A few weeks ago, FRC co-hosted a pro-life conference for medical students and health professionals on the topic of serious prenatal disability diagnosis. Throughout the day we heard from a number of well respected academics and medical professionals — a variety of researchers, medical doctors, registered nurses and other intellectuals, on the most up-to-date treatment options available as well as the latest in research findings. But perhaps the most powerful voices of the day were those who themselves received a poor prenatal diagnosis.

Kristal Dahlager, now a third year law student at Liberty University, has a remarkable story. Her mother was advised to essentially abort her because of a serious prenatally diagnosed problem. Yet Kristal, a thriving, beautiful and joyful young woman, survived and thrived. Click the ‘play’ button below to see to her tell the story:

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You won’t want to miss these special “I’m Pro-Life Stories Because” stories nor the information about the conference at the end of this blog.

Isabel is a beautiful four and a half week-old infant in the picture submitted by her grandmother. In her words, “My grandson and his wife were told the baby they expected had spina bifida. They were apprised of all the problems she would no doubt have: possible club foot, no control over bodily functions, trauma, toxic, irreversible injury. These were just a few of the possibilities. Quite simply, they chose Life. She was prayed hard for by everyone. She has not shown signs of these items or any others so far. She was 4 1/2 weeks in photo with her father. She is loved and adored by all and growing every day. They would not change things for anything and are grateful for the gift they were given. We all are.”

Filip and Christopher are fifteen-year-old twins from Norway, both with Down Syndrome. They are pictured with their 22-week ultrasound. Their parent’s, Elly and Knut, write that their identical twins are two reasons they are pro-life! They describe Filip and Christopher as the Lord’s ambassadors. “For fifteen years the Lord has used them to bless us and many others in so many ways.”

To participate in the photo campaign, click here.

As one of our Sanctity of Life month activities, FRC is co-sponsoring a pro-life conference on the topic of prenatal disability diagnosis on January 21^st: The Conference will bring together professionals from many different specialty areas, including genetic researchers, OB/GYN physicians, developmental pediatricians, hospital nursing staff, medical genetic counselors and medical students.  Other invited participants and guests include peer ministry providers, social service support professionals, advocates for persons with disabilities and public policy specialists.

Conference on Medical Advances in Prenatal Diagnoses

Saturday, January 21, 8:30 am – 5 pm

Family Research Council, 801 G Street, NW, Washington DC

Register by clicking here or watch the webcast by clicking here.

Sponsored by: Medical Students for Life, Family Research Council, Keep Infants with Down Syndrome & Jérôme Lejeune Foundation USA

Presenters include:

• Alberto Costa, MD, Ph.D.
• Byron Calhoun, MD
• John Bruchalski, MD
• David Prentice, Ph.D.
• Gerard Nadal, Ph.D.

For more information, contact Jeanne Monahan at Family Research Council, jfm@frc.org (202-637-4608) or Peg Kolm, at mkolm@adw.org (240-994-0603).

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At FRC we have been incredibly inspired by the outpouring of enthusiastic and creative submissions to our “I’m Pro-Life Because” campaign. There have been a number of truly remarkable and miraculous stories shared with us over the last few weeks.

We received one such story and image this past weekend. Sweet, energetic, bright three-year-old, Olivia Ohden, is holding a picture of her sonogram and is a vision of love and joy. The image is accompanied by the words “I’m Pro-life because my mom, Melissa Ohden, is an abortion survivor.”

In 1977 Olivia’s grandmother, Melissa Ohden’s mother, had a saline infusion abortion in a hospital in Iowa.  After her mother delivered the baby, Melissa was believed to be dead. But miraculously, a nurse saw signs of life and this little baby who should have died at six months of gestation survived and thrived…

Listen to Melissa’s story

If you have not yet submitted your story, please consider doing so! Here’s how:

*1.* Pose in a picture with your ultrasound (or first newborn photo) or have your children pose with their first photo.

*2.* Let us know in 140 characters or less why you are Pro-Life!

*3.* Chose two words to describe each individual pictured (examples: Musician, Son or Painter, Mother). And include your age of your infant picture, or the week of the pregnancy in your ultrasound.

*4.* Submit your words and photos (one photo per person, please) via email to: photos@frc.org

Over the next few weeks, we will showcase these powerful images to show the uniqueness and value of every human life.

Be creative in telling your story in a single image! Gather your children to take a group picture with their own ultrasounds or newborn photos, or take fun pictures of them playing happily with their ultrasound photos nearby. Take your own photo with your ultrasound or infant picture while at work or doing a favorite activity or hobby.

Take the pictures in settings that portray what you love, and what your life means. Some of the more poignant photos will be featured in FRC publications and advertisements.

Entries, selected by FRC’s staff, will be featured on the FRC website and our other publications, including Facebook. By submitting photos and/or your story to FRC you are granting FRC a free license and permission to publish, republish, and distribute all or portions of your photos and story, including your words and image, in any format it may choose, including in print, on the Internet, or in any other digital form.

Thanks for standing for life!

Click here to view our “I’m Pro-Life Because…” gallery.

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As part of FRC’s Sanctity of Life month activities, we are collecting images for the “I’m Pro-Life Campaign”. Having only announced the initiative on December 23rd, we have been delighted by the overwhelming response during what is normally a slow time of year. We’ve already been flooded with unique images and stories. One very moving image and story is that of the Olivia Grace Somerville. Her Grandfather John Sommerville writes “Olivia was born nine weeks early weighing 3 lbs 2 oz with severe club feet. Her left foot was turned 180 degrees from normal. After one surgery and a short time in corrective shoes, Olivia is an active five year old with no signs of her original condition.” The image submitted was taken on Olivia’s 5th birthday, holding her baby-picture from when was a new born in the Neo-Natal unit.

“We are pro-life because we believe all human life has worth. I remember how my wife and I and our son and daughter in law reacted when we heard the results of the ultra sound. We felt sympathy and then love and compassion for our unborn granddaughter knowing that God had a reason for her deformity. It never even crossed our minds to terminate the pregnancy, abortion isn’t in our vocabulary. We know now, without a doubt, we made the right decision. Olivia stayed in Intensive care for almost two months and today, there is no sign of any of the problems she faced when she was born. God is indeed wonderful and He does have a plan for each of us!”

Listen to John tell his family’s story of love and life

Please join us in FRC’s “I’m Pro-life Because…” campaign. Here’s how:

1. Pose in a picture with your ultrasound (or first newborn photo) or have your children pose with their first photo.

2. Let us know in 140 characters or less why you are Pro-Life!

3. Chose two words to describe each individual pictured (examples: Musician, Son or Painter, Mother). And include your age of your infant picture, or the week of the pregnancy in your ultrasound.

4. Submit your words and photos (one photo per person, please) via email to: photos@frc.org

Over the next few weeks, we will showcase these powerful images to show the uniqueness and value of every human life.

Be creative in telling your story in a single image! Gather your children to take a group picture with their own ultrasounds or newborn photos, or take fun pictures of them playing happily with their ultrasound photos nearby. Take your own photo with your ultrasound or infant picture while at work or doing a favorite activity or hobby. Take the pictures in settings that portray what you love, and what your life means. Some of the more poignant photos will be featured in FRC publications and advertisements.

Entries, selected by FRC’s staff, will be featured on the FRC website and our other publications, including Facebook. By submitting photos and/or your story to FRC you are granting FRC a free license and permission to publish, republish, and distribute all or portions of your photos and story, including your words and image, in any format it may choose, including in print, on the Internet, or in any other digital form. Thanks for standing for life!

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As we officially begin the 2012 Sanctity of Life Month this January, the Associated Press is reporting an amazing adoption story, “Mom reunites with daughter 77 years later.”

In 1928, as a young and innocent teenager, Minka Disbrow lived in South Dakota and worked on a dairy farm. One day while enjoying a picnic, Minka and a friend were jumped by three men and raped. Innocent to the degree that she didn’t comprehend how babies were created, months later the 17-year-old Minka was confused and surprised to find her body changing and growing. Her parents soon found an adoption agency.

“I loved that baby so much. I wanted what was best,” Disbrow said. “She never met [the adoptive parents] or knew their names. But over the years, Disbrow wrote dozens of letters to the adoption agency to find out how her daughter was faring. The agency replied faithfully with updates until there was a change in management, and they eventually lost touch. Disbrow’s life went on … Every year, she thought about Betty Jane on her May 22 birthday.”

Years later she would find herself frequently wondering about her daughter. “For most of her 100 years, Minka Disbrow tried to find out what became of the precious baby girl she gave up for adoption after being raped as a teen. She hoped, but never imagined, she’d see her Betty Jane again.” In 2006, Minka Disbrow and her daughter, Ruth Lee had a very joyful reunion seventy-seven years after their separation. Minka learned that she had six grandchildren, including a veteran astronaut, Mark Lee.

In a similar story, Ryan Bomberger, of the Radiance Foundation was conceived in an act rape. Like Minka, Ryan’s mother chose to carry her child to term. Ryan now dedicates his life to promoting and protecting the dignity of every person. For a recent lecture by Ryan on the hope and joy of adoption click here.

All can agree that rape is a horrific act of violence that no one should ever undergo. But abortion after a rape robs an innocent victim of a very beautiful life.

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On November 25, 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its annual report with the most recent data and statistics on abortion in the United States, Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2008. 

The CDC has reported on abortion-related data annually since 1969. Generally these reports are very helpful and informative in terms of tracking and understanding larger trends and actual numbers related to abortion in the United States. The 2008 report is dense with information ranging from the ethnic background and age of the mother to the age of the baby when aborted, as well as the kind of abortion that took place. However, because states are not required to provide abortion data to the CDC, while the surveillance report offers important information and numbers about abortion in the U.S., it does not provide a complete and thorough depiction of abortion data in the U.S. By way of background, until 1998, every state annually reported abortion-related data to the CDC. But beginning in 1998, combinations of states began to refuse to submit abortion-related information to the CDC. Over the years non-reporting states have included California (1998-2008), New Hampshire (1998-2008), Oklahoma (1998-1999), Alaska (1998-2002), West Virginia (2003-2004), Louisiana (2005), and most recently, Maryland (2007-2008). Missing any state’s information is problematic, but in particular, because California has the most abortions in the U.S., not including their data significantly skews the overall picture.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that states that do submit data to the CDC may pick and choose which information they provide. “…the level of detail that CDC receives on the characteristics of women obtaining abortions varies considerably from year to year and among reporting areas….because the collection of abortion data is not federally mandated, reporting areas can develop their own forms and do not necessarily collect all of the information that CDC compiles.” (page 2) Since the CDC’s abortion surveillance reports have incomplete numbers, policy-makers and other interested groups and people must rely on the Guttmacher Institute’s statistics and analysis. However, research neutrality comes into question because Guttmacher was originally founded as the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, although they have since formally separated.

The CDC report reads “CDC is unable to obtain the total number of abortions performed in the United States. During 1999–2008, the total annual number of abortions recorded by CDC was 65%–69% of the number recorded by the Guttmacher Institute, which uses numerous active follow-up techniques to increase the completeness of the data obtained through its periodic national survey of abortion providers.” (page 6)  

Also as reported last year, the report is again missing the abortion fatality rate. Page 5 reads, “Although national case-fatality rates (the number of abortion-related deaths per 100,000 reported legal induced abortions) have been published for 1972–1997, this measure could not be calculated with CDC data for 1998–2007; because a substantial number of abortions have been documented in states that did not report to CDC during 1998-2007.”

One might consider that most statistical conclusions in the abortion surveillance reports since 1998 lacked some form of U.S. data. Therefore the claim that the abortion rate can not be estimated as other statistics have been does not appear to be reasonable. It would seem that the abortion rate should be able to be computed with the same limited information obtained by the states that other statistics are computed. The report has also not updated its latest abortion-related deaths from the previous report (with 2007 data).

Last year it was reported that for the states that reported data, in 2007, six women died in the U.S. as a result of complications related to abortion. (page 5) The updated 2008 number has not yet been released. However, while some information is missing, there is still much to be learned from what the data that is included in the report. Below are some basic statistics and numbers on abortion-related information in the U.S. in 2008.  

· More children were aborted in the U.S. (in reporting states) in 2008 than in 2007. “Among the 49 reporting areas that provided data for 2008, a total of 825,564 abortions were reported.” (page 3) In 2007, the total number of abortions as reported by the CDC was 810,582, an increase of close to 15,000.

· Most abortions were performed on women in their 20s. “Women aged 20-29 years accounted for the majority (57.1%) of all abortions in 2008. In 2008, women aged 20-29 years also had the highest abortion rates (29.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 20-24 years and 21.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 25-29 years).” (page 3)

· The report states that the majority of abortions are performed early in pregnancy. “For 2008, the majority (62.8%) of abortions were performed at ≤8 weeks’ gestation, and 91.4% were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation.” (Page 4) Few abortions (7.3%) were performed at 14-20 weeks’ gestation, and 1.3% were performed at ≥21 weeks’ gestation. (page 4)

· In 2008, approximately 14.6% of women used RU-486, the dangerous abortion drug, and that approximately 75.9% of abortions
were surgical (“curettage”) for abortion done at 13 weeks or earlier. (page 4)

· Non-Hispanic black women accounted for 35.5% of all abortion while making up approximately only 12.6% of the population according to the Census Bureau); Hispanic women accounted for 21.1% of all abortion, while making up 16.3% of the population according to the Census Bureau. Non-Hispanic white women accounted for 37.2% of abortions, while making up 72.4% of the population according to the Census Bureau.  (page 4)   The CDC annual abortion surveillance reports are very informative and helpful, albeit incomplete, to those interested in women’s health – both those women who are born, and those women (and men, too) who are unborn.

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The State Department annually releases a “report card” evaluating countries’ work and progress on combating the heinous crime of trafficking of human person for either labor or sex slavery. In 2010, the United States was included in the ranking and evaluation for the first time, scoring in the highest tier, although its narrative showed much room for improvement in this area where all can agree that one exploited person is one too many.

On that note, in late November Shared Hope, a non-profit organization dedicated to the eradication of sex trafficking through education and public awareness, released a domestic version of the report, “The Protected Innocence Initiative,” grading individual states on their efforts to combat child sex trafficking.

In their words, “The Protected Innocence Initiative is a comprehensive strategy to promote zero tolerance for child sex trafficking. In partnership with the American Center for Law &Justice, Shared Hope International conducted a comprehensive analysis of each state’s existing laws. The Protected Innocence Legislative Framework solely evaluates a state’s existing laws and does not evaluate enforcement or implementation.

The methodology was vetted by experts in the anti-trafficking field including Ambassador Mark Lagon (U.S. Department of State, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons 2007-2009) and directors from the following organizations: the National District Attorneys Association; American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law; the Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies; ECPAT-USA; Children at Risk, Houston, Texas; and A Future Not a Past, Atlanta, Georgia.”

Criteria used to evaluate states’ grades included criminal provisions addressing traffickers, demand and facilitators, protections for child victims, and criminal justice tools for investigation and prosecution, among others.
According to the report, the worst ranking states in the U.S. include Virginia, Michigan, Maryland, and Colorado, to name just a few. Some of the best states were Missouri, Washington and Texas.

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Earlier this month, Elizabeth Vargas of ABC hosted a special report documenting the appalling practice of sex selection abortion in India. She traveled to India after hearing about the gendercide of girls in India.

“Six months ago, I traveled to India to see firsthand what the prime minister of that country calls a national shame. It is the systematic, widespread, shocking elimination of India’s baby girls. Some 50,000 female fetuses are aborted every month in India. Baby girls are often killed at birth, either thrown into rivers, or left to die in garbage dumps. Its estimated that one million girls in India “disappear” every year.”

Ms. Vargas describes what she calls the “dirty little secret” related to ultrasonography in India. “We walked down street after street and saw signs everywhere advertising ultrasound services. There are even technicians who pack portable ultrasounds and travel to villages offering their services. The dirty little secret is that many couples use the ultrasound to find out the sex of their baby.”

She explains the gendercide’s primary motivating factor: money.

“The reason so many Indians do this is financial. A family with a girl will pay a dowry to her husband’s family when she marries. It is a long cultural tradition in India that new laws cannot seem to break. So a girl means the family will lose money, property, or cattle on the wedding day. A boy means the family will gain those things. The illegal ultrasounds and the illegal gender abortions are used by India’s middle class to guarantee they get sons.

Poor women who cannot afford these services will simply kill or abandon their babies. Some will take their newborn girls to a drop box, usually in the middle of the night, and leave the baby there. One drop box is at a place called the Unique Orphanage in Punjab. We went from the village with no women, to the orphanage with no boys. There are only girls here…60 of them…all cared for by a wonderful woman who will raise each and every one. It is striking to see all those little faces, some two days old, others teenagers, all unwanted by their biological families. They are actually the lucky ones. Their parents didn’t kill them. They now have someone who loves them.”

Vargas also describes the disproportionate number of males to females in certain Indian localities. “50,000 girl fetuses are aborted every month in India. It is a staggering number. And it has created whole villages where there are hardly any women. We went to one such village in the province of Haryana. Everywhere we looked, we saw boys, young men, old men, but very, very few women. It was unsettling, especially because we knew this was not some freak of nature, but a result of the deliberate extermination of girls.”

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Last week my brother and sister-in-law welcomed a new little lady. Sweet little Bella was an extra special gift and surprise because her parents, who have two young boys, were expecting another little boy but instead delivered a beautiful little girl much to their delight! Bella, of course, means beautiful in Italian. And a beauty she is.

I have always believed that a person’s name holds significance. Some people of faith even believe that God is so intimately involved in the creation of persons and their lives that He names his sons and daughters. Some parents entrusted with the life of a child prayerfully seek to “discern” the name of the precious life entrusted to them.

Sadly, this is not the case in India where disturbing gender biases haunt and hurt many women; this is played out even in naming little girls. A few weeks ago the Huffington Post ran a story about hundreds of young women who received the terribly sad name “Unwanted” at birth. It is horrifying to imagine a parent cruel enough to name a child “Unwanted.” only because the baby is a “she.”

Continue reading »

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Leticia Velasquez, author of the recently published “A Special Mother is Born” on parenting a child with special needs, will be Washington, D.C. for a book signing, on Tuesday, November 15th, at 12:30p at the Catholic Information Center: 1501 K Street, NW.

Leticia is a wife and mother of three daughters, one with Down Syndrome. She writes professionally, has her own blog, Cause of Our Joy and is a co-founder of the support group, Keeps Infants With Down Syndrome (KIDS).

“A Special Mother is Born” is a beautiful anthology of stories from parents with children who have special needs. Contributors include Rick Santorum, Mary Kellet and Dr. Gerry Nadal, among others. This will be an opportunity (and a book) you will not want to miss.

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Last night, Rob Stein of the Washington Post published a fascinating piece on new technology that can potentially measure a person’s level of consciousness by examining electrical activity in the brain.

Disturbingly, those conducting the research have found that numerous patients diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state are in fact, fully conscious according to their brain electrical activity. This obviously begs many bioethical questions about the capacity to diagnose persistent vegetative state. The article is worth reading in full, but below are a few quotes capturing the main points:

Continue reading »

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On September 30th, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) received thousands of negative comments related to the interim final rule published on August 3rd where all insurance plans were informed that they must cover the full range of FDA-approved contraceptives with no co-pay. A very narrowly defined conscience exemption for religious organizations was included which, in essence, covers only places of worship and was originally drafted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for a bill in California. For more information on the rule, see FRC’s fact sheet on this topic.

Curious to read some of the comments and get a sense of volume, this week I perused the official regulatory website of the government, regulations.gov. Recall that the language from the rule indicated that comments would be posted publicly: “All comments are posted on the Internet exactly as received, and can be retrieved by most Internet search engines.”

Much to my surprise, my search led me to only a very small number of comments — under 100. Knowing that FRC constituents alone submitted close to 12000 comments, and that USCCB constituents filed close to 60,000 comments, I was surprised and assumed I was searching incorrectly. So, I called the regulations.gov helpline and had a knowledgeable customer service representative walk me through the process to assure I was doing everything correctly. At the end of that conversation together we located only 58 comments! I then asked the customer service representative if HHS may withhold certain comments. The representative ironically began by telling me that the “Obama Administration is committed to transparency” but then told me that HHS has control over what they post.

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The New York Times ran a stunning story yesterday “Contraceptive Use May Double Risk of H.I.V.“, about a new study published today in the Lancet showing that hormonal contraceptive use is strongly correlated with an increased vulnerability to contracting HIV/AIDS.

The study was conducted in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the region most impacted by HIV/AIDS in the world. Three thousand, seven hundred and ninety serodiscordant couples (one partner is HIV positive and one is not) participated in the longitudinal study running for six years, from 2004-2010. The bottom line? Women who used hormonal contraception had a “two-times increased risk of acquiring HIV.” Additionally, women who were using hormonal contraceptives were significantly more likely to transmit HIV to their partners.

The NYT reports that the World Health Organization is convening a meeting in January to review the latest research about the relationship between hormonal contraceptives and HIV/AIDS vulnerability and review if/how current recommendations require revisions.

For more information click here.

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Today marks the 11th year anniversary of the approval of RU-486, the one drug legally approved for abortion in the United States.

September also marks another difficult anniversary — the death of Holly Patterson, who died as a result of RU-486, which is considered “safe” and legal. Holly was a beautiful young woman who graduated from high school a year early. She received the abortion pill from a Planned Parenthood clinic in California at the age of 18 in September, 2003 and died a few days later from complications. Holly would have been 26 this year.

Tragically, Holly is not alone. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as of late April, at least 11 women in the U.S. have died as a result of the drug since its approval in September, 2000. Over 2200 adverse events have been filed with the FDA since that time, and 612 women had been hospitalized as a result of this abortion pill. More than 330 women have required a blood transfusion after having a chemical abortion.
Despite all of this, use of chemical abortion is on the rise in the U.S., specifically at Planned Parenthood clinics.

In Holly’s memory, today, her father, Monty Patterson, launched a website dedicated to spreading the truth about the abortion pill.

Please do whatever you can to spread the news about this website to the women in your life — they need to know this critical information that could one day save their life.

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- On Tuesday, September 20, the National Catholic Partnership on Disability will host a webinar, “Threats to Life from Physician-Assisted Suicide”. Registration is free at www.ncpd.org. For more information, contact Peg Kolm: mkolm@adw.org or 301-853-4560.

- In Altum Productions, the talented Allot brother film-making team is hosting a benefit on Friday, October 7, 2011 from 6- 8 pm, in Alexandria, Virginia for an upcoming documentary on prenatal disability diagnosis, “Flashes of Color”. A shocking 90% of babies in the womb who are diagnosed with a serious disability are aborted. Flashes of Color, seeks to highlight the profound contributions of people with disabilities at a time when a “culture of perfection” is fueling a deep and deadly bias against them. For more information contact In Altum Productions.

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Last week in Edmonton, Alberta, appellate court judge Joanne Veit issued a shocking decision regarding the fate of Katrina Effert who killed her newly born baby in 2005.

By law, the maximum amount of sentencing time in prison for infanticide is five years however the local media reported that “Effert will have to abide by conditions for the next three years but she won’t spend time behind bars for strangling her newborn son.”

In 2005, Effert, who was nineteen at the time, gave birth to a baby boy, strangled him with her underwear and then threw his body over the fence into a neighbor’s yard. Mark Steyn from National Review Online appropriately labeled this act a “Fourth Trimester Abortion” in a post earlier this week.

The Calgary Herald reports that “Veit called it a “classic infanticide case” and sentenced her to a three-year suspended sentence with probation.” Judge Joanne Veit also expressed sympathy for Effert. “[M]any Canadians . . . generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support…Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother.”

Ethicist Wesley Smith pointed out the irony that had Effert strangled a dog, she would have received no sympathy whatsoever. He’s right. Michael Vick received 23 months in jail for participating in dog fighting. So, in our culture as it stands you can participate in dog fighting (which I am not advocating, by the way – I love animals) and end up in the slammer for close to two years. But strangle your baby and you might be able to get off with a little community service time.  

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A study released earlier this week by sociologists at the University of Buffalo shows an area where men and women are NOT equal: oversexualization in the media. “Opportunity Objectification? The Sexualization of Men and Women on the Cover of Rolling Stone”  reveals that women have become increasingly overly-sexualized by the media over the last few decades whereas men are not increasingly viewed in this demeaning and harmful way.

This is a “lose-lose” in that not only does the oversexualization of women have negative ramifications for a healthy understanding and anthropology of the dignity of women, and ultimately lead to exploitation of women and girls with such as things as child pornography and sex trafficking, but it is getting worse and worse as time goes on.

For more information you can read the study here.

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For more information on the August 1st HHS interim rule which addresses women’s preventive services that insurance providers are now mandated to cover contraceptives with no co-pay, see this new FRC fact sheet.

You have an opportunity to voice your concerns. HHS is receiving comments from the public on the new rule until September 30, 2011. Please Note: all comments submitted to HHS will be made public so be careful not to include personally identifiable information.

According to the notice issued in the Federal Register on Wednesday, August 3rd, you can send comments in a variety of ways:

You may submit comments in one of four ways (please choose only one of the ways listed):

1. Electronically. You may submit electronic comments on this regulation here. Follow
the ‘‘Submit a comment’’ instructions.

2. By regular mail. You may mail written comments to the following address ONLY: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services, Attention: CMS–9992–IFC2, P.O. Box 8010, Baltimore, MD 21244–8010. Please allow sufficient time for mailed comments to be received before the close of the comment period.

3. By express or overnight mail. You may send written comments to the following address ONLY: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services, Attention: CMS–9992–IFC2, Mail Stop C4–26–05, 7500 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21244–1850.

4. By hand or courier. Alternatively, you may deliver (by hand or courier) your written comments ONLY to the following addresses prior to the close of the comment period: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services, Room 445–G, Hubert H. Humphrey Building, 200 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20201.

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