I am hoping to present a panel with a group of fine, fine women at the 2009 SXSW Interactive Festival about the work we do at Scarleteen and some of the needs and issues we see raised here. And I need your help to do it!

Here's the info on what we're hoping to present:

Sex Ed Online: How Teens Self Savvy
Creators of popular online teen sexuality content—including the Midwest Teen Sex Show and Scarleteen.com—community educators, scholars and advocates discuss teenagers, sex, and the Internet. Content developers, parents and teens: Bring your questions, fears and hopes. We’ll answer generational quandaries. Apparently, there are prizes for the best questions, but I have no idea what they are.

For the uninitiated, here are the deets about the SXSW Interactive Festival:The SXSW Interactive Festival (http://sxsw.com/interactive) is an industry conference for web developers and digital creatives, held in Austin and now in its 15th year. These days the conference has become so popular that it gets hundreds of proposals, like mine, from people who would like to present at the conference.

To help the SXSW Interactive folks sort out what people what to hear, the conference organizers now use a web-based panel picker. Please visit and use the panel picker and to place a vote on it for our proposal and leave a comment. It’s fine if you don’t currently have plans to attend SXSW Interactive 2009 - anyone at all can vote and leave a comment.

So, if you've got a sec...
***
==> Please go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/920 to find the listing for our proposal, place your vote and leave a comment. The panel picker will be active until August 29.

***
It will take you less than 3 minutes and costs nothing, but you must open an account on the panel picker to vote and post a comment. You are not signing onto any e-mail lists by giving your information, and you do not need to attend the conference nor must you have attended it in the past in order to vote for my panel. While votes to rate the proposal (1-5 stars) are valuable, I’m told that what really counts with the organizers it is having comments written about why someone would be a good speaker and/or why the topic is of interest.

Here are more details about the other women who'd be presenting with me:
* Nikol Hasler is one-third of a highly entertaining podcast, “The Midwest Teen Sex Show.” A Midwestern mother of three (who isn’t afraid to use her children in the service of sex education) Nikol has no formal training as a sex educator but along with her co-creators Guy Clark and Britney Barber, she has created a great sex education tool, playing with stereotypes not just about sex, but about age, race, class, and orientation in a way that is engaging and opinionated enough to be useful.

* Kris Gowan has a Master’s in Education in Human Development and Psychology and a PhD in Child and Adolescent Development. She is the author of “Sexual Decisions” (Scarecrow Press, 2003). Her research has focused on healthy relationships/sexuality in adolescence and lately on positive youth development and the intersection between youth, the Internet and sexual development/sexual identity.

* Karen Rayne earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, which she puts to good use educating parents about how to talk with their teens about sex and romance. She also provides comprehensive sex education to teenagers.

* Karen Kreps will be moderating the panel. Karen has more than two decades developing interactive content (www.netingenuity.com), and has written and published the book, “Intimacies: Secrets of Love, Sex & Romance,” a collection of columns she has written for The Good Life magazine. For six years, Karen hosted monthly public discussions about love, sex and romance.

Some of the questions that will be answered on this panel include: 1. What do teens want to know about sex? 2. How do they use the Internet to find answers? 3. Which social media tools provide the best sexual education? 4. What positive or negative impact can the Web have on teen sexuality? 5. At what ages should online use by children and teens be monitored? 6. Are parents abdicating their roles as sex educators to the Internet? 7. Does online info encourage or discourage sexual experimentation by teens? 8. What role does the Internet play in educating youth about sex? 9. Can the government regulate online sex education and should it? 10. Can online sex info be trusted for accuracy?

If this sounds like something you'd like to see yourself or have other folks in the world see, I hope you can find a free moment yo use the Panel Picker and vote for our proposal. I think it's really important for us to get this information out there and debunk a lot of misconceptions about online sex education and those of you who use it. Thanks a bunch!

While out of town this weekend, between two plane trips and a couple late evenings up reading, I started and polished off Elliott Currie's The Road to Whatever: Middle-Class Culture and the Crisis of Adolescence in very short order. I didn't do this because it was a fluffy or easy read -- it's actually very in-depth and painful at times, though highly readable -- but because it was such a well-done piece of work, so engaging, and from my point of view, so dead-to-rights. It was incredibly refreshing to read Currie's approach: I was thirsty for it, and it delivered a long, tall and much-needed drink. I found buried treasure.

It was timely, my reading this book, because for a while I've taken issue with how at-risk youth are even defined. For the most part, they are defined by race and class, as necessarily of-color, and/or in poverty. By all means, I agree that being a member of any oppressed class -- which every adolescent is, simply by virtue of age -- will always bump risk factors up, and I want care given to of-color youth and low-income youth in a way which does it's best to compensate for those youth having less resources than others. (As well, I'm also concerned with the not-so-well-meaning and racist or classist implications of identifying at-risk youth that way, as if, by virtue of color or income, rather than the institutions which discriminate by that criteria, a given person is somehow innately destined to have bigger problems, and it is that person in need of "fixing," not those institutions.) But I do often worry, particularly since so often we see middle-class youth of all colors at Scarleteen having such a tough time of things, about assuring that our focus is broad enough when it comes to who we decide needs care and attention. I have frequent concerns that the way we identify who is and who isn't at risk, who may and may not be likely to be at-risk, is too narrow.

How much money the family of a young adult has is no guarantee at all of happiness or well-being, something I learned all too well when I taught upper class children for a year in the early 90's: there was an isolation, a loneliness and a stressed-out perfectionism many of those students -- particularly those approaching puberty -- that took me very much by surprise at the time. On more than one occasion, I heard a parent respond to a valid concern we voiced for their child with little more than an immediate concern for and defense of their needs (such as the "need" to pull a child in and out of school incessantly because a parent didn't like the cold and liked to switch over to a summer home on their whim, for themselves), not those of their child.

The new middle-class world in which many American adolescents grow up is one that combined harshness and heedlessness in equal measure. It is a world that is quick to punish and slow to help, a world paradoxically both deeply moralistic and profoundly neglectful. Hence, it is hardly surprising that so many mainstream teenagers are in trouble, for that world makes it very hard to grow up. It makes it all too difficult to achieve a strong and abiding sense of worth and all too easy to feel like a failure and a loser. It makes it all too easy to feel like an outsider, all too difficult to feel appreciated or respected for being who you are. It is a world in which it is treacherously easy for adolescents to trip up and break the rules but in which no one can be bothered to help them avoid tripping up in the first place. (p.254, bolding mine)

I admit, I had a lot of déjà vu when reading Currie's accounts of the teens he worked with. While I grew up primarily low-income, a few of my adolescent years were spent in the middle-class, and those were the years when things got as bad as they could possibly get. Accounts in the book of Tough Love were all-too familiar to me, and the reminder harrowing. In my case, Tough Love was used in conjunction with, and sometimes as justification for, an abuse dynamic, which was particularly chilling, and you see that in some of these accounts as well. I remember, too, that when we moved into (rather, married into) the middle class, there was less notice of the effects of my household on me. In lower-class communities and schools, neighbors and teachers seemed to have a keener eye: in middle-class life, there seemed a universal propensity to turn the other cheek, to put on blinders, to say "None of my business," which felt very different -- cold, isolated, the kind of disturbingly quiet things are when no one wants to talk about what's wrong -- than our lower-income community had. Perhaps it was partly due to the timing, due to that switch happening at the onset of my adolescence, but I remember it very distinctly feeling like suddenly we youth were the enemy, always at fault, and parents and other adults ever-good, even when they were being anything but.

I noticed some changes and some similarities. On the north side of Chicago, back when I was a teen, there were a rare few of us identified as "trouble" who had not either spent some time put in mental institutions by parents -- not by the state -- or who were frequently threatened with same. It became a way to find something quickly in common: "Oh, you were in the ward at Northwestern? When? Were you there with Susie?" That still seems to be occurring, but more often the institution is pharmaceutical: at the first sign of trouble, mood changes (which are part and parcel of the chemical effects of puberty, not a disorder) or rebellion, teens are put on SSRIs, anti-anxiety or ADHD medications. We also see many youth now wind up in criminal institutions, "boot camps," -- whose listings I have to remove from our GoogleAds constantly -- get shuttled more from one home to another, and with GLBT youth, in camps which aim to "rehabilitate" them.

Young adults seem also to be suspended or kicked out of school with more frequency and ease in this era, taking away yet one more resource that is needed; setting youth more adrift than before, rather than helping them to use places like school as a much-needed tether. His accounts of the world of modern-day suburban high schools and rigorous academic achievement will probably also sound very familiar to teens today: as cold, uncaring (particularly for students who do not prove their worth with high grades or test scores), punitive and, all too frequently, more parent and teacher-centered than student-centered. Of course, there is also a heavy and judgmental religious morality, one which in the U.S. has found it's way into schools and policies through our current administration, which also often judge, youth, and do so with the ultimate authority figure: one which claims to come directly from God. The actuality or threats of kicking a teen out of the house also do not appear to have decreased, despite the fact that it still remains unlawful for a parent to abandon a minor in that way.

I appreciated that he brought up that one common reason teens wind up in trouble, or in situations or social circles which endanger them isn't because teens are stupid or foolhardy, but because those places or groups are more accepting of them, have less stringent or rigid standards for approval than teens are finding elsewhere. There's a reason, after all, that so many teens are so stressed out right now: it's not random.

If we wonder why we see very young teenage women dating older partners who clearly or likely are exploiting them or putting them at risk, rather than just looking to that teen or that adult, we should also look at what they get from that situation which they are not finding elsewhere. If the only person stating or recognizing a developing maturity (whether or not that is earnest or manipulative) is the 25-year-old guy who lives with Mom and picks up teen girls at the mall, it's no wonder a young person moving into adulthood is very drawn to that person, despite their flaws or manipulations which may even be known to teens pairing up with them. If we feel like youth are spending too much time in online communities and too little in real-life, we might look at the differences through this lens, considering what kind of acceptance they are or are not getting here or there. If we're wondering things like why we're seeing an increase in abusive YA relationships we might also look to where they are learning those patterns in the first place, why those relationships seem to be so easy for teens to fall into and why they seem so normal and familiar. If it seems completely incomprehensible that young people wind up with addictions to hard drugs (self-injury is also pertinent here), we might look at the differences in how a person feels on a drug and off of it: if a drug seems the only way to feel comfortable socially, to care less about feelings of hatred for oneself, or to find something to shake a person out of feeling numb, why look to the drugs or the addiction first, and to what's being escaped from second, if at all?

The stories he recounts are so important: as usual, I can't say enough how important I feel it is that we listen -- really listen -- to young people. They are painful and poignant, but often inspirational: many of the young people he interviewed managed -- though they shouldn't have had to -- to create and discover selves and lives of meaning and value despite so frequently being denied help and care from the sources where they should have most easily found both.

But what I found most important, and most meaningful, were the conclusions he draws from those stoires and what he knows as an expert on many of the institutions and institutional systems youth can wind up in, from what their experiences illustrated so clearly and consistently. It's all very simple, really. The idea many people seem to have that the reason middle-class adolescents find themselves in crisis is because they have too much of everything -- too much esteem, too much care, too much attention -- and thus, the answer is to take those things away -- work to decrease esteem, withdraw or deny care and attention -- is not only profoundly cruel but profoundly flawed. When the young adults he talked to were able to turn their lives around was, of no surprise to those thinking and feeling clearly, when they finally got some practical help, some support and attention; when they were cared for and treated compassionately, when who they are was respected and assured to be of worth -- without being proven through achievement -- when they were no longer just tossed to the wolves to see if they'd make it or not.

These should be obvious conclusions, but we all know that however obvious they may seem, they are often not the conclusions drawn or the approach taken.

What makes this institutional failure so troubling is that many of these teenagers really needed help at some point in their adolescence. They were at best overwhelmed and adrift, and often in peril. Some had been genuinely damaged by their treatment at the hands of abusive, neglectful or dysfunctional adults. Over and over again, the teens I spoke with said that what they most needed during their periods of crisis was basic: they needed someone to listen to them, pay attention, take them seriously and not put them down or humiliate them. They needed people who were sufficiently engaged to help them figure out what to do next and strong enough to be flexible and understanding rather than reflexively judgmental -- people who could help them understand their mistakes while acknowledging their good qualities and who could help them build on their strengths and potential. When they got that kind of response, they appreciated it and usually responded in kind. But they rarely got it. What they got too often was an ideologically grounded regime of punishment and blame that seemed designed to break their "oppositional" nature... (p.168, bolding mine)

More flashback for me. I remember -- and by all means, we still hear this from teens today daily - that whatever mistakes I made, or perceived failings of flaws I had always seemed to take more precedence than the good things I did or my unique personality and talents. I could get the great grades I did all I wanted, and yet, what I heard more about was how the way I dressed and presented was ugly and unacceptable. I could be an intensely creative person, always writing, making a piece of art, singing and playing piano, I could be as kind to other people as possible, I could try and do some things with social change movements, but because I clearly wasn't straight and was (and actually was perceived as being well before I *actually* was) sexually active, what I boiled down to was just a loose slut. The fact that I had largely raised myself, taken care of myself from a very young age without much help was never recognized, but when I made any error or oversight with that self-rearing, it was all my fault.

Like most of the youth in Currie's work, when things turned around for me was exactly when these kinds of things happened for me. I was able to switch from a very unwelcoming public school -- even for an excellent student, which I very much was -- to a specialized and highly inclusive arts school where my gifts and talents were recognized and my uniqueness was celebrated by both faculty and peers. I had a counselor who didn't put blame on me, but acknowledged things that were not my fault clearly (like that it was my family who was crazy and dysfunctional, not me; like that I had been trying to live though serious trauma without any real help or acknowledgment of that trauma so it was no surprise I was having a very hard time). I was able to get connected with a parent who was supportive of me and willing to work through the problems I was having with me with love and acceptance, fully engaged with me in doing so. All of these kinds of things were my turning points. The fact that I had to actually fight to get those things -- that anyone does -- that I was ignored or denied when asking for them so much I just stopped asking, rather than to be neglected (or, at other times, face highly severe "punishments"), abandoned, institutionalized, tossed to the wolves all "for my own good," will hopefully, at some other point in history, be recognized as the harmful lunacy that it was and for many teens, still is.

Here at Scarleteen, and at other services which are expressly for teens and young adults, one way we often see that lack of care is just in how tough it often is for us to find volunteers or get donations: to far too many people, teens and young adults are seen as a population who is too young to be considered and treated as adult, but too old to be cared for. Services which are about control or containment -- which are, let's face it, more about providing creature comforts for parents then for teens -- often are more stable and supported than those which are about providing the kind of bonafide support or help the youth themselves are asking for, and that's a serious problem. Teens are often put in a sort of purgatory, even in what services are provided for them: little children are important, adults are important, but anyone in between...well, they'll sink or they'll swim, right? What Currie makes clear, and I agree, is that what that approach inclines them to do is to tread water or drown.

I do wish some attention had been given to the additional challenges gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth often face; that some address had been made of how additionally isolated GLBT youth often are, and how "tough love" or... approaches compound their crises. But that's a minor quibble -- and really, my only quibble -- while most of the youth he talked with seemed to be heterosexual, Currie didn't explicitly identify the orientation of any of them, and it may simply have been outside the scope of his study. I also would have loved a foreword from one of the youth he interviewed: maybe for the next printing?

None of this is rocket science, but it does stand pretty counter to some very common approached to youth in trouble and.or in need of help. We should know by now that the "Bad kid! No biscuit" (or no love, no roof, no school, no social outlets, no dating, whichever it is) approach not only doesn't work, but is potentially quite damaging, and certainly not in accord with helping young people transition into healthy, happy adults. For lack of a better term -- though I personally, am really fond of rebellious and think there's a lot of great power in the term -- being "oppositional" is part of the nature of adolescence. While it may inconvenience, challenge or scare parents or other adults, and while it certainly can wear a person out, in so many ways, adolescence is another sort of birth. During the teen years, young people are giving birth to the adults they are becoming, and like any birth, it is frequently painful, in some way inconsiderate of its environment, raucous, unpredictable, chaotic, anarchist. To a large degree, it is not something others can control, which certainly poses a conflict to a culture seeking more and more control of everything and everyone. I'm of the mind -- and my impression was that Currie is, as well -- that young adult separation and rebellion needn't be or be viewed as destructive. In fact, I've long thought and expressed that I think it's something we need in our culture: one incredible thing teens do for us is sort of jar us awake, pull us forward unto their future, give us, as a culture, a sort of high-powered jolt I think we're often in need of.

So many huge cultural and social changes in our culture -- like them or not -- are changes we have generations of youth to thank for: the Great Awakening, the Industrial Revolution, public schooling, the Civil Rights Movement, the Beat era, feminism, the hippies, yippies and diggers of my parents years, the punk movement of my era, the riot-grrls of the one right after that, tech development, and.... well, we're going to see what we really have right now, if we give our youth a chance to show us, anyway. For a lot of our national and global history, young people have been at the forefront of social justice movements and other social change, and for just as long of a time, adults have frequently been resistant, and sometimes that resistance results in attempts to (and successes at) control and contain rather than engagement, cooperation and participation. Often enough, and certainly now, adults have been sure that teens cannot harness and manage their own energy despite history showing us that more often, in fact, young people know exactly how to channel their rebellion and their unique spirits powerfully and positively, perhaps better than adults do.

I think if we seek to quiet, subdue or control young people, we all -- and most particularly the teens themselves -- lose something immensely valuable and seriously important. We also don't help teens at all by either abandoning them or by punishing them for their nature: it's one of the ways we do them real harm. The title to the book speaks of a typical answer Currie got when asking teens about why they fell into destructive or damaging habits, addictions or behaviors, or how they felt about themselves and their lives at the time: "Whatever," was a typical response. I think -- I hope - one place all of us can agree upon, no matter our divergent and diverse politics, values or aims -- is that no one earnestly benefits from a population who feels that their lives and actions are just "whatever." The youth themselves most certainly don't, but neither do adults, even if that "whatever" gives some adults more room to have lives uninterrupted or without the inconvenience of a more invested and higher-esteemed teen.

It seems like stating the obvious, but if we want a healthy, vibrant and caring world, we just can't very well expect to have that if when our youth are looking towards adulthood, we've made them feel that they'll have nothing of value to contribute if and when they get there (unless, apparently, they become only who we want them to be to serve our own needs and aims, rather than being and becoming who they actually are and serving what needs and aims are their own).

Suffice it to say, I strongly recommend this book: to parents, teachers, other YA helpers, as well as to young people (I know my inner-teen got some healing and acknowledgment through this, so your actual-teen might well, too). In a similar vein, I also would suggest two other books, Generation on Hold: Coming of Age in the Late Twentieth Century, (James E. Cote & Anton L. Allahar) and The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager by Thomas Hine.

It perhaps goes without saying that I also strongly recommend that we look at where, exactly, teens are learning to look at themselves and their lives as "Whatever." A mirror may prove useful.

In a recent advice answer on Crisis Pregnancy Centers here at Scarleteen, and also reprinted for my column at RH Reality Check, I originally included a link to a hotline -- the American Pregnancy Helpline -- as one option for women looking for support with a pregnancy they wanted to sustain rather going than to a CPC.

I unfortunately, and very unintentionally, proved my own point in the piece too well.

The point is how easy it can be to be fooled by CPCs, even when you're pretty savvy, aware of practices CPCs typically employ and even when you're writing an article in protest of them. I -- and others -- appear to have been duped into thinking a site and organization was respectful of women's right to choose, when, in fact, it was itself a CPC and a funnel to other CPCs.

I gave the link because when women choosing to continue a pregnancy are seeking help, they deserve to find it, and I thought some might be found there. I -- as I made clear in that article -- would never want to send a woman to any kind of biased, misleading or antichoice business/organization for any reason, particularly since aid is available from unbiased sources who support and respect all women and all our choices, and I cannot apologize enough for the fact that I seem to have, albeit accidentally, done just that.

I hope my readers understand that it was a sincere error on my part for which I take full responsibility. I have a commentator at RH Reality Check, where the article was reprinted -- Parker Dockray, the Executive Director for the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom -- to thank for a keen spidey-sense in noticing some things on the site which I had unfortunately overlooked. I emailed the site immediately asking a few basic questions about their stance and background early but have yet to get any response.

The site for the helpline appeared to present itself as supportive of all pregnancy options and did not seem to be noticeably antichoice. I did not find warnings about it anywhere and found several sites I know to be reputable and fully supportive of women and choice linking to it.

Hidden Alliances & Agendas

It may be a bit extreme to suggest checking every single page of every site and any affiliated sites and investigating everyone's background on a site when doing so when outlinking, but if I had initially done so, I first would have found that the site -- though it didn't say so -- was directly affiliated with a much larger site, the American Pregnancy Association: one linked to even by organizations like the National Abortion Federation, the blog of Our Bodies, Ourselves, the ARHP, WebMD, RAINN, the Feminist Majority Foundation, and MedlinePlus, who likely also were themselves unaware of what appears to be going on behind the scenes.* And once I found that connection, I would have found a whole lot more.

Which, once I started digging in, I certainly did.

In a day and night of intensive excavating, I discovered that both the American Pregnancy Helpline and the American Pregnancy Association and their founders have no record at all of being supportive of all reproductive options -- quite the contrary -- and that their organization began as a CPC. I found some misleading or medically incorrect information on both sites, such as references to "partial-birth abortion," and the suggestion that future fertility or breast cancer has anything at all to do with abortion. I found that the helpline and the APA both are widely linked in CPC and pro-life directories. I noticed a strange absence of any information on contraception at the site for teens, but a bunch of links to this at the APA site.

The American Pregnancy Helpline, which also calls itself America's Pregnancy Helpline -- only recently has been geared to teens. It seems to have substantially changed its appearance since it grew, as an organization, into the APA. (In looking though it more today, I was also struck by how closely it resembled Planned Parenthood's Teenwire in style, a style established well before the helpline's most recent design.) The web archive shows them to have founded the website years back as a textbook CPC. It was at that time called America's Crisis Pregnancy Helpline, and didn't then appear to claim any sort of medical accuracy or affiliation, nor any alliance with the reproductive health community. It also, to its credit, used to say on the organization's information page that it does not provide referrals to abortion services (though a debit to that credit, since the claim was that that was due to "a policy in accordance with the ones held by numerous social service organizations whereby it does not provide direct referrals to abortion providers" when such a policy is hardly common nor a requirement): it no longer makes that statement anywhere on the current site. This same organization later began the American Pregnancy Association in 2003, which appears to share a call center.

This page from 1999 shows a clear bias -- note that the questions about finances, "long-term physical and emotional effects," knowledge of procedures, pressuring, changing one's mind or "looking down on" women are not asked about the other two options. In fact, considering how much of a lifelong endeavor parenting is, it's pretty strange that no questions on that options page were posed at ALL about readiness, wantedness or ability to parent. All that was given was a list of what extra help social service organizations may be able to give.

Same goes with adoption: no questions are asked or suggested, only a list of possible benefits. Apparently, only "when it comes to abortion, [are] there are many issues to consider when making a decision." Not when it comes to parenting or adoption. The one link provided there for adoption is for the Sheaffers book about their search for a child to adopt and what a gift giving someone a child is (because that's not any kind of pressure). In both sites past and current material on adoption, it is the only option where there is a link or list of "benefits" to making that choice: there are no lists of "benefits" for abortion or parenting. Since that time, some questions have been added to the 3-choices pages at both the APA and the helpline, but there is still a very clear bias present.

On both sites there is a list of "possible emotional side effects" for abortion, but none listed for parenting or adoption, despite the fact that these possible effects commonly occur in women who are or have recently been pregnant, whether they terminate or continue a pregnancy and then choose parenting or adoption. On the helplines page of questions to ask oneself if considering an abortion, the question, "What would an adoption plan look like?" is included. There is no such question about parenting, nor do the lists for adoption or parenting ask what an abortion plan would look like.

Birth of the Helpline

The archive of the helpline site from 1999 states that, "America's Crisis Pregnancy Helpline was established January 1, 1995, when Mike and Anne Sheaffer rented two billboards in Dallas, Texas, to broadcast their dream of adopting a child... In the 1,100 calls the Sheaffers subsequently received, many were from women facing unplanned pregnancies who did not know where else to turn. Recognizing this unfulfilled need in society, the Sheaffers envisioned a confidential crisis line where women could receive the help they desperately needed. ACPH functions in this capacity today as its trained staff provides counseling, pregnancy-related information, and referrals for community resources. ACPH is an independent, non-profit entity and is funded primarily by corporate and private donations."

No organizational background is given at the current website for the helpline site, nor any reference to the Sheaffers or to a direct affiliation with the APA, even though matching addresses and domain registrants clearly show them to be directly affiliated. The statement on the current about page simply reads, "The American Pregnancy Helpline is a national free service that helps meet the needs of young women who are pregnant. The website provides access to information and answer to questions and provides access to a toll-free helpline to meet the needs of those with unexpected pregnancies," and then lists the hotline number to call. The current site for the APA, here, tells the story of the Sheaffers, and also notes that, "In 2003, the Helpline became the American Pregnancy Association, a foundation of health services for the public, including education, research, advocacy, public policy and community awareness. Utilizing a Medical Advisory Committee, and collaborating with other reproductive and pregnancy health organizations, APA is a recognized leader of reproductive and pregnancy health information." That page lists Dr. Philip B. Imler as President of the APA, a person I could find little reference to anywhere outside the organization. The only other reference I could find online for him listed Imler as the chief officer or director of Christian Adoptions International. The domain for that organization currently bounces to adoption.com and any archive of the original site -- christianadoptions.com -- is blocked.

On a fairly buried page, the founders of the APA are listed as J. Michael Sheaffer and Dr. Philip B. Imler. While searches for Mike Shaeffer primarily result in pages at the APA and the site for Hi-Line, his electrical and mechanical maintenance product delivery service, J. Michael Sheaffer can be found in a tax-exempt organization listing as the director of Pastors for Life International, an organization listed as a Right to Life organization in Texas with a return last filed in 2002. The website for PFLI appears to have gone dark in 2005. Until 2002, the web archive of the domain shows J. Michael Sheaffer listed as one of three Founding Directors of the organization. Hi-Line is shown as a supporter of PFLI in all years of the archive of the site.

In an archive of the site during the time Shaeffer was listed as a Founding Director, there is also a page which lists ways pastors or congregations could get involved with the mission of PFLI, and those include:

Start a pregnancy center or maternity home.
Create a "Mentoring Mothers" network for pregnant teenagers.
Start a post-abortion reconciliation ministry.
Refer women who are unexpectedly pregnant to pro-life safetynets.
Create web links to pregnancy, adoption, and post-abortion resources.

A bit further down the page, those actions or goals are paired with contact links, and the helpline is listed as a contact for "Help individuals gain access to pro-life safety nets," and "Identify and support a local pro-life agency (prayer, material assistance, financial, or volunteer)."

Dr. Brad Imler, whose doctorate is in psychology, is currently listed as their contact for corporate partnerships, but also credited in several places online -- in press quotes and in his profile at the forums for the site -- as the President of the APA, not Philip. (One can only presume them to be the same person, and perhaps Brad is simply a nickname.) Brad Imler is interviewed here in a publication for the American Life League. Brad Imler is listed as the domain registrant for both the helpine site and the APA site, and the registering organization for the APA is listed as the APH (American's Pregnancy Helpline, one presumes).

There is some particularly troubling information at one of those links up there:

One of the nation's leading manufacturers of pregnancy tests recently invited the American Pregnancy Association (APA), a Dallas-based "life-affirming" organization, to include inserts in 3.5 million test kits that encourage women to call a toll-free helpline if they have questions about pregnancy.

The invitation came from Inverness, a company that manufactures most pregnancy tests on the market. The APA previously tested the market by including inserts in 300,000 pregnancy and ovulation test kits. To date, the test has generated more than 1,500 calls on the APA helpline, and most come from women experiencing unplanned pregnancies. "You feel good when you know you've made a difference in someone's life," said APA President Brad Imler, who is seeking funds to cover the 3 cents cost of each insert. "Whatever the issues are, we like to be available to get people the support and education they need, and more importantly, to get them plugged into local support groups and resources."

Since 1995, the APA has educated women, provided resources and conducted research on numerous pregnancy-related topics.

"We're not involved in the political battle," Imler said. "Abortion is just one hot topic we deal with. Contraception, breast feeding, infertility—there are passionate views from different perspectives on all of these topics. The way we work has proven to be successful for us, and that's to provide education."

Statistics have shown that 70 percent of women did not have enough information before deciding to abort a pregnancy, Imler said. "What we find is that most women, when they receive information, desire to carry a child to term." The APA compiles statistics based on its own data, as well as research coming from other reliable sources, Imler said.

In 2005, the organization received 38,000 calls on its helpline. Though some of them pertained to topics such as prenatal care or infertility, the majority were about unplanned pregnancy.

So, a major provider of pregnancy tests apparently considered including or did at one time include (I do not see any listing of the APA number in current product inserts shown online, nor in the insert for the Fact Plus test I keep on hand in my own bathroom, so it seems safe to say they are not doing this now) the APA "helpline" which sends those who want to terminate pregnancies or discuss termination to CPCs. Clearblue Easy is, however, currently listed as a corporate sponsor on the APA's front page. (I sent an email to Inverness asking about their affiliation but have not yet received any response.)

About those calls, that "information," that counseling and those referrals.

One of our volunteers here at Scarleteen, S., called into the helpline number.

She reported that they answered as the American Pregnancy Association. She told them she was seven weeks pregnant and needed an abortion because she would be in danger via her parents if they found out she had gotten pregnant. They refused to give her a referral for any abortion services or any abortion counseling or information (nor did they suggest that she get somewhere safe despite her stating she was in potential danger), but asked where she was and gave the numbers of "somewhere nearby she could go to get information on abortion." That number was for the Monroeville Crisis Pregnancy Center, which also calls itself The Monroeville Pregnancy Care Center and Crossroads Pregnancy Services, has at least two different websites despite being the same business and who clearly is not in the business of providing any accurate information about abortion. It is a member of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. We can safely presume my volunteer was not given this number by accident particularly since when pressing for more information, this was all the person on the phone would give her, even though there is a Planned Parenthood nearby as well.

That helpline number -- the one where they stated to my volunteer they will not give information about or referrals to abortion services? -- is the only listed number to call for questions about abortion procedures on the APA's abortion information pages.

The APA also appears to solicit dues-paying members directly online without advertising its links to CPCs. Chances are good that some people may have given to this organization who very much do not want to support CPCs.

The quick down and dirty, based on what I now know, is:

• Mark and Annie Sheaffer want to adopt a baby, so they advertise on billboards to find one in 1995. A substantial number of women call them who have an unplanned pregnancy.
• The same year, they begin a CPC, America's Crisis Pregnancy Helpline. It goes online in 1998. It is later retitled the American Pregnancy Helpline.
• In 2001, J. Michael Sheaffer is listed as a Founding Director of PFLI, whose goals include referring women to pro-life "safetynets." Sometime in 2002, while his delivery business remains a listed supporter, he is no longer shown as a Founding Director.
• In 2003, APH "became" the American Pregnancy Association... save that it didn't become anything else, it still existed. Now there were simply TWO different phone numbers to call, both reaching the same staff, listed at the same Texas address, both of which advertise counseling on all a woman’s options, both of which appear to funnel callers to CPCs, and which admittedly, primarily take calls not about maternal health topics, but about unplanned pregnancy.
• In other words, the original CPC begets the APA which provides one more way to send women calling them -- the majority of which, by their own admission, are calling about unplanned pregnancy -- to more CPCs.

I cannot say if the APA exists solely or primarily as a way to feed CPCs. That's simply not information any of us could have who aren't the Shaeffers, the Imlers, or someone else involved directly with these organizations. However, given all of this information, given the personal bias involved, and how all of these links and affiliations are clearly purposefully not made plain, I certainly think it begs the question. It stands to be said that plenty of the information on pregnancy itself at the APA certainly is medically accurate: it appears that it is information on abortion and adoption where we can find most of the inaccuracy and bias, and they may very well be as passionate about maternal health as they are about the pro-life cause.

In the event that you or anyone you know followed that link, used those services and suffered in any way by doing so, I am tremendously sorry for my own part in that. This kind of thing is going to happen to anyone in any kind of journalism or education now and then -- and clearly, with this particular organization it has happened before to others -- but it's something I always want to do my best to avoid, and which I take full responsibility for if and when I fail. Obviously, the CPCs are as good at being misleading and deceptive as so many of us have reported them to be, and any one of us can get suckered. Clearly, some of us working in reproductive health and rights, myself included, are going to need to be even more vigilant than we already felt we were and work even harder to assure that we don't inadvertently make ourselves -- and more importantly, the women we serve -- more vulnerable than we already are in this era where choice is so threatened.

I'm pretty streetwise, and I do tend to have a pretty keen eye for bias, for things that don't quite fit, and for deception when it comes to reproductive options and aid. And yet. Of course, what I don't have is unlimited time: the look I took at this was not in-depth. I also relied on not hearing anything bad about these orgs from anyone else...and these are all easy errors someone looking for help with an unwanted pregnancy or looking for information on abortion or referrals to abortions services could make as well, many others also not having unlimited time and figuring that if they didn't hear anything bad, it must all be okay. Except when it's not.

In many ways this is a sadly perfect object lesson about CPCs -- and I am certainly glad to have discovered all of this about these organizations and to have the opportunity to reveal this information about them -- even if it's one I much rather would not have had, particularly at anyone else's expense. I didn't learn this lesson, after all, as a woman in the midst of an unwanted pregnancy seeking help and the accurate, supportive information I was assured I'd be given for all of my choices.

* A version of this piece is also available at RH Reality Check, here, and the staff at RH have been helping to make efforts to notify the reproductive health, pro-choice and feminist groups or organizations about this newly discovered information on the APA.

From the ACLU blog today:

We just received word today that the Third Circuit struck down a federal Internet censorship law as unconstitutional. The law, called the Child Online Protection Act, imposed civil and criminal penalties on those who place "harmful to minors" material on the Web. Under this law, no adult, no matter how mature or responsible, would have been allowed to see material that is deemed unfit for a child. The law would have forced vast swaths of constitutionally protected speech off of the Web.

Today's victory is a huge win that comes as a result of 10 years of litigation by a dedicated group of ACLU clients. All of our clients—from award-winning, established publications such as Salon to individuals such as Heather Corinna, who works largely on her own to provide valuable sexual health information geared toward teenagers—put up with a great deal of hassle and inconvenience and stress. By standing up for their own right to engage in free speech on the Web, they helped protect the rights of all Americans. They deserve our thanks.

Whether today's opinion is the last to address COPA is up to the government and, ultimately, to the Supreme Court. The government has some time to decide whether it wants to ask the Court to review this case. Hopefully it will conclude that 10 years of litigation is enough.

We'd already gotten this stricken down the last time around, but since the feds just would not let this stinker go, it got another chance -- thank goodness -- to get even more thoroughly dropkicked. Obviously, for Scarleteen, this was not just about limiting adult access to all kinds of material, but about a law and policy which would have made teens "unfit" and unable to find out about your own freaking bodies and your own sexuality on the web, because doing so, apparently, is "harmful" to you.

Suffice it to say? Today is a good day. I hope you doubly enjoy finding out whatever it is you want and need to know about your sexuality and sexual health today.

For more on our part in COPA and the whole deal, you can have a read at the ACLU here or here.

Who gets left out, ignored, dismissed or denied when someone states that sex, good sex or real intimacy or love should, can or does only happen within the context of monogamous marriage, or when any given couple has only had one spousal sexual or romantic partner in a lifetime?

More than a few people.

• gay, lesbian or bisexual people in same-sex romantic or sexual partnerships in most parts of the world, including those with families
• people whose life or committed partnerships are platonic or affectionate friendships, same-sex or opposite-sex, not romantic or sexual marriages
• people under the legal age to marry
• those who are or who have been married and who did not or have not found all or any of those things within their marriages
• rape or incest survivors, when others or culture class rape as sex
• those who have been married and were abandoned by their spouse
• couples who are not yet married, and intend to marry but are sexual together now
• those who are married to someone who has extramarital sex or romantic partnership, or who are or have been engaging in same themselves
• those who are raped or abused by their spouses (in America alone, most statistics show that spousal rape -- which is considered a lesser crime than other rape in many states -- accounts for at least 10% of all rapes)
• those who are polyamorous, or whose families or relationships are more than two-person, even if only one of those relationships is romantic or sexual
• those who have been or are married to cultural conservatives who have had affairs, used prostitution services, are having extramarital same-sex sex, raped children, or otherwise engaged in behavior which stands quite counter to the "sanctity" of marriage
• those forced or coerced into unwanted marriage
• the more than 9 out of every 10 people who have sex before marriage, including those who say they are saving sex for marriage, have saved sex for marriage or are telling others to save sex for marriage
• the vast majority of men and women who masturbate or who have masturbated
• the vast majority of people who will have more than one romantic or sexual partner in their lifetime -- a thorough census sponsored by the CDC from 1999 to 2002 found that on average, adult men between the ages of 30 and 44 reported an average of 6-8 sexual partners in their lifetimes, and adult women an average of four. According to The Kinsey Institute, 80% of American men and 69% of American women report having more than one partner in their lifetimes to date.
• divorced people who have other relationships or remarry
• people in parts of the world or in communities who are considered "unfit" for marriage due to things like social or economic status, disability, appearance, differing religion, previous rape, caste or race (even in the United States, interracial marriage was still illegal until the late 60's)
• widows and widowers who later have other relationships, or those whose partners have died and who later have other relationships
• those with certain hereditary diseases which disqualify them from marriage
• adults with legal guardians -- such as some developmentally disabled adults -- who will not give consent for their wards to marry
• couples in some cultures who are not related, but who share the same surname
• those who identify as asexual
• couples whose citizenship status does not allow for marriage
• transgender or intersex couples who are blocked by legal restrictions based on biological sex, genital appearance or their particular state of transition
• people who do not want to get married for political, personal, financial, familial or other reasons

How many of those groups are you, or someone you have known, a member of? How many do you think you might be in within your lifetime? Have you ever felt real intimacy and/or had sex you enjoyed and which left you feeling good physically and emotionally while a member of any of those groups, or NOT had any of those things while married? If so, does that make you delusional? Does your reality not exist?

By the by, when restrictions like these to marriage have been protested and changed, those movements have almost always NOT come from the groups of people championing marriage, stating that it is the only right, best thing for everyone. Rather, these changes have usually been made or fought for by progressives who do not share that attitude, and protested, challenged or denied by conservatives -- such as the Defense of Marriage Act here in the United States -- who claim marriage as the only right way, the best way, the ideal we all should share.

When you look at a list like this, it's hard to ignore that in many ways, marriage is a class issue, an issue of privilege and maintaining privilege, and one plenty of people want and have always wanted to keep limited to a given class. That's obvious just by knowing the additional legal privileges and benefits married couples are often given in many countries which unmarried couples are not. It's not a wide-open door for anyone and everyone who want in, and those who champion it above all else are not ignorant to that fact. They are usually fully aware of at least some of these restrictions, and many even support or have supported some or all of them, past or present.

The term "endogamy" means that marriage is restricted to a certain group of people. That term is often applied when discussing, for instance, tribal cultures where only a member of a given tribe is allowed to marry within the tribe. But that term, in many ways, can easily be applied to marriage, full-stop: in many ways, marriage remains, nearly everywhere not big-tent, but endogamic: something only available, when it is even wanted, to certain groups, tribes or individuals.

If marriage is, as we often hear lately, what everyone should be doing or aspiring to, if it's really what some folks want for everyone and really the only right way to happiness and sexual health (even though we know that not to be true) and bliss; if the push for us to get in it is truly coming from a place of love and care, then why is "everyone" such a tiny group of people?

School districts have a list of policies that are to be followed in the case that something happens that endangers one or more students, teachers, or faculty members. These policies range in degree from detentions, to in and out of school suspensions, through a student no longer being permitted to attend the school district.

Upper St. Clair School District in Pennsylvania is facing a thirty-five page lawsuit naming the district as well as eight administrators and teachers at the high school. The lawsuit was filed when the school failed to respond properly to the reports of assault and harassment made by a female student (pseudonym Jane Doe) against a fourteen year old male student.

From the information given, it is understood that prior to the assaults the two students had been friends and classmates in an emotional support program that is part of the school’s special education classes.

When the first assault took place, the student talked to a teacher about what had happened – the teacher allegedly didn’t take any action. Later, the student again went to the teacher to report an assault and the teacher contacted the school’s intervention specialist for assistance. The teacher and intervention specialist (Esther Haguel) decided to suspend the student – in school suspension – and to have him write Jane a letter of apology.

Later in January when Ms. Haguel began to have some worries about Jane’s safety, she requested being allowed to escort her to the bus at the end of the day – a request that the principal of the school denied.

Friday February First, according to the complaint, another student was raped, the accused student apparently leaving what police believe to be a “trophy” of his act in the stairwell that remained through the weekend. Monday a third girl is was taken to the same stairwell and raped, and thirty minutes later Jane was taken from the girl’s bathroom to the stairwell and raped.

It boggles my mind to think that a school district could have ignored policy when generally schools are so very policy driven. Many schools have turned to a zero tolerance policy – meaning that if students fight they will be automatically given out of school suspension for three days and possibly face charges. The same policy is held for harassment. It doesn’t seem to make any sense that a student assaulting another student would be given an in school suspension rather than out of school.

Aside from the school policies that are in place – which in this case seem to have been dismissed without reason – if the teacher was so concerned for the safety of this student why didn’t she take the information to the principal when the problems began?She waited almost a month with more than one complaint to speak with the principal about her concerns for this student’s safety. I understand that cameras can miss areas of schools, but if someone can see the cameras and there was film of Jane being taken from the girls restroom to the stairway before being out of camera view – why was nobody watching the computer or even patrolling the hallways to be sure all students are in their classrooms?

Why is it that an intervention specialist – specially trained for the job and her work in the district – would only have had the male student write a letter of apology? When for so many schools the penalty for fighting is a definite three days out of school, it seems odd that a student could receive in school suspension for something like this.

I am also left wondering about this principal and how he is supposed to be in charge of the education and most importantly the safety of the students and faculty in his building. He wouldn’t even allow a teacher to walk a student to her bus when she’d reported assault by another student.

Even more – the school district has been quoted saying that they followed the policies of their school district. The lawyer believes, however, that had the policies been followed and the police alerted from the beginning, the rape almost a month later could have been prevented. Now I can’t help but to hope that the school and other schools have learned from this and of course that the girls are receiving the help that they need in healing.

On July 1, 2008, I became even more of a proud Canadian. This past Canada Day, Dr. Henry Morgentaler became one of several new inductees into the Order of Canada (our highest honour). I think it was long overdue.

Dr. Morgentaler has been one of the strongest voices for women’s right to choose for over 4 decades. He opened his first abortion clinic in 1969 and performed thousands of illegal procedures. His clinics were raided very often, he was arrested several times, and one clinic in Toronto was even firebombed. In 1988 however, Dr. Morgentaler won his case, and the abortion law was struck down. Here is a news article with more details about his appointment, and here is another article detailing various reactions (including Dr. Morgentaler’s).

Of course, his appointment to the Order has led to a lot of controversy. A priest in the province of British Columbia is even returning his Order of Canada in protest – not a loss at all in my honest opinion. Pro-life groups around the country have urged other Order of Canada recipients to return their medal in protest. So far, I don’t believe anyone other than the priest has done so.

Canada still has a long way to go in terms of providing abortions to every woman who wants one (some provincial governments contribute to these roadblocks), but I think Dr. Morgentaler’s appointment to our highest honour is a step in the right direction.

Congratulations Dr. Morgentaler!

*Happy dance*

• The teen booklet that Madeline and Suzanne over at Lunapdas have been working on for years with my help, as well as help and contributions from Inga Muscio, Sarah Mundy, Emira Mears and Dr. Jerilynn Prior is finally done, and is a gorgeous, fantastic, radical, groovy slice of awesome. Yay! You can order a copy of it or a PDF file here. I'm really excited that this is finally out, and think it's going to be a great thing for girls and young women to have for themselves.

• The Our Bodies, Ourselves blog yesterday reported on a disturbing piece in the New York Times about a "medical spa" in Manhattan described as the first facility "dedicated to strengthening and grooming a woman’s genital area." The facility's own website refers to its services as addressing "feminine fitness." The physician running the "spa" stated, "If you can vote and you have a vagina, you should do these. It’s the dental floss of feminine fitness.” To be clear, "feminine fitness" is a made-up phrase with no standard medical meaning, and the definition of physical fitness in general can be variable and subjective. Never mind that, though - I'm still hung up on "if you can vote and you have a vagina."

  Read more here.

• gURL's sed ex blog reports on a not-terribly-surprising but still creepy issue where "a Salt Lake City teacher with over 30 years experience under her belt, is currently on paid administrative leave and may be fired, or even charged with a crime, for answering students' questions. That's because the questions asked were about oral sex, masturbation and homosexuality." They add that, "Republican politician Carl Wimmer announced his intention to introduce legislation specifically making it a crime for a teacher to stray from state guidelines on sex education. Additionally, his law would prohibit, "promoting or encouraging sexual behavior. The bill also would create a registry to record the names of teachers who violate the law."

  Pretty scary stuff for those of us who are sex educators to think about. And speaking of educators in trouble for...well, doing their job, have a look at this bit of rubbish.

• Debra Haffner reviews The Secret Life of the American Teen. It's an understatement to say that she wasn't impressed.

  "I think I've just watched the WORST television show on adolescent sexuality that I've ever seen. Broadcast for the first time on the ABC Family Network, the "Secret Life of the American Teen" has every bad stereotype of teenagers dealing with their sexuality that I think I have ever seen in a single hour. Every one of the boys is obsessed with having sexual intercourse. The boy with the multiple partners is the victim of repeated and implied violent incest by a father. The girls are either portrayed as sluts, down to revealing clothes and too much eye make up, or as clean scrubbed virtuous innocents, including the heroine who gets pregnant after one night at band camp which sounds almost like a rape situation. The possibility of abortion is dismissed out of hand. The portrayal of the one explicitly Christian family, with the girl with the purity ring, was beyond offensive, as this beautiful blond in the tight cheerleader outfit throws her legs around her suffering boyfriend and tells him they will need to wait until she finishes medical school. The attitude of the other students towards this Christian girl is offensive beyond reality."

• Sarah Seltzer at RH Reality Check has some marvelous reminders about body image, women and where to look for more positive messages.

Today I received my third and final shot of Gardasil, the HPV vaccine.

A few weeks shy of my 23rd birthday, I am part of the first generation of women to receive this vaccine.

I have to be honest: as far as shots go, it's pretty vile. It hurt more than my tattoos did (of course, to be fair, the tattoos took much, much longer). However, (probably) being protected from four strains of HPV- the four that cause the majority of cervical cancer and genital warts- is worth it.

I say probably protected because I have been sexually active for several years: while I have practiced safer sex, there is no guarantee that I am HPV-free. However, it's highly unlikely that I have all four of the strains that the vaccine can protect against.

Today also happens to be about a month or so after discovering that one of my friends- an intelligent, funny, and all-around-wonderful woman- has cervical cancer. If she was ten years younger, she could have gotten the vaccine that likely would have helped to prevent this. My heart goes out to her.

I personally urge young women to consider getting this vaccine, and for parents to consider it for their daughters (and, hopefully one day, sons). We have a vaccine against cancer- and it's not a second too soon.

For more information, take a look at The HPV Vaccine FAQ.

As reported at Time Magazine this week, most of the United States has started to wise up about the ineffectiveness and bias of abstinence-only (which differs from abstinence-plus or comprehensive sex education, both of which contain accurate and in-depth information on sex and sexual health, but which usually also make clear that forestalling sex or certain kinds of sex is often most safe) sex education pushed by the Bush administration, and which is funded by billions of taxpayer dollars to date, and $50 million more has been given to the programs this year.

To provide some perspective, up to this year, our tax dollars have provided over 1.5 billion for abstinence-only sex education. Title X, on the other hand, which provides actual family planning services such as birth control, pre-natal care, STI testing and community education (the real kind), has continued to get a considerably lower budget.

Since the end of 1996, as we've been reporting throughout, states who want federal funding for their sex education have been forced to choose programs which contain vast amounts of purposeful misinformation, often do not include sound, accurate information on birth control and safer sex, and which inform teens that any kind of sex before or without (heterosexual) marriage is physically and psychologically harmful.

But recently, many states have made the laudable decision to refuse the funding and the programs to assure that they are educating their youth, not indoctrinating them or providing misinformation to scare or coerce them into sexual decisions that are more about the agendas of others than the real best interest of teens and young adults. Hooray! 26 states remain who are still are accepting and plan to continue to accept the money and those programs. Boo!

The states remaining which still use abstinence only programs and who have not stated an intent to refuse the programs and funding past the end of this fiscal year are, with the amounts they have received to date this year according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:

Alabama, $716,369
Arkansas, $440,640
Florida, $1.9 million
Georgia, $1.1 million
Hawaii, $122,091
Illinois, $1.4 million
Indiana, $565,556
Kansas, $252,832
Kentucky, $612,974
Louisiana, 962,673
Maryland, $427,257
Michigan, $1.1 million
Mississippi, $621,716
Missouri, $664,196
Nebraska, $164,055
Nevada, $210,130
New Hampshire, $71,177
North Carolina, $936,723
North Dakota, $66,744
Oklahoma, $517,756
Oregon, $365,772
South Carolina, $563,972
South Dakota, $102,285
Texas, $3.6 million
Utah, $216,117
West Virginia, $289,389