First, if you haven't seen CNN's explosive interview with John McCain last night, where he talks about his first marriage, you should: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChIX-XHlZ Fw

Okay, fine, grannyhelen. You got me. Put "sex" in the title and have McCain squirm on CNN while trying to defend cheating on a sick woman who faithfully waited for him the entire time he was in Vietnam, and I'll take a peek.

But what does this have to do with policy?

Follow me, young grasshopper...

First, let's all take a page from the Maverick...sometimes you just have to laugh (in this case, to help from crying): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7acdvJeg OY

This is an update to my post yesterday. Thank you for the replies and recs. If you haven't signed the HillPAC petition, please do so! Thank you.
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/8/18434 8/9482

Here's a follow-up:

Secretary Leavitt addressed this issue on his blog on Thursday night. Here:
http://secretarysblog.hhs.gov/

Cristina Page (the author of "How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex") is doing an outstanding job of elucidating and rebutting Secretary Leavitt's reply. I saw her post "Love It Or Leavitt" at HuffPo and it is crossposted at Reproductive Health Reality Check as well (rhrealitycheck.org is a great place to find updates on this).

Thank you Ms. Page!

See here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cristina-p age/love-it-or-leavitt_b_117781.html

Some of the most chilling threats are whispered. This is the case in a recent blog post by Michael Leavitt, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. In soothing tones, Leavitt explains on his personal blog that a recently leaked HHS proposal was not what he intended. That proposal sought to reclassify many forms of contraception as abortion, a strategy to protect those who want to deny women pregnancy prevention. Leavitt's post starts off seeming like an apology for what one hopes was a really big misunderstanding ("An early draft of the regulations found its way into public circulation before it had reached my review," he writes). But his explanation does not put to rest any concerns that the agency will offer cover to ideological extremists. Instead, Leavitt explains that what he seeks is something far more vague and all encompassing than merely reclassifying common forms of contraception as abortion. For example, he seems to say, what about all the other contraceptives that would fall outside that classification? Like the condom or diaphragm? A health care worker could have a problem with those too. His clarification suggests, "We didn't mean to leave those out." And why limit this to just abortion and contraception? (There's gotta be hundreds of medical procedures and medications that the morally imaginative could think are wrong.) Secretary Leavitt's idea appears to be that folks of conscience shouldn't have to make scientific sounding arguments claiming something causes abortion in order to deny a patient care. According to Leavitt, the health care you seek could be morally offensive for a whole host of other reasons, not just abortion. No matter the health care need, it's whatever the practitioner's conscience dictates.

Leavitt writes, "The Bush Administration has consistently supported the unborn. However, the issue I asked to be addressed in this regulation is not abortion or contraceptives, but the legal right medical practitioners have to practice according to their conscience and patients should be able to choose a doctor who has beliefs like his or hers. The Department is still contemplating if it will issue a regulation or not. If it does, it will be directly focused on the protection of practitioner conscience."

Leavitt's thinking on the matter raises more questions than it answers. Would a regulation include a measure that establishes what the agency accepts as unacceptable? Leavitt's post explained that defining what is objectionable was not his goal. His goal is too create sanctuary for anyone who hopes to use "conscience"--yet to be defined--as an excuse not do the jobs they were hired to do. The only part of the leaked HHS proposal Leavitt addressed as "not his intention" was that it limited the "right to refuse" protection. The leaked regulation applied that protection only to those who have a problem with abortion and many forms of contraception. That, to him, seems too limiting.

He doesn't offer any correction to reports that, if approved, the leaked proposal would force health centers to hire religious extremists. For instance, under the leaked proposal, it would be illegal to discriminate in hiring against those who refuse to take part in a health care service even if the service they object to is the main focus of the facility. (Thank you for calling Planned Parenthood, this is Randall Terry, how may I help you?) He doesn't debunk predictions that the leaked proposal would invalidate state laws established to protect patients from the ever changing whims and superstitions of ideologues whose main goals is to exercise their beliefs in our bodies. Leavitt does not deny that laws that now require emergency room staff to offer rape victims pregnancy prevention would be unenforceable. We are left to believe that much of the leaked proposal is perfectly fine with him.

If Leavitt's intent is as broad, and undefined, as he seems to suggest in his blog post, your right to health care will be determined by the sensitivities of nearly every person you must interact with. Your doctor may not have a problem giving you that prescription, but will the pharmacist fill it? And, if so, will the cashier ring it up? Women have to run a gauntlet to get reproductive health care in recent years. If we leave it to Leavitt, that gauntlet may be the healthcare passage for everyone.

The public recently witnessed the lack of basic care that people are subjected to at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, New York.  A woman was left for dead in the middle of the hospital's psychiatric ward waiting room as staff did nothing but walk away.  The evidence in the New York Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against the city proved that this was not an isolated incident (it just happened to be one of the only ones caught on tape).  Unfortunately, New York City's government is not learning from this catastrophe and taking sufficient steps forward to examine their hospitals - Women's eNews is reporting that the city is refusing to participate in a state review of maternal deaths and racial disparities, despite the fact that New York City has the highest number of maternal deaths and one of the largest populations of African-American patients in the country.

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (the same agency that is named in the NYCLU lawsuit as the agency that is responsible for the negligence at Kings County Hospital Center), has refused to participate in the review the Safe Motherhood Initiative is conducting.  Pamela McDonnell, a spokesperson for Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) said:

We chose not to participate in the Safe Motherhood Initiative simply because we already participate in a number of established monitoring and review processes, measures and collaboratives.

However, one of the main points in the NYCLU's complaint was that the city had insufficient monitoring and oversight measures at its hospitals - it was this lack of oversight that led to last month's death at Kings County, and it could be part of the cause of numerous maternal deaths at city hospitals.

New York's American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, in conjunction with the New York State Department of Health, launched the Safe Motherhood Initiative in 2001.  The Initiative was established to conduct reviews that facilitate responses to pregnancy-related deaths and eliminate racial disparities in maternal mortality in New York State.  However, HHC's refusal to participate will lead to a great deal of information, particularly information on racial disparities among pregnant women in the hospitals, being left out of the review.

The first Safe Motherhood Initiative review that came out in 2005 interpreted 33 deaths over the course of 2 years - it found that 60% of those women who died were African American.  The review examined the deaths of these women in detail and sought to determine what the cause of the racial disparity was.  According to Women's eNews:

In 2004, black women were nearly four times as likely to die in childbirth as white women nationwide, and had a maternal death rate of 34.7 per 100,000 live births compared to 9.3 deaths per 100,000 live births for white women...

Designed to discover and interpret major risk factors, [director of New York's American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Donna] Montalto's State Maternal Mortality Review surveys--among many data--the deceased woman's occupation, primary language, education, insurance coverage, prenatal care, method of delivery and history of sexually transmitted diseases. It asks if the pregnancy was intended or unintended. It might also help explain why African American women represent a disproportionate amount of maternal deaths.

The Opportunity Agenda's report on New York City's health care system, Dangerous and Unlawful: Why Our Health Care System Is Failing New York Communities and How To Fix It, showed the unequal and inadequate access to health care that many communities, particularly communities of color, are faced with.  This lack of access and poor quality was most evident in the absence of primary care for many New Yorkers.  Incidentally, the last Safe Motherhood Initiative review found that inadequate prenatal care was one of the main causes of the racial disparity in maternal deaths in New York State.  Prenatal care is something that many women get through their gynecologist as part of their primary care; thus, the lack of decent primary care can lead to many women in communities of color having at-risk pregnancies.

The problems in the city's health care system was exemplified by last month's disaster at Kings County Hospital.  It is to the detriment of all New Yorkers that HHC is refusing to participate in the Safe Motherhood Initiative's review - it is crucial that we address health disparities and find real solutions to the problems in the state's health care system, but the city has to play a role in doing this. HHC says its mission is:

To extend equally to all New Yorkers, regardless of their ability to pay, comprehensive health services of the highest quality in an atmosphere of humane care, dignity and respect.

The death of Esmin Green last month showed that HHC is not succeeding in its mission.  Its decision not to participate in the Safe Motherhood Initiative review is another one that could lead to an unnecessary, preventable death at a city hospital.  The city needs to work to address these problems - until it does, our communities will suffer.

A Left Anchor Original

The LA Times takes up the increasingly spreading meme that Obama is "presumptuous" and "arrogant."  Talking to world leaders, planning a transition to the White House, putting his campaign logo on the tail of his plane -- just who does this guy think he is?

Fox News host Sean Hannity told viewers last week how "presumptuous" Obama had become. Proof: The candidate told congressional Democrats that the world had been waiting for his hopeful message and that to some he had become a symbol of a "return to our best traditions."

Playwright and screenwriter Sherman Yellin wrote an interesting piece in the HuffPo that I read this morning about McCain's negative advertising vis-a-vis Obama as a celebrity. Aside from pointing out that it is McCain who comes from the wealthier, "celebrity" background and not Obama who has worked his way up with conscientious effort and academic success that McCain can't touch, indeed falls completely at the opposite of the knowledge scale. But even more distinctively, McCain is using a comparison that raises his own history with women and his views of the whole feminine population.

To quote Yellin:

John McCain -- unlike the mythical Good Joe American he hopes to bamboozle with his vicious anti-Obama ads -- is an elitist/opportunist who abandoned a sick wife, carried on with an attractive blond beer heiress and married her, survived corruption charges as one of the Keating Five, and became a proxy billionaire through that romantic transaction which has helped to finance his political ambitions. To suggest that Obama, a brilliant man from a modest background, one who made his own luck and life through his intelligence and strength of character, has something in common with these Hollywood girls is less than an insult to Obama, who has young daughters and clearly loves them; it is an embarrassment to McCain, as it reveals his low view of women. They are dirty jokes to him. Be it a young Chelsea Clinton's awkward adolescent looks, or women being raped by gorillas, he finds the denigration and victimization of women a source of infinite jest. None of this is accidental.

Earlier there was a diary related to gender inequality in the sciences.  Unfortunately, active discussion in the diary was not really possible.  With that in mind, I thought I would take a moment to discuss my personal experiences with gender issues in the world of academic chemistry from my male perspective.

I am a graduate student at one of the top universities in the country.  I am not trying to get patted on the back (as I was accused earlier) but simply adding context to the story.  I think it is relevant that the men and women I work with are probably some of the smartest people and best chemists in the world.

The department I work in has a man to woman ratio of around 3/2.  My specific research group comprises 20 men and only 4 women.  We are very much a boys club, albeit unintentionally.  My boss actively courts women but we find it difficult to convince them to join a male heavy group and therefore we never seem to be able to break out of the mold.  There are also groups in our department with the opposite problem.  They are predominantly female and few men join because the persona of the group has been set.  This is the first problem that I saw in my academic career and it is something many people notice pretty quickly upon their arrival.  I have thought of no reasonable solution to this problem.

There are also problems related to internal gender perceptions.  I have noticed that one of my female co-workers is typically unwilling to ask general questions of us.  At times it is detrimental to her progress in her project.  When I pointed out her unwillingness to get help, she said that she didn't want us to think she was stupid or the dumb girl.  She then gave several examples from her undergraduate experience where there was some mysogeny at play.  She had stereotyped her new male coworkers and in the process slowed down her own progress.  We discussed the matter in depth and she came around to the idea that the older grad students are there to help her just as the other grad students helped us.  If we already knew everything, why would we be at grad school.

I am also friends with a Canadian post-doctoral scholar.  After deciding to become a professor and doing some research into staying in the states, she realized that the US academics do not have a system for accounting for female faculty that want a child and tenure.  In Canada, the pre-tenure position is extended for women who choose to conceive.  This is not true here.  Young women faculty here have to choose tenure or children but rarely both.  My friend decided to return to Canada so she could do both.

These are the problems of gender inequality in my own personal experiences.  There are fewer women than men.  The women who are here sometimes are not well integrated into the greater community.  At least one women assumes that we think less of her due to her prior experiences in undergrad.  Lastly, women in the US have difficulty accomplishing their career dreams and their desire for children at the same time.

Unfortunately, there are no magic bullets for these problems.  The first clear step is to give girls in primary school equal footing at the beginning.

That is about all I can think of.  Sorry it rambles.

I would be happy to stick around and discuss my anecdotes and yours.  Blogs are about dialogue not monologue.

Before the end of the Democratic primary process there was much speculation about Barack Obama's support among women. The fact that Obama's support amongst women was weak while he was running against a woman candidate gave many pundits all the excuse they needed to suggest that support would remain weak once the primaries ended. They were obviously wrong, as the current polls show.

Another premise put forward by some pundits is that women vote more with their emotions than on the issues. They are as wrong about this as they are about Obama's weakness with female voters. All that is needed to disprove this claim is to look at women's voting patterns over the years.

Women have always favored the Democratic Party over the GOP. The Democratic Party is also the party with the best record and issues platform when it comes to women's issues. Put those two factors together and it becomes apparent that women have been voting on the issues all along.