by Jamia Wilson Originally posted Women’s Media Center, 7/19/10

When the Obama administration excluded abortion care in the temporary insurance pools, they compromised the health and safety of women with pre-existing conditions that may result in risks during pregnancy. Women with breast cancer, ovarian cancer, AIDS, diabetes, and other pre-existing conditions [...]]]>

by Jamia Wilson
Originally posted Women’s Media Center, 7/19/10

When the Obama administration excluded abortion care in the temporary insurance pools, they compromised the health and safety of women with pre-existing conditions that may result in risks during pregnancy. Women with breast cancer, ovarian cancer, AIDS, diabetes, and other pre-existing conditions will face an undue burden due to the loss of coverage. The Obama administration’s unacceptable decision limits access to health care for women in high risk pools and only provides coverage for rape, incest, and risks to the life of the woman. It is imperative that the Obama administration reconsider their harmful ban on women’s health care and ensure that abortion coverage is included when the new health insurance coverage becomes available.

We call on the President to reverse the ban on abortion coverage, and commit to providing comprehensive coverage for all in need. Women’s Media Center’s Not Under The Bus campaign stands for reproductive justice for all. Abortion is health care and women should not be forced to compromise their reproductive rights in the name of safe, fair and comprehensive health care. We will continue to fight as diligently as we did for the elimination of gender as a pre-existing condition and the extension of insurance coverage to include birth control.

As we recall our victories, we remember the bittersweet passage of the historic health care bill. We must not forget that this bill passed only after our pro-choice President appeased anti-choice hardliners by agreeing to sign an Executive Order reiterating the Hyde Amendment, a legislative provision that has been damaging low-income women’s lives and health for 34 years.

Almost five years ago, I wrote a piece calling for Hyde to be repealed due to the costly consequences women face without the lack of resources they need to survive. At the time, I explored the effects of this horrific legislation on young women, immigrant women, low-income women, and women of color. Today, the provision continues to threaten the health and safety of the most vulnerable women, while extending its destructive reach to women with pre-existing health conditions.

Presently, the Obama administration’s ban enables a three-year restriction that is similar to the Stupak Amendment that was rejected by the Senate during the health care reform debate. We must remind the President that our health care is central to the health of America, and it is not for sale! We call on you to contact the Obama Administration and let them know that we will not rest until they reverse this dangerous attack on women’s health. We urge you to be a voice in the media and stand up for reproductive freedom. Women will not be thrown under the bus. Not yesterday. Not today. Not tomorrow.

Originally posted to RaceWire, 6/4/10

When health care reform finally limped past the finish line on Capitol Hill, the compromises littering the final bill left many activists disillusioned, but some hoped that action on the state level could keep the progressive reform movement moving forward. On reproductive rights, however, it looks like the states [...]]]> by Michelle Chen

Originally posted to RaceWire, 6/4/10

When health care reform finally limped past the finish line on Capitol Hill, the compromises littering the final bill left many activists disillusioned, but some hoped that action on the state level could keep the progressive reform movement moving forward. On reproductive rights, however, it looks like the states are taking the lead in pushing back a woman’s right to choose.

This year, amid a resurgence of right-wing activism, hundreds of bills targeting abortion have been introduced in state legislatures around the country, many of which will deeply impact the rights of poor women of color. Several conservative states have passed laws to block coverage of abortion under the insurance exchanges established under the overhaul—portending a tightening of abortion access even if it is privately financed.

Originally posted to New York Times, 6/2/10

At least 11 states have passed laws this year regulating or restricting abortion, giving opponents of abortion what partisans on both sides of the issue say is an unusually high number of victories. In four additional states, bills have passed at least one house of the legislature.

In [...]]]>

by John Leland

Originally posted to New York Times, 6/2/10

At least 11 states have passed laws this year regulating or restricting abortion, giving opponents of abortion what partisans on both sides of the issue say is an unusually high number of victories. In four additional states, bills have passed at least one house of the legislature.

Supporters of three HIV-positive women in Namibia who say they were sterilized without their consent held protests to support the women’s decision to sue the government, a legal aid group said Wednesday.

The Legal Assistance Center said protesters began staging sit-ins at two state hospitals in the southern African nation on Wednesday.

The [...]]]> Originally posted to NPR, 6/2/10

Supporters of three HIV-positive women in Namibia who say they were sterilized without their consent held protests to support the women’s decision to sue the government, a legal aid group said Wednesday.

The Legal Assistance Center said protesters began staging sit-ins at two state hospitals in the southern African nation on Wednesday.

The three women allege they were sterilized without their consent, and that the sterilization violated their rights to have children and not to be discriminated against.

The women are seeking damages at a High Court hearing scheduled for Friday. Protest organizers said the sit-ins will continue until after the hearing, the first legal challenge of its kind in Namibia.

The government maintains the women gave their consent and says it will fight the damages claim.

One protest organizer, Vicky Noa, said the sit-in was about women’s demand for fair medical treatment.

There should be “peace of mind that if you have HIV you can still go to the hospital and be treated with dignity and equality,” she said. “If we were scared that we might be sterilized we will not use the hospital services as much. We do not want to be denied the right to motherhood.”

Mark Nonkes, a spokesman from the legal support group, said about 40 people gathered at Katutura hospital in the capital early Wednesday, waving placards and handing out flyers.

At a second facility north of the capital of Windhoek, patients and their visitors were supporting the protest there.

UNAIDS estimates there are some 200,000 people living with HIV in Namibia, about one fifth of the population in one of the world’s most sparsely populated nations.

Veronica Kalambi, an official from the Women’s Health Network, said women’s rights were often violated in state health institutions.

“HIV-positive women are holding the health system accountable for the wrongs done to them,” she told The Associated Press.

Sterilization is a drastic tactic to treat HIV-positive women, as mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS can be prevented with medication.

Originally posted to LA Times , 5/29/10

Despite recent hype, a majority in U.S. don’t want abortion criminalized. But the nation is split between those who call themselves pro-life and those who are pro-choice, a term needing an update.

The idea has taken hold that Americans have become more conservative on abortion. Sarah Palin put [...]]]> by Nancy L. Cohen

Originally posted to LA Times , 5/29/10

Despite recent hype, a majority in U.S. don’t want abortion criminalized. But the nation is split between those who call themselves pro-life and those who are pro-choice, a term needing an update.

The idea has taken hold that Americans have become more conservative on abortion. Sarah Palin put this new conventional wisdom to political work in a speech two weeks ago when she claimed polls showed “more Americans proudly proclaiming themselves as pro-life . . . and that’s a huge victory.”

She’s not entirely wrong, but that doesn’t mean she’s right. You might be surprised to learn that only about 15% of Americans agree with the particulars of the “pro-life” policy of Palin’s Republican Party. Or that, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 59% of Americans want Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, if she is confirmed, to uphold Roe vs. Wade.

So what’s the source of this new conventional wisdom?

Most of it stems from misleading media reporting abetted by partisan hype. Palin was specifically citing a Gallup poll released May 14 titled “The New Normal on Abortion: Americans More ‘Pro-Life.’ ” When Americans surveyed were asked, “With respect to the abortion issue, would you consider yourself to be pro-choice or pro-life,” a plurality of 47% responded pro-life, 2 percentage points more than answered pro-choice. Indeed, it was the release a year ago this month of this same poll that launched the now accepted idea that public opinion on abortion was trending conservative. For the first time ever, Gallup reported, more Americans (51%) identified themselves as pro-life than as pro-choice (42%).

The data, however, are more ambiguous than the headline of the recent poll lets on. That’s because, as Gallup noted, this year’s two-point difference between the pro-choice 45% and the pro-life 47% is “not significant.” The spread is within the poll’s margin of error. (The remaining respondents 8% answered “no opinion.” ) No matter, according to the press release, the poll “confirmed the conservative shift in Americans’ views on abortion that Gallup first recorded a year ago.”

Gallup also neglected to mention that its May 2009 51% pro-life finding is widely considered by other polling experts to be an anomaly. Or that just two months later, the 9-point margin had shrunk to 1 point, again within that survey’s margin of error. In other words, the three polls on which the so-called trend in public opinion is based include one outlier and two with inconclusive results. Perhaps a more accurate line for Palin would have been, “Heck, we don’t know exactly how many Americans are pro-choice or pro-life, but our side is winning … maybe.”

What, then, do Americans really think about abortion? Let’s go back to the polls but look a little deeper. Major longitudinal polls agree that when asked about abortion policy, a majority has consistently supported legal abortion, albeit with restrictions. In each of the four most recent Supreme Court nominations, roughly 6 out of 10 Americans have said they wanted the next justice to uphold Roe, according to Washington Post/ABC News polls. And it was the nonpartisan American National Election Studies, the main source on voter opinion used by scholars, that over the last three decades found that no more than 15% agreed with the statement “by law, abortion should never be permitted,” the official position of the Republican Party. In 2008, ANES showed 41% of Americans agreeing with the statement “by law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice.”

The complete picture, then, is nuanced. A majority of Americans do not want to see abortion criminalized, but the nation is evenly divided between those who call themselves pro-life and those who call themselves pro-choice. Although abortion rights supporters can take heart that they retain the advantage on practical matters of law and policy, the antiabortion movement seems to be winning the framing war with its “pro-life” label. It is this trend, not changing policy views, that the Gallup polls have picked up.

Who, after all, could be against life? Between life and choice, life should win every time. That it doesn’t is only because most Americans who are polled on the question understand that “pro-life” is no more than code for the antiabortion movement. However, the finding that the “pro-choice” label is losing ground should indeed give abortion rights advocates pause, because how an issue is framed can decide its political fate.

“Pro-choice” has turned into a tone-deaf rallying cry, inadequate to our actual policy preferences and to the philosophical values Americans hold on the subject of abortion. It essentially cedes the moral high ground to the antiabortion movement. It doesn’t do enough to communicate the very American ideals at the foundation of the abortion rights movement — the belief that, in a free and democratic nation, the decision to have a child should rest with the individual woman and those with whom she freely consults.

Perhaps “pro-choice” was once good enough shorthand for liberty, human dignity, individualism, pluralism, self-government and women’s equality. But anyone who thinks it is still sufficient, as we enter our fifth decade of the culture wars, hasn’t been paying attention.

The words of three Supreme Court justices, all appointed by Republican presidents, can guide the abortion rights movement back to its deeply American roots. In the 1992 decision Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, upholding Roe, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Justice David Souter and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.”

Are you pro-freedom or pro-life? Now those are values worthy of debate.

Nancy L. Cohen is a historian and the author of “The Reconstruction of American Liberalism.”

Originally posted to USA Today, 5/28/10

Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered one year ago Monday, rescued countless women who would otherwise have died as a result of medical complications. He saved the lives of girls as young as 9 years old, who were victims of rape and incest, and whose child-sized organs [...]]]> by Alice Eve Cohen

Originally posted to USA Today, 5/28/10

Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered one year ago Monday, rescued countless women who would otherwise have died as a result of medical complications. He saved the lives of girls as young as 9 years old, who were victims of rape and incest, and whose child-sized organs would not have survived childbirth. He saved the lives of women who might otherwise have taken their lives, and in so doing, he saved the lives of babies, including mine.In the politics of language, “life” is the ultimate power word: persuasive, irrefutable, indomitable. The anti-abortion movement has hijacked it. In their distorted and carefully manipulated use of the word, life refers only to the unborn fetus, never to the lives of women and girls — as much as they try to argue that eliminating this choice will spare a woman emotional and physical turmoil. But the religious right’s appropriation of the word is not irreversible. Let’s rescue “life” and marry it to “choice,” to underscore the life-affirming and life-saving values that are central to the pro-choice movement — the values that Dr. Tiller exemplified, and to which my daughter and I owe our lives.

‘Life’ vs. ‘choice’

A Gallup Poll that came out two weeks ago (”The New Normal on Abortion”) found a slight increase in the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as pro-life (47%) rather than pro-choice (45%), but there is no parallel increase in the number of Americans who oppose abortion on moral grounds. Rather than a shift in attitude, Gallup reports, “the trends by party identification suggest that increased political polarization may be a factor in Republicans‘ preference for the ‘pro-life’ label, particularly since Barack Obama took office.”

In terms of product branding, “life” is a far more powerful label than “choice.”

Those who oppose abortion don’t have a copyright on the word life — when I last checked, Life was still the name of a vintage board game and a breakfast cereal — nor on the prefix “pro.” The literal meaning of Pro-life, “favoring or supporting life,” is not the exclusive domain of anti-abortionists. On the contrary, the pro-choice movement is committed to saving, protecting, supporting and valuing the lives of women and girls; whereas the absolutist pro-life movement — single-mindedly favoring the unborn — devalues girls and women, puts their lives at risk and, at its fringes, condones violence and murder.

Dr. Tiller was pro-choice and pro-life. For three decades at his besieged Women’s Health Care Services in Wichita, he offered services to women in desperate circumstances, women facing nearly impossible choices. He heroically risked his life on a daily basis, and ultimately gave his life to protect women’s right to choose. His murder was a national tragedy. The closing of his clinic in Wichita after his murder is a second terrible loss, robbing pregnant women and girls of essential, life-saving medical services — a sorrowful response to the threat of continued violence by the “pro-life” fringe.

My choice: Life

Ten years ago, I scheduled an appointment for a late-term abortion with Dr. Tiller. Until being referred to his clinic, I had been told it was too late for an abortion, and I felt trapped and suicidal because of the disastrous circumstances of my third-trimester pregnancy, which had been misdiagnosed as a tumor. Tiller’s receptionist said I could change my mind at any time. I had one week to decide. In that week, I chose not to kill myself. I chose to have the baby. I canceled the appointment. I chose life.

Who isn’t in favor of life? The idea is absurd. We’re all pro-life. Where we differ is in an inclusive or exclusive definition.

President Obama has challenged us to find common ground in the national dialogue about abortion. Let’s agree that we all value life; and that valuing life includes the lives of women and girls. Let’s rescue the word “life” from the hate-mongering rhetoric of anti-abortion extremists, to reflect our shared, life-affirming values. It is the narrow, prescriptive, misogynist definition of “life” that fuels the self-righteous and dangerous words of anti-abortion protesters, talk-show pundits, and murderers.

Alice Eve Cohen is a memoirist, playwright and solo theater artist. Her memoir, What I Thought I Knew, out in paperback this month, won the Elle’s Lettres Grand Prix for non-fiction. She teaches at The New School in New York City.

The pill is still the No. 1 contraceptive for American women, but it’s even more popular in other countries, according to the first government report comparing nations.

More U.S. women, however, get their tubes tied than elsewhere, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday.

In the U.S., 16 percent of married [...]]]> Originally posted to NPR, 5/27/10

The pill is still the No. 1 contraceptive for American women, but it’s even more popular in other countries, according to the first government report comparing nations.

More U.S. women, however, get their tubes tied than elsewhere, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday.

In the U.S., 16 percent of married women say they use the pill. That compares to 29 percent in the United Kingdom and more than 40 percent in the Netherlands and France.

About one in four U.S. married women opt for sterilization, also known as tubal ligation, or tube-tying. Sterilization rates were below 10 percent for most of the six countries included who collect those figures.

The patterns appear to be similar for all women, not just the married ones, said William Mosher, an author of the new report.

International comparisons are sometimes difficult because some nations only have information on married women, added Mosher, a statistician with the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

The U.S. numbers are based on in-person interviews of more than 7,300 women of childbearing age nationwide from 2006 through 2008. The rates were compared to those of eight other industrialized countries — France, Belgium, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

The new report is the government’s first national data on contraception use in more than five years. It found that the pill was the most used contraceptive by all women, but sterilization was a close second. About 17 percent of women say they use the pill, and nearly the same proportion said they were sterilized.

The United States has seen a variety of new contraception options for women in the last decade, including a vaginal ring and a skin patch. Though many women have tried them, fewer than 2 percent said they used one of those methods.

Contraception choices by U.S. women have remained remarkably stable for decades, Mosher said.

“We seem to be stuck in this pattern of the pill and sterilization are the leading methods,” he said.

The pill was much more popular among women who have never had children — more than half of them use it. It was also more commonly used by white women and those who were more educated.

More popular among older women is sterilization.

Many Americans get their tubes tied after they have children, as a don’t-have-to-worry-about-it-anymore measure, experts say. Younger women with less education more often turn to sterilization, as well.

Why is the sterilization rate in European countries so much lower?

“It may be that surgical options are less acceptable to European women, and not as promoted by European doctors,” said Karin Ringheim, a senior policy adviser with the Population Reference Bureau, in an e-mail to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, the CDC report found that in the United States, the diaphragm has virtually become extinct. But the IUD, or intrauterine device, is making something of a comeback.

The IUD is a T-shaped plastic sperm-killer that a doctor inserts into a woman’s uterus. IUDs fell out of favor in the 1970s, after one brand, the Dalkon Shield, was blamed for serious and sometimes deadly infections.

Originally posted to New York Times, 5/26/10

We finally have a case where the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy is responding forcefully and speedily to allegations of wrongdoing.

But the target isn’t a pedophile priest. Rather, it’s a nun who helped save a woman’s life. Doctors describe her as saintly.

The excommunication of Sister Margaret McBride in [...]]]> By Nicholas Kristof

Originally posted to New York Times, 5/26/10

We finally have a case where the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy is responding forcefully and speedily to allegations of wrongdoing.

But the target isn’t a pedophile priest. Rather, it’s a nun who helped save a woman’s life. Doctors describe her as saintly.

The excommunication of Sister Margaret McBride in Phoenix underscores all that to me feels morally obtuse about the church hierarchy. I hope that a public outcry can rectify this travesty.

Sister Margaret was a senior administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. A 27-year-old mother of four arrived late last year, in her third month of pregnancy. According to local news reports and accounts from the hospital and some of its staff members, the mother suffered from a serious complication called pulmonary hypertension. That created a high probability that the strain of continuing pregnancy would kill her.

“In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’s life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” the hospital said in a statement. “This decision was made after consultation with the patient, her family, her physicians, and in consultation with the Ethics Committee.”

Sister Margaret was a member of that committee. She declined to discuss the episode with me, but the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, ruled that Sister Margaret was “automatically excommunicated” because she assented to an abortion.

“The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s,” the bishop’s communication office elaborated in a statement.

Let us just note that the Roman Catholic hierarchy suspended priests who abused children and in some cases defrocked them but did not normally excommunicate them, so they remained able to take the sacrament.

Since the excommunication, Sister Margaret has left her post as vice president and is no longer listed as one of the hospital executives on its Web site. The hospital told me that she had resigned “at the bishop’s request” but is still working elsewhere at the hospital.

I heard about Sister Margaret from an acquaintance who is a doctor at the hospital. After what happened to Sister Margaret, he doesn’t dare be named, but he sent an e-mail to his friends lamenting the excommunication of “a saintly nun”:

“She is a kind, soft-spoken, humble, caring, spiritual woman whose spot in Heaven was reserved years ago,” he said in the e-mail message. “The idea that she could be ex-communicated after decades of service to the Church and humanity literally makes me nauseated.”

“True Christians, like Sister Margaret, understand that real life is full of difficult moral decisions and pray that they make the right decision in the context of Christ’s teachings. Only a group of detached, pampered men in gilded robes on a balcony high above the rest of us could deny these dilemmas.”

A statement from the bishop’s office did not dispute that the mother’s life was in danger — although it did note that no doctor’s prediction is 100 percent certain. The implication is that the church would have preferred for the hospital to let nature take its course.

The Roman Catholic hierarchy is entitled to its views. But the episode reinforces perceptions of church leaders as rigid, dogmatic, out of touch — and very suspicious of independent-minded American nuns.

Sister Margaret made a difficult judgment in an emergency, saved a life and then was punished and humiliated by a lightning bolt from a bishop who spent 16 years living in Rome and who has devoted far less time to serving the downtrodden than Sister Margaret. Compare their two biographies, and Sister Margaret’s looks much more like Jesus’s than the bishop’s does.

“Everyone I know considers Sister Margaret to be the moral conscience of the hospital,” Dr. John Garvie, chief of gastroenterology at St. Joseph’s Hospital, wrote in a letter to the editor to The Arizona Republic. “She works tirelessly and selflessly as the living example and champion of compassionate, appropriate care for the sick and dying.”

Dr. Garvie later told me in an e-mail message that “saintly” was the right word for Sister Margaret and added: “Sister was the ‘living embodiment of God’ in our building. She always made sure we understood that we’re here to help the less fortunate. We really have no one to take her place.”

I’ve written several times about the gulf between Roman Catholic leaders at the top and the nuns, priests and laity who often live the Sermon on the Mount at the grass roots. They represent the great soul of the church, which isn’t about vestments but selflessness.

When a hierarchy of mostly aging men pounce on and excommunicate a revered nun who was merely trying to save a mother’s life, the church seems to me almost as out of touch as it was in the cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance.

The Oklahoma state legislature overrode Governor Brad Henry’s (D) veto of a bill that will require doctors to report detailed information about patients seeking abortions to the government yesterday. The state Senate voted 33 to 15 in favor of the override yesterday and the state House had already voted 84 [...]]]> Originally posted on Ms. Magazine, 5/26/10

The Oklahoma state legislature overrode Governor Brad Henry’s (D) veto of a bill that will require doctors to report detailed information about patients seeking abortions to the government yesterday. The state Senate voted 33 to 15 in favor of the override yesterday and the state House had already voted 84 to 13 Monday. The legislation will go into effect on November 1, 2010 and require reporting forms to be submitted to the Department of health by April 1, 2012.

A spokesperson for Governor Henry, Paul Sund, told Tulsa World, “It is disappointing because every veto override just triggers more lawsuits and legal bills for taxpayers…Similar abortion laws passed by the Legislature were challenged and thrown out by the courts last year, and the latest versions are probably headed for the same fate.”

The questionnaire will ultimately be posted on the Oklahoma State Department of Health website and includes information as detailed as a woman’s reason for an abortion, her age, marital status, the date of the abortion, and the total number of previous pregnancies, miscarriages, abortions, and live births. Though supporters of the bill argue that the omission of a woman’s name and address preserves her right to privacy, opponents assert that it would be possible to identify a woman from a small town from the information to be published.

According to the American Medical Association, “the physician’s duty to maintain confidentiality means that a physician may not disclose any medical information revealed by a patient or discovered by a physician in connection with the treatment of a patient. In general, AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics states that the information disclosed to a physician during the course of the patient-physician relationship is confidential to the utmost degree. ”

In March 2010, the Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld the February ruling of a state District Court saying that an anti-choice law that included the current patient reporting requirements was unconstitutional on the basis that it violated state rules requiring legislation address only a single subject. This law also included provisions requiring detailed descriptions of ultrasounds and prohibiting sex-selective abortions, among other provisions.

The current reporting law is the third piece of anti-choice legislation vetoed by Governor Henry that has been enacted through a legislative override. A law that that would require medical professionals to show women an ultrasound image and give women a detailed description of the fetus prior to performing an abortion procedure went into effect immediately following a veto override by the state legislature in late April 2010 and was in effect for nearly a week. The state Attorney General agreed early in May 2010 to a state judge’s order to temporarily block enforcement of this ultrasound law. The Oklahoma state legislature also overrode the veto of a second anti-choice bill in April 2010 that prohibits women from suing doctors who intentionally withhold information or provide misleading or inaccurate information about a pregnancy.

In addition to the three vetoes, Governor Henry has signed several anti-choice bills over the past few months. One requires abortion clinics to post signs in their facilities stating that women cannot be coerced to have an abortion, that a woman’s voluntary consent is required to obtain the procedure, and that sex selective abortions are illegal, at the same time. Others outlaw sex-selective abortion, institute a “conscience clause” allowing healthcare providers to refuse to participate in abortion procedures or refer patients to abortion providers, and the put restrictions on the administration of mifepristone (also known as RU-486) by requiring it be administered in the presence of a physician.

On May 24, at M2010, the sixth biennial meeting of the International Microbicides Conference in Pittsburgh, researchers presented three new drug delivery methods to protect women against HIV-AIDS.

 For decades public health professionals and researchers have been battling HIV and studying the links between mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) and ways to empower [...]]]> Originally posted to The Independent, 5/24/10

On May 24, at M2010, the sixth biennial meeting of the International Microbicides Conference in Pittsburgh, researchers presented three new drug delivery methods to protect women against HIV-AIDS.

 For decades public health professionals and researchers have been battling HIV and studying the links between mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) and ways to empower females to practice safe sex due to the prevalence of male-to-female transmission.

Strides have been made but the rate of treatment is dwarfed by transmission, 2:5 according to Microbicide Trial Network’s (MTN) analysis of 2007 data from UNAIDS and the US Center for Disease Control (CDC). “In sub-Saharan Africa women aged 15-24 are the highest risk group Globally, women account for half of all HIV infections, and in sub-Saharan Africa, women comprise 60 percent of all infected adults,” and in “southern Africa women aged 15 to 24 are at least three times more likely than their male peers to be infected with HIV.”

Rings, tablets and films are now in development and testing to empower women to take control of their own health by offering new therapeutic drug delivery and more discreet, longer lasting options than microbicide gels.

The ring
Similar to vaginal contraception rings made out of ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer  (EVA), a plastic, Andrew Loxley, PhD, director of new technologies at Particle Sciences, Inc., explained this new ring has been embedded with dapivirine and maraviroc, two anti-HIV drugs. The ring is at the beginning stages of clinical safety trials and has promising results from previous efficacy studies that showed the two drugs remained intact and the time controlled slow release show consistent output for 15 days and steady delivery up to one month, compared to gels that are applied daily.

The tablet
Sanjay Garg, PhD, an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and his team have created a tear-shaped gel vaginal tablet that melts in three minutes and delivers a slow release of antiretrovirals (ARV) including dapivirine and DS003 for more than twelve hours. The tablet has yet to undergo toxicology screens and although a convenient option, it will likely not beat the ring to the market as it is in its earliest stages.

The film
Anthony Ham, PhD, director of formulation and delivery at ImQuest BioSciences and his team have created a vaginal film with a new antiretroviral (ARV) compound, IQP-0528. The film is ultra thin and smaller than a piece of gum made similarly to various consumer goods including “contraceptive films, contact lens solutions and mouthwash strips” in using “thin polyvinyl alcohol polymer, a water-soluble synthetic plastic” melts in ten minutes and releases high levels of the ARV. The studies conducted to date show promising results but much more work in needed.