Weekly News Round-Up, Another Three-Day Weekend Edition
I’m taking Monday off work. Because I have the terrific privilege of paid vacation days, and have enough of them that I’ve actually topped out and will not accrue more until I take some of them.
First, a few of my recent posts at Our Bodies Our Blog that I’ve neglected to link up here:
- Quick Hit: Public Comment Open on Hospital Visitation Rule Change – public comments are being accepted until August 27 on a proposed rule change that would protect patients’ rights to choose and designate their own visitors during a hospital stay and make hospital visitation much easier for LGBTQI patients and their partners
- HealthCare.gov Provides Tools for Understanding Health Care Options – a bit about a new government website with information on the implementation of the health reform law and tools for finding health coverage and services.
- New Moms Invited to Participate in Study on Postpartum Sexual Health – announcement of a study by the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University Bloomington, which is conducting an online survey on postpartum sexual health to gather information on women’s sexual experiences and body image in the months after giving birth.
Meanwhile, OBOS’s fearless leader Judy Norsigian has an op-ed in the Boston Globe on the high cost of medically unnecessary caesarean sections – C’s post on the piece has info and the link. Christine also has posts on Media Gone Wild: The Continuing Sexualization of Girls and Multiple Strategies to Stop It and the problems of not appropriately including women in medical research.
Now, some other stuff worth a read.
Robin at RHRC points out that Louisiana has passed – and Gov. Jindal has signed – a forced ultrasound for abortion bill for the state.
The blogger at Birthing Beautiful Ideas points to media coverage from the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch in which Kingsdale Gynecologic Associates in which one of their docs calls it hurtful that some have called their anti-doula policy and standard “birth plan” “paternalistic and closed-minded.” BBI is more sensitive than I am in understanding that their feelings could be hurt by the critiques. I say, if they didn’t want to be called paternalistic, then they shouldn’t have developed a “birth plan” that includes, for example, language about episiotomy that says (emphasis added): “We promise to use our medical expertise and experience to make the best and safest decision for you and your baby.” Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc. Can change from being a duck, with some revision of the policy and a critical look at the sorts of attitudes that underlie such phrasing.
The Unnecesarean had a blog carnival centered around the Crisis in the Crib documentary about infant mortality, especially among Black babies. I haven’t seen it yet myself, but see The U for links to commentary.
Locally, WPNT (my local public television station in Nashville, ran an installment of their Children’s Health Crisis series on infant mortality. I haven’t seen that just yet, either.
Via Womanist Musings, a call for submissions to an anthology, Occupied Bodies: Women of Color Speak on Self-Image. Click on over for details, submissions due Oct 15.
One can now follow the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on Facebook and Twitter.
The FDA is asking for public comment “to help the agency implement a new federal law that requires the posting of calorie content and other nutrition information on menu items at certain chain restaurants and similar retail food operations and vending machines.”
Radical Doula talks about a Big victory for midwifery in New York State.
Courtney at Feministing and Cara at the Curvature talk about the passage of an Illinois law to mandate that every rape kit actually be tested.
And finally, via the librarian blogger at Pinched Nerves, this excellent LA Times opinion piece, U.S. public libraries: We lose them at our peril. The author of the piece also wrote the recent book, “This Book is Overdue!” While I’m not a total fan of that book (I like it, but my critiques are too librarian-y for this post), it’s hard to resist someone who writes:
The people who welcome us to the library are idealists, who believe that accurate information leads to good decisions and that exposure to the intellectual riches of civilization leads to a better world. The next Abraham Lincoln could be sitting in their library, teaching himself all he needs to know to save the country. While they help us get online, employed and informed, librarians don’t try to sell us anything. Nor do they turn around and broadcast our problems, send us spam or keep a record of our interests and needs, because no matter how savvy this profession is at navigating the online world, it clings to that old-fashioned value, privacy. (A profession dedicated to privacy in charge of our public computers? That’s brilliant.) They represent the best civic value out there, an army of resourceful workers that can help us compete in the world.
