I thought this was a nice try:

TALLAHASSEE - If teachers need free speech protection in science classrooms, why not extend it to sex education classes?

The same First Amendment protection should be offered to both, argued local Democratic Sens. Ted Deutch of Boca Raton and Nan Rich of Weston, as the Senate Thursday began debating whether teachers need a law that would allow them to present “scientific evidence” critical of evolution.

[…]

“We’re talking about academic freedom,” said Deutch. “In an abstinence-only sex education program, a teacher may wish to answer a student’s question and provide additional information that may protect a life or stop an unwanted pregnancy.” But the Republican-led Senate wouldn’t buy it.

* Discrimination against blacks linked to dehumanization, study finds. This study looked at the racist association of blacks with apes, and its consequences for people’s willingness to accept violence against them. Any anti-violence advocate could tell you that one way to get people to accept violence is to dehumanize its victim.

* It’s pretty easy to find the candidates’ stands on abortion, but glassbooth has also collected their stands on birth control and sex education.

* A New Zealand Idol contestant was kicked off the show for being pregnant. “Public life is set up with the assumption that people participating won’t have primary responsibility for childcare. This is incredibly anti-woman and extremely restrictive for women who do have children. A huge part of what I’m fighting for, as a feminist, is ending the notion of a ‘private sphere’ the idea that child-rearing is an individuals (usually a woman’s) primary responsibility, and that you have to choose between that role and any other role that you want to take.” Maia isn’t pro-life, but this is one area where feminists should be able to find common ground. (No, I haven’t actually had that bookmarked since August 2006. I’m not that far behind.)

* From another of Maia’s posts come two links to brownfemipower on the struggles of women, especially women in marginalized communities, to have their right to give birth respected.

* In that vein, Marysia (with a bit of help from me) has been working up a manifesto for an inclusive reproductive justice organization. This organization will encompass the rights of the unborn and already-born, and will advocate for all women’s rights to the full spectrum of nonviolent reproductive choices.

LifeSite reports on Tim Kaine’s cancellation of state funding for abstinence-only sex education.

Victoria Cobb, executive director of the Family Foundation of Virginia, said Kaine “professes to be a moderate and a man of faith, yet he is taking this very liberal, extremist position. The governor is choosing politics and playing to his base.”

(Kaine’s position, by the way, is that “effective sex education programs must include information about contraceptives as well as abstinence.”)

The article continues:

Another survey found that eight of 10 Virginia parents want their children to be taught abstinence as part of a comprehensive sex-education program. (emphasis added)

Doesn’t really take much to be a liberal extremist these days, does it?

Good news:

• Baltimore’s Healthy Start program has nearly eradicated very-low-birth-weight births. (The article says “near eradication of low-birth-weight babies”, but I think that implies something different and far more sinister than what actually occurred.)
• New York State has refused Federal funds for abstinence-only sex education. Among other requirements, recipients of the funds must agree not to promote the use of contraception, and to teach that “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of [heterosexual, I need hardly add] marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity”.
• The breast cancer mortality rate is dropping among American women, by about 2% per year.

Bad news:

• The breast cancer mortality rate isn’t dropping for black women.
• The maternal death rate is rising among American women. It is especially high among black women, and may be even higher than official figures indicate.

Where I get the news:

• The above items all came to my attention via the Kaiser Daily Women’s Health Policy report. It’s a roundup of news from mainstream media sources, so the usual disclaimers apply, but it’s a good place to get an overview.

Commentary on the news:

• Day Gardner of the National Black Pro-Life Union comments on the Jena Six
• liberaljournal at Booman Tribune reminds us, Don’t Forget the Other Jena’s.
• District Attorney Reed Walters said of a protest by several thousand supporters of the Jena Six on September 20: “I firmly believe and am confident of the fact that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened. You can quote me on that.” Thanks, I think I will. Apparently a large gathering of mostly African-American protestors is a sufficient threat as to require divine intervention. I bet poor Jesus never even had time for a smoke break during the 50s and 60s.

News that makes me worry that I was unintentionally prescient:

• The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case alleging that lethal injection is a cruel and unusual method of punishment (ht: mindful mission.)

I’m very excited to see that Marysia has started the Nonviolent Choice Blog. She will be posting on pro-life feminism, a subject which she has studied extensively.

Marysia is also developing the Nonviolent Choice Directory, with the aim of providing “wide spectrum of resources necessary to alleviate the root causes of abortion–from comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education to support for the women and children of crisis pregnancies before, during, and ever after birth, at all levels of society from the individual to the global.” This is an ambitious project, but one that is sorely needed. I encourage everyone to visit and give her feedback.

I had a glucose tolerance test at my last prenatal appointment and, although my levels were not quite high enough to warrant a diagnosis of gestational diabetes, I was nonetheless sent to a nutrition class to learn about the proper diet for stabilizing blood sugar. One thing the nutritionist told us was that contrary to popular belief, it’s OK to have some sweets; we just need to make sure to account for them in our total carbohydrate intake, and to eat them with meals so the sugar is absorbed less quickly.

Of course, unable to leave well enough alone, I spent my spare time for the next few days doing searches on gestational diabetes. (Yes, even though I don’t technically have it. I can do some pretty obsessive worrying at times.) I came across several sites claiming that people with GD, or diabetics in general, need to completely eliminate refined sugar from their diets. A popular line of reasoning was that since nobody really needs sweets anyway, it was better to be safe than sorry and cut them out entirely. Often this was delivered in a tone that seemed to chide people for wanting something that was simply pleasant, rather than nutritionally necessary.

I’m seeing that same tone a lot in conversations about the HPV vaccine. Nobody needs sex to survive, they say. So people should just exercise self-control (where “self-control” means no sex, ever, unless they’re in a heterosexual marriage), and then they wouldn’t have to worry about all these diseases.

Fortunately, these days most nutritionists don’t recommend cutting out all sweets even in a diabetic diet. In fact, studies have found that patients whose diet plans allowed for the consumption of refined sugar within certain guidelines were more likely to comply with their diets, and thus to keep their blood sugar under control, than those who were told they had to abstain entirely. Sure, it’s not a purist approach, but it works.

If only we could apply the same lesson to sexual health. Recognize that people like sex, and work with them to find ways to incorporate it into a healthy lifestyle, rather than constantly fight and chastise them for daring to want something that brings them pleasure.