Horrible Proposed HHS Regulations Announced

Remember those really horrible Department of Health and Human Services regulations that we heard were going to be proposed last month? Well, they’ve officially been announced. The regulations allow doctors and nurse practitioners to refuse to treat women for anything that might “conflict” with their religious beliefs. They also define “abortion” as ending a pregnancy even before implantation–which means they’d allow health care professionals to refuse to distribute birth control.

We’ve known about the potential for these kind of tactics for a while. HHS Secretary Michael Levitt raised a stink back in March over the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ new ethics guidelines (PDF), which said that a health care provider had an obligation to give a referral to a woman in a timely manner if he or she felt that the requested reproductive services would conflict with his or her conscience.

Additionally, such regulations directly conflict with state laws in California, Massachusetts, and Illinois that require hospitals and pharmacists to distribute birth control and emergency contraception if a patient requests it. In other words, this proposed rule could be very bad news for women and their reproductive health.

Cross posted at pushback.

More on Gardasil

I finally got to read the long NYTimes piece on the HPV vaccine. The piece is thorough and well-reported, asking many important connections about Merck lobbying and cost-per-life saved. The article's conclusion is somewhat agnostic. It doesn't say that the vaccine is bad, but it does raise a lot of quesitons about both its effectiveness and its widespread use.

But here's the thing that really gets me: these questions are almost never asked about other kinds of medication and the article makes lobbying seem unique to Merck. It's not. It was only until recently that we began to question the amount of subsidies pumped into gas and feed corn farming. Once we're talking about preventing cervical cancer in women, however, that's when we bust out our investigative skills.

I'm not complaining. The piece raises a lot of really important questions, like how urgent is it to vaccinate against a virus that is largely seen as an inconvenience (cough, cough, flu vaccine). The article also points to a false sense of security the vaccine might give women. But I know very few women that suddenly think they're impervious after getting a shot. After all, there are plenty of other STIs (and not to mention pregnancy) that you can get if you risk sex without a condom.

In any case, I still believe that widespread use of the HPV vaccine along with continued research into its effectiveness is sound policy to pursue. After all, even if cervical cancer isn't listed as one of the most deadly, if we can prevent it, it seems like a good idea.

Clinton Against the HHS Rule

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed to fight the Bush administration's attempt to pass really really bad policy that would redefine contraception as abortion and give protection to doctors and other health professionals that refuse to treat women because of their religious beliefs. It's unclear if this proposed regulation will actually make it to policy before Bush's clock runs out, but it's clear that the very proposal is an affront to the whole idea of a woman's right to decide what do do with her body.

Over at RH Reality Check today, Clinton has an op-ed in which she says this is nothing new, and she's going to fight the regulation. " The Bush Administration is up to its old tricks again, quietly putting ideology before science and women's health," Clinton said. "We've seen this kind of ideologically driven move from the Bush Administration before. Senator Patty Murray and I went toe to toe with the Bush Administration to demand a decision on Plan B by the FDA."

Some Bad News ... But Not Surprising

Today, Bush has employed an old conservative trick. He wants to require a certification that won't "discriminate" against doctors, hospitals, or nurses that refuse to provide birth control or abortions. From the NYTimes story:

In the proposal, obtained by The New York Times, the administration says it could cut off federal aid to individuals or entities that discriminate against people who object to abortion on the basis of “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

But the real fear, according to Cristina Page, is that the Bush administration is redefining birth control as abortion in official Health and Human Services policy:

With this proposal, however, HHS is dismissing medical experts and opting instead to accept a definition of pregnancy based on polling data. It now claims that pregnancy begins at some biologically unknowable moment (there's no test to determine if a woman's egg has been fertilized). Under these new standards there would be no way for a woman to prove she's not pregnant. Thus, any woman could be denied contraception under HHS' new science.

The other rarely discussed issue here is whether hormonal contraception even does what the religious right claims. There is no scientific evidence that hormonal methods of birth control can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb. This argument is the basis upon which the religious right hopes to include the 40% of the birth control methods Americans use, such as the pill, the patch, the shot, the ring, the IUD, and emergency contraception, under the classification "abortion."

Update: I have more over at pushback.

Feminists Don't Trust Gardasil Either

Haley Swanson, my co-blogger at pushback, calls me out on something she noticed while reporting on her college campus:

[T]here was a crowd of women who were completely comfortable with their current or future sexual activity who were also skeptical of Gardasil and hesitant to seek out vaccination.

Most of their reasoning centers on a sophisticated level of media savvy. While we are constantly inundated with new advertisements for new drugs we just must have, we also lack any active or visible public health infrastructure to provide a non-profit driven perspective on these drugs.

Haley's absolutely right that there are plenty of sexually liberated women that are distrustful of pharmaceutical giant Merck's predatory nature. Plenty of older feminists that remember the first days of birth control with too-high doses are skeptical as well. I still think this is ultimately good for young women, but I'm glad that Haley pointed out it's not a conservative v. progressive issue. It's a lot more complicated than that.

Is Gardasil a Greater Danger Than HPV? Maybe Not

I take issue with Loryn’s post on the possible side effects of the Gardasil vaccine, which cites a CNN story that says 7,802 girls got sick after receiving it. They’re not yet sure if the sickness is linked to the vaccine, but the Center for Disease Control is investigating it. As for the ten confirmed deaths that occurred after taking Gardasil, none of them was linked to the vaccine. Regardless, even if the girls’ sickness is related to the vaccine (we’re mostly talking about nausea and vomiting) that’s about 3 percent of the 26 million shots that have been distributed worldwide since the drug was approved. That’s a very, very low rate of side effects for any drug, let alone an injection.

I’m not saying that Gardasil is totally safe. But the HPV vaccine is a drug, and much like other drugs, it has side effects and will make some people sick. Many people get sick after taking the flu vaccine, something recommended for millions of people every winter. What is certain to make women sick, though, is cancer. Women who contract HPV (one of the most commonly transmitted STDs, and one that doesn’t even require you to have sex since it’s transmitted via skin-to-skin contact) are likely to get cervical cancer. Chemotherapy will definitely make you sick to the stomach, as would the side effects from the anesthesia from the lasering procedure to remove cancerous cells.

The reason people get so alarmist about Gardasil is because it involves parents thinking about the fact that one day their girls will become sexually active. I’m undecided about forcing young women to get the vaccine. I definitely think girls should get it, but if parents are truly concerned about the temporary stomachache, they should have the ability to opt out. But that could put their girls at risk later in life.

Cross posted on Pushback.