Who Doesn't Want More Healthy Moms and Babies?

In light of our abysmal maternal health statistics -- we're 39th in the world, behind Canada, tiny Malta, Croatia, Serbia, and the United Arab Emirates -- the U.S. needs to make every effort to promote and improve maternal health. Knowing that 1.5 trillion text messages were sent in the U.S. in 2008, several groups have teamed up to create text4baby, a mobile messaging service to promote the health of pregnant women, new moms, and their babies.

Yesterday I attended a briefing sponsored by Women’s Policy, Inc., the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues, the Office on Women’s Health, and the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies (HMHB) Coalition to promote this terrific new initiative.

Text4baby is a free service that provides thrice-weekly messages to pregnant women and new moms during the first year of their child’s life. The messages focus on health and safety – everything from where to find tobacco cessation services, to appointment reminders, to breastfeeding education, WIC eligibility, safe sleeping, and child care.

Among HMHB's many partners is the Department of Defense Military Health System (yahoo for not overlooking our military families!) and MTV, which is featuring the service on 16 and Pregnant. 

MTV Shows

If you want to sign up (FREE!) just text “BABY” to 511411 (“BEBE” for Spanish).

GOP Fake 2010 "Census": Only Losers Cheat When They Can't Win Any Other Way

UPDATE as of June 8, 2010--see the coda to this story at the bottom of the page.

I'm sure there's a Very Brady Episode that taught the important life lesson: only losers cheat when they can't win any other way. That's certainly what occurred to me when my spouse was mailed this fake GOP "Census" about a month ago. (The accompanying letter signed by RNC Chair Michael Steele is dated March 26, 2010.) We'd already been sent our official 2010 U.S. Census materials and filled it out dutifully. So when we opened the non-profit franked envelope that said in big bold black letters, "DO NOT DESTROY OFFICIAL DOCUMENT," (Exhibit 1) we raised our eyebrows.

 

For Earth Day: Backyard Gardening Tips from the White House Kitchen Garden

Home fruit and vegetable gardens are back in fashion, and with good reason. Organic food grown in your own backyard makes the ultimate eco-friendly, locavore meal — it reduces your carbon footprint by decreasing the miles your food travels from the field to your plate to an impressive zero.

An organic food garden also increases the biodiversity of plants in your yard, attracting pollinators (like honeybees) and wildlife, and improving the quality of your soil. And family gardens encourage healthy eating habits by providing a constant source of fresh, healthy food, and give children the chance to learn first-hand where their food comes from, fostering appreciation of plants' role in our environment. 

Last year, First Lady Michelle Obama chose to encourage more Americans to join the earth-friendly home gardening trend by tearing out a piece of the White House's pristine lawn to make room for a White House Kitchen Garden. And the project is still going strong. Just last month, even after a winter of record snows, the White House garden staff were surprised to collect a bumper crop of winter lettuces, greens and peas from beneath simple, inexpensive hoop houses they had erected to extend the growing season:

Go Read It: Wellpoint (Blue Cross Blue Shield) Health Insurance Targeted Breast Cancer Patients for Rescission

You may recall the greed of Wellpoint, a health insurer that thought it could raise premiums for California purchasers of individual insurance by 39% and do it with impunity.

After much deserved brouhaha, including passage of a health insurance reform law designed to prevent this kind of extortion from happening in the future, one of the results of the conflagration over the proposed rate hike in California was a scheduled review by an outside agency. Their assessment would inform a decision on premium increases by the California Insurance Commission. The deadline for Wellpoint to provide the California Department of Insurance with justifications for rate hikes is May 1, 2010, with a decision released shortly thereafter.

Keep that in mind when you read this long, exhaustively detailed story documenting how Wellpoint used computer algorithms to identify women who developed breast cancer in order to cancel their policies.

Please let the following executives at Wellpoint know exactly how you feel about their rescission policy for those unlucky enough to have breast cancer.

• Angela Braly, CEO, Wellpoint (Blue Cross Blue Shield's parent company): Wellpoint’s Indiana headquarters: 120 Monument Circle Indianapolis, In 46204, (317) 488-6748
• Brian Sassi, Executive Vice President, President and Chief Executive Officer Consumer Business, Wellpoint: 1 Wellpoint Way, Westlake Village, CA 91362-3893, (805) 557-6655 or (805) 557-6333
• Cheryl Leamon, Public Policy and Governmental Affairs, Wellpoint: cheryl.leamon@wellpoint.com, (317) 488-6748

While you're at it, let GOP gubernatorial candidate and current California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner know he'd better deny Wellpoint's proposed rate hike if he has a hope in hell of running for governor: 916-492-3500 Sacramento state capitol offices; CA residents 1-800-927-4357.

Cynematic writes at P i l l o w b o o k. She'll be directing a short film soon which has nothing to do with health insurance, thank goodness. Because that would be a horror show.

Wall Street Isn't Afraid of the SEC

You might say I have a little inside information about the SEC.

I spent several years there before I was a "recovering attorney" -- first as lawyer in the Enforcement Division who investigated a variety of securities fraud cases and then as Deputy Director of Public Affairs, where I dealt with reporters all day about cases being brought and how the agency worked. Granted, it's been a few years since I walked around the halls of the agency known as the Investor's Advocate, but my guess is that for the most part things aren't so different, except that this relatively small government agency is everyone's favorite whipping boy right now.

But as cable news shows and newspaper headlines focus on Wall Street reform, Goldman Sachs, the mortgage crisis and the economy (that still isn't so fine, thank you very much), I just wanted to weigh in on why the mess we're in is less the fault of the Securities and Exchange Commission than it is of the lawmakers who are all pounding their fists, wanting you to believe that either they're trying to change the status quo or that changing that status quo will only make things worse. The real problem is this --

Wall Street isn't afraid of the SEC.

Oklahoma legislature votes to screw women

Imagine this scenario:

Your 15-year old daughter is running through the park when she's overpowered, yanked into the bushes and forcibly raped at knifepoint. She escapes with cuts, bruises, and a nasty case of PTSD, but being a good parent, you have the rape kit done, police report filed, and then take her home and set up the appointments to deal with the aftermath.

A few weeks later, she misses her period and has a positive pregnancy test. There's no doubt in her mind or yours that an abortion is the only option that makes sense. You schedule the appointment, and take her in for the procedure. She changes into the thin paper gown, the doctor comes in for a moment, and tells her to relax, it'll just be a moment for the ultrasound tech to come in for the required transvaginal ultrasound.

Say what? It's a D&C, not a well mother checkup. What the hell is going on here? Oh, wait. I forgot to add this part: You live in Oklahoma, and in Oklahoma, some of the most misogynistic, mean-spirited, man-birthed abortion laws have just been passed by the Oklahoma State Senate.

The Oklahoma Senate approved several bills Monday that opponents say would make it more difficult or uncomfortable for women to get abortions, including one that would require women seeking the procedures early in their pregnancies to undergo an invasive form of ultrasound.

The five bills, some of which will go to Gov. Brad Henry for consideration and others which will return to the House, were overwhelmingly approved by the Republican-controlled Senate. If given final approval, the bills would give Oklahoma some of the most restrictive laws of any state, an abortion rights group says.

One of the laws headed to the governor would require doctors to use a vaginal probe in cases where it would provide a clearer picture of the fetus than a regular ultrasound. Doctors have said this is usually the case early in pregnancies, when most abortions are done.

We just had a 15-month debate about health care reform. Part of that debate was all about letting doctors be doctors because we all know that a government takeover of health care is a BAD BAD THING. In fact, it was US Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) who argued longest and hardest about how terrible it would be to have government "get between you and your doctor", right?

In the land of tea and whine-fests where conservatives live, it's only a bad thing when Democrats think of it. When Republicans decide that a more-expensive, invasive vaginal probe is something that will "provide as much information as possible" before they have the procedure, costs be damned.

I won't even address the sinister psychology of their stupid law. They'd spend a zillion dollars to marginalize women and prevent one abortion even if the kid starved in the street afterward, because Lord knows they hate entitlements of all kinds, especially in Oklahoma, where 20% of kids live in poverty.

But wait, there's more:

The other abortion measures would require women to complete a lengthy questionnaire before receiving an abortion, mandate certain signs be posted in an abortion clinics and prevent so-called "wrongful-life" lawsuits in cases where a parent might argue that a child with birth defects or other problems would have been better off aborted. Another bill would prohibit state insurance exchanges, created under the new federal health care law, from covering abortions.

And still more:

Another bill would require a woman seeking an abortion and her doctor to complete a 38-question form that asks, among other things, the woman's age, race, education, number of previous pregnancies and reason for seeking an abortion.

So, in Oklahoma, an old geezer with 18 kids and three wives can roll into the doctor's office and get a Viagra prescription, but a woman who has been raped or abused, or who has just exercised her Constitutional right to choice under the laws of this nation cannot receive medical treatment without a 38-question form invading her privacy, humiliation and judgment in the form of "mandatory signs", and an expensive vaginal probe?

Alrighty then. Got it. My advice would be to get the hell out of Oklahoma and don't look back if it were my daughter. That, and start making contributions to organizations like NARAL who will stand and fight in court to turn these idiotic, hateful laws back for good.

Oklahoma, Utah, Kansas, and other states contemplating laws that clearly discriminate against women know they discriminate. They want them to be challenged and they want a chance to re-litigate Roe v. Wade in the hopes of overturning it altogether with a Supreme Court more...conservative.

I hope President Obama chooses his Supreme Court nominee with these battles in mind. It's clear they're throwing whatever they can at the wall to see what sticks. Let's hope none of it does.

R.I.P. Dorothy I. Height

Civil rights leader Dorothy Heights passed away early this morning at Howard University Hospital. Ms. Heights was 98 and had served as the president and then chair emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women.

She was supposed to go to Barnard but they'd already accepted two African American students, thereby meeting their quota. Yes, really. She came up with some of the most well-known civil rights leaders, from the Revs. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Jr. to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Mary McLeod Bethune. A humanitarian and feminist, she was there to see JFK sign the Equal Pay Act in 1963.

I think often of her quote: "If the times aren't ripe, you have to ripen the times."

Please read her amazing obituary.

Go Read It: J.K. Rowling Gets Political, and Ta-Nehisi Coates Honors Confederacy Heritage Month

Many of J.K. Rowling's critics and fans have speculated about what sort of underlying political messages the author might have been trying to send in the Harry Potter series, and whether the fictional heroes and villains she portrays in her fantasy wizarding world have real world models in the form of certain European or American heads of state (MSNBC political pundit Keith Olbermann has said Rowling told him she told really did hide an endorsement of Barack Obama in Book 7).

But this week in The Times, Rowling made a very clear, straightforward political statement in her article, The Single Mother's Manifesto, in which she argues that Britain's conservative Tory Party has a history of cutting programs that help impoverished children and publicly vilifying single parents for political gain -- a history that belies the compassionate conservative image the party is pushing in this year's election. (We all remember how well "Compassionate Conservatism" worked out here in the U.S., right?)

But beyond an astute, passionate analysis of political situation in Britian The Single Mother's Manifesto is a scathing indictment of general Western social attitudes toward struggling single mothers, and a concise call to remember the social consequences societies face when they fail to support the very children and families who most need the help of their community. Trust me: whether or not you pay any attention to the finer points of politics across the pond, if you are a parent who has ever struggled to pay for decent health care, housing, or schooling for your child (or even if you're just a Harry Potter fan who has long wondered what sort of passionate political voice might be hiding under all that allegory) Rowling's manifesto is well worth 15 minutes of your reading time. 

Elsewhere on the web, this week The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates has come up with a brilliant way to honor Confederacy Heritage Month! Wait -- what's that, you say? There's a Confederacy Heritage Month?

Happy Tax Day!

 No, really. Happy Tax Day!

We at MOMocrats get as annoyed as any normal person by the tedious piles of tax paperwork we have to fill out each year to do our social duty. (I mean, seriously: we're a bunch of writers. We have to fill out the Schedule C.) And of course, there are some government programs we are disappointed to see our tax dollars going toward.

But as patriotic Americans, we're also genuinely proud to know that we help pay for many of the public sector agencies and government programs that make this country a better place to live, and so we're happy, on this tax day, to reflect on all the good the hard earned cash we're parting with can accomplish.

Here are some of the things MOMocrats writers actually like paying taxes for:

Julie: I am happy to pay taxes because I know it helps fund schools and I do believe that solid, well-rounded education is a cornerstone of a great culture.

I am happy to pay taxes because I know it helps fund CHIP, and knowing that kids get needed health care is crucial to me.

Need Help Registering Voters Online? There's an iPad App for That.

Or at least, there will be an iPad-compatible mobile application for that, in May, according to Project Vote, which has collaborated with Echo Interaction Group to create software that would help voter registration organizations register applicants to vote over a mobile phone or computer.

Only four U.S. states currently support fully automated online voter registration - Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. Project Vote appears to be banking on optimism that more states will soon follow their lead.

There are, of course, a few voter fraud prevention issues posed by online voter registration that must be overcome.

Many states currently allow voters to fill out voter registration forms online, but still require eligible citizens to complete the registration process by printing out the completed forms, signing them by hand, and then mailing them or hand-delivering them to a local voter registration office, in order to ensure that a valid signature is on file for comparison in case the voter's identity ever needs to be verified.