is wrong with him," Taverner said.
Besides running sex-ed courses for older adults, Brick runs trainings for caregivers in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Staff may not understand that elderly people are sexual beings who need space to build intimate relationships, she said.
Ageism is a big problem when dealing with sexual education for older adults, Taverner said. Sex is portrayed on television and in movies as the domain of the young and pretty, he said, which can trigger body image issuesin older people. And young people underestimate how sexual older generations are, Taverner said. When teaching college students, he often asks them to think about how sexual they'll be in 50 years.
"Most of them give themselves high marks," he said.
But when he asks them to think about how sexual their grandparents or older acquaintances are, the numbers drop precipitously.
"People have an internal sense that we all want to be sexual beings throughout our lives, but we don't like to think of older adults as sexual beings," Taverner said. "We often think of the sexuality of older adults as something to joke about."
To Pure Romance's Brisben, any opportunity to educate is a good one. She's seen more discussion of sexual problems on television, she said, which she sees as a good sign that people are "opening up those doors."
"Everybody has sex, everybody does!" Brisben said. "It's part of what happens in life, and so if you don't take responsibility and you don't ask these questions, it's going to continue to be the ugly elephant in the room."'
— The Curator
