Read the week's best commentary from bloggers at the Center for American Progress' "ThinkProgress," Care2 and more.
ACCESS TO CARE:
"Judge tells women who fear they could die if they don't get an abortion to go away," Ian Millhiser, Center for American Progress' "ThinkProgress": "A lawsuit seeking to protect women who could be seriously injured or even killed if they are unable to terminate their pregnancies will not move forward," Millhiser writes, citing a dismissed lawsuit challenging the application of "the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health, a set of instructions for health providers published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which include strict limits on which reproductive services may be provided to women." According to Millhiser, under the directives, which ban abortion care, "women may be prevented from aborting a life-threatening pregnancy that has no possibility of maturing into a viable fetus." He explains, "The ACLU sued Trinity Health Corporation, a multi-state, Catholic hospital group that adheres to the restrictions contained in the directives ... on behalf of some of its members who are currently pregnant, including at least one who 'had a history of severe pregnancy complications requiring the directly intended termination of the pre-viability pregnancy' and who 'lives in a county where the only hospital was a Trinity Hospital.'" ACLU in the lawsuit "argued that denying such emergency care to women violates two federal laws," Millhiser writes. However, U.S. District Court Judge Gershwin Drain dismissed the case. Millhiser writes, "Drain reasoned that the ACLU's claim that some of its members are likely to be injured by Trinity's refusal to provide them with the full range of emergency care 'too speculative.'" Noting that Drain's ruling cited a Supreme Court ruling that "denied relief" to a chokehold victim because the victim "had to show that police were likely to choke him again in the future," Millhiser states that "it will be difficult to challenge policies like Trinity's ban on medically necessary abortions -- or, at least, to bring such a challenge before a woman suffers a potentially serious injury." According to Millhiser, the Trinity case "highlights an increasingly widespread problem for women who need emergency obstetric care." He notes that about "one in six patients in the United States are treated in Catholic Hospitals, and about a third of these hospitals are located in rural areas where there may not be other hospitals nearby," meaning "women may not have access to a nearby hospital willing to provide medically necessary care, and even those that do may not know to seek such a hospital out until it is too late" (Millhiser, "ThinkProgress," Center for American Progress, 4/12).
ABORTION RESTRICTIONS:
"Utah doctors are baffled on how to perform new fetal anesthesia requirement," Robin Marty, Care2: "States throughout the country have long been replacing the medical best practices with their conservative legislatures' own weird and scientifically inaccurate 'facts' when it comes to sexual health, reproduction and abortion," Marty writes, highlighting a Utah law (SB 234) that requires physicians "to provide anesthesia to a fetus that according to almost all medical science cannot actually feel pain at 20 weeks, despite the claims of anti-abortion legislators." Marty explains that "doctors aren't sure" how to meet the law's requirements, "especially since most post-20-week abortions in Utah are done for fatal fetal anomalies." Marty points to one physician, Cara Heuser, who told NPR that some women who terminate pregnancies at 20 weeks "'choose to have their labor induced.'" However, according to NPR, Heuser under the Utah law "'can't put a laboring mother under general anesthesia, so [she] is at a loss for how to proceed in these situations, how to do what she thinks is best for patients and still comply with the law,'" Marty writes. Marty also cites comments from Leah Torres, a doctor in Salt Lake City, who "finds herself struggling to discern how to meet the new legal requirements." In a CNN opinion-piece, Torres noted, "'The law does not tell me how to provide this anesthesia'" and the options that come to mind for complying with the law are not only costly, but they "'carry far more risk than current evidence-based practices in abortion care.'" According to Marty, Torres unsuccessfully sought answers from the governor's office for two days before finally speaking with the Utah governor's general counsel, who "'was able to answer [zero questions]'" Torres had about the law. Noting that state senator who wrote the law is an accountant, Marty concludes, "With a governor and an accountant deciding the state's medical best practices, no wonder doctors have no idea how to successfully provide medical care and still keep within the state's vague new laws" (Marty, Care2, 4/12).
What others are saying about abortion restrictions:
~ "When abortions are hard to get," Rachel Cohen, American Prospect.
~ "House hears arguments on anti-abortion bill with racist overtones," Christina Cauterucci, Slate's "XX Factor."
SEXUALITY EDUCATION:
"Teens are having uneducated sex," Becca Andrews, Mother Jones: "It's 2016, and teens are receiving less formal sex education than ever before -- and young women and rural teens are especially underserved," Andrews writes, citing a new Guttmacher Institute study that found "that from 2011 to 2013, 43 percent of adolescent females and 57 percent of adolescent males were not instructed on how to use contraception before they had sex for the first time." According to the study, "only 60 percent of girls received instruction" in that time period, "a 10 percent drop compared with the number of girls receiving instruction from 2006 to 2010," Andrews notes. In addition, she notes that the study found that "girls were much more likely than boys to learn about where to access birth control, while boys were more likely to learn how to use a condom." Further, despite "increasing awareness surrounding sexual assault," the study found instruction on "how to decline sex from an interested potential partner" decreased from 70 percent to 60 percent between 2011 and 2013 for girls and from 61 percent to 55 percent for boys over the same time period, Andrews writes. The study also found that instruction on sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including prevention, decreased from 94 percent to 90 percent between 2006 and 2013 for girls, Andrews continues, adding that recent CDC research shows "that ST[I] rates are on the rise." Andrews also points to the geographic disparities in sexuality education, noting that the study found that "[t]eens in metropolitan areas are nearly twice as likely as rural teens to receive formal sex education, and teens in suburban areas are more than three times as likely to receive formal sex education than rural teens." The findings underscore recent research from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, Andrews continues, that found while "teen pregnancy has generally experienced a steep decline over the past two decades, teen birth rates in rural areas are a third higher than in the rest of the country, and rates have been falling at a slower pace compared with rates in metropolitan areas." Andrews also cites Laura Lindberg, lead author of the study, who noted that while "the number of parents talking to teens about sex has remained steady ... the conversation is often one-sided." According to Lindberg, "Only about half of teens talked to their parents about birth control ... and that's not enough," Andrews writes (Andrews, Mother Jones, 4/14).
