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by Susan F. Wood, PhD
Recently the New York Times and RHRealityCheck reported on a leaked internal proposed regulation that calls for more and different enforcement of anti-discrimination provisions for health care providers. The provisions are forms of conscience clauses that do not allow discrimination in hiring or promotion of health care workers who do not wish to perform abortion or sterilization (or indeed in the reverse, no discrimination against those who do perform abortions or sterilizations) in federally funded settings.
The draft regulation goes into detail outlining the history of the laws protecting the conscience of health providers and entities and then outlines the problem. It seems that the central concern is not discrimination against those who won’t perform abortions, but that the US Department of Health and Human Services sees a real problem with requiring health professionals (and anyone in the healthcare workforce) to be involved with contraception, even if it is part of the job. The majority of the section outlining “The Problem” concerns states that have passed laws or issued executive orders requiring pharmacies to dispense contraception, including emergency contraception, and that require hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims.
From the regulation:
Public health values prevention. In many cases, this means spending a relatively small amount of money up front (on things like water treatment and vaccination) to avoid spending a lot more money later (on medical care, lost productivity, and reduced earning potential - not to mention quality of life).
In the past few days, I’ve come across two examples of governments facing a stark choice between paying for something now, or paying a lot more later. It at least one case, it looks like the elected officials will stick with boneheaded option.
by Susan F. Wood, PhD
Today’s Washington Post writes about one more instance where women’s health and children’s health were a lower priority than the interests of a powerful group. In this case, it was breastfeeding vs. the formula industry.
Marc Kaufman and Christopher Lee write:
In an attempt to raise the nation’s historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.
Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.
The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity. In a February 2004 letter, the lobbyists told then-HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson they were “grateful” for his staff’s intervention to stop health officials from “scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding,” and asked for help in scaling back more of the ads.
by Susan F. Wood, PhD
The last week of August is full of anniversaries for me, both public and personal. On August 24, it has been one year since the partial approval of Plan B emergency contraception over-the-counter (OTC) for those over 18 years old. Two days later on August 26 is the 87th anniversary of the day that women got the right to vote, Women’s Equality Day. It also is the 2nd anniversary of the day that FDA leadership once again denied the approval of Plan B OTC despite all of the evidence and support within FDA for its approval. August 31st, just 5 days later, marks the two-year anniversary of my resignation from FDA as Assistant Commissioner for Women’s Health in response to the Aug. 26th decision.
By Jennifer Sass and Sarah Janssen
As described in earlier posts (here and here), the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has contracted the work of the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) out to the consulting company Sciences International. This issue received public attention just as CERHR’s scheduled review of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) was taking place.
We submitted comments to CERHR detailing concerns about the content and the process of the BPA review. Our concerns include:
by Liz Borkowski
It’s International Women’s Day, and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is holding its 51st session with the theme of “the elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child.” Elisha Dunn-Georgiou at RH Reality Check reports that this theme, which you’d expect to get broad support, is under attack from some groups because it’s linked to sexual and reproductive health.
For those who don’t believe that it’s a moral imperative for women to have control over their reproductive lives, there’s another compelling argument in favor of improving sexual and reproductive health (SRH) worldwide: We can’t reduce poverty, violence, and disease without improving SRH.
by Liz Borkowski
On Sunday, Marla Cone of the LA Times wrote about a federal health center contracting out the work of assessing potentially dangerous chemicals to a company with chemical-industry ties (see David Michaels’s post for reasons to be wary of this particular contractor). Her story in today’s paper shows that shining a light on such shady ties can sometimes have an effect.
