On December 7

On this day in ...
... 1970 (40 years ago today), at Canada's House of Commons in Ottawa, the nearly 500-page Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada was presented. The 167 recommendations in the report (left) -- on, for example, maternity leave, contraception, family law, child care, and pensions -- "were based on fundamental principles which assumed that equality of opportunity for Canadian men and women was possible, desirable and ethically necessary." (photo credit) Many, but not all, of the recommendations eventually would be implemented.


(Prior December 7 posts are here, here, and here.)

On November 2

On this day in ...
... 1945 (65 years ago today), fewer than 6 months after World War II ended in Europe, and a little over a year after the Allies liberated Paris from the Nazis, a program for the protection of mothers and infants was established in France. A key component of la Protection maternelle et infantile, better known by its acronym PMI, was distribution of contraceptive pills. Administered through France's public service (logo above left), PMI today includes an array of services -- medical, midwifery, and social -- to pregnant women, to mothers, and to their children.

(Prior November 2 posts are here, here, and here.)

On September 14

On this day in ...
... 1936, in Eastview (now Vanier), Ontario, Canada, Dorothea Palmer (left), "a twenty-eight-year-old social worker and part owner of a bookstore" employed as a nurse, was arrested for disseminating information about birth control and contraceptive devices to a poor, Roman Catholic family. She would be acquitted after a lengthy trial; the decision "overruled religious and medical objections to the dissemination of birth control information." Rex v. Palmer led to the legalizing of such distribution. (credit for undated photo)

(Prior September 14 posts are here, here, and here.)

On August 26

On this day in ...
... 1969, C-150, an Omnibus Bill that revised Canada's Criminal Code to decriminalize sodomy, went into effect. The entry into force marked the end of a campaign touched off by the 3-2 Canadian Supreme Court judgment in Klippert v. The Queen (1967), which dismissed an appeal lodged by a gay man sentenced to an indefinite period of preventive detention on as "a dangerous sexual offender." Soon after the bill was introduced, and it became law after its parliamentary sponsor, Pierre Trudeau -- who'd defended the bill in a televised interview by saying: "There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation." -- became Prime Minister. The legislation Canada's laws with regard to not only to this aspect of sexual conduct, but also to abortion, contraception, and other matters.


(Prior August 26 posts are here, here, and here.)

On May 28

On this day in ...
... 2010 (today), is marked the International Day of Action for Women’s Health. According to the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights, an NGO with offices in the Philippines and the Netherlands, the date was set during a network reunion in 1987. It was officially recognized by South Africa's government 11 years later. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the date's an occasion for "the world to look at women’s unique health needs in a new way." Issues to which both sites point, albeit with markedly different emphases, will be familiar to readers: contraception, maternity, gender issues, fistula prevention, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion and post-abortion care.

(Prior May 28 posts are here, here, and here.)

On May 9

On this day in ...
... 1960 (50 years ago today), the United States' Food and Drug Administration approved use of the birth control pill. A recent Time article on the "revolution" that the decision to permit sale of this inexpensive form of contraception spawned stated:

Arriving at a moment of social and political upheaval, the Pill became a handy proxy for wider trends: the rejection of tradition, the challenge to institutions, the redefinition of women's roles.

(Prior May 9 posts are here, here, and here)

On April 1

On this day in ...
... 1878, the woman known as Madame Restell committed suicide in her New York City home. Born into a laboring family in England on May 6, 1812, she'd worked as a maid and married as a teenager. Eventually she immigrated to the United States and, by 1831 a widow, remarried. Using the French pseudonym above, Ann Trow Lohman became wealthy marketing birth-control products, and "the term 'Restellism' became a euphemism for abortion." Her conduct led to many criminal prosecutions, as detailed in a number of books, reviewed here and here. (credit for 1878 newspaper illustration of Restell, far right, in a New York jail cell)


(Prior April 1 posts are here, here, and here)

Every day a mother's day

It may come as a surprise to learn that maternal mortality is no Dickensian anachronism. Quite the contrary. A Huffington Post op-ed by Donna E. Shalala, President of the University of Miami and former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF and former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, states:

Almost as many women die in childbirth today as they did nearly twenty years ago.

And that rate is cause for great concern, particularly "in the resource-poor developing countries." There, Shalala and Veneman write,

►"Every minute a woman ... dies in pregnancy or childbirth," for a total last year of 536,000 such deaths.

►Women "are 300 times more likely to die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth than women in developed countries."

►Their children suffer, too, as infants of women who die in childbirth "are up to 10 times more likely to die within two years."

The solution ought to come as little surprise:

Yet, when women have access to family planning, antenatal care, skilled nursing and doctors at birth, and emergency obstetric and postpartum care almost all mothers and newborns live through the complications that would otherwise kill them.

To step up efforts to improve health care -- "to reach the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and significantly reduce maternal and infant mortality rates by 2015" -- Shalala (near right) and Veneman (far right) have joined a coalition of NGOs and others in calling for Mothers Day Every Day, "a campaign that raises awareness and advocates for greater U.S. leadership to improve maternal and newborn health globally."

A noteworthy initiative this American Mother's Day.

Gains in Global Family Planning: Reactions on the Ground in Uganda

As Diane Amann reported here on January 29th, President Barack Obama restored U.S. funding for international organizations whose health care activities include counseling about, advocating for or performing abortions.
Upon rescinding the Mexico City Policy, Obama issued a statement observing:

It is clear that the provisions of the Mexico City Policy are unnecessarily broad and unwarranted under the current law, and for the past eight years, they have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries. It is right for us to rescind this policy and restore critical efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries.

(read the statement here).
As Amann points out, the decision was celebrated by family planning organizations and decried by abortion opponents. What are activists saying on the ground in countries that have been hurt by the U.S.’s restrictive funding policy? New Vision, a Kampala-based newspaper, reports:

“Elly Mugumya, the Executive Director of Reproductive Health Uganda, says that reversal of the gag rule could not have come at a better time. Mugumya, whose organization could not access USAID funds, says Obama’s announcement will go a long way in reducing maternal deaths and re-igniting the debate on safe abortion..” Mugumya observes, “You had to disguise or miss out on the funding, consequently suffocating public information and family planning choices because providing any information on abortion was seen in the wrong light. We pretended that abortion does not take place, yet it kills 13 – 16 % of mothers every year.”

Thomas Mega, the Uganda Country Director for Marie Stopes International, observes: “Our hope is that USAID can ultimately release the funds they otherwise held back to enable us [to] procure contraceptives to enable Ugandan women [to] be in charge of their sexual and reproductive health.”
The mood on the ground in Uganda appears to be quite optimistic. In a classic example of the “two steps forward, one step back” phenomenon, Obama’s important decision comes at a time when U.S. Congressional members modified the economic stimulus package to remove support for access to contraceptives in the U.S. According to Human Rights Watch,

the provisions, which would have allowed states to expand access to contraceptives under Medicaid, were taken out after protests from some congressional members.

Those Members of Congress supported removal of the provisions despite a 2007 Congressional Budget Office analysis that estimated that similar funding for contraceptives

would save $200 million over five years, including money Medicaid would otherwise have spent on services related to unintended pregnancies.

Change & United States' global health policy

Nothing more than too-much-to-do accounts for our not yet mentioning changes to the United States' foreign policy on family planning this past week.
Included in a a flurry of executive action, about which we've posted here and here and here, was President Barack Obama's restoration of U.S. funding for global organizations whose health-care activities include counseling about, advocacy for, or performance of abortions. U.S. Agency for International Development funds had been halted as soon as George W. Bush assumed the Presidency in 2001 -- having previously been reinstated by new President Bill Clinton in 1993, after having 1st been cut off by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Reactions?
As might be expected, anti-abortion groups are not happy; contrarily, as the Washington Post reported:

Obama's decision was praised by family planning groups, women's health advocates and others for allowing the U.S. Agency for International Development to once again provide millions of dollars to programs offering medical services, birth control, HIV prevention and other care.

Also undone, the so-called "global gag rule." We print Obama's rescission order, styled as a memo to new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in full:

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE
THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
SUBJECT: Mexico City Policy and Assistance for Voluntary Population Planning
The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2151b(f)(1)), prohibits nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that receive Federal funds from using those funds "to pay for the performance of abortions as a method of family planning, or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions." The August 1984 announcement by President Reagan of what has become known as the "Mexico City Policy" directed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to expand this limitation and withhold USAID funds from NGOs that use non-USAID funds to engage in a wide range of activities, including providing advice, counseling, or information regarding abortion, or lobbying a foreign government to legalize or make abortion available. The Mexico City Policy was in effect from 1985 until 1993, when it was rescinded by President Clinton. President George W. Bush reinstated the policy in 2001, implementing it through conditions in USAID grant awards, and subsequently extended the policy to "voluntary population planning" assistance provided by the Department of State.
These excessively broad conditions on grants and assistance awards are unwarranted. Moreover, they have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning programs in foreign nations. Accordingly, I hereby revoke the Presidential memorandum of January 22, 2001, for the Administrator of USAID (Restoration of the Mexico City Policy), the Presidential memorandum of March 28, 2001, for the Administrator of USAID (Restoration of the Mexico City Policy), and the Presidential memorandum of August 29, 2003, for the Secretary of State (Assistance for Voluntary Population Planning). In addition, I direct the Secretary of State and the Administrator of USAID to take the following actions with respect to conditions in voluntary population planning assistance and USAID grants that were imposed pursuant to either the 2001 or 2003 memoranda and that are not required by the Foreign Assistance Act or any other law: (1) immediately waive such conditions in any current grants, and (2) notify current grantees, as soon as possible, that these conditions have been waived. I further direct that the Department of State and USAID immediately cease imposing these conditions in any future grants.
This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
The Secretary of State is authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.
BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE, January 23, 2009.

On December 4

On this day in ...
... 1961, the British National Health Service made The Pill available to all women. But concern about the advisability of use of this form of contraception lingered, as indicated by this BBC reports on comments by Sir Charles Dodds, a leading physician:

He compared a woman's body with a clock mechanism. 'Even if you thoroughly understand the mechanism of a clock, provided it is going well it is very much better to leave it alone. To interfere with it if you do not understand it can be disastrous,' he said.

... 1945, having ratified the U.N. Charter 89-2 in July, the U.S. Senate voted 65-7 in favor of "legislation to give the United States full, active participation in the United Nations Organization." In this vote the 2 Republicans who'd voted against ratification were joined by 4 members of their party and 1 Democrat. It took place following a debate in which, as The New York Times reported, 2 of the opponents

sought to require the President to obtain specific Congressional authorization before he could make armed forces available to the UNO Security Council to halt an aggression or to maintain peace.

That proposal lost 65-9, thus leaving the President free for prompt and decisive action in international emergencies, once the size, state of readiness and general deployment of the United States peace-enforcement forces had been approved by majority votes of the two houses of Congress.

On October 15

On this day in ...
... 1883 (125 years ago today), in a judgment captioned The Civil Rights Cases, the U.S. Supreme Court (right) struck as unconstitutional the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had required that black persons and white persons be treated equally in sectors that, though privately owned, provided to the public services like transportation, lodging, and entertainment. Over a dissent by the 1st Justice John Marshall Harlan, 8 members of the Court ruled that the 14th Amendment governed only state action; private acts of discrimination were deemed outside the scope of that provision of the Constitution. The 13th Amendment, which banned slavery, was acknowledged applicable to private action; however, the majority of the Court reasoned, the discrimination under review was not equivalent to slavery. Congress would not pass another Civil Rights Act until 1957. (image credit)
... 1880, Dr. Marie Stopes (below left) was born in Edinburgh, to a father who was an architect and a mother who was a Shakespeare expert and the 1st woman to graduate from a Scottish university. At age 21, Stopes herself earned a bachelor's degree in botany and geology, with honors, from University College London. (photo credit) After earning doctorates in Britain and Germany, she became the 1st woman on the science faculty at the University of Manchester, and also the 1st to receive a British Royal Society grant to do research in Japan. She is best known for her many straightforward, pathbreaking publications on sex and contraception -- works that drew criticism, to which she responded by suing (unsuccessfully) for libel. She and her husband founded Britain's 1st birth control clinic. It has metamorphosed into Marie Stopes International, a "leading provider of sexual and reproductive healthcare services" -- on account of which it is now at odds with the U.S. government. Before her death in 1958 Stopes uttered many notable quotes, among them:

You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your soul's own doing.

On September 17

On this day in ...
... 1936, Ettie Annie Rout (right) died of "a 'self-administered' quinine overdose" in Cook Islands, 59 years after she'd been born in Tasmania. Rout grew up in Wellington, New Zealand, where her work as a typist for courts and commissions of inquiry "gave her a wide range of experiences on social issues." Later she worked as a writer and in business, but became best known as a health activist, concerned about the spread sexually transmitted diseases. Her emphasis on the problem, while she was a volunteer nurse during World War I, drew praise in France criticism in New Zealand. New Zealand also banned her Safe Marriage: A Return to Sanity (1922), "a contraceptive and prophylactic manual for women." Britain published it -- prompting a bishop to proclaim her

the most wicked woman in Britain.

... 1374, by means of the Pact of Koszyce, named after the city whose coat of arms is at left, Ludwik the Great, King of Poland and Hungary, granted certain privileges to the Polish nobles in exchange for their promise that he could "occupy the Polish throne should one of his daughters have no male heirs."

On July 29

On this day in ...

... 1968 (40 years ago today), media coverage focused on a new encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae, in which Pope Paul VI (right) rebuffed the recommendation of a majority of a Pontifical Commission, and thus "confirmed a ban on the use of contraceptives by Roman Catholics." Among the pope's "the most controversial" acts, it was reaffirmed in 1995 by a successor, John Paul II. This year's anniversary has stirred the issue again: among those commenting are "[m]ore than 50 dissident Catholic groups from around the world," which last week published, in an Italian newspaper, "an open letter asking Pope Benedict XVI to lift the church's ban on birth control." This group focused on HIV/AIDS as a reason for change; other commentators cited opposition among Catholic laypeople, sometimes by "majorities exceeding 80 percent," as well as links between overpopulation and global warming. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, Manila's archbishop supported the ban with this argument:

'If there is discipline in the marital bed, then there is discipline in the streets, there is discipline in schools, there is discipline in the government.'

... 1993 (15 years ago today), an Israeli appellate court overturned the conviction of John Demjanjuk. The court found insufficient evidence to support charges that Demjanjuk had committed war crimes as "Ivan the Terrible, a gas chamber operative at the death camp Treblinka, in Poland." Demjanjuk had been extradited to Israel by the United States. On his return, the United States undertook to deport him; however, no country has agreed to accept the Ukraine-born man, who'd immigrated to the United States in 1951. Earlier this month, a Spanish court announced that it would proceed with a war crimes action against Demjanjuk and 3 others. Initiator of the suit -- brought pursuant to the principle of universal jurisdiction -- was the NGO Equipo Nizkor. (credit for 1987 photo of Demjanjuk on trial in Israel)

On May 12

On this day in ...
... 1907, Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to a mother also named Katharine Hepburn, a suffragist who helped start Planned Parenthood after hearing Margaret Sanger speak. Her father was Dr. Thomas Hepburn, a urologist who worked to raise consciousness about sexually transmitted diseases. Raised in a household filled with frank discussion about such matters, young Katharine attended rallies with her mother. She followed her mother's footsteps by earning a degree at Pennsylvania's Bryn Mawr College, now site of the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center, then turned her attention to acting. Hepburn would become a preeminent actor of her generation, known for playing strong-willed women on screen -- among them, reporter Tess in Woman of the Year (1942) and lawyer Amanda (above, far right) in Adam's Rib (1949) -- and living a strong-willed life off screen. She continued her mother's support for Planned Parenthood. Hepburn died 5 years ago in Connecticut. (photo credit)
... 1996, the Wassenaar Arrangement -- full name, The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies -- was established in the Dutch town after which it is named. The Arrangement, an arms control treaty with 40 states parties, is the successor to a Cold war-era arms export control committee. Its administrative secretariat is located in Vienna, Austria.

On February 11, ...

... 1991, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization was formed at The Hague. UNPO's membership includes "indigenous peoples, minorities, and unrecognised or occupied territories who have joined together to protect and promote their human and cultural rights, to preserve their environments, and to find nonviolent solutions to conflicts which affect them." Today, on its 2d International Action Day, UNPO's launching a yearlong focus on a theme á propos of yesterday's post by Naomi Norberg: "Freedom for Burma Now!"
... 1962, U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) was born in Madison, Wisconsin.
... 1916, Russia-born American anarchist Emma Goldman was arrested by New York police for giving a public lecture on birth control. Goldman (right) "was charged with violating the Comstock Law," an 1873 federal "statute banning transportation of 'obscene' matter through the mails."

On December 28, ...

... 1967 (40 years ago today), after "passionate debates," France's National Assembly approved a law authorizing the use of contraceptives, though it did not permit reimbursement for contraceptives by the government's social security agency. The new law, dubbed Loi Neuwirth after the Assembly member who proposed it, displaced a 1920 law that had banned all contraception. Abortion would remain illegal in France until 1975. Here and here are Le Monde's retrospectives on the law that it says made "2 children, 3 years apart" the French standard.
... 1694, England's Queen Mary II died from smallpox in London, where she'd been born 32 years earlier. Brought up as a Protestant notwithstanding her parents' conversion to Catholicism, at age 15 Mary (right) married her cousin, William of Orange, and lived with him in Holland. After William invaded England and deposed her father, she and her husband became co-rulers of England. The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, was chartered by the couple in 1693.

On August 27, ...

... 1875, Katharine Dexter McCormick (right) was born in Dexter, Michigan. In 1904 she earned a bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the 1st woman ever to be graduated from that institution. After marriage to an heir of the International Harvester Co. fortune foundered when he developed schizophrenia, she devoted herself to women's issues, becoming a leader in the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the League of Women Voters. She campaigned for better and more widely available methods of contraception, and smuggled diaphragms from Britain to be used in the clinic of fellow campaigner Margaret Sanger. "[O]nce described as 'rich as Croesus,'" McCormick funded research that led to development of The Pill. Of McCormick and Sanger the Global Campaign for Microbicides writes:

No less than five men have been heralded by historians as the "father" of the modern birth control pill. In reality, it was two women who had both the foresight and the determination to transform women's sexual lives.

... 1991, the European Community recognized Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as independent nation-states.