It's an ingenious idea. Create a no-win situation for anti-choice protesters

Under the proposed legislation called The Federal Refusal Clause, HMOs and insurance companies could refuse to provide any abortion services, information or referrals to abortion services

What's going on here?

While all the articles on this study seemed to avoid mentioning the issue of doctors persuading female patients to have cesarean deliveries, not to mention the yuckiness that the general practices and enviornment of hospital births tend to be, one has to scratch one's collective head.

Doctors say these women request the procedure because they are afraid of having "old looking" vaginas. Doctors Loftus and Young say feedback from male partners is the number one reason women request the surgery.

"The most common reason we hear is that they have had a negative comment made by a male sexual partner. Women are made to feel that they are not perfect the way they are and often it's the partner that sets this off," Loftus said.

"My feeling is that women who aren't sex workers are getting this kind of thing because there's pressure from someone who's telling them they're not perfect," Young said. 'There's often pressure from a man who tells them they need it,"

So, the next time someone tells you they're doing this for themselves and no one else, I'd suggest you call them on it, since that's likely hogwash.

Of course, even knowing this, the plastic surgeons continue. Why aren't we hearing them counseling their patients about body image, about the fact that adapting their bo...

"In a community hall in South Africa's largest informal settlement, Soweto, about 20 men and women are seated in a semi-circle, talking about sex and gender roles. Working in groups, they have just completed two lists, one beginning "I'm glad to be a man/woman because ... " and the other, "If I were a man/woman I could ...

"New warnings will be added to an abortion pill implicated in the death of an 18-year-old California woman last fall, linking Mifeprex to the risk of serious bacterial infection. Holly Patterson died Sept. 17, 2003, of septic shock caused by inflammation of the uterus. She died weeks after taking Mifeprex to terminate an unplanned pregnancy.

Mifeprex is the brand name of mifepristone, also called RU-486, sold in the United States.

Because most HIV infections are transmitted across mucosal surfaces -- the vagina and the rectum particularly -- scientists have been concentrating on microbicides to prevent transmission. The research has intensified in recent years because of promising theories like the one behind PSC-RANTES and the lack of a viable vaccine.

Last April, Scott Bloch, appointed by President Bush after serving as associate director of the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives, ordered the removal of sexual orientation as a protected category on the office's website as well as its removal from all training materials from his office. He announced that he was initiating a review of the legal underpinnings of the long standing policy while calling on his staff to catch up on the large backlog of other discrimination complaints not yet investigated by his office.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of births among girls in this age group dropped 38 percent from 1994 to 2002 alone, even though the number of girls 10 to 14 climbed 16 percent during the same period. CDC researchers attributed the decline to sex education.

A pharmacist who refused to refill or transfer a college student's prescription for birth control pills violated standards of care by not releasing the prescription or telling her about other ways she could get her pills, a former director of the state Pharmacy Internship Board testified Tuesday. Noesen, 30, could lose his license for not helping Amanda Phiede get her birth control pills.