April, 2009

Hispanics encountering hostility in the South, report says

Hispanosphere, 04/21/2009 –

NLIRH's advocacy day mentioned in this blog post about Latinos in the South.

• MUJERES ADVOCACY. Latinas from the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., spent two days lobbying on behalf of Hispanic women’s access to reproductive health. While the birth rate has been increasing among undocumented families, group advocates said, those same women have gone without appropriate medical care and advice. “What the report doesn’t say is how many undocumented mothers went without prenatal care and how many will face unwanted pregnancies because they lack basic health coverage,” said NLIRH’s Executive Director Silvia Henriquez. “Latinas want to end these disparities, but they need information and skills to do this powerfully. This is why our advocacy training is so timely and so important.” Read more »

Mandatory Medicine?

TAPPED, 04/30/2009 –

I spent this past weekend in Cambridge, Mass., where I spoke about covering reproductive health issues at a conference called Women, Action, Media. During the question and answer session at our panel (which also featured Emily Douglas of RH Reality Check, Kiki Zeldes from Our Bodies, Ourselves, and Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health), the audience really wanted to talk about Gardasil, Merck's HPV vaccine. Gardasil provides protection against cervical cancer, and is currently recommended for girls and women between the ages of 11 and 26. Some school systems and states have tried -- and failed -- to mandate the vaccine for middle-school girls. Opposition to mandatory vaccination comes from both the left and right; conservative parents
often fear that vaccinating their daughters against an STI tacitly condones sexual behavior, while many on the left are skeptical of any new drug pushed by a pharmaceutical company after only short-term trials.

Read more »